SIFF Day 2 (An Evening With Lisa Gerrard)

Here we are! The first offical day of SIFF (well, the second day of SIFF but the first day for me.) Only one program tonight, Roya and I made our way down to the SIFF Cinema for An Evening With Lisa Gerrard. This involved a talk with Lisa and then a screening of the documentary Sanctuary: Lisa Gerrard, followed by a Q&A. I predicted many showings at SIFF Cinemae, so before the fest started I shelled out $100 for a parking pass, figuring we’d only have to use it 10 times to break even. It’s very handy.

While walking into the theatre we saw a guy wearing a t-shirt with a color-blindness test on it. This entertained me, since I am in fact red/green colorblind and can not actually read whatever number is on that shirt. I need to get one.

So, Lisa comes out and is being interviewed by Ian Hierons, who I know nothing about. The interview is entertaining enough, and I learned a lot about Lisa’s career and how she works, which was cool since I knew almost nothing about her. I was quite struck by how good natured and relaxed she was, spinning stories and telling jokes, yet at the same time obviously very serious about her music. I had expected something much different. Then she gets up and starts giving a demonstration about how she relaxes herself to begin singing, which was totally enthralling. I always love getting an inside look into how people do what they do, and this was seriously fascinating. I could have listened to more of that for another hour or two.

The movie was interesting from an academic level, providing a lot of insight to me about Gerrard’s career and work. As a piece of filmmaking it was not the greatest, put together in a basic way with unimpressive cinematography and shot choices (barring a really interesting bit with Gerrard singing under a freeway and describing the way that her music is similar to the drone of traffic.) Sadly this is a theme of the first week of SIFF - docs with interesting subjects and uninspired filmmaking.

After the film Gerrard came back for some Q&A. She was incredibly gracious, doing a fantastic job dealing with her over-the-top fanbase and their uncontrolled fawning. Between this event and the concert the night before, she has fallen firmly into the strata of artists that I highly respect even though they might not really be my thing. After SIFF is over I’ll have to give another listen to that Dead Can Dance compilation Roya made for me a while back.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 1st, 2007 at 11:52 am and is filed under Movies, SIFF 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.