What We Started

What begins as a thorough journey from the early days of house music loses its way somewhere after rave culture. The doc struggles to bridge the late 90s to modern electronic music, leaving the entire 1990s house/pop crossover movement behind, skipping eurodance and somehow landing at David Guetta swinging at crossover hits without acknowledging acts like Daft Punk and perhaps Prodigy? I found the narrative choices confusing and bland as the filmmakers tried to bridge the old (Carl Cox) with the new (Martin Garrix) by spending too much time with Martin and not enough time on telling the bigger story. I guess what it comes down to is that electronic dance music is a huge genre that rarely gets proper respect. Only the book "The Underground is Massive" came close to doing it right, and it's a much better place to spend your time.

I went to a director's screening of WHAT WE STARTED and it is a must see. In particular, I absolutely loved getting to know the characters. Martin Garrix is so different than my initial impression of him! He is so sweet, deep and humble. I also loved hearing Carl Cox's story and I might try to sneak into the March premiere, so that I can meet him. He seems truly amazing. I love all kinds of music, but never knew a ton about this genre, so I found it to be really educational, too, which was a great surprise (since I expected mostly upbeat, entertainment, which this has, but it has more than just that)!

I didn't know much about this kind of music before I saw What We Started, but I was super inspired by the film and have now purchased tickets to my first electronic dance music event! I learned so much by watching the film and felt really invigorated by the music.

I always loved EDM and this further expanded my knowledge on the genre. Very interesting film would definitely recommend

I saw a sneak peak of this film a few weeks ago, and it was great. I think it's a groundbreaking film -- nothing else that's been made about EDM does what this movie does. Goes behind the scenes into the careers of two of the most prolific artists in the field and also dives into the evolution of the genre in an super interesting a beautifully shot and edited way. I hear it's coming out in March 2018 in theaters and highly recommend this film.