Clockwise from top left: 20,000 Days on Earth; Pulp: A Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets; Bjork: Biophila Live; The Possibilities Are Endless
Nick Cave rhapsodizing about Nina Simone while eating eels. Edwyn Collins reconstructing his stroke-blown identity by piecing together shards of memory featuring his son as himself. A chorus of Sheffield seniors doing a sweetly melancholic cover of Pulp’s “Help the Aged.” To say 2014′s music documentary crop tilted toward the unconventional is something of an understatement. A couple of years ago some critics fretted over Searching for Sugar Man director Malik Bendjelloul (RIP) leaving out elements of Rodriguez’s story to burnish his suspense-thriller plot line. This year Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard presented a portrait of Cave that was, in a sense, fabricated virtually from start to finish.
But in another, more important sense, it wasn’t. 20,000 Days on Earth‘s staged encounters and conversations were a proscenium framing a genuine portrait of why a creator creates and a performer performs – one that, interestingly, used the quasi-fictional veneer to split off Cave from his mythic persona, as was noted by a couple of panelists in our annual review of the year in music film. And the year pretty much belonged to Nick and his friends, imaginary and otherwise, according to the critics, film fest programmers, and industry folk we asked to share their favorites of the 12 months past. (Generally speaking, films that played the festival circuit or opened directly to theaters, TV, or digital platforms in 2014 were eligible, with allowances for a few that screened sparingly in 2013 but were largely unseen until this year.)
It wasn’t just 20,000 Days finding side-ways and slant-ways into musicians’ stories, following the larger doc trend of stretching nonfiction narrative into interesting new shapes. The Possibilities Are Endless, a film about Scottish alt-rocker Collins’ recovery from a massive cerebral hemorrhage, spends 20 minutes in a beautifully disorienting simulacrum of his post-stroke mental state before his face even appears. Pulp: A Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets may be built around the tentpole of the beloved Britpop band’s final UK show, but its signifiers are in the streets, shops, and public spaces of Jarvis Cocker and company’s northern English hometown. My Prairie Home relies largely on what are in effect music videos to trace the trajectory of transgender Canadian artist Rae Spoon.
That Cave and Cocker had credited roles in conceiving how their stories would be told and chose the path of weirdness and surprise is a nice harbinger at a time when many big acts are executive-producing their own hagiographies. (Not to say Cave and Cocker didn’t also choose paths that make them look pretty cool.) And having said that, there was certainly satisfaction to be had this year in docs that effectively deployed the more traditional toolkit of chronology, archive, and talented people talking about talented people. However you choose to tell it, a good story is a good story. Here’s some of the stories we loved this year.
Allison and Tiffany Anders
Respectively, Emmy-nominated film/TV director and DJ/music supervisor; collectively, directors, Don’t Knock the Rock Film and Music Festival
Pulp: A Film About Life, Death, & Supermarkets (Florian Habicht, UK) What happens when a band who struggled for 15 years to gain recognition finally become pop stars with an anthem that resonates with the world? How do they deal with fame while remaining true to the song that catapulted them out of the world of common people? And what does it mean to the people of Pulp’s working-class hometown of Sheffield? These questions are beautifully posed by director Florian Habicht as he captures Pulp performing the last concert of their reunion tour in Sheffield in 2012. A colorful cast of local characters talk about the band, the music, and charismatic frontman Jarvis Cocker, who himself reveals how his humble beginnings shaped him (and still do) and discusses his shy, reserved character versus his exhibitionist stage persona. A sweet, funny, and unique glimpse into a band and it’s fans. (Read an MFW interview with Florian Habicht.)
Honorable mention:
Led Zeppelin Played Here (Jeff Krulik, USA)
Beautiful Noise (Eric Green, USA)
The Case of the Three Sided Dream (Adam Kahan, USA)
The Possibilities Are Endless (Edward Lovelace and James Hall, UK)
Colm Forde
Director, Doc’n Roll Festival
Johnny Winter: Down & Dirty (Greg Olliver, USA) I loved this straightforward profile of a long-lost blues-rock guitar hero. Having exploded on the scene during the Woodstock era, Johnny Winter managed to survive the 27 club, unlike many of his mates, but he slid into obscurity over the past two decades, weighted down by opiates. Although it suffers at times from its limited budget, Down & Dirty is a fascinating story of early promise and recognition followed by decades in the wilderness. Johnny finally gets his due as a living legend via this film, fittingly released just prior to his passing this summer.
