The Consortium present...

Two rare and intimate London screenings of the universally acclaimed Monks documentary film.

The monks were 5 American GI’s in cold war Germany who billed themselves as the anti-Beatles; they were heavy on feedback, nihilism and electrical banjo. They had strange haircuts, dressed in black, mocked the military and rocked harder than any of their mid-sixties counterparts while managing to basically invent industrial, punk and techno music.
The genre-overlapping documentary film not only illustrates the pop music phenomenon in its political, social and cultural historic contexts, but also reveals the monks project as the first marriage between art and popular music
and this months before Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground.
The five protagonists of the film came to cold war Germany in 1961 as soldiers and left the country in 1967 as avant-garde monks.
For more than thirty years they were not able to talk about their strange experience. In the film they recount for the first time their adventure.

featuring Gary Burger (vocals/guitar)
Larry Clark (organ)
Dave Day (banjo/guitar)
Roger Johnston (drums)
Eddie Shaw (bass)
Charles Wilp (fashion photographer, composer, Afri-Cola guru, ARTronaut)
Jimmy Bowien (Polydor producer of the monks)
Gerd Henjes (Polydor sound engineer of the monks)
Wolfgang Gluszczewski (tour manager of the monks)
Joachim Irmler (Faust, 60’s eyewitness and fan)
Jon Spencer (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, 90’s fan)
Byron Coley (Spin Magazine staff writer)
Genesis P-Orridge (Psychic TV & Throbbing Gristle, 60’s fan)
Peter Zaremba (Fleshtones, 90’s fan)

Showing at:

Paintwork #2 - May 19th, 6pm (very limited availability, small space)

Lexi Cinema (Kensal Green) - May 20th 7.30pm (again, very small cinema- book ahead)

The Lexi screening will be introduced by Alan Dein, highly esteemed Radio 4 broadcaster and proud recipient of the dubious honour of having received the most letters of support from listeners appalled at his treatment by the more conservative listening demographic. He'll talk about meeting the Monks.

Brilliant film, don't miss it.