An honest and funny film about the phenomenon of Russian musical schools by the French director Marie Ange Gorbanevsky.
During 2014, Marie Ange Gorbanevsky filmed the teachers and pupils of the Special Musical School and the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in St Petersburg. Her attentive inquiry grew into A Music Lesson—an amazing journey into the world of a Russian musical school, offering insight into the unique spirit and culture, saturating its classrooms.
The documentary is filled with genuine sincerity and warmth towards its characters, no matter what age and how musically skilled they are. The pupils and their tutors look equally relaxed and spontaneous on camera, turning this accurate investigation into a comedy of characters of sorts, where anyone involved in a musical school in Russia would easily recognize their own story. In this light and engaging film Gorbanevsky makes visible the otherwise hidden process of learning to understand music, the most elusive and subtle of the arts.
A Music Lesson
Director Marie Ange Gorbanevsky. France, 2014.
67 minutes.