Until the Light Takes Us
Aaron Aites' and Audrey Ewell's black metal documentary chronicles the history, ideology and aesthetic of a movement and music genre that was variously co-opted, appropriated and, arguably, misrepresented by everyone from church-burning Satanists to visual arts practitioners.
Exploring the line between music, art, activism and domestic terrorism, the filmmakers track down surviving instigators of the movement Varg Vikernes - a.k.a. Count Grishnackh, of Burzum and Mayhem fame - then serving time in a maximum security prison, and Darkthrone's Gylve 'Fenriz' Nagell, whose ambivalence towards the commodification of the music genre he helped pioneer is captured in a telling scene shot in the pristine environs of an Oslo art gallery. (Wonder what he would have made of Harmony Korine's performance piece 'homage' in an L.A. gallery, captured in a cameo).
