The Other One (2023, Henry Threadgill)

It’s hard to make time for the movies at Big Ears, but sometimes they’re programmed at 10am so you can watch one without missing any concerts. I would’ve loved to see The Tuba Thieves but it conflicted with Trevor Dunn’s Trio-Convulsant, and I later heard that Laurie Anderson’s Home of the Brave and subsequent interview got delayed by an hour, which would’ve made me miss Secret Chiefs 3 and Kronos Quartet. This didn’t conflict with anything except brunch, and I’d already seen Threadgill’s Very Very Circus ensemble and knew I like his music. This was consumer-looking-video of a few interwoven Threadgill covid-era projects. Primarily it’s a concert performance of a new piece, music played by a small orchestra he’s conducting with pauses to read poetry off projected pages (their layout and typography being as good as the language). There are sections where he’s arranging small mystical objects while yelling at cloud in voiceover, and slideshows of the photographs he took of junk New Yorkers put out on the sidewalk when they had to actually inhabit their apartments due to the pandemic.