Coming to NYC’s Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center and LA’s Laemmle Royal today, Friday, November 4: PIANOMANIA
Lilian Franck and Robert Cibis’s doc, focused on the efforts of a piano tuner to match players with the perfect piano, has screened at major festivals since its premiere in 2009, including Locarno, IDFA, Sheffield, and San Francisco. It was nominated for Best Documentary in the European Film Awards, and won Best Sound at the German Film Awards.
Vienna-based Stefan Knüpfer is one of Steinway & Sons’ expert piano tuners. As the film’s subtitle suggests, he’s “in search of a perfect sound,” and the film chronicles this obsessive task with humor and tension as the beleaguered man tries to find the ideal blend between master pianist, instrument, and concert hall. While he is shown working with a number of players, the film is largely structured around his efforts to find the best concert grand piano for Pierre-Laurent Aimard to record Bach’s The Art of the Fugue. The latter is demanding and knows exactly what he wants, and it’s up to Knüpfer to figure out how to give it to him in his own self-effacing but fastidious way – and within the deadline. The result is a fascinating look at the little-seen behind-the-scenes world of sounds.
what (not) to doc 