Sound Unseen 2009

Two letters...M and J!

A kaleidoscopic journey into the parallel musical universe of cult music festival All Tomorrow's Parties. This is a DIY concert film set around the cult music festival All Tomorrow’s Parties. Made from Super8, camcorder and mobile phone footage contributed by filmmakers, fans and musicians over the festival’s recent history, it captures the uncompromising spirit of a parallel music universe. Featuring: Belle And Sebastian / Grizzly Bear / Sonic Youth / Battles / Portishead / Daniel Johnston / Grinderman / Lightning Bolt / David Cross / Animal Collective / The Boredoms / Les Savy Fav / Mogwai / Octopus Project / Slint / The Dirty Three / the Yeah Yeah Yeahs / the Gossip / GZA / Roscoe Mitchell / Seasick Steve / Iggy and the Stooges / A Hawk and a Hacksaw / Fuck Buttons / Micah P Hinson / Two Gallants / Mars Volta / Akron/Family / Jah Shaka / Saul Williams / Shellac / Patti Smith / John Cooper Clark Critics Quotes: “Visually dazzling…pure catnip for anyone who has Pitchfork.com bookmarked.” - Variety “Stunning…A truly immersing experience, All Tomorrow’s Parties runs the gamut from raucous energy to magisterial grace…This remarkable film encapsulates and sculpts the ecstatic abandon of shared musical experience into a thing of opulent brilliance. All Tomorrow’s Parties is a film to fall in love with.” - SXSW Festival

Director Cory McAbee Present!Brand New 35 MM Print! Space travel has become a dirty way of life dominated by derelicts, grease monkeys, and hard-boiled interplanetary traders such as Samuel Curtis. Written, directed, and starring Cory McAbee with the legendary cult band The Billy Nayer Show, this sci-fi, musical-western uses flinty black and white photography, rugged Lo-Fi sets and the spirit of the final frontier. We follow Curtis on his Homeric journey to provide the all-female planet of Venus with a suitable male, while pursued by an enigmatic killer, Professor Hess. The film features music by The Billy Nayer Show and some of the most original rock n’ roll scenes ever committed to film. Critic’s Quotes: “Imagine a long laurel & hardy skit directed by Salvador Dali. ”– Entertainment Weekly “More original than almost anything you’ve seen this millennium. ” – Sundance Film Festival “Surprising and Hilarious! May be the most wonderfully strange film experience you have this year. ” – Elle Magazine

Based on the autobiography of iconic American folk singer Woody Guthrie who wrote "This Land Is Your Land" director Hal Ashby’s, Bound for Glory , is still one of the best musical bio-pics of any generation. Woody (Carradine), is a dust bowl populist who hops from train to train, city to town, meeting the American people who would come to form the heart of so many of his best songs. Eventually, Guthrie's protest music earned him a following through the radio and he rode the rails to New York to find a larger audience. Sound Unseen is proud to present, Bound for Glory , not only as a tribute to Carradine, who won Best Actor from the National Board of Review in 1976, but as a testament to the power of Guthrie’s music, which is still relevant today. Bound for Glory was nominated for six Academy Awards including: Best Picture and won two Oscars for Best Cinematography (Haskell Wexler) and Best Music, Original Song Score and Its Adaptation or Best Adaptation Score. Critic’s Quotes: “ Bound for Glory is outstanding biographical cinema, not only of Woody Guthrie but also of the 1930’s Depression era which served to disillusion, inspire and radicalize him and millions of other Americans. ” -Variety “ 4 out of 4 stars. There are images in Hal Ashby’s “Bound for Glory” so striking or so beautiful I doubt I’ll ever forget them. It is one of the best-looking films ever made, in its photography, in its use of locations and in its recreation of the America that Woody Guthrie discovered. ” – Roger Ebert

