Harry in Wonderland
1990 · 28m · Canada
Directed by Barbara Willis-Sweete
Genres: biography, documentary, musical
Tones: contemplative, theatrical
Composer Harry Freedman develops Fragments of Alice, a new musical work adapted from Alice in Wonderland, from early ideas through production.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1990 doc about a composer riffing on Carroll feels like the safest possible premise, but Willis-Sweete's refusal to mythologize Freedman or impose narrative drama on the creative process is quietly radical—she lets the *work* be strange instead.
Willis-Sweete positions Fragments of Alice within the long conversation between literature and composition, and the film's deliberate pacing mirrors the composer's own methodical thinking—this is craft documenting craft, formal rigor all the way down.
The decision to shoot the creative process in real time, watching Freedman return to the same ideas across weeks, creates an intimacy that a conventional bio-doc would flatten—it's all restraint until a single moment of breakthrough feels earned.