Kerry Candaele’s second Beethoven film (after Following the Ninth) explores the composer’s only opera, Fidelio, through the lens of a contemporary political context: the long shadow of Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile. Jorge Pena Hen was a composer and conductor. He was also among the tens of thousands arrested and killed after the coup which brought down the democratically-elected socialist Allende government. Restaging Fidelio in an abandoned factory in Valparaíso, Candaele meets Pena Hen’s granddaughter, Maria, who dedicates her art form — Butoh dance — to memorializing her grandfather, and sees surprising echoes of the opera in her tale. Love & Justice has it all: Beethoven’s stirring music and singing, history, politics, but above all it’s an inspiring testament to the enduring power of creativity and artistic expression, even in the hardest times.
