Featuring: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Sonic Youth, Theoretical Girls, DNA, LIARS, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, Gogol Bordello, flux information sciences, Lydia Lunch, Black Dice, Swans, A.R.E. Weapons, foetus and Glenn Branca.
Plot Outline: First-time filmmaker S.A. Crary shares a complex history of New York's art-punk scene. This compelling documentary weaves together a timeline for an aggressive movement allowing the players to reflect in the moment. With interviews from such punk rock icons as Teenage Jesus & the Jerks bassist Jim Sclavunos, bandmate Lydia Lunch, DNA's Arto Lindsay, Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth and others from the late '70s/early '80s art-punk explosion. Exclusive interviews with these originators and a new generation of practitioners -- from the Grammy-nominated Yeah Yeah Yeahs to Black Dice to Liars to Gogol Bordello -- reveals a consistent hunger for invention through subversion, motivations that come into cacophonous focus in the new and archival concert footage bridging the interviews. What also comes out is a depth of retrospection amongst the older generation that puts the younger generation's musings in a context that will surprise even the most plugged-in of scenesters. By documenting art-punk in the same spirit as the movement itself has played out, Crary has created a compelling reference for a movement that defies them and managed to stay true to its spirit in the process.
DVD Features:
· Over 60 mins of exclusive interviews and performances
· Additional live clips and music videos
· Photo galleries
· Weblinks
· Trailers
· Over 60 mins of exclusive interviews and performances
· Additional live clips and music videos
· Photo galleries
· Weblinks
· Trailers
Enigmatic and deliberately hypocritical, this is not a typical documentary film.
Taking cues more from video art than journalism, the film is structured thematically and is more complex than a linear historical survey. The editing cleverly compiles interviews with the originators of No Wave, newer bands, and Sonic Youth (the bridge between) into a sort of a dialogue of confession and criticism. The director doesn't conceal the fact that the cuts in editing pervert time, which appropriately comments on the medium of documentary film itself.
Shot in NY homes and streets rather than studios, Kill Your Idols meditates on the notion of nostalgia, time, scene, and music history. The film is unique for the ability to display the intentions of art through the musicians' view whether they sound dignified or not. It's clever and cocky and insightful. There are connections and contradictions. There are no pre-chewed short cuts. The film won't tell you what to think, but it will make you do so.
(The hour+ of special features on the DVD are very worth mentioning and include a lengthy, great featurette.)
Taking cues more from video art than journalism, the film is structured thematically and is more complex than a linear historical survey. The editing cleverly compiles interviews with the originators of No Wave, newer bands, and Sonic Youth (the bridge between) into a sort of a dialogue of confession and criticism. The director doesn't conceal the fact that the cuts in editing pervert time, which appropriately comments on the medium of documentary film itself.
Shot in NY homes and streets rather than studios, Kill Your Idols meditates on the notion of nostalgia, time, scene, and music history. The film is unique for the ability to display the intentions of art through the musicians' view whether they sound dignified or not. It's clever and cocky and insightful. There are connections and contradictions. There are no pre-chewed short cuts. The film won't tell you what to think, but it will make you do so.
(The hour+ of special features on the DVD are very worth mentioning and include a lengthy, great featurette.)
