hurrengoa
music documentary cinema blossoms Maider Gomez Inchauspe   On the verge of disappearing, the San Sebastian Dock of The Bay music film festival asked fans and supporters for help. They didn’t expect to get the type of answer they did. Through crowd-funding they quickly managed to get the money they needed to organise another edition of the festival. On the one hand, it’s as plain as the nose on your face that documentaries about music have really blossomed in the last few years, and, on the other, while not always the case, and especially so nowadays, people do respond when a festival is meticulous in putting together a carefully chosen interesting collection of films. In the last few years we have been inundated with documentaries about music and musicians. It also seems that the audio-visual industry has become aware of the kind of following that music commands. Seeing as that this huge “market” is there, the idea of producing films for the sector certainly seems like a no-brainer. Lots of films from a wide variety of opinions and perspectives have been made in recent times: The Filth and the Fury (Sex Pistols), Some Kind of Monster (Metallica), No Direction Home (Bob Dylan), The Devil and Daniel Johnston, I’m Trying to Break Your Heart (Wilco), Anvil, End of the Century (Ramones), Let´s Get Lost (Chet Baker)...

On the verge of disappearing, the San Sebastian Dock of The Bay music film festival asked fans and supporters for help. They didn’t expect to get the type of answer they did. Through crowd funding they quickly managed to get the money they needed to organise another edition of the festival. On the one hand, it’s as plain as the nose on your face that documentaries about music have really blossomed in the last few years, and, on the other, while not always the case, and especially so nowadays, people do respond when a festival is meticulous in putting together a carefully chosen interesting collection of films. cinema blossoms These films weren’t made as promotional tools per se, but seeing the success some of them have had, we can’t really think of a better marketing tool. They also preserve for the future different periods in music like The Last Waltz (The Band) and Gimme Shelter (Rolling Stones). Directors like Martin Scorsese, Jim Jarmush, Jonathan Demme, Clint Eastwood, Peter Bogdanovich or Wim Wenders have made many of these films.

Music documentary film festivals, apart from big name directors’ work, have also made space for a different type of work, and for us this is far more interesting than what the aforementioned directors are doing. In film festivals like Dock of The Bay, work that shows what’s happening on local music scenes all over the world is on show. Raw, amateur films made by bands and music fans. On many occasions it’s a collective effort, films that play witness to different epochs and musical movements and finally become great archives that document the whole thing. Like the one that talks about the Kampsa centre in Pasaia or the 160 Metros: Una Historia del Rock en Bizkaia, just a couple of documentaries at the last DOTB festival worthy of a mention.