Forbidden Music

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The feature documentary project, Forbidden Music, began its journey in 2018 when a researcher in Italy came across the story about an Austrian Jewish musicologist named Ida Halpern who spent a year in Milan, Italy in 1937 while writing her PhD dissertation.  Ida and her husband George returned to Vienna  just as the Nazis were annexing Austria, and Jewish students and professors at the University of Vienna were expelled. Sensing imminent danger to Jewish people in Nazi Germany, Ida and George left for Shanghai where Jewish exiles were not required to have a visa. From there, the couple immigrated to Canada, where Ida  pursued a prolific career as a music writer and ethnomusicologist for 50 years.  From 1947 to 1951, Ida recorded the songs of Indigenous chiefs and song keepers in British Columbia including Chief Mungo Martin, Chief Billy Assu, George Clutesi, Dan Cranmer, Stanley Hunt, Billy Scow, Peter Webster and Florence Edenshaw Davidson. Many of the 342 songs she recorded were released by Folkway Records in New York in four double albums sets, and are now part of the Smithsonian Institution’s collections. 

The documentary concept was originally developed by the Italy-based documentary production company Incipit Films (formerly Quasar Multimedia). In 2019, Incipit contacted Barbara Todd Hager, an Indigenous producer and director and owner of Acimow Media, to pursue a co-producing partnership.  Forbidden Music is a 100% owned and created Canadian documentary, with the concept for the documentary licensed from Incipit Films. An international version, with Acimow Media and Incipit Films co-producing, is planned for the future. This version will focus on Ida Halpern's life in Vienna before escaping to Canada in 1938.

Director Barbara Hager has interviewed hundreds of Indigenous artists, musicians, actors, storytellers, writers, dancers, knowledge keepers and archaeologists during her 20-year career as a filmmaker. She is dedicated to working collaboratively and respectfully with those who hold the rights to stories, songs, art and traditional knowledge. As the documentary director of Forbidden Music, Barbara is committed to ensuring that the singers’ stories are told from a prominent Indigenous perspective, and not as footnote to Ida Halpern’s story. Chief David Knox (Kwakwaka'wakw) has granted Acimow Media permission to tell the story of his Great-grandfather, Chief Mungo Martin, the the documentary Forbidden Music.

The documentary will be broadcast on the Knowledge Network in 2025. 

Financial support is from Knowledge, the Indigenous Screen Office, Rogers Doc Fund and the Canada Media Fund.