Academy Award nominated director Scott Hicks ("Shine") documents an eventful year in the career and personal life of distinguished composer Philip Glass as he interacts with a number of friends and collaborators, including Chuck Close, Ravi Shankar and Martin Scorsese. |||| Director Scott Hicks demonstrated his own knack for popularizing classical music in his 1996 film Shine about the pianist David Helfgott. In "Glass: A portrait of Philip in twelve parts," Hicks traces an eventful year in Glass's life, as he stages the opera Waiting for the Barbarians, writes his eighth symphony, takes his annual ride on the Cyclone roller coaster, scores several films, travels to three continents, and maintains a family with his fourth wife, Holly. |||| Shine director Scott Hicks documents a year in the life of prolific composer Philip Glass in order to explore the work that goes into creating a symphony and offer a detailed overview of his subject's remarkable career. Glass may be a composer whose name is virtually synonymous with the Minimalist music movement, but one shouldn't be so quick to pigeonhole the composer into a single musical movement. A musician who is outwardly confident and at times unpredictable, Glass works tirelessly to create a composition entitled &Symphony No. 8" for orchestra, as well as an opera entitled Waiting for the Barbarians. Additional conversations with Glass' family and friends highlight how the composer is able to retain his creative spirit while simultaneously remaining a devoted family man.

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