Documentary looking into the history, origins, and highlights of the UK’s biggest music festival.
Self
Spreading the gospel of "Mutation", Joe Rush and his Mutoid Waste Company, an underground collective of wild and subversive performers whose credo is the art made of waste, the parties and the road, shake up the alternative cultural history of Europe.
Filmed across the Festival’s Worthy Farm site at landmarks including the Pyramid Field and the Stone Circle, the event will see a range of artists giving their time to perform in support of the Festival, including Coldplay, Damon Albarn, HAIM, IDLES, Jorja Smith, Kano, Michael Kiwanuka, Wolf Alice, plus DJ Honey Dijon, who will all perform as part of an uninterrupted film production. There will also be a number of unannounced surprise performances.
Borne out of the anarcho-squatting free-festival scene of the eighties the Levellers have survived over 25 years of music press vitriol, drink and drug addictions as well as many barren years in the wilderness. But the band had seven consecutive gold albums throughout the 90s, sold out their own festival for the last ten years and run their own creative centre, the Metway. Via the eccentric artist, archivist, whiskey loving bassist Jeremy Cunningham we are taken on a journey; how the band rose to fame and how they survived. A potted history of 25 years of subsidised dysfunctionalism. An uplifting tale of battling demons, that reminds us that behind every band there is always a story of struggle for expression, acceptance and survival.
self
In this personal film, Julien Temple, who directed the definitive documentary history of the Glastonbury Festival, explores the alternative side of the festival away from the spotlight of the main stages with their global pop superstars. In fields known as Shangri La, Arcadia, the Unfair Ground, Strummerville, Block 9 and the Common, every year an unlikely attempt at utopia takes shape. Here, the festival reconnects with its radical, countercultural origins combining underground music, performance art and some of the funniest and most provocative sights of the festival with a dark, urgent 21st century spontaneity. Filmed at the 2011 festival, this 75 minute documentary features Michael Eavis, the creators of, and visitors to the true heart of the Glastonbury, and, fuelled by the music of tomorrow, explores the hopes, dreams and personal utopias of those who, for one weekend in June, come together as the tribes of 21st Century Albion.
