Biography

Render - Spanning Time with Ani DiFranco

Render isn't a documentary or concert video, but a combination of the two--bathed in the casual intimacy of a home movie. In the 2002 film (directed by Hilary Goldberg and DiFranco), the folksinger is shown backstage with her band, in rehearsal, in concert, in the studio, etc. The highlights are the vibrant live performances from Austin, Texas; Knoxville, Tennessee; and New Haven, Connecticut. DiFranco comes in to her own on stage--singing, chatting, relating--she has the charisma of Janis Joplin and the political savvy of Joan Baez, along with the punk rock spunk of Chrissie Hynde (her "Bad Boys Get Spanked" T-shirt testifies to that). Over 20 songs are featured, including such favorites as "The Slant" (from her 1989 debut) and "Cradle and All." Guest performers include Sekou Sundiata and Bitch & Animal, a duo on her Righteous Babe label. Render is the ideal accompaniment to DiFranco's live CD, Living in Clip. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Join Ani DiFranco, her band, and members of the extended Righteous Babe family as they crisscross the country in this long-awaited, one-of-a-kind portrait of the Li'l Folksinger at work. Videographers spent years on Ani's trail, capturing her onstage, in the studio, and on the tour bus--footage which Ani herself shaped into a very personal self-portrait. The resulting movie, which draws on material from as far back as 1997, focuses on her 2000 and 2001 tours. This impressionistic collage takes you way behind the scenes; you'll watch a new song take shape and learn the stories behind some favorite older ones. Over two dozen songs are featured, including two brand new Ani songs and previously unreleased live versions of many of her classics. As dynamic, thought-provoking, and fun as one of her concerts, Render gives you a sneak peek into Ani's life and music in her own words, on her own terms. It's a visual live album, it's a road film, it's an art flick, it's a document of a movement in time.

American Caruso

Mario Lanza did more to bring classical music and opera to the masses through the popular art of movies than anyone else. His unique tenor voice was known to millions through such hit films as The Great Caruso and The Toast of New Orleans, and on such chart-topping records as "Be My Love." The chubby "singing truck driver" from Philadelphia became a Hollywood legend, only to be destroyed by his own excess. In a brief twelve years, Lanza went from being a star to an overeating has-been. He died tragicaly at the age 38 alone and near penniless in a diet clinic under mysterious circumstances. Through clips of his popular recordings, and from interviews his story is now told. This revealing video profile presents the highs and lows of this remarkable performer. Video hosted by Placido Domingo. 1983, color, 70 minutes.

Bob Dylan - Don't Look Back

Both a classic documentary and a vital pop-cultural artifact, D.A. Pennebaker's portrait of Bob Dylan captures the seminal singer-songwriter on the cusp of his transformation from folk prophet to rock trendsetter. Shot during Dylan's 1965 British concert tour, Don't Look Back employs an edgy vérité style that was, and is, a snug fit with the artist's own consciously rough-hewn persona. Its handheld black-and-white images and often-gritty London backdrops suggest cinematic extensions of the archetypal monochrome portraits that graced Dylan's career-making early-'60s album jackets.

Pennebaker's access to the legendarily private troubadour enables us to witness Dylan's shifting moods as he performs, relaxes with his entourage (including then lover Joan Baez, road manager Bob Neuwirth, and poker-faced manager Albert Grossman), and jousts with other musicians (notably Animals alumnus Alan Price and Scottish folksinger Donovan), fans, and press. It's a measurement of the filmmaker's acuity that the conversations are often as gripping as Dylan's solo performances. Grossman's machinations with British promoters, Baez's hip serenity, a grizzled British journalist's surrender to the fact of Dylan's artistry, and the artist's own taunting dismissal of a clueless sycophant are all absorbing.

