The gospel of converging media plays like a coma-inducing broken record in many a journalism class at AU. But when music is the medium of interest, it's a different story altogether. As much a visual as an audio experience, music offers consumers more than an iTunes file and a place in the crowd. Courtesy of a sonically-charged shutterbug, digitally deft punks and big beats from Baghdad, here are three treats for your eyes and ears this September.
'Keep Your Eyes Open: The Fugazi Photographs of Glen E. Friedman'
Glen E. Friedman's celebrated body of work is punctuated by photographs that defined a generation. Friedman got his start in junior high at SkateBoarder magazine capturing a few friends and Dogtown's cultural phenomenon on film in 1976. Since then, Friedman's name has been married to shots of punk shows (Black Flag), a few album covers (The Adolescents) and even production credits on Suicidal Tendencies' eponymous 1983 debut. But Friedman's most famous and enduring alliance is that with longtime subject and friend, Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat, Fugazi).
Friedman's first book is dedicated solely to his best Fugazi photos, of which there are many. "Keep Your Eyes Open" was released on Sept. 3, exactly 20 years after the band's first show. From 1986 to its last U.S. show in 2002, Friedman was by the band's side--or in the crowd, on the Mall and everywhere in between--capturing Fugazi's commitment to the democratic production and transmission of music from an ethos-enforcing vantage point. The book's 200 black and white and color images showcase a kaleidoscope of personas, including a few shots of a playful MacKaye amid incendiary stills of Guy Picciotto's combustible vocal deliveries. For the nostalgic Fugazi fan, of which D.C. and AU harbor many, this book will make for some "red" medicine.
Daft Punk's 'Electroma'
This 74-minute experimental film follows the two robot incarnations of French electronica outfit Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel De Homem-Christo on their quest to become human. The film is completely dialogue-free and, contrary to all logic, is set not to the band's own scores but to those of Chopin, Haydn, Brian Eno and Curtis Mayfield. Nonetheless, Bangalter and De Homem-Christo maintain that the film is, admittedly, a Daft Punk vision of inaccessible proportions.
Fans and curious cinemaphiles packed midnight screenings from San Francisco to New York after the film's 2007 Cannes Film Festival debut, despite news that the scene in which the tragic robot heroes begin their death march through Death Valley induced a mass exodus at that screening. Viewers remain split in their opinion of the duo's directorial debut, but many maintain it communicates Daft Punk's statement about the modern world, whatever that may be.
Ultimately, the film is spine-tingling postmodernism reduced to its most minimal state, much like "The Wall" - except that viewing Electroma on any amount of acid couldn't possibly make it any more aesthetically pleasing. A $5 screening will be held at Creative Alliance in Baltimore on Sept. 22, and the DVD will be released in January.
'Heavy Metal in Baghdad'
This film documents the life and times of Acrassicauda, Latin for "black scorpion" and moniker of Iraq's only heavy metal band. The quartet formed in high school in 2001 when Baghdad was still under Saddam Hussein's Baath party regime. Shortly after the fall of Hussein, a VICE magazine article covered the band's progress in their country's new political climate. However, when the situation in Iraq quickly deteriorated, Acrassicauda fell off the map.
That's when VICE co-founder Suroosh Alvi and VBS (VICE's online TV network, vbs.tv) producer Eddy Moretti picked up camera and crew and set off to answer the question "Where are they now?" The result will debut in its entirety at the Toronto Film Festival, which runs from today through Sept. 15, in its "Real to Reel" documentary program. Alvi has been filming Acrassicauda for the past few years, capturing the band's attempts to create a metal scene in Baghdad and then, after failing to do so, as they forge a new path in Damascus, Syria, as refugee rockers.
Showing off their Iron Maiden CD collection in their Slipknot and Metallica shirts, the guys of Acrassicauda speak English with ease, eager to tell their stories of success and survival, of gigs bygone and soon-to-come. As much a testament to the strength and determination of youth in war-ravaged Iraq as it is to the power of music, "Heavy Metal in Baghdad" is not to be missed.
