Allen Miller, an American documentary filmmaker, seems to take a special fancy of China these days, with the opening on Wednesday three of his films depicting western classical musicians experience in China and a planned lecture tour to Beijing Film Academy late this month.
Opening the screening of From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China, The Turandot Project, and Perlman in Shanghai, Miller said, "These films about western music in China go together in so many ways, forming a 25-year arc."
"The moving forces in each one -- Isaac Stern, Zubin Mehta and Itzhak Perlman -- were very close friends and collaborators who helped introduce young musicians not just to this wonderful music but to more powerful ways of expressing it," he said.
In a recent interview with Xinhua, Miller said he originally only had interest in all things that are Chinese, but things changed when he was given the task of making a documentary from 60 hours of films shot during virtuoso Isaac Stern China tour in 1979.
"I was amazed by what I called the otherness, or the unusual quality of Chinese life that Americans don't ever understand, even if you read about it," he said.
The result of that interest was an Oscar-winning documentary From Mao to Mozart, which constitutes a beautiful expression of two differing cultures brought together by the warmth and dedication of a great musician.
His interest did not stop there. When he learned that the world's leading conductor Zubin Mehta and well-known Chinese film director Zhang Yimou were planning to bring Turandot, an opera by Puccini with its background set in ancient China, to Beijing's Forbidden City, he seized this "opportunity of a lifetime."
Miller takes his camera behind the scenes to bear witness to this cultural undertaking on an epic scale. His documentary The Turandot Project, combines the pageantry of the opera with a cinematic portrait of the struggles and triumphs of the two outstanding artists.
A student of music, Miller entered the cinema more or less by chance. To support his family after marriage, he entered Public Broadcasting Service in New York as a producer of music programs in the 1970s.
Miller said he went to make films because he wanted films about music would be made by people who know music. Films made by those without music training may appeal to audience's vision with beautiful pictures, but they often missed a lot, the most important of all, the music.
"I'm mostly interested in trying to make pictures that somehow match what you are hearing without distracting," he said. But he does not think much of the simplistic approach that matches impressive, grand music with pictures of waves crushing onto the beach, or tender moment with scenes of sunshine through the tree leaves, because that "makes the music a total background."
He said he tried to make the music as much in the foreground as possible by finding out interesting things about how the music was put together, and also by making audience feel attached somehow to the musician.
Asked about his idea on cultural exchanges between China and the West, he said his films helped Americans learn more about China than Chinese audience about America, because these films are about Chinese people understanding Western music.
Miller said he has been tentatively invited by different people to shoot films in China, but he is more interested in doing joint projects. "I believe if we could make films together, the process would be very interesting and helpful for both sides," he said.
The filmmaker said he was looking forward to his tour to Beijing and expecting some interesting exchanges. He noted that Chinese and American documentary filmmakers differ in their use of narrators.
Some Chinese documentaries seem to rely more on narrators to tell the audience what is going on. In contrast, some American documentaries just try to let whatever is happening happen in front of the audience, he said.
However, he said he believed that while documentary filmmakers may differ in their approaches, a good documentary should have something in common. For instance, it should be natural, say something interesting and tell a story that is important, he added.
(Xinhua News Agency September 9, 2004)
