This year Hellfest will blow its tenth candle and is already full for the occasion. Ten years of metal, death metal, hard rock, hardcore, grindcore, of nucore, doom, stoner, sludge, punk … In short all the families of music called “extreme” from the four corners of the planet will be there.
The opportunity to take a dive in the heart of a universe at times maligned, at times demonized, often ignored in the media. I would simply say a universe primarily unknown.
The film goes in two directions. As Asaf Avidan recently told me when I finished editing his concert at the Folies Bergères. “Some shots for the feeling and some shots for the information.”

“Some shoot for the feeling”

In huge part, the film therefore proposes, by its shape, for viewers feel the quite amazing atmosphere that emerges from such a festival. On the one hand of course due to the content of the music, at times violent, transgressive, hypnotic. On the other by the look of the musicians as well as the public. Through attitudes, the way to move. I have sometimes been captivated by the postures of a bassist, tense muscles, almost motionless, like a fawn before the assault. Or conversely by the energy of a singer who paces the stage, a true lion in a cage. One must have seen this mass of people, improbable outfits, atypical haircuts, moving as one, running in a circle. Tribal dance if so.
A visually strong film with real biases, trying to give a real look at the Hellfest, on this music and what gives it its singularity.

“Some shoot for the information”

Another part of the film is more informative. I would almost say educational. But here rather than a chain of artist interviews in promotion, or religiously listening to a supposedly expert reporter tell us the history of rock, I propose to try to explain what are the different music present at Hellfest through meetings with the musicians themselves, instruments in hand, explaining to us, demonstrating in support, what distinguishes such a current from another.