Asylum was very pleased to contribute to Branchage International Film Festival 2009 and happy to have attended various screenings and shows. The festival programme was very diverse, the quality of films was extraordinarily high, and the lineup of special guests, producers, directors and media experts was starry. Branchage provides a way for artists, musicians, film makers, writers, and all sorts of talented people to come together, make friends, party, network, plan for future projects, and indulge their passions for artistic diversity and cinematic excellence, and this year’s event delivered all that in spades. There is a very nice review of the festival at The Quietus.

Very big thanks to Justin, Fluff, Leonie, Zach, Flavio, Colin, John, Tobi, Tharindu, Sam, the staff of Live Lounge and the bands for helping to make sure our show was a success. What a great team we made! Thanks to Nina, music programmer, Carla, producer, and Philip, festival programmer, for their great work and support. It was especially thrilling for us to have Philip come to the show and introduce All Tomorrow’s Parties.

Click on the images below to view them large.

Brobots!

Whitechapel Murders

Nailed To The Furnace

Brighton post-rock band British Sea Power performed a live soundtrack to Robert J. Flaherty’s film Man Of Aran at Jersey Opera House. Their music was played with treated guitars, bass, trumpet, keyboards, strings and drums, and made up of little motifs, as if phrases from rock music had been sampled, looped and layered, building in intensity and ebbing away. It was an epic concert. Images of waves smashing into cliffs, schools of sharks, and a hard people living with the barest means under enormous, merciless skies contrasted powerfully with the band’s minimalist drones and metronomic pulses. I think taking photos wasn’t permitted but I managed to get one anyway from my seat in the dress circle.

Brobots! were back for the final night of the festival greeting audience members at the entrance to the Opera House. Duncan Jones’ new film Moon, an homage to the eerie, existential science fiction of the early seventies, in which themes of loneliness of space and fragility of identity are explored with masterful narrative skill, had to be postponed until later that evening and relocated to another venue. For those that could attend the late screening it felt very clandestine and exclusive, especially as the director was there to introduce his film.