The Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2014, which concluded last night, has today revealed the winner of the Audience Award from the 2014 festival. The winner of the award has been announced as Los Wild Ones, an Irish co-production, which screened to a rapturous response from a sold-out audience at the festival during the week.
Elise Salomon’s Los Wild Ones had its Irish premiere at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, with Reb Kennedy and Imelda May attending. The Audience Award is voted for by audiences as they leave each film screening at the festival, with audiences awarding films a score of between one and four stars.
Gráinne Humphreys, Festival Director, commented [quote]It’s wonderful to see this really inspiring, lively and informative documentary win the Audience Award this year, not only because of the fact that Reb is Irish and the film is an Irish co-production, but because the screening of the film truly was one of the highlights of the festival.[/quote]
Los Wild Ones follows the lives of Reb Kennedy and the artists on his LA based indie label, Wild Records. Wild is composed of young Hispanic musicians who write and perform 50’s rock ‘n’ roll. The film delivers an honest look at the label’s ethos and unconventional but tight-knit family of Reb, the Irish father figure, and his ‘kids’. Reminiscent of the early days of Sun Records and the influence that label had on popular music, Wild mirrors that journey. The bond between Reb and his artists is unparalleled in the music industry. Just like every family system, there is a fair amount of dysfunction but they manage to stick together.
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The label is Reb Kennedy and Reb is Wild’s founding father. A purist and vinyl fanatic, he is extremely reluctant to embrace the digital age. He is a genius in many ways and has created so much of what the record label is, who the artists are: their style, their voices, their image. Realistically however, Reb must adopt newer ways to take Wild Records and these talented artists to the next level.