Reflecting on 2015, Part 2: The best music documentaries
January 4, 2016
I took in a decent amount of music documentaries in 2015. Most were great. Only one was terrible. And the one that caps this list will probably win the Oscar, and I wouldn’t disagree with its win.
Let’s start with the actually bad music documentary I saw this year. Even though it’s beautifully shot and the songs sound amazing (even in hacked up snippets), Arcade Fire’s The Reflektor Tapes is atrociously edited. The phenomenal group from Canada created an album full of songs that build on grooves. But before you can get into any musical moment in this film, there is a cutaway to something else. Making matters worse are the varied formats of framing. The film even jumps around in time with little rhyme or reason. Sometimes the audio doesn’t even match the performance. Director Kahlil Joseph simply betrays the music with a concern for panache over substance. Vincent Moon did it much better with Miroir Noir. Seek that out instead (purchase here).
Honorable mentions include Revenge of the Mekons, which actually came out a couple of years ago but only last year made its theatrical tour. I caught it at O Cinema Wynwood during a one-night only screening with only four other people attending, and — besides my partner — two of them turned out to be people I know from the music scene, so that says something about who The Mekons are in the world of music. Read my review of the film here: Revenge of the Mekons presents a portrait of a band whose success transcends fame and fortune. Also worth noting is the revealing documentary What Happened, Miss Simone?, which debuted via Netflix. It’s quite good, and director Liz Garbus does ultimate justice to Simone’s music by allowing full performances to play out as the story of her life is told with archival recordings and talking heads, including her daughter, who doesn’t hold back in sharing how difficult her relationship was with her activist/artist mother.
For the most part, this year, we got to know and understand the difficult line of existence that is the world of music and fame contrasted with musicians’ private lives out of the limelight. Simone was later diagnosed as manic-depressive as was Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin and Jaco Pastorious, all subjects in some of the year’s best music documentaries, whose tragic stories involved premature death. In a way, Simone was the strongest and indeed the feistiest of these subjects. It makes for an odd, sad connection between these excellent films, but these are sad exceptions of the music world in general. There are clearly happier stories that don’t make for compelling, sad stories. One of those more positive stories of recent music history debuted at Miami Dade College’s Miami International Film Festival. The Record Man undeniably stands as the most uplifting of all the docs on this list. It had its world premiere at the festival with a rooftop party featuring guests like music legend George McRae, who introduced himself to me singing this song’s chorus.
But really, this was the year of the depressing music doc, reflecting on dead icons, their lives meticulously picked apart in retrospect with the cooperation of surviving family members who helped paint intimate portraits of the people behind the music. For more thoughts on these films, I have linked to my original reviews. If I didn’t get the chance to review them, I share a few thoughts. Where available, all titles link to the item description page on Amazon. If you purchase via the link provided, you will be financially supporting this blog.
5. Janis: Little Blue Girl
Read my review
4. The Record Man
Though, like all the subjects in these documentaries, Henry K. Stone has passed, this film is the most uplifting of the lot. I never thought disco music would make me smile as much as it did when it appears in this film. This was the music of my childhood, and it was great to see how a warehouse in Hialeah, Florida, became the source of an indelible movement in music. Director Mark Moormann offers a brilliantly paced stroll through Stone’s story as a music mogul that included the discovery of Harry Wayne Casey (of KC and the Sunshine Band).
3. Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck
The film that set the tone for the year of the grim music documentary reflecting on deceased musicians. Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck is an incredibly researched work, despite some contention by Cobain’s former friend in The Melvins, Buzz Osborne (read his review here). Director Brett Morgen had access to Cobain’s archives of tapes and recreated the man’s past, sometimes even using animation set to Cobain’s monologues. On a human level, it’s a hard film to watch. The home movies of Cobain as a precocious child slowly evolve into the home movies of the drug-addled man, and it’s a pitiful thing to observe.
2. Jaco
Read my review in “PureHoney Magazine”
1. Amy
Read my review
Next up, a look at some of the year’s best albums and songs.
