Folk Noir on stage and screen

So what the hell is ‘Folk Noir’, anyway? Turns out it’s a bit of a slippery concept, incorporating everything from American southern gothic to the darker side of the English folk tradition. St. George’s music programmer Phil Johnson takes an eloquent stab at a definition, pointing to a cross between “the doomy chiaroscuro and skewed perspectives of classic film noir with the cussed fatalism and strange apparitions of folk music”. Musically, this big tent finds room for Nick Cave’s murder ballads, dark Americana and elements of indigenous British folk music, whose deceptive jauntiness often masks some decidedly grisly preoccupations. On screen, it ranges all the way from Jacques Tourneur’s M.R. James-derived Night of the Demon – the definitive folk noir movie, reckons Phil – to Beasts of the Southern Wild, via everybody’s favourite rural pagan horror, The Wicker Man.

Phil confesses that Folk Noir also has a rather more prosaic use – as a marketing tool. “There’s almost too much choice of music in Bristol these days and one thing I’ve found really useful when it comes to marketing things is to be able to give them some kind of label. People really seem to buy into the concept.”

That’s particularly handy when you’re programming a multimedia mini-festival with a budget of bugger-all. Filmic is a collaboration between Phil and Watershed film supremo Mark Cosgrove, who make a virtue out of their impecuniousness. “Because there’s no cash, we’ve had to be creative in our thinking, which is good in a way,” explains Phil. “We look to see what’s available and who’s touring and try to programme around that.”

Back in 2012, Filmic’s inaugural year, they bagged Michel Legrand, who was planning an 80th birthday tour and agreed to cram in a bunch of film hits for his show at St. George’s. The next year, Philip Glass was crossed off the Filmic wish list, paving the way for 2014’s city-wide Glassfest. Last year’s O Brother-themed season proved a big hit with audiences, making Folk Noir a natural development. “There are lots of orchestral film music festivals and live film score performances, but that’s not what we wanted to do even if we could afford it,” says Phil.

Instead, the April music programme boasts The Furrow Collective on Sat 4 (“a quartet of singer/songwriters who specialise in really dark and miserable old ballads”) and Tuscon singer/songwriter Howe Gelb, who’ll perform a live solo set followed by the premiere of a new documentary about his band Giant Sand on Wed 8. There’s no obvious connection between these artists and any specific film. But that, says Phil, is the point. “Because we’re now all familiar with film music, we know the cues for things like suspense. That has crossed over into a lot of the most interesting modern music. People are making ‘filmic’ music that isn’t necessarily related in any way to a film.”

As for the future, Phil would love to get the Will Gregory Moog Ensemble to perform Walter/Wendy Carlos’s A Clockwork Orange score. But his dream booking is German electronic titans Tangerine Dream, whose memorable film score work includes Heat, The Sorcerer and Thief. Contacts have been made and it may yet happen. Watch this space.

Folk Noir on Film

The Watershed’s complementary April screening programme comprises these four gems. See the film listings here for more details and trailers.

Badlands (Sun 5)

Terrence Malick’s hugely influential masterpiece of a feature debut from 1973, based on the 1950s Charlie Starkweather murders, starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. Malick makes imaginative use of Carl Orff’s distinctive folkdance-style Gassenhaur, which has since popped up multiple times in movies ranging from True Romance to Monster.

Mud (Sun 12)

Two teenage boys team up to assist fugitive Matthew McConaughey and protect him from the bounty hunters on his tail in Jeff Nichols’ potent slice of Southern noir. Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer would feel right at home in this 21st century setting.

The Proposition (Sun 19)

This Nick Cave-scripted ‘Australian Western’ bristles with late 19th century outback frontier nihilism, garnished with bursts of Peckinpah-esque violence. Cave and Warren Ellis’s haunting soundtrack combines with Benoit Delhomme’s evocative cinematography to lend the film a strange beauty.

The Wicker Man (Sun 26)

Virginal Christian rozzer Edward Woodward arrives on a remote Scottish island to investigate a mysterious disappearance, only to encounter a pagan cult led by Christopher Lee. Their rites include much naked romping by Ingrid Pitt and Britt Ekland (that’s actually a stunt bottom, by the way, as Ms Ekland refused to expose her buns). The finest British horror flick and the best advertisement for paganism ever made, with a hugely influential folky soundtrack.