Seymour: An Introduction

[projekktor id=’18100′]

Seymour: An Introduction is a biographical documentary directed by Ethan Hawke (Boyhood, The Purge). The film focuses on the life of pianist Seymour Bernstein, who traded in a career as a concert performer for a simpler life as a composer and educator. The film placed third in People’s Choice Documentary voting at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Seymour Bernstein started playing the piano as a little boy, and by the time he turned fifteen, he was teaching it to others. He enjoyed a long and illustrious career as a performer before he gave it up to devote himself to helping others develop their own gifts. While Ethan Hawke’s gentle, meditative study is a warm and lucid portrait of Bernstein and his exceptional life and work, it’s also a love letter to the study of music itself, and a film about the patience, concentration, and devotion that are fundamental to the practice of art. SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION allows us to spend time with a generous human being who has found balance and harmony through his love of music.

“I never set out to make a documentary,” Hawke says. “I met Seymour Bernstein at a dinner party and found myself completely hypnotized. The party’s host, a longtime student of Seymour’s, shared the same feeling and began a campaign to convince me to document a few of his piano teachings. I attended one of his teachings, and a few years later find myself with this film.”

Seymour: An Introduction is rated G.