Honorable mention:
The Winding Stream (Beth Harrington, USA) A beautifully told history of the iconic Carter Family, the first family of country music. Interviews with three generations offer a broad perspective on the clan’s influence and reach, and clever use of graphics and animation fill in the gaps in archive footage. The film also features some great ’60s era Johnny Cash alongside one of his final interviews.
20,000 Days on Earth As fresh as they come, be it a music doc or narrative profile of a great performer. When it looks this good, who cares?
Oli Harbottle
Head of Distribution, Dogwoof
Obviously I’m not allowed to choose one of Dogwoof’s own 2014 releases, but it’s worth pointing out that we did more music docs this year than any other year (The Punk Singer, Mistaken for Strangers, Finding Fela, Nas: Time is Illmatic), which shows how excited we are by the current quality of music films being made. But I digress. Without a doubt my pick would be 20,000 Days on Earth, which would feature near the top of my list for best film of the year period. Continuing the recent documentary trend of fusing drama and reality, this striking debut from Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard is an incredibly welcome and refreshing take on the typical music doc. With its frank insights, intimate portrayal of the artistic process, and hilarious scenes with the mighty Warren Ellis (who arguably steals the show), this category-defying film examines what makes us who we are and celebrates the power of the creative spirit. I could watch it again and again, and the last shot gets me every time.
Honorable mention:
Beautiful Noise I was so happy to see this film on the history and legacy of shoegaze finally finish its long crowdfunding process and make it to the big screen. A veritable trip down memory lane. (Read an MFW interview with director Eric Green.)
Bjork: Biophilia Live (Peter Strickland and Nick Fenton, UK) Bjork. David Attenborough. Peter Strickland. ‘Nuff said.
Beth Harrington
Director, The Winding Stream
Interestingly, my two favorite music docs of 2014 are about the way the severely compromised brain responds to music: Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me (James Keach, USA) and Alive Inside. Both are exceptionally well-done and emotion-packed, but I’m giving the slight edge to I’ll Be Me, which documents the great country singer and guitarist’s decline following an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. What’s truly phenomenal is seeing how deeply embedded music is for Campbell: even when he can’t tell you what day it is or who the first president of the United States was, he can pull the lead-guitar part for “Rhinestone Cowboy” from the recesses of his mind. With incredible access to the star and his family, Keach shows how they work to keep Campbell in the game as long as possible, facilitating his farewell tour and final recordings in the face of his rapid deterioration. It’s a heart-wrenching but ultimately uplifting story.
Honorable mention:
Alive Inside (Michael Rossato-Bennett, USA) is similarly illuminating about music and the brain as it examines social worker Dan Cohen’s project to re-introduce music into the lives of severely withdrawn Alzheimer’s patients – who are quite literally awakened by hearing the melodies they love.
Johnny Winter: Down & Dirty You don’t have to be a fan to enjoy this well-crafted look at the great bluesman’s life trajectory. What is really terrific about this film is the way it reveals the relationship between Winter and his one-time bandmate Paul Nelson, who valiantly and deftly takes on the role of managing his friend when Winter becomes enslaved to both drugs and a terrible business deal. A grab bag full of great moments reveal Winter’s quirkiness and genius.
The Ballad of Shovels and Rope (Jace Freeman and Sean Clark, USA) offers an upbeat look at a rootsy, scrappy musical duo – young married couple Carrie Ann Hearst and Michael Trent, aka Shovels and Rope – as they go from gigs in diners to winning the Americana Music Award for Emerging Artist of the Year. A pleasant portrait of determination and fervor for music.
