Mozart’s Sister – An Interview with director Madeleine Hetherton-Miau
Image: MOZART'S SISTER film still
For a good true life mystery, moviegoers should be intrigued by this story that has been hidden for hundreds of years.
Mozart’s Sister tells the forgotten story of Maria Anna Mozart, the sister of Wolfgang Mozart, who herself was a child prodigy. She was a gifted pianist while a child but was forced to retire at the age of 16 as her talent was not permitted to flourish in the 1800’s owing to her gender.
The role of women at the time was to be stay at home mothers and wives and to serve the men. It was stated that ‘women possessed no artistic sensibility or genius’ and performances by women were considered equal to prostitution, until attitudes changed in the late 18th century.
Could Maria have been just as brilliant as her brother had she had a chance? Did she assist her brother in his orchestrations?
“This documentary retraces the story of her life to see if we can find out what happened to her in terms of her musical ability and also whether she composed herself and if so what happened to her music,” explained screenwriter and director Madeleine Hetherton-Miau.
The research on this project was exhaustive and very time consuming. The main research process was to go back to the original sources as much as possible.
“Luckily the Mozarts themselves were energetic correspondents. There are hundreds of letters they wrote between them, so they were a fantastic original source,” enthused Hetherton-Miau. “Looking at these old letters was a wonderful experience because it’s as close as we can possibly get to these historical figures who have touched the world with their music.”
Searching for original autographed musical scores of the Mozart family from archives around the world and speaking to musicologists, authors, forensic document examiners and researchers who spent their lives in the Mozart story, also aided in this lengthy research process.
It’s not a widely known fact that Wolfgang Mozart had a sister, nor the story explored in this documentary. “I had no idea myself until I came across an article written about it,” confessed Hetherton-Miau. “Women at that time did not have public profiles, thoroughly discouraged and prevented, they weren’t seen as important, and nothing was written about them. So, I’m not surprised that few people know about Maria-Anna Mozart.”
Hetherton-Miau explained that this is a cautionary tale for today because if we don’t critically look at the things that prevent people from flourishing and creating, then we are literally losing incredible music, art, science etc.
Miau said the moment she discovered that her documentary would be screening at the Sydney Film Festival was super exciting as this is one of the greatest festivals around the world.
Mozart’s Sister has been nominated for the Best Australian Documentary Award. “If we won this award, it would be incredible but there is an amazing competitive group of films and they’re all deserving of the award. Just being nominated is an honour.”
June 5 – 16
Screens at the Sydney Film Festival
www.sff.org.au
