Last week, the sixth edition of the Chicago International Movies & Music Festival, aka CIMMfest, took over parts of the Second City for four days straight. Founded by musician Josh Chicoine (Cloudbirds, The M’s) and filmmaker Ilko Davidov (BulletProof Film), the festival has expanded over the years to highlight films, concerts, DJ sets, live score performances, and panels that “show just what movies and music mean to each other.” That drive is what makes the festival so unique, and so appetizing for music obsessives looking to discover more.
This year, major alternative players like Yo La Tengo, EMA, Booker T, Murder by Death, Trust, and Escort headed an exhaustive bill of films that ranged from (new and old) documentaries on the Mississippi Delta blues, Grant Hart, the Mekons, and Townes Van Zandt to feature films set in the world of music a la Pleased to Meet Me, Metalhead, and Palestine Stereo. There were also an assortment of panels that touched upon noteworthy industry subjects like live streaming, women in music and publicity, and home studios. Remarkably, a few shed light on topics that most wouldn’t even care to know, specifically the music going on in prisons.
They have a long way to go before they start rivaling the likes of, say, South by Southwest, CMJ: Music Marathon, or Sundance, but that’s not exactly their goal, either. This isn’t about flashy premieres, exclusivity, or buzzworthy talent — it’s more or less an epicenter of information between two mediums that continue to depend on eachother as the clock keeps ticking. Admittedly, there’s room for improvement, and especially expansion, but it’s certainly a start. So, in honor of the festival’s sixth edition, we pieced together our six favorite films/events we caught over the bustling weekend.
Califone live scores Water & Power
1st Ward
“I feel like an asshole,” Tim Rutili kept whispering into his microphone. He had just terminated his improvisation with Califone abruptly after the film they were scoring, Water & Power, cut out to a DVD menu screen. He figured the film was over. It wasn’t. Back in the booth, a projectionist struggled to get the film back on track, while the audience offered support for Rutili’s gaffe. “You sounded great!” someone said.
They did sound great, supplying layer after layer of surreal textures as the film unfolded. A semi-abstract examination of the Los Angeles landscape, Water & Power nicely accompanied Califone’s yawning, experimental folk music. Pat O’Neill’s 1989 film superimposes early computer animation and strange, uncomfortable performance pieces over long shots of the California city. Devoid of characters or narrative, it’s an alienating experience to sit through, especially when rounded out by Califone’s eerie drone.
But that’s the kind of transportation good movies promise, and it’s all the more impressive when they can achieve it without story. Until the visuals cut out, we weren’t in the back room of the 1st Ward in Wicker Park; we were somewhere between Los Angeles and our own nightmares. –Sasha Geffen
Led Zeppelin Played Here
Dir: Jeff Krulik
On January 20th, 1969, months before the release of their self-titled debut, Led Zeppelin performed in front of roughly 50 teenagers at Maryland Youth Center… or did they? No posters, ticket stubs or other ephemera exist to prove the show occurred. Led Zeppelin’s former tour manager denies it ever happened. Yet the show’s promoter and a handful of eye witnesses claim to have been there.
Over the course of this feature-length documentary, director Jeff Krulik chases the fraying threads of evidence in a search to uncover the truth. Part loving homage to this wild moment of classic rock pre-history, part investigative journalism, the whole is a funny, entertaining journey through foggy recollections and poorly documented early days of a band that just months later would become legends.
Adjacent to the story, but forming the film’s core, are the cast of oddballs, former hippies and other music die-hards reminiscing about these halcyon days, when a “highly intoxicated” Rod Stewart and The Faces played the same youth center, or a peanut butter-smeared Iggy Pop and the Stooges freaked out the audience at a nearby church. It is an eye-opening experience to remember that “rock gods” like Led Zeppelin and Iggy Pop were once small-time bands hustling for gigs and, sometimes, threatening promoters for gas money.
As Krulik and his interviewees reverentially sort through old show posters and ticket stubs, it is difficult not to see one’s pot-bellied future in the frayed tie dyes and hazy recollections of epic shows with bands before they got big. –Kris Lenz
