Frank Scheffer's (collage like) documentary on the American composer and rock guitarist Frank Zappa, as broadcast by VPRO in the Netherlands April 22,2007. Most of what’s on here is seen before, particularly in Roelof Kier’s 1971 documentary and/or Scheffer’s own documentary “A present day...
Frank Zappa: Phase Two is a 2002 documentary about Frank Zappa. It features a lot of footage from Scheffer's previous film, but new material from Malcolm McNab's private achive.
Ivan Ivanović, a party functionary, arrives in a provincial town as a temporary replacement for a cultural official. The newcomer is fanatically eager to reform the town's cultural life in accordance with socialist ideals. He abolishes all five music societies and orders a monument of the town's...
It all begins with a childhood memory: that day when the father of the future filmmaker Sebastiano d'Ayala Valva forces him to listen to certain music that initially terrifies him; a distant echo from the past that leads him to follow the trail of his mysterious ancestor, the Italian composer...
A story built around the music of Oskar Merikanto, tells the love story of the poor musician Lauri Alanko and the daughter of the rich Grahn family Annina. Annina’s family doesn’t approve of the relationship, and the couple’s happiness is also threatened by Lauri’s worsening eye disease.
A loving mother who has lost her family because of her alcoholism, tries her hardest to make things right as she is slowly consumed by her very own nightmares.
O Thou Transcendent: The Life of Ralph Vaughan Williams
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Award-winning filmmaker Tony Palmer directs this riveting documentary on the life and times of influential English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. With archived performances by conductor Sir Adrian Boult and stirring musical passages from "The Tallis Fantasia" and "The Lark Ascending," among...
"A soundscape is any collection of sounds, almost like a painting is a collection of visual attractions," says composer R. Murray Schafer. "When you listen carefully to the soundscape it becomes quite miraculous." David New's portrait of the renowned composer becomes a lesson unto itself, gracing...
The documentary examines Frank Zappa and his music through archive footage, including unique video excerpts from Austrian television archives featuring interviews with Zappa and backstage scenes from the 1970s and 1980s. The entire film is divided into chapters discussing the most important themes...
Ludwig van Beethoven headed for Symphony No. 9 literally his entire life. As early as the 1790s, he had an eye on Ode to Joy, perhaps the most well-known poem by Friedrich Schiller, written on the threshold of the French Revolution (1786). In his mature and, in particular, later years, the deaf...
The film tells the story of Eva, a pianist who followed her husband, musician and composer Peter, to a small village on the Slovak-Hungarian border. While Peter enjoys the peace and quiet of composing in the local environment, Eva searches in vain for a career as a performer, feeling disconnected...
Brilliant composer and violinist George Enescu is at the peak of his career and wants to compose an opera. He falls in love with a princess, Maruca, who inspires and challenges him. She is fascinated by Enescu and his music, she loves him passionately, but has a duty towards her husband and her two...
The life of composer, conductor, pianist and Oscar-winner Andre Previn, filmed during a year which culminated in the world premiere of his first opera, A Streetcar Named Desire, in San Francisco. Wherever he went, the camera followed. To Tokyo for a concert with Kiri Te Kanawa. To Philadelphia for...
A composer and his daughter emigrate to America in the hope that he can sell his symphony. But he meets with little success and begins to give up hope. His daughter and her friends, however, never give up hope.
Relying on a bounty of archival footage and interviews with prominent musicians and intimates, Philo Bregstein's film traces the life and career of the conductor and composer Otto Klemperer, one of the foremost musicians of his time.
The myths of Orpheus and Charon are interwoven with the entirely sung story of four friends dining in an Italian bistro who are fated to perish the next morning in the attack on the Twin Towers. At meal’s end, through magical realism, the restaurant’s mysterious strolling violinist is revealed...
