The CineVegas film festival has announced it’s line-up and one of the main films is a documentary on aging, hipster downtown NY noiseniks, Sonic Youth, called “Sonic Youth: Sleeping Nights Awake.“
Produced by non-profit filmmaking patrons Project Moonshine, the twist with this digital-video doc was that it was shot entirely by seven high school students and featuring interviews, backstage footage, and 10 songs that were filmed live in Reno, Nevada on back in July 06.
Other films included in the fest will be Abel Ferrera’s reprobate stripper-paean, “Go Go Tales” (it was at Cannes last year and still has yet to be picked up) and his doc about the infamous New York hotel, “Hotel Chelsea, Chelsea on the Rocks,” “The Great Buck Howard,” which features a score by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! and stars Tom Hanks and John Malkovich (it screened at Sundance earlier this year), Alex Gibney‘s doc, “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson,” arrested development artists doc, “Beautiful Losers“(which features a score by Beastie Boy collaborator Money Mark) Rainn Wilson as the failed drummer in “The Rocker,” and Clark Gregg’s “Choke,” which features some Radiohead and other indie artists on the film’s soundtrack. CineVegas will run June 12-21 at the Palms Casino.
More from Ferrera’s ‘Hotel Chelsea,’ from Jeffrey Wells’ blog. The notorious hotel has a storied rock n’ roll relationship (tales that include Nancy Spungen’s death at the hands of Sid Vicious and legends that involve Nico, Leonard Cohen, etc. etc.) and evidently features interviews with “residents past and present” like director Milos Forman, Ethan Hawke, Dennis Hopper and subversive comic artist R. Crumb, plus vintage music, archival footage and re-enactments of famous Chelsea episodes — Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious, Janis Joplin — performed by Bijou Phillips, Jamie Burke, Adam Goldberg, Giancarlo Esposito and Grace Jones. Ferrera is debauched incarnate, so he probably sounds like the man for the job when it comes to rock bacchanalia stories.
Watch: ‘Sonic Youth: Sleeping Nights Awake’ trailer
As Thurston said at the end of the trailer, “You should use more light, dude.”
Indeed.
The trailer was hard to watch as it was nearly impossible to see what was going on, sort of like haveing a TV one with the brightness level close to off.
Also, this “Project Moonshine”; are they a real company or is the is the colaberation of these seven kids? And if not, interesting way of filming a movie and not having to pay anyone to do so, as I doubt highly that these kids are getting paid scale wages that other camera people in the industry make.
And due to the poor lighting of the trailer (I can’t believe that the whole movie looks like this being that it was the “Official Selection” of several film festivals) it shows the lack of knowledge involved in shooting something like this.
Too bad…