X Way Vision is a video of live per­for­mances by artists from the Dunedin-based Xpress­way record label. Per­form­ing artists include The Dead C, Alas­tair Gal­braith, Pla­gal Grind, Chris Hea­zle­wood & Greg Cairns, Shayne Carter, and Chug.

Screen­ing at the Film Archive, Wednes­day 27 May at 7pm. Tick­ets $8/6 con­ces­sion.

[Read more after the jump]

Xpress­way was a Dunedin-based record label that in the words of it’s founder Bruce Rus­sell pro­vid­ed a “lifeboat” for a col­lec­tion of local rock and exper­i­men­tal musi­cians. Despite being unwant­ed by oth­er record labels in New Zealand many of the artists on the Xpress­way label would lat­er come to be inter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised as the defin­ing acts of New Zealand under­ground music in the 1990s.

X Way Vision was shot at the Stu­dio 13 and Super 8 venues in Dunedin from late 1991 by John Har­vey. Just as these groups were — and remain — out­side the recog­nised def­i­n­i­tion of New Zealand music these per­for­mances were shot in ware­house spaces that oper­at­ed as alter­na­tives to bars and reg­u­lar venues. A hall­mark of all of the per­form­ers on the Xpress­way label was the fore­ground­ing of per­for­mance over com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion val­ues, and the film sticks close­ly to the same for­mu­la, using a max­i­mum of two cam­eras and min­i­mal effects. The cam­era had pre­vi­ous­ly been used to shoot the TAB photofin­ish in horse races.

X Way Vision fea­tures the fol­low­ing per­for­mances:
Gate — Cropped Sil­ver Hi-Lo
Peter Jef­feries — Dif­fi­cult Days
Chug — Ooz­ing
San­dra Bell — Dreams of Falling
Chris Hea­zle­wood & Greg Cairns — Surf Shit­ty
Cyclops — Steel White Bed
Alas­tair Gal­braith — Hux­ley
Son of a Gob­lin — Trav­el­ling Grave
Shayne Carter Big Band — Big Fat Elvis
Pla­gal Grind — Scream­ing E
The Dead C — Helen Said This

New Zealand Film Archive mediathe­atre
cnr Tarana­ki and Ghuznee Sts
www.filmarchive.org.nz