Director Phil Grabsky's Blog

Wednesday 4th January 2012

2012-01-10T02:42:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 4th January 2012

Happy New Year! If only all year could be as fun as Christmas….It was certainly nice to have a few days off after such a busy year. We had some nice news just before Christmas began when we heard that THE BOY MIR - TEN YEARS IN AFGHANISTAN had won the Grand Prix award at a festival in Warsaw. Sadly they could not afford for me to travel to the ceremony to pick up the award especially as my father’s background is that part of the world. The award and certificate have turned up here though and they are super. Thanks Santa! Elsewhere with Mir, we keep plodding away - we haven’t had such a positive reaction from the politicians and generals of the world but who knows what 2012 will bring…we’ll keep trying to get their attention. We also had a good screening on ARTE (the Franco-German TV channel) and I had many emails from people afterwards. As for Mir, we had some news only last week…He rang from a cold mountain top and spoke on the mobile to my colleague Shoaib. It seems he’s thinking of getting married!.....More on that when we get it.

2012 has started with a passion: rushing around on the holiday to finish the grade for Haydn, then the subtitles and credits and then finally the audio mix. The Barbican concert hall is coming up on the 12th and we obviously need a finished film by then! Hopefully many of you will come to see the film and hear the wonderful Endellion String Quartet play live too. Take an exclusive look at the trailer below:

We did get our first review in from Empire magazine: ‘The ideal introduction to the prolific Austrian credited with being the father of both the string quartet and the orchestral symphony’. Our press screening in the UK is Jan 10th so I hope that goes well too… Here’s the Empire review (I hope we get more of these…):

Completing the composer trilogy started with In Search of Mozart (2006) and In Search of Beethoven (2009), Phil Grabsky considers the maestro who inspired them both in the typically assured In Search of Haydn. Placing equal emphasis on the character, the career and the music, this informative and accessible profile is the ideal introduction to the prolific Austrian usually credited with being the father of both the string quartet and the orchestral symphony. However, as Grabsky demonstrates, Haydn was also capable of producing exquisite sonatas and concertos, as well as the occasional operatic aria of consequence.

Juliet Stevenson and Henry Goodman narrate the story which begins in 1732 in a wheelwright's shop in Rohrau on the Hungarian border. Such was the young Joseph's singing talent that he was recruited for the choir of St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna at the age of eight and struggled for a while as a freelancer after his voice broke and he was dismissed in 1749 for snipping off another chorister's pigtail.

Having contracted a disastrous marriage to Maria Keller, Haydn was offered the post of assistant to Kapellmeister Gregor Werner in the household of Prince Paul Anton Esterházy. However, it was his brother Nikolaus who became Haydn's most important patron, both at the family estate at Eisenstadt and the majestic palace at Eszterháza that was designed to rival Versailles. Indeed, such was Nikolaus's preoccupation with this sprawling palace that Haydn was forced to compose `The Farewell Symphony' (No45 in F sharp) to prompt the prince into allowing his musicians to return to their homes after a prolonged absence.

These events are related with a lightness whose authority is reinforced by the contributions of historians Tim Blanning, Richard Wigmore, David Wyn Jones, Bayan Nortcott and Theresia Gabriel, as well Eisenstadt Festival director Walter Reicher, Eszterháza tour guide Zsuzsanna Voros and British Library music curator Rupert Ridgewell. Indeed, the expert analysis is impressively lucid throughout, with conductors Sir Roger Norrington and Gianandrea Noseda providing insightful overviews and pianists Emanuel Ax, Ronald Brautigam, Marc-André Hamelin, Joseph Kalichstein and Christophe Rousset discussing Haydn's innovative composing style, while violinist Rémy Baudet, cellists Gautier Capuçon and David Waterman, trumpeters Alison Balsom and Jonathan Impett and sopranos Sophie Bevan, Camilla Tilling and Wilke Te Brummelstroete assess their own specialisms with an enthusiasm that is joyously evident and unforced.

The standard of the performances is equally high, with the Endellion String Quartet, the Orchestra of the 18th Century, Les Talens Lyriques, Ian Page and the Classical Opera Company, the Hanover Band, the Van Swieten Trio and the Florestan Trio providing polished accompaniment to the soloists. The excerpts in chronological order to show the evolution of Haydn's genius and, along with the keyboard sonatas No1 in G, No9 in D, No34 in E minor and No47 in B minor, the Concerto No4 in G, the Variations in F minor and the Trio in B flat, there is a chance to hear parts of the Cello Concerto in C, the Trumpet Concerto in E flat and the string quartets No20/4 in D, 20/6 in A, 54/2 in C, 64/5 in D, 74/3 in G minor, 76/3 in C and the unfinished 101 in D minor.

The symphonies are also well represented, with highlights from No6 in D, No30 in C, No82 in C, No84 in E flat, No86 in D major, No94 in C, No100 in G, No101 in D and No104 in D being used to show how Haydn found a new freedom after Nikolaus's death in 1790 and he was allowed to accept commissions from Paris and London, where he was treated like a celebrity after his long years of isolation at the Esterházy court. The experts are quick to express reservations about his capabilities as an opera composer - although Ana James's performance of `Placidi Ruscelletti' from La Fedeltà Premiata, Thomas Hobbs's `Wenn am beiten Firmamente' from Philemon und Baucis, Wilke Te Brummelstroete's Aria di Giannina, and Sophie Bevan's renditions of `Salamelica, Semprugna Cara' from Lo Speziale and `Navicella da Vento Agitato' from Il Marchese are as thrilling as the snippets from Missa in Tempore Belli and The Creation.

Grabsky illustrates the musical passages with still lifes depicting associated landmarks and their natural environs, while the narrative is dotted with archival images and extracts from Haydn's correspondence and/or encounters with Mozart, Beethoven and physician's wife Maria Anna von Genzinger, who became his closest confidante. What emerges, therefore, is a rounded portrait of the man and his music and one hopes that the director goes in search of another composer (perhaps Bach?) in the near future.
David Parkinson

Phil Grabsky's Blog - Friday 18th November

2011-11-23T02:04:00.000-08:00

Friday 18 November 2011.

3am, Koln. Can’t sleep. My body clock is upside down. I’m listening for the millionth time to my CD of Haydn’s Keyboard Concerto in F Major played by Ronald Brautigam. I almost can’t believe I am almost through this long-planned series of screenings of The Boy Mir. It began almost two weeks ago with a screening at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. That was at the invitation of a South Asian event (Annual South Asian Literary and Theatre Arts festival) which was very impressive and comprised two days of performance – beginning with a screening of The Boy Mir. The Natural History Museum (of Night at the Museum fame) was the venue. In their excellent cinema, we had a sparely attended but well received showing. It was a real whistle-stop as, after only 30 minutes of Q&A, I had to run for a plane home. I had been flown in on Delta who I have to say were great but they weren’t going to wait for me so it was all at double-quick speed to get on board and home – for the Leonardo Live shoot. I’ve talked about this in another blog so suffice to say once that was done (phew!) it was farewell to my patient and supportive family and back to Heathrow and onto a plane to Washington again. I had asked an excellent PR company (PlanetPix) in New York to organise some BOY MIR screenings for political purposes – to get the film seen by those who make the decisions about billions of dollars and thousands of lives. On a beautiful Autumnal day in DC, we held our first screening at the fancy new building housing the United States Institute of Peace.
In their own words, USIP is our country's global conflict management center. Created by Congress to be independent and nonpartisan, we work to prevent, mitigate and resolve international conflict without resorting to violence. An ideal place to show the film. It is indeed a beautiful new building just near the Lincoln Memorial. The screening was well-attended by aid workers and grant-funders…and USIP ‘experts’ of various types. They seemed to enjoy the film and the subsequent Q&A. Then Planetpix took me downtown to the National Press Club. In their own words: The National Press Club, a private club for journalists and communications professionals, has been a Washington institution for more than a century. It is also a world-class conference and meeting facility that hosts thousands of events each year for sophisticated clients from around the globe. And while these are the Club’s functions, its mission is to be The World’s Leading Professional Organization for Journalists. It is a social and business organization dedicated to supporting the ongoing improvement of the profession of journalism. It’s a great place, actually – with some wonderful, iconographic photos on the walls. Along the corridor are also many world flags and I was very proud that the occasion of my visit was used to present (from the Afghanistan Embassy) an Afghan flag to stand among them. I think Afghan journalists are supremely brave and deserve every recognition. As for my own press conference, it was a bit quiet but I did do a couple of TV interviews – who knows?… It was the eve of a three-day weekend so not the best time, in hindsight, to be asking journalists in. That night, I had a wonderful dinner with the inspiring and, frankly, brilliant head of the Afghanistan section of VOA (Voice of America).
Friday – another lovely day outside but I simply couldn’t break away from trying to whittle down the 200+ emails I had to deal with. I’d like to say I’m a victim of my own success but I’m not sure it’s really that…. I also had to work on the Leonardo Live re-edit. I did make time to walk down with a good buddy of mine to the war memorials including the recently restored First World War memorial. Today was Veterans Day so there was quite a crowd. I was wearing my poppy (as we do in the UK – commemorating the poppy fields in France in which so many men died) and I suddenly burst out laughing: all of yesterday, talking about Mir and Afghanistan, I’d been wearing a poppy ! Most folk here don’t know about our UK tradition so what were they thinking?? That I was an advert for Afghanistan’s no 1 crop?!
That evening, I went to Symphony Hall to see cellist Gautier Capucon. He was fabulous and I stopped by backstage to say hi. His cello piece in IN SEARCH OF HAYDN will, I’m sure, be among many people’s favourites.

Saturday: I worked all morning and then took a lunch break to go to a local cinema to watch The Drive. I don’t know why I do it to myself – it was crass, violent & pointless. If they had given the budget to schoolkids in Afghanistan they’d have done so much more good. In the evening, Planetpix had again done an excellent job of organising a big screening of MIR – this time in a fine cinema at the George Washington University. It was noteworthy for so many Afghans that turned up. Well dressed, handsome, affluent – just as their brothers & sisters in Afghanistan could and should be. For me, a particular treat was sharing the stage with Christina Lamb, one of the best journalists around. If you haven’t read SEWING CIRCLES OF HERAT, you should. Luckily for me, she liked the film. Phew! A lot of positive reaction…but, as so often, very few donations. Website-based donation simply doesn’t work. I keep expecting at least one wealthy person to send in a few thousands dollars but it simply hasn’t happened in all the screenings I have had over the past year…

Sunday – train to NY – had an important meeting with the distributors of LEONARDO LIVE and then made my way to a lovely building overlooking Central Park where I was the guest speaker at a fundraiser for Afghan women. Showed 20 minutes of clips and talked for an hour. Went down very well. Best of all though was the delicious Afghan food – people always laugh when I say one of the reasons I go back is for the food – especially the kebabs … but it’s true.

Monday – Pittsburgh. Oh dear. 11 hours to get there to do a Q&A at a cinema. Travelled up to the cinema and was surprised to arrive at the door and see a poster for me to do the Q&A three days earlier: they got my day wrong! Audience who turned up today – 0! Well, two old dears finally waddled in , hesitated until I told them what a great film it was (they didn’t know I was the director) and they sat all alone in a 300-seater and watched the film. My sense of professionalism did not extend to me sticking around to do a Q&A. I’ll be looking for compensation for that cock-up.

Tuesday and almost at the end of my trek now. As wet and miserable a day as yesterday was gloriously sunny. I gave a talk & screening at the University of Pittsburgh. Some very nice folk who are at their Institute for Human Security. Then a mad dash for the plane home.
Weds- into Sky for the start of the Haydn post production – luckily I have a star post-production editor who can get on with it all alone at the early stage so I could go home. Only to leave 4.30 am next day to Berlin.
Berlin holds such a special place in my heart that I am always so happy to be here. The city always has the same central European air that I remember from my visits as a child. Such a grand, sad, energetic, beautiful city. I’m here because the Franco-German channel ARTE are holding a press screening of MIR. Of all the braodcasters to whom I pre-sold the film, ARTE is actually the biggest coup – and then to get picked for their number one doc slot too is brilliant. And then the fact that they are pushing it makes me even happier. They have hired a wonderful cinema called the Babylon (where, funnily enough, I once came to show ESCAPE FROM LUANDA). I met my ARTE commissioning editor and we hug in relief that we actually managed to win the many fights along the way to get the film through. I won’t bore you with it but, trust me, it was like walking through a field of thorns at times. She has become one of my favourite all-time TV folk – because she believes in the programmes and programme-makers. And, trust me, many don’t. A decent crowd gathers inside – there must be thirty or so people in attendance – a very good turn-out, including the former German ambassador to Pakistan. It’s so easy to put on these events and for them to be ill-attended (well, like the National Press Club in Washington which only saw a handful turn up). The film kicks off on the big screen and it looks great. I make a run for a meeting to do with a classical music project (but that’s another story, folks) and then get back in time for the end of the film and the Q&A. Everyone stays and are very keen to ask questions and listen to the answers. The proof will be in what they eventually write but they seem really approving of the film. I have to add that this is a special moment for me as my sister and her lovely friend who both live in Berlin have come too. I manage to woof down half a bagel before my commissioning editor and I dash to the airport for a 3pm flight to Koln. There I give a talk to a class of film students interested in making political films…’Don’t’ I tell them. ‘make “political films” but tell great stories and let your politics come through the way you tell them, the choices you make, the questions you ask, the shots you frame, the characters you choose”. I find I talk non-stop for 45 minutes – either I’m good at this or have become a bore who likes the sound of my own voice….a bit of both probably! After this we head to the Forum Ludwig – a nice cinema next to the staggeringly impressive cathedral. Their first film ever (five or so years ago) was IN SEARCH OF MOZART (can you believe?!) and so it’s nice to finally visit them. This is a somewhat unofficial screening for WDR (the German channel that is showing the film six months after ARTE) . Again, it is decently attended and well-received. What I learnt from this screening is that the only way to extricate donations towards my desire of paying for a new, well-educated, teacher for Mir’s school is to actually have buckets held out by the doors on the way out of the cinema. Asking folk to visit the website fails. Handing out flyers fails. Two students jumped up after this screening and made paper hats from newspaper and held them out to everyone leaving – and raised 150 euros in one go. I am delighted..and somewhat peeved as I have had so many screenings that I could have done that at – and didn’t. I should have learnt from the Church – they know how to raise cash. Pass the tray round or hold a bucket out and get the cash from people before they leave the building. Oh well… Live & Learn.

Fri – Back to Britain…and it’s not quite over yet. In the afternoon, I give a talk about documentary film-making to some young kids at Brighton College (rapidly becoming accepted as one of the top schools in the UK) and then, after dinner and general fun & games at home, I drive off for my last Mir event: a conference on Afghanistan to be held at Marlborough College, an hour or two west of London.
The event on Saturday turns out to be fascinating (and well-run). I attend excellent presentations today from Bijan Omrani, Rob Johnson and Frank Ledwidge. Mostly concerned with history and contemporary military failures. The event is very well attended and the screening of MIR at the end of the afternoon goes very well. I hang around for a pleasant dinner and then head home, arriving about 1am.

Sun – I’m with my family now and I’m so delighted this mini-Mir-madness is over….It’s time to ease back a little and hope the films take on a life of its own….My golf swing has become way too rusty…

Oh shame…just heard we were not shortlisted for an Oscar. Lots of other omissions too such as (amazingly) Senna and The Interrupters. The selection committee like old-school simple emotional narratives it seems. I’d been told MIR stood no chance but I’d lived in hope for the past few months – it would have been great publicity. Well, we tried….and, on that, one has to say we’ve tried our best for the last year. We said we’d push it for this twelve months (at our own expense) and that time has now ended….Let’s see what happens…Maybe in 6 or so months from now we’ll be able to judge what impact, if any, the film had had….

Leonardo Live

2011-11-14T07:47:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 9th November 2011

I’ve been counting down the days and, finally, it is done. LEONARDO LIVE has passed. This is the morning after the night before. I don’t think I’ve ever known such a stressful project – not Afghanistan, Nigeria, Angola, Brazil, nowhere. But we made it – on TV and in 41 cinemas across the UK, we had an unbroken 73 minute show live from the National Gallery. It is two years since I first thought it would be nice to share the privilege of being at great exhibitions after-hours with a wider audience, i.e, in this case, a cinema audience. I always recognised that the Leonardo would be a good first show to do but I had no idea at all it would be such a perfect choice.

The press has been utterly extraordinary – ‘the greatest exhibition I’d ever seen’, ‘the most wondrous exhibition ever’ and so on. It really helped achieve a remarkable success – 95% sold out. I had originally thought to do a live screening to kids at midday in cinemas but the cinema chain that I managed to bring on board decided, for them, it had to be for an adult (and paying) audience. Then I had to get a broadcaster interested and the enthusiastic and ambitious SkyArts came on board. It wasn’t quite that straightforward, of course, but suffice to say without Sky there would have been no project. Luckily the National Gallery were open to the idea and I was lucky enough to hook up with the one person with the insight, energy and sheer brilliant person skills to make this happen. Gosh, looking back, there were so many hurdles – access, cabling, lighting, so on and so forth. But we just kept moving forward small step by small step.. It seems that no-one had filmed live from the gallery before (though that seems hard to believe) but certainly from the basement that is the Sainsbury Wing it seemed impossible. We tested with radio frequency cameras (which worked OK) but, in the end, thanks to the advice of the live production team we worked with (Leopard), we went for cabling. I can still remember spending most of my two week holiday in France dealing with that on the phone; it seemed impossible. But, again thanks to our National Gallery colleague, we somehow were able to lay cables into the roof of the gallery space at the same time as they were building the rooms for the exhibition.

When you remember this is the biggest exhibition in years and includes paintings & drawings worth not millions but billions, the fact they let little old us in is a thing of wonder! At the same time as this was on-going, there were satellite links to book, press releases and posters to check, picture clearances to be sought (and that is another massive task). Above all perhaps, there was the creative process to engage in: what is the film going to show? How? What? We decided very early to have two presenters (Tim Marlow and Mariella Frostrup) and a mix of pre-recorded background films as well as live talk with intelligent guests in front of the paintings. That basic premise never changed though maybe too many people were involved in the scripting at different stages – all wanting to do a good job but sometimes you need one clear voice to drive it forwards. This was tricky because the live script had to be pre-written and the pre-recorded script had to work around it. I’d have expected it to be the other way around so that was a long, difficult process. The default of ‘Live’ folk is quick, quick, quick whereas I lean to taking more time to let people look and learn. The best way on a show like this is probably somewhere in-between. Anyway, the day dawned finally and the 70-odd crew made their way to the gallery. A road outside was shut off to allow the trucks to park and set up their satellite links. Mariella and Tim came in and did their make-up, rehearsals, and so on. The minutes ticked by until finally at 6.40 we went live to cinemas with a special 20 minute (cinema-only) intro of fun facts and then at 7pm we went live to both cinemas and on TV. The next 75 minutes were nail-biting. Tim & Mariella were super, as were most of the guests. The technology worked – my word, I can still remember the endless, endless hours spent on discussing the technology to get these signals out live. Hats off & thanks again to Leopard Films for working so hard to get the show up in the air live and bouncing back down again to cinemas and TVs around the country. Along the way, we had an autocue failure and a camera failure but, again, that’s live TV I guess.

The point is what did the folk in the cinemas and front rooms think? And that answer came back to me very quickly – they loved it! They forgave the glitches because they just loved seeing the paintings in huge HD, they enjoyed hearing the background, they enjoyed the guests. Some cinemas immediately rebooked it for a repeat showing. SkyArts’ viewing figures were, for them, huge. And everyone said that this certainly had been a gamble but it had proved to be a gamble that had paid off. The National has already asked me what exhibition should we do next! And I have meetings with four other major London institutions and a couple of international galleries too…This could run and run. If I have anything to do with it, you need never miss a major exhibition again!!

Sunday 6th November - Leonardo Live

2011-11-07T08:15:00.000-08:00

Back in the UK (after a very nice screening at the Smithsonian in Washington DC) in an edit suite in London. Preparing some short documentary inserts for Tuesday’s big event: LEONARDO LIVE. I can’t honestly say it has been as much fun getting this far as making MIR or HAYDN – it’s a helluva lot easier working in a small team whereas Leonardo Live has about 100 folk involved. But the team I’ve employed to do the live production – Leopard Films – are doing a fine job and it should be a great night. I always knew there’d be an audience in the cinemas and just about all 40 cinemas that are taking it live have sold out! And I hope SkyArts get a good audience too (they are showing it live as well). Above all, the paintings – all 9 of them – will be shown in HD on big and small screens throughout the country. And soon the world. Wonderful. Mind you, I say all this two days before the show and I am most certainly not counting any chickens! Trucks, cables, dozens and dozens of crew, satellite links, radio frequencies, 600 guests to the preview night itself, egos, stress, adrenaline, excitement, fear….and, above all, the paintings. I just hope they don’t get it swamped in all the technology. Well, we’ll see…or you will if you watch it on TV or in the cinema: just know while you watching no-one is more scared witless than me. And if the show seems to go OK I want us all to raise a glass at 8.30pm UK time and toast Leonardo da Vinci and the rockets he first drew which ultimately put satellites in the sky. (LATER: started editing (three suites) at 11.30am - ended at 2.30am next morning. Madness. All I can say is you had better bloody well watch the show now after all this effort!!).

