Home
sign up| features / film interview |
 content by: editor |
 glastonbury interview
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Down on the farm with director Julien Temple. Careful what you wish for: faced with the task of documenting Britain’s biggest and best-loved open-air music and arts event, Glastonbury, over its 35-year lifespan, director Julien Temple asked festival goers to submit their own home movies.“We had 900 hours sent in,” he gulps, “which is quite a scary amount. And you had to look at it all because there’d be loads of, say, jugglers and then suddenly a moment in someone’s tent which would come alive. And people filming themselves is so much better than a TV crew sticking a big, furry microphone into a tent, which kills everything dead.”  Combining this material with his own professionally shot footage gave Temple the necessary scope to tackle what he calls “a kind of spaceship through three decades”. What started as a small hippie love-in in farmer Michael Eavis’ field in 1970 gradually expanded into a musical and cultural touchstone, via 70s travellers, 80s CND protesters, 90s Britpop and today’s steel-ringed fence which holds more than 150,000 over a long weekend in June. “I didn’t select music that I would necessarily choose to sit down and listen to myself,” Temple points out. “I tried to avoid the kind of ‘hip indie’ thing, and I certainly didn’t want the bloody anthems thing, Robbie Williams or whatever. I tried to use the music to tell the story of the film and the weekend.” Temple’s approach is unusual in that, amongst galvanizing concert footage of the likes of The Velvet Underground, David Bowie and Radiohead, the focus is squarely offstage. “I do think the event is made by the people who go there – it’s possible to go there and have a great time without seeing any band,” Temple asserts. “I just love this thing where people seem to leave behind the kind of blinkered roles that they play in a 21st-century city when they get through the gate.”  Among numerous joyous examples of English eccentricity, none makes as big an impression as Eavis himself. “The beard and the gnomic presence, there’s something Pan-like about him. You can slag off Glastonbury; I know a lot of people who just say it’s lost everything,” says Temple, referring to the festival’s ever-creeping commercialization. “But I feel it’s still a place that’s exciting, and there aren’t many places like that left. Michael’s defended that and I wanted to make a film that fundamentally celebrates it.”
Leigh Singer
Glastonbury, on selected release 14 April 06.
 comments
Read members' comments related to this film.
|
 |
related info
 useful links
note: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
see also
 glastonburyalternatives your glastonburyfeature
related member reviews
by llamarama by iyers by dave house by astrotomato by alastair by dj bu & the astrons
also on bbc.co.uk
on bbc.co.uk/film network books  books and comics archive Author interviews and reviews from 2002 to 2008. |
send to a friend
access 1000s of articles
