Best movies like Seiji Ozawa — Back to Japan

Never Give Up: The 20th Century Odyssey of Herbert Zipper is a 1995 short documentary film about Herbert Zipper. It was written, directed, and produced by Terry Sanders, with Freida Lee Mock co-producing. The extraordinary story of Vienna born musician and conductor Herbert Zipper who survived Dachau, Buchenwald, and a Japanese concentration camp to become one of the great music educators of the world, continuing at 92 to bring music to the inner city schools of America. In Dachau, Zipper organized secret concerts using makeshift instruments. He learned the lesson that music and the arts are essential to the very existence of life. For the last half of the 20th century, Zipper has pioneered in bringing professional orchestras into America's inner city schools. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short at the 68th Academy Awards in 1996.

A band-leader has arranged seven chairs for the members of his band. When he sits down in the first chair, a cymbal player appears in the same chair, then rises and sits in the next chair. As the cymbal player sits down, a drummer appears in the second chair, and then likewise moves on to the third chair. In this way, an entire band is soon formed, and is then ready to perform.

1974 documentary about symphony conductor Antonia Brico, including her struggle against gender bias in her profession.

Bugs conducts the Warner Brothers Symphony in Franz von Suppé's "Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna" while reacting to a bothersome fly.

A biography of artist Frida Kahlo, who channeled the pain of a crippling injury and her tempestuous marriage into her work.

A portrait of Leonard Bernstein's singular charisma and passion for music as he rose to fame as America's first native born, world-renowned conductor, all along following his ambition to compose both symphonic and popular Broadway works.

After he is rejected by the Great Poochini as an opening act, Mysto the Magician gets his revenge by conducting his next operatic performance.

Famed composer Gustav Mahler reflects on the tragedies of his life and failing marriage while traveling by train.

An account of the life and work of legendary Japanese actor Toshirō Mifune (1920-97), the most prominent actor of the Golden Age of Japanese cinema.

Opera singer Prudence Budell, overhears truck driver Johnny Donnetti singing opera, and persuades her opera company to give him a chance in her new opera. They fall in love, but on meeting his colleague Mary while visiting Johnny's work, Prudence becomes convinced Johnny is in love with her.

Emma, a lesbian conductor, is confronted with a toxic relationship with her father.

Composer Robert Schumann struggles to compose his symphonies while his loving wife Clara offers her support. Also helping the Schumanns is their lifelong friend, composer Johannes Brahms.

A cowboy protects a girl from those who murdered her father for his gold mine.

A lonely 10-year-old boy living with his parents in a remote coastal part of Alaksa, spontaneously finds a legendary golden seal and her newborn pup. But the greed for her valuable pelt sets off the hunters, including his own father, the local natives, and an ambitious poacher in pursuit the seal. The golden seal and her cub are hunted for a huge bounty on her head and the mythological legend

The portrait of Russian composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky focuses on his failed love affair.

In December of 1944, Lionel Evans, an internationally renowned American conductor, is on a USO tour with his 70-piece symphony orchestra in newly-liberated Belgium. While fleeing from a German counterattack, Evans and his orchestra members are captured by a Panzer division and taken to an old chateau in Luxembourg. Despite orders to execute every prisoner, General Schiller, an avid music lover, commands Evans to give a private concert for him.

A beautiful young concert pianist is torn between her attraction to her arrogant but brilliant maestro and her love for a farm boy she left back home.

In Kansas during the middle of the Civil War, John Golden is left for dead and his family has been killed by the ruthless Confederate outlaw William Quantrill. Rescued by runaway slave Joshua Brown, Golden is determined to get revenge. With the help of a legendary gunfighter and a special gun, Golden must not only deal with Quantrill and his men, but has to dodge General Custer and his army, as well.

After the Second World War, budding film composer Jerry Herst moves to Hollywood to study with infamous master teacher Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

Kim Novak never dreamed on being a star, but she became one. Most famous for her enigmatic performance in Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), the Chicago-born actress never quite fitted into the Hollywood mould and wanted to do things her own way.

The portrait of the last cowboy Hollywood legend dives into the 65 years of an extraordinary career in Hollywood, highlighted iconic films like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, as well as Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River and Gran Torino all the way to Cry Macho in 2021. It is no small task to cover more than 60 years of cinema history, especially when it is trying to surveyed with such breadth and diversity: TV star, international star, controversial icon, contested director, filmmaker with a capital F, Eastwood has been through it all, experienced it all, and it is first of all this romantic trajectory, this true American pastoral that the documentary wants to tell with all the passion it possibly can.

