Sound & Vision @ GFT

Untitled mix #2 from The Vile Arts on 8tracks Radio.

‘Film festivals have struck upon a rich seam with live music, so expect to see many more such events creep into upcoming programmes. But they won’t get much better than this’

– Nick Mitchell, WOW 247, on GFF event A Night at the Regal



Following on from its success at Glasgow Film Festival, Glasgow Film Theatre has incorporated the Sound & Vision strand into its year-round programming with major events and screenings taking place throughout April and May, including live performances from Mercury Prize nominees Field Music and legendary 90s synth-pop pioneers Saint Etienne. Glasgow Film Theatre will also become a venue as part of Stag and Dagger presents Live at Glasgow 2015, with film screenings during the all-day multi-venue music festival, including a special preview screening of the new Elliott Smith documentary Heaven Adores You.

I didn't realise Saint Etienne were still going: last time I looked, their main man was writing articles for The Guardian. Still, I'm at that age when their cover version of Only Love Can Break Your Heart  is a magical memory of a beautiful youth.


GFT will team up with Monorail Music to host a special late night Record Store Day screening of the ultimate 90s independent music store cult classic Empire Records, and a one-off screening of My Secret World, a documentary about the famed Bristol-based record label Sarah Records, with founder Clare Wadd in attendance. GFT will also be screening the all-new Curt Kobain documentary Cobain: Montage of Heck, a devastatingly insightful documentary about the troubled icon that features a previously unheard 12-minute acoustic track by Cobain.

Assuming there is not a very good reason why that track has remained unheard, this is like a trawl through my back pages, when music meant something to me, in the way that celibacy and theatre do now...



FULL EVENT DETAILS

Saint Etienne are one of the most important British bands of the past two decades and Glasgow Film Theatre is delighted to welcome them for this extra special limited-capacity event. The core band consists of the trio Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, who have been making innovative left-field pop together since 1990. 

For this event they will be joined by 5 other

musicians, making an 8-piece band that brings to life the evocative images on screen. The band will play their live score to Paul Kelly’s film How We Used to Live; a woozy, poignant and telling document of London’s past from 1950s to 1980s. 

Using only colour footage from the BFI archives, the film charts the early days of the welfare state up to the opening days of Margaret Thatcher’s reign. This event is in partnership with Monorail Music and will take place on Tuesday 19 May (19.30).


Stephen McRobbie (perhaps better known as Stephen Pastel) of Monorail Music said:

‘We have a long and happy association with both Heavenly Films and the GFT. We are extremely proud to be involved in the screening of Paul Kelly’s newest film, How We Used to Live; a mesmerising, occasionally brutal but always poignant elegy to a disappearing London. With a live music score by our friends Saint Etienne, this is truly unmissable.’


In 2013, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival commissioned one of the most critically acclaimed bands to emerge from the North East of England, the Mercury Prize nominated Field Music, to compose a new cinematic score to accompany seminal silent documentary Drifters, by John Grierson. The band will now restage that hugely acclaimed event at Glasgow Film Theatre, with the band’s original line-up of brothers Peter and David Brewis playing with Andrew Moore. This event will take place on Sunday 31 May (20.00).


David Brewis of Field Music said:

‘It's incredibly exciting to be given the opportunity to tour Drifters as writing and performing the original commission for Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival in 2013 was a true pleasure, culminating in a wonderful evening. We are delighted that we can do it all again at some truly lovely cinemas and art spaces around the country.’


On Bank Holiday Sunday 6 May, Glasgow’s most popular city-centre music venues will be taken over for a one-day festival of live music presented by Stag and Dagger called Live at Glasgow. As part of the festival, Glasgow Film Theatre will be hosting a series of screenings, including a special preview of the new Elliott Smith documentary Heaven Adores You. 



Paul Cardow of PCL says:

‘Given our history of working with the incredible talent that was Elliott Smith – having hosted memorable shows for him in Scotland – we are extremely proud to have this opportunity to be involved with the GFT in screening this special tribute to his career, as part of our multi-venue festival Live at Glasgow. It's especially fitting to have this film involved, as Elliott's music was hugely influential to many of the artists that have performed at the event over the years, with this year being no exception.’


