All Tomorrow’s Parties

Colour, DIGIBETA
United Kingdom, 2009, 90 min
Section: 2009: A Musical Odyssey

Synopsis

All Tomorrow’s Parties is a DIY concert film featuring performances from an eclectic mix of artists, including Nick Cave and the group Grinderman, Portishead, Animal Collective, Sonic Youth, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Grizzly Bear, Belle and Sebastian, Battles, and many others. The film takes its title from the cult festival of the same name: All Tomorrow’s Parties is a fiercely independent fest that many music-lovers regard as one of the world’s most important music events. Musicians and fans spend a few days living side by side in an intimate and communal atmosphere, serving up a heady combination of alternative music, crazy golf and chalet-living. At each festival a band or artist is chosen to gather together their own favourite artists who perform over a weekend in an out-of-season holiday camp by the sea. Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore described the festival as the ‘ultimate mix tape’. The film offers a bricolage made from Super8, camcorder and mobile phone footage contributed by over 200 filmmakers, fans and musicians over the course of the festival’s recent history, with key contributions from co-director Jonathan Caouette and cinematographer Vincent Moon (whose film Little Blue Nothing is also being shown at the KVIFF).

About the director

Jonathan Caouette (b. 1973, Houston) and All Tomorrow’s People codirected  All Tomorrow’s Parties, which collects the work of over two hundred contributors who offered up their images of the festival recorded on all kinds of different equipment. The director and occasional actor from Houston, Texas, brings the final shape to this community spirit, adding another work to a filmography which includes the personal documentary Tarnation (2003 – screened at KVIFF 2006), whose key theme is his relationship with his mother. Caouette also appears in the film Shortbus (2006), which was shown in Czech cinemas. Joining him on the set of All Tomorrow’s Parties (2009) is distinguished contemporary documentarist and cameraman Vincent Moon, creator of the film chronicle The Take Away Shows (part of which is Little Blue Nothing, being screened at this year’s KVIFF).