WHEN THE FIRE BURNS When the Fire Burns is a musical documentary portrait. Filmed throughout Spain and Argentina, this documentary captures the rich sensuality of Manuel de Falla’s music, in counter-point to the near monastic austerity of his life…

No-one did more to expand the audience for opera than the tenor Luciano Pavarotti. He reconnected an elite art-form with popular audiences throughout the world, through his unashamed enthusiasm for life and his unique ability to communicate to vast…

How did artists survive in the Soviet Union? How tricky did they have to be in the face of authorities? What kind of danger and difficulties did they have to fear? Sviatoslav Richter and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky talk about authorities, watchdogs and…

The mother through the daughter’s eyes - a family portrait blending intimate conversations, agreements and disagreements, and shred ties of sounds and blood. This intimate portrait of two musical giants by Martha Argerich’s daughter Stéphanie has…

From 1982 to 1992 Frank Scheffer worked with John Cage on many different occasions, which resulted in a unique archive of historical audio-visual material. Based on this unique archive, including interviews, musical performances and images of…

Jan Peerce was a great singer, universally acclaimed as one of the outstanding artists of his time, a role model of the American Dream. Beginning with Peerce’s roots on the Lower East Side of New York, this film takes us uptown and around the world…

In 2003, after a career spanning nearly forty years, Julia Varady discreetly retired from the public stage. She now dedicates her time to teaching. While for most great singers the transition from performing to teaching generally follows signs of…

This film is about the life of a composer creating in the darkness of a tragic era. As we will see, like most Soviet citizens, Khachaturian hid a complex private life behind a mask of Communist loyalty. Khachaturian was the President of the powerful…

The film "Shadows in Paradise" portrays the vibrant atmosphere of the Los Angeles German-speaking exile community during the 1930s and 1940s, revealing their struggles, frustrations and achievements. By 1939 tens of thousands of intellectuals and…

Max Lorenz was at the height of his career as a heldentenor in 1941. As a homosexual with a Jewish wife in Nazi Germany, he would have faced deportation. However, as Hitler’s favourite tenor and a symbol of his times, he was protected by Hitler and…