Read my review
Read my review
Vincent Moon retrospective in Miami — A review
August 1, 2014
I’ve been a fan of Vincent Moon since 2010, however, I had never heard about him until last week. Before then, I had spent countless hours watching La Blogothèque videos and other films directed by Moon but never paid attention to his name. I became aware of this videos by just searching for music that I like, which I often play it in the background, but there was something so unique about the videos from La Blogothèque. They are filled with a humanity that is usually absent from music videos, the type of incredible connection you can have to a musician during a live concert. These videos were also adventurous, often featuring some kind of action in the streets that just seemed very exciting and spontaneous. It was only until I listened to Moon talk about his artistic philosophy and filming style at an event hosted by the Indie Film Club last week that I understood how someone can encapsulate so much humanity into a very small video.
Last Thursday, July 24, I attended a retrospective on Moon’s work (read our preview interviews here). It sounded half bombastic to me: attending a retrospective for a guy who’s not 35 yet and has not released commercial work under the auspices of a big production house. Nonetheless, I was intrigued because of my own personal connection to the music that is in most of his work. The setting was The Screening Room, a small gallery in Wynwood, an unassuming room filled with fold out chairs and dozens of aspiring filmmakers.
The talk started as a friendly Q&A led by Diliana Alexander, Indie Film Club’s executive director, who admitted to the audience, “I’ve been trying to bring Vincent to Miami for years.” And there he was in front of an eager, capacity audience. He described his philosophy of making films as an artist would. He creates content that is free of charge and uploads it to Vimeo, YouTube or his own website for everyone to enjoy. His budgets are non-existent. “I believe it keeps things pure,” he said in a heavy French accent (he grew up in Paris, but has no specific home since about 2008). Indeed, the artist approaches each project from a human perspective, his goal, he described, is to make people look beautiful and showcase beauty through what they do: music. But much to my surprise he sees music as an expression of community and culture. He looks at musicians as generators of culture or providers of meaning as a cultural expression.
Diliana Alexander and Vincent Moon
Moon quickly took over the conversation and often interrupted the discussion to share some of his favorite videos. In all of the highlights he shared, he described them as an experience that could not be replicated. Someone in the audience asked him about preparation ahead of each shoot. He said he travels around the world and meets with different musicians and people whom he records, but there’s no direction. When asked about research, he scoffed, paused and said that he traveled to each location without preconceived ideas. That’s when I understood the marvel behind the videos because you are experiencing with him something unique through his camera lens. One of my favorite videos he shared that night is the following. It took place in Argentina and you can see how it captures a moment in time that is quite special. The background sounds add an atmospheric layer that cannot be replicated– Moon mentioned it was firecrackers among other sounds that you can hear in the background adding an almost surreal percussive accompaniment.
As the night went on, a lot of the filmmakers wanted to know how he survives financially or how the artists themselves benefit, as his work is freely available to anyone for download. He was a little puzzled by the questions, just as puzzled as the audience about his disregard for “making it big.” He picks places based on a feeling and admits that his worry is the opposite. His concern is how big budgets actually take away something from his work. He relishes the freedom and challenge of working with minimal resources because limitations spark his own creativity.
I am only thankful to Indie Film Club for creating a space where directors like him can be featured at Miami venues. I leave you with my favorite videos (part I and II) from the Take Away shows. Shot in Colombia, featuring Bomba Estereo. I love how the music blends with the landscape…
Filmmaker Vincent Moon talks about the influence of music and rootlessness in his craft, Part 2
July 24, 2014
French filmmaker Vincent Moon has nearly 700 films under his belt. Despite subjects as diverse as music videos for popular bands like REM or a vérité documentary about a “maestra” of natural medicine in Peru, a certain style shines through. His work is patient but still dynamic. He’s very active behind the camera, yet he makes films of raw intimacy. Asked what he tells his subjects before he starts rolling his digital camera, he says, “Nothing. I really trust in the energy of the moment. That’s where it happens, and before is not the right time. I’m not a director in the sense that I tell people to do this or that. That’s something I really don’t like. I just love to leave people as free as possible.”
