Yaghoobian unearths the men (and women) behind the magic...

-Montreal's own Chloe Lum of Seripop in Eileen Yaghoobian's Died Young, Stayed Pretty

Eileen Yaghoobian's doc is a candy-coloured offering, and a lot of that has to do with the subject matter: band posters. Who doesn't love 'em?

Finally somebody had the endurance and fortitude and plain old nerdiness to track down the evil geniuses responsible for the screen-printed, photocopied, hand-doodled, bled-in, spat-in, culture-jammed art that is stapled, taped and stuck with chewing-gum onto post boxes, bus shelters and telephone poles prêt de chez vous. Yaghoobian, a Canadian photographer who also has ties to NYC (witness the cool shots of Coney Island in winter on her website), takes you on a long road trip across the highways and byways of the U.S. and Canada to interview the freaks and geeks in charge of this art, and to look at their vast, and in most cases totally weird, archives.

This is a beautifully shot doc that combines a home-video collage aesthetic with non-obvious editing, and some clever divergences, as well as a forward thrust that takes us somewhere, though never too quickly. It probably goes without saying that this is not a tight, concise documentary. It progresses as a road trip through underground music/art culture should, with as much digression as progression and lots of opinionated, meandering, complaining people deconstructing their own motivations and others' inclinations towards doing what they do, and what they don't do, and what they would never do, and why. We see guys leafing through old skin mags looking for the next bathing beauty to rip out and copy until all that is left of her is a few high-contrast shapes in black and white (or pink, red, yellow, green, purple) playing off each other, stapled to a post, and ruined in the rain.

Died Young, Stayed Pretty plays at the Montreal World Film Festival, starting next week. Consult www.ffm-montreal.org for schedules and show times.

Died Young, Stayed Pretty

 
 

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