In Search of Cézanne & Bowing Out

Part of The Walter Scheuer Film Festival: A Celebration

In Search of Cézanne

2002. Produced and Directed by Allan Miller. 48 min. Color.

Special Guest: Allan Miller

In Search of Cézanne is an exploration of the French painter Paul Cézanne, as seen through the eyes of a young documentary filmmaker who is just discovering his work. Traveling from New York to Paris and Cézanne's hometown in the South of France, meeting scholars and family of Cézanne at each stop, her journey is a satisfying inquiry into artistic expression and its appreciation.

Screened with

Bowing Out: Robert Mann's Last Three Days with the Juilliard String Quartet

1997. Produced and Directed by Allan Miller. 35 min. Color.

After 51 years the founder and first violinist of the Juilliard String Quartet, Robert Mann, prepares to perform his last show with the highly respected ensemble. Robert Mann and the Juilliard String Quartet played over 5000 concerts in America and abroad, dazzling audiences with their adventurous approach to new music and the old masters alike. The Los Angeles Times called the Julliard "the standard by which all others are judged."

The quartet, composed of Joel Smirnoff on violin, Samuel Rhodes on viola, and Joel Krosnick on cello, spends two days rehearsing Beethoven Quartets Opus 132 and 130 in a living room of the old Koussevitzky Estate at Tanglewood, Massachusetts.

The four men are clearly moved by the fact that this will be their last rehearsal together, but they manage to remain lighthearted as they joke about Mann's continuing insistence on changes, right up to the last sound check on stage.

The final concert, in Ozawa Hall, is met with a tremendous ovation. As an encore, Robert Mann and the quartet play the poignant slow movement from Beethoven's Opus 135. The film ends backstage with the four men in a farewell embrace.