I admire filmmaker Kat Candler's affinity for chaos. Last year at Sundance, she brought her short film Hellion (currently being written into a feature film), about a rambunctious group of boys.
This year, she's bringing more anarchy to Park City with her new short, Black Metal. I haven't seen the the film yet, but here's the Sundance synopsis: After a career spent mining his music from the shadows, one fan creates a chain reaction for the lead singer of a black metal band. To give more insight, the fan kills a teacher to honor the band, and the film follows the frontman's (played by Jonny Mars) guilt dealing with it. Vicious.
This story is already great for two reasons: 1) the media doesn't really share much insight from an artist, film, or celebrity being blamed for the cause of a school shooting or massacre - they just point fingers, and 2) die hard fans are caught up in the fantasy world and forget the reality that musicians and actors are acting. No matter how nutty you see them on stage or in a movie, it's just an act -- a performance to get paid. Ozzy Osbourne may bite the head off a bat on stage, but I guarantee you he tells his family he loves them when he comes home from work, says "Thank You" when it's needed, and gets his feelings hurt. (Note: we're going to exclude GG Allin, who had no feelings and was just as much of a lunatic off stage as he was on.)
Diving into a subject this sensitive can't be easy, but having seen a majority of Candler's previous work and following her campaign for Black Metal via Twitter, she's right for the job. It also really helps that she's a film lecturer at the University of Texas (i.e. a teacher at a school).
So here it is, folks, the first trailer for Black Metal. For more updates on the film, Like the Facebook page or head over to their official website.
If you are attending Sundance, below is where and when you can catch it. To see what other shorts are playing in this block, click here. I will save your precious index finger some time -- it's screening with Blue-Tongue Films' Nash Edgerton (Spider; stuntman extraordinaire) and Spencer Susser's (Hesher) short, The Captain. Only a fool would miss this.
1/19/2013 6:00 pm Broadway Centre Cinema 6, Salt Lake City
1/20/2013 6:30 pm Redstone Cinema 1, Park City
1/23/2013 8:30 pm Prospector Square Theatre, Park City
1/24/2013 4:00 pm Holiday Village Cinema 4, Park City
(Follow Chase Whale on Twitter.)