ONE MAN IN THE BAND
Director / Cinematographer / Editor
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Doc about people who play as solo musicians
Male
36 years old
London, London and South East
United Kingdom
Last Login: 12/4/2009
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Mood:
mice mice mice
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ONE MAN IN THE BAND's Film Bio
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| Website | onemanintheband.com | | Influences | Film synopsis: ’One-man band’ conjures up images of tuneless street entertainers with drums on their backs and cymbals on their knees, whereas contemporary one-man bands are diverse and vibrant in their musical output. They are more than just solo performers: a one-man band brings to the stage noise and spectacle worthy of a whole band. However, unmediated by creative collaboration, the result can have a peculiar intensity verging on the downright eccentric.
| | Directors | In this film we follow a selection of one-man and one-lady bands from Europe and the USA as they survive on the fringes of the gigging circuit. We meet the Man From Uranus, a veteran of the first Gulf War who wears wellingtons on his hands as he hammers his Moog keyboards into submission. Ninki V weaves webs of sound with her theremin and Thomas Truax has built a backing band of automata. Dennis Hopper Choppers turns the volume up to eleven, while Honkeyfinger wrestles werewolf rock from a lap-steel guitar, The Two Tears pines for her Californian past and Duracell drums with a hurricane in his soul.
Rather than mocking the musical excesses on display, the documentary takes an intimate approach to depicting its subjects, helped by the fact that it’s a film about one-man bands made by a one-man band filmmaker. With its intercutting of multiple stories, a broader theme emerges: the question of what drives us as humans to create. | | Awards | | | Festivals | Visit www.onemanintheband.com for news of festival and special screenings |
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ONE MAN IN THE BAND's Interests
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| General | Making films and looking behind mirrors. | | Music | Appearing in the documentary ONE MAN IN THE BAND...
DENNIS HOPPER CHOPPERS A gifted London-based musician who seems to have sold his musical soul at a crossroads somewhere in the American deep south. His music is seductive, beguiling, world-weary and utterly modern. As a one-man band, his virtue is his insistence on playing all his instruments 'live'.
DURACELL A heroic figure among DIY noise kids and chip tune enthusiasts, Lyon-based Duracell has perfected the idea of giving electronic music a thoroughly physical manifestation. Using an elaborate system of modular triggers around his drum kit, he comes across as the hybrid of the band Lightning Bolt with a Commodore 64 home computer, possessed by the spirit of Animal from The Muppets.
HONKEYFINGER Howling and eloquent, Honkeyfinger unleashes swamp trash blues from his homely lap-steel guitar in an adrenalised rush. With a stated aim of taking on power rock behemoths such as Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer at their own game, he has recently acquired a 'go faster' pedal which makes his live performances truly memorable. He also has a splendid beard.
MAN FROM URANUS Originally from Florida, Man from Uranus is defiantly in a musical dimension all of his own. Using analogue electronic instruments such as Moog synthesizers and theremins, he brews violent and seductive rhythmic trances that borrow equally from Stockhausen and vintage children's TV. He must never be allowed to become a musical hermit.
NINKI V Trained as a medieval musician, Ninki discovered instruments such as theremins, drum pads and casio keyboards and now delivers elaborate musical epics with invigorating energy and bamboozling dexterity.
THOMAS TRUAX Thomas tours with a full backing band, except that he made them himself from junkyard trash and drags them around in an oversized suitcase. A complex array of characters from mad scientist to broken-hearted crooner become sublimated into Thomas' mesmerising performances, with solid backing from his bizarre contraptions.
THE TWO TEARS Once there were five, now there is only one left in The Two Tears. From the high-energy LA girl punk scene to Paris' boulevards of broken dreams, The Two Tears epitomises the drive, focus and ferocity of a true survivor. | | Movies | 
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ONE MAN IN THE BAND's Details
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| Status: | Single | | Hometown: | London, UK | | Body type: | 0' 1" | | Zodiac Sign: | Sagittarius |
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| Films: 1 |
Total Plays: 394 |
Plays Today: 0 |
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Run Time:
82
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Plays:
394
Comments:
2
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ONE MAN IN THE BAND's Latest Blog Entry
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Screening: Sunday 22 November 2009, Malmö, Sweden
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One Man in the Band in Montpellier this Sunday... plus Croatia, Spain and Singapore
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Free screening of One Man in the Band in Hull, UK, plus London screening reminder
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More screenings of One Man in the Band: London, Portland, Montpellier...
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One Man in the Band - free screening - Belo Horizonte, Brazil
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ONE MAN IN THE BAND's Blurbs |
About me:
My name is Adam Clitheroe and I'm a documentary filmmaker with a background in avant-garde film and a smattering of children's TV. The former earned me a reputation for gratuitous nudity, the latter BAFTA and RTS nominations here in the UK. I was making a fascinating feature-length doumentary about the act of looking out of windows when I encountered the fantastic MAN FROM URANUS in a pub and was introduced to the intensely exotic and disturbingly peculiar milieu of the modern one-person band. The windows documentary was temporarily put on hold - fenestrists, don't worry, it's coming soon - and I was sucked into the world of ONE MAN IN THE BAND, meeting many unique musicians along the way, of whom DENNIS HOPPER CHOPPERS, DURACELL, HONKEYFINGER, MAN FROM URANUS, NINKI V, THOMAS TRUAX and THE TWO TEARS made it into this documentary. The obvious choice was to make the film as a one-man band myself, and so I plunged in with my equipment strapped to my limbs and my camera rolling. What intrigued me about the one-man bands I met was that they were all doing music that was really quite adventurous and 'out there', but they had progressed beyond the need for acceptance by the music industry or, indeed, anybody else. They were doing what they wanted in an unadulterated and quite public manner. As a filmmaker who has always hidden behind glass eyes, this nakedness and lack of pretension in front of an audience was refreshing and quite alarming. I think it was no coincidence that for many of the one man bands I met, their personal lives were in turmoil. Over the course of filming them observationally for this documentary, I began to grasp - as my own life descended into chaos - exactly what it takes to persist as ONE MAN IN THE BAND. It's the yearning for the sweetness of one's own vision, raw and undefiled, and a dogged stoicism in trudging the wastelands of solitude to get to that place. So do try and see my film ONE MAN IN THE BAND - screening at film festivals and coming out on DVD in 2009 - and ask yourself - was music ever meant to be this lonely?
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Who I'd like to meet:
Formally inventive documentary filmmakers such as Agnes Varda, Ulrich Seidl and Errol Morris. Errol Morris' film VERNON, FLORIDA (1982) was a direct influence on this film, ONE MAN IN THE BAND.
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