Our Documentaries
Gypsy Vengerka (in progress)
“Gypsy Vengerka” is a musical piece central to the tradition of Russian-Romani guitar performance. The film closely follows the lives of several Russian-Romani (“Gypsy”) musicians over two decades. It also includes interviews with Romani activists and some non-Romani specialists who discuss Romani identity, discrimination, and human rights.
Sorabji In Iowa
A short documentary about the British organist Kevin Bowyer and his lifelong obsession with the most difficult organ music ever composed: Kaikhosru Sorabji’s 8-hour-long (!) Second Symphony for Organ Solo.
The Cantor of Swabia
Influential theologian and church musician Richard Gölz (1887-1975) re-introduced music into the pulpit-centered German Protestant Church. His famous Chorgesangbuch (1934) is a pioneering scholarly edition of 16th-century music, that reached every protestant church choir in Southern Germany and beyond. He sheltered Jews during the Nazi years and for this, he is remembered in Yad Vashem.
“Mrii pro mynule”: Early Music in Ukraine
Russian-American lutenist and early music expert Oleg Timofeyev comes to Ukraine to teach early music performance for a year. He soon finds out that ‘early music’ means something entirely different there than in the West: the rediscovery of the Ukrainian epic tradition, folk songs, vocal liturgy and unique instruments that are not played anywhere else.
Take Off One Ear!
An experimental non-fiction music documentary shot during the recording sessions of SARMATICA’s album THE LVIV LUTE. The music is a crossover between 16th century lute music and Ukrainian folk styles.
Frautschi
FRAUTSCHI is an intimate portrait of one of the most influential (and least known) guitar pedagogues in Russia: Kamill Frautschi (1921-1997). The Frautschis were Swiss émigrés in Russia who fell victims to Stalinist purges in 1937.