Filmmaker Xan Aranda discusses her new documentary about musician and Chicago native Andrew Bird on Chicago Tonight at 7:00 pm. View a photo gallery that goes behind-the-scenes of making this documentary.
And watch a trailer of Andrew Bird: Fever Year in the following video.
Watch the new music video for Give It Away, off Andrew Bird's latest album: Break It Yourself.
Read Aranda's director statement about the documentary.
Summer of 2009, Andrew and I were sitting on his porch and he asked me to make a concert film capturing the 155th (and final) show of the year with his beloved band-members, knowing their tight onstage bubble would disperse soon after. He’d spent nearly five years carefully assembling the band, and was loathe to leave its only visual record to short TV appearances and internet videos.
Andrew was in the middle of an insane touring year - the apex of over a decade of hard work. He’d been suffering from perpetual fever, a common topic of our latenight post-show phone calls from wherever he was in the world. I’d joke that he was a frog in hot water, temperature rising to meet the rigor.
We’d previously collaborated on three projects (live-show projections, two music videos) and for years I’d had an opinion of how a feature-film about him should be made. Just as Andrew is often praised, criticized, or cornered for creating “unclassifiable” music, I strongly believed that a “rockumentary” or “concert capture” approach would not adequately honor his work.
Fever Year isn’t a document of Andrew’s intimate details or an assay of his sweat. It’s a snapshot a time during which he became “perfectly adapted to the music hall” – his risk and reward for being an undeniable creative force.
