The director Richard Lowenstein is the author of most music videos of the famous Australian band INXS, including the clip for the song Never Tears Us Apart, where the communist Prague appears as the background. Back then, it was his visit to the 1984 KVIFF that inspired him to use the capital city for his video. This year, he returns to KVIFF with his film Mystify Michael Hutchence, a document revealing the complicated inner world of the charismatic frontman of INXS.
The film, composed exclusively of archive footages, presents interviews with several Hutchence’s close persons. “I had already known many of them and they knew Michael trusted me. Moreover, more than twenty years had passed since his death and these people felt it was time to tell his story,” the director described the film’s genesis. Having been asked by a member of public why the film does not include interview with Bob Geldof, ex-husband of Paula Yates, Hutchence’s last girlfriend and mother of his only child, he answered: “I did approach him, but he replied that he had already told everything and had in fact only ever had three angry telephone calls with Michael. Geldof certainly was not the cause of Michael’s suicide and I do not think he is the key to explain what happened that night. I rather focused on the brain trauma Michael suffered in 1992, which changed him.”
Lowenstein also told the audience that it was not the respondents that were hard to be found for the film, but the licence to use the music of INXS. “Their manager is very weird and refused to provide the licence unless he had the final cut of the film. Luckily, Michael’s daughter Tiger Lily helped us after having seen the rough edit,” revealed Lowenstein.
