Direction
Christopher Nupen
Production
An ALLEGROTM Film

United Kingdom, 1975, 62′, English

We were lucky to be there during its great years, in the right place at the right time and able to make a kind of film that had never been made before. And why had they never been made before? Because the cameras required to make such films had not previously existed. The new cameras were lightweight and they were silent and that made all the difference. We were able to show things that the public had never seen before, among them a film called Pinchas Zukerman: Here to Make Music which did some- thing that had not been done before. We started filming Pinchas Zukerman when he was 19 years old. We should have started when he was nine years old because that is when Pablo Casals and Isaac Stern made their famous statements about him but I did not meet him or know about him until he was 19. When I did meet him I was so impressed by his playing that it gave me the idea of making the first film in the history of the world to follow the develop- ment of a great musical talent from adolescence to early maturity.
Why do that? Because film remembers our artists in a way that nothing else can do. In the end we spent six years making Pinchas Zukerman: Here to Make Music and when it was finished it was the only arts film nominated for the International Emmy Award in 1976. We arrived at the title by a process that makes us laugh today but was very dangerous and very worrying at the time. You will discover for yourselves just exactly what happened towards the end of the film, a big drama that could have bankrupted Allegro Films forever.