After weeks of talk in London’s creative circles, the world premiere of the latest provocative documentary by Relentless Energy (Coca-Cola), Lives of the Artists, was tonight revealed to an anticipating crowd of over 500 music, sport and film movers and shakers at Shoreditch Town Hall, London.
While there is a strong culture of film-making in action sports it’s rare that one film can reach across genres. Inspired by the work of Renaissance painter, sculptor and architect Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists explores the personalities of contemporary artists as they search for fulfilment across three diverse domains, pursuing their passions without compromise, and in doing so risking all to push themselves to the absolute limits.
Frenchman Xavier De Le Rue, is one of the world’s top snowboarders and World Freeride Champion for the past two years. While Xavier has enjoyed the sweet taste of success in a variety of snowboarding disciplines, including competing in the 2010 winter Olympics, his passion lies with backcountry boarding — seeking out the perfect line and taking his sport off the edge. Despite a near-death experience with an avalanche last season, Xavier ventures back into the remote, dangerous and often untouched surroundings of Greenland. There he tunes into the mountains to navigate and conquer the truly unthinkable.
Lives of the Artists then morphs from land to sea as big-wave surfers, Englishman Tom Lowe and Irishman Fergal Smith, along with their friend and photographer Mickey Smith, battle the South Pacific. On the southern tip of Tahiti to a place known by locals as ‘Teahupoo’ — which translates to ‘wall of skulls’ — this trio take surfing to the extreme and learn there is more to fear from the ocean than Jaws. With stomachchurning injuries, a distasteful circus of chaos and experience riding the most unforgiving waves in the world, the boys walk away (just) with the rare respect from the local surfers. But, they also learn that everything comes at a price, and the boys are left questioning at what costare they prepared to pay for their art?
From Mother Earth’s finest, Lives of the Artists then hits the road with UK hardcore punk band Gallows as they tour the USA on the Warped Tour. A soul-sapping, tortuous trek from city to city, playing in a tour where 90 per cent of the crowd represent the most commercial and soulless aspects of commercialism, Gallows stand out like a very sore and angry thumb delivering impossibly intense performances to audiences that just aren’t prepared for the onslaught. This journey witnesses the frustrations of the group, all of whom are serious about leaving their eternal scar on the future of punk music. Gallows are volatile and enraged, dispirited and disgusted, but throughout all this they create real punk attitude and performance. They are the real deal. Real artists. Angry and authentic to the core.
Lives of the Artists is shaped by the sharp contrasts between worlds and domains of performances, and through this it demonstrates the common characteristics of the personalities involved; their artistry with all the vision, ambition, struggle, sacrifice, obsession and triumph that it possesses. Irrespective of the domain, be it mountain, ocean or amphitheatre, artists wherever and whenever are united by an uncompromising attitude to create their art.
«We can only watch, absorb and learn,» Lives of the Artists 2009.
To watch Lives of the Artists again and to download the film visit www.relentlessenergy.com.