Wednesday 2nd November - The Boy Mir, Frontline Club, London.

2011-11-07T07:49:00.000-08:00

So here we are, the day after the night before. More4 showed THE BOY MIR – TEN YEARS IN AFGHANISTAN last night . After all the to-ing and fro-ing, the contracting, the hustling, the 70-page security protocols that went back and forth, the film has come and gone. Ten years ago, it would have been on Channel 4 and watched by 2 million. More 4 – it’s 200,000. Then again, in the cinemas, you’ll get 2000, maybe 20,000…So it’s a rough old game. But it’s on catch-up and will be repeated and folk are talking on social media about buying the DVD…so who knows? There is so much stuff out there, so much competition on your and my time, that having anyone see your film at all is a minor miracle. But still, one can’t help but feel a little low – I really want people to see the film and, moreover, think they should. I write this on a plane to Washington (very nice flight on Delta I have to say) where I’m screening at the Smithsonian. A couple of days earlier I had a nice screening at the best club in London, the Frontline Club in Paddington… it was the first time I felt I really benefitted from writing a blog – someone at the club had read how a cinema recently did not feel it could give me a free pudding with a coffee (despite my travelling at my expense for 4 hours to get there) and so the lovely lady at the Frontline gave me a free dinner! Mind you, the event was sold out and I could have done with a fee too. How are film-makers supposed to make ends meet? I don’t get it. Anyways, here I am flying merrily to Washington DC for another screening. I'm only staying a night but the organisation has provided the flight in business so it's all very comfortable (albeit via Atlanta) and I have got a huge amount of work done. I'm one of those rare folk who look forward to long flights as I get so much done....

Leonardo Live - One week to go....

2011-11-02T05:21:00.000-07:00

Just one week to go now…. I can still remember the moment, two years ago, when I thought wouldn’t it be great to share the privilege of filming so often in galleries with a national and indeed international cinema audience. I love and respect what SkyArts do but there will undoubtedly be something special about seeing paintings in HD on a big screen. The Met Opera, NT Live and others have paved the way and now, 101 weeks later, here we are about to launch a global first – LEONARDO LIVE.

Presenters Mariella Frostrup and the art historian and director of the White Cube gallery, Tim Marlow, will be joined by a cast of celebrated guests from the worlds of art, fashion, theatre and film to bring a unique behind-the-scenes look at this incredible exhibition. Guests will include the actress Fiona Shaw, Creative Director of the Royal Opera House and dancer Deborah Bull, the musician Nitin Sawhney and photographer Eamonn McCabe who will be discussing key aspects of Leonardo’s life and work. Pre-recorded films will also offer insight into Leonardo’s biography and the individual paintings. Bringing together the largest ever number of Leonardo’s rare surviving paintings; it will include international loans never before seen in the UK.
This is the first ever time that both versions of the Virgin of the Rocks, from the Louvre and the National Gallery, will be viewed together. The Salvator Mundi will also be featured in the programme, the first rediscovered Leonardo in 100 years which was once sold for £45 and is now worth an estimated £125m.

This pioneering simulcast, created and produced by PhilGrabskyFilms.com in association with LeopardFilms for SkyArts seeks to give the widest possible audience the opportunity to experience this once-in-a-lifetime exhibition.
I remember as a child living near Manchester that the idea of going to a gallery in London was an impossibility. Now we can bring the gallery to you – of course on TV but also in cinemas. I have been making documentaries now for 25 years and, in many ways, it has become much, much tougher than ever before to do anything valuable and crafted. I specialise in arts, classical music, social docs and history – in sum, four of the hardest areas to be in. I still remember the Head of BBC2 in the late 90s telling me that arts & history were dead on TV. ‘Get into reality shows’ I was told. Well, 120 Tim Marlow shows later, two box office successes with IN SEARCH OF MOZART & IN SEARCH OF BEETHOVEN (and next January IN SEARCH OF HAYDN) and many more including, recently, THE BOY MIR – TEN YEARS IN AFGHANISTAN shows it can be done. But it’s hard, at times seemingly impossible. Most at fault have been the broadcasters who worried there was no audience for content. I knew they were wrong – I see the crowds at concerts and art galleries, etc. You all know it too from the areas you report on. But change is in the air: my cinema screenings are full – LEONARDO LIVE is sold out across 40 screens in the UK. Worldwide it may play in dozens of countries – and it is the first of a series of such films I intend to do. My Afghan film (also, in its way, about human creativity and potential) THE BOY MIR has played in dozens of UK cinemas and will continue to do so. One day here, one week there. It’s not commercial but the films are seen. Digital technology in only a handful of years has changed everything. The VOD revolution has also begun. If you love art and are willing to look out for it you can find it. The downside, of course, is that fewer folk stumble across things. THE BOY MIR tonight plays on More4 – and will get maybe 200,000 viewers – my films in the 90s on BBC2, ITV and C4 got 2 to 3 million.

I hope you get the chance to see LEONARDO LIVE next Tuesday – it has been extremely difficult to do but we are about to bring the wonders of Leonardo on small and big screen in HD to viewers from Bolton to Brisbane, Reading to Rio. I’m exhausted by it all but I hope on the 9th November I’ll feel it was worthwhile and I hope you will too.

Best wishes, Phil Grabsky
PhilGrabskyFilms.com & Seventh Art Productions

2011-10-19T02:56:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody – and thank you to all of you who recently gave me your email addresses at screenings.

We have had wonderful press in the newspapers and on TV but it remains an awful struggle to (1) get cinemas to show it and (2) get audiences in to watch it. So to all of you who came..Thank You! I tried to attend as many of those screenings as I could though I wish the cinemas would at least contribute to my fuel costs!
One cinema said I could have a free biscuit with my coffee but not a free cake (and I’d just travelled three hours to get there!). Anyway, more importantly, the audience reactions to the film have been as strong as I’ve ever had for any of my films. The Q&As have always been good and I have met so many interesting folk who have expressed a real compassion for Mir and his family. As you’ll have gathered, the film was finished about 12 months ago so what has happened to Mir since then? Well, I had hoped to return in person this June to show him the film to them in person but, sadly, my Afghan colleague Shoaib thought it was simply too dangerous. I also thought the money it would cost me to get there would be better spent by being given to Mir directly.
Anyway, Shoaib did go and meet them in a city in the north (the first tarmac that Mir had ever seen) where, after some difficulty, he managed to get Mir, Abdul and Khoshdel identity cards and then bank accounts. We have now transferred some money which will help them and, in Mir’s case, will help him continue with his schooling. They also saw the film which they really liked. For my part, I committed to spend a year pushing the film (at our own expense) and that year is almost up. I have a handful of UK screenings left- and two trips to Washington DC mid November to show politicians. We had a wonderful premiere screening here at the Royal Geographical Society and it was very well attended with charity folk, authors, diplomats, famous actors, etc but it was also notable that no politician – and we’d invited them all – turned up. I hope Washington is more successful. Perhaps all the attention (and some really nice 5-6 minute pieces) on CNN, BBC World news, Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, and others will catch someone’s attention. I feel so strongly that if you are making decisions about millions, billions, of dollars being spent in Afghanistan and, more importantly, lives being risked and lost, then you have the responsibility to know who the Afghans are – for that, watch this film. Anyway, we’ll keep on trying.
Do keep an eye on our Facebook site, or my blog. If you would like to help us get the film seen please visit http://www.sponsume.com/project/boy-mir

Thank you again for your interest and I’ll send more news after Christmas.
Phil

Phil Grabsky's Blog - The Boy Mir - U.K Screenings

2011-10-14T01:58:00.000-07:00

Well, I for one thinks the train service is pretty good in the UK...at least that's been my experience over the past week as I've bounced around doing Q&As for The Boy Mir. Last weekend was a whistle-stop to Edinburgh and York and it all worked out really well. Indeed the screenings in London before that and these ones more recently have been pretty well attended. Perhaps more importantly the film has been very well received. Everyone stays for the Q&A and there are always far more questions than time allows. It's wonderful to see how moved people are by Mir' s story and I can also see that people are thinking, realising, that Afghanistan is a more complicated story than a blunt 'Bring the Troops Back Home' slogan... Financially for us, these one-off screenings make little commercial sense - cinemas these days won't even cover your train fares (and one said to me, after a three hour journey to get there, that I could have a free biscuit with my coffee but not a cake!). But I'm glad to be doing it and I know it will work out. 100 screenings in the UK is my target...we're going to hit 50 OK but those other 50 will need a lot of ringing, emailing, pleading on out behalf...but we'll get there. Meanwhile, we have been getting lots and lots of press attention - BBC World News, CNN, BBC World TV, and lots more. Rotten Tomatoes website still has us at 100% appreciation and 100% reviews...and the film has been nominated for some more awards...so little by little... Shaoib is in Afghanistan right now and will be trying to talk to Mir...news soon I hope.

28th September 2011

2011-09-28T01:59:00.000-07:00

Well, here we are...the UK premiere. It was one of those dates that went in the diary and seemed a LONG way away and now here we are. The Royal Geographical Society tonight (all invited!) should be a great place to launch the film. There will be lots of guests, that's for sure and we've great prizes for the raffle...but, above all, it will be a good way to show the film to the UK for essentially the first time.

I feel so honoured that Michael Morpurgo is coming to introduce the film - and it's been great to have so many messages of support from friends and colleagues. One has to be realistic too: this won't be a red carpet premiere that precedes month-long runs in the cinemas of the country. We have a target of 100 arthouse screenings...and we'll see. Certainly we've been getting some good press coverage: Voice of America, BFBS, Afghan Voice Radio, BBC World News, BBC Radio Sussex, BBC Asian Network, Press TV, Deutsche Welle, The Guardian, Independent on Sunday and more... How much impact any of it has is impossible to gauge... I know that the positive press we have had in the past for In Search of Mozart and In Search of Beethoven does make a difference - and made both films great successes - but social docs are so tough. I guess, maybe, at the end of the day films are supposed to entertain and peopel fear a lecture from docs that report on the problems of the world... As I say, we have invested a fortune in time and money this year to shoot the film out of its rocket and by the end of November we'll have to step back and see whether it reaches any stars...(sorry about the metaphor...!! I do try to be an artists, you know!).

Anyway, it's time to dust off a suit and make my way to London - CNN want an interview at 4pm - now that could be very useful. And let's hope we raise a lot of money for charity and Mir tonight.

Friday 16th September - The Boy Mir, 10 Years in Afghanistan

2011-09-16T03:05:00.000-07:00

Last month my colleague Shoaib very kindly and, as always, at some risk, organised for Mir to come to Mazar in the north where Shaoib organised identity cards and bank accounts for him, Khoshdel and Abdul. Yesterday we were able to transfer funds to them – which, in Mir’s case, he will be using to secure his future. More on that another time. We will be continuing to hopefully raise funds for them all via the new film THE BOY MIR – TEN YEARS IN AFGHANISTAN but, so far, though people are extremely moved sometimes by the film that hasn’t translated into donations. Maybe I should have been more specific about Mir or the school rather than saying all donations will be split between Mir, Save the Children and AfghanAid? Anyway, we have a big premiere at the Royal Geographical Society on the 28th September. Tickets on sale now! All income from that will go to those three. And maybe there is a knight (or princess) in shining armour out there… Either way, we are all working very hard on the film’s release and are thrilled by today’s Guardian piece – check it out.

Phil Grabsky's Blog - Armadillo - Review

2011-09-08T02:25:00.000-07:00

Armadillo - Movie Review by Phil Grabsky

Rating: 5 STARS

Having worked on and off in Afghanistan for past decade (making a film The Boy Mir - Ten Years in Afghanistan) I was really interested to see this film. Yes, it is another film from the POV of the foreign soldiers - and maybe we need more from the ANA or ANP perspective (but broadcasters don't want to fund those) - but I have to say I think this is the best I've seen. Restrepo, Where Soldiers Come From, and many more are all interesting, often brave, often powerful films but the sheer humanity of this film really gets to you. Brave young guys suddenly fighting for their lives in a ditch in the middle of no-where. And, don't forget, the film-makers in the same ditch - and they too have kids at home, wives & parents waiting by the phone. It doesn't tell the whole story - no film can - but you have to see it.

Armadillo is currently available to watch on 4OD. For more information please visit the official website

Phil Grabsky's Blog - Milan - The Boy Mir, In Search of Haydn, Leonardo Live.

2011-09-05T06:42:00.000-07:00

Milan 28 August 2011: well, I know I moan about funding and stuff but some days are really worth all the headaches. Today was one. I started before dawn to drive up to Heathrow airport to catch the early flight to Milan. I know they take a lot of stick but I really enjoy flying BA (most of the time) and this was, again, a nice comfortable flight. Then, after the long train ride into Milano Centrale (one of the greatest train terminals in the world), I was at my hotel by midday. Then began a typical day of working on three projects at once. To begin with I did 2 hours of emails concerning the Boy Mir film. The recent screenings in NY, LA and Chicago were, overall, very successful in terms of generating reviews and interest. The actual screenings were poorly attended (but so were the other docs I saw) but many of those who did see the film have become very active in supporting it and spreading the word. Ultimately, I think it's word-of-mouth that makes a film gain traction so that's hopeful. On the other hand, we lost our extra bookings in NY & LA because, almost bizarrely, we got too much press attention. I certainly can not tell cinema managers how to do their jobs; they know best. BUT I'd have thought having a great line from the LA Times or Village Voice would help sell tickets - I'm not convinced documentary film-goers are that concerned about seeing something the week it comes out. But, hey, I can't really be sure. Anyway, since my trip to the USA, I've been getting a stack of emails and facebook messages which take time to deal with. At 2.30pm I switched to project 2: Leonardo Live. It was 30 degrees and my shoulders are now a mess but for three hours I traipsed with HD camera and tripod the wonderful city of Milan from one Leonardo location to the next - gathering up some GVs (general views) that we need as background for our live show on the 8th November (Leonardo Live will go to cinemas and TV at 7pm UK time on the 8th November - a first-ever live event from the opening of an art exhibition and not any old exhibition but the biggest worldwide exhibition of this year).

I could have used an assistant today or someone to carry the tripod at least but the budget doesn't allow for it - broadcasters, when they insist we work for smaller and smaller budgets, should come on a shoot sometime. I bet none of them could carry a tripod - never mind camera, tripod and rucksack - for more than 2 minutes. Funnily enough, the last Leonardo shot was a great statue outside La Scala. And there I changed to project no 3: In Search of Haydn. Today's search took me to another super interview with Gianandrea Noseda who is rapidly shooting up my charts as one of my favourite people.. Not only did he give me an excellent interview but then I attended his rehearsal (with La Scala's orchestra) of Dvozak's Symphony no 8 in G major and a piece by Weber. Both were great: for 2 and a half hours I was utterly engrossed by both the music and Gianandrea's attention to detail, energy, control and, well, sheer artistry. I was privileged to be there. Things got even better when - and I will now be accused of name-dropping, I know - I then went to dinner with Gianandrea and one of the world's best pianists Leif Ove Andsnes. I tried my best to contribute but really I just wanted to ask questions and hear them talk! The food was fabulous too - thank you Milan! Thank you Italy! You may have Berlusconi but he will pass and the food, the architecture, the music and so much more will go on for ever. It's now 1am - my feet are killing me, my shoulders wrecked, my belly bigger, my brain scrambled, my nose sunburnt but it's been a good day - oh, one extra treat: Man City won away to Spurs 5-1. OK, early flight tomorrow. Must go. Ciao.

Phil Grabsky's Blog - New York - The Boy Mir - Documentary Daze.

2011-08-15T02:38:00.000-07:00

Documentary Daze. A day of endless documentary talking and watching. The first film I saw was Better this World - directed by Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega. It was about an aborted attack on the Republican National Convention in 2008. Very strong film. Then I saw about half an hour of Miss Representation by Jennifer Siebel Newson - about how mainstream media objectifies women. Not a fresh idea but that's probably the point! I guess you have to keep making such films until things change. I guess I have to side, at the end of the day, with the view that documentaries do, in some small way, have an influence. But it can feel like your canoeing up a waterfall. Then I went to Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams in 3d. Spectacular and the best use of 3d I've thus far seen - and clearly a small rig too. Everything was right - even the captions (which the Royal Opera House's Carmen got so wrong). Herzog is a must-watch director - always interesting though certainly at times a bit quirky. Those 30,000+ cave drawings though make the whole film wonderful. His choice of music wasn't perfect either. Indeed, wall to wall music seems to be the de facto way to make docs these days.

Then I saw Steve James' The Interrupters. A film about trying to reduce street-crime in Chicago. Again, strong. Good characters, good access. Film-makers sure do put themselves on the line for these films, I have to say. Too long again - the message began to repeat, and repeat. But still worth seeing. Then my own The Boy Mir premiere screening. Poorly attended but those who watched it very very enthusiastic and the Q&A afterwards went on towards 1am. I think that's going to be the struggle - if I can get folk to see it, they'll really like it. But are people tired of Afghanistan?

Phil Grabsky's Blog - New York - The Boy Mir, Docuweeks Theatrical Documentary Showcase 2011

2011-08-12T02:45:00.000-07:00

Thursday 11th August 2011

A full-on documentary day. Meetings with distributors; and emails and texts galore. Watched Errol Morris' Tabloid - there are not that many documentary film-makers whose name alone makes me want to see whatever they do. Morris, however, is one. Tabloid doesn't disappoint - great style, entertaining and interesting - although I have to say I'm left at the end slightly unsure of Morris' attitude to the story. Then went to a HBO-hosted event for the Docuweek Showcase. It seemed to be a clever mix of opening event and excuse to show one of their own films that isn't in the Showcase. Marathon Boy is about that little Indian kid we all gawped at a few years back when he ran 42 miles. Very nicely made film, albeit half an hour too long. I won't give much away but the film has many good moments and some shocks too. I was, however, left with rather too many questions. Still, the film-maker really must have worked hard and I hope the film does well for her. At the event tonight there were something like 200 folk, just to show once again how competitive the doc world is now. So it's such a bunfight what films do well and which don't - plus the importance of contacts, publicity budget and what-not... A few observations from this event too: 1: I listened in to three conversations. Each was exactly the same. Person one says 'I ...' the second person listens for a pause and then says 'I..' and so it goes on. Not one of those people asked a question of the other! 2: at any one time there were 30 people on mobiles. No-one feels able to stand for a second on their own. 3: I overheard a woman discussing her forthcoming $65,000 food and beverage bill for her wedding. She can't have been a documentary film-maker. 4: the Time Warner building has a great view over Central Park, reminding you that this has to be the most exciting city in the world. 5: I hope one day Mir gets to visit. Back at the hotel, the all-important New York Times review comes in...bit so-so I have to say. The reviewer loved The Boy who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan and thinks the long span of time for the new film makes it a little patchy. Which it is...but you don't want to sit and watch a three-hour film. Luckily on Rotten Tomatoes they mark it down as a positive review with the summary: 'If you've seen the first film, you'll want to come back to see Mir's progress through life. And no matter what happens, it seems, the smile remains.' Also Jules Brenner on Filmcritic.com writes a great review whose summary is 'Conveys an understanding of Afghan culture better than anything we've seen yet. Well worth its ninety minute screen time, and a lot more.'.

Phil Grabsky's Blog - Croatia, Brighton and New York

2011-08-11T07:44:00.000-07:00

Monday 8 August: A big week for the release of my film: The Boy Mir – Ten Years in Afghanistan. Today in Croatia at a film festival. The films get shown in the most beautiful setting: on a huge inflatable screen in a mountain canyon, bizarrely next to the entrance to Tito’s once-secret cave complex. This could so easily be a peaceful Afghanistan in 20 years. Could but won’t be. At 2 o’clock in the morning I was in a bar with singing Croats, Serbians, Macedonians, Slovenians…I can’t say the former Yugoslavia is totally at ease with itself but what a dream for Afghanistan to get here. Bed at 2.30am .

