But We Have the Music

saw this film this afternoon at the same gallery - great experience, as I was just having a wander around the gallery (which was about 50% roped off for rehanging, so not the most amazing of my occasional trips down the road to it) and wasn't expecting there to be a film on. just turned up as the end credits came up, so got to see the whole thing from the start (it was on repeat, every 40 mins). pleasantly surreal to watch holidaying families with restless children trickle in and out every five minutes.

the film itself was watchable and enjoyable, a series of brief intimate portraits of people listening to/occasionally playing music in various settings - waking up in the morning, drinking by a river, sitting alone in a cafe - things that most music fans like me who constantly walk around with headphones glued on can relate to, that different music becomes associated with times, places & experiences. the short vignette structure occasionally reminded me of Jim Jarmusch's Coffee & Cigarettes, but less pretentious and more homespun and relateable. worth seeking out.

Came across this one by chance, went to see the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and as part of the festival it was playing on continuous loop, at 41 minutes, it's just a feature by BFI, AFI, and AMPAS definition, but most people I'm sure would term it a short.

It's a selection of scenes of people listening to music, with their reactions being filmed, shot in black and white on Super 8. To be an art film we can't hear them listen to anything obvious, so a lot of the soundtrack is old fairly obscure rock and French tunes. I didn't know many but I had listened to Blitzkrieg Bop by the Ramones before "hey ho, let's go!". The filmmaker somehow makes the locations they're shot in quite interesting, psychologically, not sure quite how she did that, they're not stereotypical at all.

I just think it was nice to show how people have music as an escape, it's a joy that most everyone young and old, good or bad, rich or poor, can access and participate in. As a teenager my brother knew people who knew about music and I used to headbang away to stuff, but I've since mostly been able to handle only minimalist or sturm und drang type classical music, so it was quite a melancholy watch for me, the kind of freeness and joie de vivre I had seemingly quite vestigial.

We get different characters here, a beautiful young woman with lustrous hair and tasselled arms headbanging, an emotionally beset attrited man sat outside a café in an ugly street full of parked cars, a woman fondling her cat in bed, a man playfully blinking at the camera, a gelled-hair guy taking a leak and a smoke and a drink outside a bar - which is nice because music is often accompanied by visceral sensations.

The film starts of with Shanti doing a duet herself which is a nice personal touch.

Anyway it's French, it's good, it won a Special Jury Award at CIMMfest in Chicago, if you ever get the chance to see it, why not give it a go?