BL!NDMAN & DONNIE DARKO

VIDEODROOM, the annual dream date between 404 Arts Centre and Film Fest Gent, opened in 2024 with a bang: BL!NDMAN [sax] performed live their new soundtrack to the cult film Donnie Darko.

This dark sci-fi gem from 2001 grew into one of the cult films of the early 2000s largely through word of mouth. Director Richard Kelly’s debut had a forgettable run in cinemas, released just two months after 9/11 with promotional focus on a plane crash, seemingly destined to fail. Despite this rocky start, Donnie Darko became a true underground hit on DVD, a ‘must see’ for cinephiles drawn to eccentric cinema.

“I want to emphasize the different storylines with BL!NDMAN without falling into the clichés of traditional ‘horror-movie’ accompaniment. The typical eighties songs (Duran Duran, Echo & the Bunnymen, Joy Division, …) are of course preserved as such. It’s an arsenal of instruments (saxophones, percussion, turntables, electronics, …) that will give the film’s sound a physical presence. The musicians on stage are part of another parallel world, a tribe elsewhere in time and space.” Eric Sleichim

“The brooding saxophones added an extra energizing layer to the story, and the more Jake Gyllenhaal mentally deteriorated, the more that overexcitement made sense within the context of the film. In that way, an already feral film became even a tad more intense.”
Tobias Cobbaert for Focus Knack 11-10-2024