You’re never given the sense that you’re watching a competition in “Pianoforte,” though as you are seeing the International Chopin Piano Competition unfold, the teenagers who descend on Warsaw to battle it out appear as if they’re primarily contending against themselves rather than one another, fussing over the smallest imperfections in a rendition that would sound flawless to the untrained ear. The 21-day affair in Poland has been held every five years, making it like the Olympics for young pianists, all generally quite accomplished already yet drawn to the prestigious event as a rite of passage and after Jakub Piatek had done some freelance work earlier in his career for the Chopin Institute, which organizes the competition, he ended up with almost as much time to prepare as the pianists do over the course of five years to find the best approach.
The result is a film that draws you in as intimately a live Chopin concerto would, reflecting the camaraderie of musicians who wouldn’t be where there are without a similar level of dedication, yet have all gone about their practice in different ways. “Pianoforte” ends up chronicling a collision of cultures, not only the Chopin competition brings aspirants from around the world, but in temperament as well, though Piątek allows that there is a universal language between them in music and honors their shared ability to be completely engaged in the present moment by rarely looking back on their past, saving home movies of their matriculation for the end credits. Even if that weren’t worth staying for alone, the film gives a front row seat to a competition that’s typically only viewed at a distance and as “Pianoforte” makes its way into theaters across the U.S. following its premiere at Sundance earlier this year, Piątek explained all that went into getting as close as possible to see the pianists grow up right in front of his eyes and bringing audiences into the experience with savvy sound design and intricate, fluid editing that gives a sense of full-on immersion.
How did you become interested in this?
I’m not a musician myself. I don’t play instruments and once I was picked up to the school choir, but just because of my height not because of my voice. [laughs] I was just told to to lip-sync and be in the background. Therefore the very first time I was in a Philharmonic Hall, it was because the tickets were discounted for students and [it felt like] entering the sacred area. And as a filmmaker, I was hired to make some teasers for concerts and videos of recording sessions and because of that, I was close to the musicians. There was this one moment in 2016 or 2017 when [the Argentine pianist] Martha Argerich came to Warsaw and there was a rehearsal with the Polish National Orchestra, and there was a special vibe really waiting for a great artist that you could feel in the air. I remember when she entered the stage, I was just like, “What brought her here and what effort is behind it?”
The Chopin Piano Competition is every five years [and when it happens] it’s all around you [in Poland]. You talk about Chopin in a taxi or on a tram in the metro system. It’s all over television and radio and you talk about it with your friends. And the last film that was produced [about it] was from 1971, so I thought that maybe after 50 years, it would be good to revisit it. What I found compelling was [to tell] a coming-of-age story, so we’ve got like this great mechanism of the competition with four stages. Every stage, half of the participants go home and within that structure, I thought that maybe I could find protagonists that would resonate with the feelings that I felt being their age or I still feel in a way. In 2016, I started to softly lobby the Chopin Institute, the main organizer to make the film and they granted me this exclusive access to it, [which entailed] all their trust because even during the process, they didn’t know who we are following. They only found out watching the rough cut version of the film, so we were trusted enough to have this front seat to witness the whole process.
The structure is unlike any I’ve ever seen in a film like this because it very much is in the present tense. You don’t double back to individually profile the competitors. You really see them in the moment. Was that something you knew you wanted to do from the outset?
Initially, I knew because of math, we had chosen our protagonists before the competition happens before October 2021 when they came to Warsaw to compete, so we would probably tell the story of the non-winners and what I didn’t like watching the archives — and the Chopin competition started in 1927, so there’s like almost 100 years of history behind it — was there was always this safari-like vibe. It’s long lenses and [the competitors are presented as] magical creatures, waiting for the winner. I just thought that all of [the pianists] are really interesting, so we wanted to focus on the human part of it and that it was going to be a mosaic. For example, we talked to 40 or 50 of them before the competition to get to know know them and choose [who to follow] and I remember talking with one of the participants and [saying], “I don’t know maybe if it’s going to be a film just about me, I’m not [interested].” But we knew that it was going to be about a couple of protagonists from the very beginning and we also knew that music could transport us from one to another because they are preparing like over three hours of music for the whole competition, but at some points they [probably] were going to perform the same pieces, so [we thought] with that kind of music we can cut it together and transport [the film] from one to another or even back in time before the competition happened.