With the exception of the studio recording of "Subterranean Homesick Blues," the live performances (including five newly restored, complete audio tracks excised from the original film but included on the DVD version) are constrained by crude audio gear. Their urgency, however, is timeless, as is Pennebaker's film, a legitimate cornerstone for any serious rock video collection. --Sam Sutherland

When acclaimed documentary filmmaker D A Pennebaker (Monterey Pop, The War Room) filmed Bob Dylan during a three week concert tour of England in the Spring of 1965, he had no idea he was about to create one of teh most intimate glimpses of the rock legend

Richard Rodgers - The Sweetest Sounds

How did some of the most beautiful melodies of the 20th century come out of a man described as depressive, hypochondriacal, remote, and alcoholic? This stirring 2001 documentary cannot answer that question about Richard Rodgers, but it provides a near-perfect blend of biography, personal reminiscence, and music appreciation. The latter comes via experts sitting at their pianos: Richard Rodney Bennett, Barbara Carroll, Andrew Lloyd Webber. The composer himself gives a lucid explanation of his working method, as he demonstrates how the lyric of "It Might as Well Be Spring" inspired the melody. Interviewees include Rodgers's daughters, who provide suitably unsentimental memories of dad. At the heart of the story is Rodgers's brilliant collaborations with two great lyricists: mercurial Lorenz Hart, whose problems made Rodgers look non-neurotic, and steady Oscar Hammerstein II. Ample clips give the best evidence of all, from Frank Sinatra upper-cutting "The Lady Is a Tramp" to John Coltrane jazzily bending "My Favorite Things." --Robert Horton

Speaking in Strings

Emotional, raw, and revealing--those adjectives apply to the documentary Speaking in Strings and the person profiled, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, one of the world's most acclaimed violinists. The intense musician's professional journey, which began at Carnegie Hall when she was a teenager, was sidetracked when she accidentally cut off the tip of a finger and almost ended when she tried to commit suicide. Filmmaker Paola di Florio was a childhood friend, and this intimacy is reflected in frank oncamera interviews. ("Feeling more than anyone I know" can be phenomenal and "a damn curse," she says.) The concert footage is electrifying: Two weeks after the suicide attempt, a possessed Salerno-Sonnenberg once again plays Carnegie Hall. Her mother, friends, fellow musicians, and critics--who say she lets her emotions overpower the music--are heard from. The loudest voice, though, is the honest one of Salerno-Sonnenberg, consumed yet empowered by her talent. "It's amazing what you endure," she says, "when you must." --Valerie Nelson

Described as "possessed, "frightening," and "brilliant," Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg has either enraged or enraptured critics while earning herself the nickname "the bad girl of the violin." Academy Award® nominee Speaking In Strings explores the controversial and fascinating life of this funny, fearless, irreverent, and world-renowned musician. A deeply private look at the woman behind all the accolades and controversy.

DVD Features: Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg Biography; Docurama Previews; Interactive Menu; Scene Selection

Return of Rubén Blades

This 1986 documentary by filmmaker Robert Mugge chronicles the life, music, philosophies, and opinions of the singer, bandleader, political activist, and Harvard-trained lawyer Rubén Blades. Mugge captures Blades's intelligence, passion, and charisma in a variety of locales: from the bandstand of New York City's famed club, S.O.B.'s, where Blades and his ensemble, Seis del Solar, performed, to his heartfelt recollections of growing up in United States-dominated Panama City. Whether he's talking about the political history of his country with columnist Peter Hamill of the [New York] Daily News, recording a track with pop superstar Linda Ronstadt, or swinging the son montuno/salsa grooves of "Buscando America," "Tiburon," and his "Mack the Knife" cover, "Pedro Navaja," with his group, Rubén Blades successfully blends art and politics. In the film he promised to return home and run for president--which he eventually did, unsuccessfully, but heroically. --Eugene Holley Jr.

Follows the singer to Harvard where he gets his Master's Degree in International Law, to his old neighborhood in Panama, to California for a recording session with Linda Ronstadt, and to New York for a performance at S.O.B's.

Leonard Bernstein - Reaching for the Note

Originally aired on PBS's American Masters series, this evocative biography of the American composer, conductor, and de facto musical evangelist Leonard Bernstein offers a compelling balance of musical scholarship and personal insight. It's a fitting approach to the brilliant--and emotional--life and art of Bernstein, who elevated Broadway musical theater, demystified and democratized classical music for two generations of American children, and brought a true New Yorker's vigor and directness to his conducting.

Writer-director Susan Lacy establishes the film's sympathetic tone in its opening shots of Bernstein's funeral cortege as it passed along Manhattan streets in 1990. Underscoring the footage is the elegiac second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, the final piece conducted by Bernstein at his final performance months earlier at Tanglewood. Scenes from that last concert (and a return to that slow, funereal march) are the inevitable conclusion of Lacy's film, which finds ample drama over the course of approximately two hours.

