Searching For Sugar Man, Riverside Studios, 10 May 2014

I’m not sure quite what put us on to this superb movie, but we booked an all-too-rare showing of it weeks in advance at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith. I suspect this was our last visit there before the closure for major redevelopment of the site.

It is a most unusual, true story. The American singer-songwriter, Rodriguez, was for some time billed as “the next Dylan” (the kiss of death for many a career) but vanished into obscurity.

Unbeknown to him, he was a cult, underground figure in South Africa where his music was extremely well-known and where he was believed to have died. After South Africa emerged from the apartheid era, some fans tried to track down Rodriguez’s story, discovered that he was still alive and the rest is history.

Here is a link to plenty of resources on the film and Rodriguez’s story.

Here is the IMDb item on this movie.

And below is the official YouTube trailer for the movie:

I also bought the soundtrack album, which Janie and I have enjoyed listening too quite a lot.

It isn’t often that a movie sticks in our thoughts for a long while after we saw the movie, but this one really did. Highly recommended.

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