If you think protest music ended with the 1960s then the new rockumentary, Sounds Like a Revolution, should be on your must-see movie list. Made in Toronto by local filmmakers Summer Love and Jane Michener, the film opens at the Royal Cinema this weekend following an emotional world premier at the NXNE music fest last week. The movie examines a new generation of musical activists ranging from Michael Franti and Spearhead to Anti-Flag (left), NOFX, Ministry, Rage Against the Machine, Paris, Blue King Brown and many others.
“Unlike the 1960s, protest music today isn’t restricted to any one genre,” says Love, left (holding the microphone). “The artists who are featured in the film have more in common politically and ideologically than musically. Anti-Flag [a pop/punk band] was actually invited to the Power to the Peaceful festival in San Francisco.”
Sounds Like a Revolution is a rocking good movie featuring 38 songs that keep toes tapping while documenting a new outpouring of musical protest, much of it incited by the rise of the U.S. Republican party under George Bush, et al. The film also details the impact on music of corporate conglomeration by the major labels, Clear Channel and retail bully Walmart.
Protest against the war in Iraq made unwitting activists of otherwise apolitical artists like the Dixie Chicks whose dramatic fall from favour in 2003 made them poster children for media censorship and First Amendment chill. The band’s crucifixion and Grammy-winning response is detailed here.
There are lots of triumphant and outrageous moments in the movie but the most surprising of all is the discovery that this terrific doc is actually a first film. Although co-director Michener, above right, had previously worked on shorts and animated projects, this is Love’s (above left) premier effort.
“We got tremendous assistance from Women in Film and Television – Toronto,” explains Love. “WIFT-T partnered with local post-production facility Imarion to assist a local female filmmaker making her first film, so we applied and got the help. They really helped us boost the production values to meet our vision for the film; they helped us get it to a place where we could actually deliver it to a broadcaster [Super Channel], which was critical.”
Gaining access to stars like David Crosby, Steve Earle, Ani DiFranco and Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello (above), never mind the Dixie Chicks, was a massive coup for a couple of gals who’d never made a picture before. The key was “persistence, persistence, persistence,” says Love. “We wrote some really heartfelt letters about why we felt it was important to document their stories. We wanted to tell the present day story but within the context of 1960s protest music so we needed a David Crosby, we needed Dixie Chicks and Anti-Flag and Michael Franti — they were essential.”
Although the Dixie Chicks agreed to allow their music, video and image to be used in the film, they would not consent to an interview so Love went around the roadblock; she finagled a pass to a 2006 TIFF media conference where the Chicks were meeting the press. She elbowed her way to the front of the room, set up her camera and lobbed a question. Mission accomplished.
“The best piece of advice I received was from a friend’s father who said, ‘Don’t take a no from anybody who can’t say yes.’ In other words, don’t accept a no from the people standing between you and your subject. It’s easier for those people to say no and that’s what they typically do.”
There were some outright refusals: Neil Young, whose famous 1970 protest song, “Ohio,” about the Kent State riots, would not participate so it falls to Young’s bandmate, David Crosby to tell the song’s story.
“We asked David to put some pressure on Neil,” says Michener, “and he emailed back a one-liner: ‘He won’t do it, not even for me.’ I think it’s just his policy not to do things like this, it wasn’t personal or any reflection on our film.”
Both women take pains to laud Toronto’s independent film community and their friends who pitched in to help, gratis. “There’s no way this film could have been made without them,” says Michener.
Love adds, “The film was made with the help of the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, the National Film Board, the Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund, which is now defunct as a result of the Harper cuts, Rogers Documentary Fund and Super Channel. Without those partners coming on board at crucial moments, we never would have made it.”
Finally, Love says she’d be remiss if “I didn’t make some comment about the G20 in Toronto this weekend. The militarization of these types of events and preventing people from being able to express themselves freely is inevitably going to lead to conflict. This is not the face of Canada and Toronto that we should be showing the world.”
Photos courtesy of Deltatime Productions
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