Back to work post long weekend and one film on Tuesday night, that being the amazing Liberation Day (Norway, Latvia), about a Slovenian band that was invited to perform In North Korea for the 70th anniversary of their liberation from Japanese rule. The band is Laibach and I’d never heard of them and now I love them and feel I have been missing out. They sort of look like an industrial version of Devo and sound amazing with a male lead vocal with a guttural growl that reminded me a little of Lemmy from Motorhead, in fact here’s a clip of a song that was in the movie, Life is Life. Anyways, they were invited to play in North Korea, and significantly for me, were invited to play tunes from one of my favourite movies, The Sound of Music; as it turns out this movie is a popular favourite there. Who knew! Aside from my fascination with Laibach, the movie itself was fascinating, both for its own views and takes on North Korea, as well as its portrayal of how complicated it can be to stage a show and the amount of negotiation required, not to mention changing lyrics and visual effects in accordance with recommendations from Nth Korea’s censorship committee. Included were plenty of discussion with various officials around what was acceptable and ensuring respect was maintained. All in all, I really enjoyed this doco in a bunch of different ways.