Guest blog post by Andy Markowitz of ace Music Film Web
Besides being Nigel Tufnel Day, Friday marks the midpoint of the Leeds International Film Festival’s second week. For us over at MusicFilmWeb, the online hub for music documentaries (and a festival media partner), a lot of the highlights were front-loaded into the early days, which saw us
• getting to ask Pulp’s Candida Doyle which is a weirder experience: playing for hundreds of thousands of people after nine years off the road on Pulp’s reunion tour, or watching herself on the big screen in the Sheffield music film The Beat Is the Law – Fanfare for the Common People (answer: the latter);
• hosting a showing of the marvelous Sound It Out, Jeanie Finlay’s sweet, funny doc about the last indie record shop in Teesside, with a big northeastern cohort on hand (including Stockton band the Chapman Family, which did a ripping post-film set and took a rather dim view of David Cameron);
• And, on a purely personal note, emerging from darkened Hyde Park on bonfire night to the sight of fireworks in the distance then walking through Leeds University, hallowed ground for this outlander as the birthplace of the Mekons.
Great stuff. But the show’s not even half over yet, and there’s plenty more music film to come.
To start with, there’s an encore showing Monday (14th November) of GL Echternkamp’s Never Make It Home, which chronicles alt-bluegrass band Split Lip Rayfield’s last tour with guitarist and singer Kirk Rundstrom, whose response to a cancer death sentence was to hit the road. It’s a moving tribute that eschews sentiment for scorching music.
On Tuesday (15th November) MusicFilmWeb presents Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest, a late addition to the programme and a must-see for hip hop heads. Give indie actor-turned-doc director Michael Rapaport, a huge Tribe fan, props for this penetrating look inside the pioneering rap group. Rather than just producing a love letter to his favorite band – the bane of so many music docs – Rapaport saw firsthand the internal tensions wracking Tribe and weaved them into fabric of his film, without giving short shrift to Q-Tip, Phife, and Ali’s humanity and their remarkable musical legacy.
You can see Beats Rhymes & Life, meet us for a drink and a chat afterward, and still have plenty of time to catch PressPausePlay (both are at Town Hall), which examines how digital culture and the new modes of content creation are changing the way artists make art. Cultural democracy or wellspring of the new mediocrity? Moby, Robyn, Bill Drummond, Hot Chip, and Public Enemy’s sonic architect, Hank Shocklee, are among the musicians offering their insights in this provocative doc.
Wednesday (16th November) brings rootsy goodness with a Yadig? Records folk/film showcase at the HiFi, starring Serious Sam Barrett. Along with a set of Sam’s trademark Yorkshirecana, the evening features the first chapter in Hardeep Pandhal’s planned multi-part documentary portrait of the Leeds singer-songwriter, plus a trio of fascinating 1970s short films exploring some of the odder corners of American roots, including strange southern “mouth music” and a couple of proto-rapping Washington, D.C., fishmongers.
The final music film of LIFF 2011, on Friday the 18th, is Cure for Pain: The Mark Sandman Story, a portrait of the enigmatic, charismatic frontman of ’90s underground band Morphine. Emerging from a troubled, tragedy-plagued youth, Sandman led the indie-rock trio with the sultry sound and the unlikely instrumental lineup of sax, drums, and two-string bass to cult success before dying onstage in 1999. It’s a tribute to an overlooked artist very much keeping with the Leeds film fest vibe of cultural discovery and diversity.
You can check times, buy tickets, and get more info on all these events at MFW’s LIFF mini-site. And if you missed some of those first-week music films, keep an eye on the festival website – you might get a do-over as they’ll be repeating audience favorites over the final weekend on 18-20 November. While you’re there have a look at the other great feature, documentary, and horror/fantasy films on tap for the rest of the fest – because even at MusicFilmWeb, we understand that moviegoers cannot live by music films alone.