LITTLE EDEN - A FILM ABOUT THE BEVIS FROND

LONDON: RIO Q&A WITH DIRECTORS + BAND MEMBERS, HOSTED BY STEWART LEE

Despite almost complete disinterest from the wider music industry, THE BEVIS FROND have spent the best part of 40 years maintaining a thriving recording-and-touring career, supported by an avid and ever-growing, global fanbase. An unclassifiable mix of dissonant pop melodies, punk aggression, propulsive guitar licks, folk, blues and neo-psychedelic rock, their music has been covered by a host of musicians including The Lemonheads, Teenage Fanclub, Elliot Smith and Juliana Hatfield, while iconic bands like Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. all point to them as pioneers of indie distribution models. This playful documentary from the directors of THE BALLAD OF SHIRLEY COLLINS, tells the extraordinary story of the band over the course of a single, semifictionalised day in the life of the band’s singer-songwriter and guitarist Nick Saloman, and serves as a timeless example of how to succeed in the music industry on your own terms. All shot in the English coastal town of Hastings, the film features moogs, badgers, septuagenarian footballers, seagulls and window cleaners, but most of all, it folds together an eclectic soundtrack of in-turn explosive, transcendental and exquisite music drawn from the band’s catalogue of 35 (often double) albums, spanning four decades.

Dirs. Rob Curry, Tim Plester, UK, 2024, 50 mins