This is a very interesting and well-made film, about an intriguing and personable character, of particular interest to musicians who are slightly outside the mainstream.
I am one such musician, but I am afraid that one of my pet hates is music documentaries where the protagonist's story suddenly jumps from "I was so unpopular that even my mother refused to listen to my music" to "Then I was rich and famous because of my music", with absolutely no explanation of how this change came about.
In Glenn Copeland's case, this jump is described as taking the form: "I was living openly as a lesbian, which was still illegal in Canada at the time, and escaped being confined to a mental institution and receiving electo-shock treatment by a hair's-breadth. Then the Canadian Broadcasting Company published my first album, and everything was great."
How on earth could that possibly happen? To my mind, this unexplained jarring improbability called every other "true" assertion within the film into question, souring my enjoyment somewhat.
Keyboard Fantasies
2019
Action / Biography / Documentary / History / Music
Keyboard Fantasies
2019
Action / Biography / Documentary / History / Music
7.0Plot summary
As a sci-fi obsessed woman living in near isolation, Beverly Glenn-Copeland wrote and self-released Keyboard Fantasies in Huntsville, Ontario back in 1986. Recorded in an Atari-powered home studio, the cassette featured seven tracks of a curious folk-electronica hybrid, a sound realised far before its time. Three decades on the musician - now Glenn Copeland - began to receive emails from people across the world, thanking him for the music they'd recently discovered. Courtesy of a rare-record collector in Japan, a reissue of Keyboard Fantasies and subsequent plays by Four Tet, Caribou and more, the music had finally found its audience two generations down the line. Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story sees the protagonist commit his life and music to screen for the first time - an intimate coming of age story spinning pain and the suffering of prejudice into rhythm, hope and joy. Half aural-visual history, half DIY tour-video, the film provides a vehicle for our newly appointed queer elder to connect with youth across the globe. A timely lullaby to soothe those souls struggling to make sense of the world.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN