A poster for Sufjan Stevens' "BQE" project. (Asthmatic Kitty Records)
By Claude Peck
A youthful crowd sold out the Southern Theater in Minneapolis Thursday for a show that revolved around singer/composer/songwriter (and now filmmaker) Sufjan Stevens. Although Stevens was present, he did not perform.
Instead, Stevens introduced his movie, "The BQE," which was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music and premiered there in 2007 with a live, 30-piece orchestra, plus hula hoops.
A sort of hipster "Koyaanisqatsi," the 35-minute movie is edited in a perpetual-motion, three-screen setup to Stevens' symphonic and electronic score. True to its title, it centers on scenes of the notorious Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a brutal 12-mile, narrow-laned freeway in those two buroughs that tore across dozens of historic neighborhoods and was built between 1940 and 1960.
Dark-haired, slender and wearing skinny jeans, track jacket and motocross gloves, Stevens sought to "contextualize" the movie with some introductory remarks. He said that while he now lives in Brooklyn, "I'm originally from Detroit, so I understand cars and freeways." Stevens and cinematographer Reuben Kleiner shot "The BQE" in 16mm and 8mm over a year's time and in all kinds of light, weather and traffic conditions. The movie's only people are three young women who perform with hula hoops in getups (plastic sunglasses, shorts, leg warmers) that resemble a sort of hipster version of Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.
The film's patchwork score pulses with energy, with big Mahler-like outbursts of brass, parts that sound like a marching band on steroids, delicate patterned flute parts and even a section of popping synth beats. You can download a track ("Movement VI -- Isorhythmic Night Dance With Interchanges") here.
Sufjan Stevens (photo by Denny Renshaw)