Tuesday 9 August: Hotel balcony door bursts open at 3.50am. A storm has whipped up and it’s mighty windy. Slept on and off till 6am. Went downstairs for the car that was to take me to Zagreb airport. Only problem was the local tunnel had been shut by the storm – disaster; I had to get to the airport. Eventually a high-speed dash at Top Gear speeds along an alternative (and beautiful) coast road got me to the gate with 3 minutes to spare. Went in to the office in Brighton and waded through emails and post. Was heading to London for Kevin Spacey’s Richard III but rioting London kind of put me and the clan off. I was never scared to go out in Kabul.

Wednesday 10th August: New York Times get in touch – I’m nervous about their review as it’s the one review that everyone in the US and indeed internationally takes notice of. Meanwhile two other projects I have underway take up a lot of time – one on the life of Haydn and the other called Leonardo Live – a live broadcast to TV and cinemas in November from what will be an extraordinary exhibition at the National Gallery. But I’m drowning in contractual squabbles. Talking to my lawyer till the plane took off for New York didn’t feel like I was any kind of a hot-shot; I felt like an overworked, underpaid, tired Dad that was spending another three days away from his kids.

Thursday 11th August: Making War Horse was on PBS last night, which is great. I have to admit my first thought though was to check any press for Mir.. and the Village Voice had posted something. Relief, it's great: 'makes you laugh and breaks your heart in equal measure'...That's the DVD cover sorted then! I hope the NY Times tomorrow is even half as nice - or, at least, not bad. Off walking to a meeting in this wild, wonderful New York City. An American male is more likely to die here than in the US military in Afghanistan. Statistics, huh? $600 billion dollars, Thousands dead. Is life any better there? Depends who you are. Has there been progress? Of course. Is the country any less likely to return to civil war? No. Are we any safer in the West? You can die from a million ways. Terrorism is not your biggest worry – maybe those cigarettes, or that drink at lunchtime before you drive home. New York City though…no sign of being in a country at war. I know a film won't do much - if anything at all - but I do hope some people take a look.

The Boy Mir - Ten Years in Afghanistan will be showing in the excellent Docuweeks Theatrical Showcase at the IFC Center. It's an honour to have been selected and I can't wait, among other things, to see the other films. Anyone who loves films - actually anyone who loves life! - should come here or to LA to see what's been chosen for screening.

Leonardo Live - Tuesday 8th November 2011

2011-08-08T04:10:00.000-07:00

I am not sure whether to breathe a sigh of relief or become more nervous...as tickets are now on sale for our big autumn arts project - LEONARDO LIVE. I came up with the idea almost two years ago to bring the big London exhibitions to a wider, even worldwide, audience - a mix of live Tim Marlow show to both Sky Arts and cinemas but LIVE on the eve of the exhibition's opening. I choose the huge November show at the National Gallery - Leonardo da Vinci. Like all these things, I severely underestimated the complexities in ramping up from a pre-recorded show to a live one and I'd say it's been a project that has needed my attention and input every single day! But I won't bore you with the horrors of negotiating contracts, access, budgets, etc. - what I will say is that there will be ten Leonardo paintings remarkably brought to the exhibition - unique and unlikely to ever be repeated. Plus dozens of other artworks that are relevant to the core show too. Tim Marlow and Mariella Frostrup will present an 85' show at 7pm on the 8th November and you can watch it on Sky Arts in the UK or at selected Picturehouse Cinemas. We'll have background mini-docs and expert guests and hopefully no-one will fall over or slip up. It is scary doing live stuff but if I can get through Afghanistan I can get through this! More to the point, it will bring Leonardo to a wider audience in, I hope, a wonderful way - and I always want to encourage people to look and admire the work of creative genius - whether a Beethoven or a Bruegel. TV broadcasters doubt there is an audience for art and stick any shows they do make on the smaller 4th channels (BBC4/More4 in the UK - or NOT AT ALL in the USA!) but you and I KNOW they are wrong, don't we?

Tickets for Leonardo Live are available to purhcase here.

23 July 2011

2011-07-27T05:15:00.000-07:00

That's scary - the 23rd July already. We're only three weeks off the US premiere of THE BOY MIR - TEN YEARS IN AFGHANISTAN and there remains so much to do. New York on the 12th and then LA the 19th and Chicago the 21st.I've enjoyed not being stuck in airports and airplanes for a while but that's sound about to change! Leigh, Christina and everyone in the office are working hard to get the word out but the demands upon any individual's time these days are enormous - you simply never know if the cinema will be full or empty. That's why my intention is simply to always feel we have done our best and then let the dice fall as they will. At very least we have done well to secure a two week run in both LA and NY - which, incidentally, means the film will be considered by the Oscar committee...(Hey, you never know! Mind you, a colleague in LA who works closely with the Oscars folk said he thought the film was stunning and stood no chance of being nominated - 'they simply don't nominate those kind of international social docs...' - though Born into Brothels was nominated I remember).
Anyway, more importantly, will the press give us any coverage? That's the key - and maybe it being summer won't help. It's also Ramadan so some of our Muslim audience will stay away too. Oh well, as I said, we do the best we can. The film launches in Holland soon and that will be interesting as a guide to what folk think.

I've been doing a fair bit of reading about Afghanistan recently - and the book I'd most recommend is Cables from Kabul by Sherard Cowper-Coles, the former Ambassador in Kabul. Fascinating, erudite, funny and, for me anyway, on the nail. I met him briefly last year at a conference on Afghanistan and he was all those things in person too. It's a shame I didn't get anywhere with the book idea for Mir but I'd have struggled to write anything as relevant as Sherard's insights. I must also mention in passing an excellent film made by that excellent journalist Lyse Doucet - it was on the BBC recently (and was the best of their short 'Afghanistan after 10 years' series - if you've access to I-Player, have a look. There really is no shortage of material about Afghanistan these days - quite what the public's attitude is I find hard to gauge. Certainly, when I hear the public talk on, for example, Question Time, they are extremely poorly informed - mind you, some of the panellists talk absolute rot too. And THAT'S why they have to watch my film....

Bafta - Documentary Award - At Last!

2011-06-23T08:13:00.000-07:00

At last! BAFTA sees sense. For over 20 years, BAFTA has been embarrassingly short of a Documentary Award in its Film Awards. The OSCARS have one, so do the CESARS..and now finally – after a lot of lobbying – does the BAFTAS. It has been absurdly slow in doing this and one can only breathe a sigh of relief and say ‘about time too!’.

In Search of Haydn - the Endellion String Quartet - St. George's Bristol

2011-06-22T04:13:00.000-07:00

These are the days I like best: today I filmed the Endellion String Quartet playing Haydn extracts / complete movements for IN SEARCH OF HAYDN. We decided that the best location for acoustic reasons was St George’s in Bristol. Chris (the sound recordist) and I travelled up late the night before to make sure we were bright & breezy for the day ahead… The day actually started with a fascinating and very useful interview with David Wyn Jones – an acknowledged expert on Haydn’s life. These are the guys that make me look good! Really all I have to do is point the camera in his direction and ask sensible, interested questions. He was an articulate, treasure trove of information and, while I need to guard against too many British historians dotted throughout the film, I know I’ll use him. It’s always more exciting to do the interviews late in the process too as (1) your questions are more focussed but (2) you can immediately see where parts of answers will slot straight into the film. Phil Reynolds (the genius editor) and I have been editing the film for three weeks, mainly working on the musical moments, but now we can start laying in the narrative moments. All very exciting. My only concerns are that I’ll run out of time before examining every avenue but that’s always the case with any film. It’s also the downside of the struggle to raise funds – I can’t afford a full-time researcher for instance (which we always used to have on projects).
Anyway, after the interview, we set up for the recording of the music. The Endellion had wisely suggested we use a company called Classic Sound to help on this one – as the sound of a quartet has to be very carefully recorded. I have to say that Classic Sound were fantastic and we let them sort out the mics (only 4 are used, hanging above the quartet). By 1pm we were ready to start filming and for five hours I had the absolute pleasure of filming 10 different pieces – all of them gorgeous to listen to and gorgeous (I think anyway) to look at. The Endellion are not only at the top of the field musically but are great to film too – expressive, active, emotive. For those of you interested, the pieces (in extracts of maybe three minutes) we chose to film were Opus 20/4 (3rd movement), Opus 20/6 (2nd and 4th), Opus 33 /2 (finale), Opus 54/2 (slow movement), Opus 64/5 (1st movement), Opus 74/3 (finale), Opus 76/1 (first – all for the DVD extras !), Opus 76/3 (slow – the German National Anthem tune), Opus 77/2 (3rd). We finished bang on 7pm and went for a well-deserved meal…and I clung tight to my rushes knowing I had struck gold. More good news: the Endellion will ‘open’ for the world premiere of IN SEARCH OF HAYDN at the Barbican in January. They will play 76/1 and then the film will run. That’s brilliant – what a night it could be. See you there….

Hay Festival 2011

2011-06-02T02:49:00.000-07:00

I'm at the Hay Festival in Wales and it is absolutely fantastic. It has helped, of course, to have been doing a couple of talks but whether a punter or performer, this festival is certainly one of the best. For me as a film-maker, it is without doubt more useful than any film festival. I think I learnt more about a certain area of South America yesterday a one-hour talk by an author than in any number of documentary films. Indeed, it makes you wonder (once again) what are documentary films best at? So many these days are slight, poorly crafted and without depth or thesis. Radio and books are where its at...and that is so well reflected at Hay. There are dozens of tents, there must be 2000 performers over the 9 or 10 days and the setting (especially in the sun) is outstanding. We went up to Capel-y-ffin (near Hay) and a more beautiful drive is hard to imagine. My son and I chatted to a shepherd who was rounding up (with his 5 Border Collies) 800 sheep. He was working in a tradition that was centuties old and it was as fascinating to watch as any movie. Back at the Festival, I shared the Green Room with Jo Brand, Paul Merton, Arthur Smith and Dara O'Briain and couldn't help but wonder who was the funniest! Michael Morpurgo was here too and did two wonderful readings...I said hi and gave him the latest film on Mir (he based his recent book Shadow a bit on Mir). Michael and his wife are wonderful folk. Naturally we bought a stack more books and made all sorts of plans to do way more events at literary festivals and far less as film festivals...we'll see. But we'll certainly come back to Hay next year!

The Boy Mir - Ten Years in Afghanistan - President Barack Obama's U.K state visit.

2011-05-23T02:23:00.000-07:00

In the words of one famous American: 'I have a dream'. I accept that my dream is not comparable to Martin Luther King's in any way but I too have a dream: it is that President Obama one day calls in Michelle and the kids into the TV room in the White House...There they settle back with tubs of popcorn to watch a movie called THE BOY MIR - TEN YEARS IN AFGHANISTAN. I don't care about festivals or awards but I would love Presidents and Prime Ministers to see this film and let Mir's story in some small way influence how they behave not only in Afghanistan but everywhere. I believe we should praise the Coalition forces for their courage and sacrifice as well as acknowledge the progress that has been made. At the same time we should criticise them, their governments and their NGOs for the huge amount of progress that should have been made but hasn't. Let us not forget the terrible bloodshed on all sides; primarily the fault of the Taliban of course but not always. This film is unique and if there is only one film the President watches (and frankly he should watch any and every film on this country) then let it be this one. He and Cameron will talk at length this week but frankly if they don't understand families like Mir's then they will be wasting their time and billions more dollars and thousands more lives...

Afghanistan

2011-05-20T07:19:00.000-07:00

Every day Afghanistan seems to bring bad news….this from the LA Times:

Insurgents massacred 36 workers at a road-construction encampment in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday, provincial and company officials said, marking one of the most lethal assaults of its kind in recent years. The Talban and other insurgents sometimes target work crews on infrastructure projects, regarding the building companies as collaborators with the central government and foreign forces. But most such projects have substantial security contingents, and it is unusual for militants to be able to kill so many in a single strike. The construction company's owner, Noorullah Bidar, one of 20 people injured in the attack, said from his hospital bed that all those slain in the predawn attack in Paktia province were Afghans. Rohullah Samon, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said the dead included laborers, technical personnel and security guards. Eight assailants died in the attack as well, he said. By Laura King, Los Angeles Times, May 20 2011

It’s so awful…yet on the other hand I did hear the female Head of the Health Ministry yesterday and, as she said, ten years ago she wouldn’t have been allowed in the ministry never mind being allowed to run it…so there is some progress to hold on to. But it is such a fine line between going forwards and backwards….

Istanbul - TRT 2011 Documentary Awards - The Boy Mir - Ten Years in Afghanistan

2011-05-10T07:08:00.000-07:00

9 May 2011

I feel like a boxer that has just taken two almighty blows to the gut and is wondering whether to bother getting up off his knees. Just as I was talking in my last blog about festival programmers I get an email today saying a big festival I was desperate to get in to has decided no. Then a cinema chain who I thought were going to support us have moved in a different direction. Maybe I really do over-estimate the film; maybe there are so many better films out there. But it is really disheartening. I'm not really sure how best to proceed - all this distribution work & effort is self-financed and without outlets to show the film, you're stuck. We've lots of TV support - but of course these days TV show social docs on their cable networks late at night ...I don't know. I've been at this computer now for 9 hours knocking out emails in the effort to keep The Boy Mir fight going but some of these upper cuts are starting to sting....

Istanbul - TRT 2011 Documentary Awards - The Boy Mir - Ten Years in Afghanistan

2011-05-10T07:06:00.000-07:00

7 May 2011

Arriving at 4am into Istanbul is undoubtedly exciting, especially when the taxi driver as taken this weekend's Grand Prix to heart and decides to drive through the harbours, the ancient walls, the minarets at 140 kph. Exciting but potentially deadly. Crazy town, crazy people. I haven't been here for a while (after many filming visits in the 1990s) and am delighted to be back for a documentary film festival. Too often my films have played here and I haven't been able to afford to attend. I have only had the first screening so far of The Boy Mir - Ten years in Afghanistan but it went really well. The audience afterwards refused to leave they had so many questions...I find it so strange that an audience can be so moved by a film and yet a festival programmer (who should know a thing or two about audiences) will reject a film - as Mir has been rejected recently by a Canadian festival Hot Docs that I was, frankly, sure we'd get into. I know it's all down to personal taste, zeitgeist, contacts and all that but I was still surprised. Still, saved me yet another transatlantic trip. And it meant I could come to Turkey. This is certainly one of the most interesting countries for me and I'd love more time to explore - and it was also lovely how interested the TV channels were in the film and how I came to make it. I also had the chance to see a couple of good docs: Ward 54 and Israel v Israel. Both very moving. There really are so many wrongs to right - although I doubt that life has ever been as safe and sound as it is for most people in most places. Mind you, next door in Syria, all sorts of chaos and bloodshed are breaking out. Anyway, having savoured the delights of an Istanbul kebab I retired to my hotel room to work through the endless avalanche of emails...outside, a great city roared through the night.

Friday 15th April - War Horse - New York

2011-04-15T02:29:00.000-07:00

Making War Horse - trailer from David Bickerstaff on Vimeo.

The War Horse publicity is everywhere - gosh, I wish I had a budget like that for The Boy Mir. It's on buses, billboards, newspapers... The show is up and running at the Lincoln Centre and I'm sure (and hope) it does really well. It deserves to. AND I want folk to buy the 'Making of' DVD!!

I had dinner with Tom Morris (the co-director) and the poor guy has been here for weeks and weeks fine-tuning the show. I'm ready to go home after just over two weeks! Michael Morpurgo was interviewed by The New York Times so he's in town - I dropped by to see him on the off-chance but he was out, no doubt doing a hundred radio and newspaper interviews. If you don't do the time, you don't earn a dime. Did I just make that up? Anyway, anyone who is in New York or near by should go see the show - War Horse is spectacularly good.

Spielberg’s film comes out in December I believe and it will be fascinating to see how he adapts the same material. I'll be chatting to Tom about his adaptation at the Hay Literary Festival in May - it's a tremendously interesting craft to take a book and turn it into a film or play. Naturally it involves a whole team of people too - these things really are co-operative. The National Theatre's great skill was to have such a wonderful team right across the board.

Making War Horse - written, filmed and directed by David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky

IFP - Envision Forum - Phil Grabsky - Guest Blogger - The Boy Mir - Ten Years in Afghanistan

2011-04-14T04:08:00.001-07:00

Phil Grabsky was invited by IFP Envision to take part in their guest blog spot prior to The Boy Mir - Ten Years in Afghanistan screening at the IFP Envision Forum.

Photo Credit: Phil Stearns/Envision

Here is what Phil had to say about The Boy Mir - Ten Years in Afghanistan.

"We talked about going to Mazar in April or May but I said I would be in the USA and we'd go to Mazar in June instead. There we would see Mir and his family and sort out Mir's further education and probably a new home for the entire family. Everything seemed to be going well - the film (THE BOY MIR - TEN YEARS IN AFGHANISTAN) was starting its festival life and in a month won two awards - Santa Barbara and Washington. At Seventh Art we were all excited and I looked forward to telling Mir all about it. Then, yesterday, I turned on the news. 12 people killed, slaughtered, inside the UN compound in Mazar. 12 people who would have felt really pretty safe in that northern Afghan city. 12 people with lives ahead of them, families & friends, pasts and futures. Then murdered - for what? Because some loony pastor with no brain adds petrol to a fire that just doesn't die.... All Mir wants, all 95% of Afghans want, is an education, a job, a mobile phone, a girlfriend, a future.. Stuff. Like you and I like stuff and indeed have so much stuff we stick it in attics, lock-ups, cupboards. Have you ever had nothing? I mean nothing at all. Have you ever spent all day collecting water and ploughing a field to grow wheat for bread? No, nor have I. Why should some human beings suffer so badly while the lucky few, we lucky few, drown in excess - and we do, don't deny it. Look at your CD collection, the clothes in your cupboard, the food in your fridge, the sporting gear in the garage. Your bike, my bike, is worth more than Mir earns in a year shovelling coal, ploughing the rocky earth, collecting twigs before school. I make films to entertain, to move you, to inform you - I make films to make a difference. A tiny pebble thrown into an endless lake perhaps but if we all throw a pebble, maybe one day the shadow of movement becomes a ripple, becomes a wave and change will come. Until then, mourn those poor folk in Mazar who just wanted to help. I've no intention of having less food in my cupboard or spending less on my holidays but I, we, should work towards the day when Mir too has a fully stocked fridge and sits at his computer to book a trip to Hawaii."

To read other guest blog posts from Envision speakers and panelists please visit the IFP Envison Blog

Photo Credit: Michael Cerda/Envision

The Boy Mir film hosted by the UN in New York and Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn in Boston..

2011-04-11T03:14:00.000-07:00

The Boy Mir film hosted by the UN in New York and Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn in Boston..

Another Best Western…this time in some industrial estate in Boston. Hmmm.. Can I go home now? The Wi-Fi is useless, the TV appalling, and my work pile gets bigger not smaller…this must be some cosmic joke. For every email or phone call, two are created. I know it’s my own fault but still… Anyway, after that little moan I should say that Boston is a super city (or so it says in the hotel guide). I do know that the Museum of Fine Arts is extraordinary and it’s great that we’re screening Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn (preview) there later today as it will give me a chance to look round. I know I moan but my word, what good fortune I have really: filming in art museums after they’re closed to the public, talking to the world’s best musicians, filming backstage at the National theatre, ENO, etc, travelling the stunning landscapes of Afghanistan and so on.

So…no more moaning. If I have learnt anything from being with Mir in Afghanistan it is to appreciate every single thing I own and experience. Yesterday in New York I showed The Boy Mir at a fabulous event hosted by Envision which is a partnership between the UN and the IFP. It started on Friday with an introduction by Harry Belafonte followed by a super film ('The Sound of Mumbai') and then Saturday they showed my film followed by a discussion on documentaries and their potential impact, etc. Actually the discussion was broader than that but no less interesting. The film screening was downtown just off Times Square and the audience received the film very enthusiastically – I hope some more comes of it.

I need donations for the charities, more screening invitations, etc. It’s not enough at this stage that folk watch, applaud but then go away and think no more of it. But that involves me running around a lot, handing out business cards, selling DVDs, asking for email addresses, and so on… I had to run to Penn Station to catch my 2pm train and got there just in time…with suitcases in tow. Still, the 4 hour train journey allowed me to catch my breath as we travelled through the gorgeous landscapes between these two key US cities. One sees an enormous amount of wealth on the way up – huge houses in the woods, yachts, endless 4x4s…but it’s strange when, on arrival, you pop into the nearest McDonalds (to connect to the Wi-Fi they offer) and the place is full (I mean at least 15 or 20 folk) of crack addicts and drunks and down-on-their-luck souls.. It really can be a country of extremes. There’s so much for documentary film-makers to make films about….

Do documentaries make a difference?

