WFF: ‘Sonic Youth: Sleeping Nights Awake’
Sonic Youth: Sleeping Nights Awake
documentary
(USA, 2008, 84 mins)
digital video
Directed By: Michael Albright
director of photography: Project Moonshine
cast: Sonic Youth
Avant-rock pioneers Sonic Youth finally receive a concert film worthy of their incendiary live shows, courtesy of seven high school students working with Reno nonprofit Project Moonshine. It may be shot by teenagers, but this is far from an amateur production – in crisp black and white, Sleeping Nights Awake captures the raw energy of a Sonic Youth show with you-are-there immediacy. Off-the-cuff backstage interviews find the teens getting closer to Thurston, Kim, Lee, and Steve than countless “professional” hagiographers ever have. For their part, the band burns through a career-spanning set-list ranging from highlights off the recent Rather Ripped to fan favorites like “Tom Violence.” “This is one of the most engaging and single-minded film studies of a band since Instrument, Jem Cohen’s 1999 film on Fugazi…The music is uncompromised, full-bore Sonic Youth, a band distinguished by a rare gift for blending pop attitude with avant-garde taste and daring. Albright, having trained under Albert Maysles, shows that he’s learned (and imparted to his talented students) Maysles’ central documaking lesson, which is to always be ready to cover the moment with one’s camera and to do so without visual or narrative trickery.” — Robert Koehler, Variety.
