Larry Weinstein

Starting in the early 1980s and basically non-stop to this day, Larry Weinstein has been directing some of the most vivid, instructive, curious and entertaining documentaries coming out of this country. With an acute interest in music, its composers (Ravel, Back, Beethoven, Shostakovich, Mozart, Weill, Schoenberg and others), musicians and essentially everyone who's deeply affected by it.

In Mozartballs (2006), we witness the passion for the composer through a variety of "fans", from astronauts bringing his music into space to a woman thinking she is the reincarnation of Mozart. In Beethoven's Hair (2005), forensics is applied to a lock of Ludwig's hair to study its previous owners and the medical secret related to his death.

None of his documentaries are straightforward and about a given subject or topic. We learn everything through how the subject has affected others, how people have absorbed a passion into their lives and effectively created something new. It's more about the personal, social and historical significance of these people than what their life arches have been. His latest, Inside Hanna's Suitcase (a Special Presentation at Hot Docs 2009), concerns the relationship between a Holocaust victim's found suitcase, her surviving brother and Japanese students learning about a part of history they weren't familiar with. The point is really that everyone needs to talk about History.

Weinstein is a writer, director and producer and has consistently (so far...we're watching you Larry!) created movies that are interesting for all audiences.

How did you move from music lover to filmmaker who mostly tackles musicians and composers?

I always loved music, but in a way my interest in music and film kind of collided from the beginning. The first film I ever saw about a composer was Ken Russell's brilliant 1968 film on Frederick Delius, "Song of Summer". It was on TV soon after it was made - I was like 12 & I remember rushing off to the library the day after & reading about Delius. It was my first real "encounter" with a composer and not long after that I started reading more and more about lives of composers and music and started listening a lot - it kind of sparked my love of research too. A little later I saw a book on Canadian composers which seemed like an anomaly to me. I stared at a photo of John Weinzweig and was impressed when I read about his activism as an artist... I made a film about him maybe 18 years later.

Did you feel there might have been a void in films being made about music?

I never thought about it in those terms - I just knew that I loved music, that from the time I was 16, 17, I loved making films & the idea of combining the two seemed natural and pleasing. This is way before music videos of course - it's the early & mid-70's. I made some film/music experiments through the 70's but really it was only when I teamed up with my Rhombus partners in 1979 that the music/film dream looked like it had a chance of being fulfilled.

Your approach is very entertaining and dynamic. In several of your films, we meet an array of eclectic personalities. How do you find these people?

It sounds like you're thinking about the crazy "Mozartballs" (2006) - and in that case, many of the characters were "discovered" by my writing colleague, Thomas Wallner... but in general I have always been interested in presenting ideas through characters - I've called it "the humanization of music" - which sounds like a bad translation from a non-existent German word - but, yes, I stay away from third person narration as much as possible and also musicologists spouting off theories, unless they knew the subject personally and are in themselves colourful or mesmerizing... And think of it as a film.

I mean, let's face it. What a ridiculous thing to make films about. The creation of an invisible, intangible art captured on a medium that demands visual and tangible treatment. The one thing that music and film really do have in common are the fact that they are temporal and of course have rhythms and emotional arcs... OK - I'm wrong music and film are perfectly suited to one another.

Which comes first, the interest in the topic or the people you interview?

The topic comes first and that can be suggested from outside or come from within but in any case I need to make it my own - if it is about music then comes the listening, then the internalizing and dreaming about a suitable treatment - will the subject dictate a verité treatment, a hybrid dramatic treatment, pure performance, abstraction, all of the above?

And at the same time one enters the deeper research and delving. It's that combination of the instinctual and intellectual. Then the enlisting of collaborators - the brilliant ones that are suited to the subjects at hand - the Thomas Wallners, David Mortins, David News, Jessica Daniels, Alexina Louies, Dan Redicans to dream with if it's all too lonely or dangerously insular.

As far as interviews go - I do like to do a bunch of them as the first step in shaping the film whether it is a music thing like "Ravel's Brain" or a hybrid piece like "Inside Hana's Suitcase" - these can really alter the shape and approach to the film.

You cover some dark subjects, such as Shostakovich under Stalin's regime, the memories of the Holocaust and the importance of discussing history, but always with an accessible touch. What's your tactic?

Darkness infuses many of these films - that's inevitable if you're covering real stories in the twentieth century - Hitlerian, Stalinesque, Mussolinian subjects. Even Spanish Catholicism at its darkest.... But my films aren't really about these subjects per se - they become the backdrop to other subjects, usually rather heroic subjects - musicians who resist the darkness, those who combat their ill-fate, those who have so much life force and creativity that they transcend their circumstances.

Even the Holocaust film "Inside Hana's Suitcase" is very much about hope, tolerance, compassion in the face of evil. Deep but not debilitating... I don't think people walk away from my films in a cloud of darkness. That, of course, is not always the case with many documentaries. I don't think it is my nature to brood.

You¹ve had a long-standing relationship with Toronto production company Rhombus Media, how has this developed?

Well, I became a partner in 1979 after I met my future partners at York University. We were all in our 20's and kind of foolish, more in love with the idea of making films about art than anything lucrative - and it was tough to do, although maybe tougher now... Actually Niv Fichman & Barbara Willis Sweete had formed a partnership out of school and needed another hand. They liked me in my interview when I spoke of my love of music (though I lied about my technical prowess - I still don't know how to use my cellphone). But I was on a work program that lasted 12 weeks - at the end of that period they ran out of money and offered me partnership instead. I took it. Our 31st anniversary is this week.

What subject are you still dying to tackle?

I tend not to burn for the things that I'm not doing... But I've had this Balinese/Canadian subject evolving for 14 years.. a dramatic film.... Great subject. Heartbreaking and beautiful. Admittedly it kind of obsesses me. It'll get made one day.

What are you listening to these days?

I'm listening to lots, but in terms of repeated listening it's two things - the scratch recording of the full-length original comic opera that I'll be directing later this year.... Don't ask. It's secret and delicious. A good friend called it my "career-ending film".

And I'm crazy about this 1972 bootleg recording of a Lou Reed live concert in New York recorded between his "Transformer" and "Berlin" albums - he's so ebullient for the usual deadpan Lou. It's very life-affirming. I found it last week in a record store in Augsburg, Germany, the birthplace of Bertolt Brecht - I love that I'm listening to Lou's song about Germany before he had ever been there that I bought in Brechtland. It feels full circle.