Lecture 21 is a 2008 British

Cinema of the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom has had a major influence on modern cinema. The first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park, London in 1889 by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented the process in 1890. It is generally regarded that the British film industry...

-Italian

Cinema of Italy

The history of Italian cinema began just a few months after the Lumière brothers had patented their Cinematographe, when Pope Leo XIII was filmed for a few seconds in the act of blessing the camera.-Early years:...

 film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 written and directed by Alessandro Baricco

Alessandro Baricco

Alessandro Baricco is a popular Italian writer, director and performer. His novels have been translated into a wide number of languages...

 and starring John Hurt

John Hurt

John Vincent Hurt, CBE is an English actor, known for his leading roles as John Merrick in The Elephant Man, Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mr. Braddock in The Hit, Stephen Ward in Scandal, Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant and An Englishman in New York...

, Noah Taylor

Noah Taylor

Noah George Taylor is an English-born Australian actor.-Early life:Taylor, elder of two boys, was born in London, England, the son of Maggie, a journalist and book editor, and Paul Taylor, a copywriter and journalist. Taylor's Australian parents returned to Australia when he was five, and he grew...

 and Leonor Watling

Leonor Watling

Leonor Elizabeth Ceballos Watling is an award-winning Spanish film actress and singer.-Early life:Watling was born in Madrid, Spain to a Spanish father and a British mother, and has three siblings, with whom she speaks English. Her father died when she was a teenager.When she was a child, she...

. The film is in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

.

The film is set in 1824, 1997 and 2007 and tells the tale of a Professor (John Hurt

John Hurt

John Vincent Hurt, CBE is an English actor, known for his leading roles as John Merrick in The Elephant Man, Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mr. Braddock in The Hit, Stephen Ward in Scandal, Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant and An Englishman in New York...

) delivering a lecture about a musician (Noah Taylor

Noah Taylor

Noah George Taylor is an English-born Australian actor.-Early life:Taylor, elder of two boys, was born in London, England, the son of Maggie, a journalist and book editor, and Paul Taylor, a copywriter and journalist. Taylor's Australian parents returned to Australia when he was five, and he grew...

) coming to a remote village in the mountains to better understand Beethoven's 9th symphony before he dies. The film is presented as a documentary

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

, as Leonor Watling

Leonor Watling

Leonor Elizabeth Ceballos Watling is an award-winning Spanish film actress and singer.-Early life:Watling was born in Madrid, Spain to a Spanish father and a British mother, and has three siblings, with whom she speaks English. Her father died when she was a teenager.When she was a child, she...

 and her friends recall the lesson, the audience views what happens as though it were real. The lesson is interspersed with documentary-style interviews of a variety of musicians, who provide a secondary narration

Narrative

A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...

.

It also features Clive Russell

Clive Russell

Clive Russell is a British actor.Clive was born in Reeth, England and brought up in Fife, Scotland.He is a familiar face on British television and has appeared in numerous television series including Boys From the Black Stuff ,Hope And Glory, Neverwhere, Great Expectations, The Mists of Avalon,...

, Matthew T. Reynolds, Daniel Tuite, Andy Gathergood, Rasmus Hardiker

Rasmus Hardiker

Rasmus Kip Hardiker is an English actor from Sutton Coldfield. He is best known for his roles as Raymond in Steve Coogan's sitcom Saxondale and Ben in the Jack Dee comedy Lead Balloon. Hardiker was also in the BBC3 sketch series The Wrong Door.-Personal life:Hardiker was born in Sutton Coldfield,...

, Grant Gillespie

Grant Gillespie

Grant Gillespie is a Scottish professional footballer who plays for Hamilton Academical, as a defender.-Career:Gillespie made his senior debut for Hamilton Academical on 15 August 2009, in a Scottish Premier League match against Kilmarnock. In May 2011, he signed a new two-year contract with...

, Michael Jibson

Michael Jibson

Michael Jibson is an English actor born in 1980, Hull, East Yorkshire, England. He is married to the stage actress Caroline Sheen. His father, Tim Jibson, was the programme director of KCFM in Hull. His brother is the actor Paul Jibson...

 and Natalia Tena

Natalia Tena

Natalia Gastiain Tena is a British actress and musician. She sings and plays the accordion in the band Molotov Jukebox. In her acting career, Tena is best known for playing Nymphadora Tonks in the Harry Potter film series, and Ellie in the movie About a Boy.-Life and career:Tena was born in...

.

It had its North American premiere at the Miami International Film Festival

Miami International Film Festival

The Miami International Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Miami, Florida in the late winter. The film festival is sponsored by the Miami Film Society, which has been around since 1983....

in 2009.