Santa Cruz Film Festival 2009

FILM AND PARTY EVENT!

A benefit for The Home of Love, an orphanage in Mumbai, India
www.streetchildcare.org

In 2002, musicians Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman undertook an ambitious project; travel the world recording music and interviewing philosophers, artists, spiritual leaders and other thinkers exploring the nature of humanity. Creating a uniquely philosophical musical vision, the project garnered two Grammy nominations.

Catto and Bridgeman have followed up 1 Giant Leap with another auditory and cerebral visual experience unlike anything you’ve seen before. The duo traveled to over 50 countries recording popular and native artists alike blending these recordings into cohesive musical statements. Starting with pre-recorded backing tracks, each piece grows layer by layer seamlessly mixing popular musicians like Michael Stipe, Carlos Santana, Michael Franti, Stewart Copeland, KD Lang, Alanis Morissette, Bela Fleck, and Speech from Arrested Development with traditional native artists like the Bedouin musicians of Oman, Tuvan throat singers, Japanese taiko drummers, Egyptian folk musicians, Brazilian cuica percussionists and Turkish Gypsy violinists, and many of the leading figures in world music including Baaba Maal, Zap Mama, Lila Downs, Rokia Traore, MC Young Kim and Oumou Sangare.

Along the way, they spend time with creative and intellectual masters gleaning their thoughts on ego, loneliness, relationships, freedom, health, hope, faith, mortality and passion. The wisdom imparted by the likes of Echkart Tolle, Stephen Fry, Noam Chomsky, Ram Dass, Bhagavan Das, Gabrielle Roth, Billy Connolly, Sir Bob Geldof, Tom Robbins, Tim Robbins and Nadal Sadawi is interwoven with the perspectives of “ordinary” people just carrying on with their lives. These unscripted conversations reveal the interconnectivity of our lives through not only our creativity and beliefs, but through our madness! Greater than the sum of its parts, 1 Giant Leap: What About Me? is an extraordinary and alarming journey through the human condition that will leave you both existentially enlightened and dancing in the streets.

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After the screening, DJ Dragonfly will be throwing down “ethno-funky, trans-global, bass-bonkin’ grooves for the modern-day dancefloor!

Fusing that concept to the masses is his self-defined genre of “Gaiatronic Grooves,” a signature mix combining funky thumpin’ breaks and bangin’ tribal house with a decidedly global influence of samples and sound smatterings from India to Africa by way of multiple sound sources including electronic percussion and didgeridoo.