LAST HOPE with The Sounds of Science
Last Hope is a unique meeting of music and film. Created by filmmaker Andrew Kidman (Glass Love, Litmus) and Aaron Curnow of Spunk Records, the project marries 16 short films inspired by the sea with stirring music from Spunk’s revered stable of artists.
Appealing to surfers and non-surfers alike, Andrew Kidman and a selection of noted filmmakers elevate the traditional surf film into an artistic vision that dives deep in to the heart of the subculture. Combined with the quiet musical stylings of some of the best independent artists of today, Last Hope is a collage dedicated to the vast and infinite beauty of the sea.
Kidman and band The Windy Hills have been touring Last Hope successfully throughout Australia and the US, including a sold-out sitting at the New York Surf Film Festival. They now bring Last Hope to Speakeasy Cinema, augmenting the already mind-blowing soundtrack with a dynamic and evolving live score.
Contributing filmmakers include: Albert Falzon (Morning Of The Earth), Richard Kenvin (Hydrodynamica), Monty Webber, Patrick Trefz (Thread), Jon Frank (Litmus), Michele Lockwood (Kids) and Andrew Kidman. Music is supplied by Smog, Sufjan Stevens, Explosions In The Sky, My Morning Jacket, Vetiver and Kidman’s own band The Windy Hills.
Appealing to surfers and non-surfers alike, Andrew Kidman and a selection of noted filmmakers elevate the traditional surf film into an artistic vision that dives deep in to the heart of the subculture. Combined with the quiet musical stylings of some of the best independent artists of today, Last Hope is a collage dedicated to the vast and infinite beauty of the sea.
Kidman and band The Windy Hills have been touring Last Hope successfully throughout Australia and the US, including a sold-out sitting at the New York Surf Film Festival. They now bring Last Hope to Speakeasy Cinema, augmenting the already mind-blowing soundtrack with a dynamic and evolving live score.
Contributing filmmakers include: Albert Falzon (Morning Of The Earth), Richard Kenvin (Hydrodynamica), Monty Webber, Patrick Trefz (Thread), Jon Frank (Litmus), Michele Lockwood (Kids) and Andrew Kidman. Music is supplied by Smog, Sufjan Stevens, Explosions In The Sky, My Morning Jacket, Vetiver and Kidman’s own band The Windy Hills.
7:30PM | SUNDAY 28TH MARCH
SPEAKEASY CINEMA AT 1000 £ BEND
361 LT LONSDALE STREET, MELBOURNE
TICKETS $20/$25 FROM MOSHTIX
$12 beer & burger bundle
(roo burger, saganaki burgers or vegan burrito plus beer or wine)
Before David Attenborough and Jacques Cousteau - there was Jean Painlevé (1902-89). Poetic pioneer of science films, Painlevé explored a twilight realm of vampire bats, seahorses, octopi, and liquid crystals. In collaboration with his life-partner, Genevieve Hamon, Painlevé made more than 200 science and nature films and was an early champion of the genre. He was also one of the first filmmakers to take his camera underwater. Surreal, otherworldly documents of marine life, these films transformed sea horses and mollusks into delicate dancers in their own floating ballets.
Possessing a remarkable eye for life's eerie curiosities, Painleve's art pivots on the premise that 'science is fiction'. He created a landscape of bug-eyed wonderment marked by a playful sense of nature's hidden poetry and scandalized the scientific world with a cinema designed to entertain as well as edify. In the process he won over the circle of Surrealists and avant-gardists and counted amongst his friends Antonin Artaud, Sergei Eisenstein, Jean Vigo, and Luis Bunuel. Painlev's astonishing documentaries witness a genuinely 'magic realism', which continues to enchant audiences around the world.
The Sounds of Science pairs eight of his films with an alternative soundtrack by US art-rock band Yo La Tengo. Yo La Tengo's place in rock history is unique - few bands in memory dare to experiment quite so widely with such casual audacity. From screeching art-rock and jangling pop songs to electronic soundscapes and hushed lullabies, their music explores the range of musical history without ever sounding less than modern. In 2001 the band was selected by the San Francisco International Film Festival committee to compose new music for the films of Jean Painlevé. Their alternately sombre and joyously moody music seemed like a natural fit for Painleve's dramatic underwater studies.
A selection of The Sounds of Science will screen before Last Hope.