Music blows minds, creates the soundtracks to lives, crosses borders. For those of us raised in a simpler, analogue era, music managed all of that in its own sweet time.
Jonathan Ogilvie’s touching fourth feature “Head South” is a time capsule, wrapped in the glorious, sweaty textures of punk rock and post-punk tunes.
Think The Slits, Public Image Ltd and Magazine fired out of a cannon, onto the big screen.
“Head South” played to a full house at the Melbourne International Film Festival on August 21st, presented by Variety AU/NZ, with Ogilvie and producer Antje Kulpe on hand along with several cast members, including Ed Oxenbould (Angus), Roxie Mohebbi (Holly), Jackson Bliss (Fraser) and Orion Carey-Clarke (Fergus).
It’s a film loaded with easter eggs and detail (keep an ear out for the Wilhelm Scream, and the three nods to Stanley Kubrick, a director Ogilvie worked under), and sneaky ambition. Ogilvie manages to weave complex themes of spirituality, love, tragedy, comedy and the idea of “cultural cringe,” he explains, “this nagging fear that we in the southern hemisphere might not be up to snuff with what happens in the northern hemisphere, until we go live there.”
Nick Cave, when he took his newly-named band The Birthday Party to “swinging London,” remarks Ogilvie, made the observation that it “was swinging alright, but swinging from a rope.”
Ogilvie reminds us to “celebrate our own stories.” “Head South” is very much his own tale – perhaps 99% is lifted from his own experiences.
“My northern hemisphere experience was probably not as gothic as Nick Cave’s, but what it did bring home to me was that the music and art that my friends in Christchurch were making was equal to if not better than what I was experiencing in London, Paris, Berlin, New York and LA.”
In “Head South,” Ogilvie invites us into the world of Angus, a loveable and clumsy schoolboy on a voyage of discovery, whose hormones are kicking in as the sounds of punk make their own life-altering impression. Sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, with a human touch.
Christchurch, a world away from the action, but with its own, world-class music scene, is its connective tissue. Anyone who has logged time in a small town where friendships are easily made, where human quirks are allowed to flourish, can relate. “Head South” made many friends with its opening-night debut at Rotterdam’s International Film Festival earlier in the year, an unlikely resonating chamber for an independent Kiwi film.
The film also features several of Ogilvie’s own compositions, a nod to his own rock ‘n’ roll journey with YFC.
After wrapping 2021’s “Lone Wolf,” Ogilvie handed Kulpe a script for “Head South.” “I started reading it and thought, this is amazing,” she recounts. “It’s all the things I remember from Christchurch in the 1990s, even though it’s set in 1979. It really translated to what I knew of Christchurch. There’s something for everybody there.”
Ogilvie laughs when asked of the prospect of a sequel. The well-travelled filmmaker throws out some viable titles: “Head North,” “Head East,” “Head West.” Who knows. What we do know is that Ogilvie’s next project is the heist movie, “Geebung Darts Club.”
“Head South” is “very much a celebration of creative energy and the music of the time, a gateway into the world of ideas,” he enthuses. “That’s not exclusive to Christchurch, it happened around the world. It’s still happening for young people. You may want to form a band after you see the film.”
“Head South” was funded by the New Zealand Film Commission in association with Head South Cohort, Black Frame and I&G present. It’s set for general release in cinemas this October, following a second MIFF screening Thursday, August 22nd at Melbourne’s Kino.