In Search of Beethoven (Phil Grabsky's blog)

[Preston]

Thanks for the information Emma! Do you work at 7th Art?

[Emma7thArt]

Hello Preston,

Yes I work for Seventh Art Productions. I will try and post a few more updates on In Search of Beethoven e.g. when the trailer is released, other screenings etc. You should check out Phil Grabsky's blog in the meantime at http://www.seventh-art.com/blog.php as he talks about some of the artists he has worked with for the documentary.

Emma

[Preston]

Well thank you for keeping us posted. Your posts are appreciated.

I have a quick question, will there be an actor portraying Beethoven in the film/documentary?

Thanks,
Preston

[bernardc]

In Search of Beethoven (release dates 2009)

Anyone know when the documentary is coming up North (Glasgow or Edinburgh)?

[susanwen]

Is there any news about "In Search of Beethoven?"

[Emma7thArt]

Hi everyone,

I thought i would let you know that the trailer for In Search of Beethoven is now up on www.seventh-art.com. The official site www.insearchofbeethoven.com will be launching soon and will have lots of additional exclusive features about the film. I will let you know when the website is up.

The U.K premiere will be taking place at the Barbican Hall, Barbican centre, Silk Street, London on Monday 30th March 2009 at 7:30pm

The film will be released in selected cinemas from April 2009.

Hope you can all make it.

Emma

[Agnes Selby]

With the great success of "In Search of Mozart" in Sydney, Australia
in mind, are you planing for Beethoven to be shown in Sydn ey?

Regards,
Agnes.

[Emma7thArt]

Hi Everyone,

Hope you have all had a chance to check out the trailer for In Search of Beethoven. If not, you can check it out at www.seventh-art.com.
Phil is currently in the studio with the voice over artists adding the last few touches.

There are still tickets left for the U.K premiere on Monday 30th March 2009 at the Barbican Hall, London. Visit www.barbican.org.uk to purchase tickets.

Phil Grabsky will be attending the premiere and will be doing a Q+A after the screening.

I will try and provide some further information over the next couple of months about when In Search of Beethoven will be screened regionally and internationally.

Don't forget to check Phil's blog for all the lastest developments with In Search of Beethoven and other productions in the works.

Emma

[Peter]

Thanks for that Emma and please pass on my best wishes for the production's success!

[Emma7thArt]

Hi Everyone,

I thought you might be interested in knowing that director Phil Grabsky wrote an article in last weekend's Indepedent on Beethovne's Vienna. If you would like to read it the piece it can be found here

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/...a-1650203.html

If anyone is interested in attending the In Search of Beethoven premiere, tickets are still available www.barbican.org.uk. It takes place on Monday 30th March, 7:30pm, Barbican Hall, London.

Phil will be doing a Q+A after the film.

[Peter]

On Monday, London's Barbican Hall hosts the world première of Phil Grabsky's gripping, feature-length biographical film with TV channel Sky Arts, "In Search of Beethoven." Using a strategy developed in his previous film, "In Search of Mozart," also narrated by actress Juliet Stevenson, Mr. Grabsky's documentary aims to debunk both the gossip of Beethoven's contemporaries and the myths we've derived from it, with two hours of crisp interviews and illustrative performances by musicians and Beethoven experts, including Riccardo Chailly, Claudio Abbado, Hélène Grimaud, Sir Roger Norrington, Paul Lewis and Emanuel Ax. As in the Mozart film, each piece of music is presented chronologically and linked with Beethoven's letters and biography.

There are humorous moments, as when the genial Mr. Ax speculates about Beethoven's musical jokes. Though just as the Mozart film unpicked the myths perpetrated by "Amadeus" -- Mozart did not die a pauper and was not poisoned by Salieri or anyone else -- we discover that Beethoven was not the unkempt, unhygienic, tormented figure of romantic tradition, struggling, unloved and alone, against his tragic deafness. Rather, he was a handsome young man, whose misfortune was falling in love with women from a superior social class to whom marriage was simply out of the question.

Mr. Grabsky, 45 years old, was born in New York but brought up from the age of two in England. He has made more than 200 films, and, for the last five years, has specialized in documentary movies that launch first in cinemas, are licensed for TV broadcasting, but mostly make their profits from DVD sales. His visually stunning 2003 film "The Boy Who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan" -- starring Mir, a winsome eight-year-old and his family, who lived in the Afghanistan caves adjoining the Buddhist sculptures irreparably damaged by the Taliban -- won 14 awards.

Mr. Grabsky has close-cropped hair and piercing dark-blue eyes. He works (and travels) at lightning speed, doing almost all the jobs himself -- camera-work, lighting, sound, direction and scripting, helped in the post-production stage by his long-time editor, Phil Reynolds. The breakneck work-schedule allows maximum time with his wife, who looks after the business side, and their two young children.

