The guys are back in town next month when the Mushroom Group launches its new distribution and production company, Long Play Music Films.
Long Play kicks off with Emer Reynolds’ award-winning documentary about the late Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynotta: Songs For While I’m Away, which will hit Australian theaters Sept. 29.
The new company will tackle “unique and remarkable musical stories from around the world,” explains Warren Costello, director of Long Play, “diving deeper, capturing angles of performer and performance that people haven’t seen before.”
Long Play began as a “fun side project” born out of a brainstorming session with the late Mushroom Group founder Michael Goodinski, as a weapon in addition to the indie company’s music recordings, tours and special events.
Those ventures include Mushroom Pictures, which this month marks the 20th anniversary of the release of the award-winning biopic “Chopper,” produced in partnership with Pariah Productions.
When concert venues and borders closed in 2020, Mushroom Group and its chairman focused on film and television projects. During the darkest months of the pandemic, Goodinski curated the virtual concert Music From The Home Front; the six-part series The State Of Music, which aired live on YouTube, Facebook and Victoria Together; and the series The Sound, which completed two seasons on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
With Long Play, “we’re positioning ourselves as a vehicle for storytelling, real stories, and hopefully using a lot of existing material rather than shooting from scratch,” Costello explains. “There’s a lot of gold lying around in archives, record company shelves and warehouses.”
Phil Lynott: Songs For While I’m Away will premiere at the Irish Film Festival, which will take place online Sept. 3-12, followed by a limited theatrical release.
“We aim to offer screenings of new music documentaries in the comfort of the theater and, if possible, with improved sound,” adds Costello, who continues to run the Bloodlines label, another Mushroom Group company, “so audiences can see and hear these films the way they were meant to be seen and heard.
