The seventh season of the UMass Boston Film Series began on October 1 with the Boston premiere of “Breaking a Monster,” a documentary directed by Luke Meyer about the band Unlocking the Truth’s journey as they signed a record contract with Sony.
Chico Colvard started the film series in 2012 as he worked on a film of his own to help unite the Boston film community. This season, the film series has partnered with both The Dockyard and the Institute of Contemporary Art to do dual premieres of Frame by Frame and Here Come the Videofreex, respectively. All films shown during the series will be followed with a question and answer session with the director of the film.
Unlocking the Truth is a metal band based in Brooklyn, New York with members Malcolm Brickhouse, Alec Atkins, and Jarad Dawkins. The band gained notoriety when videos of the then 12-year-old band members playing in Times Square went viral on the internet.
After playing on The View and on Totally Biased, the band was approached by Alan Sacks in February of 2014 to be signed on the major label, Sony Entertainment. The documentary follows the band as they deal with the difficulties of touring, marketing, and trying to maintain their childhood. This includes performances at Coachella, Warped Tour, and opening for Metallica at Heavy Montreal.
After the screening, Luke Meyer answered questions from Chico Colvard and from the audience about the documentary. Meyer, “The question they’re really faced with is: are they a pop band with a hard edge or a young metal band?”
Meyer also highlighted a pivotal moment in the documentary where Malcolm shows Sacks a YouTube review of the group. The reviewer claims that the band had only become famous because of their racial background, and the two of them discuss the content of the video. “There’s always these little moments when you make a documentary, like you know that is going to be in the final cut, and you know that the story pivots around that or rests on that or is centered on that,” said Meyer. “We’d been day three into the recording studio and we were back into the booth and back into the video games and just trying to keep track and this super important thing happened and it was a great moment.”
The next movie in the series is “What Happened, Miss Simone?” on Thursday, November 5 at 7 p.m. in the Campus Center Ballroom. The director, Liz Garbus, will not be able to attend the screening, but a Skype-based question and answer session will still take place after the movie.