Luke Fowler continues to create posthumous portraits of relevant figures. In this film, he evokes the life of music producer Patrick Cowley, the pioneer of Hi-NRG, a genre of electronic music, in the late 70s, and a prolific artist of the San Francisco cultural scene.
It’s possible that we are familiar with Patrick Fowleys’s name from the enigmatic Do You Wanna Funk – an inevitable theme of a good disco set, but there’s not much else that makes it possible that we know who he was. It’s his wonderful musical heritage one of the rare signs of his existence. In about twenty minutes, Patrick is a film that creatively traces Fowley’s biography, through images of a pre-gentrification San Francisco, illustrated with a flawless soundtrack. This film is also a reflection of the HIV epidemic in the 80s, which precociously took the life of Patrick Fowley. A film that allows us to contemplate the magic of the artistic creation in dark times and the human traits it can bring to social relationships: that’s the magic of Fowley’s legacy. (Filipa Henriques)