Sonic Outlaws

Colour, 16 mm
USA, 1995, 87 min
Section: A Musical Odyssey
Oficiální stránky: www.othercinema.com

Synopsis

A frenzied, award-wining collage depicting the people who create musical collages. The group Negativland name their single "U2", after which they face years of lawsuits from the record label publishing songs by the band of the same name. Composer John Oswald plays around with recordings by other people, and Barbie starts speaking like an American soldier. A work which finds itself on the crossroads between superb entertainment and media activism, the film and its protagonists pose pressing questions: when is it possible to use other people´s work as the basis for a different kind of music, one´s own? Why is it not possible to regard the products of show business which engulf public space as public property? Where are the boundaries of "progressive art", governed by giant record companies? Does the process of recycling music exist? Director Craig Baldwin presents the theme in the only way possible: he gradually changes his film into a burlesque collage which itself doesn´t pay much attention to the authorisation of its sources. A film which is considered an essential landmark in contemporary art.

About the director

Craig Baldwin is an independent filmmaker and media archaeologist. His feral style paraphrases and satirises the world of documentary film. Baldwin feeds his film with borrowed shots from the silver screen and American media, chiefly television. Whether he probes the issues of American history or the sci-fi genre, the result is entertaining and intellectually penetrating. Selected filmography: RocketKitKongoKit (1986), Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America (1991), Sonic Outlaws (1995), Spectres of the Spectrum (1997). Awards (selection): Oberhausen 1988, San Francisco 1991, Los Angeles Film Critics´ Award 1996.