The South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference and Festival has announced films for its event that runs March 12 – March 20, 2010. Chris Morris’ pitch-black satire “Four Lions” has been chosen as the closing night film, but honestly we haven’t heard of that one. Of interest to us are as follows:
Elijah Drenner’s “American Grindhouse” which is a documentary on American exploitation films (sure to have appearances by Quentin Tarantino and other likely suspects) and Ivan Engler and Ralf Etter sci-fi film, “Cargo” from Switzerland.
Also of interest are all the music related films. Guto Barra’s “Beyond Ipanema” sounds like a fascinating take on Brazilian music, from Tropicália to Favela Funk, and hopefully including all the giants of Brazilian music over the years (coming to mind for us is admittedly a lot of the Tropicalia faves like Os Mutantes, Jorge Ben, Milton Nascimento, Tom Ze, Gil Costa, etc. etc.)
Music doc maestro Don Letts is back at it again. Having already directed such great music docs like, “The Making of All Mod Cons: The Jam,” “Brother From Another Planet: Sun Ra,” “The Clash: Westway to the World” and the Jamaican-set drama, “Dancehall Queen,” he’s now tackling another old friend and subject in Joe Strummer from the Clash. Called, “Strummerville,” the Grammy winner’s latest shows how Strummer’s spirit lives on through a charity set up in his memory.
Recently discussed with an April release date date, Tom DiCillo’s Doors doc, “When You’re Strange” narrated by Johnny Depp will also show at the festival, as will Spike Jonze’s short film, “I’m Here.”
Perhaps our most anticipated, or one that we’re incredibly curious to see how it turned out is Bruce McDonald’s Broken Social Scene-centered drama written by Don McKellar (“Last Night”) called, “This Movie Is Broken.” It sounds like an interesting concept as there’s a drama or love story set around a hot summer’s night in Toronto, during a Broken Social Scene show. Evidently a lot of the concert footage was crowdsourced by fans too. It will be interesting to see if this one succeeds or not, but it definitely sounds like a worthwhile experiment and obviously all the talent involved is top notch. SXSW will be the film’s world premiere.
Another related music film is the picture, “Suck” which features lots of musicians and a cast that includes Rob Stefaniuk, Jessica Pare, Dave Foley, Moby, Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins, Dimitri Coats, Alex Lifeson (of Rush) with Alice Cooper and Malcolm McDowell. But it’s called a “rock and roll vampire movie” and honestly? Kinda sounds dreadful from all we’ve read of it.