We spoke to Mr. Grabsky over coffee at the Grosvenor Hotel near London's Victoria Station.

Q: How did you get started?

My first film, while I was 20 and still at college, was "The Dalai Lama of Tibet: 25 Years in Exile." Somebody recently said to me "It's time to make 'The Dalai Lama: 50 Years in Exile,'" and I felt very old. In 2000 I did my first full-length film, which had a lot to do with Michael Moore, thanks to whom "documentary" was no longer a dirty word. Also technological changes now allowed me to film by myself, without a big crew.

Q: What led you to make films for cinema release?

Having children changed my thinking. I began to feel that as I'm putting this effort into making something, I want it to have value. TV no longer values itself highly enough. The public may think it wants another reality show about conjoined twins or size-zero models. But the audience doesn't always know what it wants until it's offered -- so there is an audience for international affairs, opera, music and art, as shown by cinemas using their screens for the Metropolitan Opera, Glyndebourne Opera, rock concerts, motor-racing, football matches and, occasionally, a little old documentary.

Q: You made films on Muhammad Ali and Pelé; why now composers?

The things that have linked my films, from "The Boy Who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan" to "Beethoven," is a celebration and exploration of what human beings are capable of. I look at Beethoven and ask, how did he do that? And talk to great musicians, performers and conductors. I don't have a script when I begin. I just want to talk to people and find out from them how Beethoven achieved what he did. Take the little boy from Bamiyan, who had absolutely nothing, lived in a cave, and had no prospects. Yet there is laughter, humor and welcoming hospitality in his family: I celebrate their enthusiasm, their optimism, their ability to survive in extreme circumstances.

Q: All your films have depended on getting to the right people. Didn't even the Bamiyan film depend on having the right connections?

You have to engineer your own luck. Yes, I was going to do Afghanistan, and I knew Bamiyan had some name-recognition. But that little boy actually found me. Looking at the rushes, I saw a group of boys peering down through the lens at me, and one of them was Mir. I had meant to focus on an adult male (I knew filming a woman was out of bounds) but the men were all depressed, had no opportunities, could speak of the past, but not the present.

Q: How do you find a narrative thread in these circumstances?

Yes, above all the audience needs a good story, a strong narrative. After 4-5 days, I saw that little boy should be the story, because he had energy, drive, and could take me places adults wouldn't. My job is to be there from 6:30 a.m. to record the landscape and sounds, and ask the right questions.

Q: You got the best people in the world to talk about Mozart and Beethoven. How did you do that?

With "Mozart" and "Beethoven" it was different. Nicky Thomas, my associate producer, said she'd work with me only if we do it properly, and with respect for the subjects themselves. No one else will do this for the next 50 years, she said, and it requires talking to the very best musicians. We made a completely unaffordable, mad list, with 60-70 bits of live performance, but discovered that once you get past the agents, to the musicians themselves, they were eager to participate.

Q: Did your budget stretch to this?

I'm not terribly successful in raising budgets from broadcasters. Even when I get them to say yes, they're in for €3,000 or €5,000. The films go to state television. Broadcasters do, though, appreciate what we do. At the moment we're doing a film about a guy who delivers tea in Mumbai -- a project that, I hasten to say, pre-dates "Slumdog Millionaire."

Q: So how do you manage?

We have to take advantage of orchestras playing the composers as part of their repertory, and allowing us to film rehearsals. There's a lot of Haydn being played this year, and Handel and Puccini. So I can go to the Orchestra of the 18th Century, and say "you're playing all this Haydn this year. Can I film it?"

What was the budget for Beethoven?

About £330,000. Some of the ads in the breaks in our films cost that much. We only raised about two-thirds of that. When the BBC did a film about Beethoven some years ago, they did three parts. It cost a lot because they were all reconstructions. I don't do reconstructions. Particularly for Mozart. You can't out-Amadeus "Amadeus," so why try? Also it has to be scripted before you've done all the traveling and met all the people, so there's no discovery.

[Agnes Selby]

Thank you, Peter. Now I must wait for the film to come to Australia.

In "Search of Mozart" was so popular in Sydney that the showing
of the film was extended for a longer period than previously
anticipated.

Regards,
Agnes Selby.

[charly]

I can find no news or reviews about the film premiere on March 30. Has anyone heard?

[susanwen]

According to the internet movie database ( http://www.imdb.com ), it is scheduled for release in the UK on 17 April 2009, and in the Netherlands on 10 May 2009. There is no clue as to when it will come to the United States.

[susanwen]

According to the internet movie database ( http://www.imdb.com ), it is scheduled to be released in the UK on 17 April 2009, and in the Netherlands on 10 May 2009. There is no word about when it will come to the United States.