Muhai Tang - In The Ocean Of Music(2011)

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

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hudba Svetozár Stračina(sk)

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.

Tibetan Warrior(en)

The true story of one man's fight for freedom. For more than 60 years Tibetans have been fighting Chinese oppression. But their non-violent struggle appears to be in vain. Now, as a new form of peaceful protest, Tibetans are setting themselves on fire. Loten Namling - an exiled Tibetan and musician living in Switzerland - is deeply disturbed by such self-destructive action. So he sets off from Europe to India, on a one-man mission to meet top politicians, experts and young radicals. He himself becomes increasingly radical and is on the verge of violent protest. Finally he ends up at The Office of the Dalai Lama in India to seek the advice of the exiled Tibetan leader.

The Unanswered Question V : The Twentieth Century Crisis(en)

This series comprised six lectures on music, which cumulatively took the title of a work by Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question. Bernstein drew analogies to other disciplines, such as poetry, aesthetics, and especially linguistics, hoping to make these lectures accessible to an audience with limited or no musical experience, while maintaining an intelligent level of discourse: Lecture 5 picks up at the early twentieth century with an oncoming crisis in Western Music. As these lectures have traced the gradual increase and oversaturation of ambiguity, Bernstein now designates a point in history that took ambiguity too far.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ode to Joy: Beethoven's Symphony No. 9(en)

Showcasing a musical masterpiece in a rare full-length television recording by the Vienna Chamber Orchestra with the Westminster Symphonic Choir, under the direction of conductor Mark Laycook. An introduction to the performance, narrated by actor John Lithgow, gives a unique perspective on music history.

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.