Coming Attractions: What They Could Do, They Did

August 20th-24th at the Forest Cafe (Bristo Place), Edinburgh.

WTCD,TD & Graven Images Presents

MIDNIGHT MOVIES IN THE EVENING
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Every night from 7, we turn down the lights and pull back the curtains for an evening at the pictures. For four nights our big screen presents anything from mumblecore to diary films to psychedelic video nasties. Come see young lovers, broken hearts, foreign lands and open roads. See creatures of the night and karaoke songs on our silver screen. Be our cheap date.

Wednesday 20th – WHAT THEY COULD DO SHORTS (Various, UK, 30 mins)

What They Could Do, They Did presents a programme of underground films to amaze and surprise. See poor fiends, invisible cities and cursed vampires in a revue of the work of Tom Moore. Travel across the sea to Russia in Tom Latter’s “Russia Is A Different Country”. Hear visions of the future and watch beauty pageant danses in Garry Sykes’ “Ecstasy”, and experience a cut-up subjective history of the cinema in Ad-Hoc & Mixpaste’s showcase reel. These films come from gutters, but all of them have stars, and tonight you will see them born.

Thursday 21st – QUIET CITY (Aaron Katz, USA, 2007, 90 mins)

With recent screenings at the ICA and on FilmFour, Aaron Katz is a name to watch. One of the breakout talents of the movement dubbed ‘mumblecore’ – a group of loosely affiliated NYC filmmakers with no budgets and heavy emphasis on improv, creative passion and heart – Katz’s second film Quiet City is a masterpiece of subtle emotion and genuine romance as a young woman adrift in New York meets a young man and they wander together through two unforgettable days and nights in the city. These films are your life. We’re proud to have this rare opportunity to share this one with you tonight.

Friday 22nd – JESUS RIDES SHOTGUN (Burke Roberts, USA, 1997, 50 mins)

A near legendary cult classic funded by dole cheques, Jesus Rides Shotgun has blazed a trail across the world since it’s 1997 midnight Cannes premiere. Shot over a period of years, and with a striking visual style, the film follows its hapless doormat protagonist as he discovers his fiance making hardcore porn without him and flees on a journey of self discovery across roads and plains in a mini-van. As he presses on the van fills with hitchhikers – musicians, Biblical prophets, vagrants, rappers and dead rock stars – driven always onwards by a unique, schizophrenic soundtrack, and all ending somewhere completely unexpected. You’ve never seen anything quite like this before.

Saturday 23rd – KARAOKE (Garry Sykes, UK, 2008, 35 mins)

This is a world premiere, these karaoke songs. Starring Tom Moore and introducing beautiful new starlet Alice Saint to the eyes of the world, these songs they sing tell who they are, were, and who they’re becoming. Karaoke is a no wave musical, a video portrait and above all a romantic picture. Karaoke is compromise, obsession and addiction. Karaoke is change, determined spirit and love.

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my bloody valentine

Super ATP

the first super-8 footage i ever did shoot.

i never liked barry norman and now he’s given the world pickles

 

meet me after the world with the shivers

can i talk about music?

this past weekend i was at ATP. the whole place smelled of chlorine sometimes and the food i ate isn’t worth mentioning except that one of the harvest bars came with the fact that “women blink around twice as often as men.” the television told me more than once to open all the windows and doors and we’d sing the note A in unison. i watched the closing scene of City Lights with around four people in a cinema only slightly above makeshift, and all of us really saw Chaplin for the first time again. i talked about age not making a difference. i talked about how there really was a future. i talked. concealed drinks. cigarettes. mandy. dark hair. limpets and seaweed and recording waves. 3 photographs. the money ran out. on the water flume i sped over the second hump, and got dunked in 2m of water that went up my nose and into my eyes. it was a thrill. the music was incredible.

music has been missing for a while now. either nothing’s grabbed me or i haven’t made the effort to grab anything too hard which sounds like something my dad said to me once. he stopped caring in 1982 and never got back into music. that sounds a terrible fate to me.

so being assaulted by the synths and light show put on by animal collective, and suddenly their music that i’d half liked falling into place, or hearing a liars song on the p.a. and both of us recognising it at the same time, or the first chorus of a silver jews song, or saul williams being something new that surprised, or jumping around to trail of dead and thinking that i love this much as i ever did, and that new songs and soundtracks are still joining and replacing the old…

i saw times new viking at bardens last week, and the week before saw health at the luminaire. it was like a warm-up. it was exciting like years ago.

i think i understand how music works. i get lost in songs too. i’ve never really been much of a musician. i can play a little guitar, a little keyboard, but i can’t put on a show. once i stood in for the bass player of a friend’s punk band. we played at a pub in Blyth to an antagonistic crowd, and i wore a mask made to look like the real bass player the whole time i was on stage. i fudged the notes.

i mean to say that i really want to make music, but i’m a different animal to you guys in bands or dj’s. i need screens to work on not stages.

i’ve been working on making two films lately. the first is called Ecstasy, and it was played in rough cut on bad screen at What They Could Do, They Did Escape a week ago last thursday. it needs the monologue re-recording, and the editing needs to be a little tighter and more precise. i think i know how to do that now. look out for it in a week or so. the other one is Karaoke. it’s going to be long, and the image is going to be filmed silent, but we’re going to record a soundtrack as a 20-odd minute musical piece and lay it over the top. so far it’s progressed slowly, but i think now it’s going to pick up. i can see how to do it. you compose layers of images the same way you do a song.

the final scene of city lights, when the formerly blind girl touches the tramp’s hands and realises that he was her kind benefactor, and he smiles, and she cries – it’s silent, put to a whole range of different accompaniments over the decades. but every time it plays, audiences still dab their eyes, hearts still swell. at the start of the weekend, i told her i had no idea how to stir someone that way, but maybe i do. there’s music in the close up of their hands, and in the way he breaks a smile. it’s about rhythm and nuances, it’s like the crashing end of a song by explosions in the sky.

i made this compilation cd today. it’s the time of year to be thinking about summer soundtracks, so these are some songs that remind me of the past few weeks and places i’ve been and that will hopefully stay with me for the summer. if anyone wants the CD (with a better cover), get in touch. whoever says so first, it’s yours.

1.broadcast – colour me in

2.future of the left – fingers become thumbs

3.fuck buttons – okay let’s talk about magic

4.william s burroughs – just like the collapse of any currency

5.mogwai – glasgow mega snake

6.times new viking – drop-out

7.crispin hellion glover – the daring young man on the flying trapeze

8.no age – loosen this job

9.liars – the other side of mt. heart attack

10.werner herzog – father umbrillo’s broken nation

11.animal collective – fireworks/essplode (live)

12.health – glitter pills

13.battles – atlas (bbc electric proms)

14.crystal castles – good time

15.silver jews – suffering jukebox

16.the kills – goodnight bad morning