bobcom.com -- the legacy of Redford
Saturday April 30 2011
In last Saturday's Weekend Review, Dublin writer Michael Feeney Callan's wrote about Robert Redford's secret visits to Dublin as they worked on Robert Redford: The Biography. The book was some 15 years in the making. Over this time Feeney Callan became such a close confidant of Redford's that he became adept at judging the actor's moods simply by gauging the angle he was wearing his beret that morning.
Whilst working with Redford over such a long period of time gave Feeney Callan a deep insight into the actor's mind, it had other, unexpected effects on the writer. "Each project leaves its mark and, directly or otherwise, begets the next," he said. "And so it was that 15 years working with Redford begat my current project, Bobcom.com, a kind of successor to Sundance."
The author was inspired by Redford's dedication to the long-running film festival, which he founded in 1978. Feeney Callan became aware that the festival 'came before everything' for Redford, even before his eco-activism and political campaigning. "First and foremost in his mind at all times was the promotion of independent filmmakers. He called Sundance 'the acorn' that leads to important new art."
The Sundance festival was initially set up as a purely altruistic venture, says Feeney Callan, but with the global distribution of Steven Soderbergh's hugely successful Sex, lies and videotape in 1989, Sundance became commercially viable.
"The success for Redford was not measured in dollars, though, but in the fact that an assembly-line model had been developed to ensure the continuance of experimental film as an alternative to the Hollywood machine."
This urge for variety inspired Feeney Callan in his own work in different media over the years and directly led him to found Bobcom ('birth of brilliance community') to promote new independent musical voices.
"The website is not strictly a website," says Feeney Callan. "Based on the Sundance model it fuses disciplines, marrying internet, television and literature to create a one-stop alternative to the many existing websites and conventional music industry platforms. Our first principle is to give an unending series of career-building opportunities to new artists."
One such opportunity is a competition for bands to play in the Cavern Club in Liverpool on July 13, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Beatles, alongside John Lennon's original band, The Quarrymen.
"Bobcom is committed to reversing the trend for juries of three and turning the power of choice over to artists, and to the democratic voice of the web," says Feeney Callan.
"We launched with an event at Hoxton Square in London, supported by the likes of legendary DJ Annie Nightingale and producer Steve Levine, on November 1.
Since then, we have placed a new band in Abbey Road Studios and four new artists on Bobcom's Channel 4 television series, Sounds from the Cities, hosted by actor Mat Horne."
From such tiny acorns . . .
Originally published in
