By the early 1980s, Ebba Grön had risen to become by far the most influential punk group in the country. Although punk was largely a permissive anti-culture, more and more clear rules were developed for how the music should sound and what instruments a punk group should contain. This meant that the musical shirt of Ebba Grön was becoming too tight. To find an outlet for their musical creativity, drummer Gurra Ljungstedt, guitarist and organist Stry Terrarie and singer and guitarist Joakim Thåström started the side project Rymdimperiet.
When Ebba Grön broke up in 1983, the prefix "Rymd-" and Imperiet took its place on the Swedish music scene, quickly becoming one of the biggest and most important Swedish rock groups of the 1980s.
"A Heart is Always Red" is a story about the drive to develop artistically and musically while struggling to maintain one's political ideals in an increasingly commercial environment and time. It is easy to lose oneself in an increasingly fast-moving carousel where one's own ideals collide with the demands of record companies and the media's image of how successful artists are expected to be.
So it's a story about how they themselves help create a monster they no longer have any control over, to suddenly be popular rock stars without really knowing how it happened. About how celebrity can eat away at you, about a hierarchical world where the status of being a star means that in the end you don't know who to trust in all the swarm of backstabbers and yes-men. Where record labels make big money but little trickles down to the artists. We want to tell you how all this affected them and shaped their post-Empire careers.
Director: Balsam Hellström
Producer: Hjalmar Palmgren
Photographer: Jonas Embring
Editing: Kaveh Akaber
Graphic design: Jon Edergren, Spektra Design
Research and social media: Carl Von Starkenberg
