widescreen
do c s film in a wider context
h a l fway t h ro ug h Michael
opposite gimme shelter ABOVE standing in the shadow of motown
Rappaport's Beats, Rhymes & Life (2011) the director asks members of De La Soul if the show they are all at will be the last show by A Tribe Called Quest, the subject of the film. The reply is 'I hope so'. It’s a moment that illustrates important factors in rock documentary - honesty, capturing the moment and the quality of the participants. Since DA Pennebaker captured a young Bob Dylan on the road in Don't Look Back (1967) the 'rockumentary' has surged to become a popular staple of the wider documentary genre. Pennebaker’s film and the conventions it spawned have become part of mainstream cinematic consciousness, with Todd Haynes' Dylan mythology I'm Not There (2007) borrowing heavily from its aesthetics for key sequences. Also, films such as Rob Reiner's beloved This Is Spinal Tap (1984) capture an authentic behind the scenes feel in a work that spoofs both the heavy metal and rock music genres in addition to the rockumentary itself. The rockumentary is generally a reflective document looking back at key moments surrounding its subject, from a distance that allows for that reflection by those involved and affected. This is fundamentally different to the concert film, which, due to the temporal nature of the subject, captures a specific moment in time. One of the greatest examples of a film that straddles both is The Maysles Brothers and Charlotte Zwerin's Gimme Shelter (1970). What must have started life as a straight document of The Rolling Stones’ 1969 Altamont show became something else entirely following the tragic,
unforeseen events that transpired. The directors perfectly capture both the prior ego and subsequent terror and reality check of disconnected rock royalty as well as creating a visual testament to a watershed cultural event. Their skill as documentary filmmakers elevates a simple concert film into a valuable historical artefact. The film becomes a way of viewing history in a wider context. It's post summer of love, the end of the sixties and paired with Jean Luc Godard's Sympathy for the Devil (1968) places a rock and roll group at the heart of a major cultural shift. Godard's film is a complicated and astute rockumentary, painstakingly capturing the attritionlike construction of one of rock and roll's most famous recordings it is also a painfully voyeuristic insight into a band at breaking point. Similarly to Gimme Shelter, it manages to convey a darkness emerging over the horizon of the hope fueled '60s, shot as it was in the aftermath of the May 1968 Paris riots and infused with classic Godard symbolism and contrasts. Increasingly Rockumentaries have become a way of redressing history and moments in time almost archaeologically, giving us new ways of seeing famous historical moments in music history and also providing an insight into artists that provided key influential, but under appreciated, input into the musical landscape. Standing In The Shadows Of Motown (Paul Justman, 2002) is a tribute to the Funk Brothers - the session musicians responsible for some of the most memorable music of the twentieth century - that also exposes and documents issues of injustice and Autumn 2013
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