{"id":658,"date":"2017-01-20T02:52:01","date_gmt":"2017-01-20T02:52:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/?p=658"},"modified":"2017-02-02T02:53:02","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T02:53:02","slug":"sundance-cues-up-a-chorus-of-music-docs-and-features","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/sundance-cues-up-a-chorus-of-music-docs-and-features\/","title":{"rendered":"Sundance Cues Up a Chorus of Music Docs and Features"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"VarietyLogo1\"<\/a>From \u201cOnce\u201d to \u201c20 Feet From Stardom,\u201d \u201cSearching for Sugar Man,\u201d and \u201cWhiplash,\u201d Sundance has long been a key launchpad for music features and docs, and this year\u2019s edition is primed with a slew of music-infused entries, from documentaries to features.<\/p>\n

Even though Lucy Walker\u2019s follow-up to \u201cThe Buena Vista Social Club\u201d was forced to withdraw from the program at the start of the fest, one Sundance music doc managed to make ripples before films had even started screening, as Amir Bar-Lev\u2019s four-hour Grateful Dead documentary \u201cLong Strange Trip\u201d was picked up for distribution by Amazon. Singers Adam Levine and Mary J. Blige will both be in town as castmembers for \u201cFun Mom Dinner\u201d and \u201cMudbound,\u201d respectively, and L.A.\u2019s electronic music wizard Flying Lotus makes his directorial debut with \u201cKuso,\u201d in Sundance\u2019s Midnight section. Documentaries touch on everything from early rock icon Link Wray (\u201cRumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World\u201d) to Japanese pop fandom (\u201cTokyo Idols\u201d), and the Jack Black-starring feature \u201cThe Polka King\u201d details the stranger-than-fiction saga of polka superstar-conman Jan Lewan.<\/p>\n

From producer Pharrell Williams and Sundance veteran director Michael Larnell comes the dramatic competition entry \u201cRoxanne Roxanne,\u201d which tackles the life of rapper Lolita \u201cRoxanne\u201d Shante Gooden, whose appearance in the song \u201cRoxanne\u2019s Revenge\u201d in 1984 helped spark one of hip-hop\u2019s earliest, most legendary battles. Larnell\u2019s film depicts the fateful performance and the \u201cRoxanne Wars\u201d that followed, while also delving into the teenage rapper\u2019s difficult upbringing in the Queensbridge housing project, and her career afterward.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe first started rapping when she was 10 years old, and there were a number of trials and tribulations that she dealt with before she became Roxanne at age 14,\u201d says Larnell, who spent significant time with the real Shante to prepare the film.<\/p>\n

In addition to supporting parts for Mahershala Ali and Nia Long, \u201cRoxanne Roxanne\u201d features screen newcomer Chante Adams in the title role, and Larnell recalls the difficulty of finding the right actor.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe definitely wanted to go with someone new, and we didn\u2019t really find (Adams) until maybe two weeks before shooting,\u201d he says. \u201cSo that was kinda stressful, that was pushing it\u2026 But she had something. And once I started working with her I could tell that she was the real deal. Because it\u2019s hard to do hip-hop as an actor, to actually be able to rap, have the mannerisms, the attitude, be able to perform onstage, but then offstage be able to be vulnerable. It\u2019s a serious challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also in dramatic competition, Zoe Lister-Jones used music as a window into her directorial debut, \u201cBand Aid,\u201d for which she also serves as writer and star. The film sees her character and her husband (Adam Pally) look to salvage their fracturing relationship by forming a garage band, and transforming their fights into songs. (Fred Armisen, who plays the couple\u2019s oddball next-door neighbor, completes the trio on drums.)<\/p>\n

\u201cI was really interested in the intersection of two ideas,\u201d Lister-Jones says. \u201cFirst, exploring the ways in which a couple fights; and then exploring that through music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lister-Jones \u2013 who sang in a band with several of her mother\u2019s graduate students while still in high school \u2013 had written music for a film before, collaborating with Kyle Forester for songs in 2009\u2019s \u201cBreaking Upwards.\u201d For \u201cBand Aid,\u201d Lister-Jones composed lyrics as she wrote the script, then brought them to Forester to turn them into fully-fledged tunes.<\/p>\n

Lister-Jones, Pally, and Armisen performed the music live on set for the film, the director says, \u201cbecause it always bugs me when I watch films that have a musical element when I can tell they\u2019re being performed with playback. It always lacks that raw authenticity that I wanted to preserve in \u2018Band Aid.\u2019 It was also a great test (of the songs), because our crew members had to listen to them a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Rolling Stones\u2019 historic free concert in Havana, Cuba was the subject of a documentary that played Toronto last fall, but the group was beaten to the punch by electronic music outfit Major Lazer, who became the first major U.S. act to play the island nation since the easing of diplomatic tensions. That concert is the subject of documentary premiere \u201cGive Me Future\u201d from director Austin Peters.<\/p>\n

Though the group\u2019s performance is the main event in the film, Peters wanted to capture a bit of Cuba\u2019s youth culture along the way. \u201cI knew I wanted it to be about the Cuba that you don\u2019t usually see on the news,\u201d he says. \u201cIt seemed like an opportunity to see what it feels like to be a kid in Havana, and highlight some of these people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finding young Cubans with interesting stories on such a tight schedule was easier said than done, however. \u201cUnlike a lot of other countries, Cuba has something like 5% internet penetration,\u201d Peters says. \u201cThere\u2019s no one with a Tumblr down there telling you what they\u2019re doing, so it was really impossible before going down there to do any sort of research on who we wanted to talk to. A lot of it was uncovered in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortunately, a number of Peters\u2019 subjects ended up contributing to the film\u2019s coverage of the Major Lazer concert itself. \u201cMaking a concert movie for a DJ is kind of an unusual thing,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s not like shooting a band where you\u2019re watching a great guitarist, or watching Levon Helm\u2019s drumming. It\u2019s about the experience of being there and dancing and participating in a moment. So we gave a bunch of kids that we\u2019d been hanging out with these little cameras that shot video, and said, \u2018just shoot everything, take a video of the show for us.\u2019 And they shot their whole experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to capture the feeling of being there, because it\u2019s just as much about the people in the audience as the people onstage.\u201d<\/p>\n

View this article at Variety<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From \u201cOnce\u201d to \u201c20 Feet From Stardom,\u201d \u201cSearching for Sugar Man,\u201d and \u201cWhiplash,\u201d Sundance has long been a key launchpad for music features and docs, and this year\u2019s edition is primed with a slew of music-infused entries, from documentaries to features. Even though Lucy Walker\u2019s follow-up to \u201cThe Buena Vista Social Club\u201d was forced to
+ Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":324,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-variety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":660,"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions\/660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}