Best Before Death Available on Limited Edition Blu-ray September 28th
Posted: 10th September 2020
On 28 September 2020, Screen Ireland-supported documentary Best Before Death, Paul Duane's fascinating look at artist Bill Drummond, will be available on Blu-ray.
Released by Ant-Worlds, and produced in close collaboration with the filmmakers, the Limited Edition Blu-ray boasts high-quality presentations and are complemented by extensive bonus content - including director commentaries, interviews, short films, deleted scenes and more – as well as exclusive booklets.
Best Before Death (Director: Paul Duane)
REGION FREE
Release date: 28 September 2020
Limited Editon Blu-ray (World Blu-ray Premiere)
Twenty-three years ago, Bill Drummond ceased activities as part of the enormously successful pop group, the KLF. Since 2014, he’s been on a World Tour, travelling around the world with his show – The 25 Paintings – visiting a different city each year. In December 2016, he based himself in Kolkata, while in the Spring of 2018, he was in Lexington, North Carolina. In each place, he carries out his regular work, setting up a shoeshine stand in the street or building a bed in order to give it away. He walks across the longest bridge he can fnd, banging his parade drum at dawn, starts knitting circles with anyone who wants to join him, bakes cakes and offers them to strangers whose houses sit on a circle he’s drawn on a map of the city.
He’s not rich, and he’s deliberately designed his actions so they cannot be monetised. He’s mostly been ignored by the art world. So what is he doing it all for? Director Paul Duane shadowed Bill Drummond for three years before starting this film in order to achieve some level of understanding of what he’s about. Co-produced by Grammy Award-winning writer Robert Gordon and shot by Oscar-nominated DOP Robbie Ryan, the documentary is a fascinating look at an uncompromising artist.
Best Before Death is named afer Drummond’s belief that the World Tour, scheduled to end when he’s 72, is a race against his own mortality. It’s a film about life, death, art, money, music, and cake. And some knitting.
LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES:
- Audio commentary with Bill Drummond and director Paul Duane (2020)
- What Is Film? (2020, 40 mins): Drummond interviews Duane for his Forty Minute Interviews project
- Deleted scenes and alternative footage (110 mins): extensive unseen footage from the film's producton
- Three Short Films from the ‘Best Before Death’ Project: Tenzing Scott Brown (2018, 3 mins), 23 Seconds with Bill Drummond in the Wig Shop (2018, 2 mins), and Big Mike and the Pike (2018, 3 mins)
- Three early dramatic works by Duane, united by their macabre themes: Ink (1988, 10 mins), Blind Alley (1992, 11 mins), and Misteach Bhaile Átha Cliath/The Dublin Mystic (1994, 33 mins)
- Image galleries: behind-the-scenes photography
- Limited edition exclusive booklet containing new writing by Bill Drummond, David Keenan on Best Before Death, an interview with Paul Duane, Duane on his short films and film credits
- Limited edition of 3,000 copies