The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) officially launched last night, complete with a fine selection of music documentaries on bands like The Stone Roses, The Sunnyboys, and the Cosmic Psychos, whose feature length rockumentary is getting screened nationally.
But it’s not just on the silver screens of Melbourne that you can catch some excellent music documentaries, with some benevolent filmmakers offering up two bite-sized features online. The first, a 10th Anniversary retrospective on The Postal Service and a second looking at the cultural impact of the annual celebration of independent music retailers, Record Store Day.
This year marks a decade since The Postal Service – the side-project from Death Cab For Cutie’s Benjamin Gibbard and Dntel’s Jimmy Tamborello – marked the release of their one-and-only album, 2003′s Give Up; Sub Pop’s second-biggest selling album, behind Nirvana’s Bleach, selling over 1 million copies and earning it Platinum status.
To celebrate, the duo reformed for a massive international reunion tour and re-issued the album in a deluxe 10th Anniversary reissue. Capturing the reunion trail was director Justin Mitchell for the Creators Project – a partnership between Vice and Intel – and the resulting 14 minute doco, Some Idealistic Future, (named after a lyric from the track ‘Nothing Better’), as reported by Pitchfork.
Featuring interviews and behind the scenes footage with the band at a recent show, the doco contains many fan-happy highlights including Ben Gibbard discussing “reclaiming” the Postal Service songs on the tour, Jimmy Tamborello showing off the equipment used on the album, and close band (and dancing ) mate Jenny Lewis (of Rilo Kiley) suggesting they ‘pull a Kanye/Jay Z’ and perform ‘Such Great Heights’ on a live loop.
This year’s Record Store Day, held back in April, celebrated the importance of independent record stores with unique gigs, specials, and events, while punters turned out in their droves to support grassroots retailers and snap up some of the huge list of exclusive releases on offer (many of which wound up on eBay thanks to touters).
Statistics from both the US and UK demonstrated that the annual Record Store Day was not only successful, but record breaking driving huge sales of vinyl as music lovers swept stores.
Commissioned by UK organisers of the annual event, together with the Entertainment Retailers Association, the Record Store Day Film was shot live on location at stores around the UK on Record Store Day 2013. The Greatcoat Films production team and director Michael Legg travelled to East London, Manchester, Belfast, and other locations to chat to avid punters headed to iconic record stores like Rough Trade.
Also be on the look out for cameos from musicians and Record Store Day advocates, Frank Turner, Billy Bragg, and The Modfather himself, Paul Weller.
In related news, Björk has collaborated with iconic documentarian David Attenborough on a documentary exploring the relationship between music, art, technology, and the environment simply called When Bjork Met Attenborough: The Nature of Music, as Consequence Of Sound reports.
Produced by Pulse Films, the team that put together the LCD Soundsystem concert film Shut Up And Play The Hits, the Nature of Music showcases the “remarkable story of how and why music has evolved, our unique relationship with it, and how technology might transform the way we engage with it in the future.”
Attenborough and the Icelandic songstress have collaborated before, most notably on Björk’s app for 2011 album Biophilia, which featured narration from the the unofficial face and voice of nature docos, while the score for The Nature Of Music features many of the instruments used for Biophilia, including the “pendulum-harp, Sharpsicord, and Gameleste.”
When Bjork Met Attenborough: The Nature of Music premiered on UK’s Channel 4 last Saturday 27th July, as part of its Mad4Music series, with a teaser trailer for the film turning up online. The full 47 minute documentary (narrated by actress Tilda Swinton) is available for streaming at Channel 4’s website for UK residents (and for those with a little bit of a modification to their ISP: give it a Google).
