festival
documentary film | Germany, Spain, USA | 2009 | 85 min |
color
There are two kinds of rock festivals: the conventional
and the adventurous ones. The former present music that
everyone knows. Others are more experimental and put their
ear into boundary zones. The Klangbad Festival, curated
by Faust’s Jochen Irmler, belongs to the latter. Since
2004 the picturesque village of Scheer hosts an innovative
musical journey crossing various genres. In today's profit-oriented
event scene it is hard to find anything comparable. The
festival is small but growing constantly. Despite this fact,
it abandons commercial sponsoring funds unlike normal open
air festivals. Award-winning filmmakers Dietmar Post (USA/Germany)
and Lucia Palacios (Spain) portrait this fine festival in
the style of DIRECT CINEMA pioneers, such as, Murray Lerner,
Albert Maysles and D.A. Pennebaker. Or did you forget how
those filmmakers combined simplicity and economy with craftsmanship
in their seminal films Monterey Pop, Gimme Shelter or Newport
Folk Festival?
“Klangbad:
Avant-garde in the Meadows” stands in that same tradition
of carefully chronicling an event.