Mar 1, 2011
Artist Development
The 54th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 21-May 5) announces an annual programming highlight and audience favorite, the presentation of a film accompanied by live performance of an original score by a contemporary music artist. This year Tindersticks, the groundbreaking British chamber rock band known for its distinctive orchestral sound and the baritone of lead vocalist Stuart Staples, will perform works from the scores that they have created for six films of French director Claire Denis at the historic Castro Theatre on Monday, May 2 at 8:30 pm.
For the past 15 years, world-renowned French filmmaker Claire Denis and composer Stuart Staples have engaged in an inspired and fruitful collaboration, pushing the boundaries of their creative fields to produce artistic experiences of profound and charmed beauty. As a hybridized highlight of this year’s Festival, the band will accompany a meticulously prepared 70-minute montage of scenes from six Denis films for which Staples and his bandmates have composed original soundtracks. Strikingly sensual and alternately meditative (train journeys, dreams of horses) and shocking (flesh-eating amour fou in Paris), clips from Nénette et Boni (SFIFF 1997), Trouble Every Day (2001), Vendredi Soir (Friday Night SFIFF 2003, music by former band member Dickon Hinchliffe), The Intruder (SFIFF 2005), 35 Shots of Rum (SFIFF 2009) and White Material (featuring Isabelle Huppert, SFIFF 2010) have been prepared by technicians who scoured archives to collect the films’ original elements and assemble prints from which the musical scores have been stripped. Viewed-and heard-anew, Denis’s singular images will soar as the band’s live music envelopes the appropriately majestic Castro Theatre. For this special event, Staples will be joined by regular Tindersticks members David Boulter, Neil Fraser, Dan McKinna and Earl Harvin, and they will be augmented by additional musicians on strings and brass. The full ensemble will do dramatic justice to Denis’s visionary cinema through gorgeously dark-hued music that blends subtle guitar strumming and delicate violin arpeggios with otherworldly percussion and atmospheric washes of symphonic color over which Staples croons in his inimitable baritone. “Working with Claire makes us shift our vision,” Staples has said. “We come out the other end of it and we always feel kind of changed.”
“The combination of Stuart Staples and Claire Denis is practically alchemical,” said Festival programmer Sean Uyehara. “In addition to being fantastic artists, they both are well-known for their meticulousness in developing their respective works. The care that has gone into this program is beyond compare. We are honored to present this music and film concert to the public.”
Born in Paris and raised in French West Africa, Claire Denis has created a sensual, empathetic body of work that is as intellectually satisfying as it is emotionally immediate. Her cinema explores the experience of outsiders in French society while astutely documenting the legacy of colonialism. Her films, in addition to those listed above, include Chocolat (1988), I Can’t Sleep (SFIFF 1995) and Beau Travail (SFIFF 2000) among others.
Tindersticks was founded in 1991 and has released eight critically adored studio albums including Curtains, Simple Pleasure and Falling Down a Mountain. Now two decades into its enduring musical journey, the band continues to tour worldwide and collaborate with Claire Denis.
The show will coincide with the release of a special edition boxed set of the soundtracks, Claire Denis Film Scores 1996-2009, which will be released worldwide by Constellation Records.
Tickets are $25 for San Francisco Film Society members and $30 for the general public. For tickets and information visit sffs.org/tickets. Box office opens March 1 for members and March 30 for the general public.
In recent years the San Francisco Film Society has presented these commissioned works to premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with Stephin Merritt; The Lost World with Dengue Fever; The Golemwith Black Francis; The Phantom Carriage with Jonathan Richman; Street Angel with American Music Club; Sunrise with Lambchop; A Page of Madness with Superchunk; and Jean Painlevé: The Sounds of Science with Yo La Tengo.
For photos and press materials visit sffs.org/pressdownloads.
54th San Francisco International Film Festival
The 54th San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 21-May 5 at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, the Castro Theatre, New People and SFMOMA in San Francisco and the Pacific Film Archive Theater in Berkeley. Held each spring for 15 days, the International is an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation in the country’s most beautiful city, featuring 15 juried awards, 200 films and live events with upwards of 100 participating filmmakers and diverse audiences of 75,000+ people.