Brighton Festival: The Measure Of All Things
The Old Market, Upper Market Street, Hove, Saturday, May 23, and Sunday, May 24

AS a documentary filmmaker Sam Green has investigated those on the outer edges of society, from the revolutionary Weathermen to Rollen Frederick Stewart – America’s famous Rainbow Man seen at sporting events across the country wearing a distinctive wig.

With his latest live cinema event Green is exploring the world of record breakers – those who both fought to get into the Guinness Book Of Records, and those who are there through no fault of their own.

“When I was seven or eight years old I would spend hours looking at the photographs in the Guinness Book Of Records,” says Green from his native New York.

“A couple of years ago I came across a paperback version of the book from the 1970s and leafing through I remembered a lot of the old photographs.

“The guy with the biggest moustache or the lady with the longest fingernails were etched into my imagination.

“There is a poignant side to the book as well – a lot of the records are very moving stories, like the man most struck by lightning.

“I wanted to make a piece that captured both those sides – that self-portrait of humanity trying to make sense of who we are.”

He went to meet some of the people behind the stories, and uncovered some of his stories of his own.

“Some of my favourite records from the 1970s come from the people making the book having a sense of humour,” he says.

“There’s a record for the longest time a painting was incorrectly hung upside down in a major art gallery – you can hear the compilers cracking up as they put that one together.

“The winner is the MOMA in New York which had a Matisse upside down for three months.

“Not all the records are from the book – like the longest time someone was stuck in an elevator, which is a record but wasn’t in there.

“The fun part was coming up with those things and then seeing what was there.

“One piece which isn’t in the film is when I went to meet the longest serving prison inmate, which was a little disturbing. He was incarcerated in the US, which I guess isn’t so surprising...”

The documentary is changing as time goes on – not least the section about the world’s oldest person, which has changed at least three times since the film was made.

In presenting the film Green has followed the lead of his last few works which have only been screened as a live performance. Green provides narration on the night, with a live band providing the score.

“I came across the form almost by accident,” he says.

“I was in the middle of editing Utopia In Four Movements when somebody asked me to do a presentation on the project.

“I did a talk, presented some film clips, and got a friend to do some live music. Afterwards I realised everything I wanted the film to do we had done in the presentation. It made sense.

“Now people watch movies on laptops, often alone while they’re on Facebook.

“When you’re making a serious movie about a utopia that people would be watching on a laptop it seemed heartbreaking. This way people are hanging out together in the cinema.”

For his next project, The Love Song Of R Buckminster Fuller, Green joined forces with alt-indie legends Yo La Tengo.

And for The Measure Of All Things he is bringing six-piece yMusic to Brighton for the first time.

“I came across yMusic two or three years ago,” says Green.

“I went to see Dirty Projectors at Carnegie Hall and they were playing with them as a string and horn section. They played a couple of songs before Dirty Projectors came on.

“Their sound was huge – almost like a power chamber group, like metal in its intensity. It was the perfect sound for this piece.”

Essential info
Starts 7.30pm, 4pm matinee Sun, tickets £15. Call 01273 709709.