Lisbon’s gallery ZDB looks as of this week at some of the most important music and youth movements of the last half of the 20th century. “Fandom” is the name of the movie cycle focusing on a particular subculture portrayed on seven visual documents which you can watch on the terrace of this gallery right in the heart of Bairro Alto. “Our Hobby is Depeche Mode” and “The Height of Goth: A Night at the Xclusiv Nightclub: Batley, West Yorkshire UK” are our personal recommendations given the close links with the music genres in these documentaries and this particular neighbourhood.
Three decades after the rise of Bairro Alto as the hotspot for a certain Lisbon’s underground culture, Fandom movie cycle looks at this subculture and throws an “analytic look on the music produced during that time” and at some music genres from electro pop to goth trough to heavy metal and rock. The program starts with Our Hobby Is Depeche Mode by Jeremy Deller and Nicholas Abrahams (2009), a movie focusing on the social environment where these youngsters came from but through the words of the fans of this band that became a true pop giant. It is also the possibility to look at the certain 1980’s reality requiring more theoretical work and analysis. With this movie “the aim is not only to pay tribute to the fans. It goes further, exploring the way how music helps people forge their cultural and political identity.”
Fandom culminates on October the 2nd with The Height of Goth: A Night at the Xclusiv Nightclub: Batley, West Yorkshire UK (1984), focusing on “the bodies, hairdos and pose of young people on a night club in northern England dancing to ‘avant-garde rock’ as this particular sound was known in Portugal” at the height of the trench-coat wearing club scene. For the Love of Dolly by Tai Uhlmann (2006), Heavy Metal Parking Lot by Jeff Krulik e John Heyn (1986), Rock My Religion by Dan Graham (1983-1984), Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey by Sam Dunn (2005) and The Decline of the Western Civilization part II – The Metal Years by Penelope Spheeris (1988). According to those in charge of Fandom “the story of pop-rock discovers itself her with its forgotten objects” in this movie cycle focusing also on the relation of people with music, while fans, members of a youth subculture and eventual music lovers”.
