Check it out! SPIN Earth picks the top 10 music docs of 2009, and EyeSteelFilm’s Omar Majeed and Brett Gaylor’s flicks come in at the top. Gnarly, dudes!
SPIN Earth : North America : BEST OF 2009: Top Ten Music Documentaries by lazarus.
Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam
Click to see trailer
Are Punk and Islam a match made in heaven? It seems outrageous, but punk is in fact alive and well in many Islamic countries across the world, and it’s fueled by Michael Mohammed Knight’s seminal book “The Taqwacore”, a fictional manual for the movement. Islamic punk is passionate, political, all embracing, and highly controversial in their native lands. Watch these documented bands rail against society with guitars, amps and a never-say-die attitude.
RIP: A Remix Manifesto
Click to see trailer
Musical piracy is one of the biggest controversies of our age. As soon as Napster was born, piracy inspired countless lawsuits and impassioned social dialogue on what it means to be a consumer, but most importantly created some of the most exciting, riveting music of the past decade. RiP: A Remix Manifesto fascinatingly explores what artists are creating today by means of illegal downloading, remixing and sampling. The film is centered on Gregg Gillis’ (Girl Talk) mashup techniques that have incited so much debate in the past few years, and advocates those who want to take further by making something new out of something old.
Fokofpolisiekar
Click to see trailer
Fokofpolisiekar is a trailblazing South African punk band who play their brand of punk music at all costs, singing and commenting on one of the most complex and precarious political climates in the world. Their music enrages most but empowers many with its passionate questioning of society. Fly on the Wall tries to tell the band’s unique story that transformed and liberated a generation of young South Africans.
Beijing Punk
Click to see trailer
China’s government rules with an iron fist, but the Beijing punks don’t give a hoot. They wear spikes and play their music as hard and loud as possible causing the rest of society to view them as cannibals and sex fiends. Filmmaker Shaun Jefford has uncovered a fiery group of renegades who are constantly risking their lives to play the music they love in Communist China.
Workingmen’s Blues
Click to see trailer
Set in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Workingmen’s Blues documents the journey of unknown bands and their dreams of making it big as rock stars and navigating the business side of music. Craig Carpenter’s film spouts insight from industry insiders who have worked at all levels of the business. The film showcases two bands, Heavy Hand and Sinclair, who are living through the trials and tribulations of rising to the top in this new democratic, Myspace-driven era of music.
I Need That Record!
Click to see trailer
Record stores may be dying off, but fanatic record collectors are still everywhere. What happens when every last indie record store dies at the hands of big-box retailers during the death knell of the analog age? Indie music titans like Thurston Moore, Ian Mackaye and Mike Watt get sentimental over the cannibalistic state of the record industry, and the disappearance of every young music freak’s favorite past time of browsing through the racks and record hunting.
I Need That Record! chronicles the last days of the independently owned record store.
Blind Pilot’s Bicycle Tour
Click to see trailer
Blind Pilot is a band with a different vision than most. This documentary follows the eclectic, indie rock duo’s three-month bike fueled tour from Bellingham, Washington to San Diego, California in 2008. Running on “human power”, Blind PilotBlind Pilot‘s Israel Nebeker and Ryan Dobrowski play shows along the way never knowing where they’re going to sleep, but that doesn’t stop them from embracing life on the highway. This band’s desire to do something new and different is as infectious as their music.
One Kansas City Room, 317,000+ Records
Click to see trailer
When the floor beneath the Marr Sound Archives in Kansas City’s Miller Nichols Library started to crack under the weight of its nearly 1 million vinyl records, they moved to the ground floor to accommodate their ever-growing assemblage, which is expanding thanks to donors who unload their personal libraries every year. This massive archive attempts to preserve the collective human experience through their meticulously-assembled collection, and this film highlights the men and women who curate this legendary room of sound.
Three Chords, Four Countries, One Revolution: Punk in Africa
Click to see trailer
The evolution of punk in Africa mirrors the continent’s tumultuous political and social history. Early punk was called “the soundtrack to a revolution,” and as whites and blacks clashed in the streets, they were also coming together to form punk bands and speak out against oppression and violence. Today, countries like South Africa and Kenya maintain healthy punk culture, which also contains traces of reggae, ska, dub and traditional music, as a cutting-edge source for the liberation of its people.
Los Aldeanos
Click here for trailer
Los Aldeanos is a rap duo based in Havana, Cuba who strive to make music independently, without any help from labels. Their music is distributed through their friends and word of mouth on the streets for free or a small fee. Their most recent album, which was recorded in under a month, got its inspiration from their own experiences on the streets of Havana, and was made for the people of Cuba. Their music is truly some of the most organic out there in the world, and Los Aldeanos make no apologies to anyone for what they create.
New York Times: defines “Taqwacore”:
Taqwacore – Schott’s Vocab Blog – NYTimes.com.
Islamic punk – a portmanteau of “taqwa” (Arabic for “piety”) and “core” (as in “hardcore” punk).
Writing in Time, Carla Power reported on a new documentary that showcases the bands at the forefront of North America’s Islamic punk scene:
These young punks are taking on every establishment going: Muslim, American and Muslim American. “In this so-called war of civilizations, we’re giving the finger to both sides,” says the godfather of the Muslim punk movement, Michael Muhammad Knight, in Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam, a new documentary by Pakistani-Canadian director Omar Majeed. As a mashup of piety and politics, hard-core music and anarchy, the Muslim punk movement makes the Sex Pistols look like Fleetwood Mac.