He has no concern with “breaking the fourth wall” or calling attention to the fact the camera is present. “I would not even say to them, ‘Do not look at the camera.’ I just think that all these interactions between the camera and the musicians and the moment it goes without words in a sense. There are some energies in the air, and you are asked to find the same ones as the people you are recording, and that’s really, really exciting. I love that. I love this momentum of shooting because I come from this huge love of improvised music.”
His camera often moves around to create relationships between images rather than rely on edits. And a dark palette seems to permeate his work, whether he’s working in black and white or color. He does not come from any traditional school of filmmaking. Responding to a query about his influences, he states: “I came late to films, and my influences are just so diverse … I opened a DVD store 10 years ago to do that, watch all the films possible. But a few names, very diverse and important to me are Chris Marker, Peter Watkins, Guy Debord, Robert Gardner, Peter Mettler, Philippe Grandrieux, Antoine d’Agate, Vittorio de Seta and Peter Tscherkassky.”
He never thought of becoming a filmmaker, or that he would make a career of it. Instead, he had thoughts about the possibility of a filmmaker who existed without a base, who just adopted technologies and locations to keep working. He never thought he would become that filmmaker. “I’m just a complete outsider, and that’s good,” he says with a laugh. “I like that. I just wanted to try things my way, and so I’ve been travelling all those years.”
Though he has been credited for revitalizing the music video (check out this New York Times article), Moon does not want to be known as a music video director. He relates more with the genre of ethnographic film. “We are living in a very interesting moment, this kind of like big truth of the anthropological studies and so on,” he says. “I think we are regaining like a certain in-between, a sort of like interesting balance from an ethnographic type of cinema and a much more poetic, experimental approach, and there’s a few filmmakers exploring those things right now, and that’s really, really exciting.”
The extremely opinionated Moon is curious to explore these ethnographic films, which also include Manakamana and the Oscar-nominated and IndieEthos-championed The Act of Killing. However, though Leviathan has been celebrated on IndieEthos and Film Comment, to Moon, Leviathan is a poor example of execution. “I really, really don’t like this film at all,” he reveals. “It’s very poor actually, in terms of experimental research and everything. I don’t like the images. I hate the sounds. I think the mix is terrible … I mean the idea is interesting, but that’s all. I’m very surprised, actually, it’s had a lot of success for what it is. A lot of people have been talking about it. I’m just wondering if that’s really because of its complete lack of such cinema, that such a film, which is completely outrageous, in my opinion, in terms of its research, in terms of experimenting with tools. There is so much more. But that it has such success, maybe it shows there is definitely not much there that is interesting to see.”
Moving one to his talents, he has had many years and examples to fine tune his skills. Making these films is like an addiction for Moon, and there’s no sign of him slowing down. “It’s a sickness,” he admits. “I did 60 films last year, which are not even only short films. There are a few feature-length films, and that’s just ridiculous, completely ridiculous. I’m trying to do this all, and I have to work all the time on those edits and prepare my next project in Brazil, but it’s too much. That’s why I always want to slow down. I think that technology in a sense, obviously, offers you that easiness of work … It’s very easy to film, to record the sound, to edit, to make the phone calls before, to send the emails after. So you do everything yourself, and it can look really great. You don’t need a team or anything working with you these days, and that’s an incredible thing.”
He has made all his films free to view on his Vimeo page and calls it empowering to anyone else who might aspire to become a filmmaker outside the mainstream of the cinema scene. “It’s very, very powerful,” he declares. “We just have to question this, what it means really because I do not think that the film industry is very much excited about such news.” He pauses to laugh. “They are definitely reluctant about such terms, obviously,” he adds about the commercial film industry.
* * *
This is Part 2 of a 2-part interview. Read the first story here:
Filmmaker Vincent Moon talks about the influence of music and rootlessness in his craft, Part 1
Plus, a different article with a focus on his visit to Miami can be found at the Miami New Times art and culture blog Cultist, jump to that article through this headline:
Indie Filmmaker Vincent Moon To Host Retrospective, Seek “Richness of Miami”
The Vincent Moon retrospective and conversation takes place Thursday, July 24, 7 p.m. – 10 p.m. at The Screening Room, 2626 NW Second Ave., Miami. Free. Indie Film Club Miami has set up an intimate 2-day workshop with Moon on July 26 and 27. Visit www.film-gate.org for more information.
