Flint School of Performing Arts’ Documentary Wins National Awards

In January 2021, the Dort Honors String Quartet at the Flint School of Performing Arts started working virtually with the Dover Quartet, one of the most in-demand ensembles in the world. The award-winning documentary, The Year of Haydn: COVID Can’t Stop the Music, highlights the marvelous musical match of quartets.

“Having been involved as a supporter of the FSPA for numerous years, I wanted to showcase one of the amazing opportunities they provide their young musicians,” said documentary filmmaker Nicole Bowers Wallace, a Flushing, Mich. resident. “The opportunity for these young performers to be mentored by a Grammy-nominated quartet is once in a lifetime for them and I wanted to capture that on film.”

FSPA is a program of the Flint Institute of Music. Its Dort Honors String Quartet is generously funded by the J. Dallas and Marcia W. Dort Trust.

To date, The Year of Haydn: COVID Can’t Stop the Music has won a Best Short Documentary and a Grand Jury Award for Best Cinematography at the New York International Film Awards.

It was also nominated at the Idyllwild International Festival for Best Documentary Featurette, Best Director Featurette for Nicole Bowers Wallace and the Mary Austin Award for Excellence in Producing – a woman’s filmmaker award – for FSPA Director Davin Pierson Torre and Bowers Wallace.

The Florence Film Awards gave it an honorable mention.

“This documentary means so much to so many people here at the Flint School of Performing Arts as well as to the Dover Quartet and its contemporaries,” explained Pierson Torre. “It gave an especially meaningful educational opportunity to our students during COVID when we were all online. To eventually be able to come together in person at the end and perform was an absolute joy!”

Submitting to film festivals is an important next step to share the documentary with the public, according to Bowers Wallace. The films are reviewed by industry experts at festivals and judged on their originality, story, cinematography, directing, acting and more. These festivals receive hundreds and sometimes thousands of submissions worldwide, so they give the film crew the opportunity to be recognized for their artistic composition.

Film festivals are also an excellent way for the film to receive world-wide publicity and be seen by numerous industry professionals and film advocates. This publicity benefits FSPA and FIM as it brings attention through a creative storytelling technique, highlighting the organizations' expertise, staff, and vision.

Receiving awards from film festivals gives films further recognition and publicity opportunities, and allows crew members to be recognized for their hard work. It also gives credibility to the film’s quality and production value.

The documentary has been accepted by numerous other festivals as well, so Bowers Wallace and FSPA believe more awards are coming over the next several months.

“Winning is always a huge celebration as it is hard for films to stand out,” said Bowers Wallace. “We had a great first few months for The Year of Haydnand could not be happier for how it is being received.”