BOOM FOR REAL: ART + MUSIC DOCs
BOOM FOR REAL: a term used by Jean-Michel Basquiat, meaning; he would take all the things in his world that inspire him, big or small, interpret them through his own vision and make them explode onto the canvas equally for us to look at and interpret.
We’ve hand-selected our favourite art and music documentaries— from pioneering women in electronic music and abstract art, to enfant terrible’s of the 80s New York art-scene and 70s London punk-scene— browse through our selection of groundbreaking artists on the celluloid screen.
Sisters With Transistors
DIR. Lisa Rovner
Sisters With Transistors is the remarkable untold story of electronic music’s female pioneers, composers who embraced machines and their liberating technologies to utterly transform how we produce and listen to music today. The film maps a new history of electronic music through the visionary women whose radical experimentations with machines redefined the boundaries of music.
Boom for real: Jean-Michel Basquiat
Dir. Sara Driver
Sara Driver’s exploration of the pre-fame years of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, offers a window into his life and the City of New York, 1978-81, illustrating how the city, the times and the people around him informed the artist he became and shaped his vision.
Keyboard Fantasies
DIR. posy dixon
Keyboard Fantasies tells the time-travelling tale of mystical musician and vocalist, Beverly-Glenn Copeland, as the present finally catches up with him and he embarks on his first international tour at the age of 74. Capturing five decades of relentless musical output and shifting manifestations of gender and sexual identity, set against a backdrop of profound social change, the film celebrates the unpredictable rhythms of life.
Beyond the visible: Hilma af klint
Dir. helena dyrschka
Hilma af Klint was an abstract artist before the term existed, a visionary, trailblazing figure who, inspired by spiritualism, modern science, and the riches of the natural world around her, began in 1906 to reel out a series of huge, colourful, sensual, strange works without precedent in painting. Her work inspired some most celebrated contemporary artists like Josef Albers, Paul Klee, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Mondrian, Kandinsky…
Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché
Dir. Celeste Bell + Paul Sng
Poly Styrene was the first woman of colour in the UK to front a successful rock band. She introduced the world to a new sound of rebellion, using her unconventional voice to sing about identity, consumerism, postmodernism, and everything she saw unfolding in late 1970s Britain, with a rare prescience.
A-Ha: The Movie
Dir. Thomas Robsahm
a-ha’s hit Take On Me is still one of the most played songs of the last millennium. This documentary follows the band over a period of four years, sharing the full story of how three young men followed their impossible dream of making it big. When Take On Me reached number 1 on Billboard in the US in 1985 that dream came true. The film closely portrays the challenging creative and personal dynamics of a group of three strong individuals.
An Accidental Studio
Dir. Kim Legatt, Bill Jones, Ben Timlett
An Accidental Studio charts the early years of HandMade Films as seen through the eyes of the filmmakers, key personnel and the man who started it all - former Beatle George Harrison. With unreleased archive interviews and footage with Harrison, exclusive interviews with Sir Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam, Richard E. Grant, Neil Jordan, and unseen interviews with Bob Hoskins, this documentary explores HandMade’s baptism by fire, the risks it took in producing uniquely crafted intelligent films and the stories that grew up around it.
Show Me The Picture: JIm Marshall
Dir. Alfred George Bailey
An outsider with attitude, Show Me The Picture: The Story of Jim Marshall chronicles the infamous photographer’s life behind and outside the camera. A child of immigrants and a life battling inner demons, Jim fought his way to become one of the most trusted mavericks behind a lens throughout 60’s history. A passion for music led him to capture some of the most iconic figures in music history from Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, to the infamous image of Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar.
Be Natural: Alice Buy-Blaché
dir. Pamela B.Green
When Alice Guy-Blaché completed her first film in 1896 Paris, she was not only the first female filmmaker, but one of the first directors ever to make a narrative film. In Be Natural, Pamela B. Green acts as a detective, revealing the real story of Guy-Blaché and highlighting her pioneering contributions to the birth of cinema and her acclaim as a creative force and entrepreneur in the earliest years of movie-making.
Carmine Street Guitars
dir. Ron Mann
At the heart of Greenwich Village, New York, amidst the newly developed luxury restaurants and boutique clothing stores, sits Carmine Street Guitars; a sacred destination for the world’s most notorious guitar players and musicians. In the humble woodworks of Carmine Street Guitars, owner Rick Kelly and his young apprentice Cindy Hulej, build custom handcrafted guitars out of reclaimed wood from old hotels, bars, churches and other local buildings. At the core of their physical craft lies New York’s vibrant cultural history— embraced by the likes of Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Patti Smith and Jim Jarmusch since the store’s inception in 1970 bohemia New York.
White Riot
Dir. Rubika Shah
Rubika Shah’s award-winning and energising film charts a vital national protest movement. Rock Against Racism (RAR) was formed in 1976, prompted by ‘music’s biggest colonialist’ Eric Clapton and his support of racist MP Enoch Powell.
White Riot blends fresh interviews with queasy archive footage to recreate a hostile environment of anti-immigrant hysteria and National Front marches. As neo-Nazis recruited the nation’s youth, RAR’s multicultural punk and reggae gigs provided rallying points for resistance. As co-founder Red Saunders explains: ‘We peeled away the Union Jack to reveal the swastika’.
SHOOTING THE MAFIA
Dir. Kim Longinotto
In the streets of Sicily, beautiful, gutsy Letizia Battaglia pointed her camera straight into the heart of the Mafia that surrounded her and began to shoot. The striking, life-threatening photos she took documenting the rule of the Cosa Nostra define her career.
SHOOTING THE MAFIA weaves together Battaglia’s striking black-and-white photographs, rare archival footage, classic Italian films, and the now 84-year-old’s own memories, to paint a portrait of a remarkable woman whose whose bravery and defiance helped expose the Mafia’s brutal crimes.