FREE SCREENING! at The Walker Art Center! tickets available at the Bazinet Garden Lobby desk from 6 pm Died Young, Stayed Pretty is a candid look at the underground poster culture in North America. This unique documentary examines the creative spirit that drives these indie graphic artists. They pick through the dregs of America’s schizophrenic culture and piece them back together. What you end up with is a caricature of the black and bloated heart that pulses greed through the US economy. The artists push further into the pulp to grab the attention of passersby, plastering art that’s both vulgar and intensely visceral onto the gnarled surfaces of the urban landscape. The film gives us intimate look at some of the giants of this modern subculture. Outside of their own circle, they’re virtually unknown. But within their ranks they make up an army of bareknuckle brawlers, publicly arguing the aesthetic merits of octopus imagery and hairy 70s porn stars. They’ve created their own visual language for describing the spotty underbelly of western civilization and they're not shy about throwing it in the face of polite society. Along the way, they manage to create posters that are strikingly obscene, unflinchingly blasphemous and often quite beautiful. Yaghoobian shows these artists for what they are: the vivisectionists of America’s morbidly obese consumer culture.

Director Ondi TImoner Present! DIG! screened at the 2005 Sound Unseen and won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. One of the best rock documentaries of the decade DIG! , comes back for a special repertory screening. Seven years in the making and culled from 2000 hours of footage, DIG! plunges into the underbelly of rock ‘n’ roll, unearthing an incredible true story of success and self-destruction. Anton Newcombe, of the Brian Jonestown Massacre and Courtney Taylor of the Dandy Warhols, front men for each band respectively, are star-crossed friends and bitter rivals. DIG! is the story of their loves and obsessions, gigs and recordings, arrests and death threats, uppers and downers, and the delicate balance between art and business. Variety & Minnpost.com Film Critic, Rob Nelson, will be on hand to moderate a Q & A following the screening. Don’t Forget : Ondi Timoner will be receiving a special award from Sound Unseen for her creativity and excellence in Documentary Filmmaking on closing night before the MN Premiere of her latest Sundance award-winning documentary, We Live in Public .

Director Jim Granato Present! Winner of Best Documentary at this year’s San Francisco Int’l Film Festival D-Tour follows Pat Spurgeon, the drummer for indie rock band Rogue Wave and how he was placed on dialysis for a failing kidney. Pat’s been on a six-year waiting list for organ replacement and instead of not quitting the band, Rogue Wave goes out on tour, deemed the “Dialysis Tour”, which becomes even more challenging in finding a viable match, for a new kidney while out on the road. Filmed over three years, and compiling more than 80 hours of footage, D-Tour , also addresses issues with the U.S. health care system, the lack of affordable insurance, the importance of organ donation and the hectic life of an indie musical. D-Tour features live performances from Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie), John Vanderslice, Nada Surf, and of course, Rogue Wave.

Director Don McGlynn Present! A Minnesota Native, prize winning Producer/Director Don McGlynn ( The Howlin’ Wolf Story, Louis Prima: The Wildest, Art Pepper: Notes from a Jazz Survivor, Dexter Gordon: More Than You Know, The Mills Brothers Story ) has previously made many music biographies. Normally, he was an invisible presence, but in this case, he has opted to be the narrator. And he sometimes interacts with his longtime friend Ed Thigpen, from behind the camera.

Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench is about the often uneasy but always beautiful relationship between music and love. It tells the story of a young Boston jazz musician who drifts from affair to affair, his trumpet the only constant in his life. He makes a promising connection with an aimless introvert named Madeline, who immediately takes to his music. Their relationship is cut short, however, when Guy leaves her for another, more outgoing love interest. The two separated lovers slowly wind their way back into each other’s lives, through a series of romances and near-romances punctuated by song. A full-fledged musical that recasts the MGM tradition in a gritty, near-documentary style, Guy and Madeline stars Jason Palmer, recently named by Down Beat Magazine one of the top twenty-five “Trumpeters for the Future,” and features all original music composed by Justin Hurwitz and recorded by the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra. The film was shot on black-and-white 16mm and also features Desiree Garcia, Sandha Khin, Andre Hayward (trombonist with Betty Carter, the Dave Holland Big Band, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra), and Kelly Kaleta (cast member of Imagine Tap).