2011-04-08T08:43:00.000-07:00

It’s a bit like the lyrics of a song…’Woke up this morning and didn’t know where I was…’. Well. the tone of the tour has switched from classical music screenings (after a relatively poorly attended one in Michigan three nights ago) to The Boy Mir – Ten Years in Afghanistan. Yesterday was a presentation in Pittsburgh of the first film The Boy who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan to a university class of under-graduates studying international relations. A very interesting day in a fascinating town. It’s striking to me how fresh the film is even though it was finished back in 2003. I guess its universal themes of childhood, poverty, education and so on prevent it from becoming dated. Similarly the question of how documentaries can reflect, even affect, the world remain constant. Do documentaries make a difference? I naturally believe in their power and possibility but I know many broadcasters that don’t care too much about that anymore. To me it’s an abandonment of public service principle if a broadcaster retreats to a insular view of the world and frequently one toploaded with game shows, youth culture and the promotion of acquisition: food, houses, clothes, etc. I flicked through 40 channels of American TV in my hotel room last night: in those 60 seconds I saw a reality show singer discussing her shoes, a photo of a woman beaten to death in her garage, two kids kissing in a high-school drama, a tattooed man beating on a door, 4 talk shows, 3 music shows and my favourite: a panel discussion deciding if Britney Spears ‘pooped’ before a flight or during (I kid you not!)…OK, you get the idea. What wasn’t there? World news, art, any serious documentaries at all, intelligent discussion, classical music, opera, foreign languages (except Spanish soap opera). It’s more than a shame, it’s is undermining a nation. Despite ten years of war and huge expense in Afghanistan I still meet folk here who don’t know where it is. That’s why I have to work to ensure people see the film. If not on TV, then in the cinemas, internet, DVD… Tomorrow, here now in New York, I have an important screening with the UN agency that deals with education and poverty. Maybe they’re will only be 200 people there but with blogs, Facebook, general chit-chat, word spreads. And who knows who’ll be there and what they’ll do. Someone I met yesterday is going to try and get the film into the White House….I would LOVE to imagine Michelle calling in the kids to sit on the sofa while Dad prepares the popcorn and then, as a family, they watch Mir’s story… Then of course, in my dreamworld, I get a call…. Hey, you can but hope.

Grand Rapids, Michigan

2011-04-06T02:48:00.000-07:00

The problem with changing hotels in America every night…

• you forget your room number
• you forget where the bathroom is in the night
• you spend ages connecting to the wi-fi
• you waste time trying to find ONE DECENT programme on the TV
• you give up trying to follow world events
• you long for an Italian cappuccino
• you long for bread, butter, eggs, bacon, orange juice that taste natural
• you give up trying to open a window

BUT
• you sleep really well on big comfortable beds
• the staff are friendly
• there is free parking
• there are lots of towels, hangers, soaps, etc
• the wi-fi is free

Flying in America.

2011-04-05T01:45:00.000-07:00

It is always ‘for Operational Reasons’ that has me bounding down endless corridors to get to a revised Gate in time. You book a flight, they cancel it – you run. I had 8 minutes today at Washington Dulles to get from check-in to Gate B73 – and that included passport, security, train ride and the 100 metre sprint… I guess Operational Reasons means they didn’t sell enough tickets. If I missed it, I had three hours to wait and I’d miss the start of tonight’s screening. Luckily I made it on board and it was fine though a shame I had to go via Dallas to get to Kansas. Makes for a long trip. But this country is huge and I do wonder if it really is worth having these screenings and doing these Q&As when I’ll only ever scratch the surface here. On the other hand, every day I get exciting emails with requests and offers so maybe there’s a rhyme to the reason. And the occasional jogs through airline terminals keep me a wee bit fitter…. LATER SAME DAY…OK, so I arrive in Dallas and wander through the very busy airport (lots of soldiers) and get to the gate only to be told the plane is undergoing a technical inspection…the delay is …three hours. Eventually we take off. The flight is note-worthy for being served the worst coffee ever. To cap things off, at Kansas airport, they tell me they have lost my bag! I have to wait (a short while) until the next plane. I finally get to the hotel and the electronics on the doors are bust so I can’t get into any of the rooms…Man-o-Man. One hour after the film has started, I arrive at the cinema. I’m very apologetic but the very nice manager is all smiles: ‘we are 100% full, not a spare seat. We’ve had some many phone calls we’re extending by five days’. Somehow that makes it all worthwhile….

On a voyage of Discovery

2011-04-04T04:04:00.000-07:00

He started, so they say, from his garage. He mortgaged his house and then bought documentaries for $1000 /each. A ridiculously low figure 20 years ago – now so common. He felt that Americans wanted to know more about the roots – that, unlike their parents, the new generation was interested in the ‘old countries’. His name was John Hendricks and he started the Discovery Channel. Today, many years later, in a wet, miserable Silver Spring towards the end of the Washington DC Metro line, I stood at the doors of a huge office block holding the many Discovery Channel families. John I expect was enjoying his multi-million dollar wealth somewhere. I’ve made many films for them but that was back in the day when they wanted decent history shows rather than reality shows about deep sea fishermen, gold pan-handlers or whatever. TV has changed almost beyond recognition in two decades and Discovery has been a part of that – part the cause and part the effect. Like so many big institutions it has always come down to individuals. My friend there is one of the good guys – smart, hard-working, passionately interested in the world. Yet even he (a high up exec) feels the jelly under his feet of job insecurity. VPs and CEOs come and go – familiar names swop between Discovery, A&E, BBC and others. The impact, the value, of programmes become secondary to audience numbers. The audience wants blood, give them blood. Julius Caesar had this worked out two thousand years ago when he flooded arenas for sea battles, brought in wild animals from Africa to fight gladiators and so on. But you know what? No kid wants to go the theatre but take them to see Romeo and Juliet and they’ll want to go back. Take them to see Marriage of Figaro and they’ll want to see The Magic Flute. So, I say to my buddy at Discovery, hang in there, they need you!

An Incident

2011-04-04T04:01:00.000-07:00

There were two doors – an In and an Out. They were clearly marked. The Out had that familiar red circle with a white line. I couldn’t miss it. Big official building on Capitol Hill, central Washington DC. Very Roman – all big walls and columns. Police cars and blocked-off roads. A city in fear of terrorist attack. Two doors and I was there for a TV interview about war in Afghanistan, poverty & education in Afghanistan, a young boy’s life in Afghanistan. Someone came out of the Out door and while it slowly closed I nipped in. ‘Other door, sir!’ A large man in a crisp blue shirt with official letters across the chest as well as keys and phones and maybe even a gun. ‘Other door’. ‘So sorry’, I said and started to walk to the desk. ‘Out of the Out door, and come back in the In door’. ‘You’re joking’, I said, knowing he wasn’t. ‘You want me to go out that door and come back in the one next to it?!’ ‘That, sir, is what you will do’. Another crisp blue shirt took up position behind me. And another gazed my way, aware of a slight disturbance and eager to somehow participate. Now some things wash over me; I don’t care. But this kind of petty nonsense always winds me up. ‘That, sir, is the height of stupid-ness!’ I decided in a split second not to say ‘stupidity’ as ‘stupid-ness’ sounded more appropriate. ‘That door sir is the way in’. I saw the producer of my interview plead with her eyes for me to swallow my indignation and retrace my clearly all-too-vital steps. I did, laughing out loud to show I had the moral high ground. The man who was there to provide security had, in his incredibly small way, done quite the opposite. Crisp blue shirts no longer suggest order and calm; they now say to me needlessly aggressive, short-sighted and stupid. Then I talked on TV about the war in Afghanistan.

Tuesday 29 March 2011 - Washington DC. USA.

2011-04-01T08:23:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Washington yesterday after a nice easy British Airways flight and came straight to the Austrian Embassy for tonight's screening. I had showed Mozart here a couple of years ago and they very nicely have invited me back for a screening of IN SEARCH OF BEETHOVEN. The embassies are all next to each-other out here and we're opposite the UAE and the Egyptian - you can imagine how busy these embassies have been over the last few weeks. Maybe that's how Vienna felt back in the late 1700s when Napoleon was charging through Europe - you simply didn't know what was what. Here the Ambassadors of so many embassies, especially the North African and Middle Eastern countries, have been turned upside down and inside out. Fascinating times indeed. But my film concerns an earlier period though no less fascinating and I was delighted to see a full auditorium seated at 7.30pm ready to go. It wasn’t the greatest screen or projector but it didn't seem to matter - the audience loved the film and stayed afterwards for many questions. As so often in US screenings, you meet so many delightful people, albeit briefly. It only serves to frustrate me too as I know there are not 300 but 30,000 people like last night's audience who would enjoy the film in Washington but connecting to them, making them aware of the film and giving them the chance & easy possibility to see it is so difficult - but we'll keep trying. And Social Media - Facebook, blogs, twitter, etc - whatever one thinks of it all is undoubtedly a great tool to help us. Anyway, a good first night of this two week tour...

2009-11-02T03:18:00.001-08:00

DAY 40 SATURDAY 31ST OCTOBER, HOME…

After 40 days, what a relief to be home. Now, what to do with that three-foot high pile in my in-tray… You know, I think it can wait a day or two..

END.

2009-11-02T03:15:00.001-08:00

DAY 39 FRIDAY 30th OCTOBER, HONG KONG

Feeling very achy – I hope my body is not going to rebel now the 40 days is up. Spent the day packing, tying up loose ends and buying my son a camera for his birthday. It might just have been the shops in Kowloon but I didn’t notice it being any cheaper than the UK. Good camera though – ideal for him. You can take a picture and then electronically draw over it or add patterns, symbols, etc…extraordinary what our kids have access to. And then to the airport…one last wait for the plane (taken up, as so often, by writing this blog…). Here, then, are some summary reviews from the past few weeks:

‘IN SEARCH OF BEETHOVEN’ A Phil Grabsky film

“Superb…The film will give those who already know about Beethoven enormous pleasure,
and provide any receptive 12-year-old with an ideal introduction to the man and his music”
The Telegraph (UK)

‘beautifully lensed and intelligently crafted’
Variety (USA)

“TEN OUT OF TEN! The best film I’ve seen about a composer!” The Sun Herald, (Australia)

“A hit...so terrific I wept”
Mail on Sunday (UK)

“Gripping”
Wall Street Journal (Europe)

“Expertise and passion combined......high-class”
New York Times (USA)

‘Sensitive & meticulous’
THE AUSTRALIAN

“One of the finest movies about a great musician I've ever seen”
The Observer (UK)

‘splendid ..a revelation to the uninitiated and a joy to music lovers’
The LA Times (USA)

‘an extraordinary collection of musicians, conductors and musicologists”
Time Out London

“impressive”
Village Voice, New York (USA)

“An endearingly human biography….every bit as wonderful as In Search of Mozart.”
Chicago Tribune (USA)

“Captivating”
Minnesota Public Radio (USA)

“The musical examples are exemplary – including a brilliant 9th Symphony”
Herald Sun (Australia)

“One of the best films I’ve seen about a musician – it gets close to the mystery that is creativity”
Financial Review (Australia)

Let’s hope it gets ‘bums on seats’ otherwise it remains just as hard as ever, maybe even harder, to make another one – and I really do want to make IN SEARCH OF HAYDN now.

2009-11-02T03:14:00.000-08:00

DAY 38 THURSDAY 29th OCTOBER, HONG KONG

I can’t sleep in these rooms – with the air con on it’s too noisy and off it’s too hot… So up early and a quick visit to the gym. Emails till 11 when I do an hour-long phone interview. I then head off to meet lovely man Ben Cruft at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. Fantastic facilities…and a very interesting man. Bit of an Haydn expert too – which may well come in handy..

More reviews coming in from Australia and rumours are it’s doing extremely well in the cinemas in which it’s playing. Not going to be any kind of smash hit but may do respectably well. After Ben, I hopped in a cab to the Hong Kong University… 260 people turned up and they thoroughly enjoyed the film – I really will redouble efforts to get more screenings here.

2009-11-02T03:13:00.002-08:00

DAY 37 WEDNESDAY 28th OCTOBER, HONG KONG

Woke up feeling a bit rough. Really need to go outside for some fresh as opposed to recycled air. Had a little walk about but spent most of the day on the computer and starting to read up about Haydn. Caught the ferry from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island just as the sun was going down as I had appointment with the host of tomorrow’s screening. Walking through the overpasses, tunnels and shopping malls is a bewildering experience – you really do feel like a white blood cell coursing through the veins of some mighty beast. At random, I dropped into a clothes shop – picked up a suit and asked the price. £5000! Yes, that’s right…£5000. Apparently their target market is rich Chinese businessmen who come to HK with suitcases full of money…only they can afford this stuff. I laughed and left. Everyone has earphones for music or their telephones – so strange: I mean virtually everyone has these little black wires coming out of their ears…Like one big security company… Had stunning dinner and thoroughly nice time with Professor Daniel Chua who is something of a Beethoven expert himself but is also hosting the screening at the Hong Kong University. I really am finding people here are tremendously nice. Glad to return to the relative quiet and solitude of my hotel room though – you could get lost in the bowels of these huge department stores and never emerge..

2009-11-02T03:13:00.001-08:00

DAY 36 TUESDAY 27th OCTOBER, HONG KONG

Ventured out…went for a run down by the ferries… What a truly wild, weird and wonderful place.. Where to start? Even though it was only about 7am, there was a sea of people out rushing to get to work. Red cabs everywhere..building work…hawkers…dim sum bars…joggers…great views across to Hong Kong island.. After a radio interview to promote Thursday’s preview screening, I’d set up three appointments which simultaneously would give me a good look around. I really don’t know if I can describe the city – it is so easy to get lost in the bowels of buildings – pavements, streets, walkways all pass through the ground floors of buildings and you are endlessly walking past fancy, well-lit shops (expensive too – where do people get their money?!). But the people are extremely polite and friendly, everything is spotless, the public transport puts the London tube to absolute shame and, I discover at the one meeting a bit out of the centre, this crammed, crushed state of affairs is the middle but, thanks to legislation preventing endless building, the countryside is close by and from the little I saw it looks stunning.

2009-11-02T03:12:00.000-08:00

DAY 35 MONDAY 26th OCTOBER, FLYING TO HONG KONG

Well, it’s farewell Australia… I am glad to be one stage nearer home but I will certainly be eager to get back to Australia – it’s a wonderful place with wonderful people. And another excellent flight on Qantas (no they are not sponsors, sadly..)took me to the next and final stop…Hong Kong. I arrived in the dark but nevertheless it’s an impressive sight. It’s always one thing to see a place with your own eyes. Certainly I had not realised how many skyscrapers there were..talk about cramming millions of people into a small space! First of all, though, I have to say that it should be compulsory for all employees of British and American airports to visit Hong Kong and see how it should be done. Now that is what I call efficient! Arrival, passport, bags, free buses to hotels – all as smooth and quick as you could hope for. Mind you, the area I am staying in – Kowloon – is an absolute jungle – a chaotic symphony if you will – of neon, wires, underpasses, overpasses, tunnels, junctions, and lord knows what. I have arrived in the world of the film Blade Runner… I actually felt too overwhelmed to wander the streets which is what I usually do in new places. I used the excuse of dozens of emails to stay safely indoors – in another (comfortable) prison cell where you cant open a window and cant see the sky… And the normal hour or two wasted getting the right room, the internet to work, correcting the mistakes in the billing, etc, etc…

2009-10-27T05:33:00.001-07:00

DAY 34 SUNDAY 25th OCTOBER, PERTH, AUSTRALIA

Nice review to read in the coffee bar at 7am at a local golf course

Sunday Times (Western Australia)
by Gavin Bond
October 25, 2009
Dedicated director and historian Phil Grabsky (In Search of Mozart) has now turned his attention to chronicling the life and times of arguably history’s most revered composer, Ludwig van Beethoven, with this meticulously crafted documentary.

Grabsky combines a series of interviews with numerous accomplished classical musicians (who gush eloquently about Beethoven’s intricate compositions) with informative narration by British thesp Juliet Stevenson.

This combination of fact and opinion is most successful in delivering a comprehensive historical portrait of the man and his considerable musical achievements.

Like his previous film, Grabsky chronologically documents his subject’s legacy by first recounting the musical prodigy’s first performance at the age of seven.

The precocious pianist then penned his first concerto while still in his teens before establishing himself as a pre-eminent and amazingly dexterous musician who performed for the Venetian aristocracy of the day.

The film then dissects his remarkable output as a composer of a series of progressively inventive, emotive and stirring concertos and symphonies, an opera and, his self-proclaimed proudest achievement, a religious mass.

Music lovers will also be pleased to note that a renowned bevy of cellists, violinists and string quartets perform more than 50 live performances of Beethoven’s best known works, culminating in a rousing rendition of Ode to Joy.

Through the use of excerpts from his personal diary, this doco also explores Beethoven’s rather tragic and troubled personal life, including his dysfunctional childhood and ongoing ill health.

Grabsky also delves into the cantankerous composer’s turbulent romantic life and his eventual mental breakdown and premature demise in 1827 at the age of 56.

But what this film does best is illuminate the many inexplicable paradoxes of the man himself.

The fact that Beethoven was a misanthrope who created such optimistic music, that he was an incurable romantic who remained unmarried and that his instinct for melody failed to be thwarted by his inability to hear prove to be most enlightening, even to authorities on the subject.

Despite its excessive length, this reverential doco will enthuse fans, historians and even those, like yours truly, whose familiarity with Beethoven is limited to the opening strains of his 5th Symphony.

The day was spent golfing, working, reading & listening to Haydn…

2009-10-27T05:31:00.002-07:00

DAY 33 SATURDAY 24th OCTOBER, PERTH, AUSTRALIA

Three reviews I picked up today and read over my cup of tea:

THE AUSTRALIAN – EVAN WILLIAMS
24 OCTOBER 2009
Beethoven’s Unfinished Symphony
In Search of Beethoven (G)
3 stars
Limited national release
IT can only be coincidence, but two of the films I reviewed recently in these pages both contained excerpts from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. And very different films they were: Departures, that deeply moving idyll of love and death from Japan, and the Hollywood sci-fi thriller Surrogates, whose credits refer to a Beethoven "song" (though I must have missed it at the time).

But is it such a coincidence? I've seen a list of more than 200 films with Beethoven on the soundtrack. There are the famous ones: Disney's Fantasia, Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (the Ninth again), and Copying Beethoven, Agnieszka Holland's partly fictionalised account of the composer's last years. According to my reliable internet source, Beethoven also popped up briefly on the soundtracks of Sex in the City, Hellboy II: The Golden Army and The Assassination of Richard Nixon, and can be heard, would you believe, in Drag Me to Hell, a horror film on current release. What the great man would have made of all this is anyone's guess, but he would have relished the royalties.

Biopics of the great composers used to be standard Hollywood fare: Cornel Wilde doing his consumptive Chopin bit in A Song to Remember (that splash of blood on the keyboard after some crashing chords), Brahms (in the person of Robert Walker) eyeing Clara Schumann in Song of Love, Dirk Bogarde doing his best Lizst impersonation in Song Without End, playing the piano in a way that reminded one wag at the time of someone washing his socks. The last big-name actor to play Chopin was Hugh Grant in the 1991 Impromptu. And the last to play Beethoven in a major biopic was the inscrutable Gary Oldman, in Immortal Beloved (1994).

To this growing filmography we can now add Phil Grabsky's documentary In Search of Beethoven, a brave attempt to come to grips with the composer's anguished life. It is a meticulous work: ambitious, lucid, sensitive, visually handsome and supported by a host of interviews with musical authorities. And, it shouldn't surprise us, it never quite gets the measure of its subject. What film could? But nor, I fear, does it live up to the large claims made for it. According to the producers, In Search of Beethoven "delves beyond the familiar image of the tortured, cantankerous, unhinged personality to reveal a surprising and completely creative genius".

Really? We all know Beethoven was a surprising and creative genius, so I'm not exactly sure what is being revealed. The popular notion of Beethoven as a "heroic, tormented figure battling to overcome his tragic fate" is described in the film's production notes as a "romantic myth". If so, it is exactly the romantic myth that the film perpetuates. It is true that we are given glimpses of another side of Beethoven, but they hardly amount to an alternative theory of personality. Experts line up to tell us that he was jealous of Haydn and Mozart, determined, in a seemingly egotistical way, to overshadow them. He was also a man of some personal vanity - fond of good food and wine, fastidious in his dress - not qualities we associate with distracted genius. According to Grabsky, he liked to cut a fashionable figure in Viennese social circles. An amusing story is told that soon after moving into rented quarters in Vienna, he took a stonemason to his room upstairs and, without consulting his outraged landlord, smashed a hole through the outer wall to improve the view. He would have been at home in Sydney's real estate market.

