South Birmingham College
Saturday 14th 23:00pm - Sunday 15th02:00am
£4  Book tickets

Dir. Peter Clifton & Joe Massot

Presented in association with Home of Metal.

Back in the day when psychedelic concept movies were compulsory for any self-respecting rock band, Led Zeppelin took the plunge with this patchy but often entertaining document of their 1973 Houses of the Holy tour. The meat of the film is a performance at Madison Square Gardens shot over three nights in which the group steam through 'Stairway', 'Black Dog', 'Heartbreaker' and the rest to thunderous effect. Also scattered through the movie are fantasy sequences which Spinal Tap might have cringed at, including Plant rescuing a fair maiden and Page meeting a hermit up a mountain. The simplest and most touching is John Bonham’s, shot on his farm near Droitwich.

The making-of story is an epic in its own right, and today’s special screening will include a talk by Birmingham-born documentary maker and music historian Chris Phipps. Combining personal anecdotes with music fact and urban fiction, Phipps will provide a unique decoding of a band and film which often defy description. As he says, “you may leave with more questions than answers, but that’s Zeppelin.”

Home Of Metal is a new project aimed at creating a legacy to celebrate the innovators of the metal genre and those that continued to develop it; Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest, Napalm Death and Godflesh. Bringing people together to share their passion for the music by creating a digital archive, heritage tours, large-scale exhibitions and ultimately a permanent collection dedicated to telling the story of Metal and its unique birthplace.