Dagny lights up the evening at NME and BFI present: Cinejam with Zig Zag and Rooftop Cinema Club

Night five of the summer-long festival of live music and film

Yesterday evening (July 30) a sold-out audience at the top of south-east London’s Bussey Building was treated to the fifth night of NME & BFI’s fourth rooftop Cinejam event in partnership with Zig-Zag Live and Rooftop Film Club, marking the half-way point in the series.

The 10-night set of open-air events is being curated by Bastille’s Dan Smith, providing several evenings of live music and classic film across the summer. Playing the live segment of last night’s show was Norwegian pop star Dagny, who played a six-song acoustic set featuring stripped-back versions of her recent single ‘Wearing Nothing’ and new song ‘The Night’. The sun broke through to light up the south-London skies during her set, which she closed by leading a singalong of her hit song ‘Backbeat’ among the crowd.

Following Dagny’s set, the Cinejam crowd was presented with Danny Boyle’s phenomenally successful 1996 film Trainspotting, an adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel of the same name centring on a group of young Scots. A sequel to the film, T2: Trainspotting, set 20 years on from the original and bringing back its central quartet of Renton, Begbie, Spud and Sick Boy, was released in January.

Advertisement

Bastille’s Dan Smith said of the original: ”The way [director] Danny Boyle uses music throughout the film has such an impact on the character of it. It’s lived on as such an iconic soundtrack.” The Trainspotting soundtrack includes the likes of Iggy Pop’s ‘Lust for Life’ and Underworld’s ‘Born Slippy’.

The crowd watches Dagny at Cinejam

Speaking to NME following her evening set, Dagny said: “It’s an incredibly satisfying feeling doing an acoustic show because you just connect with people in different ways: you can strip it back and do different things than you’d normally do. I don’t think we’ve ever played a rooftop.”

Asked whether she’s influenced by film, she pointed out the cinematic homages in the video for her new single ‘Wearing Nothing’: “In the treatment we were talking about Wes Anderson – I have always wanted to do a Wes Anderson-inspired film – as well as a Fred Astaire-style dance, like in an old-fashioned movie where there’s like two people dancing but really quirky and weird. I’ve always wanted to do that. So it was inspired by all of that: this symmetrical, quirky, weird-looking, throw-back dance. It’s about this cycle of relationships: how you’re in sync and then you fall out of sync.”

Dagny played:

Advertisement

‘Fool’s Gold’
‘Bullet’
‘Wearing Nothing’
‘Too Young’
‘The Night’
‘Backbeat’

NME and BFI present: CineJam supported by Zig-Zag is hosted at the Rooftop Film Club, Bussey Building, Peckham. The big screen event runs from July 5 to August 30, 2017 – find more information here.

NME’s Cinejam series continues on Wednesday 2 August, with a set from Little Cub preceding a screening of This Is Spinal Tap.

You May Also Like

Advertisement

TRENDING

Advertisement

More Stories