LIFT ME UP: 

A Film By Project ATX6

Directed by Chris Brecht

 

An R&B lyricist, a beats-making electropop mastermind, a honky tonk singer, an indie darling, an alt-country guitarist, and an experimental multi-instrumentalist take the stage at Jai Thep Festival in Thailand at the dawn of a pandemic. 

 

And that’s only a small part of the story.

 

Over the last six years, Austin-based non-profit Project ATX6 has selected six musicians a year to serve as musical ambassadors for the creativity, diversity, and talent that is the DNA of Austin’s music culture.

 

Those six musicians perform their own material and each others’ at three select music festivals across the globe. And each year, it’s not sure who learned more -- the foreign audiences, or the musicians themselves. <<<love this line

 

Following the most recent “class” of musicians, Lift Me Up documents the group’s rehearsals, their first performances at Toronto’s Indie Week, and then Thailand’s Jai Thep festival, where individually and collectively, the six hit some highs and lows, leaving them with only each other on a search to find themselves.

 

Unknown to them at that time, the hometown and home country they would return to swiftly became unrecognizable after the onset of COVID-19 followed by a landmark civil rights uprising through the Black Lives Matter movement.  Their third festival, The Great Escape, in Brighton, UK would not be possible, and in one week in March, Austin’s cancellation of SXSW ushered in an era without live music, festivals, and a cultural calamity that America and much of the world is still reeling from today, as the film prepares for release.

Lift Me Up documents in real time the indescribable experience and energy of live music festivals only to be followed by the silence of music around the world, through the eyes of the musicians themselves.