New documentary about the late musician Arthur Russell opens in NYC and London on September 26 and will be released on DVD in November. The film about the pop singer-songwriter, composer-cellist and disco producer features commentary from Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, and other Russell collaborators and loved ones.

Trailer for WILD COMBINATION: A PORTRAIT OF ARTHUR RUSSELL

Before his untimely death from AIDS in 1992, Arthur Russell created music that spanned a diversity of styles and won the love of artistic communities that would seem utterly disparate. His collaborators and most ardent supporters ranged from Philip Glass and Allen Ginsberg to rock bands like The Talking Heads and The Modern Lovers; the pre-Studio 54 disco-party scene of Nicky Siano’s Gallery and David Mancuso’s Loft; and DJ-producers like Francois Kevorkian and Larry Levan, among others.

Matt Wolf’s film about Russell is a film about the experience of being gay and confronting AIDS, a document of the compelling cultural history of New York in the 1970s and Œ80s, and a testament to the cathartic process of making art and pursuing popular success at a time when those goals were mutually attainable. Wolf includes footage he shot amidst the bucolic landscape of Russell’s Iowa hometown, on the Staten Island Ferry where Russell used to reflect and listen back to his recordings, of a turntable arm rising and falling with each rotation of a Russell record.

Plexifilm is releasing the film theatrically and on DVD this fall. The film will have its New York premiere at the IFC Center, where it will open September 26, the same day it opens in London at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts). Openings in other cities will be announced soon. The DVD, scheduled for a November release, will include over an hour of bonus material: 25 minutes of archival performance footage, footage of
Allen Ginsberg chanting a mantra at Russell¹s funeral, an audiocassette letter from Russell to his parents, and covers of Arthur Russell songs by Jens Lekman, Verity of Electrelane, Joel Gibb of Hidden Cameras, and
Arthur’s Landing.

As Philip Glass recounts in the film, Russell “felt in his bones that he was destined to have a larger audience than he had at the moment. He was really looking for that. He felt that his music had the possibility of being
popular in the sense that popular music is.”

Directed by Wolf, Wild Combination is produced by him, Ben Howe and Kyle Martin and executive produced by Philip Aarons, Shelley Fox Aarons and Mark Lewin. The film¹s director of photography is Jody Lee Lipes, and its editor is Lance Edmands.

Arthur Russell¹s recordings are available on Audika Records. A number of the previously unheard songs featured in Wild Combination are on the forthcoming Audika release Love Is Overtaking Me (October 28, 2008), which culls folk, pop and country songs from Russell’s vast archive.

“Wax the Van” by Arthur Russell

For more information, see www.arthurrussellmovie.com