The Georgia Museum of Art will present the “Music on Film” series in conjunction with the exhibitions Boxers and Backbeats: Tomata du Plenty and the West Coast Punk Scene and The . . . of E6, part of Athens Celebrates Elephant 6. Open free to the public, all films will begin at 7 p.m. in the museum’s M. Smith Griffith Auditorium.
On Nov. 6, the museum will present The Past is a Grotesque Animal, a 2014 documentary that presents a personal portrait of Kevin Barnes, frontman of the Athens-based band of Montreal. The film looks at Barnes and his pursuit of making transcendent music and how that pursuit drives him to value art over human relationships. The film follows Barnes’ struggle with family and bandmates as he is forced to reconsider the future of the band. Fans of the indie pop band pledged $100,000 to fund the film’s production through a Kickstarter campaign.
On Nov. 20, the 1986 film Population: 1 will be shown. The punk rock musical stars Tomata du Plenty, singer of the 1970s band The Screamers, as the sole survivor of a nuclear apocalypse. To send off the world’s last empire, du Plenty gives a twisted one-man history lesson that eerily anticipates both the future music video era and present-day world conflicts. The film features members of Los Lobos, Vampira, Fluxus artist Al Hansen and his Grammy-winning grandson Beck, among many other artists.
Lynn Boland, the Pierre Daura Curator of European Art at the museum, will lead a gallery talk of both related exhibitions before the screening of The Past is a Grotesque Animal on Nov. 6 at 5:30 p.m.
