United States • d: Matthew Heineman • 1h 40m 

For Passholders only!

2022 was shaping up to be a magical year for Jon Batiste: he had just won an Oscar for his Soul soundtrack; had a fantastic nightly gig as the bandleader for Late Night with Stephen Colbert; and his song “Freedom,” from his We Are record, was topping the charts. And Batiste was embarking upon his most ambitious work, an assemblage of regional sounds and deep historical themes scheduled to premiere at Carnegie Hall. But then, he received crushing news: his partner, the writer Suleika Jaouad, had a relapse of her leukemia. The filmmaker Matthew Heineman—known for covering the world’s most intense situations in Cartel Land, Retrograde, and The First Wave—kept his camera rolling as Batiste’s painfully eventful year unfolded. His American Symphony is a startlingly intimate account, showing us how Batiste responded to his family’s crisis with love, creativity and supernatural stamina. It’s one of cinema’s most soulful, honest portraits of an artist at work. 

About the Telluride Film Festival

The Telluride Film Festival has been, for the last 49 years, a celebration of the art of film: honoring the great masters of the cinema, discovering the rare and unknown, bringing new works by the world’s greatest directors and the latest in American independent film to a small mountain town in Colorado. The New York Times called Telluride “the smallest, most original, and most stimulating of the major festivals,” while Entertainment Tonight simply said it was “the world’s best festival.”

About Telluride By The Sea

The Music Hall and the Telluride Film Festival collaborate on an exclusive presentation of six new features, brought directly from their Colorado debuts. This unique and intimate Portsmouth event treats audience members from across the Northeast to an exclusive peek into the Telluride experience—packing one September weekend in Portsmouth with the latest international cinema, private parties, great music, delicious food, and inspired conversations with other cinephiles of all ages, tastes, and backgrounds.

Schedule
Fri., 9/15 • 7pm • The Holdovers
Sat., 9/16 • 12:30pm • The Teachers’ Lounge
Sat., 9/16 • 3pm • The Promised Land
Sat., 9/16 • 7pm • Poor Things
Sun., 9/17 • 12pm • Fallen Leaves
Sun., 9/17 • 2:30pm • Anatomy of a Fall
Sun., 9/17 • 6:30pm • American Symphony