combination of a rock concert and a theatre show. What are those Christmas things called? Pantos! It’s sort of like a punk panto.’ Thomas describes the piece as a ‘brutal satire,’ that deals with ‘the corruption of power and nastiness of the do-gooder’. With only limited scope for GFF audiences to see it, are there any plans to film the piece and show it later?
‘To me a film of a performance is
basically pornography,’
to what a
Thomas argues. ‘It’s nasty – it’s antithetical live performance is. The mass of strength and power of a live performance is that it happens in the moment, and it’s gone.’ comment seems counter-productive. If film is a poor, perverse reflection of an experience, stripped of its meaning, should the filmmakers all pack their bags and head home?
Thomas’
‘I don’t agree with it but I think it’s a remarkable statement,’ responds filmmaker Jane Pollard. Working with her husband
Iain Forsyth, Pollard has made her name restaging classic concerts in order to capture grainy, bootleg- style versions of the action. Their project is to preserve the integrity of a performance by capturing rawer, more typical fan footage. However Pollard acknowledges there are still pitfalls. ‘As the maker or the documenter of something you have no way of prepping the audience in how to read what they’re seeing. You can’t be there, and even if you were, and ‘TO ME A FILM OF A PERFORMANCE IS BASICALLY PORNOGRAPHY’
CW from bottom left: Zombie Zombie; Nick Cave; Pere Ubu; Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard
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N C K C A V E
I
M A G E :
P O L L Y B O R L A N D
Glasgow Film Festival 2010 you were saying, “look it’s only from these angles, and what you’re not seeing is this, and remember that this was going on”, people probably wouldn’t believe you.’
this
kind
approach Neatly sidestepping this problem, their film The Good Son, which premieres at the festival, takes an innovative to documenting the creation, and reception of an album: Nick Cave and The Bad Seed’s The Good Son. ‘We create this multi-headed monologue, of schizophrenic speech about the record . . . it never cuts to any other footage. It’s always people’s head and shoulders, framed identically so that their eyes are in the same place in the shot, so the heads are able to almost morph, without any digital effect, into one another. And then we start editing it so that it makes sense as a whole, single piece.’
than
‘There’s no better way to make an emotive or immediate connection to have somebody’s head talking to you,’ she the conversations that you remember – when somebody tells you a story and you can see in the inflection of their face . . . just how much something means to them.’ ‘They’re
adds.
It’s a strange but fitting idea, that the best summation of the power of music is the words and feelings that surround a song or album, evoking the spirit of its live appeal without dirtying the intimacy of the audience/performer connection with a camera. Zombie Zombie, Mono, Thu 18 Feb, 8pm; Pere Ubu, Classic Grand, Sat 20 Feb, 8pm; The Good Son, GFT, Mon 22 Feb, 7pm.
administration. One of the best films you will see at this or any festival. Tramway, 7pm, Fri 26 Feb. BEST OF BRITISH Kandahar Break
around him. GFT, 6.15pm, Sat 27 Feb. EUROPEAN The Girl on the Train
FRIGHTFEST A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin
GREAT SCOTS Gregory’s Girl: 30th Anniversary School Reunion
FASHION/ART/FILM Punishment Park Peter Watkins’ remarkable 1971 pseudo documentary, or ‘figurative depiction in a documentary style’ examines a 48 hour period in the tribunal halls and parks of imaginary anti insurrection parks in California during the Nixon
Afghanistan set British thriller about a British engineer’s awakening to the conflict Remastered and restored print of Lucio Fulci’s terrific trippy 1971 sex horror. GFT, 2pm, Sat 27 Feb.
Racism and suburban snobbery in modern day France essayed by French filmmaker Andre Techine. Atarring Catherine Deneuve. Cineworld Renfrew Street, 8.30pm, Sat 27 Feb and 1.30pm, Sun 28 Feb. Scottish comedy reemerges for its 30th anniversary. Cast and crew will attend the screening, dedicated to late producer Clive Parsons. GFT, 3.30pm, Sun 28 Feb.
18 Feb–4 Mar 2010 THE LIST 27