The Iranian journalist/photographer Massoud Memar Nezhad fled from his country and spend 17 months in Friesland waiting for a residence permit. Without this status, he was not able to work. He killed time dreaming about Iran and about the film he wanted to make about an Ashig, a travelling musician who occasionally makes his own instruments, but whose music was banned in Iran anyway.
Someone working at the refugee center put him in contact with Wim Heins, a man preoccupied with building guitars. Massoud became fascinated by Wim Heins, who regards spending two days sanding a piece of wood as the ultimate happiness, as a form of meditation that can make something beautiful out of every piece of wood.
Unconsciously, Massoud identified with that piece of wood, with the tree that was cut down and taken to a foreign country, just like himself. The felled tree repeatedly gave birth to a beautiful guitar. How does Wim Heins do it? And what does the guitar sound like when the master guitarist Jan Akkerman plays it?

Sandra van Beek
Barbara den Uyl
Massoud Memar Nezhad