Heaven Adores You (Nickolas Rossi, USA) is an unavoidably melancholy but comprehensive look at the career of the reticent singer/songwriter Elliott Smith, whose trajectory to fame was uncharted, unexpected, and ultimately tragic. Moody cityscapes of places Smith lived, most notably Portland, Oregon, emerge as supporting characters. (Read an MFW interview with Nickolas Rossi.)
Alexander King
Program director, Leeds International Film Festival
My standout music documentary for 2014 is The Possibilities are Endless. It’s a brilliantly cinematic expression of mental dislocation, an inspirational tale of a great musician overcoming the odds, and a touchingly unsentimental love story. Not many music docs have that many dimensions. (Read an MFW interview with directors Edward Lovelace and James Hall.)
Honorable mention:
20,000 Days on Earth takes another interesting approach to making a biographical music doc, with some compelling insights into the creative process.
Jennifer Mair
Publicist, National Film Board of Canada
20,000 Days on Earth Documentary purists might sneer at the narrative conceit of this stylish film ostensibly capturing a single day in Nick Cave’s life (it was filmed in three countries), with its set-up situations like an extended session with famed psychoanalyst Darian Leader and in-car chats with phantom figures from Cave’s past (Kylie Minogue, Blixa Bargeld). But these devices all serve to separate Cave from his swaggering psycho Elvis/preacher persona and reveal the emotional truths of a vulnerable husband and father who, in his mid-50s and settled in rainy Brighton, is more creative than ever. Through candid conversations interwoven with a visit to the artist’s personal archive, electrifying live performances, and intimate footage of the creation of the Bad Seeds album Push the Sky Away, Cave opens up about childhood, family, fears, memory, drugs, religion, songwriting, and artistic drive. “Who knows their own story?” he says. “It only becomes a story when we tell it and retell it.” Cave and frequent collaborators Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard found a captivating way to do just that.
Honorable mention:
Super Duper Alice Cooper (Reginald Harkema, Scot McFadyen, and Sam Dunn; Canada) The Canadian boys at Banger Films add another chapter to their impressive resume of hard-rock docs. Looking forward to their Soundgarden film!
Mateo (Aaron Naar, Japan/Cuba/USA) The strange and sad story of an obscure talent, America’s “first gringo mariachi singer.”
Bjork: Biophilia Live Because it’s Bjork and she rules.
Andy Markowitz
Co-founder, MusicFilmWeb.com and MusicFilmWeb.tv
There were more aesthetically ambitious music documentaries this year than Led Zeppelin Played Here, as I’m sure the ever-modest Jeff Krulik would acknowledge. But none gave me more sheer delight than this hugely fun and deceptively sharp foray into a bit of rock apocrypha: whether the nascent Zep played a sparsely attended January 1969 show at a suburban Maryland youth center, of which there are eyewitness accounts but no physical evidence. Deploying the engaging everydude approach that’s served him well since the fabled Heavy Metal Parking Lot, Krulik plumbs the mystery with everyone from local record nerds and rock ‘n’ roll collectors to Jimmy Page himself. But more than the detective work, the film’s pleasure lies in playfully limning the narrative tension between the vividly remembered and the cold hard factual, and in excavating a lost world of pre-Live Nation pop promotion where boss jocks and A&R road warriors booked shows on the fly and the Stooges might headline your weekend teen dance. (Read an MFW interview with director Jeff Krulik.)
Honorable mention:
The Possibilities Are Endless captures not so much Edwyn Collins’ recovery from a catastrophic cerebral hemorrhage as his intensely personal experience of recovery (and that of his redoubtable wife, Grace Maxwell), charting with structural daring and sublime visual empathy what it’s like to lose, and regain, language, memory, music, and love.
20,000 Days on Earth Pollard, Forsyth, and Cave artfully re-imagine the elements of bio-doc – the interviews are dream conversations, the archive an administrative reverie – to construct a portrait of the artist that is precisely sculpted yet feels intimate, insightful, and, yes, real. And the closing concert sequence is the most galvanizing gig footage I saw this year.
The Case of the Three Sided Dream explores the genius and obsessions of protean jazz musician Rahsaan Roland Kirk with acute observation and a funky visual sense that’s wholly appropriate to the story of a guy known for his ability to blow three saxes at once. (Read an MFW interview with director Adam Kahan.)
