This playlist is an audiovisual journey through the last 45 years of Italian music. Far from being a systematic overview of Italian heritage, this selection aims to outline a heterogeneous, if not divergent, landscape of sounds and music videos.
Other Music was a seminal NYC record store for 20 years. Emilie Friedlander, a frequent shopper there, reflects on the film of the same name and a legacy lost to the algorithm.
André Santos finds ambivalence in the tourism and gentrification of his hometown, as depicted through fado music in the film «Silêncio – Vozes de Lisboa».
Love songs tend to be seen as unpolitical. Granî however, the energetic Kurdish wedding music, contains significant political meanings. An essay by Martin Stokes on the power of hidden dissent cultures, inspired by George Mürer’s film «Her Bijî Granî».
Angolan producer Nazar grew up in Belgium, spent his teens in Angola, and is now based in the UK. In this interview, he talks about war, anger, discrimination, and loneliness. An experimental podcast.
After watching Anna Gawlita’s film «Krzyżoki» (Horse Riders), Agata Pyzik wonders what’s next for contemporary masculinity?
Azin Feizabadi gets caught in Ebrahim Monsefi’s spirit breeze conjured by Kamran Heidari’s «documentary» on the Iranian singer/songwriter, «None of Your Business».
Sound is able to merge supposed contradictions: in the audio walk «Zero, Land der Zukunft» at Dystopie Festival, our writer finds herself entangled both in dystopian and utopian worlds. Here is a short essay on listening as a mode of creating critical agencies.
In an era where platforms package music in a way that strips away life’s complexities, Angus Finlayson finds a melancholic antidote in the music documentary «The Long River Slides».
Clive Bell muses on the music documentary «Don’t Rush’s» love for Rembetika – Greek urban folk music essentially made by refugees – and on an ongoing humanitarian crisis.
What can we learn from a film by listening to it? Rana Eid’s «Panoptic» (2019) takes the viewer on a dark peregrination in the city of Beirut, and becomes a terrain on which images, sounds and voices superimpose and coalesce.
