SXSW 2019 Film Recaps: Teen Spirit, The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story, and Band Together With Logic
While ANCHR Magazine primarily focuses on music coverage, I’ve always loved film and regularly catch new releases in theaters. During SXSW, I experienced the best of both worlds and managed to spend some time catering to my love for film and music by catching a few featured film premieres that center around music. See which upcoming films I had the chance to catch during this year’s SXSW below!
Teen Spirit
Actor Max Minghella made his directorial debut with Teen Spirit, which stars Elle Fanning. Fanning plays Violet Valenski, a timid, but talented British teenager who enters a singing competition alongside an unlikely mentor. The film features a soundtrack of pop songs like “Dancing On My Own” by Robyn and “Don’t Kill My Vibe” by Sigrid, which Minghella described as pop songs with a melancholic undertone. “I love this idea of sugar coating something much darker inside,” Minghella added during a Q&A session following the film’s premiere. In addition to Minghella and Fanning, producers Fred Berger (pictured below), Jamie Bell, Mickey Liddell, and Michael Glassman also attended the SXSW screening of Teen Spirit.
You can watch Teen Spirit in theaters starting April 5th, 2019.
Photos from the red carpet premiere featuring Fred Berger, Max Minghella and Elle Fanning on March 12th, 2019
The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story
NSYNC’s Lance Bass attended SXSW this year for a panel discussion with former MTV VJ Dave Holmes, in which they discussed everything from Bass’ public coming out, married life, and Bass’ producer role in the upcoming documentary The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story. Following the panel discussion, Bass and Holmes joined Joey Fatone of NSYNC over at the Paramount Theatre for the world premiere of the Aaron Kunkel directed YouTube Original that gives an in-depth look at the rise and fall of the late and infamous Lou Pearlman. Alongside interviews with Lance Bass and his bandmates, the film gets insight from other band members formerly managed by Pearlman, like Aaron Carter, Ashley Parker Angel (O-Town), and AJ McLean (Backstreet Boys). Regardless of how you feel about boy bands, the film provides a fascinating look at the level of corruption that can take place in the music industry, and I’d definitely recommend anyone interested in the music business watches when it gets released April 3rd, 2019 via YouTube.
Photos of Lance Bass and Dave Holmes during their panel discussion on March 13th, 2019
Band Together With Logic
The documentary Band Together With Logic showcases what can happen when artists from around the world come together in the sake of collaboration, thanks to Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s platform HitRecord. The project begins when rapper Logic uploads the first version of a song to HitRecord and invites musicians to contribute to the song and create remixes. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and his team then went through the thousands of submissions and picked several of them to show to Logic, who ultimately made the final call on which entries would make it into the final version of the track. The YouTube Original documentary follows that journey from start to finish, and ends with the music video that the contributors created alongside Levitt and Logic.
The full feature is already available to watch in full via YouTube— watch here.
Photos from the red carpet premiere featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and musicians Lamar Jones, Josh Driskell, Ariea Bastami, Marybeth Kern, Luciano Nascimento on March 15th, 2019