Filmmaker Vincent Moon talks about the influence of music and rootlessness in his craft, Part 1
July 23, 2014
Filmmaker Vincent Moon is a man without a home, and as a rootless traveler, he has shot brief but transcendent films that capture the essence of people in places like Peru, Russia and Malaysia, mostly featuring musicians. His filmography almost reaches 700 films— several almost feature-length— and there’s no sign of him stopping, as he seems to be only scratching at an essence that has drawn him to music and film. Having shot many famous bands like The Fleet Foxes, Phoenix and Yo La Tengo for the French on-line video channel La Blogothèque, Moon’s interest in music is actually beyond fame and celebrity. He is much more interested in how people commune with the music on a fundamental and elusive level.
During a phone conversation from Rio de Janeiro covering his many subjects, which also includes Sufis entranced in a musical chant and Peruvians slipping into song under the influence of Ayahuasca, Moon shares an incident that opened his mind to the power of music as a spiritual experience. “I think, like three or four years ago, something happened to me, and I ended up in a ritual in Cairo one night, very sacred, a very sacred ritual, and I knew this because of the way people were playing the music. I never expected that … I didn’t make any research or anything between music and spirituality, let’s say, or rhythms and trance, and when I saw this, it completely changed my way of thinking about this all, and since then I’ve been pursuing this quest of how people live with music.”
Moon brings up the book Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations Between Music and Possession by Gilbert Rouget. “It’s a very thick book about how tribes would use music to communicate with the spiritual, and there is not one answer to this,” he says.
He notes that as much as he tries to document a variety of musical experiences, not only are no two the same, from region to region and country to country, but they will infinitely vary once they are repeated without his camera present. His search to even try to document it all is impossible, and he has no pretense that he has the ability to create such a comprehensive survey even if he produced 700 million films. “This is not some archival project of any kind,” he says, “just a very localized experience. It happens there, at the specific moment, probably the next day it will not be the same. I do not try to say: This is how it is.”
Moon left Paris in 2008,but he’s not even sure of the exact date. “I think it was six years ago. I just went traveling. I just wanted to change my surroundings.” He has not had a fixed home since.
Recently the Indie Film Club in Miami, who are the people behind Filmgate Interactive, invited him to its home base. They have presented his work in the past and have set up a talk with the filmmaker as well as a two-day workshop for other filmmakers to spend a lengthy amount of time picking the brain of this prolific auteur. Miami may as well be Singapore to him and will also most likely present a musical opportunity for him to document the city. He notes that the only time he has visited Miami was as a child on his way to Disney World. “So that really doesn’t count,” he says.
As a world traveler, Moon has experience putting biased expectations aside and wants to remain open to the city. As far as what band or subject he may shoot for his project “Petites Planètes,” the output of which can be found on his Vimeo page, he remains open-minded. “If you don’t make any research in advance, you have no expectation,” he says. “That’s the key for me to make such films … So really when I go to a shoot, I only have like two or three ideas before but nothing else. I really don’t want to think about the final result, the length of whatever film and so on. We just make a film and see what happens, and then we are all surprised in the best way possible because we have no idea,” adds with a laugh.
You can read more about Moon in my article for Cultist, the arts and culture blog for the Miami New Times:
Also this interview continues in a second blog post, which covers Moon’s influences, his method and why he hates Leviathan. Read it here:
Filmmaker Vincent Moon talks about the influence of music and rootlessness in his craft, Part 2
The Vincent Moon retrospective and conversation takes place Thursday, July 24, 7 p.m. – 10 p.m. at The Screening Room, 2626 NW Second Ave., Miami. Free. Indie Film Club Miami has set up an intimate 2-day workshop with Moon on July 26 and 27. Visit www.film-gate.org for more information.
Independent Ethos 