In his documentary on the magnetic, enigmatic and ultimately tragic frontman for 80s megastars INXS, Michael Hutchence, director Richard Lowenstein – who arrived in Karlovy Vary for the film’s European premiere – plunges the viewer completely into the singer’s life and times by only using footage from the past, without relying on talking heads.
“I wanted to take you on a time-traveling journey,” says Lowenstein. “I wanted to take the audience back into the 80s and keep them there, and trap them there in this imagery.” But not filming the people you interview means you need footage of some kind - concert and music video clips can’t fill up an entire film, so where was Lowenstein going to find unique, never-seen, personal footage of Hutchence? It turns out he just had to walk upstairs to his attic, where he was shocked to find he had a treasure trove sitting in rusty film cans, outtakes from INXS videos he had saved as well as Hutchence’s own home movies.
You can read the whole interview in today's Festival Daily.
