music of the heart

Director: wes craven

Actor: meryl streep,cloris leachman,henry dinhofer,michael angarano

Data Published: Fri Oct 29 1999

Genres: Drama,Music

Key Words: violin,teacher,school,female protagonist,musician

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166943/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_the_Heart

Description: Music of the Heart is a movie starring Meryl Streep, Cloris Leachman, and Henry Dinhofer. Story of a schoolteacher's struggle to teach violin to inner-city Harlem kids.

Plot: The film opens with violinist Roberta Guaspari having been deserted by her US Navy husband and feeling devastated, almost suicidal. Encouraged by her mother, she attempts to rebuild her life and a friend from student days recommends her to the head teacher of East Harlem's Central Park East School. Despite earning two degrees in music education, she has little experience in actual music teaching, but she accepts a substitute violin teaching position at Central Park East. With a combination of her toughness and determination, she inspires a group of kids, and their initially skeptical parents. The program slowly develops and attracts publicity, eventually expanding to Central Park East II and River East Schools. Ten years later, in 1991, the adversaries of the Central Park East, Central Park East II and River East School string programs win a decisive institutional victory. They work with the New York City Board of Education to help eliminate funding for string programs, which leads to Roberta's early dismissal. Determined to fight the cuts, she enlists the support of former pupils, parents and teachers and plans a grand fund-raising concert, 'Fiddlefest', to raise money so that the program can continue. But with a few weeks to go and all participants furiously rehearsing, they lose the venue. Fortunately, the husband of a publicist friend is a violinist in the Guarneri Quartet, and he enlists the support of other well-known musicians, including Isaac Stern and Itzhak Perlman. They arrange for the concert to be mounted at Carnegie Hall. Other famous musicians, including Mark O'Connor, Michael Tree, Charles Veal Jr., Arnold Steinhardt, Karen Briggs, Sandra Park, Diane Monroe, and Joshua Bell, join in the performance, which is a resounding success. The film's end credits declare that the Opus 118 program is still running successfully. They also report that the school's funding was restored during the making of the film.