Mutiny In Heaven: The Birthday Party is a 2023 documentary about Australian post-punk band The Birthday Party. Formed in 1977 in suburban Melbourne as The Boys Next Door the band quickly realized that they needed to be where most of the music that interested them was happening meaning outside their home country. The documentary tells the story of the influential group’s modest beginnings as local weirdos into art and literature that pursued music almost as an afterthought only to become a band described in its heyday as the most dangerous band in the world. Led by Nick Cave and guitarist Roland S. Howard the group also comprised of drummer Phill Calvert, bassist Tracey Pew and guitarist Mick Harvey The Birthday Party still come off like figures of rock and roll myth.
Directed by Ian White, Mutiny In Heaven: The Birthday Party utilizes extensive archival footage, photography, animated sequences and contemporaneous and more recent interviews with the band including the late Roland S. Howard who passed away in 2009. Dissatisfied with much of the music going on around them The Birthday Party first moved to London, England for a few years and quickly signed to legendary post-punk label 4AD on the strength of its harrowing and thrilling music and incendiary live shows fueled by tensions within the group and their collective disdain for an uninspiring and disappointing cultural milieu in the UK minus likeminded artists like The Fall and The Pop Group. That experience pushed four members of the quintet to move to Berlin leaving founding drummer Phill Calvert behind and to new creative heights before issues with drug addiction and unsustainable expectations caused its abrupt dissolution in 1983 leaving behind a legacy for excellence in deeply imaginative songwriting, unparalleled live performances and an aesthetic that was striking and unique even through today.
The Birthday Party set a high benchmark as a band and the little live footage one could find before now on more or less bootleg copies of the 1984 video release Pleasure Heads Must Burn gave glimpses of a group of artists that were universally respected by peers like Thurston Moore, Lydia Lunch and Henry Rollins. With Mutiny In Heaven: The Birthday Party you get to experience previously unreleased live performances, hear unreleased material and witness the rise and collapse of one of the most impactful and influential bands out of the post-punk canon whose legacy continues in the likes of IDLES, Viagra Boys, Amyl and the Sniffers and Sprain. The documentary is currently being screened throughout the USA including three times in Denver on October 10 at 7:30 pm. 13 and 14 at 9:15 pm and October 15 at 4 pm at Sie FilmCenter. For more information and to look for other screenings please visit birthdaypartymovie.com. At select screenings and from the movie website a limited edition t-shirt commemorating the release of the film will be available.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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