Celebrate ten years of the alternative music festival All Tomorrow’s Parties with Sonic Youth, Portishead, Nick Cave, Iggy and the Stooges, Patti Smith, Animal Collective, Daniel Johnston, and many many more.
“Have you ever wondered what summer camp with Nick Cave, Daniel Johnston and Iggy Pop would feel like?” — SXSW 2009
Screened as part of NZIFF 2009
All Tomorrow's Parties 2009
For almost a decade, All Tomorrow's Parties have been occupying weatherbeaten, out-of-season holiday camps on the English coast and turning them into a mecca for adventurously minded musicians and audiences. The weekend long festivals are an idealistic endeavour, with headliners such as Sonic Youth, the Dirty Three and Mogwai given carte blanche to select the acts they want to share the stage. In the spirit of such anarchic inclusiveness, this documentary distillation hands the reins over to more than 200 filmmakers, musicians and fans. Tarnation director Jonathan Caouette is on hand to make sense of their footage, combing coverage from several festivals to create a freeform assemblage of magnificent strangeness that includes Daniel Johnston's impromptu confessional in the camp courtyard, the swampy blues of Nick Cave's Grinderman, Japan's Boredoms pummelling a quartet of drumkits, the breakneck assault of bass and drum duo Lightning Bolt, the Wu-Tang Clan dueling with liquid swords, Iggy and the Stooges' sinuous raw rock reborn, plus much much more. — MM