Last year’s Glasgow Music and Film Festival fulfilled their objective to “promote the cross-fertilisation between clubbing culture, visual art, live music, theatre and the moving image” with considerable style.
A special screening of Anvil! The Story Of Anvil proved to be one of the highlights of the programme. The film was accompanied by a live performance by metal’s comeback kings as well as a Q&A with director Sacha Gervasi. Also present was director Alan G. Parker, who answered questions on his excellent investigative documentary Who Killed Nancy? that traced the final days of Sid Vicious’ girlfriend Nancy Spungen.
As the festival’s 2010 schedule looks set to surpass last year’s event, Clash previews some of the expected highlights:
Mogwai’s Burning
Mogwai’s home city will be host to one of the first UK showings of their new live film Burning, which was filmed at shows in Brooklyn last year. Burning was directed by Nathanaël La Scouarnec and Vincent Moon, the latter of whom has previously helmed documentaries on The National and Arcade Fire, and who also co-founded the video podcast series The Take-Away Shows in which artists as varied as R.E.M., Sigur Ros and Guillemots play live in unusual surroundings. Mogwai will be present to perform a live DJ set on the night.
Music documentaries
Nick Cave’s many cinematic projects have included the writing of the screenplay of The Proposition as well as scores for films including the current adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. But it’s his music that comes under scrutiny in Do You Love Me Like I Love You: The Good Son.
Created by acclaimed British artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, the film collates a collage of people explaining what the songs on Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds’ 1990 album ‘The Good Son’ mean to them. Participants who worked on the album include the producer Flood, Kid Congo Powers, for whom ‘The Good Son’ was his final album as a Bad Seed, and another former Bad Seed Blixa Bargeld, who contributed haunting vocals to standout track ‘The Weeping Song’.
Other contributors include Mute Records founder Daniel Miller, Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner, The Pogues’ Spider Stacey, Interpol’s Paul Banks and Mudhoney’s Mark Arm.
Norwegian black metal is under examination in Until The Light Takes Us, a documentary that looks to examine the principles behind the scene. The genre is best known for sensationalist headlines following the imprisonment of Burzum musician Varg Vikernes for the murder of Mayhem guitarist Øystein Aarseth and for the arson of historic churches. Black Dice, Boards Of Canada and múm contribute to the otherwise metallic soundtrack.
Other live shows
Expect the unexpected from American experimentalists Pere Ubu. Their last appearance at city venue The Arches was when they performed a live score to Fifties cult sci-fi hit It Came From Outer Space – an event particularly memorable for the film’s showing in its original 3D format and an audience sporting retro 3D glasses.
This time they present Long Live Pere Ubu!, a boundary pushing battleground between rock and theatre that promises connective dialogue, electronic ambience, choreography and animations from The Quay Brothers. Frontman David Thomas inhabits the grotesque persona of the doomed Père Ubu, beset by the incompetence and treachery of his minions, who are all played by members of the band.
Also performing is Thomas Truax, the one-man band whose inimitable live experience is built around a variety of indescribable homemade instruments. Truax’s most recent album was a leftfield tribute album to music of David Lynch’s weird and wonderful filmmaking.
Operating in a similarly surreal realm is Parisian electronic duo Zombie Zombie, who will perform to a backdrop of their own remarkable short film; an interpretation of John Carpenter’s The Thing recreated by G.I. Joe figures in stop-motion animation.
Further information on The Glasgow Music and Film Festival is available at – www.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk.