Grabsky made that splendid documentary In Search of Mozart in 2006, and it was a model of its kind, with well-chosen musical excerpts and readings from Mozart's letters. We are asked to believe that his Beethoven film is challenging accepted wisdom, but nothing in it disturbs our impression of a tragic figure cruelly used by fate.

The suicidal outpourings in the so-called Heiligenstadt Testament, written in 1802, when Beethoven's deafness was well advanced, are movingly recounted. "In my profession it is a terrible hardship," Beethoven wrote of his deafness a year earlier, in what seems now like a masterpiece of understatement. Today his deafness would almost certainly be curable, and I have always thought of it as the worst and most bitterly ironic affliction ever visited on a human being. But perhaps it was a necessary spur to that sublime creativity.

Suffering drove Beethoven to despair, and nastiness. And if anything he was a nastier man than the film would have us believe. I have a much-loved copy of Alexander Thayer's monumental biography of the composer, published in 1866 (and in Henry Krehbiel's English edition, in 1921). The three volumes were the gift of a dear friend, and there is nothing of consequence in Grabsky's film that they hadn't already told me. In Thayer's estimation, Beethoven was a self-hater. When his mother died, his father took to drink; and even before his deafness he was plagued by recurring illness. So a good deal of ill-tempered bitterness would have been natural in him. Thayer despised other traits: Beethoven's snobbery, his meanness in money matters. But what can account for the insane fury he showed towards his family?

Yet he gave the world those great, unalterable sounds, those imperishable insights into a world of suffering, beauty and spirituality to be found, I think, in no other music. Genius is all too often flawed (don't mention Wagner), and the greater our admiration for the genius the greater our reluctance to acknowledge the flaws. In Search of Beethoven is at heart a cautious film, despite its pretensions. It prefers the genius to the monster, and so do we all.

But what might have been a great documentary turns out to be merely a good and serviceable one. It lacks fire, daring, and originality. There are too many snippets of music, too many talking heads, too little to define that great arc of the composer's life and spiritual development. But no one who cares about the man and his music will miss it. For that I give credit to its subject. The search goes on.

THE HERALD SUN – 24 OCTOBER 2009
In Search of Beethoven (G) Director: Phil Grabsky (In Search of Mozart) Starring: Juliet Stephenson (narrator), Roger Norrington, Helene Grimaud, Emmanuel Ax, Jonathan Biss. Rating:
**** Found behind a wall of sound
Anyone who looked at the title above and immediately envisaged the hunt for a slobbering St. Bernard can go and stand in the corner for the rest of the review.

No, the stately chase promised by this polished documentary tracks the life and legacy of the late German composer Ludwig van Beethoven.

As he did with Mozart a while back, British filmmaker Phil Grabsky is playing detective with classical music history here.

Dispensing with all the clichéd claptrap and generalisations that inevitably plague movies like this, Grabsky successfully reassesses and revitalises the imposing reputation of his subject.

Simply by staying sensible, and sticking to the facts. The prim narration of actor Juliet Stephenson draws liberally from the composer’s own correspondence.

Elsewhere, the film throws open the doors and invites in a wide diversity of opinions and reflections from a cavalcade of experts, boffins and plonkers.

They all know their stuff, and better still, they all know how to express themselves in a way that allows the music of Beethoven to come alive in a whole new way.

As the film proceeds, novice viewers will also get a fascinating overview of how Beethoven’s unusual blend of gut instinct and unorthodox work techniques set him apart from his strait-laced contemporaries.

The musical performances through the film are exemplary, concluding with a brilliant rendition of the timeless Ninth Symphony by conductor Franz Bruggen and the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century.

THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW
25/10/09
BY Peter Crayford
Two good actors have played him before. Gary Oldman in Immortal Beloved and Ed Harris in Copying Beethoven. Neither captured the man or entirely rescued him from numerous black and white melodramas. But Phil Grabsky’s documentary IN SEARCH OF BEETHOVEN is one of the best films about a musician I have seen.
He interviews a select group of erudite and articulate musicians, critics and musicologists and each has something interesting, unpretentious and memorable to say.
Musical performances illustrate the interviews. Thankfully free of period dramatisations, it lets the music do most of the speaking through formidable recordings.
This documentary gets somewhere close to the mystery that is creativity

So….did I find anything or not? Well, I think you have to be pretty confident in your knowledge of Beethoven to suggest the film offers nothing new..but each to their own. That slightly mixed review in the Australian was still on a whole page and with a photo – all the other films barely got a paragraph. So that is fantastic!

When I turned up at the cinema, they are in a bit of a fuss: so many people have turned up that they have to swap from the 160- to the 260-seater! The place is crammed. Young and old. What a great way to finish the Australian tour. The cinema has a glitch transferring the film from the hard-drive of one cinema to the other – so ironically I do a 20-minute stand-up about the film, explaining why you could not have made this film without modern technology…while, meanwhile, the cinema struggled to get their modern technology to work! They did, however, and we had a really good screening and Q&A to follow. 3 rounds of applause: 2 more and they’d have called the police! (You need to watch the film to understand that joke…).

2009-10-27T05:31:00.001-07:00

DAY 32 FRIDAY 23rd OCTOBER, PERTH, AUSTRALIA

A travel day really. A morning of packing and emails and then a midday flight from Adelaide to Perth. I checked in to the hotel then went over the cinema which is going to play Beethoven. It’s called the Paradiso and is pretty much downtown, near to the train station. The Duty Manager Rebecca could not have been nicer or more enthusiastic about the film and she thinks we’ll do ok in tomorrow’s preview screening. It is going into a 160-seater and she hopes it will be pretty full. I did an interview with William from the West Australian who certainly knew the subject well and I enjoyed talking to him for an hour. I’m always aware that I probably talk too much but I enjoy talking about Beethoven and the film. Just as well! Pottered about in the hotel – had a great dinner of snacks in front of the TV..

2009-10-27T05:30:00.000-07:00

DAY 31 THURSDAY 22ND OCTOBER, ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA

Just one radio interview today – nice community radio station, run by volunteers. Then bit of time to myself – so no blogging! Here’s three reviews from today instead:

Reviewed by Paul Byrnes The Sydney Morning Herald - Paul Byrnes

Grabsky's elegant film reveals that Beethoven shares many characteristics with some of our own doomed musical geniuses.
Rating stars-4
HE MAY search, but does he find? The British arts documentary veteran Phil Grabsky made the much-admired In Search of Mozart in 2006. Here he goes in search of another genius – arguably one more difficult to pin down.
Ludwig van Beethoven was so many things at once: deaf, drunk, dishevelled, a braggart, moralist, meddler and, at times, dishonest. He was also generous, romantic, lovelorn and some say companionable. He seems to have inspired great friendship and devotion among a select few closest to him. We get a sense of all these things from Grabsky's intriguing film, but there is still a gap. Where did a man so flawed and troubled by life, love and illness find the spiritual depth to write music that was so moving and even joyous? Where does the hope come from?
That is the problem with the biopic, whether fictionalised and Hollywooded or factualised and scholarly, like this one. The genius cannot be cracked open. It remains at the core, sealed and mysterious, so the biographer must circle and ponder, accumulating mere detail, but never really knowing.
Grabsky uses the only solution there is: talk to the people who have tried to know Beethoven by playing his notes, and see what they have found. The language is music, so he speaks to those who speak it. Thus, he visited some of the modern world's greatest musicians, filming them at home and at work, or in breaks from rehearsal. The style is informal, and often intimate. The Dutch pianist Ronald Brautigam (with wild Ludwigian hair) demonstrates the kind of music the boy would have grown up hearing from his court musician father in Bonn in the 1770s. The American pianist Emanuel Ax says he must have had large hands, because his fingering is so difficult to play. Ax believes some of it was his little joke, to annoy imitators.
Grabsky also films some great orchestras and ensembles across Europe and North America: the Salzburg Camerata with Sir Roger Norrington, the Vienna Symphony with Fabio Luisi, the Endellion String Quartet, Claudio Abbado conducting the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in a production of Fidelio. These interviews and performances are often intriguing in themselves. I could watch the French pianist Helene Grimaud talk for hours about Beethoven – or the weather. Some of them are quite poetic: talking about a passage in the 4th Symphony, the Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda says the allegro is like "the opening of a bottle of champagne".
Beethoven's problems with women punctuate the story. It's clear that the frustrated romances, the dashed hopes of marrying "up", the stifling Viennese rules about social intercourse, all had a big impact on his well-being and music. They seem to bring out his best and worst – the haunting beauty of the Moonlight Sonata and Fuer Elise, written for his objects of desire, versus the four years in which he fought his brother's widow for custody of her son, Karl. She was a slut, according to Ludwig. And yet, for the arrogant moralist he arguably became, he did not shy away from pursuit of married ladies. The man badly needed a wife.
The illnesses remain intriguing. Was it tinnitus, lead-poisoning, syphilis or typhus that damaged his hearing? Or all of the above? Did alcohol drag him down, as it did his father? "On the all-time list of composer drinkers, [Ludwig] would be near the top," says the musicologist Giovanni Bietti. In later life he so rarely changed his clothes that his friends used to replace them while he slept – that certainly sounds like the habits of a major drunk.
What becomes clear in Grabsky's elegant film is that Beethoven shares many characteristics with some of our own doomed and recently departed musical geniuses. We know he contemplated suicide, but decided he had too much music to get written. That shows a great degree of courage, as well as hubris. As good as the film is, Beethoven remains mysterious. He refuses to roll over, so to speak.

From THE AGE:
IN SEARCH OF BEETHOVEN (G) ★★★ (139 minutes)
Nova
Reviewer Philippa Hawker

FILMMAKER Phil Grabsky (The Boy who Played on the Buddhas of Bamiyan) has already made an intensive study of Mozart, and he structures his portrait of Beethoven in a similar fashion.
It's a combination of austerity and riches. Grabsky traces a chronology, shuns dramatised reconstructions and keeps his supporting images - of locations where the composer lived and worked - relatively simple. The vividness comes from a host of interviews with leading scholars, conductors and performers, supplemented by performances, brief, but exhilarating, of more than 50 pieces of music.
We hear vivid turns of phrase. Conductor Roger Norrington compares Mozart and Beethoven, saying they had one thing in common: they both wrote very fast. "But Mozart was writing for Saturday. Beethoven was writing for eternity."
And there are concrete demonstrations, as when pianist Emanuel Ax takes to the keyboard to make a point about the composer's virtuosity as a performer.
When it comes to the personal life, there are no startling revelations or glib speculations, but there are telling details - some light-hearted, some distressing. Beethoven's creative life, with all its achievements, cannot easily be reconciled with the image of a difficult, solitary figure, shadowed by depression. Grabsky, to his credit, doesn't try to make one life fit the other, but he manages to illuminate both.

2009-10-27T05:29:00.000-07:00

DAY 30 WEDNESDAY 21ST OCTOBER, ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA

Up early for quick trip to the gym. Beautiful day. Pick up the national newspaper: The Australian. 4 new releases reviewed & thankfully one is ours. That’s almost more important than what they actually say. The review is a bit lukewarm but still very useful – and the opening line would sit nicely on any future press release or DVD cover:

A sensitive and meticulous documentary by Phil Grabsky about the life and work of the composer, with a moving emphasis on his encroaching deafness. Despite copious musical excerpts and a host of interviews with musical authorities (not all of them well known) the final effect is unenlightening, never quite matching the success of Grabsky’s 2006 documentary IN SEARCH OF MOZART. Evan Williams

‘sensitive and meticulous’ The Australian. Thank you – that will do nicely. And thanks for the Mozart plug – that will help DVD sales….

Head spinning with trying to keep up to date with the blog, notes, reviews, radio, press, publicity, cinema managers, and all the many emails for other stuff that I get daily – plus trying to start reading up about Haydn…Plus expenses, laundry, hotel bookings, photos for the blog, banking, trying to eat healthy and sneaking off to nearest golf courses… What day is this? I had to check: 30. A month. Right, enough – got to go for first radio i/v of the day.

2009-10-27T05:28:00.000-07:00

DAY 29 TUESDAY 20TH OCTOBER, ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA

Woke up in Hobart
2 flights, one game of golf, one blog, 25 emails, one dinner and went to bed in Adelaide. That was Day 29

2009-10-27T05:26:00.000-07:00

DAY 28 MONDAY 19TH OCTOBER, HOBART, AUSTRALIA

Took an early morning flight through an absolutely packed Melbourne airport. I’m hanging in there with all these flights but it’s a shame I lost my lounge access card as the peace and quiet (and the free snacks) of a lounge do hope ease the pain of travel. Once on board, I pulled my coat down over my head and slept the whole way there. I have never been to Tasmania before and from the air it is stunning. I didn’t connect with the person picking me up at first until I heard someone on the phone saying ‘yes, but I don’t know what he flipping-well looks like’ – that had to be for me. It was. John the owner of the one and only Hobart arthouse cinema had found me… He’s another one of these extremely hard-working folk who keep these wonderful cinemas going. He has even dug down into the ground under his cinema to create extra screens… He and his partner Jan seem to work their socks off to keep the cinema going and I hope the locals realise what a treasure it is. Apparently they do as some make long journeys to visit – and some, apparently, have even moved to Hobart from elsewhere in Tasmania just to be near the cinema. Hobart is a rather lovely place too – only 500,000 folk and a real sense of the past which has managed not to have been knocked down and replaced by bland skyscrapers. The evening was great – a complete sell out and, for the very first time, a standing ovation! Now I can only remember standing to applaud a film once (and that was quite recently in Prague for a great film called Anvil) and frankly I didn’t know where to look when the good folk of Hobart offered me the same honour… As always, the proof will be in the pudding and how long it justifies John keeping it in the cinema. It would be great to have a good run… The local radio and press really liked the film so that will help.

2009-10-27T05:25:00.000-07:00

DAY 27 SUNDAY 18TH OCTOBER, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

Up at 7am and went for nice run down to the river. There were hundreds of cyclists already there about to go on a sponsored bike raid – and what a lovely ride that must be. I don’t run that far as I need to prepare for the day before going to the cinema to watch a couple of films before my own screening. First up was a thoroughly decent film called Seraphine and the second was the excellent National Theatre performance (filmed and sent to Australia on tape) of All’s Well that Ends Well. Then it was Beethoven time. Pretty well sold out though only a 130 seater. The film went well – and one thing I am starting to notice is that members of the audience seem to have a more profound connection to Beethoven and his music, I have had quite a few on this trip telling me that Beethoven’s music helped them ‘out of a hole’ or through some life crisis or other. More people are certainly moved through the film too – again, more than one has been so emotional after the film that they have found it hard to talk to me. Maybe there is something deeper about Beethoven. I have my views on this but I’m still reserving judgement a little until I have had more screenings. After this one, I went for quick snack with Carol – from the local radio station, who hosted the Q&A, Trent who works for the distributor and the lovely Teri who was publicist on Mozart and now works for a group of lawyers attempting to bring the world closer to being nuclear weapon-free. Good luck on that one, teri!

2009-10-22T03:30:00.001-07:00

DAY 26 SATURDAY 17TH OCTOBER, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

Body still hyper I guess. Woke before 7am and was soon tapping away on the computer, trying to get my email in-box back to single figures…No chance…
Another packed press day. Dashing around Melbourne to various radio stations. As I said yesterday, it’s extremely impressive how many radio stations there are and how each of them had done their homework on the film and had a full list of questions they wanted to ask. I thought I might have to adjust my responses depending on whether the channel was a classical radio station, indy music station or a gay & lesbian radio station but in fact all asked broadly similar, intelligent questions that in the UK you might get from only one or two stations. It’s another day passed in a car or radio station but I guess that’s why I’m here. I certainly hope it helps… Certainly the interviewers could not have been more enthusiastic about the film and all essentially insisted their audience come see the film! In the evening I had dinner with some wonderful friends of mine who, truth be told, I so wanted to see again after the last trip to Australia (for IN SEARCH OF MOZART) that I never hesitated for second in any plans to set up this press tour. I’m not sure I should embarrass them by describing them too much but what I will say is that John was the first person I met on the Mozart film. He was absolutely Day 1 (of three years) and the fact that I can now stay at his house in Australia or vice versa – he and his fabulous wife Janet – are welcome to stay with us in the UK any time is illustrative of what a wonderful world the classical music world is. Others may have had different experiences but I have made more friends – some of whom are the world’s best musicians – in the course of these two projects than probably all the 100 or 200 films I made previously. Got to be late again – 1am. Alarm is off: I’m sure to sleep in.

oh, and a little poem:

There once were two mice
Called Ella & Billy
Known for being,
Well, really, quite silly
They lived in my pocket
And ate all my snacks
They really are cheeky
And live life to the max!

2009-10-22T03:29:00.000-07:00

DAY 25 FRIDAY 16TH OCTOBER, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

Flight at 7am from Sydney to Melbourne. Finally managed to get my baggage down to 23k so no excess baggage at $10/Kilo. Though it did mean my rucksack was stuffed full of books and golf balls… Quick flight to Melbourne and taxi straight to SBS radio for an interview for French folk (done in French) then German folk (done in English). No rest..need coffee…off to ABC radio for national interview. I came here in 2006 but have no memory of the building at all – which is a bit spooky. One struggles to get any radio in the UK but here there’s loads – indeed I did two more and a TV spot until at 3pm I said that’s it – enough’s enough. I suppose I should have had a nap at this point but I dashed off to a nice public golf course instead. Short course and I just managed to finish 18 holes as it got dark. Walked straight to the cinema (where Beethoven showing tomorrow) and went in to see Quentin Tarantino’s latest film – set in WW2. I have never felt the need to rush out of a cinema and go get a shower after watching most of this film. It was so, so disgusting on so many levels – normally I just want to persuade people to watch Beethoven now I want to chain them to their cinema seats and forcing anyone who was thinking of see Tarantino’s film or has had the misfortune to see it – to watch a film that contains hope, optimism, love, genius. Because Tarantino’s is almost sickness, violence, hate. Of course his film will be seen by tens of millions and mine won’t. On that, a 21-hour day came to an end.

2009-10-22T03:28:00.001-07:00

October 22nd 2009
DAY 24 THURSDAY 15th OCTOBER, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

A sunny day in Sydney – such a great city. I dashed around doing radio interviews – I don’t have any trouble keeping enthusiastic about the film or Beethoven; indeed I enjoy the challenge of being articulate, funny, and a good salesperson. The one question that always trips me up though is ‘So, Phil, who is better? Mozart or Beethoven?’ So, which are your two kids do you prefer? Do you like your left leg more than your right one? No time to enjoy Sydney though – too many emails to keep on top of forthcoming screenings. I did manage to meet a local author called Agnes Selby who wrote a great book on Constanze Mozart. She and he husband Theo invited me for pancakes. And thoroughly nice they were too. Though I am always amazed at the short-sighted stinginess of some restaurants. The pancakes were advertised to come with fruit. They turn up with two strawberries and an inch of banana. Can I have more banana please? Yes, sir, but we’ll charge. Before I can respond in an appropriately Beethovian way, Theo says that will be fine. The waitress reappears with another inch of banana….
After lunch I had a meeting at ABC Australia – great guy works there called Ian who is keeping them honest. Ultimately it comes down the individuals who work in organisation – hopefully they’ll keep Ian on for a good while yet. Especially as he wants more of my films!
Rushed over to AVIS and picked up a hire car and then Linda the publicist and I headed north to a screening at Avoca Beach. It was a two hour drive (through lovely landscapes) and a pretty small cinema but as far as I am concerned Avoca Beach is the absolute model for small, community-based, well-run, fabulously programmed cinemas. Digital had changed everything so one day it’s Beethoven then it’s a live concert from Sydney, a Shakespeare play from London even a Robbie Williams concert. Plus a strong array of films. Good coffee, good cake, a bar, comfy chairs in and out, and cinema owners who know many of their clients by name. And what a great evening we had. A string quartet played on the lawn – with the sea only metres away – and then the film was tremendously well received. Terribly enthusiastic Q&A – lots of laughs too. Linda and I didn’t get to leave until 11pm and then we had to drive back to Sydney. We couldn’t find a cab anywhere for Linda – who is tremendous fun and extremely nice but started to lose her smile by 1am and no way home from the airport (where I was staying). Sorted it in the end. I got to bed in a dingy prison cell of a room – a Formule Un (which can be OK in France) – but a bed’s a bed. I seriously considered not bothering to get undressed as I have to be up in 4 hours..

