Stories of Spinal Tap, James Brown, Jeff Buckley, Depeche Mode, and Ol’ Dirty Bastard headline In-Edit festival

Funk, electronica, punk, hip-hop, flamenco, contemporary pop, 80s pop, singer-songwriter, jazz, and classical all feature in the lineup of the latest In-Edit festival, Barcelona’s music documentary film festival.

From October 23 to November 2, In-Edit Barcelona will hold its 23rd edition in Mooby Aribau Cinemes in the heart of the Catalan capital. 

Boy George & Culture Club, Cheech & Chong, Depeche Mode, James Brown, Jeff Buckley, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Sex Pistols, Sly Stone, Spinal Tap, and Suzanne Ciani are just a selection of names from the world of music that will feature in films showing this year at In-Edit. 

As well as a stellar lineup of 71 titles featuring 17 worldwide premieres, the festival will also see a series of talks, DJ sets, and industry activities surrounding the screenings. 

The lineup features premieres almost every day, as well as nearly 50 guests coming to speak or present works, including Carl Craig, Alba Flores, Leiva, Harley Flanagan, and Joan Dausà.

Opening the festival on October 23 is the long-awaited ‘Spinal Tap II: The End Continues’, while on November 1, ‘We Want The Funk!’ will be the official closer.

For those who can’t make it in person to Mooby Aribau, the online home of In-Edit will be CaixaForum+, the online streaming platform of the cultural centre CaixaForum. From November 17 to December 1, some 15 titles from the film will be available to stream at home there. 

Official selections

In-Edit features an international and a national official selection, with seven and eight productions competing respectively. 

In the international official selection, ‘It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley’, ‘La 42’, ‘O Menino D’Olho D’Água’, ‘Queer As Punk’, ‘The Butthole Surfers Movie’, ‘The World According To Allee Willis’, and ‘We Want The Funk!’ are challenging for the title. 

In the national section, ‘Antihéroe’, ‘Copeland’, ‘El canto de las manos’, ‘Fandango’, ‘Flores para Antonio’, ‘Hombre bala’, ‘Serás Farruquito’, and ‘Solo pienso en ti’ will be competing.

Themes

With 71 films in total, and 115 different screenings, the festival can be categorised into various themes to make it easier for fans to navigate the lineup and find the movie they want to see. 

The festival highlights figures that are worth rediscovering in the music industry, such as Allee Willis, Jude Sill, and Meredith Monk, as well as seismic figures in music history that have been eclipsed by others, including Warren Ellis of Nick Cave’s band The Bad Seeds, bassist and songwriter of the Sex Pistols, Glenn Matlock, and Paul di’Anno, the first vocalist of Iron Maiden. 

Music as a manner of forging identity is another of the major themes of this year’s festival lineup. In this sense, the festival explores the stories of Pauline Black, a key figure in the 2 Tone movement and resurgence of ska in the UK, in ‘Half Moon’ we discover the history of the Syrian diaspora through the artist Kinan Azmeh, and in ‘Queer as Punk’ we will learn about the background of Shh…Diam!, a punk queer band in Malaysia, a country where the LGBTQI+ community has been severely criminalised. 

The festival also includes many films that utilise comedy as a narrative vehicle, including the program opener ‘Spinal Tap II: The End Continues’, ‘The Butthole Surfers Movie’, and ‘Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie’. 

Latin America will feature strongly this year, with ‘Esto es Raptor House’ exploring the world of underground Venezuelan techno, ‘Yo no canto por cantar’ following the stories of female voices in rural Chilean sung poetry, and ‘Brasilana’, a celebration of Afro-Brazilian cultural expressions.