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Angolan Death Metal Documentary Has New York City Premiere

By Ben Fractenberg | November 21, 2014 10:34am
 Harlem filmmaker Jeremy Xido's documentary "Death Metal Angola" is opening at Cinema Village on Friday. 
Death Metal Angola Opens at Cinema Village
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MANHATTAN — Angolan death metal is coming to Manhattan. 

Harlem-based filmmaker Jeremy Xido’s documentary "Death Metal Angola," about the metal and hardcore scene in the post-civil war African country, starts a weeklong run at Cinema Village on Friday, with Brooklyn teen metal band Unlocking the Truth to play after Saturday night’s showing.

“Bringing the film back to New York is a homecoming for us,” Xido told DNAinfo New York. “Much of the team that made the film is based here, as are some of our biggest supporters like the Black Rock Coalition, the Fulbright Association and DOC NYC.”

Xido spent seven weeks filming Angola’s emerging metal scene as musicians planned the country’s first-ever rock festival in 2011.

The director, a former Fulbright scholar, said the music allowed young people to process and express their feelings about the violence they experienced during the country’s 27-year civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Even though the war ended in 2002, much of the country is still rebuilding and political dissent isn't completely tolerated.

A Q&A with Xido will follow the Friday opening at 7 p.m. The Black Rock Coalition is hosting an after-party at Littlefield in Gowanus.

Unlocking the Truth will play a special pre-show concert before the 7 p.m. showing on Saturday. They’ll play again in the theater after the movie ends. 

"Having an Unlocking the Truth and 'Death Metal Angola' double-header is off the hook for me," Xido said. “It has my inner 12-year-old leaping and shouting and doing fist pumps in the air.”