To Think Like A Composer

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60 minutes / Documentary / English / 2006 Co-produced by Rink Rat Productions and Cine Metu Words and Music by Stephen Hatfield. Written and Directed by Michael Ostroff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“To Think Like A Composer” is a joyful exuberant introduction to the world of Canadian composer, conductor, educator and renaissance man, Stephen Hatfield. A documentary that reveals the creative collaborative excitement and tension as Hatfield and Susan Knight and Shalloway Youth Chorus of St. John’s produce an opera performed by youth for adults. An opera based on the novel “Anne and Seamus” by Kevin Major. 

 

There are no patronizing platitudes in Hatfield’s work. The opera deals with sadness, heartbreak, and the joy of existence – the Newfoundland ethos – as interpreted in a story of shipwreck, survival and love on the Isle Aux Morts off the southwest coats of Newfoundland in 1828.

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(Currently In Development) On the eve of the biggest dirt bike competition of the year, alpha underdog, working class hero and utterly "unique human" Donnie Dumphy cashes his welfare cheque, tours the sketchiest regions of town, loses the love of his life, gets a shit-knocking, puts his "all" into an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet, steals hallucinogenic mushrooms from some teens, brings the house down at the hottest club with his raps and sleeps with his social worker. What else do you wanna know? Oh yeah, he so really wins that dirt bike competition despite what the judges say. Everybody knows dat..

    

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