2009-10-19T08:14:00.004-07:00

DAY 23 WEDNESDAY 14th OCTOBER, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Up at 4.30 to drive to Gold Coast airport and then flew to Sydney. I was met by the film’s Sydney publicist and we started a mad day of press. First there was SBS TV at the hotel then ABC national radio followed by 3 other radio stations. It’s really noticeable how many radio stations they have here – BBC Radio is a national treasure back in England but we don’t have the range of radio stations. Great screening at Cremorne Orpheum (where Mozart did so well) – a truly great cinema run by a very enthusiastic and knowledgeable manager. After a very good Q&A I rushed back to the hotel to watch the important ABC TV movie show. Their review really does have an impact and we got a great one!

In Search Of Beethoven
Rated G
Review by Margaret Pomeranz

Phil Grabsky’s examination of some of the world’s great composers continues with his film IN SEARCH OF BEETHOVEN. His approach, as with IN SEARCH OF MOZART, is to bring some of the world’s experts in various fields to tell Beethoven’s story. But this is not just a history; it’s an exploration of the man and his music.

It’s fascinating to discover just how revolutionary Beethoven’s music was, and the film gives great insight into the humanism at its heart.

This is really an excellent documentary. For lovers of classical music it will be a must-see but for people who want to learn about Beethoven I don’t think you could get any better introduction than this film. The music is sublime, the experts knowledgeable, the musicians themselves give a real understanding of the playing of his pieces, the music is dissected so cleverly.

The film is long, over two and a quarter hours, but there’s depth and intelligence in it. This is not a superficial journey and you end up with enormous gratitude for having taken it.

Further comments

MARGARET: David?

DAVID: I don't think I can add much to what you've said, Margaret, because I completely agree. I mean, one of the things that fascinated me about the film was to learn really what a sad life Beethoven had. The fact that he wasn't able to marry, for one reason or another, and, of course, his increasing deafness and disability and so on, while at the same time creating this sublime music. And also very interesting too is the political background at the time, which the film makes very clear.

MARGARET: Yes.

DAVID: The Napoleonic wars that were going on and the occupation of Vienna, where he lived, of course, and so on.

MARGARET: Yeah.

DAVID: I think this...

MARGARET: Well, I mean, the Heroica.

DAVID: Yeah. Yeah. So, look, I think this is an exemplary film. I'm going to give it four out of five.

MARGARET: I think it's sublime, this film. I'm giving it four and a half.

This could really help….

2009-10-19T08:14:00.003-07:00

DAY 22 TUESDAY DAY 13th OCTOBER, BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA

Ah, the joys of being back in a country that can make coffee. Up bright & breezy and had coffee and a biscuit or two at a local café. Spent the morning with Gil and his colleague Peta and we worked through schedules and what-not. Did a radio interview then picked up a car hire and drove to the wonderful seaside town of Byron Bay – though actually drove a little past it to see a good friend Oren Siedler (and her partner Tony). I met Oren in Toronto back in 2003 when I was raising funds for The Boy who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan. She made a great film – now an excellent book – called Bruce and Me. Thoroughly recommend reading it. Their house is in the rain forest and is fantastic.

2009-10-19T08:14:00.001-07:00

DAY 21 MONDAY 12th OCTOBER, WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND to BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA

Half-way through the tour now. Energy levels still good. New York seems a long time ago though…I kind of hope that Hong Kong comes a bit faster. Anyway, I took an early flight from Wellington to Sydney, then had a four hour stop-over in Sydney (where I worked on my computer) and then caught a plane to Brisbane. Arrived to a beautiful hot sunny day…the kind of day that really should be a holiday. Met by my distributor Gil Scrine and we headed off to Noosa Heads for tonight’s screening. It’s a couple of hours drive north of Brisbane and, Gil being Gil, first things first on arrival: a swim in the sea. These ozzies can’t help it – they are irresistibly drawn to the sea like bees to honey. I have to agree it was great to play in the waves for 30 minutes or so… Then, drying off in the car park as best I could, it was dressed and off to the local cinema. Lovely multi-screen cinema showing a much broader mix of films than our multiplexes do. Well, that’s illustrated by my presence. Screening went well – back to full crowds which is a relief after NZ. Late night drive back to an apartment hotel in Brisbane.

2009-10-19T08:12:00.000-07:00

DAY 20 SUNDAY 11th OCTOBER, WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND

Blast! It’s a beautiful sunny day – their first in 3 weeks. That won’t help… I spent all morning not in the sun but indoors on emails – that really is a theme of this trip. Anyway, headed out at lunchtime for the cinema and another double-bill. I was still expecting a good audience. After all, this very cinema played In Search of Mozart for 6 – yes, six! – months…. I am extremely disappointed to see only 10 people have turned up in a 450 seat cinema. That is awful. But I can learn from this and there are definitely changes to how this whole thing will be done next time. Too many links in the chain and, as they say, you are only as good as the weakest link. Evening ended a bit better with a snack and quick driving tour of Wellington with a very good local film-maker Jennifer Bush-Daumec. After that, I packed and prepared for tomorrow’s flight to the next country: Australia.

2009-10-16T08:33:00.003-07:00

DAY 20 SUNDAY 11th OCTOBER, WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND

Blast! It’s a beautiful sunny day – their first in 3 weeks. That won’t help… I spent all morning not in the sun but indoors on emails – that really is a theme of this trip. Anyway, headed out at lunchtime for the cinema and another double-bill. I was still expecting a good audience. After all, this very cinema played In Search of Mozart for 6 – yes, six! – months…. I am extremely disappointed to see only 10 people have turned up in a 450 seat cinema. That is awful. But I can learn from this and there are definitely changes to how this whole thing will be done next time. Too many links in the chain and, as they say, you are only as good as the weakest link. Evening ended a bit better with a snack and quick driving tour of Wellington with a very good local film-maker Jennifer Bush-Daumec. After that, I packed and prepared for tomorrow’s flight to the next country: Australia.

2009-10-16T08:33:00.001-07:00

DAY 19 SATURDAY 10th OCTOBER, AUCKLAND & WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND

Woke early and went for a jog up the road to a nice park called The Domain. Should of and could of run further but soon seemed to find myself in a café bar buying a spot of breakfast. Looking forward to Australia and some nice runs in the sun. I spent the majority of the day with the distributor friend from last night who took me to some gorgeous spots on the coast west of Auckland. What a stunning country – I will have to come back one day with the family and hire a campervan and explore…
In the afternoon, I took a flight to Wellington. $10/kilo for excess baggage! The airlines really are squeezing every buck these days…
Wellington is grey, wet & cold. My mood not helped by another crummy hotel in the middle of nowhere. I had to dash for a pre-arranged seat at the NZ Opera Company presentation of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. Apparently it’s relatively rare to have opera in NZ – maybe twice a year. The place was packed – everyone was very scrubbed and brushed for a night out. I have to say that, fine performance though it was, it wasn’t Beethoven. Hurried back to hotel for a good night’s sleep. Hope it’s wet tomorrow – that will encourage punters to the show.

2009-10-16T08:32:00.001-07:00

DAY 18 FRIDAY 9th OCTOBER, AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND

I have to say that the Qantas flight was great. Love to fly with them again. I also had a funny experience of the guy next to me putting on the in-flight entertainment and choosing one of my films! Meanwhile I watched one of the worst films I have ever seen: Angels & Demons. It was so awful on so many levels…I couldn’t stop watching it it was so bad…So maybe that was the idea.
I arrived in Auckland at 0830am and checked into a crummy hotel in a pretty dismal part of Auckland. My mood wasn’t helped by my arrival at the cinema at 10.30 for the start of a special double bill of Mozart & Beethoven. It seems that there has been a real paucity of advertising – the cinema is only half, maybe a third, full. Considering how well IN SEARCH OF MOZART did in Auckland, I am very disappointed. My mood was improved only by the positive reaction of those who did come, a very nice cinema manager who said she’d love to show more of my films, and a very nice dinner with a local distributor (mainly DVD these days) and his wife & friends.

2009-10-16T08:31:00.001-07:00

DAY 17 THURSDAY 8th OCTOBER, somewhere over the Pacific...

This day never existed….or did it? Or was it just very short? Flying west and crossing the date line just confuses me….

2009-10-16T08:28:00.000-07:00

DAY 16 WEDNESDAY 7th OCTOBER, VANCOUVER, CANADA

Up at 7am for a quick trip to the gym with my brother – then a quick breakfast before he headed off. It took me a while to answer emails and pack and then I headed off to see a film about a young boy in India. I expect it was very good but the standard of the audio was poor and, to be honest, hurt my ears and I left. Then I went to see a film that a friend of mine, Christina Daniels, had a lot to do with – ONLY WHEN I DANCE. I had been asked to work with a new producer called Giorgia and an experienced producer called Paul Webster. They wanted to make a film in Brazil with me – and I brought Christina into the mix. After a few months I felt it best I withdraw – I just wasn’t sure there was a need or desire for another favela in Rio film. Well, good luck to them all – they persevered and persevered and have made an absolutely wonderful film about two young dancers. Beadie Finzie is the director and I have to say she did better job that I would have. She – they – absolutely nailed the story and the emotional roller coaster you want to take your audience on. People around me were clapping and groaning at key moments. I am particularly pleased for Christina who, like so many, has worked so hard for so little but she has not given up. She worked with me in Brazil and Angola and I look forward to working with her again – though she may be hard to book now. Mind you, she still owes me for lending her my camera for free for months in Brazil…. After that, it was off to the airport and a flight to LAX (they’re still grumpy) and then onto Qantas for a midnight flight to the next continent, the next country: New Zealand.

2009-10-16T08:27:00.000-07:00

DAY 15 TUESDAY 6th OCTOBER, VANCOUVER, CANADA

A typical film festival day for me. Loads of emails, and sending packages, posters, flyers and postcards around. Great that my brother here to help me. We both then went for a run in the beautiful Stanley Park before heading over for a screening of a film we wanted to see about Laos. A first time feature by a nice Irish woman. Well shot and interesting. She had to tough it out with no real funding until the Irish Film Board stepped in at the end with completion funds. This was her first international screening and I wish her well. She’s the type of film-maker broadcasters should support….
My film was on at 3pm and went very well again. After that my bro and I headed for dinner and then another film about Tibet. I lasted two minutes before falling asleep. Went back to the hotel to go to sleep. I woke when my brother came in and we worked & talked until 2am. Then I really did need to go to bed….

2009-10-16T08:24:00.000-07:00

DAY 14 MONDAY 5th OCTOBER, VANCOUVER, CANADA

My brother has come up by bus from Seattle. I don’t see him enough so any chance to hook up is great. And I’ll need his help at the screenings today and tomorrow. We spent some time together today which was great – actually we rushed off for a game of golf. It was gorgeous – with a backdrop of mountains. The standard of our golf wasn’t quite as attractive… Rushed back to downtown Vancouver for a very nerve-wracking moment: an interview with Radio Canada……..in French! Somehow I managed to get through it but I’m not telling you the link to any recording…. I have to say though that I am chuffed to bits to have done it. 6pm and a festival screening of Beethoven. One never knows how many will come so I’m delighted to see an almost full house of 300+. Apart from a problem with their screen, the projection and audio are great and, although I had intended to rush back to the hotel to do emails, once I started watching the film I couldn’t leave. I think it’s the best I’ve seen it – and I really enjoyed it. So did the audience – they had a great time, laughing and some crying at all the right moments. A very warm round of applause at the end and a good Q&A. All a bit hectic afterwards with lots of people wanting to ask questions. After all this mayhem – and meeting some really nice folk (some of whom remembered me from the Mozart screening two years ago) – my brother and I went to dinner with Marc Destrube and his wife Anna. He is one of the musicians from the Orchestra of the 18th Century who feature so prominently in both films. He is in fact often the Concert Master or First Violinist. He – like all the musicians in that wonderful orchestra – is extremely nice and the fact that I have become friends with a good number of the musicians and conductors that I interviewed is a huge bonus and joy to me. I have actually been skiing with Marc and I remember being terrified that he’d fall over and hurt his hands! I had to apologise to Marc after the film – most of the time in the film we only see his fingers….

2009-10-16T08:18:00.000-07:00

DAY 13 SUNDAY 4th OCTOBER, VANCOUVER, CANADA

Up at 4.30am to get to the airport for a flight to Vancouver. I love Canada and I love Vancouver so I’m really looking forward to this leg of the trip. I have been to Canada many times and have never had anything but the most fantastic times. And when IN SEARCH OF MOZART showed at the Vancouver Film Festival 2 years ago it was a big success. Showing Beethoven at the Film Festival should be fun. Mind you, the journey wasn’t much fun to start with..on arrival at the airport I was gruffly informed that the flight was
cancelled. I’m sorry but US airports can be rough old places and I guess the staff there has developed a defense mechanism which entails that they don’t look at you, smile or seem to care much. Obstinacy comes in useful at times like this…and though they offered me a flight 4 hours later I refused and demanded an earlier flight on a different airline. This was agreed and I had only a couple of hours wait for a United flight which was actually pretty good. Especially as they made a mistake (which I kind of encouraged) and put me in business! A delight to arrive in Vancouver – such a beautiful spot. Sad not to be arriving with my family though. Arrived about midday at the festival hotel – and it’s a lovely hotel, the Sutton Place. It really does help on these trips to be in a nice hotel and this one fits the bill. I check in with the festival – they have some great films and I hope I get the chance to see a few. There are about 2000 festivals I believe and one has to choose very carefully which ones you enter and why. Some are useful for seeking distributors, some for press, some to reach an audience, some to enter competition and maybe win an award, some just because the location is nice and you’ve been invited. Vancouver is a good one because of location, the range of films you can see (lots of Asian ones because of Vancouver’s relation with Asia), and a very enthusiastic audience – some watching 5 films a day! I wish we filmmakers could take a share of the box office but festivals struggle like everyone else. I guess every year they have to rely on sponsors – and in this day and age there is nothing guaranteed about them. Anyway, I managed to see a film in the afternoon about the pianist Glenn Gould. Nicely made by people who clearly thought he was a great pianist though I’d liked to have heard from musicians telling me why he was – or indeed was not – so ‘great’. Great archive – that’s often the key to films. I do daydream about a film about Mozart or Beethoven using imaginary DV archive – can you imagine if someone had some home video of Mozart playing billiards or Beethoven joking around in a local bar…

2009-10-16T08:14:00.000-07:00

DAY 12 SATURDAY 3rd OCTOBER, LOS ANGELES, USA

Busy day…an interview in the hotel with the biggest radio station in LA and apparently the biggest metropolitan radio station in the USA. I’d have tidied my hotel room if I’d have known that’s where he wanted to conduct the interview… Then rushed off for lunch with a local distributor. Mitchell Block is a stalwart of the documentary world and knows that world inside out. He’s been involved in many Oscar-winning docs but the world is changing, has changed, and it doesn’t get any easier for him. He distributes a series of mine called The Great Commanders, which I made almost 15 years ago, so I hope he continues to find success. I then went straight from lunch to a screening of the film at the George Lucas building at the University of Southern California. A new building that cost millions (did someone say $140m?) at & for the school of cinematic arts. Wow. Mind you I spoke to one student studying animation – her three year course would leave her $200,000 in debt! Anyway, a well-attended screening; half students and half opera-goers who regularly come to the cinema for Live from the Met screenings. Then a quick dash back to West Hollywood to meet a fine critic Jules Brenner. He used to be a camera operator and has some fine stories to tell of the old Hollywood – an Hollywood that is probably long-dead. Barely had time to finish eating before dashing to the cinema. Bit disappointed again that audience stubbornly sits at 50 or 60 – in a 250-seater. I can only hope for word-of-mouth but I’m not sure I have reason to be confident. The last show wasn’t any busier either – though, as always, the audience were extremely enthusiastic for the film. I’d rather that than a full house of slightly bored or disappointed punters.

US TOUR - IN SEARCH OF BEETHOVEN

2009-10-12T04:15:00.000-07:00

DAY 11 FRIDAY 2nd OCTOBER, LOS ANGELES, USA

Flew in to LAX and just had time to drop my bags off at the hotel before heading off for a radio interview at KPFK. Thought it would take 10 minutes but it took 40 and $40 too. Just to get from West Hollywood to North Hollywood…crazy city. Good interview though – except it was a pre-record and might not go out until next week which frankly won’t help keep the film in the one cinema it is playing in LA. Still, the interviewer was extremely keen on the Afghan film I am working on and promised to really get behind that when we release it in 2011. The trick is keeping all these offers of help in store and not to forget them… Organisation, organisation, organisation – you can’t overstate how important it is. After a lovely lunch with an old mate from Brighton, I had a meeting with a top (and I mean top) manager to the stars. I felt like I was in Curb Your Enthusiasm (and if you don’t watch that series you are missing one of the great TV series – again, something the Americans do so, so well – The Wire. Sopranos, American Office, etc… I was just meeting this guy to say hi and leave him some DVDs of work. A friend had set it up and who knows…maybe one day, someone will talk to someone about someone else who wants to make a film about so-and-so and they’ll remember this English guy who passed through town with a film on Beethoven… Extremely pleasant guy that I met – when you think of the battles he must face dealing with top stars, top studios, top distributors, etc, I was impressed by his charm and attention. After that meeting – and with my feet still firmly on the ground – I hurried off to the cinema where Beethoven is premiering in LA tonight. Well, I had a little moment of feeling the loneliness of the long distance runner. The cinema was deathly quiet. Yes, the film’s name was up in lights outside and there was a poster or two but in a city where no-one walks and an hour before the cinema opens, there was literally no-one around. I had no sense if anyone would come to the first 5pm screening. We’d had a good review though in the LA Times:

An ode to joy for Beethoven fans

With "In Search of Beethoven," documentarian Phil Grabsky has created a splendid work that will be a revelation to the uninitiated and a joy to music lovers. As with his previous "In Search of Mozart," Grabsky has gathered an array of major musicians and scholars to explore the dynamic relationship between Beethoven's life and art. Excerpts of key Beethoven works are performed by various European orchestras, punctuating the narrative of the composer's tumultuous life, which was expressed so boldly and passionately in his music.

Described as being a "rude, forthright, impatient" young man, Beethoven soon concluded that he could be better than reigning composers Mozart, whom he may or may not have met, and Haydn, who became a mentor. Beethoven enjoyed acclaim and even financial security. But by age 30, he had begun to lose his hearing, which would eventually become total. He fought back suicidal despair, crediting his urge to compose for saving his life. His health would fail and he would sink into poverty, yet he continued to compose, no matter what.

Every source Grabsky interviews for his film enlarges both the viewer's appreciation of Beethoven's genius -- his soaring originality, complexity and variety -- and how his music so richly reveals his ideas, thoughts and state of mind at the time of its composition. The range and influence of his work were so great it is completely understandable why one of Grabsky's commentators proclaims, "Beethoven is the greatest composer who ever lived."

-- Kevin Thomas

Don’t come much better but how many people read the LA Times, how many want to go immediately that afternoon to see a film? Bizarrely, people have been saying that LA is not a great movie-going city. Someone even told me that 80% of an arthouse film’s income can sometimes come from New York alone. I instinctively would doubt such a statistic but it suggests something, doesn’t it? 4.30pm – still quiet. I’m nervous: believe me, it took a lot of work to get the film booked here, then $1500 on a small ad in the LA Times, endless expense in other forms of publicity, endless hours by my colleagues in Brighton, and of course the time, effort and expense for me to get here. And, what?, no-one turns up… Horrible. 4.45…no-one. I want to walk off. I’m starting to look forward to Vancouver on Monday where I know I’ll have a large crowd. 4.46..someone arrives. Then an elderly couple…I listen eagerly as they say ‘2 tickets for Beethoven’, then 2 more, 1 more, 2 more, 4 more…We reach 10..ok, it won’t be empty. 15…not a disaster. 20..not too bad..and eventually 30 people. No avalanche, nothing to shake the arthouse world but it’s OK. The Q&A goes well and I really go on the offensive and push hard that people tell their friends. I really could enter politics after all this one-man hustling from the front. If I pushed any hard, I could have them singing and swaying and chanting ‘Ludwig! Ludwig!’…but that might be going a little far! I do love these Q&As though – and I really don’t mind answering the same questions and so forth – such lovely people – and who can be bored meeting, albeit briefly, nice people who are enthusiastic for the same things as you. I finish the Q&A just as the second sitting arrives…5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 – I know it doesn’t read as being too many but it still means a pretty consistent flow of people in..35, 40.. Well, it’s a 250-seater and we reach 50 people. 20% - doesn’t look great, I know but in a city with hundreds of attractions, a Friday night, a cinema not near any freeways so pretty much only attracting the Beverly Hills inhabitants, I’m not ashamed of 50. I would like to crack 100 so we haven’t managed that but let’s see how we do tomorrow. My voice is really rough by the time I do the last Q&A and I’m ready for bed. Then the last person to ask me questions outside the screen turns out to be a journalist who’d like to interview me there and then. I warm to her immediately – she likes to write considered, intelligent criticism of arthouse films (and there isn’t enough of that) so I agree to get a coffee with her, despite it being midnight. We struggle to find a coffee bar or deli where there’s parking but eventually at half past 12 in the morning, I find myself drinking tea and honey (to save my voice) sharing some cheesecake and pronouncing about the difficulties of making documentary films… While we record this interview to tape, all around us are people having a night out – no-one bats an eye at us though. It’s probably entirely normal for LA. Like earlier in the day, you wouldn’t believe how many guys were reading scripts while drinking their coffee at Starbucks – I wondered if it was a set-up for a TV show…. I’m bushed…that’s 23 hours and I promised my wife only today that I’d get enough sleep. I cut the interview short and go back to the hotel. I turn the TV on but I don’t know why; I’m asleep in minutes.

