Mar 7, 2017
Festival
San Francisco, CA — The San Francisco Film Society today announced two additional programs in the popular Live & Onstage section of the 60th San Francisco International Film Festival: Asian Dub Foundation Live Score of George Lucas’s THX 1138 and The Man with a Movie Camera with DeVotchKa. Continuing the Festival’s tradition of uniting vital contemporary musicians with classic films, Asian Dub Foundation will electrify George Lucas’s stark 1971 authoritarian odyssey with their signature cross-genre sound live at the Castro Theatre on Tuesday, April 11, at 8:00 pm. DeVotchKa will harmonize their Russian-inspired rhythms and stylistic diversity with Dziga Vertov’s immensely influential 1929 film at the Castro Theatre on Thursday, April 13, at 8:00 pm.
“It has been wonderful to take the opportunity of our 60th Anniversary to present an expanded slate of Music & Film selections,” said SF Film Society Director of Programming Rachel Rosen. “Each of these groups brings a unique approach and musical style to their chosen film, and these programs promise to be among the most dynamic and exciting Festival offerings this year.”
With their trademark fusion of punk rock, electronic beats, reggae, bhangra, and hip-hop, the multicultural Asian Dub Foundation is one of the most musically inventive bands on the scene. Their score for THX 1138 incorporates almost all of the film’s original distinctive soundtrack—notable for its use of audio sampling from well-known electronic music artists—adding dynamic dimension with live flute, guitar, bass, and percussion. Their current line-up features founding guitarist Steve Savale, Dr. Dass (bass, guitars), Brian Fairbairn (drums), and Nathan Flutebox Lee (flute). Asian Dub Foundation has composed live re-scores of The Battle of Algiers and La Haine, which they performed live at London’s notorious Broadwater Farm housing estate, site of one of the UK’s most notorious riots.
THX 1138 is set in a dystopian future century when political paternalism reigns. Every aspect of life is controlled by the state, efficiency is king, individual thought is forbidden, and love is the ultimate perversion. Produced by Francis Ford Coppola and written by Lucas and Walter Murch, THX 1138 conjures a world of chemical brainwashing, android police, and constant surveillance brought to life with chilling intensity. THX 1138 makes creative use of a number of iconic Bay Area locations, including the then-under-construction BART tunnels.
Known for their popular soundtrack to Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Denver’s DeVotchKa has been combining a range of influences—from Slavic and Gypsy to punk and folk—into their unique blend of expressive rock music for more than a decade. The band’s Nick Urata has composed scores for films as diverse as Crazy Stupid Love (2011) and Paddington (2014). He composed the original music for Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017), based on the children’s novels by Lemony Snicket. Urata and bandmates Jeanie Schroder (acoustic bass, sousaphone), Shawn King (percussion, trumpet), and Tom Hagerman (violin, viola, accordion, piano) bring their multifaceted, cinematic melodies to Vertov’s influential classic.
A landmark for its playful experimentation with the depiction of reality, Dziga Vertov’s The Man with a Movie Camera is charged with the excitement of cinema’s possibilities. “The film drama is the opium of the people,” Vertov wrote, “Long live life as it is!” Named in a recent Sight & Sound poll as the eighth best movie ever made, Vertov’s joyful trip through the streets of Moscow, Odessa, and Kiev, uses superimpositions, jump cuts, split screens, and a host of other effects to create an expressive portrait of a modernizing world.
Tickets to Asian Dub Foundation Live Score of George Lucas’s THX 1138 are $20 for SF Film Society members, $25 for the general public. Box office is now open online for members and opens March 8 for the general public.
Tickets to The Man with a Movie Camera with DeVotchKa are $20 for SFFS members, $25 for the general public. Box office is now open online for SF Film Society members and opens March 8 for the general public.
In recent years, the San Francisco Film Society has presented these works-many of which were commissioned as world premieres-at the San Francisco International Film Festival as part of the Live & Onstage section: Vampyr with Mercury Rev and Simon Raymonde (Cocteau Twins); Kronos Quartet Beyond Zero: 1914-1918; Cibo Matto New Scene; The Unknown with Stephin Merritt; Short films with Thao and the Get Down Stay Down; Waxworks with Mike Patton, Scott Ammendola, Matthias Bossi and William Winant; Buster Keaton Shorts with Merrill Garbus (tUnE-yArDs); Claire Denis Film Scores 1996-2009 with Tindersticks; 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with Stephin Merritt; The Lost World with Dengue Fever; The Golem with Black Francis; The Phantom Carriage with Jonathan Richman; Heaven and Earth Magic with Deerhoof; Street Angel with American Music Club; Sunrise with Lambchop; A Page of Madness with Superchunk; Jean Painlevé: The Sounds of Science with Yo La Tengo; and Tom Verlaine: Music for Film.
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