TOUR WITHOUT END A FILM BY LAURA PARNES Press Contact: Becky Elmquist | [email protected] | 917-815-2124 The players include: Matthew Asti (MGMT), Lizzi Bougatsos (GANG GANG DANCE), Becca Blackwell, Christen Clifford, Alexandra Drewchin (EARTHEATER), Nicole Eisenman, K8 Hardy, Johanna Fateman (LE TIGRE), Jim Fletcher (NYC PLAYERS), Shannon Funchess (LIGHT ASYLUM), Alessandra Genovese (CRUSH), Kathleen Hanna (THE JULIE RUIN), JD Samson (MEN), Gary Indiana, Rachel Mason, Neon Music (YOUTH QUAKE), Tom McGrath, Eileen Myles, Kembra Pfahler (VOLUPTUOUS HORROR), Brontez Purnell (THE YOUNGER LOVERS), Roger Ramos (LOVE PIG), Kenya Robinson (CHEEKY LASHAE) and Kate Valk (WOOSTER GROUP). Official Selection 2018 The Sarasota Film Festival Country of Origin: USA Format: DCP 2K/Color Running Time: 92 min. Genre: Experimental Narrative Not Rated In English "Tour Without End” is artist Laura Parnes’ invitation to enter the colorful and conscientious world of American independent rock musicians of the ‘90’s – present. These musicians sought (and still seek) to fuse musical expression with political action, formal experimentation, and other dialectically rigorous endeavors. The resulting film is strikingly unique – a hybridized documentary, narrative comedy, which utilizes the subjects of the film as non-actors playing themselves in an exploration of identity, representation, and the arts. The film’s WORLD PREMIERE features Kate Valk (The Wooster Group), Lizzi Bougatsos (Gang Gang Dance), Johanna Fateman (Le Tigre), Kathleen Hanna (Julie Ruin, Bikini Kill); among others." Greg Bortnichak, Director of Pr,ogram Operations Sarasota Film Festival TAGLINE Tour Without End is an experimental narrative comedy/documentary hybrid film that casts real-life musicians, artists, and actors as fictional bands on tour that evolves into a cross-generational commentary on contemporary culture and politics in the Trump era. SYNOPSIS Tour Without End (Twenty-One Portraits and a Protest) stars the legendary Wooster Group founder Kate Valk and Jim Fletcher (The NYC Players), and includes musicians Kathleen Hanna, Lizzie Bougatsos (Gang Gang Dance), Brontez Purnell (The Younger Lovers); poet Eileen Myles, along with many other queer and feminist icons. Shot in real environments and situations, the core group of players improvises based on semi-scripted scenes. Many of these performers are legendary in the downtown NYC arts scene, and so become archetypes playing archetypes. As the players move in and out of their real life identities and roles as fictionalized characters, the film moves in and out of non-linear narrative, complicating the work as historical document. The film revels in the sometimes hilarious but always-complex band dynamics that the characters endure while touring, collaborating, and aging in a youth-driven music industry. The sometimes self-indulgent bubble the bands exist within is burst when, while on tour, they attend the protests surrounding the republican convention. Drawing connections between past and present, the film draws from the current political climate and the rockumentary tradition of This Is Spinal Tap and Medium Cool to assert that no one exists outside of politics. The film was shot over the course of 4 years between 2014-2018 at over 15 DIY music spaces in and around NYC. Presenting a multitude of characters and stories, the film also functions as a time capsule made more apparent by the shuttering of many of the films’ locations due to NYC’s rapid gentrification. BIO Laura Parnes’ critically acclaimed films and installations address counter-cultural and youth-culture references where the music is integral to the work. She has screened and exhibited her work widely in the US and internationally, including: Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; MoMA PS1, NY; Miami Museum of Contemporary Art, FL; Brooklyn Museum; Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens; The International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands; and Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; and NY and on PBS and Spanish Television. She recently had solo exhibitions at LA><, LA, Participant Inc., Fitzroy Gallery, and solo screenings at the Museum of Modern Art and The Kitchen, New York City. Parnes is a 2013 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow, a 2014 NYFA recipient, and a 2016 Creative Capital Awardee. Video Data Bank published a box set of her work, and Participant Press published a book of her scripts titled ‘Blood and Guts in Hollywood: Two Screenplays’ by Laura Parnes with an introduction by Chris Kraus. She has also directed music videos for The Julie Ruin and Le Tigre. TOUR WITHOUT END CAST BIO KATE VALK Kate Valk is described in the New Yorker as “one of the greatest the American stage has produced in the last forty or so years.” She epitomizes the best of New York Theater. Her honors include an Obie, a Bessie, and a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.. She