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Poster for Land of Gold
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Released
2021 · FILM

Land of Gold

Directed by
Runtime
82 min
Documentary
Streaming on
  • HBO Max

Synopsis

California history unfolds along with the making of an opera in Jon Else‘s entrancing documentary. Returning to the work of composer John Adams and librettist/director Peter Sellars, the subjects of his film Wonders Are Many, Else peeks behind the curtain as the pair prepare their collaboration Girls of the Golden West for its 2017 San Francisco Opera premiere. Ostensibly a look at the nuts-and-bolts of production from informal rehearsals to glittering opening night, the documentary also investigates the Gold Rush era that inspired the show. Soprano Julia Bullock is mesmerizing, as the opera’s star and the film’s narrator, employing passages from a real-life diary to make vivid the boom-and-bust of a rapacious time.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 13

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Gail HuddlesonShot by Jon ElseScored by John Adams

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