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Isabel's Piano (2014)
HD colour video with sound
74 minutes

excerpt - full video available by request.

Isabel’s Piano is a feature length documentary exploring connections between woodworking and memory. Stephanie accompanies her uncle, Steven, as he teaches himself how to restore an antique baby-grand piano inherited from his late grandmother, Isabel. 

Originally made around 1895 by roughly one hundred skilled workers in the Mason & Hamlin factory near Boston, USA, Steven has taken it apart into many pieces. The dismantled piano shapes the material and psychological landscape of the film. Recorded over a period of two years and sited in and around Steven’s home, Stephanie accompanies her Uncle as he attempts to cope with the pianos extraordinary complexity.

The video accepts the camera as a physical agent in the act of recording – the cinematography is haptic in its methods. Steven’s inventive experiments frame scenes for Stephanie’s own exploration via the camera. The form of Isabel's Piano appears in the convergence of these parallel investigations: an uncle, a piano restoration, an artist and a video camera.

Cinematography: Nicola Stephanie
Editing: Ling Lee and Nicola Stephanie
Sound: Gisburg
Music: Robbie Lockwood

Previous screenings include Freud Museum, London; Museum of Arts & Design, New York and the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, CT.

Isabel's Piano (2014) video stills