Maestro
Length: 1 hour 29 minutes
Studio: Artrution Productions, Door A
Release Date: 2004-05-28
Cast: Larry Levan, David Mancuso, Frankie Knuckles, Nicky Siano, Francis Grasso
Director: Josell Ramos
Screenwriter: Josell Ramos
WorkNameSort: Maestro
Our Rating: 2.50
In the early 1980s, I knew a New York club DJ who had no concept of musical symmetry. He’d drop out a vocal track on the last line of a rhyme scheme and then wonder why it left listeners feeling anxious and unsatisfied. He’d probably see nothing wrong with Maestro, a sprawling but sloppy documentary about the rise of the underground dance scene. For the first 30 minutes or so, it’s a biography of allegedly seminal DJ Larry Levan; suddenly, the focus shifts to a bunch of other names on the record-spinning circuit. Then we’re back to Levan again for a heartfelt wrap-up that would matter more had we learned anything substantial about the late nightlife figure. The movie’s chronology is haphazard, interviews overlap uncomfortably and the semiliterate captioning lets speakers go unidentified for entire minutes. There’s some interesting information in here, but you have to work hard at piercing the veneer of busy-but-drab visuals and insider chatter to find it. Director Josell Ramos appears not to have learned the cardinal rule of documentary filmmaking: Assume that your audience knows nothing about your subject and needs to be cajoled into caring. Instead, Maestro is just remixing to the converted.
This article appears in May 26 – Jun 1, 2004.