Music's history shown at festival

Stewart Copeland (L) and Andy Stewart were at Sundance for Copeland's film. Picture / Reuters

For an event about movies, the Sundance Film Festival featured a parade of musicians, from Neil Young to the Beastie Boys, offering new insight into singers and songs that spanned decades.

The festival blended traditional documentaries such as director Lian Lunson's Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man, in which she profiles the 1960s poet-singer, with an unconventional film about the Beastie Boys. The Beasties gave 50 concert-goers video cameras to tape one of their Madison Square Garden shows.

Former Police drummer Stewart Copeland charts his band's rise to stardom in the 1970s and 1980s using film he shot in Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out, and director Jonathan Demme peers into an iconic singer/songwriter's soul by creating a "dream experience" in Neil Young: Heart of Gold.

Young writes and records deeply personal songs like Old Man, and he calls the film, which features work from his recent Prairie Wind album, a deeply personal undertaking.

"It conjures up the history of my family and the music," Young said in a joint interview with Demme.

The pair said the movie was not a documentary, nor a concert film. It breaks new ground because each number, including hits from Harvest and Harvest Moon albums, was elaborately staged at the legendary Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee.

As in a theatrical production, each song has a new setting. Lights come up, and Young might tell a story then the song would illustrate that story.

"Seeing Neil Young expressing these lyrics and seeing the emotions that register on his face in his style of presentation is a sublime extra for understanding his music," Demme said.

Sundance, held annually in this mountain town east of Salt Lake City is the top gathering for American independent film, and movies that screened here will be among the most widely anticipated art house films of 2006.

Lunson's profile of iconic singer/songwriter Cohen has wowed audiences, too. For I'm Your Man, the director interviewed the reclusive poet, as well as rock icons like Bono and Edge of U2 to talk about his impact on their music. Then, performers like Rufus Wainwright and Nick Cave sing his songs to show how Cohen's life is reflected in his work.

"His lyrics and poetry are so poignant and so beautifully deep that if young kids could listen to this and could be transformed by it that'd be great," Lunson said.

Copeland's Everyone Stares offers audiences a look at the Police before anybody had ever heard of him, bassist Sting, or guitarist Andy Summers and hits like Can't Stand Losing You were unknown.

In those early years, Copeland filmed life behind the scenes and often the band on stage.

What emerges is a portrait of normal guys transforming into rock stars until fanfare and isolation from real life became too hard to handle.

In 1984, the Police broke up, but contrary to headlines, Copeland said they were always friends and remain that way.

"Hopefully it dispels a myth, which even I bought into, that the band fought all the time. You can see in this movie, that we love and respect each other," he said.

Also screened were American Hardcore, about the early days of American punk rock, and urban life is explored in Beyond Beats and Rhymes: A Hip-Hop Head Weighs in on Manhood in Hip-Hop Culture.

"Music has an immediate effect. If you want to go beyond that and look underneath, film is a good way of explaining," Copeland said.

- REUTERS