04/12/2014

Doors 20:00

Sublime Frequencies in North and West Africa: The films of Hisham Mayet.
Exhilarating, hallucinatory, harrowing, ecstatic and surreal, Hisham Mayet’s films and audio collections reveal a region’s rituals, rhythm and landscape, with an aesthetic of extra-geography and soulful experience. Mayet will be premiering his brand new film Vodoun Gods on the Slave Coast as well as discussing his methodology and that of Sublime Frequencies, a label he founded with Alan and Richard Bishop in 2003. Other highlights of this live screening will include stories and unseen footage of his experiences with the now legendary clutch of Saharan guitar groups (Group Doueh, Bombino, Inerane) he came upon in the region, as well as sharing his many adventures travelling and documenting possession ceremonies in the Sahel for the last 10 years. Employing an unflinching methodology that continues to inspire contemporaries and audience alike, his many documentaries have been redefining the nature of ethnographic film, and continue to provoke and amaze in equal measure.
Musical Brotherhoods From The Trans-Saharan HighwayFilmed in 2005 by Hisham Mayet predominately at the Jemaa Al Fna in Marrakesh Morocco, 'Musical Brotherhoods of the Trans-Saharan Highway' captures an assortment of spectacular musical dramas presented live and unfiltered on the home turf of the world's most dynamic string and drum specialists performing and manifesting the ecstatic truth. Ancient mystical brotherhoods have been flourishing for centuries in and around the cities of Marrakesh and Essaouira in Morocco where the trade caravans have gathered from their long journeys across the Trans-Saharan Highway. This is some of the last great street music on Earth. A must see for string aficionados looking for inspiration as electric ouds, banjos, mandolins and the Gnawa sentir peel flesh from bone right before your eyes!