EVEN HELL HAS ITS HEROES: POST-FILM Q&A w/ CLYDE PETERSEN & EARTH

Saturday, January 6, 2024
Even Hell Has Its Heroes
Post-Film Q&A w/ Director Clyde Petersen and Earth
$12 GA & $9 OFS
Doors 6:30p / Film 7p
Open Caption screening
Since 1989, the slowest metal band on the planet has conjured some of music’s most striking tectonic changes. Not only did the band Earth create a glacially paced subgenre of metal and play a pivotal role in the popularization of grunge, but visionary leader Dylan Carlson also did it while battling small-town boredom, heroin addiction, and the tragic death of his roommate and best friend, Kurt Cobain. Despite the high volume of its beloved and beautiful drone metal, Earth has rarely had much to say for itself. For the first time, in a moving saga that respects the music as much as the ragtag cast of eccentrics and surreal Pacific Northwest majesty that shaped it, Clyde Petersen gets to the core of the could-have-been-tragic triumph of Earth, the slow band that changed everything it touched.
Dir: Clyde Petersen / 2023 / US / 110 min / Open Caption Screening

“A comprehensive look at the history and legacy of the metal band Earth, Even Hell Has Its Heroes is a true achievement of a documentary in every sense as its sonic resonance echoes just as the group’s meditative music does decades later. Entertaining as all hell, whether you’ve followed Earth for years or have yet to be graced by their music, Even Hell is the absolute best film of this year’s festival, and it carves out an irreplaceable place in Washington cinema history. More than a recounting of the group’s origins, the film eschews typical documentary conventions, with its overreliance on talking heads, by interweaving interviews with the footage itself. It is a work befitting the grandiosity of Earth’s creations that takes us fully into the minds of those behind it and illuminates how they left their mark on a genre that will forever owe them a musical debt. There is a darkness, but an earned vibrancy emerges as well.” – Chase Hutchinson, The Stranger

SCREENING: SAT 1/6 7PM