"Heavy Load," the award winning documentary about the English punk rock band, is now out on NTSC DVD. The film was first shown in the US on IFC and premiered at SXSW in 2008. Since then, it has been shown at film festivals around the world and screened at cinemas in the UK and shown on the BBC.The documentary website says:
Heavy Load are Lewes' answer to the Ramones, a punk band subject to the usual inflammatory mix of ego, fantasy, and desire. They're also, uniquely, made up of musicians with and without learning disabilities. The bands' survival is a precarious negotiation between two different worlds: on the one hand the institutional timetable of day centres, work placements and social workers; on the other the chaotic slacker life of rehearsal rooms, studios and gigs. Home life and band-life; from invisibility to stardom of a sort and back again. But this is not a film about a young band on the road to making it. Specializing in thrash covers of late 70's punk - or punk versions of recent pop, Heavy Load are unlikely to have a top ten hit. Shot over two years as the band record their first album, the film is a comedy of conflicting ambitions, as the band move out of the ghetto of disability club nights to test whether their dreams can survive in the mainstream.
You can get a copy of the DVD which includes extras such as their trip to NYC from http://www.heavyload.org/.
To find out more about the film, see http://www.heavyloadthemovie.com/.
