Meet The Film Maker

Meet The Film Maker

The Paramount are thrilled to announce a very special event. Phil Grabsky, director of In Search of Mozart and In Search of Beethoven will be in Wellington on October 11th to present a double feature of these two films, and to do a Q & A. Tickets are available now at the Paramount so book early to avoid disappointment. All tickets are $40 and include a light afternoon tea in the break between films.

IN SEARCH OF MOZART

A fascinating insight into Mozart, his life and music, this documentary by British documentarian Phil Grabsky takes us on a journey covering as many miles as notes. As a non-musician, Grabsky prises open the history books and explores the persona of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

In the words of historians, musicians, composers and conductors, we get a great sense of the man - the complexity of his childhood, the relationship with his father and the genius of his music..


Sketches, paintings and footage of European cities today are integrated with interviews and scenes from orchestral and operatic performances. We hear Mozart's first composition and hear about the early years as a child protégé touring through Europe with his violinist father and older sister. The reality of life in the 18th Century, when snuff box gifts and kisses were plentiful but payment for performances was not, is portrayed through letters and Mozart had a lively sense of humour.

The detail is extraordinary as we hear excerpts from letters to and from Mozart.

Hundreds of snippets of Mozart's works are played in chronological order as a counterpart to the events in life - his marriage to Constanze, the death of his mother, the sadness of the death of his first son, the difficulties in the relationship with his father, his obsession with death...



Contrary to the thoughts expressed in Milos Foreman's marvellous film Amadeus, Mozart was not a pauper, nor was he penniless when he died at age 35. Indeed the communal grave in which he was buried was the custom of the day.



If you like the music of Mozart, are interested in his life or are simply curious as to who was this musical genius who injected joy, sensitivity, romance and emotion into his works, you will be captivated by this documentary. In Search of Mozart offers a multi-layered dense tapestry that is both entertaining and informative.

-Urban Cinephile

IN SEARCH OF BEETHOVEN

After returning something close to the "real" Mozart to viewers and listeners, it was perhaps inevitable that Grabsky would turn to the miraculous artist's successor and counterpart Ludwig van Beethoven for his next subject.
The contrasts between the lives and works of these two must have been both a positive and a complicated challenge to Grabsky. Mozart's public life as a performer began when he was a tiny child and was well documented until his early death at 35 in 1791. He was dragged back and forth from capital to capital for his early years, providing a filmmaker with a steadily changing landscape. His story was also that of his father and mother, his sister, wife, sister-in-law, and children. And with so much of his output given over to opera, his life provides multiple opportunities for spectacle and other stage scenes.

Beethoven (1770-1827), however, was almost perpetually alone. Leaving and losing his parents in Germany early, he lived in Vienna essentially permanently from age 21 and began to lose his hearing at 25, forcing him to withdraw from the more public life of a piano virtuoso. For whatever reason -- Grabsky gives reasonable weight to class issues -- Beethoven neither married nor had any serious relationships. The only relative with whom he had much interaction was his nephew, Karl, whose troubles consumed much of the composer's time.

Grabsky's solution to this more limited narrative material is to follow Beethoven more in time than in place. This often proves ingenious as we are reminded by the film's talking heads and performing fingers (many shots are of various hands on various types of keyboards) that so much of Beethoven's accomplishment was to restructure the way time and structure worked in music. While Mozart worked almost effortlessly, he still worked with the formats that were well-known in his day. Beethoven exploded these structures, whether in solo piano works, string quartets, symphonies and concertos, or even in his one mixed bag of an opera, Leonora, later renamed Fidelio. He did so with a great deal of real and artistic thinking aloud, ever conscious that, although he had a gift "from the Deity," he was all too human and so was his daily struggle to make art. If politics and history were far from Mozart's interests, Beethoven was keenly aware of the tumult of his times and the movement from structured societies with powerful kings and churches to democratic, humanistic experiments.

Grabsky therefore takes us more into Beethoven's head than onto his footpaths. He is well-served by the articulate and wonderfully insightful music professionals he's recruited. The running commentary and performance excerpts of Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda make his debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra next season something to be anticipated. Pianists Emanuel Ax, Paul Lewis, Leif Ove Andsnes, and Hélène Grimaud do wonderful jobs illustrating Beethoven's revolutions in sound just by demonstrating and commenting on "simple" passages, as does frequent Grant Park guest 'cellist Alban Gerhardt.
Beethoven's life and work show us how much greater a thing it is to be concerned so totally with life and joy and humanity and true creativity.
-Sun Times

Phil Grabsky is one of the UK's leading film-makers. He has specialized in arts, biographical and historical documentaries for over 20 years for television and cinema. Recent highlights have included the award-winning cinema films The Boy who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan, Heavy Water - a Film for Chernobyl, Escape from Luanda and, of course, In Search of Mozart. Other highlights include historical programmes with Terry Jones for the BBC and Discovery, major films on Pelé and Muhammed Ali and more than 100 visual arts programmes with Tim Marlow for channel Five and Sky Arts. His arts programmes, which are informative, engaging and stimulating, reveal both a seriousness of purpose and his wide interests.

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