WORLD PREMIERE + Q&A PANEL: DIR. MATT STEPHENSON & ANNE BEAN, HOSTED BY HELEN MARRIAGE
Featuring leading avant garde musicians and artists from the UK improvised music and performance art scene including
Anne Bean, David Toop, Evan Parker, Richard Wilson, Steve Beresford, Max Eastley and many others...
“All I knew was an ice body on a sidewalk – can you fill me in?”
Burning Bridges tells the explosive story of an artist who challenged musical boundaries and pushed his art to the most extreme edges of creativity. From the 1960s to the early 2000s, percussionist Paul Burwell was at the forefront of avant garde music and art in the UK. A founder member of the London Musicians’ Collective and the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, Burwell and his collaborators played with the elements to blur the distinction between magick and art. But while many of his friends found creative success and fame, Burwell headed up-river, literally and metaphorically, on his own “heart of darkness” journey, abandoning London for a new tribe in the post-industrial north, sinking further into his own vision and ultimately challenging death itself. Through rediscovered archive footage, sketchbooks, diaries and photographs, along with interviews with Burwell’s friends and family, Burning Bridges is the story of an artist who knew no limits.
Soundtrack by David Toop
Dirs. Matt Stephenson, Alan Jones, UK, 2024, 121 mins