Yesterday, Arlo Parks announced via Instagram that she will be hosting a ‘one-off event’ at the historic Everyman operated Screen on the Green cinema in Islington. The event will take place as part of the sixth annual Everyman Cinema Music Film Festival, and will include a global premiere for her next release and a Q&A session.
South London singer-songwriter Arlo Parks has been busy this year. She has released three powerful singles: Eugene, Black Dog and Hurt, as well as a cover of Radiohead’s Creep. In addition to this, she has appeared on countless platforms such as COLORSXSTUDIOS, BBC Live Lounge and most recently a Channel 4 special for World Mental Health Day.
Park’s spoken words are as eloquent as her song-lyrics. At only the age of twenty, she is incredibly self-aware about her mental health and the creative process. Talking to Jordan Stephens of Rizzle Kicks, she articulately discusses the dissonance between the way one sees oneself vs. the way the world sees you: ‘things can be going incredibly in terms of your career… but the internal landscape is so detached from the success around you’.
The Everyman’s annual Music Film Festival is a way of celebrating the ‘crossover and creativity between the fields of music and film’. It has been running for six years now, and in the past has involved Q&A’s, live music and film screenings of films such as Amazing Grace and Teen Spirit. This year, alongside Parks, there will be a feature of Nick Cave playing his songs alone at Alexandra Palace; as well as an exclusive screening of Billie Holiday tapes and interviews.
Park’s session is set to feature ‘a selection of music videos’ which will then presumably be discussed in the Q&A. She is a well chosen candidate for this conversation, given the artful nature of her music videos. The video for Eugene, directed by Loyle Carner and his brother, was an evocative accompaniment to the track. The birds-eye view of Parks and her best friend lounging about in a bedroom gives the viewer the sense of observing perfectly undisturbed and intimate moments.
This connection between film and music, of how the two can enhance and affect each other, is an interesting topic of conversation. To buy tickets to the Everyman Cinema Music Film Festival or to find out more, please click here.
