From Congo to Sweden, from the United Kingdom to Ethiopia, passing through Portugal and the United States, this year's Transmission competitive program takes a trip around the world to depict music in its most diverse contexts. Whether as a result of creative—and romantic—partnerships or as a cry for freedom and sexual defiance. As a political gesture or as a political tool. As a treasure preserved by a passionate collector, or as the result of pure experimentation and unique, unpredictable creative processes. Through recordings on stage or in the studio, using rare archival materials or never-before-seen interviews, the seven films aim to tell new stories through music.

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat reveals how jazz and some of its biggest names were used as political instruments during the Cold War, employing dynamic editing that jumps from one archival piece to another in an attempt to reproduce the rhythm of the musical genre. Accompanying the Democratic Republic of Congo's independence process in 1960, Belgian director Johan Grimonprez tells how the United States used a Louis Armstrong concert in the African country as a pretext for an assassination attempt on Patrice Lumumba, the main leader of Congo’s liberation movement. At the same time, Black artists like Dizzy Gillespie and Abbey Lincoln resisted the colonial and imperialist use of their work. The film is a powerful portrayal of how Europe and North America played their bloody chess game using Africa as a disposable pawn, and how the UN became a mere tool for maintaining the white supremacy of these two continents.

Still in Africa, Ethiopian music is at the center of Ethiopiques Magnetic Suite. The documentary, narrated in the first person by filmmaker Stéphane Jourdain, reconstructs the story of Francis Falceto, a French producer, musicologist, and collector whose preservation work allowed a series of Ethiopian recordings, artists, and music—otherwise lost due to the repression and censorship of the dictatorship that ruled the country in the second half of the 20th century—to be spread throughout the world.

Using only archival footage, and blending new and old interviews with the Swedish quartet, documentarian James Rogan narrates, in Abba: Against the Odds, the rise of one of the biggest pop music phenomena of the 20th century, from their introduction to the world with the hit Waterloo at the 1974 Eurovision to the band's end in 1980—a whirlwind that sold nearly 400 million records. In other areas of pop, Teaches of Peaches follows the tour marking the 20th anniversary of the self-titled album by the iconic—and iconoclastic—Canadian artist Peaches. One of the leading figures in the 21st-century electropunk scene, the singer revisits the early days of her career backstage while delivering the same defiant, libertine sexual energy on stage that birthed hits like Fuck the Pain Away and Lovertits.

The underground, outlaw, DIY electronic spirit was present decades earlier in Free Party: A Folk History. English director Aaron Trinder tells the story of collectives like Spiral Tribe, Circus Warp, and DiY, responsible for organizing free, clandestine raves in the UK between the late 1980s and early 1990s. The film captures the transition from hippie culture to the New Age generation, presenting characters who viewed raves not as events but as a lifestyle, living on the road and organizing gatherings that brought together thousands of people while defying the police, repression, and moralism of the British government.

Across the Atlantic, but still in the 1990s, Pavement—one of the pillars of U.S. alternative rock—has its journey retold in Pavements. Directed by indie filmmaker Alex Ross Perry, the film is a mosaic of live performances, music videos, and interviews, mixed with rehearsals for the Broadway musical Slanted! Enchanted!, written from the band's songs; scenes from a fictional feature in which the musicians are played by teen stars like Joe Keery (Stranger Things) and Fred Hechinger (The White Lotus); footage from the opening of a museum about the band in New York; and preparations for the group’s first concert in 12 years. All this while maintaining the unmistakable ironic, blasé attitude that has become the signature of the quintet led by Stephen Malkmus.

From laconic indie rock to sound experimentation, the competition concludes with Sur La Stre Nuro - Uncharted Soundscapes: Dialogues On Sound Experimentalism In Portugal, in which filmmaker Luís Fernandes talks with various musicians from the contemporary Portuguese experimental scene about their creative processes, approaches, instruments, and reflections, while also experimenting with the texture of the image, colors, graphic interventions, and different editing effects throughout the film.

TRANSMISSION COMPETITION

Abba: Against The Odds, James Rogan
United Kingdom, 2024, DOC, 90'
TRAILER

Ethiopiques Magnetic Suite, Stephane Jourdain
France, 2023, DOC, 88'
TRAILER

Free Party: A Folk History, Aaron Trinder
United Kingdom, 2023, DOC, 107'
TRAILER