Heavy metal gains exposure
Tomeletso Sereetsi | Thursday April 17, 2014 14:42
“A week ago, the film screened at the Capetown Xfest, a festival of metal documentaries,” Raffaele Mosca, the Greece-based filmmaker behind the work said last week.
Mosca was in Gaborone arranging for a local screening in Botswana, along with Wrust, the metal band at the centre of the film.
“It was amazing. The applause was priceless,” he said, “The press liked it. We did a Q&A with the audience after the screening”.
The film was then off to three screenings at the Bioscope, Maboneng Precinct in Johannesburg. It is set for another screening next month at the same cinema. Mosca said the next stop is the Lisbon Film Festival.
“We are mainly doing film festivals and university screenings,” he said.
Not only are audiences revelling in the story of the local rock god and disciple, the soundtrack is wholesome local rock anthems. The film is as much a unique anthropological tour de force as it is a rare ode to the musicians and music of bands such as Wrust, Metal Orizon, Stane, Overthrust, Remuda, Skinflint, Amok and Kamp 13.
The film could go a long way in bringing recognition to this genre of music, which continues to exist on the further fringes of mainstream pop culture in the country.
All the bands enjoy heartfelt speaking roles, in addition to raw rolls of live show footage that capture the entrancing life and spirit of a Botswana rock show in its various sweaty hues and shades. Interestingly, the filmmakers organised for Wrust to perform at a major rock show in Milan, Italy called SoloMacello, and filmed parts of the tour for the documentary.
An aspect of the work also worth a mention is the fact that the storytelling was not left solely to Mosca.
“We gave a camcorder to the crowd to film whatever they wanted during the gigs so as to have a real local perspective,” Mosca said.
The 88-minute film is shot in HD except for the ‘crowd cam’, which is standard definition.
“Time was the big issue. We had just three weeks to shoot everything so we worked around the clock on our scheduling. With so little time every unforeseen event pushed our film schedule forward, it was incredibly stressful, but we made it. Wrust’s help was precious in making this movie, we stayed at Stux’s (frontman of Wrust) house for the entire time and we’re grateful for his family’s patience,” Mosca said.
After the shooting, they had 50 hours of footage to wade through.
“We watched everything, and it took one year to edit the film. We started building the structure of the movie on a board, dissecting footage in terms of content and relevance. We created timelines, and edited everything on paper,” he related.
Mosca is upbeat that with the good international festival run, parties interested in purchasing rights to the film will emerge for distribution deals on the cinema circuit and video-on-demand platforms such as Netflix.
“We are still in the early days,” he said.
But the rock bands are not only just a subject and object of the study, Wrust will manage the rights to the movie in Botswana.
“I will be happy if they can make whatever amount of money from the movie in Botswana because they bore half of the cost of the trip to Milan,” Mosca said.
Then based in London, Mosca came across Frank Marshall’s photographs of the local metal scene on Vice Magazine in 2011, and knew he had to come to Botswana to tell the story on film.
“The unique local metal head aesthetic spurred me to read up on this phenomenon, and it didn’t take long for me to realise there was no way I wouldn’t turn this story into a documentary. We funded the project with our personal savings and the funds we collected with our crowd-funding campaign on Indiegogo.com which helped cover Wrust’s travel expenses when they flew to Italy to play at SoloMacello festival,” Mosca said.
He said that he hoped audiences will be able to look at Africa in a different light after seeing the film.
“There’s an Africa that is not about wars, hunger or diseases and I think it’s time for the world to know about it. I left a piece of my heart in Botswana when I took the plane back home. I fell in love with the people, the nature, the languages and the beauty of it all. I hope the audience will be able to feel it too,” he said.
He expressed hope that the film will interest sponsors in the local metal bands.
“I really hope this documentary helps getting the bands some exposure. It’s vital to get some funds into this scene, I hope local companies and the government will hear the call,” he said.
Mosca holds a degree in Cinema and Television Production from Fondazione Cinema Milano and has worked as a filmmaker for various web television channels and studios in Milan and London. He has also produced several short length television documentaries.
March Of The Gods: Botswana Metalheads is his directorial debut. Natalia Kouneli, the producer of the film, was born in Athens, Greece, in 1988. She holds a degree in Video Design from Istituto Europeo di Design, a diploma in Documentary from Fondazione Cinema Milano and an MA in Moving Image from Ravensbourne. She has worked as a filmmaker for various web television channels and independent clients in Milan, Athens and London. Alessio Calabresi, the story editor, was born in Milan, Italy in 1986. He holds a degree in Communication from Università degli Studi di Milano and a degree in Scriptwriting from Fondazione Cinema Milano.