Were you thinking about sound a lot before this? Besides the music, you’ve got a lot of great sound design moments.
From the very beginning, it was crucial for us and our sound designer Michal Fojcik is rooted in really strongly in the film post-production and Joanna Popowicz is more into recorded [music], [having worked on] over 100 albums for a classical music and jazz music, so [it’s a] meeting [of the minds]. It was also really important to be honest to the music [in recording it] because these [pianists] are preparing for this event for a couple of years — or even their whole lives, so we also knew that we’re going to have this guerrilla-like music recording [situation] from [small] practice rooms where there is one grand piano inside [mostly crowding everything else out] so we have this powerful sound and being there, it’s not that nice being so close to the piano. So we just started with this really old set-up of several microphones and then we wanted to progress to towards the end when during the final, the music is being recorded with more than 60 microphones inside the concert hall.
During the post-production, we also chose to do the Atmos sound, which is not that popular for a documentary. Normally, you use it for blockbuster films with tie fighters flying around, but then we got our freedom in terms of mixing the music. And if you think about the concerto sequence, we didn’t want to put just one piece of music — one performance of the music — and then just to try to match it with video. We edited the music also so whenever you see someone, you also hear their performance and that was like our tribute to those artists as well. Then what I like to do with Michal was to to treat sound even in a documentary film as a tool to get inside someone’s emotions, so for example all those scenes with Eva, [there’s] this really subjective storytelling with sound, changing the sound and trying to imagine what they can hear, for example, standing on the stage. What’s their perspective there? So playing with that was a crucial part of working with the sound.
You really feel it’s swirling all around you. Was there anything that happened that may have changed your ideas of what this could be?
First of all, making this film was kind of like a bet against the competition because we chose our protagonists before so it could easily end up really bad for us, discovering that all our protagonists are going back home after stage one — my hair turned a little bit grey at that point. But just using intuition and this non-musical way of thinking about the filmmaking, we’ve been lucky enough to have more and more of them in a final stage and what I really like about the process, because we were really gentle with our protagonists and their performance was also the top priority for us as for crew [and staying out of their way], was the way they trusted us because we started the process before [the competition] and they forgot about our presence in a room, so we could get close with our cameras [as it went on]. For example the scene with the teacher and a conductor, that was special for me because it was really being almost invisible. The competition was in a couple of days and it’s so intense for them and as a crew and because we spend so much time with them before that, there were these small discoveries.
It’s got to be pretty cool afterwards, given how long it takes to finish a film and the age you capture your subjects at, to be attending screenings with them this past year.
Yeah, it’s an incredible privilege to have this kind of access and trust from our protagonists and also the trust from the organizers from Chopin Institute that they made this film possible in the first place. Being on the road with almost all of our protagonists — Hao [Rao] and Vivian [Li] were present during the premiere at Sundance, and in an hour, I’m meeting Leonora Armelini who’s going to join me here in in New York — that’s incredible and it’s also funny because it’s maybe the last moment that you can do this. After the final stage, I remember I was looking for Alex Gadjiev in the concert hall after the final announcement and I found him with organizers [and professional pianists] Bruce Liu and Kyohei Sorita and as I entered the room, their calendars were filling up for two years ahead so after this kind of a competition, you’re entering adulthood in a way. There’s agents and publicists involved, so maybe this honest portrait of young musicians would not be possible and I really like that I had an opportunity to be with them at this very important moment of their lives.
“Pianoforte” opens on December 15th in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Royal and in Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center. A full list of theaters and dates is here.
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