Documentary

Survival Artists

A Portrait of the Underdogs

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Program notes

A documentary from Holger Preuße and Claus Wischmann on the less glamorous side of classical music: the musicians who cannot live from their art.

They lead a kind of double life. They have a day job, but their passion is making music. They perform in prestigious concert halls at night and clean toilets the morning after. They spend one evening tickling the ivories in a jazz club and the next taking out the trash in an office building. If you ask them, "do you make enough money as a musician to live from your art?", they respond "Some do, some don't." In this documentary, we explore the lives of those who "don't." Professional musicians dedicated body and soul to music, who have passion and talent, but must have a day job to make ends meet. Whether to get them to the end of the month, or to assure themselves with a certain quality of life, they take on another profession as garbageman, mechanic, doctor...

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