CMU Approved

Approved: Ivory Tower

By | Published on Tuesday 28 September 2010

Thanks to the fact that August is an incredibly busy time for CMU, we missed out on the UK premiere of Chilly Gonzales’ first film, ‘Ivory Tower’ (featuring music from his new Boys Noize-produced album of the same name). However, last Friday we were treated to the first airing of the film in Germany, at the Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg. So now we can officially say that we’re fully up to speed with goings on in the world of “existential sports comedy”.

Starring Gonzales and fellow musicians Peaches and Tiga, the film follows two champion chess player brothers in a bitter battle of love and chess. This probably sounds weird, and I haven’t even tried to explain the concept of ‘jazz chess’, which runs through the entire movie. Although it takes a while to settle into, about 30 minutes in ‘Ivory Tower’ becomes one of the funniest and most quotable films we’ve seen in a long time. Tiga, in particular, turns out to be an incredible comic actor.

Coming up this week, the film gets its premieres in Gonzales’ adopted European home towns of Berlin and Paris, the former tonight and the latter on Sunday. If you can’t make it to either of those, get onto YouTube and check out the video for Gonzales track ‘I Am Europe’, which features footage from the film (including the beginning of a thing that has long been missing from the world of cinema: the chess training montage).

youtu.be/4UjjLpLzzX8



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