Historically, heavy-metal bands such as Slayer and Metallica have sold images of hellfire and damnation, torment and oblivion, amplified and exaggerated to mythic proportions for a mostly suburban, adolescent base. Even under Saddam Hussein's violent regime, metal colonized the subconscious of a generation of young Iraqis, who suffered criticism for their scruffy goatees and threw their devil horns the raised fist with index and pinky fingers extended like the furtive signal of a secret society. It wasn't easy to rock. But once American armed forces began dropping bombs on Baghdad in 2003, followed by an occupation now in its sixth year, things really went to hell. All the apocalyptic language and gruesome cover art that gives metal its demonic kick paled amid the harsh reality experienced daily by the young men who wanted nothing more than to emulate the Western rock bands they idolize. How are you going to crank the volume when the power goes out all the time and there's a 7 p.m. curfew? What do you do when a Scud missile blows up your equipment van and a bomb wipes out the guitar store? These are a few of the many cultural questions that underpin "Heavy Metal in Baghdad," which opens the 15th and final edition of the New York Underground Film Festival tomorrow night at the Anthology Film Archives. It's an ideal choice for the festival, which is shutting down in part because the gonzo auteurs it has served so well have taken over the Internet. The film was produced by Vice, the Williamsburg-based media empire that promotes latter-day hipster culture and has expanded online with VBS.tv. There, Web surfers can watch bits of "Heavy Metal" along with documentaries of soft-porn photo sessions and "webisodes" of "Toxic Garbage Island." Shot by Vice honchos Eddy Moretti and Suroosh Alvi on handheld video cameras with a "we must be nuts to come here" first-person approach, "Heavy Metal in Baghdad" quickly transcends its potential flake factor as it chronicles the struggle of Acrassicauda, a quartet that is purported to be the only heavy metal band in Iraq. The group's name is Latin for "black scorpion," an insect common to Iraq, and a usefully descriptive symbol for the band's impressively stinging attack. The cameras follow the band over the course of three years, beginning in 2003 when it was first featured in Vice, then picking up again in 2005 when Acrassicauda successfully staged a concert in a downtown Baghdad hotel though they had to pack up the gear and get lost before nightfall, and the coalition forces guarding the bombed-out site got spooked by all the shaggy Iraqi dudes in their bootleg Iron Maiden T-shirts. Much of the story is told by the group's bassist, Firas Al-Lateef, an amiable and talkative young man whose command of English idioms is admirable, if almost comically profane. Though the musicians say they taught themselves from movies and recordings, their accents make them sound a lot like the good ol' boy American servicemen around whom they've spent much of their time. "Dude" is frequently used as verbal punctuation. Weird cultural transliterations abound, such as when Mr. Al-Lateef complains about the difficulty of "head-banging" in an Islamic nation. It seems the up-and-down motion known to metal fans too closely resembles the Jewish act of davening, and could be punished with extreme measures. It's tough to keep a band together when it's too scary to make a 15-minute walk to your guitar player's house, so the musicians leave home only as a last resort. Gradually, the band drifts into exile before regrouping in Damascus, where the Vice guys arrive to film its first concert in ages. Remarkably, given that there is no metal scene in Damascus, a crowd turns up for the show in a basement café... --The NY Sun
As one quick glance at this year s list of Oscar-nominated documentaries should prove, there are a lot of filmmakers with the conflict in Iraq on their minds right now.
These films have given us a lot of different perspectives from a lot of different sources, such as filmmaker Deborah Scranton s 2006 film The War Tapes, which put cameras in the hands of a group of soliders stationed in Iraq, to fascinating results. Or filmmaker Charles Ferguson, whose recently Oscar-nominated doc, No End in Sight, sought to give viewers an insider s perspective of the American occupation of Iraq.
But of all these films, none have had quite the deeply personal perspective (and dare I say) strangely irreverent tone of filmmakers Suroosh Alvi and Eddy Moretti s debut documentary feature Heavy Metal in Baghdad. And though the film s title could have just as easily been referring to some sort of heavy artillery, it is quite literal as Alvi and Moretti make their focus a group of Iraqi men who comprise the one and only heavy metal band in Iraq, Acrassicauda (Latin for Black Scorpion ).
Whether you re a fan of metal music or have even heard of Acrassicauda (and watching the film it s clear that the filmmakers are banking on the fact that you probably haven t) is not important. What is important is that Alvi and Moretti use the much more personal scope and experiences of the four young men in the band to turn their film into a distinctly human experience. And though they don t pull any punches, their unique sense of humor is evident. (It should be noted that both filmmakers are heavily involved with the publication of Vice Magazine, frequent purveyors of scathing political editorials steadfast in their belief that too much political correctness might not be a good thing for anyone).
