Crossing Channels - Beethoven's Hair

Acclaimed director Larry Weinstein presents a new documentary tracing the strange history of one of classical music's oddest pieces of memorabilia - a lock of Ludwig van Beethoven's hair, cut immediately after his death by his disciple Ferdinand Hiller. The film traces the history of this Romantic relic across the turbulent background of 20th century German history up to the present. It also examines contemporary medical research on the lock of hair, now owned by a pair of eccentric American collectors, aimed at finally and definitively determining the causes of Beethoven's illness and subsequent death.