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Soundtracking Music has always been a very important part of cinema and audiences’ experience, adding coherence and evoking emotions in accordance with the stories told. Sometimes the music is the one thing we truly remember from a film. For our 25th edition we are proud to present this sidebar with films about music, under the heading Soundtracking (a similar sidebar with the same name was presented at tiff 2009). The film year 2014 provided many strong candidates, and it has been a grateful assignment to compose the program. What are we tracking in this selection? If the five films presented have a common denominator, it is that they all tell of the extreme importance of music in the lives of their protagonists. In these films, music has the power to liberate as well as to enslave. The characters, be it a young black man from the banlieues of Strasbourg or a music mogul reciding in Hawaii, must live under its spell. With a nod to another tiff sidebar of the year, City:Scope, we have also been looking for films where the music is grounded in particular urban milieus. This aspect is quite obvious when it comes to films about a streetwise rapper like Nas or the Sheffield band Pulp; in both cases the musical approaches are deeply influenced by the artists’ respective backgrounds. But it even goes for the portrait of Shep Gordon in supermensch . He started his career in the creative environment around legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York, where Jimi Hendrix allegedly pointed out his direction in life saying he should become a music manager. But first and foremost we have aimed to pick quality films that are enlightening as well as entertaining – and that have some great music in them. Both fiction films presented are French: eden is a mesmerizing musical coming-of-age tale from the emerging electronica/house scene in Paris in the 1990s, whereas may allah bless france! tells of the tribulations of a hard-hitting rap group in a suburban environment. The British documentary pulp is simply a great film about a very likable band, their music and their hometown Sheffield (which in the film seems like a place you’d want to move to). nas: time is illmatic records the background and legacy of one of the most important and celebrated rap albums of all time. And finally, to round it up, we have included supermensch: the legend of shep gordon for its many wild stories and joyous approach to the music industry. Enjoy!