The film follows the band s journey from the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 to the present day as they struggle to stay together and keeping making the music they deeply love as their nation crumbles around them. The film also presents a unique glimpse into the influence that American music and culture has on the young people of Iraq, the members or Acrassicauda even admitting they learned most of the English they know from the contraband Metallica and Slayer albums they were able to smuggle into the country.
Due in no small part to the creation of the film, Acrassicauda were able to flee to Turkey because of a number of generous donations made on their behalf, but we re left with the bittersweet notion that these four lads from Baghdad aren t out of the woods yet.
One part political doc, one part music doc, Heavy Metal in Baghdad manages to be moving and memorable in a way few films that have taken on the heady subject of the war have managed. It s no wonder Academy Award winning filmmaker Spike Jonze (Adaptation, Being John Malkovich) felt the need to lend his name as executive producer.
Heavy Metal in Baghdad has its U.S. premiere schedule dfor March 12t at the SXSW film festival and is sure to open a few minds, break a few hearts and cause even the most mild mannered of viewers to bang their heads in the name of freedom. Heavy Metal in Baghdad has its U.S. premiere schedule dfor March 12t at the SXSW film festival and is sure to open a few minds, break a few hearts and cause even the most mild mannered of viewers to bang their heads in the name of freedom. --Documentary Channel
It was already an unlikely story: Around 2000, a group of Iraqi school friends weaned on bootleg Metallica and Slayer tapes formed their own metal band with an imposing name, Acrassicauda (derived from the name of a species of black scorpion), and an appropriately do-or-die attitude.
They rehearsed in a basement in Baghdad and dreamed of playing Ozzfest and having long hair. Though their kind of music was essentially verboten under Saddam Hussein s regime, they managed to perform a few times for several hundred fellow headbangers and considered themselves a center of the (deeply) underground hardcore scene. When their country was plunged into war a few years later, they lost a lead singer he fled to Canada but gained a new audience in Western journalists eager for some local color. Vice magazine, the downtown bible known mostly for its sneering outlook, profiled the band in its January 2004 issue, drawing attention to its perseverance in the face of increased security risks; no matter what, it seemed, Acrassicauda was committed to rocking out. In 2006, the company s managers, sensing a bigger opportunity, traveled to Baghdad for what was intended to be a punchy short video starring the group, being billed as Iraq s only heavy-metal band. Instead they turned the footage into a feature-length documentary, Heavy Metal in Baghdad, which opens for a weeklong run on Friday in New York and Los Angeles. (A DVD will be released June 10.) A blend of Behind the Music -style back story and amateur guerrilla war reporting, the film follows Acrassicauda from 2003 to 2006 as the four remaining members struggle to stay together even as Iraq falls apart. Their rehearsal space is bombed, their audience dwindles and eventually, they, too, flee to Syria, then to Turkey. Two years later, filmmakers and band have remained committed to one another and to the youthful idealism of the movie (as expressed through a devotion to pounding riffs and shrill lyrics, of course). It was life-changing, nothing short of, Eddy Moretti, 36, a director of the film, said of making it. In addition to helping the band, he said, the big ambition is to get people to change the discourse on the war a little bit, to get people started talking about, wanting to know about, the Iraqi refugee situation. His co-director, Suroosh Alvi, 39, said that making the movie was a no-brainer. There were just so many elements that I felt like we were tailor-made to do, especially writing about music for so many years in the magazine, it got really boring after a while, he said. I would say it was one the most creatively satisfying projects I ve ever worked on. They used the project to inaugurate VBS.tv, Vice s Viacom-backed online video network, last year and to reposition the Vice brand as a more serious endeavor appropriate for the posthipster, globally pluralist era. (And it is still macho enough to keep the attention of young men, said Ken Sonenclar, managing director of DeSilva and Phillips, a media investment-banking firm.) But for Acrassicauda s members, now living in exile on Vice s dime in Istanbul, the life change was not uniformly positive. The band s three unmarried members Marwan Hussain, 23, the drummer and designated spokesman; Tony Aziz, 29, the lead guitarist; Faisal Talal, 25, the singer and rhythm guitarist and a cat share an apartment over a kindergarten. Firas Al-Lateef, 27, the bassist, lives with his wife and young son nearby. They have not seen their extended families in nearly two years...For now Acrassicauda is stranded in Istanbul, where Vice helped the members relocate in the aftermath of some threatening e-mail messages they received after the movie s premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. --The New York Times
