Coming soon to the SUNY Oswego campus: two documentaries kick off OFG’s music series File Under: Eclectic. The films will be screened on Wednesday, November 4, at 7 PM in the Campus Center Auditorium (C118). The screenings are free; a discussion will follow the films.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil:

At 14, Toronto school friends Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow and Robb Reiner made a pact to rock together forever. Their band, Anvil, went on to become the ‘demigods of Canadian metal,’ releasing one of the heaviest albums in metal history, 1982’s Metal on Metal. The album influenced a musical generation, including Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax….. But Anvil’s career took a different path–straight to obscurity.

Director Sacha Gervasi [himself once a teenage fan of--and even a roadie for--the group] has concocted a wonderful and often hilarious account of Anvil’s last-ditch quest for elusive fame and fortune. His ingenious filmmaking may first lead you to think this is a mockumentary, but it isn’t….[We] see the reality of their day-to-day lives as they struggle to make ends meet, take a misguided European tour, and engage in antics on the road–which is not always lined with fans. Gervasi even finds a softer center to this raucous film, introducing us to band members’ ever-supportive, but long-suffering, families…. Anvil rocks–it has no other choice. (John Cooper, Sundance Film Festival Catalog)

Anthony Lane found the movie “the most stirring release of the year” and in his review in The New Yorker concluded:

This film is not about rock music at all, …; it is about time, and how it threatens to fade us out like a song on the radio, and why, risking ridicule, and leaning on love, we should crank up the volume and keep going….

On the same bill, Heavy Metal Parking Lot:

The legendary 1986 short film that documents a group of metal fans congregating before a Judas Priest concert. The kids-in-the-parking-lot interviews are funny–and sometimes disturbing.

Washington DC area filmmakers Jeff Krulik and John Heyn used borrowed equipment, shot without permission from the venue, and initially didn’t even copyright the work. The result became an underground hit. HMPL fans make copies and distributed them; the buzz about HMPL began to grow as it drew attention from bands including Nirvana and the Lemonheads and directors Sofia Coppola and Cameron Crowe.

The film, after all these years, has outgrown its underground status: it’s been ranked 6 in SPIN magazine’s list of top 20 rock movies and 16th out of the Top 100 Most Metal Moments on VH1.

Remember that VHS that circulated in for reals underground style? It was shot outside a Judas Priest concert in the 80’s- Heavy Metal Parking Lot!

Well, Topie wrote those guys because they’re from Maryland too- and they said it was ok for her to make ‘Goth Parking Lot’, so she did.

See here-

Vintage PaidtobeNicedotCom

http://gothparkinglot.bryceward.com/

Her friend, NYC photographer Bryce Wards kindly hosts it on his site.

Here’s some of HMPL: