Celebrating its 10th anniversary, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster requires no affinity for heavy metal music to appreciate the many pleasures of this documentary classic. Oscar-nominated filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (Paradise Lost) follow the members of the band over several years as they engage in group therapy. Reviewing the film for the New […]
NYC PREMIERE Young love—and heartbreak—is captured through a tailor-made soundtrack in Elvira Lind’s sweetly observed naturalistic portrait. 18-year-old hopeless romantic Ryan writes songs about his 16-year-old girlfriend Alexis as the couple navigates a long-distance relationship between Long Island and San Francisco. But in contrast to his supportive family, Alexis’s father doesn’t approve of their relationship […]
WORLD PREMIERE As a teenager in the 1980s, Scott Crawford began a fanzine documenting the explosion of a distinctive brand of hardcore punk music in Washington, DC, exemplified by bands like Minor Threat, Bad Brains and Fugazi. Drawing from his own immersion in that world, and featuring a who’s who of musicians, label owners, photographers […]
NYC PREMIERE In Jingle Bell Rocks!, director Mitchell Kezin delves into the minds of some of the world’s most legendary Christmas music fanatics and hits the road to hang with his holiday heroes – including hip hop legend Joseph “Rev Run” Simmons of RUN-D.M.C., The Flaming Lips’ frontman Wayne Coyne, filmmaker John Waters, bebopper Bob […]
NYC PREMIERE Elliott Smith was unexpectedly thrust into the mainstream spotlight when his song “Miss Misery” was nominated for an Oscar in 1998. He died just five years later, at the age of 34. Structured as both an expansive overview of the singer/songwriter’s life and as an elegiac city symphony focused on the influence of […]
NYC PREMIERE A fascinating exploration of history as reflected through a nation’s popular culture, John Pirozzi’s film excavates Cambodia’s lost era of American-inflected music. Just as traditional Cambodian songs took on a French colonial influence in the 1950s and ‘60s, the presence of US Armed Forces Radio during the Vietnam War inspired a fusion of funk, […]
NYC PREMIERE Commissioned to create a first-of-its-kind concerto for the banjo and an 80-piece symphony orchestra, virtuoso musician Béla Fleck faces an intensely personal challenge of collaboration and composition. Named after classical composers, can he live up to the legacy of his namesakes? Directed by Fleck and his brother Sascha Paladino, working together again after […]
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE Olga Lvoff’s film is a sensitive examination of family, memory and mortality. Under the watchful eyes of her dutiful daughter Sonia, Regina recalls the Yiddish and French songs of her youth through music therapy sessions following a stroke. But the 93-year-old Holocaust survivor is starting to succumb to dementia. Fearful that their […]
WORLD PREMIERE New Jersey’s WFMU has occupied a unique position as an independent, commercial-free, listener-supported radio station since its inception in the late 1950s. At its heart is the dedicated station manager Ken Freedman, committed to an unstructured, free- form broadcasting model which has won WFMU acclaim as the best—and perhaps weirdest— radio station in […]
WORLD PREMIERE Illustrating the transformative power not only of music, but of mentorship, Ben Niles’s film is an uplifting look at Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program for inner- city youth. Several diverse and inviting kids are followed for two years as they devote their weekends to developing their musical proficiency, receiving hands-on instruction typically impossible in […]