DAY 10 THURSDAY 1st OCTOBER, KANSAS CITY, KANSAS, USA

Wow, Day 10 – one quarter through my 40 day trip… Early ride out to Cleveland airport (it’s way too far to drive to Kansas) and a quick flight into Kansas City. I am met by an expert in the world of music – a guy called John Tibbetts. He has broadcast and written on many of the same musicians that are in the film and it’s nice to have an hour in the car and then a spot of lunch to talk to him. We are met at lunch by the man who runs the arthouse cinema in Kansas and we bemoan the difficulties in getting folk to see films such as mine but more to the point all those wonderful arthouse movies – which, let’s not beat about the bush, are worth a whole lot more than the mainstream run-of-the-mill output that makes up so much of the chains’ product. Jerry, the manager of the cinema, has been fighting this battle for 20-odd years and is clearly such an important element of Kansas City culture – I just hope they appreciate him. Anyway, after lunch I dashed to his cinema to see a Jane Campion film about Keats but I didn’t last the course (well, not all arthouse films keep me gripped!) and I returned to my hotel to catch up. Jerry wasn’t sure how we’d do for numbers but it was pretty well attended and the Q&A went well. He’s showing Beethoven for one week and Mozart for another so hopefully word-of-mouth will keep numbers steady. Good reviews in the local press and a couple of positive radio interviews is about as much as I could do – so, as always, it’s in the hands of luck, fate, and who knows what? Having spent all day emailing and just keeping on top of the needs of the tour I asked Jerry to give me a quick drive around downtown Kansas city. Another city that is very quiet at night – I guess they are so big, so stretched out, that people just don’t wander – they drive from spot to spot, park in the back, walk straight in. I really enjoyed talking to Jerry – he is one of a breed of Americans that sometimes don’t get seen much on TV abroad – we see the brash, the aggressive side more often – clips of Fox News, or the Congressman from so-and-so demanding a pre-emptive strike against Iran or Syria. But Jerry also represents a huge number of Americans who are smart, funny, articulate, extremely hospitable and just downright nice. So, a quick one-day trip to his city but I thoroughly enjoyed it –and I’d never seen the Missouri River before either….

DAY 9 - WEDNESDAY 29TH SEPTEMBER – CLEVELAND, OHIO, USA

After the excitement of last night, a new day and back to earth…
Emails
Ironing
Emails
Coffee
Radio interview with Kansas
Emails
FEDEX
Email
Phone calls
Emails
Then a radio interview in downtown studio Cleveland. I was interviewed by a wonderful lady by the name of Dee Perry. What a voice! Check her out on-line on WCPN. We had a nice 20 minute chat and luckily I really do not find it hard to be enthusiastic about Beethoven or the film. These radio stations – especially as the print media is in such decline and financial trouble – are absolutely essential. And as I said yesterday it’s folks like these who should be top of every government officials’ budget list. I am not going to write a long essay on this but those kids beating each other up at school and the struggles of people in the cultural spheres – they are connected. It all starts at home and at school. Those kids in France, Germany, Holland who find it normal to learn an instrument, go to concerts, go to the theatre – they, with a rare exception, are not holding up drug stores with sawn-off shotguns. OK, speech over but in the one local newspaper store I went into there were more gun magazines than cultural ones.
After the radio show, John and I hurried off to the first screening. He has never ever scheduled a film at 2pm but did so as I was here. He was worried no one would show- but in fact there was an acceptable 23 people. One of whom had just caught the radio show and rushed across town. The cinema, by the way, is in the university district and pretty much somewhere to drive to. After I had done my introduction I went back to the hotel and finally got the Skype working and spent a lovely 90’ chatting to my family on the webcam. My idea is to have remote dinner with them on Saturday: we all eat in front of the camera and chat as if it were a normal dinner. Weird & wonderful…what a world.
Nice Q&A after the film though I can tell I’m losing my voice. Quick intro for next one then back to hotel. Watched another documentary called The End of the Line. I know some of the people involved and had missed it when it had its one day multi cinema screening in the UK. It’s a powerful film which essentially makes a strong case for the disaster we are committing to the seas and the fish within. They had rather ‘over-scored’ it by which I mean the orchestral score was very emotional and really wasn’t needed. The facts were strong enough; I didn’t need the music to tell me how to feel. That apart, a powerful film that should be seen and acted upon. Indeed, all credit to the film-makers: it had a real impact in the UK on its release and shows the power of a film backed up with enormous commitment and sheer hard work. Various outlets and restaurants have, it seems, already changed their policy on which fish they buy and serve. Great: TV & films are such powerful media and should be used for the common good. Oops, watch out..stop myself before another rant begins…
My second screening of the day went well too. 40 or 50 people (which doesn’t sound much – and indeed could have been more) but on a wet day wasn’t too shabby. And they were very receptive and the Q&A went well. One gentleman I talked to after the show is writing a book that shows Beethoven (and Haydn too) had black fathers… I do like to engage with folk in the audience but I had to ask what evidence could he possibly have to back this up: apparently Malcolm X had mentioned it in a speech in 1963. Well, TV is always asking me what’s new to say about Beethoven so that would be new….
Feeling pretty weary now; hotel room service was shut and so dinner was (a pretty decent) chicken and fruit salad from a nearby coffee shop. Watched Operation Filmmaker by Nina Davenport. One of those docs that you hear about –and all credit to her for that. I certainly could see she had put the effort & time & money in to get the material – the hard-to-capture actuality of a story. Those real moments. Worth checking out.
Despite best efforts, couldn’t clear in-box of emails to under 30…(and don’t even ask about my 'Pending' box and ‘To Read’ box)… Couldn’t sleep – perhaps too much coffee during the day..1am, 2am – and I have to be up at 6 to catch a plane…

DAY 8 - TUESDAY 28TH SEPTEMBER – CLEVELAND, OHIO, USA

First of all, a message to a good friend of mine, Allan in France. He’s a great guy and a big fan of Beethoven and I wish him a speedy recovery. Like Beethoven, Allan will work his fingers to the bone whether he feels well or not. It’s such a burden to be ill; I think all of us who, today, feel hearty and healthy should thank our lucky stars and make the best of it. Anyway, Allan, it is pouring with rain here in Cleveland – the coffee is awful and the pastries worse. I wish I was down at the La Bascule with you having my café & croissant… See you soon I hope.
Yes, it is really very wet here and I am definitely stuck on the computer in my room. I can’t go out anyway as I’m waiting for FedEx to come and take some tapes that have to go to LA. This is a much nicer hotel than the one in New York and half the price. Very comfortable room. The front desk is a bit funny though. They answer the phone as follows: ‘Expect the Unexpected. This is the [X] Hotel. This is Melanie. How may I help you or direct your call this morning’ by which time any caller has forgotten why they are calling. And what on earth does ‘Expect the unexpected’ mean? I asked one of the women at the desk and then immediately realised she didn’t know as it would be unexpected… I guess I expected drinkable coffee, fruit with taste, oatmeal that was warm, orange juice that was fresh and eggs that were real…and I received the unexpected by getting none of those. Still, mustn’t grumble, eh? Had so much to do today that it made no difference that it was a grey as slate and pouring with rain. I was shooting off emails like an English archer shooting arrows at Agincourt. Late afternoon, I drove the car across town to the Avis car lot ($280 for 2 days hire including the different city drop-off – I have to sell 100 tickets to cover that). There I was met by John from the Museum of Art / Cinemateque. He and people like him are like gold-dust. They work against all sorts of odds to deliver a rich, valuable programme of films including classics and new discoveries. These guys are underpaid and undervalued – and frankly it shows in our society. No offence bankers but it’s guys like John who deserve the bonuses… It’s so obvious to me that culture is absolutely essential to society – it’s a bedrock of all that is decent and good – and yet I know no cultural sphere that doesn’t struggle for funds. Think of the financial waste in local government and then think of how much someone like John deserves $20,000 here or $30,000 there so at least he could have an assistant and wouldn’t have to do everything from picking the films, doing the deals, pushing the press, taxi-ing filmmakers from the airport, turning on the projector, introducing the guests, etc, etc. I really enjoyed my time with him and couldn’t stop myself from borrowing 5 documentaries that I watched in my room. Of those, one called ‘Mother Courage’ (with Meryl Streep) was excellent. But the highlight of the day was a trip not to the cinema but to the theatre… By the wildest, craziest, whackiest chance there was a play at the nearby Cleveland Playhouse called ‘Beethoven, as I knew him’. Now on a recent trip to Chicago I had been told about this wonderful actor, writer, concert pianist called Hershey Felder who had done one-man shows about Gershwin and also Chopin and was about to do Beethoven. Actually I’m not sure if I was told he was doing Beethoven…anyway, I made a mental note but never thought to try and contact him. Lo and behold, he is here and my friend in Chicago effected an introduction. The wonders of Facebook: I swear that 10 minutes after I had sent a message to the guy in Chicago I receive an email from Hershey which says he absolutely, I mean ABSOLUTELY loved In Search of Mozart (which he bought at Mozart’s house in Vienna) and had watched it 5 or 6 times and would love for me to come to the show and meet him afterwards. How great! So that’s what I did. The show, I am pleased to say, was fabulous! Do see it if you ever get the chance or buy the DVD which might well be out next year. Essentially the theatrical equivalent of my film – extracts of letters and pieces of music (which Hershey plays on a Steinway and plays very well). I’m obviously a bit sniffy about other work on Beethoven – I just don’t rate very highly anything I have watched – but this was great. Then, to my surprise and slight embarrassment, at the end of the play, during a great question and answer that Hershey does with the audience, he showered me with praise and told everyone to go see my film playing tomorrow! Afterwards, we had a drink and all I’ll say is that if half of the suggestions Hershey put forward to help me with the Mozart and Beethoven films come to fruition….well, the trip may have been worth it for that alone. And you know what, sometimes you know someone is either a bit over-excited and suggesting things that actually they can’t secure or they are enjoying making themselves seem important by telling you what they can do for you – but I’m not a bad judge of character and I reckon Hershey was down-the-middle genuine. As a deeply creative soul himself, he really did seem to have been taken by the creativity of the my – and my team’s – films and I think – if time permits him – he really will help. Fabulous: I still can’t quite get over the serendipity of it all…

DAY 7 - MONDAY 28TH SEPTEMBER

American breakfast coffee is awful.
Left my hotel and drove from 8am to 3pm to get to Cleveland. Some observations:
1 - the radio stations have NOT changed in 30 years: Sammy Hagar, Led Zepellin, Free, Bad Company, Van Halen, Bachman Turner Overdrive, yes, they are all there… Great: I loved it…except…
2 – yes, except, you can’t really listen to that music and crawl along the freeway. But cops everywhere (not that I advocate speeding but 65MPH?? Please). Worse are those drivers that send me mad who sit in the overtaking lane doing 55 when the inside lanes are empty. Who taught these people to drive – don’t they have any idea at all?
3 – Pennsylvania is gorgeous
4 – I drove off the freeway to stop at random in a town. I was shocked. A main street that had barely changed since 1880. That in itself isn’t the end of the world but so many shops boarded up. Others selling second hand stuff or just rubbish. I saw one delivery and it was piles of boxes freshly in from China (and that’s part of the problem). I stopped to look at one nice old building and the owner within two minutes asked me if I wanted to buy it. This is indeed the famous ‘Main Street not Wall Street’ that Obama promised to help. We’ll see – but compared to practically any town or village that you might stop into in France and my word they are worlds apart. There is so much to love about the USA but the problems they have are huge. Still, at least lunch was only $5.
Arrived at my hotel in Cleveland – in the very pleasant university district and decide to walk to Downtown and the Lake (Erie). Oops, it was 7 miles and took my one and a half hours and I swear I passed only two (2!) people on the sidewalk the whole time… What is that all about? Downtown was very quiet but interesting. I caught a taxi back and worked till 2am (with a background of some great classic concerts on VH1) when I was hoping to ring the kids at home but no-one answered and then I was simply too tired.

DAY 6 – SUNDAY 27TH SEPTEMBER

Worked all morning on emails in my hotel – with a brief hurried rush to buy some oatmeal (again) from Starbucks…
Went down to the cinema at for the 1pm screening – pretty good crowd. I know I should make more of New York but I just have so much to do (and it’s raining) so I carry on with emails until the first Q&A at 3.20. I really should remember to introduce the films too because, despite posters everywhere saying there will be Q&As, people always seem surprised. Anyway, the crowd were very energetic for a Sunday midday so that was good. I collected a few emails, handed out some flyers, and saw the 3.45 lot going in. Again, pretty busy. Then I headed off for a really nice two hours with three very fine friends from New York. It was actually quite a relief to be talking about something other than Beethoven… Headed back for the 6pm Q&A and then decided to have a bit of exercise so made a run for the Golf Range at Chelsea Piers. When I got there, I choose to do a simulator which I haven’t done before. Pretty amazing machine – you hit an actual ball that crosses two lines and then hits a toughened screen. So the speed is measured by the time taken to cross those lines and the direction is marked by where you hit the screen…. To be honest, it doesn’t match a proper game at all but it was OK. But even that was interrupted by a phone-in radio interview I did. I left it a bit late and literally had to jog back to the cinema so the Q&A was conducted by a very sweaty Brit… Again a terribly nice and enthusiastic audience, all promising to spread the word. We’ll see. I then had to dash off to Avis to pick up a hire car, return to the hotel for my bags and head through the Lincoln Tunnel and towards the 1-80 and Cleveland. I surprised myself by not feeling tired but I had chosen to drive partly to see the country so not much point driving in the dark. Stopped at a motel: dinner was Salsa dip, Carrots and an Orange & grapefruit juice…it was the only stuff in a nearby garage that looked like it was less than a million calories a bite… Watched a bit of ladies golf and feel asleep….

DAY 5 -SATURDAY 26th

An absolutely mad day of Q&As and running here and there. The audiences were good and there were four (even the midnight one) lively and positive discussions after each film. Had some more reviews come in too: this one was very erudite: http://boxoffice.com/reviews/2009/09/in-search-of-beethoven.php

In Search of Beethoven
by Matthew Nestel
posted September 25, 2009 8:30 AM

A valentine to the rock star of classical music

he straight story can be told in many octaves. Many minds, literati and artisan, chime in on music’s titan among titans. Composers, conductors, concert musicians, and historians deliver intimate interpretations of a genius whose muted mortality was no match for his talent—a talent he himself characterized as “heaven’s most precious gift.” In Search of Beethoven is a visual biography that employs scores of live performances reimagining the master’s infinite range—from raging to ethereal. The film, like the Flemish artist’s vast oeuvre, aims to strike an apotheosis by chronologically reciting Ludwig van Beethoven’s remarkable flight and plight. The clever movements should entreat a cultured base, like those who still read daily broadsheets and listen to classical records. The MP3 crowd won’t break their Urban Outfitters shopping spree for this affair but may catch glimpses once it jumps from big screen to small.

Afflicted with many physical ailments, Beethoven, the classical rock star who followed Mozart and his teacher Haydn’s footsteps to Vienna, was riddled with financial and female woes. He never married despite what appear to be many crushes, his purse was only moderately filled because manuscript royalties were sold as one-offs and he couldn’t tour because he was sick so often.

Despite his reputation as a harsh hermit, the letters he penned reveal a wounded heart, and his piano concertos and string quartets exude unadulterated beauty, grace and fragility. These pieces are treated like scriptures for the musicians and aficionados dedicating their lives to cracking them. Concert pianist Emanuel Ax admits some of the virtuosic measure are impossible to play and says Beethoven “was less concerned with human beings in the flesh and more concerned with humanity as an ideal.” It was with this that his work lasted longer than the so-called masters of the Baroque period before him. Roger Norrington, a conductor, believes that Beethoven was thinking on a grander stage when comparing him to Mozart. “Mozart was writing for Saturday. Beethoven was beginning to write for eternity. That was one of the conversations he had with his Creator. He wanted to be a great composer, I think.”

The opuses are performed in rich and buttery manners and played as we see paintings, illustrations and composites of the epoch. The narration is quite unobtrusive and touches on elements succinctly, thus letting the thinkers, doers and instruments carry the doc’s tune. Letters are orally recited and in the message you gather that Beethoven was a wounded soul but also determined to make his mark with impunity. To one muse named Josephine he wrote: “You have conquered me. I love you as clearly as you do not love me.” He would write a sonata in her honor (as he did with many women) when smitten. At other times he was wallowing in the depths of despair. “I have dragged on this miserable existence.” But there’s also some sardonic wit from the key master when recounting tension with the help: “My servant has been quite difficult since I threw those books at her head.”

The film permits Beethoven’s story to unfold without too much tinkering. Any stylizing or seasoning would ruin it. And director Phil Grabsky is well aware of this, having made a sister film about Mozart before. The intention, one must believe, is to go deeper into the bowels and cerebellum of this creator who fought deafness and so many other maladies both physical and spiritual, but managed to leave the world an unrivaled legacy. Beethoven’s canon is an eternally living, breathing organism charming and wounding billions and billions in just a couple of strokes.

I had to post the whole thing because it’s pretty impressive – I hadn’t realised I was going deep into the bowels and cerebellum of Beethoven – I think I best go wash.

Oh, I managed to get a massage today. The masseuse walked all over my back – that was a first and my word I thought I’d had deep tissue massage before (even a Turkish guy in an Istanbul Hammam) but this was so deep she was massaging back and front at the same time… She said my muscles were so tight I needed to come back soon. I nodded politely as I stumbled back onto the Manhattan streets…

Walked home in the rain at 1am….watching all the revellers…maybe feeling a bit sorry for myself…

DAY 4: Friday 25th September

It must be the air conditioning (which is a nightmare in hotels like this) but I am awake at 5.20am. Decide to email for an hour than try sleeping again. Colleagues are shooting Tim Marlow on the Turner Exhibition in a few days and I have a few notes to send them. SkyArts saved that show when Channel Five bailed out of the arts and I am so pleased they did – they are such nice and also valuable shows. Why is it so hard to find space on UK TV for 24 minutes about, in this case, one of Britain’s greatest ever artists. If I wanted to make 100 hours entitled ‘Pets Falling Over’ I’d be commissioned in a shot – now what does that say about us? So all credit to SkyArts – I know it’s all about selling set-top boxes but if the most commercial channel there is sees there is an audience why don’t the terrestrials? Anyways, that’s how it is,

8am and I’m at the Printing & Copying store Kinkos picking up 5000 flyers that I spent half of yesterday designing and ordering. I have decided that audiences at Cinema Village are simply not good enough. We have had across-the-board excellent reviews but have people seen them? And it is my belief that you need to hit peoples’ consciousness five or six times before it sinks in…so 5000 flyers in two heavy boxes.

At 9.30 outside the Lincoln centre, the two guys I have hired from the Cinema and I start handing our flyers to passers-by and also folk going in to an early morning Brahms concert. Amazingly everyone takes one as soon as we say the magic word ‘Beethoven’…you can see that they would otherwise have walked by. I feel like Mozart and Beethoven actually – having to employ people to hand out flyers for my ‘concerts’….Nothing’s changed really has it in 20 years. The trouble with New York is that there is SO much choice, that getting anyone into your cinema is a task, an art, a miracle! I left the two guys at it (one of them had last handed out flyers for Barack Obama and he said it was nice to be handing out flyers and not be told it was a disgraceful hippy… or worse). I rushed off to the Marriot (where I left some flyers of course) to pick up a suitcase of another 150 Mozart DVDs that my brother had brought into the country last week on a business trip. I have to sell these things – like some itinerant vacuum cleaner salesmen or encyclopaedia salesmen of past – to pay for the trip first and hopefully even start to pay back our investment (which was sizeable) in the film itself. So there I am, blazing heat, wheeling my heavy suitcase of wares through Manhattan. I dropped them off at the hotel and then ran for a 12.30 with another top doc exec – trying to persuade them that my forthcoming film about ten years in the life of a boy in Afghanistan is one they should invest in. She wasn’t disinterested…we’ll see. To me, I cannot imagine a more important film.

