The Voice of the Violin

Filmmaker Lawrence Shapiro discusses voice-over acting with the talented people behind the characters.

An underachieving vocal coach is motivated by her father, the king of movie-trailer voice-overs, to pursue her aspirations of becoming a voice-over star. Amidst pride, sexism and family dysfunction, she sets out to change the voice of a generation.

In 1950s Pittsburgh, a frustrated African-American father struggles with the constraints of poverty, racism, and his own inner demons as he tries to raise a family.

A talented violinist's prestigious new role as a music tutor for an enigmatic, elite family spirals into a psychological battle for her safety and sanity.

The illegitimate son of an African slave and a French plantation owner, Joseph Bologne rises to improbable heights in French society as a celebrated violinist-composer and fencer, complete with an ill-fated love affair and a falling out with Marie Antoinette and her court.

A brother and sister's battle over a prized heirloom piano unleashes haunting truths about how the past is perceived — and who defines a family legacy.

A man searches for his childhood best friend, a Polish violin prodigy orphaned in the Holocaust, who vanished decades before on the night of his first public performance.

After Roberta Guaspari separates from her husband, she receives encouragement from her mother to take up a job of a music teacher at the Central Park East School in East Harlem.

When teenager Ren and his family move from big-city Chicago to a small town in the West, he's in for a real case of culture shock after discovering he's living in a place where music and dancing are illegal.

Summertime on the coast of Maine, "In the Bedroom" centers on the inner dynamics of a family in transition. Matt Fowler is a doctor practicing in his native Maine and is married to New York born Ruth Fowler, a music teacher. His son is involved in a love affair with a local single mother. As the beauty of Maine's brief and fleeting summer comes to an end, these characters find themselves in the midst of unimaginable tragedy.

In 1965, passionate musician Glenn Holland takes a day job as a high school music teacher, convinced it's just a small obstacle on the road to his true calling: writing a historic opus. As the decades roll by with the composition unwritten but generations of students inspired through his teaching, Holland must redefine his life's purpose.

At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.