Scott Walker - 30 Century Man
"The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" was the swinging London song that scored an international hit in the mid-sixties for The Walker Brothers, the group formed by American bassist and lead singer Scott Walker. And yet, in 1967, at the height of their fame, the group disbanded. Scott Walker, whose career began as an jobbing bassist on Los Angeles' Sunset Strip, had other interests apart from competing with the likes of the Beatles or the Rolling Stones for an audience of screaming teenagers. Scott Walker loved the films of Ingmar Bergman; he read Jean-Paul Sartre and listened to Jacques Brel. Scott Walker's path did not lead to Las Vegas, where he could have become a second Frank Sinatra.
Instead, he recorded solo albums that harboured dark sounds and challenging lyrics. Scott Walker is regarded as one of the most influential figures in pop history; but he is also one of the ones most shrouded in mystery. His projects - such as the soundtrack to Leos Carax's 1999 film POLA X - have polarised audiences time and again. In spite of monumental flops and personal crises, Scott Walker remains one of pop's most legendary figures. "I've become the Orson Welles of the music industry", he is quoted as having said. "People like to lunch with me, but nobody wants to finance the film." In 2006 Scott Walker released a new, highly acclaimed album entitled "The Drift". Once again, the album contained sounds that could well be described as eccentric (he asked, for example, one percussionist to beat the halved carcass of a pig). This portrait does not only provide images of Scott Walker at the studio during the recording of "The Drift"; the musician that normally refuses to be interviewed looks back frankly on his chequered career, while famous fellow-travellers and fans including David Bowie, Brian Eno and Jarvis Cocker talk about Walker's influence on their own work.
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details
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Runtime
95 min -
Country
Great Britain, United States -
Year of Presentation
2007 -
Year of Production
2006 -
Director
Stephen Kijak -
Cast
Scott Walker, David Bowie, Brian Eno, Radiohead, Sting, Jarvis Cocker, Marc Almond, Damon Albarn, Allison Goldfrapp, Ute Lemper, Lulu -
Production Company
Missing in Action Films -
Berlinale Section
Panorama -
Berlinale Category
Documentary Film
pictures from the movie
Biography Stephen Kijak
Kijak studied with the film scholar and John Cassavetes expert Ray Carney, as well as the late Mel Howard at Boston University's College of Communication. He wrote, directed and produced the feature film Never Met Picasso (1996) which starred Margot Kidder, Alexis Arquette and Don McKellar (with music by Kristin Hersh). It won awards for both Best Screenplay and Best Actor (for Arquette) at the 1997 Outfest film festival.
Kijak followed that with the cult hit Cinemania (2002) (co-directing and co-producing with the German filmmaker Angela Christlieb), a documentary about five of the most manic-obsessive film-buffs in New York City. The film won the Golden Starfish Jury Award for Best Documentary at the 2002 Hamptons International Film Festival.
His next film was a documentary on musician Scott Walker. The film, titled Scott Walker - 30 Century Man was executive produced by David Bowie, and featured Radiohead, Brian Eno, Sting, Damon Albarn and Jarvis Cocker, and provided a look inside Scott Walker’s creative process over a 40-year career. The film had its world premiere on October 31, 2006, at the 50th London Film Festival, and premiered internationally at the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival and became one of the most critically acclaimed documentaries released in the UK that year.
In television, Kijak has directed episodes of the Bravo original series, Queer Eye, and the Sundance Channel's Big Ideas for a Small Planet.
Stones in Exile, a film he directed that was commissioned by The Rolling Stones to tell the story of the making of their 1972 album Exile on Main St., had its world premiere at the 2010 Directors' Fortnight in Cannes, followed by broadcast premieres on BBC 1's Imagine, and on a special edition of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on NBC.
On February 11, 2013, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Kijak would be directing a feature documentary about the biggest-selling boy band of all time, The Backstreet Boys, a film being produced by Mia Bays (who produced Kijak's Scott Walker film) and Pulse Films.
We Are X, a documentary on the heavy metal band X Japan and its leader Yoshiki, was premiered in the World Documentary Competition at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. Kijak remarked about the film "I might have to quit music films after this one. The story is so unreal, I don't know where else I could go after this." The film was awarded the Special Jury Award for Editing. It then went on to play at SXSW where it won an Audience Award for Excellence in Title Design. It has continued to screen at festivals around the world, including Seattle International Film Festival, BEAT Festival in Moscow, and the Shanghai International Film Festival. It was released theatrically in the US by Drafthouse Films, a division of Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and has been released to great acclaim all around the world, from the UK to Japan and most recently on 100 screens across Russia.