Revisiting musical greats on film
MFA to launch Murray Lerner retrospective
Most artists - filmmakers, musicians, writers - prefer to focus on their latest work as opposed to their early work. Critics and fans might be stuck in the past, but artists are always moving forward.
So who knows what Bob Dylan might be making of all the attention his early work has been receiving recently from filmmakers.
Martin Scorsese's three-hour-plus 2005 documentary "No Direction Home" was centered on Dylan's musical shifts from 1961 to 1966. Todd Haynes's 2007 "I'm Not There" riffed on Dylan's chameleon nature, with Cate Blanchett earning the most kudos for her portrayal of early-'60s-era Dylan.
And the spotlight of rock chronicler Murray Lerner's newest film is right in its title: "The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival, 1963-65." Lerner shot the 1963, 1964, and 1965 festivals and first turned pieces of the footage into a 95-minute documentary called "Festival," which was released in 1967. That movie included not just Dylan but Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, and Donovan.
Lerner's Dylan material was used in the Scorsese film, and that may be what gave him the extra push (and cash) to re-edit the raw concert footage from the 1960s into yet another focused piece on Dylan's time of transformation from folk musician to rock musician. (Lerner also said at a press conference last fall at the New York Film Festival that it was a rights issue that kept the material from being released before now.)
You can ask Lerner yourself: He'll be at the Museum of Fine Arts on Thursday for a discussion after a 7:45 p.m. show of "The Other Side of the Mirror." Thursday opens a retrospective this month at the museum of Lerner's work, with a 5:45 p.m. show on opening day of "Festival," six screenings in total of "Mirror," and Lerner's films on Miles Davis, The Who, Isaac Stern, Jimi Hendrix, and the band Jethro Tull.
Lerner will attend three screenings for discussion: The Thursday opener; the Friday 6 p.m. show of "Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue," about Miles Davis's embrace of electronic music (including the 38-minute performance of Davis's band at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970), and the Saturday 12:30 p.m. show of "Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Festival," a 1997 work about that same 1970 festival.
Two other movies are drawn from the 1970 Isle of Wight footage as well: "Blue Wild Angel: Jimi Hendrix Live at the Isle of Wight," which plays April 20 at 4:20 p.m., and "Jethro Tull: Nothing Is Easy," which features recent interviews with the band's singer Ian Anderson and plays April 30 at 8 p.m.
Others on the schedule are "Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who," playing Friday at 7:45 p.m., and "From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China," about the classical violinist's 1979 tour of China, on Saturday at 10:30 a.m.
For more information, contact the MFA at 617-267-9300 and mfa.org/film.
CARING FOR ELDERS: Earlier this year, WGBH issued an open call for short films about adult children and their very adult parents, saying, "Forty-four million Americans are caring for aging relatives and friends. Are you one of them? If so, tell us your story."
The top three selections have been picked, and among them is "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," by Kelly Lawman of Jamaica Plain. It shows the joy her young daughter gets from sharing a music class with elders at the Rogerson House, a Boston assisted living facility and day program for people with memory loss and Alzheimer's.
"Twinkle" and the other shorts are posted online at lab.wgbh.org - click on "Watch Over Me." The effort complements the broadcast on PBS of "Caring for Your Parents," a program by "
SCREENINGS OF NOTE: The second of a two-day Eco Film Festival takes place today in Beverly; among the films playing are "King Corn" (11:20 a.m.), "Who Killed the Electric Car?" (1:20 p.m.), and "The Unforeseen" (3:15 p.m.), all at the Montserrat College of Art (ecofilmfestival.us).
And at tonight's closing event of the Boston Turkish Film Festival, director Reha Erdem will receive the Award for Excellence in Turkish Cinema before an encore screening of his "Times and Winds." It all starts at 7:30 at the Museum of Fine Arts.
Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com.
