Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould | |
 DVD cover |
|
| Directed by | François Girard |
|---|---|
| Produced by | Michael Allder Niv Fichman Barbara Willis Sweete Larry Weinstein |
| Written by | François Girard (screenplay) & Don McKellar (screenplay) Glenn Gould (additional material) |
| Starring | Colm Feore Derek Keurvorst Katya Ladan |
| Release date(s) | September 14, 1993 (Toronto Film Festival) 26 November 1993 (USA) |
| Running time | 98 min. |
| Language | English/French |
Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould is an award-winning 1993 film about the piano prodigy Glenn Gould played by Colm Feore. The film's screenplay was witten by François Girard (who also directed) and Don McKellar.
The film does not present a single narrative, rather a series of thirty-two short films. These include documentaries (five interviews with people who knew him), re-creations of scenes from Gould's life, and various odd items (such as "Gould Meets McLaren", in which animated spheres reminiscent of those in Norman McLaren's animations move to Gould's music). The segments range in length from six to less than one minute. The form is inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations, which was Gould's first acclaimed recording.
According to Girard: "As Gould was such a complex character, the biggest problem was to find a way to look at his work and deal with his visions. The film is built of fragments, each one trying to capture an aspect of Gould. There is no way of putting Gould in one box. The film gives the viewer 32 impressions of him. I didn't want to reduce him to one dimension."[citation needed]
The soundtrack consists almost entirely of piano recordings by Gould. It includes pieces famously linked with him, such as Bach's Goldberg Variations, and the Well-Tempered Clavier, as well as others which are less so.
The film won four Genie Awards and Best Canadian Feature Film at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The structure and style of the The Simpsons episode "22 Short Films About Springfield" (first aired April 16, 1996), is inspired by this film. It was also used in an Animaniacs short entitled "Ten Short Films About Wakko Warner".
[edit] External links
|
|||||
