Cinematech Tel Aviv is launching a new festival, and this time it’s one that’s really worth paying attention to: the Soundtrack Festival is a festival “for music in cinema and television”, it’s managed by Time Out darlings Dana Kessler and Shiv Cohen (responsible for the beloved municipal initiative “The Circle of Music History” for its many branches and his lectures). But what is particularly successful about the festival, which will take place between November 15 and 19, are its unconventional lineup choices. The festival will include what such a festival must include – dozens of films from Israel and the world, documentaries and feature films, premiere screenings, film classics, performances, meetings with creators, workshops and master classes, lectures, guests and special events, midnight screenings, a special program for children and more – but the elections themselves They are surprising and creative.
In general, if you see in the two screenings that the Cinematheque will hold before the festival (as a kind of “warming up the engines”, according to their definition) a statement of intent, then it is impossible to open with films by two artists who are more different from each other – Saul Williams, the experimental rapper-artist-poet, who created a kind of “Queer-Afro-Futurist Maddow Musical” in “Neptune Frost” (6.10) and two days later – a legendary concert film of Billy Joel in 4K (on 8.10). Saul Williams and Billy Joel. You understood with which What kind of festival do you have a business?
In the meantime, at the festival itself (which will take place about a month and a half later) some particularly original events are expected: a reunion with the people of “Esak Black” (1996-2007), Kwami and Liron Thani, alongside a premiere screening of the documentary “All the streets are quiet”, about the hip scene New York’s Hope in the Eighties and Nineties; Premiere screening of a documentary about Serge Tankian, the political and sharp lead singer of System of a Down who is trying to spark a cultural revolution in his native Armenia, including a conversation with Kobi Farhi, lead singer of Orphand Land; and the documentary screening about the life of the leader of the Clash band and one of the fathers of punk, “Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten”, including a video conversation with the director; and a number of special screenings of silent films accompanied by live music.
What more? “Industrial Symphony No. 1: Dream of the Broken Heart”, a performance film of the singer Julie Cruise directed by David Lynch, with whom she collaborated in several films as a musician and also appeared as a singer in “Twin Peaks”; Alongside the screening, there will also be a special tribute performance by Hila Ruach; documentaries about a variety of bands such as King Crimson, Idols, Dinosaur Jr., Chamvumba and more; And also a special visit to Israel by Lydia Lench, a legend from the New York underground scene in the 70s, who was discovered in a compilation album compiled by Brian Eno and continued from there to an eccentric career of punk, spoken word and avant-garde art. Here too she will appear before the screening of the docu about her, “Lydia Lunch: The War Never Ends”.
Soundtrack Festival, 11.15-11.19. Tel Aviv Cinematech, 3 Shaprintsak