Step Across the Border

In “Step Across the Border” improvised music meets direct cinema: two artistic forms that are dedicated to the immediacy of space and time. Fred Frith is reunited with John Zorn, Arto Lindsay, Ciro Battista, Iva Bitová, Bob Ostertag, Joey Baron, Jonas Mekas and Robert Frank in a celluloid improvisation full of rhythm, compelling images and joie de vivre. Filmed in black and white, the camera captures moments and conversations that offer a fascinating insight into the musicians’ lives. Concert footage, interviews in run-down hotel rooms and tracking shots through megacities like New York and Tokyo are intercut to form a thrilling audiovisual collage. At the same time, the music and visuals each remain independent media, neither is subservient to the other and yet connections emerge that are sometimes comic, sometimes absurd and sometimes simply beautiful – like the cornfields that sway momentarily in the wind to the rhythm of Frith’s improvisations, embodiyng the movement of the sounds. “Step Across the Border” is a complicit acknowledgement of the link between fast trains, storms and electric guitars and a sophisticated discourse on the spirit of music- and filmmaking.