Time travel to 1970s Germany in a new film: Koln 75
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 29 May 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For my final podcast for The Independent, I am talking to film director Ido Fluk about his new movie – which transported me back to 1970s Germany. a war-weary land where much was changing. Koln 75 tells the story of the best-selling jazz piano album by Keith Jarrett – who was cajoled to Cologne and onto the stage by a teenager named Vera Brandes. A great story, told with great care of time and place.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's Friday the 29th of May. |
| 0:10.2 | Today I have the great privilege of talking to the US-Israeli film director, Edo Fluk. He is currently in Brooklyn and the reason I'm talking to him is about |
| 0:23.1 | 1970s Germany. He is the maker of Kuhn 75, a film about the best-selling jazz piano record in history. |
| 0:36.1 | Keith Jarrett's concert in the German city of Cologne. |
| 0:40.2 | Edo, why on earth which you, a young director, |
| 0:43.8 | want to make a film like this? |
| 0:45.4 | I read about the story of Vera in a small magazine piece, |
| 0:48.7 | how this famous concert was produced |
| 0:51.7 | and was played on a broken instrument and it told me something that |
| 0:57.0 | I knew about art, about what makes art good. And that is that art is interesting, not when it's |
| 1:05.7 | perfect. You know, perfection is boring in a way. And that in the imperfections, in the broken instruments, in the challenges and obstacles that we face when we make art, |
| 1:16.6 | that's where something special is made. |
| 1:19.6 | And that story encapsulates that perfectly. |
| 1:22.6 | Keith Jarrett's most famous, most renowned, most interesting piece of work was played in really |
| 1:30.4 | bad conditions and was organized by this really cool punk rock hero of a woman in the 70s in |
| 1:38.9 | Germany. So I thought someone should make a movie about that. And I believe that when you went to Vera Brandes, you said, I need to make a film about this. |
| 1:48.8 | And she said to the effect of at last. |
| 1:51.8 | Yeah. |
| 1:52.8 | Yeah, we found her. |
| 1:54.4 | My producers found her and they called her up. |
| 1:56.6 | And they said, I'll want to make a movie about your lives. |
| 1:59.5 | And there was quiet on the line for a minute. |
... |
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