My Prairie Home (Chelsea McMullan, Canada) Transgender electro/country singer-songwriter Rae Spoon’s escape from a terrifyingly Pentecostal upbringing to personal and creative self-actualization is told in jaunty, touching fashion through disarmingly unself-conscious interviews, stylishly stylized musical numbers, and long bus rides under the vast western Canadian sky. (Read MFW interviews with Rae Spoon and Chelsea McMullan.)
Landon Palmer
Culture Warrior columnist at Film School Rejects and critic at Nonfics
There were a few really groundbreaking music documentaries this year – 20,000 Days on Earth comes most prominently to mind – but I’m going to use this space to advocate for Bjork: Biophilia Live. Not so much a nonfiction art form in and of itself, the concert documentary, since the 1980s, has been geared ever more narrowly toward existing fans of the artist or band in question. Strickland and Fenton’s record of the penultimate show of Bjork’s 2011-13 tour not only instills the immediate “event” quality of a performance but plays with the inherent contradictions of a “live” concert film, highlighting the tour’s integration of multimedia and imbuing a rousing music video aesthetic. Biophilia Live isn’t just for fans; it’s for anyone interested in the art of capturing live performance on film – an art that, as this film demonstrates, still has many under-explored avenues for experimentation.
Honorable mention:
20,000 Days on Earth
Nas: Time is Illmatic (One9, USA)
Janet Pierson
Head of SXSW Film
My favorite musical story on screen this year wasn’t a documentary but a biopic, the exquisite Jimi: All Is by My Side, featuring a surprisingly strong and subtle performance by Outkast’s Andre Benjamin. On the doc side, my top choice is Pulp: A Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets. Shot in and around Sheffield as Jarvis Cocker and company mount their final hometown gig, this is a rock film with the emphasis on film, as much about a place and its people as about the charismatic musician at the center.
Honorable mention:
Take Me to the River (Martin Shore, USA) pays tribute to Memphis soul via the making of an album mixing legends with contemporary artists. Nothing new about that, but Take Me to the River infuses it with great joy, warmth of spirit, and, of course, wonderful, timeless music.
The 78 Project Movie (Alex Steyermark, USA) At a time when music is everywhere and you can pull anything you want from the cloud, this travelogue of today’s artists performing old-time popular songs brings back an element of risk and posterity. It’s like an exercise in musical archaeology, and I loved it.
The Possibilities Are Endless Not a straight-ahead music documentary, but a gorgeous film about love, language, the brain, and recovery featuring Edwyn Collins.
20,000 Days on Earth I still haven’t seen it, but I have heard too many raves from people I trust not to include it.
Daniel Dylan Wray
Freelance film and music writer
20,000 Days on Earth Nick Cave is in danger of reaching preposterous levels of canonization, a circumstance of which this documentary, and Cave himself, seem thankfully aware. 20,000 Days on Earth ducks and weaves around this process, offering flashes of insight into Nick Cave, the man – human, grounded, relateable – even as it projects him as maker of transcendent music and a nearly godlike performer. The film’s focus is that transformation: the force of music to create canonical performers who escape their own normal selves to become “other” beings – as do we when we witness the transition. Cave, of course, comes away gleaming and pristine, as was the intention of all involved, but ultimately 20,000 Days more a film about the power of art than a portrait of a single personality. It may also open the wider world to seeing what a wonderful human being Warren Ellis is, and that can only be a good thing.
Honorable mention:
The Possibilities Are Endless A glorious ode to love, life, and Scotland. Edwyn Collins is now nearly a decade on from his stroke, so a hard luck/rehabilitation story is not what was needed to reflect his life at this stage. This film avoids those trappings, wonderfully, poignantly, and cinematically.
Finding Fela (Alex Gibney, USA) A marvelously detailed and insightful documentary about Afrobeat superstar Fela Kuti that unearthed a treasure trove of material. (Read a two-part MFW interview about the film with Fela’s longtime manager, Rikki Stein.)
