DUMBO-based indie rock darling Sufjan Stevens will join Castanets crooner Ray Raposa for a live performance the duo’s original score of stellar documentary, “Beyond this Place,” alongside a screening of the film at BAM on Oct. 30.
The perfectly paced score — which Stevens and Raposa wrote and recorded over the course of one week in Stevens’s waterfront recording studio last year — rests against “Beyond This Place” filmmaker Kaleo La Belle’s portrait of his own turbulent relationship with his father. The film, written, photographed and directed by La Belle, documents his attempt to reconnect with his estranged hippie dad — a lightly toasted free spirit who abandoned his family to ride bikes and make hallucinogenic drugs — by embarking on a 500-mile bicycle trip from Portland, Oregon to Mount St. Helens with him. La Belle recruited Stevens and Raposa to record the score in the spirit of collaborating with friends — La Belle made a film about Stevens and his brother Mazuki in 2006 called “Crooked River” — and in the hopes of performing the whole thing live one day.
“The music, to me, carries and creates the emotional arc of the film,” La Belle said. “One knows where one is in the story through the music — it leads one in his feelings towards the characters and the story. We’re really excited to do it live.”
Raposa and Stevens’ score and La Belle’s film complement each other to paint a subtle, layered and emotionally affecting portrait of forgiveness, family, responsibility and the process of moving on, all shrouded in the fog of the Pacific Northwest — and some very thick marijuana smoke.
“Beyond This Place” screening with a live performance by Sufjan Stevens and Ray Raposa at Brooklyn Academy of Music [30 Lafayette Ave. between St. Felix Street and Ashland Place in Fort Greene, (718) 636-4198], Oct. 30, 7 pm, $25. For info, visit www.bam.org.
