Romantic Warriors: A Progressive Music Saga
| Romantic Warriors: A Progressive Music Saga | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Adele Schmidt José Zegarra Holder |
| Produced by | Zeitgeist Media LLC |
| Written by | Adele Schmidt José Zegarra Holder |
| Starring |
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| Music by |
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| Cinematography |
Adele Schmidt José Zegarra Holder |
| Edited by | Adele Schmidt |
| Distributed by | Zeitgeist Media |
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Release date
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2010 |
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Running time
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95 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English, Spanish (with English subtitles) |
Adele Schmidt
Romantic Warriors: A Progressive Music Saga is a feature-length documentary film written and directed by José Zegarra Holder and Adele Schmidt, released in 2010 as the first part of a series dedicated to progressive rock as an artistic, cultural and social phenomenon. The project reflects the film makers' love of a music genre that has made a strong comeback in the early 21st century – four decades after its Seventies heyday – although without regaining the commercial appeal of the original movement. Romantic Warriors was positively received by long-time followers of the genre, and sparked interest also outside the boundaries of the progressive rock fandom.
The second installment of the series – titled Romantic Warriors II: A Progressive Music Saga About Rock in Opposition – was released in the summer of 2012, while a third film, dedicated to the Canterbury scene and titled Romantic Warriors III: Canterbury Tales, was released April 2015.
Adele Schmidt and José Zegarra Holder are the co-founders and managers of Zeitgeist Media LLC, a video production company based in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, where it has been active for over 15 years. Schmidt's work as a film and video director, editor and producer has won numerous international awards; Zegarra Holder, who in the 1990s was the owner of Media Sur Films, a documentary production firm, also deals with the marketing aspect of the company's activity.
Romantic Warriors was inspired by the film makers' lifelong passion for progressive rock. In particular, Zegarra Holder has been contributing to the Spanish-language blog Autopoietican since 2004. The documentary was partly funded by the Arts Council and the government of Montgomery County, Maryland.
Romantic Warriors – whose title references jazz-fusion outfit Return to Forever's 1976 album, Romantic Warrior – introduces progressive rock (or prog, as it is widely known among its fans) in its social, cultural and artistic dimension through interviews and concert footage, captured for the most part in various venues of the US East Coast between 2007 and 2009. The genre's early beginnings in the late Sixties are identified with influential albums such as The Mothers of Invention's Freak Out! and The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, emphasizing its relationship with classical music and the unusual focus on long, multi-part compositions rather than on the conventional song form. The spread of the original movement from the UK to other European countries, and then other parts of the world such as the US, South America and Japan, is illustrated through the use of maps that trace the development of the genre over the past 40 years, including its many modern ramifications.
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