According to Power, Knight coined taqwacore in his 2002 novel, “The Taqwacores”:
He then received an e-mail from a 16-year-old Texan Muslim, Kourosh Poursalehi, who was in a band called Vote Hezbollah, asking how he could get in touch with the mohawked Sufis, skater punks, burqa-wearing riot grrrls and skinhead Shi’ites in the book. When Knight told him it was fiction, Poursalehi responded, “Well, then I’ll make it real.”
The taqwacore scene has since spawned a variety of bands (including The Kominas and Secret Trial Five), as well as two films: Majeed’s documentary and an upcoming feature.
Not surprisingly, Knight has come in for a good deal of criticism since writing his novel. As Lydia Crafts reported for NPR in July 2009:
The man who helped start all of this — Michael Muhammad Knight — has himself been singled out by Muslims and non-Muslims for his views on Islam.
“I’ve gotten that from all kinds of people,” Knight says. “I’ve gotten that from neo-conservative people on their blogs who say, ‘Oh this is awesome, this guy’s challenging Islam. This guy’s hating Islam — he’s trying to tear down all that.’ And I’m not trying to tear down Islam. I’m trying to make Islam possible in my life.”
[Some sources translate taqwa as “higher consciousness” or “God consciousness.”)
“EyeSteelFilm’s The Last Train Home is on a roll.
The China-shot documentary — already a winner at the Whistler and IDFA film festivals — has generated over $17,500 on two screens at Montreal’s AMC Forum and Cinema Parallel theaters, where it opened on Nov. 20 via its Montreal-based producer/distributor.
EyeSteelFilm (Up the Yangtze) released the doc itself in Quebec, while an English Canada release is planned for March through Kinosmith. It follows a Chinese family’s challenge to stay together amid the country’s booming economy which spurs factory migration.
The film, directed by Lixin Fan, was also recently selected to play in competition at Sundance.
Last Train currently sits in second place on the list of domestic titles for the week of Nov. 27 to Dec. 3, just behind E1 Entertainment’s La Donation — named this week as one of Canada’s Top Ten films of 2009. The French-language drama from Quebec auteur Bernard Émond has earned $330,000 since its release on Nov. 6.
Meanwhile, E1′s Vancouver-shot New Moon remains the top film in Canada for the third week in a row, with a total box office of $20 million. In the U.S., the teen vampire sequel was knocked from the number one spot by sports drama The Blind Side over the weekend. Both titles came out on Nov. 20. New Moon‘s domestic total is US$255 million, according to Variety.”
http://www.playbackonline.ca/articles/daily/20091207/train.html
Congrats to POV, the outstanding documentary series by American documentary on PBS: they just won the prestigious IDA award for continuing series. The episodes submitted for the award were our very own Up the Yangtze and James Moll’s Inheritance.
[this report just in after the first public screenings in China of Last Train Home]
I landed in Guangzhou around midnight, in order to attend the GZDOC festival and meet up with the Zhangs (the husband and wife who are in Last Train Home). I took a taxi went down to meet them, and we had dinner together at a nearby restaurant. The Zhangs are still the same, but they both look very tired. The mom has come back to the factory again a few months back because the dad can’t make enough money to sustain them. The parents don’t know exactly where their daughter Qin is these days. Qin went back to the village for her little brother’s birthday in October. She left again, letting her grandmother know that she will be working in a copy store Wuhan city, although I’m not sure if that’s true or not. The mom had spent several month living back in their home village, but has returned to Guangzhou to work in the factory with her husband. A vicious cycle. However, one nice thing the mom can’t wait to share with us is that Yang (little brother) ranked 1st in his class this year.
The screenings at GZDOC went well. We had five public screenings in cinemas in downtown and in universities. Most of our audience is made up of university students. We have very good feedback from the young Chinese crowd. They all loved the film. One student told me after the film that he was crying the whole movie since he came from countryside, and he knows exactly what the family has been through. The Chinese have similar questions as what I have from the western audiences. First they are all very concerned about where is Qin now and how is the family, then they will go on ask about the logistics of filming and how did we treated the relationship with the subjects. They also liked the intimacy between the family and the crew. One student asked if the film crew triggered the tension and altered Qin’s life. My answer is as a filmmaker I would say we have a minor indirect effect on what the subject will do but this is way less than having any real impact on affecting how they want to act in life. So the answer is NO, I don’t think we changed their life cause per se.
I gave a panel talk with Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Ruby Yang (The Blood of YingZhou) and another renowned Chinese filmmaker Zhang YiQing. We talked about “China In A Foreign Lens”. We discussed interesting differences between how the west perceives China and how Chinese react to these perceptions. One point being raised by a political professor also at the panel is that one film is just a slice of history, we should always put our perception into a international and historical context to be self-reflected and examined.
A few years back when I showed To Live Is Better Than To Die (a film about China’s AIDS problem) to my friends, the question that every Chinese person asks: is this a film for or against China? I’m very happy that there are only a few people who asked me this question this time, and they asked me only when I was off stage. I will report more as the release continues.
