QFT Marks Anniversary Of Grunge band

This week Belfast celebrated the 20th Anniversary of Seattle Grunge legends, Pearl Jam, with a special one off screening at Queens Film Theatre (QFT).

The film rockumentary, titled Pearl Jam Twenty, is a definitive portrait of the band as told by Academy Award-winning filmmaker and music journalist, Cameron Crowe.

Pearl Jam Twenty embraces big themes and bold colours with blistering sound, and chronicles the years leading up to the band's formation, the chaos that ensued soon after being catapulted into superstardom and their step back from the spotlight with the instinct of self-preservation.

During the two hour spectacular, Pearl Jam fans get a privileged insight into the band's motivation behind name changes, drummer changes, fighting popularity and commercialism, and there biggest battle to date - taking on ticket giants Ticketmaster.

The journey is an emotional roller-coaster ride with laugh out loud highs, including their drunken MTV performance and award presentation, and grief-stricken lows, including the death of Andrew Wood in 1990 and the Roskilde tragedy in 2000. But it always comes back to the music, the band's pulse, with spellbinding concert performances throughout the years.

The film celebrates the freedom that allows the band to make music without losing themselves, their fans, or the music lovers they'd always been.

Discussing the film-making process, and the editing of over a thousand hours of never-before-seen footage, Director Cameron Crowe said: "We put so much into the film - moments, pieces of footage shot by band members, audio snippets, visual bursts, new and old interviews - many different formats, all meant to present an emotional scrapbook of what it felt like to be a member of the band on this twenty-year journey."

He added: "The richness of the footage made our path very clear - just tell the story of the band and let the music guide us. It was a joy to make this film, and we’re thrilled to share it with the fans."

(BMcN/BMcC)