Muhai Tang - In The Ocean Of Music(2011)

What Would Beethoven Do?(en)

Classical music doesn’t exactly have a reputation for being hip. For too long it’s been seen as a stuffy genre for the high cultured elite. WHAT WOULD BEETHOVEN DO? follows a number of renegades, from composers flirting with modern mediums, to young musicians dedicated to changing the narrative, to a man who’s bringing turntablists and orchestras together. Notable artists such as, Bobby McFerrin, Benjamin Zander and Eric Whitacre add their voices to the debate about why classical music is still relevant today.

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphonie Nr. 9 - Leipzig, Paris, Mailand, Wien(fr)

Yugodivas(en)

Five New York divas close up. The thing that in addition to their friendship links these gifted, confident and beautiful women; a painter, an actress and three musicians, is their shared homeland, former Yugoslavia.

Famous Composers: Joseph Haydn(en)

Joseph Haydn is renowned for taking the established forms of the symphony and string quartet and shaping them into the powerful media for musical expression that they became thereafter. He brought symphonic traits to the piano sonata and was a master of chamber music. His masses and choral works also continue as standards in the concert repertory, and his operas are highly valued. These informative programs are a concise overview of the composer's life and times, filmed on location in the cities and places that influenced their works. Also included in a detailed list of each composer's most significant musical compositions.

Breaking Rachmaninoff(en)

A humorous documentary about the search for a great composer who managed to overcome his depression by spelling his own name wrong.

Benjamin Britten and His Festival(en)

A behind-the-scenes look at the Aldeburgh Festival and the opening by The Queen of the new concert hall at Snape.

Bear-Like(de)

At the far end of the Alaskan peninsula, for filmmaker Roman Droux a childhood dream comes true. He discovers together with the bear researcher David Bittner the universe of wild grizzlies. The two adventurists face bears at smelling-distance, experience the struggle for survival of a bear family and witness dramatic fighting scenes. Driven by a desire to explore the unknown the film tells a personal story of wilderness, framed in breathtaking pictures of unique creatures.

Tosca's Kiss(it)

Memoirs of the Italian Opera by the singers and musicians of the Casa Verdi, Milan, the world’s first nursing home for retired opera singers, founded by composer Giuseppe Verdi in 1896. This documentary, which has achieved cult-like status among opera and music lovers, features former singers who reminisce about their careers and their past operatic roles.

Bach pour tous(fr)

A musical journey in the footsteps of conductor Michel Brun, an atypical character, an atheist, who nevertheless plays sacred music, and who devotes his life to Johann Sebastian Bach. With the musicians of the Ensemble Baroque de Toulouse.

The Winners(en)

A searching, melancholy Dutch documentary about the lives of four classical musicians who won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, a victory that did not prove a guaranteed ticket to the top of the classical music world.

Monte Grande: What is Life?(de)

Documentary account of a man’s life in the face of imminent death – Francisco Varela's story told affectionately and gently, touchingly and astutely. Varela spent his life building bridges: between Western science and Eastern wisdom, neurobiology and philosophy, abstract theory and practical life. This film seeks to deconstructs the prevailing division between science and art.

Kick That Habit(xx)

Kick That Habit is a 1989 film by PETER LIECHTI, an audio-visual portrait of his native country, eastern Switzerland. The film collects samples from the land-and-soundscape, underscoring in the process the oft-ignored industrial underpinning of our latter-day culture. Also native to eastern Switzerland is VOICE CRACK, the everyday household electronics duo of NORBERT MOSLANG and ANDY GUHL, whose musical workings are explored as part of Liechti s vision. Whether clicking quietly and rhythmically or humming and shrieking at ear-splitting volume, their recycled electronics produce innovative sounds and provide an appropriate accompaniment in this cinematic search for the detritus of our culture, the lost and destroyed remains of the last century of progress.

Raving Iran(fa)

Anoosh and Arash are at the center of Tehran’s underground techno scene. Tired of hiding from the police and their stagnating career, they organize one last manic techno rave under dangerous circumstances in the desert. Back in Tehran they try their luck selling their illegally printed music album without permission. When Anoosh is arrested, there seems to be no hope left. But then they receive a phone call from the biggest techno festival in the world. Once landed in Switzerland, the haze of the instant euphoria evaporates quickly when the seriousness of the situation starts to dawn on them.

The Italian Character: The Story of a Great Italian Orchestra(de)

The Italian Character: a film within music and about music. The Italian character is the story of one of the most renowned orchestras in the world, enriched by archive material of the last thirty years about the great conductors who have been performing on the most famous rostrum in Rome.

Into Great Silence(de)

An intimate portrayal of the everyday lives of Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse, high in the French Alps (Chartreuse Mountains). The idea for the film was proposed to the monks in 1984, but the Carthusians said they wanted time to think about it. The Carthusians finally contacted Gröning 16 years later to say they were now willing to permit Gröning to shoot the movie, if he was still interested.

Hudba Svetozár Stračina(sk)

Kill Hitler(de)

This 140-minute documentary takes a close look at the story and historical context of a young Swiss man who was beheaded during WW II for supposedly wanting to kill Hitler. The man's family cannot help clarify the issue since they say he had been pro-Nazi earlier. Other injustices or puzzling omissions come to the fore, such as a German who was against Hitler, survived torture by the SS, and then was not given any state aid when peace was restored. Another sequence shows an extensive U.S. archive of materials that identifies many Nazis and their activities -- but is not available to anyone trying to track down former war criminals. Like other films of this type, the documentary helps to fill in facts about WW II that are little-known, or slow in coming out.

Herbert von Karajan, Symphonie n°5 Beethoven(de)

The Bolero(en)

The first part of this Academy Award-winning short consists of a behind-the-scenes look at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra as it prepares to perform Ravel's "Bolero." Individual musicians offer their thoughts as workers set up chairs and music stands; there are also comments by conductor Zubin Mehta and scenes of Mehta and the orchestra rehearsing. The rest of the film features a complete performance of "Bolero" with striking images of the orchestra as the music relentlessly approaches its climax.

The Strauss Fantasy(en)

Johnny Green leads the MGM Symphony Orchestra in a medley of waltzes and other familiar pieces by three members of the Strauss family. Filmed in CinemaScope.