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Date: Saturday 21 January, 7.30pm
Venue: IMAX, Millennium Point, Curzon St, Birmingham
Tickets: £6 (£4.50 concessions)
Bookings: 0121 202 2222

AFTER SHOW PARTY @ SCRUFFY MURPHYS FROM 9.30PM
FREE ENTRY
TWO FLOORS OF HEAVY METAL ACTION

Ladies and gentlemen, air-guitars at the ready. Heavy metal was Birmingham and the Black Country's gift to the world, and tonight the gift will be returned.

Sam Dunn is a thirtysomething anthropology student and self-confessed headbanger from Toronto. In making this film he travelled through the blood and guts of the metal community, talking to fans, kneeling at the feet of legends, stage-diving, and on the whole having more fun than any documentary-maker is strictly entitled to. What makes Metal such a joy to watch is Dunn's infectious pleasure in this much-derided music.

The film does touch on the movement's dark side, including the Norwegian death metallers connected with a series of church-burnings, but on the whole this is a film about metal as a force for good - most clearly in the 80s footage where we see Dee Snider (of Twisted Sister) in front of the US Senate, persuasively defending his spandex tribe from Tipper Gore's concerned parents campaign. Other advocates include Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden, Lemmy from Motorhead, and Alice Cooper.

Star billing, however, should be reserved for guitarist Tony Iommi, too often eclipsed in recent years by his Black Sabbath colleague Ozzy Osborne. Sat back in his Warwickshire mansion, Iommi talks with beguiling honesty about growing up in Aston, about overdoing it in the 70s, and about Sabbath's fondness for crucifixes.

"Superbly crafted documentary is strong enough to make believers out of non-metalheads, and inside enough to get the devil's-horns salute from the most diehard followers." - Variety Part of the Flatpack Festival, an unholy mishmash of shorts, animation, music docs and live events in venues around Birmingham from 19-22 January 2006.

www.7inch.org for more info.