Lacy traces the arc of Bernstein's career from his earliest triumphs as a young conductor through his Broadway successes (culminating in West Side Story), his historic network television outreach, the frustrations encountered over his "serious" compositions (often derided, ultimately vindicated), and his autumnal work abroad conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. Bernstein's private demons--anguish over the tradeoff between a conductor's glory and a composer's productivity, the ridicule invited by his impassioned political activism, the conflict between his devotion to his family and his bisexuality, bouts of depression suffered in his later years--are addressed as well.

Excellent archival footage and a literate script are enhanced by interviews with his brother and children; collaborators including Jerome Robbins, Isaac Stern, and Stephen Sondheim; and conductors including John Mauceri, Seiji Ozawa, and Michael Tilson Thomas. --Sam Sutherland

Isaac Stern: Life's Virtuoso

This American Masters production celebrating Isaac Stern is more a profile of the man than the musician. Fans hoping to hear Stern performing will have to settle for the briefest snippets of fiddling: a bar or two from Mendelssohn, a fragment of Rimsky-Korsakov, a taste of Beethoven. Though each of these begins enticingly, they all quickly fade into the background, little more than aural wallpaper behind the comments and testimonials from such notables as Pinchas Zukerman, Yo-Yo Ma, and Itzhak Perlman--as well as some less-expected commentators such as Gregory Peck and Jimmy Connors. But the portrait that all give of this marvelous octogenarian is almost as dazzling and multifaceted as hearing him play. After all, master violinist is only one of the hats Stern can wear with aplomb. There's also the flashy celebrity who provided the music for Hollywood films like Fiddler on the Roof and Humoresque and who could share the stage as easily with Jack Benny as Eugene Ormandy; the musical emissary who sought to bridge cold war divides with music, touring the Soviet Union and communist China as soon as he was allowed (as recorded in the 1980 documentary From Mao to Mozart); the beloved teacher, demanding but genuinely respectful toward young performers; even the hard-driving fundraiser who kept Carnegie Hall from being torn down.

Through it all, Stern has carried himself with a no-nonsense humility, born of his profound love of humanity and devotion to his craft that is never less than inspiring. Footage (again, far from enough!) of Stern performing in Israel during the Gulf War, ignoring the whine of the air-raid sirens and the anxious surreality of an audience decked out in their gas masks, rapturous as he unfolds the serene music of Bach, raises the inspirational to the magnificent. --Bruce Reid

Sir Georg Solti - The Making of a Maestro

This too-brief but informative and insightful documentary was finished soon after Maestro Solti's death in 1997 at age 85, a title card informing us that the very last interview was filmed five days before he died. In only 90 minutes, Solti's extraordinary life and career are vividly recounted, from his upbringing in Austria to his clash with the Nazis while in his late 20s; from his days leading the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden to his shaping of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra into one of the world's greatest musical ensembles. Solti himself engagingly discusses his techniques and musical influences (including his analytical account of Richard Strauss as a conductor) while colleagues like soprano Kiri Te Kanawa and director Sir Peter Hall and his widow Lady Solti give their own personal takes on the man. The Making of a Maestro is a richly satisfying glimpse at a seminal musical artist. -- Kevin Filipski

This definitive profile of one of the greatest conductors of our day captures the remarkable man's amazing energy and passion for music. Filmed with Solti in Budapest, Bavaria, Chicago and London during the last year of his life, and filled with a wealth of archival footage and music, this documentary charts Solti's amazing life and illustrious career.

Andre Previn - The Kindness of Strangers

André Previn is one of the most interesting figures on the classical music scene, and this well-crafted television documentary on his career deserves to be preserved, in classrooms and public libraries if not in private collections. It is essentially an introduction to Previn's blockbuster opera A Streetcar Named Desire (based on the Tennessee Williams play), which is available on both CD and DVD recordings, and it will be most useful when played in tandem with the opera.

Besides scenes from the opera and the Williams drama, with occasional filmed comments by Williams himself, The Kindness of Strangers takes a look at Previn's biography: a jazz pianist and Hollywood soundtrack composer, often married and divorced, who successfully crossed over an almost unbridgeable gap to become a respected conductor with the world's most important symphony orchestras. He is shown composing, rehearsing, teaching young conductors, and even (though not often) enjoying moments of relaxation. --Joe McLellan