German director Werner Schroeter invited his favourite opera singers to a 13th century abbey near Paris. Love’s Debris didn’t have, and couldn’t have had, any pre-planned action. There was no script, no continuity. On the other hand, there were precise constraints that provided the rules of the game: the setting, the Abbey of Royaumont, and the chosen participants. Each singer came accompanied by a person of his or her choice, and worked on an aria chosen by the director. And there was Elisabeth Cooper, a “one-woman orchestra”, who transposed and played the scores on the piano and organ. —IMDb
Werner Schroeter (born 7 April 1945, Georgenthal, Thuringia) is a German film director and screenwriter, considered one of the most important of his country in the post-war period. He has also worked in film as a producer, cinematographer, editor and actor. In the later function he appeared in several films directed by his friend Rainer Werner Fassbinder, including Beware of a Holy Whore (1971), and a number of theatre productions.
His 1980 film Palermo oder Wolfsburg, telling the story of a Sicilian guest worker in Germany, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, while his 1991 production Malina was entered into that year’s Cannes Film Festival.
In the 1960s, Schroeter worked with Rosa von Praunheim, who is also gay. Schroeter has also worked as a theater and opera director, in Germany and elsewhere. In the late 1970s Schroeter met the Irish Artist Reginald Gray at a collection of Yves St.Laurent in Paris. Gray painted a portrait of Schroeter. —Wikipedia read more
Possibly one of the most heart-rending documentary on opera ever made - each scene alternates with interviews with singers about their conceptions of love, death and angst. Not long at all, hesitant at times and therefore truly moving.