is known for bringing fresh perspective to roles such as O’Neill’s Brutus in Emperor Jone’, Paul Schmidt’s interpretation of Racine’s Phèdre, and Gertrude Stein’s Faustus. Valk is one of the original members of the lauded theater company, The Wooster Group, and has had a formative role in the creation of over 25 full Wooster Group theater productions. Additionally, Valk and The Wooster Group have produced four video features, an opera, three radio shows for BBC-3, the film Wrong Guys (1995-1997), a CD of songs, and the interactive video installation There Is Still Time... Brother (2007). Valk directed The Wooster Group's Early Shaker Spirituals, which premiered at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn in 2015. JIM FLETCHER “When the actor, who is usually a head or two taller than the other players, takes the stage, you know you’re in for something interesting: sexiness, sometimes, a sense of tragedy and humor for sure, but also a cogent dissection of masculinity, with a focus on the discord between what a man looks like and what he feels.” –Hilton Als, The New Yorker, 2015 Jim Fletcher is a longtime member of New York City Players theater company with Richard Maxwell and has performed in New York City since 1998 in works such as And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid by Richard C. Martinez and Jeff Weiss, and LORNA, a butoh play he wrote and performed with Ariana Reines at CUNY in spring of 2013. He won an Obie award in 2012 for his performance in Gatz and was most recently seen in A PINK CHAIR (IN THE PLACE OF A FAKE ANTIQUE) with The Wooster Group. His projects with the visual artist collaborative Bernadette Corporation – as well his book with renowned poet Harry Matthews – demonstrate that it is collaboration that is at the heart of Fletcher’s practice. LIZZI BOUGATSOS “This legend of the downtown scene is equally at home in the Whitney Museum and at the Brooklyn waterfront, drumming out 88 Boadrum, composed originally by Japanese noise-rock band Boredoms.” –Hunter Braithwaite, Paste Magazine, 2015 Lizzi Bougatsos works as a musician, artist, actress and activist. Bougatsos is also known for her work as the drummer for her girl-band I.U.D – and as the singer for the band Gang Gang Dance, whose album Eye Contact earned acclaim as "Best New Music" by Pitchfork, and was selected as one of the top albums of 2011 by New York Magazine and The Guardian. Her work has been presented at James Fuentes Gallery, NY; Reena Spaulings Fine Art, NY; The Station, Miami; Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles; Museo d’arte Contemporanea di Roma, Milano; Kunste Werke, Berlin; as well as in the Whitney Biennial. MATT ASTI Matthew Asti is an artist and musician who lives in Brooklyn, NY. As a bass player, he has performed and recorded with Eleanor Friedbergr, Christopher Owens, Conan Moccasin, MGMT, and others. His visual art has been exhibited with Jonas Wood, David Ostrowski, Mark Flood and others. He grew up in Warwick, NY and attended Oberlin College and Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio. GARY INDIANA Gary Indiana is a novelist, artist, actor and art historian. Hailed by The Guardian as “one of the most important chroniclers of the modern psyche,” Gary Indiana is the author of a darkly satirical trilogy set in Southern California during the late 1990s, Resentment, Depraved Indifference and Three Month Fever: The Andrew Cunanan Story. His 2008 novel, Shanghai Gesture was praised by Bookforum as “structured delirium … an aesthete’s hallucinatory folktale.” He is also the author of two collections of essays, Utopia’s Debris and Let It Bleed. Indiana teaches philosophy and literature at the New School in New York City. SHANNON FUNCHESS “Funchess, the Light Asylum frontwoman, drums and sings, pogoing around in a mix of black leather and new-wave neon, like a punker, harder-edged Grace Jones possessed by the sensibilities of Ian Curtis.” –Jacob Brown, New York Times, 2010 Shannon Funchess is the founder, vocalist, producer and multi-instrumentalist of Brooklyn-based electronic group LIGHT ASYLUM. Funchess’ vocal prowess has been sought after for collaborations with acts such as TV on the Radio, LCD Soundsystem, and The Knife. Funchess toured as a member of The Knife in 2014 and participated in a Knight Foundation-funded residency in Detroit, Michigan in 2015, spearheaded by electronic husband and wife duo ADULT. Funchess is currently producing and recording a much-anticipated LIGHT ASYLUM sophomore release, as well as enlivening a 20-year long DJ career and performing new solo material. KATHLEEN HANNA “Kathleen Hanna helped put the ur in riot grrrl with her band Bikini Kill. The '90s proto punk band's driving beats and straight outta Olympia, WA message of female-empowerment, independence and justice inspired legions of often young women who nearly 25 years later still line up to thank her for the empowering influence she had on them.” -Andy Gensler, Billboard Magazine, 2016.