A biopic of seminal 20th century artist Leonard Foujita, a contemporary of Picasso and Modigliani, who was famous for mixing up European and Japanese styles.

Over a 50-year career and more than a hundred movies, filmmaker John Ford (1894-1973) forged the legend of the Far West. By giving a face to the underprivileged, from humble cowboys to persecuted minorities, he revealed like no one else the great social divisions that existed and still exist in the United States. More than four decades after his death, what remains of his legacy and humanistic values in the memory of those who love his work?

Life on Air: David Attenborough's 50 Years in Television is a BBC documentary film that recounts David Attenborough's television career. It is presented by Michael Palin and produced by Brian Leith. The BBC first transmitted the documentary in 2002 and is part of the Attenborough in Paradise and Other Personal Voyages collection of 7 documentaries. It includes interviews with Attenborough and several of his former colleagues, along with archival footage.

Giant of cinema, the embodiment of creation, Orson Welles is the man who reinvents the film language at 24-years old. Who is hidding behind this impressive figure? This movie is a journey towards the man behind the legend. It drags us into the labyrinth with multiple mirrors that Welles erases and recreates at the mercy of his imagination.

French artist Maurice Chevalier (1888-1972), a legend of stage and screen, was an accomplished singer, actor and entertainer, who embodied the charm of his native Paris throughout a decades-long career that brought him fame in Europe and America and left for show business history a vast repertoire of masterful classic songs and captivating film performances.

The Dunars are conductors from father to son. François' long and brilliant international career come to an end, whereas Denis has just won an umpteenth classical music award. When François is chosen to be the head of the Scala, his ultimate dream, he can't believe it. Happy at first for his father, Denis quickly become disillusioned when he discovers that he was, in fact, chosen to go to Milan.

Actress Sally Field looks at the dramatic life and successful career of the superb actress Barbara Stanwyck (1907-90), a Hollywood legend.

Sheku Kanneh-Mason made history in 2016 when he became the first black winner of the BBC Young Musician competition. Sheku has six musically gifted siblings and this film explores their extraordinary talents and issues of diversity in classical music. We follow Sheku and his brothers and sisters and examine the sacrifices that parents Stuart and Kadie make in order to support their children in pursuing their musical dreams. Told through the prism of family life we get an understanding of what it is that drives this family to be the best musicians they can be. At the heart of the story is 17-year-old Sheku, and we see him coming to terms with his Young Musician win and the pressures and opportunities it brings. His life is changing dramatically as he now has to learn to deal with the challenges of becoming a world-renowned cellist.

This film tells the story of one of the greatest and most controversial conductors of the 20th Century. The Hungarian-born Georg Solti had huge drive, energy and ambition. A combination of willpower and extraordinary talent took him to the peak of musical power and prestige. This film includes remarkably candid interviews which Solti talked with great honesty about his life, challenges and achievements. It also includes new interviews with some of the artists and musicians who worked closely with him.

Academician and piano expert David Dubal narrates this absorbing documentary chronicling the instrument's history and featuring some of the 20th century's finest pianists via archival film clips. Among the keyboard virtuosos are Vladimir Horowitz, Claudio Arrau, Van Cliburn and Glenn Gould. Extras include Arrau's 1983 performance of Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Concerto no. 4, accompanied by the Philadelphia Orchestra under maestro Riccardo Muti.

The influential German-born conductor Bruno Walter is captured in this 1958 telecast as he rehearses the first and last movements of Brahms's Symphony no. 2 -- at the age of 81, shortly after he had suffered a heart attack.

Henry Kesdi is a silenced classical composer and a survivor of the Holocaust. He is coaxed out from retirement by an inspired musicologist, Stefan, who convinces him to compose a complex symphony on his neglected piano. As a help Kesdi gets his new musical secretary. His loyal wife reluctantly accepts her as his young lover.

The late 1950s were known as golden years in the world of motor racing, champions were made and lost on a Sunday, and no losses were greater than those of Enzo Ferrari’s Scuderia. Based on Chris Nixon’s bestselling biography Mon Ami Mate, Ferrari: Race to Immortality tells the story of the loves and losses, triumphs and tragedy of a turbulent era that shook the motor racing world.

To some of the greatest performing magicians alive today, Jerry Andrus is the name of a legend. Renowned as one of the best and most influential "close-up magic" performers of our time, Jerry is equally regarded among scientists, educators and skeptics as a visionary, poet, philosopher, inventor and creator of truly astounding optical illusions. Andrus; The Man, the Mind & the Magic is the story of a modern day Da Vinci told by the man himself, along with extensive interviews from some of the notable thinkers, artists and magicians in the world today.