A celebration of music at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival

Whiplash kicked off the festival and uses music as a tool to explore human identity.

LOS ANGELES:

The ten-day-long 2014 Sundance Film Festival started with a bang on January 16 in the snow-covered streets of Park City, Utah.

Now in its 30th year, it is the top independent film gathering in the United States and has helped launch the careers of many up-and-coming film-makers, including Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh and David O Russell.

Sundance has also ushered some strong music films into the awards race in recent years, with 2012’s Searching for Sugar Man winning the Best Documentary Feature Oscar the following year, and 2013’s 20 Feet from Stardom, which is on this year’s Oscar shortlist.

Music spans all categories at Sundance 2014, including competition, premieres and spotlight films, and takes many different guises, such as a musical, coping mechanism and tool for healing.

Whiplash, a contender in the US dramatic competition, kicked off Sundance and is the first of numerous films that use music as a tool to explore human identity at the festival.

In God Help the Girl, a contender in the world cinema dramatic category, Scottish musician Stuart Murdoch, from indie-pop band Belle & Sebastian, explores a coming-of-age tale with a musical. In the spotlight category, Only Lovers Left Alive, starring Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston, follows a dejected musician who finds solace in his lover as his world collapses.

“I’m curious as to how music is of such interest to our film-makers,” said John Cooper, director of the film festival. “It could be tied to their passions being very similar, but each film is so unique in the approach that they’ve taken, it’s almost as if there are no similarities except for the music.”

Alive Inside: A Story of Music & Memory, a contender in the US documentary competition, explores the healing power of music as one man crusades to have music in nursing homes to help those with Alzheimer’s disease.

The festival’s closing night film, Rudderless, directed by actor William H Macy, sees a father cope with the grief of losing his son by forming a rock and roll band to perform his late son’s original music.

“It’s definitely going to be a celebration of music at the festival,” said Cooper.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 21^st, 2014.

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