September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill is a fusion of film, theatre, and concert performance that reimagines the music of the German composer Kurt Weill whose songs bridged opera, cabaret, and popular music with piercing social and emotional insight. Featuring an extraordinary ensemble — Teresa Stratas, Lou Reed, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Charlie Haden, Elvis Costello & The Brodsky Quartet, Betty Carter, Mary Margaret O’Hara, William S. Burroughs, and more — September Songs transforms Weill’s work into a haunting collage of performance, theatre, and cinema. Each artist reinvents Weill’s legacy through their own lens, creating a living dialogue between past and present, exile and belonging, beauty and decay. Blended throughout the film are stylized “documentaries”, evocative imagery, and cinematic transitions that transform Weill’s haunting melodies and biting social commentary into a contemporary meditation on art, exile, and the human condition. The film celebrates Weill’s enduring influence on 20th-century music and culture. Through its visuals, its music and its original choreography, the film merges concert, cabaret, and expressionist cinema into a single dreamlike experience.
