‘Becoming Led Zeppelin’ had its premiere last Saturday at the Venice International Film Festival in Italy. Jimmy Page said there were several offers in the past to make a documentary, but the others wanted to talk about everything but the music.
Page was there at the premiere along with director Bernard MacMahon and the film’s screenwriter Allison McGourty.
The film features all- new interviews with Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones. It also features archival interviews with the late John Bonham, and it marks the first time group’s members participated in a documentary about the group.
Page talked about the documentary: "It’s everything about the music and what made the music tick and the performances and complete versions of songs. That’s the other thing. It’s not just a little sample of it and then a talking head. This is something in a totally different genre."
The film focuses on the legendary group’s first two years. Director Bernard MacMahon says his goal in making the documentary was to "make a documentary that looks and feels like a musical. I wanted to weave together the four diverse stories of the band members before and after they formed their group with large sections of their story advanced using only music and imagery and to contextualize the music with the locations where it was created and the world events that inspired it. I used only original prints and negatives, with over 70,000 frames of footage manually restored, and devised fantasia sequences, inspired by Singin' in the Rain, layering unseen performance footage with montages of posters, tickets and travel to create a visual sense of the freneticism of their early career."
There’s no word on when ‘Becoming Led Zeppelin’ will be shown in the U.S.
[Source: Classic Hits Today]