JIM JARMUSCH: MUSIC, WORDS AND NOISE

Event information

DOORS 7PM
TICKETS £5 ADVANCE (COMING SOON) £6.50 ON THE DOOR
A HORSE HOSPITAL FUNDRAISING EVENT
With Sara Piazza, Stephen Barber and DJ Tim Caspar Boehme, hosted by Gareth Evans

Jim Jarmusch – music, words and noise (Reaktion Books, 2015: http://jimjarmusch-musicwordsandnoise.com/) by Sara Piazza is launched tonight in a special event featuring the world premiere cinema screening of Eskimo Lounge Music – Del Byzanteens Live At Hurrah (2010) directed by Merrill Aldighieri (link to trailer: http://artclips.free.fr/del-byzanteens.htm)

For Jim Jarmusch, the connection between cinema and music is a vital one, as this book and film vividly demonstrate. Jim Jarmusch, music words and noise is the first book to examine Jarmusch’s films from a sound-oriented perspective. The book reveals how the director created a form of ‘sound democracy’ in film, in which the audible and the visual are equally important and different acoustic layers infiltrate each other. It features original interviews with many prominent figures including Ennio Morricone, Luc Sante, John Lurie and Jarmusch himself.

Alongside his filmmaking, Jarmusch has worked and performed as a musician from the early 1980s with the Del Byzanteens to his contemporary work with Sqürl. The Del Byzanteens were a post-punk experiment that coincided with his film-making debut. Jarmusch formed the group with childhood friends and college classmates. Director and VJ pioneer Merrill Aldighieri captured unique, extraordinary performances by the group in 1980 at the Hurrah club in New York. Her film features guest saxophonist John Lurie and a commentary by the group’s collaborator Luc Sante, who brings a wry perspective on NY myth-making.

Sara Piazza is an independent writer, radio journalist, TV and documentary-film producer based in Berlin. This is her first book.

Stephen Barber is the author of many books on film, counter-culture and digital arts, and is co-editor of the Locations film series at Reaktion Books. He is a professor at Kingston University. His most recent book is Performance Projections (2014).

Merrill Aldighieri is a multi-award winning independent film-maker who has been involved in many different aspects of film, music and television for over 30 years. “HURRAH was the first club to make video installation a focal point of the club environment, but until I came they were just turning it on occasionally to play films. I asked if I could experiment to create a real-time constant flow of visuals to work with the DJ’s music, so when my film played, the flow would not stop. When they offered me my first pay-cheque, the word VJ was born, as we looked for how to note what I was doing.”