Coming down to the destructive power of music, Polish-born director Lech Kowalski's Dead On Arrival: A Right of Passage and Born to Lose: The Last Rock `n' Roll Movie and Benjamin Smoke by Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen from the US demonstrate the affinity between drugs and rock music. "It's interesting to see why drug-using is so closely related to the rock music scene. To me, the two share great similarity: people succumb to the power of music just as they yield to the control of drugs," Wang said.
Through the directors' distant yet loving lens, punk band Sex Pistols, US singer Johnny Thunders and the Atlanta-based underground music legend and speed freak Benjamin are seen slowly disintegrating and self-destructing while their idiosyncrasies forever capture the public's imagination.
The underground classic The Connection by US experimental pioneer Shirley Clarke makes the drug culture in 1960s into a fictional, or mocumentary, drama where the director is granted permission to film eight drug addicts in a Manhattan loft apartment while they wait for their heroin dealer to arrive. It has been called the psychedelic version of Waiting for Godot because nothing really happens in the film.
Festival Notes:
What: The Imprint of Sound Conversation of Sound and Image
(聲音的痕跡－影像vs.音樂影展)
When and Where: May 26 to June 9 at SPOT -- Taipei Film House (台北之家－光點電影院): 18 Zhongshan N Rd, Sec 2, Taipei (台北市中山北路二段18號).
June 6 to June 11 at the Wonderful Cinema (萬代福影城): 38 Kungyuan Rd, Taichung (台中市公園路38號)
June 13 to July 4 at the Performance Hall of Taoyuan County Government, Cultural Bureau (桃園縣政府文化局演藝廳): 21 Hsienfu Rd, Taoyuan
(桃園市縣府路21號).
June 27 to July 9 at Kaohsiung Film Archive (高雄市電影圖書館): 10 Hesi Rd, Yencheng district, Kaohsiung (高雄縣鹽埕區河西路10號).
Tickets: Taipei: NT$150, available through NTCH ticketing outlets nationwide or at www.artsticket.com.tw; NT$1,300 for ten-screening package, purchased at Spot. Screenings in Taichung, Taoyuan and Kaohsiung are free of charge.
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