X
- 2012
- Not Rated
- First Run Features
- 1 h 10 m
- 2012
- Not Rated
- First Run Features
- 1 h 10 m
Summary Renown Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein takes on the contentious role of Production Designer for a never before seen opera about the Holocaust in Tel Aviv, Israel in 2010.
Directed By: Lisa Kirk Colburn
- 2012
- Not Rated
- First Run Features
- 1 h 10 m
- 2012
- Not Rated
- First Run Features
- 1 h 10 m
Gottfried Helnwein and the Dreaming Child
35
User Score
Available after 4 ratings
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Where to Watch
Summary Renown Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein takes on the contentious role of Production Designer for a never before seen opera about the Holocaust in Tel Aviv, Israel in 2010.
Directed By: Lisa Kirk Colburn
Where to Watch
Metascore
Generally Unfavorable
Based on 7 Critic Reviews
35
0% Positive
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
86% Mixed
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
14% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Metascore
Generally Unfavorable
Based on 7 Critic Reviews
35
0% Positive
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
86% Mixed
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
14% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Colburn's focus is so single-mindedly laudatory that the whole collaborative process is reduced to people either helping or hindering the visiting genius.
Much of the documentary plays like a moderately well produced but tediously uncritical making-of feature that could easily have been included on the opera's DVD release.
The film never achieves any real depth in its unabashedly admiring portrait. What might have made a mildly interesting short feels vastly attenuated even with its brief 72-minute running time.
The backstage commentary circles around the bailiwick of a production designer and frustrations over Mr. Helnwein's literal interpretations. But they are rarely juicy or pursued in depth, and platitudes abound (with the exception of a matter-of-fact lighting designer named Bambi).
While the opera nonetheless soars with its acrobatic choreography of refugee displacement, this documentary about it suffers some dramatic slackness from the inevitable drawing board tedium of performance preparation.
Helnwein's elaborate vision bumps up against practical concerns and meets with resistance - a conflict that this superficial portrait glosses over almost as much as it reduces Helnwein to simply being a determined, intransigent creative type.
This infomercial for Helnwein's work as designer for an Israeli opera called "The Child Dreams" doesn't tell us a lot about how opera comes together, but it is accidentally revealing about its subject.
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Production Company
Red Fire Films LLC
Release Date Nov 23, 2012
Duration 1 h 10 m
Rating Not Rated
Genres
Website
http://helnweinmovie.com/