After the meeting, I made my way by train to Long Island where I was having a special one-off screening a delightful cinema in Huntington. Cliff Eisen – one of the leading authorities on Mozart and Beethoven – lives close by so we were co-appearing as guests for an after-film Q&A. The film was very well attended and everyone really seemed to enjoy it. It was nice to see a packed cinema after the quarter-full screen at Cinema Village. But also nice to meet so many nice people (and so many musicians) who were simply delighted to see the film. They were all made SVP (Senior Vice President – everyone in business in the US is a SVP) of verbal distribution. Most, when I told them that, simply thought I was strange…and looked at me as though I was speaking Chinese. But anyway a very pleasant night – excellent to spend time with Cliff and his wife Katy – and despite the 1am train ride back to Manhattan and then having to walk my way through the cold night, filled with revellers and police cars screaming around, it was thoroughly worth it. Couldn’t sleep at first – think I drifted off about 2.30.

DAY 3 – Thursday 24th September

I’d hoped to sleep in but bang on 6am I wake. Can’t tell from looking out of my box window if it’s day or night. Doing emails by 6.01am… UK one way, Australia the other…Truly a global operation! OK, ok, no bread but surely I’m allowed banana pancakes… Go out and it’s blazing hot already which is bad news as I have a day of pounding the pavements from meetings, screenings and also trying to see other documentaries in other cinemas… First of all, of course, I check for new reviews. Time Out & Village Voice are in the shops:

Time out:
“If we had to pick ten things that are great about humanity, there would probably be several Beethoven works amongst them.” Sparked by that appraisal from an unseen authority, documentarian Phil Grabsky launches into an investigation of the composer’s life, providing insights into an audacious talent who could either delight or baffle his contemporaries. Beethoven’s painful insecurities and petty squabbles are deftly balanced with generous musical examples. Honorifics like the opening quotation liberally punctuate the film, but so do frank, even irreverent observations from scholars and musicians. The results do justice to a complex genius whose impact can scarcely be overstated.—Steve Smith

Village Voice
In Search of Beethoven plays like a good, if necessarily condensed critical biography. Drawing from archival letters, interviews with contemporary musicians and historians, and a generous selection of live music, Phil Grabsky's film takes us through the life and work of its imposing subject, moving from Beethoven's days as the "piano virtuoso of Vienna" in the 1790s through his establishment as that city's leading composer and his subsequent personal troubles and declining production. What's interesting about the film is not so much its re-creation of the man's life or its presentation of his character—which hew closely to romantic notions of the stubborn, increasingly erratic genius—but its consideration of just how revolutionary his body of music was compared to that of his predecessors. The film's real resource is its impressive array of talking heads, their intimate familiarity with the music, and their ability to impart graspable insight, as when two subjects offer different readings of the Ninth Symphony's seemingly incongruous ending. Only the angry outburst of one expert, who uses Beethoven's genius to deride contemporary art and "video clips" as comparative trash, imparts a sour elitist whiff to the proceedings.

Then back to my hotel room to phone in a long interview with WBIA radio – that should help. It’s NY’s public radio station and I’ve found that radio is really important in attracting the classical music audience. I’ve done so many interviews about Mozart and Beethoven now but, because I love the subjects so much, I always feel – and thus sound – truly enthusiastic. Probably I also like sounding off too! After the interview, although I would have loved to walked around Manhattan, I simply had no time to do anything but answer emails. But around midday I headed off north to a meeting at the Museum of Modern Art. I have both filmed there in the past and also shown films there. It’s an extraordinary place and to have anything to do with it is a bit of an honour really. I also love the fact it is always so busy – again illustrating that the audience is there for art and most TV channels just don’t get it. After a good meeting – though my cold is really getting on my nerves; I cannot shift it – I scampered off to a friend’s apartment: she had kindly allowed us to use it as an address to send 300 DVDs….I just about had time to leave them at the hotel before having to walk downtown to the Cinema Village for the first Question and Answer session of the day. Today is really the day a film normally opens and when some of our press said we were opening so I’m keen to see how we do today. Bums on seats…

1.45am..well, four Q&As later…I’m Phil Grabsky and this is my film… I have to say it went extremely well. The numbers were average – 20, 30 people per screening (although the other 2 films in the cinema had 2 or 3 people only) but those 20 or 30 absolutely loved the film and were very animated about it and very enthusiastic to go tell their friends. Some people were genuinely moved; others stunned by so much music from so many top musicians. Many were highly critical that you wouldn’t see something like this on US television. Questions tended to be on the hows and wherefores of making something like this. Not one comment about me missing something out. And no comments about the Immortal Beloved which often gets people very heated. Not that it matters really who she was. A really busy day as I managed to squeeze in a very important meeting with a Commissioning Editor of documentaries of a leading channel, and also managed to see Michael Moore’s latest film: Capitalism: A Love Story. Now, despite the fact that on Rotten Tomatoes my film is scoring 92% (!) and his only 70%, I do consider him a deity of the film-making world. No documentary film-maker can deny how significant he has been to opening up the cinemas to docs. Nor do I for a moment deny that it is so wonderful to have an alternate voice poking at the otherwise hidden wounds of modern society…but, frankly, as a film, this one was a bit weak. It makes some shocking ‘needs to be said’ points about Wall Street but it’s too polemical, too ham-fisted at times, to score points with anyone but an already converted audience. That said, I hope it is watched by millions of people around the world. OK…almost 2am and I’m calling time on today.

DAY 2
Can't sleep. Could be nerves - more likely this crummy hotel where the window opens onto a dark narrow infinitely long shaft of some sort and the room is so small I can just about get past the bed to the bathroom or the front door...And �200/night - breakfast is extra! Anyway, allows me to crack on with my emails. Sometimes that is like trying to hold back the tide by lying flat on the beach...it's impossible! Went for a 5 mile run at dawn along a new jog & cycle track along the Hudson River. Not as nice as Chicago�s shoreside but good enough... and better than trying to jog in Manhattan with that grid system....
Met Marjorie my NY publicity agent... She is super and knows her stuff. Tells me this is one of the worst weeks to open : there are 30 films out this week including the Almighty Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore (to whom all documentary filmmakers owe an enormous debt) with his new film. She says it is a testimony to the Beethoven film that we have been getting such good press - indeed reviews at all - in such a packed marketplace. And there is a free screening in Central Park tonight of a film about US National parks...and the UN are in town blocking everywhere....and so on and so on. I decide to walk 50 blocks north to see the press people at the Neue Gallerie and the Metropolitan Gallery of Art. We filmed there last year for an interview show (on SkyArts) called Marlow Meets and I want to be sure they got the DVDs we sent them. The city is packed as always - how do I get these folk to the screenings??? The police are everywhere blocking streets for the fleets and fleets of fancy cars for the UN meeting - and right now clearly it's time for lunch as fancy restaurants are being cordoned off. All seems a little perverse... Manage to get to Met where, guess what, it's been shut for the day to allow for visiting dignitaries to have special tours - I guess they don't want the hoi polloi in there...Gosh, no wonder these leader of the world lose touch....Anyway checked that the press departments at the Met and Neue Gallerie had received their DVD of Marlow Meets and then caught a cab down to the cinema. Not alone - an elderly lady from Washington was at the Neue Gallerie upset as that was closed too (in their case they close on Tuesdays and Wednesdays). 'Want to see a great film? ' 'Sure...' So I kidnapped her....well, escorted her, downtown. At least there would be one person at the 3.45 screening...

'I'm Phil Grabsky, I directed this film, does anyone have any questions' - four times I did that today - after the 1pm, 3.45, 6.30 and 9.30pm performances. It's now 1.30am and so what the result? Not great in terms of numbers - too many empty seats but at least those that were there were VERY enthusiastic and promised to tell friends and colleagues. We can't afford the millions Moore spends on TV ads and posters so we can only rely on word-of-mouth, radio and press reviews and support and a dose of good luck. The Cinema Village is lovely - the projection is excellent - they are offering a run if we get bums on seats so let's see. Bed by 1.30am

DAY 1
The Wilderness World Tour... well, it is 40 days after all. I haven't been away from home for so long since the kids were born and so it�s all a bit a risk. An expensive, extremely time-consuming and exhausting risk - but it's no good making films if you don't get out there and sell them, get them seen. So USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Hong Kong here I come. Never again will I underestimate how much effort goes into a rock tour. Combining cinemas across three continents and sorting out the travel, accommodation, press and who knows what else has taken a scorching amount of time. But here we are: it's Day 1, I'm packed and on the way to Gatwick airport near my home in Sussex. On suitcase is full of DVDs that I certainly hope to sell en route...and maybe fill with some new shirts as I haven't had time to shop for ages (and no doubt it shows!). But 40 days....the kids seem to grow even if I am away for a week... Well, as it is 40 days, I am going to try and abstain from something: and I have decided on two foods I'm quite fond of... bread & alcohol. I had a check-up yesterday and while the nurse said it's great I haven't put on more than a kilo in 9 years she thought maybe I could still lose one or two.... Oh well, at least I won't need to eat those dreadful BA sandwiches. (They do so much so well but the food still lets them down). Their in-flight entertainment, however, and I'd say their staff too, are second-to-none most of the time.

Caught up on some reading on the plane and before I knew it I was at JFK. Then in a taxi (bang! There goes $50) and at the hotel.

Evening in my room and first two reviews are in: the two keys ones actually and they are good!

NY TIMES:

'... jammed with prominent musicians and conductors, all striving to put across just how revolutionary Beethoven's works were. They don't just talk the usual documentary talk, they play the music to illustrate their points: expertise and passion combined... ...with an awfully high-class soundtrack'.

VARIETY:

'beautifully lensed, intelligently crafted ...The musical performances -- ranging from the aching melancholy of "Moonlight Sonata" to the sublime transcendence of Symphony No. 9 -- are impeccable. Grabsky infuses his storytelling with a compelling sense of drama and elicits more interesting observations from a select group of musicians (many of whom perform), historians and musicologists. "In Search of Beethoven" affectingly deals with the composer's increasing deafness and romantic disappointments. (Royal Shakespeare Company vet David Dawson reads passages from Beethoven's letters.) Just as important, however, the pic also finds elements of rich humor in Beethoven's life and art'.

I walk down to the cinema where Beethoven is to premiere - no posters! First problem... Back to hotel and endless emails.

December 4th 2008

2008-12-09T04:03:00.000-08:00

Fantastic: have just done the first narrative read-through with Juliet Stevenson for Beethoven. It's been a hectic few weeks - and scripting is all-consuming. But I'm very happy with how things stand. I also am still happy to have (bar one last interview) finished the filming now - finished off, as I mentioned in an earlier blog, in Vienna with Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber playing/singing Adelaide and An die ferne Geliebte. Beautiful music and the words (largely though not entirely by coincidence) resonate exactly with Beethoven's biography.

November 12th 2008

2008-12-09T04:01:00.000-08:00

Things are going well - I have had meetings with the leading arthouse cinemas of LA, New York and Chicago and all are very excited by Beethoven. At a time when many films, and certainly that includes docs, are getting no cinema screenings at all, it's nice to feel wanted! And we're talking minimum 2, even 4, week runs. The dates are a little bit here and there - some wanting next May/June 09 - others March 2010. I've even been told to have a go at Oscar qualification (which means a minimum of one week in NY and LA) but that seems a little bit fanciful to me. I have also been talking to film & music journalists, music venues, etc, etc, and what is really great is how encouraging they all are. The fact that they know the Mozart film is really helping. Meanwhile, dusk & dawn, the emails fly between my editor in the UK and me. Snip, snip, snip we go and the film pulls ever tighter together. But it's hard now saying goodbye to an interviewee whose last piece may just have gone or even one or two music pieces. The first of the 9 symphonies is under threat - and guess which one? The second. I mentioned this last night to a very charming man from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and he said 'it's always the second which gets squeezed out!' - and you know what!? That made me determined to keep it in! I am writing this at 4.35am in Chicago airport, en route to New York and a 10am meeting with the Lincoln Centre - so fingers crossed that goes well. (Last time we screened Mozart there, there was a fight outside the cinema because tickets were sold out! I remember thinking 'how awful' and 'great!' at the same time... Well, I've resisted the lure of the brick-sized muffins till now but I'd better eat something; American airlines seem not to serve food anymore. I bet Beethoven would have hated all this travelling.

November 4th 2008

2008-12-09T03:59:00.000-08:00

Washington DC. I'm here sorting out the US Fall/Autumn 09 release of In Search of Beethoven and obviously a fascinating time to get here - Obama has been elected and every conversation you overhear is talking about it. I walked down to the White House and they are already constructing the Inauguration Stands - can't be much fun for Bush to look out of his window and see the preparations well under way for his successor. Very gracious speech from McCain in defeat though - something that I see from the press has been noted in countries around the world. In Kenya, for example, a young man was quoted as saying he was moved to see that those who lose an election can accept it with dignity rather than provoking riots. Meanwhile, I suspect getting elected is the easy part for Obama... As my head is so full of Beethoven one can imagine how Ludwig felt when the dashing, energetic Bonaparte took over the reins of France and how disappointed he was when Napoleon (as he renamed himself) crowned himself Emperor. Keep an eye on Obama in case he starts to wear a crown. Didn't Julius Caesar also make the same mistake? I think, though, that Michelle Obama will keep him firmly grounded. I'm also visiting LA, Chicago and New York - working all the time on the script. The first narrative read is in less than a month so every second counts. It's amazing actually how little errors can slip in or interviewees can make tiny mistakes which need to be weeded out - especially in dates. Only one more shoot to do - Bonn & Vienna. Vienna will be a nice end to over two years of filming - I'll be filming two pieces: 'Adelaide' and 'An die ferne Geliebte' - sung by Christian Gerhaher. Interestingly, it's believed 'Adelaide' was the last piece Beethoven performed in public as a pianist. Anyway, first meeting of the day awaits. Bis später....

In Search of Beethoven

2008-10-30T09:32:00.000-07:00

A month into the editing now and the beast that is the film IN SEARCH OF BEETHOVEN makes slow but steady process. I remember the rough-cut of IN SEARCH OF MOZART once topped 11 hours - or maybe even more than that - and now Beethoven has hit double figures, edging over ten hours yesterday. It's not my fault! He just wrote so much great music which I have been fortunate enough, after a lot of hard work, to gain access to film - and I have also been lucky enough to have done 40 or 50 interviews with world experts on him and his music. So the challenge is whittling it down, and down again, until it is more like 2 or 3 hours. So far we've had no really tough decisions to make - except for cutting one world famous violinist who simply felt unnecessary. But I tremble at facing choices between symphonies or not being able to keep in all five piano concertos, etc. And I really don't want to only have 20 second clips - ah well, time will tell. It's Saturday today so the office is quiet and I can spend the day snipping away. I shouldn't take the great Michelangelo's name in vain but it feels like his wonderful unfinished slave sculpture- you know there is a work of art in there somewhere but it involves extraordinary precision in working through the marble until the form is fully realised. We'll see...Meanwhile, my days are accompanied by the performance of, among others, Helene Grimaud, Ronald Brautigam, Vadim Repin, Claudio Abbado, Paul Lewis - and so, so many more. Somebody asked me the other day what is my favourite piece and it's impossible to answer - it's the piece I'm working on at that moment. Yesterday we were editing the Missa Solemnis that I filmed in the Musikverrein in Vienna and we were laying the violin solo over an extract of interview from the conductor Fabio Luisi in which he was explaining how the violin playing over the orchestra was written by Beethoven like that to illustrate the Holy Ghost hanging over mankind. I love that kind of insight, explaining what I am seeing and what it means. The World Premiere is now set for 30th March in the Concert Hall in London's Barbican so I have a tight schedule to keep to now. US, Australian, Dutch theatrical releases are also being sorted out so one can feel the pressure ramping up. No-one has tried to make anything as comprehensive as this (just as no-one has made a film as comprehensive about Mozart as IN SEARCH OF MOZART) and I really feel a responsibility to do a good job not just for the screenings and broadcasts we'll have next year but the screenings and broadcasts we'll be having in 10 years. Mind you, one has to wonder what kind of media environment we'll be living in over the next decade: I went to a UK channel's Commissioning Briefing a few days ago and their Editor of Factual announced how delighted she was with a recent production (that had got just under 3 million viewers) - the title? 'The Woman with Giant Legs'. You can see why I can never raise the money to make films like Beethoven! I don't know what's worse - the broadcaster commissioning something like that or 3 million people deciding that was the best way they could spend an hour of their time. Or, indeed, the fact that, in a public forum, you would declare great pride in having shown such a film. Maybe it was ever thus: poor old Ludwig had to put up with the knowledge that the most popular symphony during his life time was his so-called Battle Symphony - all cannons and rousing patriotic tunes. Maybe human nature simply doesn't change and artists just have to deal with that fact and work around it. Anyway, my edit suite awaits - this morning, it's the fantastic Endellion String Quartet and the late quartets...

Filmmaker Phil Grabsky's July 2007 blog

2007-07-05T02:03:00.000-07:00

July 4th 2007

'Beautifully lensed' - 'lensed'?? I don't believe that word exists - and that from a reviewer in Variety. Oh dear. Anyway, he more or less liked the Mozart film which is still rating 90% on the Rotten Tomatoes site. The world of blogs, internet sites, MySpaces, etc, is bottomless…. Whenever I 'Google' In Search of Mozart, I am amazed at the scope of who's talking about it and where. My favourite so far though are the Singles' dates that met at screenings in LA. Excellent. I'm off to screenings in 2 weeks in New York, Newport, Chicago and Boston - I'll keep an eye out for singles on blind dates… I'm sure Mozart would have thoroughly approved. I'm certainly looking forward to those screenings - especially, I have to say, the Opening Night at Cinema Village in New York. It's a special cinema at one of the true hearts of cinema anywhere in the world - and so to have a documentary on a classical composer play there is, for me, a thrill. Hopefully, I won't be sitting on my own - but, if I am, I'll still be humming along.

Meanwhile, the whole distribution juggernaut is beginning to kick into gear for ESCAPE FROM LUANDA - it was only finished days ago but already we have festivals chasing us for copies. I'm very level-headed about all that. We'll see how it does and then go from there. Interestingly enough, only today, Angola have refused to allow BA to fly into Luanda any more in retaliation for the British banning Tagg airlines (due to an EC report that concluded they were too dangerous for the European air corridors). What a mess. And just as we were planning how to show the film to the school and students.

Talking of students, I ran the gauntlet of thousands of screaming kids last night when I went to the European premiere of the latest Harry Potter. The film is tremendous - each graphic wonder costing more than my entire annual film budget! You have to hand it to them - they do what they do supremely well. I wouldn't know where to start. It too, by the way, was 'beautifully lensed'….

Escape from Luanda - Trailer

2007-06-29T02:41:00.001-07:00

Expected to tour festivals worldwide before being released in cinemas and on DVD in early 2008.

Latest Film: Escape from Luanda

2007-06-08T04:20:00.000-07:00

4^th May 2007

With May only just beginning we have one production commencing, one coming to an end, one touring cinemas, another entering festivals and a couple seeking funding – what a busy month we have ahead!

Escape from Luanda – the end, or should I say beginning, is now in sight. Next week I will be travelling back and forth to London for the final online edit. Then it will be full steam ahead as we crack on with festival entries and the planning of our premiere, watch this space…

Tuesday 2^nd May we held a private screening of Heavy Water: a film for Chernobyl at the Tate Modern’s Starr Auditorium – a great venue for any of you who are yet to go there. Tim Marlow asked David Bickerstaff and I about our experiences of Chernobyl and future plans for the film. A thank you to all those that sacrificed half of the Chelsea – Liverpool match to join us; we even managed to catch the crucial penalties afterwards. David recently visited Gdansk in Poland for a similar screening, and on May 21^st we have a screening as part of the Brighton Festival, this time a chance to hear a Q & A afterwards with David, Mario the poet and myself – there are a few tickets left.

In Search of Mozart continues to be a big success in the USA & Canada, with cinemas booking extra dates to keep up with the demand – now covering at least 20 different cities and cinemas. Almost everyday I hear of a new screening or a new newspaper review, in fact just yesterday I was sent a link to a podcast from an interview I did with a journalist. Mozart (you really have to be careful what you say – as all of a sudden it’s on the internet as a podcast!)

Finally, the follow-up to The Boy is well under way with another trip to Afghanistan under our belt; we have now edited together a pilot with which we’re trying to pull together enough funds to enable the final shoot to happen and the expensive post-production stages. The Boy who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan continues to be a success with DVDs selling well and new screenings being arranged all the time.