I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (A Portrait of David Toop Through His Record Collection)

Colour, DIGIBETA
Belgium, 2009, 96 min
Section: 2009: A Musical Odyssey

Synopsis

Film as a musical seance, an intimate portrait of a thinker, the genesis of a multi-style mixtape and a record of a feat of sporting endurance. The filmmakers take their camera into the London home of David Toop, musician and noted author of books on ambient music, silence, sounds and memory. Their objective is simple: to create "a portrait of David Toop through his record collection”. Toop puts on a selection of records, he comments on them and ties them together in unexpected but logical contexts. We hear the music of Korean monks, old rockabilly, works by John Cage and Finnish minimalist techno outfit Pan Sonic. A strong theme in the film is the experience of listening to music itself. The huge collection of LPs and CDs here becomes a tangible testimony of living with something as infinite as music. Toop’s restraint and the unseen nature of music give the film its unique tension. The film will probably be appreciated most by those who have already travelled a fair distance with the kind of art which takes them on a journey with no precise destination.

About the director

Dominique Lohlé (b. 1966, Louvain), Guy-Marc Hinant (b. 1960, Charleroi)

Guy-Marc Hinant is a music producer with his own label, Sub Rosa, based in Brussels. His catalogue contains around 250 titles, from documentaries on the inter-war avant-garde and early electronics, to New Music (Marcel Duchamp, William Burroughs, James Joyce, Luc Ferrari, Milan Knížák, Morton Feldman). In 2000 he teamed up with documentarist Dominique Lohlé to begin filming a series of video portraits entitled OME (Observatoire de Musiques Electroniques). They have made 14 parts to date featuring, alongside David Toop, also Pierre Boulez, Jonas Mekas and Philip Jeck, among others.