Filmmaker Larry Weinstein to Join Faculty at The Glenn Gould School

“We’re extremely fortunate to have Larry joining our team, and I know our students will be excited to expand their arts studies under his guidance,” said Barry Shiffman, Associate Dean of The Royal Conservatory’s Glenn Gould School. “Music and filmmaking go hand-in-hand, and there is no better person in Canada to impart his extensive experience on the power of cinema to tell important stories.” 

Mr. Weinstein consistently pushes the boundaries of conventional documentary storytelling and has made more than 30 award-winning films, many of which centre on music and the creative process – he is best known for such classical-music projects as Ravel's Brain, Beethoven's Hair and Mozartballs. His directorial debut came in 1984's Making Overtures: The Story of a Community Orchestra, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short and won the first-ever Best Documentary Gemini Award in Canada. 

Mr. Weinstein has also been engaged by the GGS to direct a new film on composer Jörg Widmann's composition “The Hunting Quartet”, in collaboration with Riddle Films, featuring the Rolston Quartet and shot on location at Koerner Hall. 

The Film Studies course, which will be co-instructed by Dr. Hieu Thong Ly, a film studies lecturer from Université de Montréal, is a new addition to the curriculum at GGS, and will prepare students to read, analyze, and write about cinema. Students are taught to consider a film within its historical and geographic context, and are introduced to the formal study of genre, narrative, celebrity, industry, and film technique. The course will touch upon the cinema of the decolonized worlds of Asia and Africa, the marginalized voices of women, radicalized groups, LGBTQ, and will explore the realities of Canadian Indigenous cinema and Maori cinematic production in New Zealand.