Thursday 26 March 2015

Sound & Vision @ GFT

‘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





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