This year’s film festival was a real goldmine for music fans with documentaries and dramas covering all genres from Paul Simon To Ryuchi Sakamoto.

The 13^th Marty Duda from Floor attended two more screenings this week and here is his report:

Alien Weapons: Kua Tupu Te Ara

Director/Camera Kent Belcher followed the Maori metal trio for six years, starting in 2018 and ending just last year.

Most New Zealand metalheads will know that the band was formed much earlier. Brothers Henry and Lewis De Jong were just 10 and 8 years old respectively when they started making noise in their parents’ house. Henry took over the drums and Lewis the guitar, and we see wonderful home videos of both brothers when they could barely walk, let alone strut around.

The signs were clearly on the wall… these kids had to rock. Fortunately, their parents, Niel and Jette, were sensible enough to encourage their musical madness. With their elementary school friends Ethan Trembath on bass, the band became a force to be reckoned with after winning the Smokefree Rockquest and later playing European metal festivals such as the Wacken Open Air Festival in Germany. It was there that director Belcher met them, at which point the siblings were 18 and 16 years old.

Niel and Jette are also there and take care of the managers and parents equally… Niel himself was a musician and sound engineer and Jette acts as road manager and press spokesperson.

Oh yes, and the songs are all sung in Maori.

In my experience, metal musicians and fans form the friendliest and most open music community, and this is confirmed throughout the film.

Belcher does a good job of focusing on the brothers’ relationships with each other, with their bandmates (there are three bassists, after all), their fans, and with other bands.

We receive short comments from members of Lamb of God And Gojirabut mostly it is a family matter.

There’s drama… the brothers fight, as brothers do, and one of them breaks a bone just before a big show in Christchurch.

The real drama could have happened if the parents tried to “manage” the band after the boys came of age, but they are smart enough to let them grow up and out of the nest.

The film ends when Lewis turns 21. For most musicians, their creative life is just beginning, but here Henry and Lewis are seasoned veterans. Let’s see where music takes them next.

Note: The brothers (together with Kent Belcher) attended the screening and spoke afterwards. They looked just like they did in the film – a good sign for everyone involved and an inspiration to young musicians (and filmmakers) everywhere.

Eno

Where Alien weapons were heartwarming and inspiring, Eno was thought-provoking and challenging.

This comes as no surprise to anyone who has followed the story. Brian Enos Career of Roxy Music To Fripp And Bowie Employees of U2 And Talking Heads Producer.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Direct Gary Hustwit tackles the challenge of documenting Eno by taking to heart one of Eno’s own theories, that of “generative music”, defined as Music that is “always different and changing and is created by a system”To this end, the filmmaker had new software developed that made it possible to make each screening of this documentary unique… supposedly there are millions of possible variations.

“Fascinating,” Spock might say.

So the version I saw may or may not be similar to the next version that is shown, which makes reviewing the film a bit of a conundrum. I can only comment on what I saw. And what I saw was pretty good.

It feels like 70% of the film is made up of actual interview segments (talking heads, if you will) in which Eno muses on the meaning and importance of art, music and nature. He could come across as self-centered, but thankfully he doesn’t.

While recordings of Roxy Music was tight, we have a lot of vintage footage of Bowie, Fripp and Eno making Heroines and use the infamous “Oblique Strategies” cards. We also get our fair share of Devotee and just enough Talking heads.

I was disappointed that Eno’s foray into No wave The New York scene wasn’t mentioned… I wonder if it appears in other versions of the film.

Having over 500 hours of Eno’s archival footage to work with, Hustwit and his team did a great job of telling Eno’s story…in fact, it felt as if Eno himself was telling it to us. And even though the film didn’t present events in chronological order, it felt like it had a beginning, middle and end.

After about 90 minutes Eno I found myself feeling like I knew more than I did before and was curious to learn and explore even more. And with an almost overwhelming body of work out there… and still growing… there is plenty to keep me busy.

Marty Duda

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