Movies: Composer

The lack of respect with which the Black musician Thelonious Monk was treated in Autumn, 1969. At the end of his European tour, legendary jazz musician Thelonious Monk appears on an interview show in Paris for French state television....

"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...

A short documentary on Jerome Kern and the making of Till the Clouds Roll By....

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....

Fictionalized biography of George Gershwin and his fight to bring serious music to Broadway....

A young violin prodigy is manipulated and pushed to her psychological breaking point by the composer she adores....

Petr and Richard are among those for whom fixed working hours are a nightmare. They want to be masters of their own time and not be subordinate to anyone. Petr also wants to fulfill his dream of becoming a great composer. The shackles of a regular jo...

To mark Beethoven's 250th birthday, the documentary sheds light on the composer's private side, linking his writings with his music in an original way. Beethoven's many letters and notes tell of his temperament, his love affairs, his humanism and his...

Anne Boyd, one of Australia's leading contemporary composers, teaches music at the publicly funded University of Sydney. This documentary chronicles a year in the life of an academic department that's under the financial gun....

Neil McRae, an impoverished composer, loves Cynthia Mason, but, fearing poverty, proposes to wealthy Gladys Cady. Can he compose himself and find the courage to seek love over comfort?...

This episode focuses on Zappa's early 70s albums, Overnight Sensation (1973) and Apostrophy (') (1974). Together they encapsulate Zappa's extraordinary musical diversity and were also the 2 most commercially successful albums that he released in his ...

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....

Hosted by Bette Midler, enjoy a musical tribute to the man who wrote some of the most enduring songs in American popular music. Lyricist Hal David and composer Burt Bacharach dominated the pop-music charts in the 1960s and early ’70s, crafting dozens...

Esther, a film composer going through a dry spell, moves in with her boyfriend Michael only to find out that he still keeps his Ex-girlfriend's belongings in his closet. What follows is an emotional roller coaster of a film exploring the great length...

Known for his mournful "Adagio for Strings," Samuel Barber was never quite fashionable. This acclaimed film is a probing exploration of his music and melancholia. Performance, oral history, musicology, and biography combine to explore the life and mu...

The film tells the story of two very popular Finnish singer/songwriters: Tapio Rautavaara and Repe Helismaa, who worked together until their relationship got frictious for a long time. The film covers the years from 1949 to 1965. Since the film is ba...

The heartbreaking but hopeful tale of Danny Kenny and Peggy Nash, two sweethearts who meet and struggle through their impoverished lives in New York City. When Peggy, hoping for something better in life for both of them, breaks off her engagement to ...

One of the first US born conductors to receive worldwide fame, Leonard Bernstein is an exceptional composer and certainly not only due to The West Side Story. Instead of concentrating exclusively on his most famous work, Thomas von Steinaecker sets o...

Johann Strauss, Jr., a would-be composer of waltzes in mid-19th Century Vienna, attempts to thwart his father's efforts to prevent his success when the older man becomes jealous of his melodic skill....

King of disco in the 70s with the band Chic, producer of Bowie, Mick Jagger, Madonna, Daft Punk, Pharrell Williams and many others... Nile Rodgers is today pursuing his fascinating career. We take a behind-the-scenes look at the genesis of some of th...