I've spent large chunks of the past several days at the incredible DOC NYC, an inaugural documentary film festival that's the brainchild of Thom Powers and Raphaela Neihausen of the IFC Center and many other endeavors (Powers is the documentary programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival.)
The concept of the festival -- celebrating storytelling in all formats, though these people probably don't say silly things like "formats" -- captured me completely, so I signed up to volunteer. Ended up working several shifts selling tickets, opening doors and the like. Plus, I got signed up to "cover" four events for blog posts for their site.
That actually turned into something of a challenge, seeing as how I've barely written anything in the past 25 years. One might say it's like riding a bike, except for the fact that I haven't ridden my bike for the past two weeks and I'm not sure I can do that any longer, either. But I digress.
All of this writing business turned out to be quite a bit of fun, and a terrific exercise in exercising my brain in ways that it had almost forgotten about. And I think it's quite appropriate that I did some of this again, especially at a documentary festival, at the same time as I'm trying to expand my boundaries in photography and video.
I'll get into more on the festival later, when my brain has had a chance to rest. In the meantime, my first blog post was here on the DOC NYC site
And I've pasted it below in case it disappears from the site.
Of all the spellbound fans that director Thom Zimny pulled straight into the essence of Bruce Springsteen last night, perhaps none was more transfixed than E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg. Even after more than three decades of living the music, and living the language of the band in its complex interplays, Weinberg says Zimny’s concert film “Darkness on the Edge of Town” showed him something new.
“I’m fascinated by Bruce’s eyes when he’s singing,” Weinberg said during a Q&A after the film’s world premiere at DOC NYC. “I’ve never seen that, the view from the front.”
What’s more: “Thom captured the grit of what it’s like to play. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that in a concert film.”
The eyes, the grit, the individual pieces of the band and the cohesion and interplay of all the pieces – Zimny’s magical film not just captures it but almost makes you experience it as part of the band. And that, Zimny told the audience at the Ziegfeld Theatre, is exactly what The Boss had in mind. It was Springsteen’s idea to film with no audience, just seven guys up on the darkened stage at the Paramount Theatre in Asbury Park. Springsteen was the one who wanted to bring the cameras in close, to “let the viewer be part of the E Street Band.” And he wanted to focus on the individual parts, while also capturing all the intensity and emotion of the band as a whole.
Zimny pulls all that off gorgeously. In a festival celebrating all the storytelling art forms both separately and collectively, this film and the Springsteen-Zimny collaboration that created it is a sort of workshop in itself, a piece of art conveying a piece of art while melding the music and photography to become its own art form.
The film is just 15 cameras, the band and the music, nothing extraneous, with all the songs in the classic 1978 album performed in order so the narrative structure remains intact.
The photography perfectly mirrors the album and the artist: elegant in a rough-hewn sort of way, at once simple and complex, stark and passionate yet with enough soft edges to soothe. It’s such a perfect match that – sacrilegious though this may sound – you almost don’t even need to hear the music. The lighting – call it lightness on the edge of darkness – and the closeups and the unexpected angles and perspectives all combine to take you into the music even without the music. And though it’s a moving picture, the closeups are so stunning that each could be a still photograph, meant to put on a wall and absorb and examine for a very long time.
“The thing about the E Street Band: We’re like a flying wedge, with Bruce at the point, and everyone pushing in that direction to help fulfill his vision. And that’s what you’ve captured so well,” Weinberg told Zimny during the Q&A. “You really captured the cohesion, the interplay of all the parts.”
The film wasn’t created for the big screen, but fortunately DOC NYC Artistic Director Thom Powers took action to change that. Powers saw a clip six weeks ago following the premiere of “Promise: the Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town” at the Toronto International Film Festival, where he’s the documentary programmer. Like “Promise,” the concert film will be included on DVD as part of the box set for the reissue of the “Darkness” album later this year. But Powers knew immediately that it demanded more than a 40-inch TV screen (or a 15-inch computer screen), and that’s when it’s helpful to have your own doc festival in the wings.
Noting the concept of the full “Darkness” album as an art form, Powers asked at the Q&A whether the era of the album is passing.
“If Bruce Springsteen has anything to do with it, there will be many more albums,” Feinberg replied. “There will always be serious artists who want an overall concept to be captured.”