“It was the final great madness of Merchant Ivory”
MERCHANT IVORY (2024) is the first definitive feature documentary film to lend new and compelling perspectives on the partnership, both professional and personal, of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant and their primary collaborators, writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and composer Richard Robbins. Footage from more than fifty interviews, clips, and archival material gives voice to the family of actors and technicians who helped define Merchant Ivory’s Academy Award-winning work of consummate quality and intelligence. With six Oscar winners among the notable artists participating, these close and often long-term collaborators intimately detail the transformational cinematic creativity and personal and professional drama of the Wandering Company that left an indelible impact on film culture.
“There has to be a special feeling about your work, a passion about your work, a commitment about your work, and if that is the case, then it never dies, you see. Anything is possible.”
OFFICIAL TRAILER
“I seldom think of my films as any kind of an organized life’s work. I was here - maybe in New York, maybe Paris, maybe China even - or there, working with stories by this author, or that, maybe Ruth Jhabvala, maybe E.M.Forster, maybe Tama Janowitz, sometimes Kazuo Ishiguro. Always pretty much at my pleasure. So it’s with another kind of pleasure that I watch Stephen Soucy’s version of my creative life, of Merchant Ivory’s life, and see how their strands were woven together artistically, sometimes with my help, most often not. I like giving all the artists who work with us free rein.”
“What a wonderful documentary. Just bliss to watch.”
“It is brilliant! A great film about Merchant Ivory Productions, sexuality, friendship, directing and filmmaking. Should be on the curriculum at all film schools as well as on general release!”