In much the same way as independent cinemas like GFT offer a haven for film-lovers, independent record stores are a highly treasured cultural touchstone for lovers of music. 

Magic Moments... Made for Sharing

Here is my weekly list of five really cool things that I saw, heard or thought while I was about being a critic. Plus two rubbish ones, just from life, really.

The pas de deux between Mina and her husband (Dracula @Tramway). 

Another good bit(e)

Mark Bruce is big on the 'pas de deux equals people having sex' equation, and never more so than when Mina and Jonathan have their honeymoon night together. Capturing both characters' tentative intimacy, while establishing their sense of alienation even in the act of love, it encouraged the dancers to stretch themselves (literally and metaphorically) to present a sensual, hesitant union.  When the other characters came back on stage, it felt like they had barged into the bedroom. 

Guy Veale's soundscape (OOG @ The Arches).
Despite its reputation as a venue for alternative performance, The Arches is a tough space to work: the rumbling of trains overhead can be distracting. Veale's soundscape for Al Seed's exercise in physical precision was both tough enough to conquer the rumbles, and porous enough to incorporate them into the overall atmosphere. Switching between My Bloody Valentine, ambient (and probably illbient) numbers and a jaunty spot of old time jazz, Veale lent Seed's post-apocalyptic soldier an immersive, daunting dark atmosphere.

Putin's Photograph on the wall (Leviathan @ Glasgow Film Theatre).
A Russian take on The Book of Job was never likely to be a chuckle-fest, but the subtle pointers to the corruption of the ruling elite through Leviathan made it as much political satire as theodicy. In a key scene, when the corrupt mayor is confronted by the over-sexed lawyer (no-one is innocent in this film), a framed portrait of an anemic looking Putin is just above their heads throughout the scene, making it clear that evil is one thing that does work in trickle-down economic theory.

Victor Zarallo and Sophie Martin (Scottish Ballet Up Close @ Tramway).
At the risk of being another critic whom Sophie Martin has to arrange a restraining order, the brief pas de deux Jealousy by James Cousins in SB's mixed mixed bill was another reminder of how she is becoming one of the most exciting dancers in Scotland, meshing contemporary energy with classical technique. Bathed in red light, and teetering between the erotic and the despairing, Cousin's choreography gave both dancers a showcase that insists on ballet's ability to explore emotional extremes without compromising on its rigorous physicality.

The Words on the Body (Autumn Nerve Dance @ Old Hairdressers).
Paul  Michael Henry is always good for a bit of butoh inspired action, but Prof Lavery (academics - if you tell me, I'll steal it) pointed out a layer to this dance. Henry's use of projected cut-ups covered his body, emphasising the failure of words to express whatever Henry's movements were trying to manifest - but their disappearance left Henry's body bare and vulnerable. Not just some funky moves, Autumn Nerve Dance posed a question about how words might shape our identities, even if they are merely reflections on the surface of our bodies...

And here's the rubbish...

That Bloke In Front of Me (Autechre @ The Art School).
When he turned round and said in a loud voice that 'this was the most abstract thing ever made,' I wondered whether his comment on Autechre's electronic lesson in history (I'll get to it) was profound or just a stupid bit of showing off that revealed an ignorance of, say conceptual art  or Xenakis' compositions. I was pondering what he meant when he followed this up with 'and there is only one sound going on at a time', which was audibly wrong. 

Him wearing a comedy sanitary towel fancy dress on Halloween (Total Fucking Nightmare Walk Home @ Sauchiehall Street). 

The internet proves this is not an
isolated activity. Thanks, internet.

While it was a bold move to challenge the hegemony of the 'sexy' halloween fashions (I was more conservative and went for 'sexy William Burroughs), the man who was wearing a big bloody tampon wasn't committed enough to the feminist subtext to really pull it off. Actually, given that halloween is supposed to be about monsters (even 'sexy nurse' had a bit of blood on her - either because she was being top beat combo Nurse with Wound ((c) Lorna Irvine) or she'd cut herself on her nasal accent), wearing a towel suggests an innate fear of menstruation. 

There is, of course, another joke about where these towels are usually found, and what this makes him, but I think that's going into misogynistic territory.