Sound Unseen: The 9th annual festival of movies about music

Every year since 2000, fans of music and film have cleared their calendars for Sound Unseen, a curated festival of independent movies about music. The ninth annual Sound Unseen, now running for eight days in Minneapolis, should be no exception. Its 18-film roster includes marquee subjects such as Sonic Youth and Sigur Ros and local heroes such as Low and Garrison Keillor, as well as more obscure topics such as Anvil (an early-'80s Canadian metal band) and "nerdcore" (a hip-hop subgenre characterized by such geeky subjects as science fiction and computers).

New festival director Rick Hansen, who took the reins from longtime director Gretchen Williams this year, says he's been close to the festival since its inception and a member of the local film scene for years. In an apparent move away from the party-heavy festivals under Williams, Hansen explains, "I really wanted to put the focus on the films. I do feel like we might have the strongest lineup of films in Sound Unseen's history, and there are some pretty strong contenders from years past."

The festival opens with a film about a Minnesotan whom most of us know as a writer. "The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes" documents the creation of Keillor's weekly radio show "A Prairie Home Companion" from conception to performance, as well as Keillor's travails and interviews with those close to him. Keillor, who lends his familiar voice to narrate the film, also discusses his beginnings as a writer, his take on America and tradition, and the inspiration for his writing. Director Peter Rosen will be present, with a reception in the Riverview Theater lobby before and after the film with live music by Meg Ashling and Ballast.

Give a bunch of high school kids some cameras and send them out to a Sonic Youth show, and guess what happens? Not a lot. Not even at the 2006 casino gig in Reno, Nev., which was the basis of this 80-minute documentary, a product of the nonprofit youth-in-film organization Project Moonshine. The young filmmakers interviewed everyone from the soundman to the requisite fan with a band tattoo to the musicians themselves. Their most interesting subject was actually the guitar tech, which tells you something about Sonic Youth's music, and about how dull this behind-the-scenes footage really is. The concert footage, however - all shot in black and white -- is surprisingly high-quality.

With its starkly beautiful Icelandic landscapes, this film at first appears to be more of a minimalist art piece than a documentary, if not for its soundtrack. "Heima" takes place during a series of free unannounced concerts in the summer of 2006 after Sigur Ros had toured the world and returned home ("heima" means "homeland"). There's rare interview material with the notoriously shy band, but mostly the documentary focuses on the musical journey across Iceland, as Sigur Ros performs everywhere from a dam protest site to a deserted herring oil tank to the countryside. For the music alone, it's a must-see for any fan; for the film critic, it's a visual and aural statement of the interconnectedness of the band's sound to its surroundings and origins. Friday's postparty at the Back Room includes live music by Sika, A Whisper in the Noise and DJ A-Ray.

"Folks, you are in an amazing place," comedian Dave Gruber Allen says by way of introducing another evening at the Los Angeles underground club Largo. "You never know who's going to drop in." In 1993, owner Mark Flanagan bought Largo and subsequently "brought great food, unchecked syphilis and great music to L.A.," as Allen puts it. The documentary focuses on the musicians and comedians -- including Fiona Apple, Flight of the Conchords, Aimee Mann, Sarah Silverman, John C. Reilly, Andrew Bird and Jackson Browne -- that give Largo its respected reputation. The grainy black-and-white format is a fitting canvas for the magical and iconic moments captured at the club throughout 2008.

Dennis Lambert was part of a songwriting/producing duo that thrived from the late '60s on through the early '80s, creating dozens of Billboard hits. In 1972, Lambert decided to step into the limelight and record his own album, "Bags and Things," which flopped. Unbelievably, the record was a tremendous hit in the Philippines. Thirty-five years later, Lambert, at the insistence of his son Jody (who directed), heads to that distant country for a concert and to meet his obsessed fans. While this sounds like the potential for a fascinating film, "Of All the Things" is thoroughly tedious. This is a movie only a son could love, replete with dull news conferences, uneventful bus rides and, at its heart, some of the most tepid concert footage ever filmed. Self-indulgent and a waste of time.

Every rapper has to have a great hard-knocks story. Emmanuel Jal's probably tops them all. His harrowing tale starts in southern Sudan, where the country's bloody civil war turned him into a child soldier. Now in his late 20s, he's using hip-hop to tell the world about his struggle and the plight of his homeland. While the rapper provides vivid insight into the horrors of his war-torn childhood -- his mother killed and aunt raped in front of him -- filmmaker Karim Chrobog adds old footage (taken from a previous European documentary) showing Jal being interviewed in a refugee camp when he was just a boy. The Jal of today is a soft speaker who comes alive onstage, his songs almost entirely dedicated to peace and uplift. The film is beautifully shot, following Jal from his speeches and performances in the United States to his anticipated trip home, where he will reunite with his father, grandmother and loved ones he hasn't seen in more than a decade. A mesmerizing account, told to a hip-hop beat.

Acrassicauda is a heavy metal band based in Baghdad. Two intrepid reporters from Vice magazine go crazy for the group and, over four years, fly to Iraq three times to see how things are going. Things are not going well. "Heavy Metal in Baghdad" is about the vicissitudes of Acrassicauda (the name is Latin for a deadly black scorpion in Iraq) and it is a fascinating, maddening ride. The film is far from perfect -- there could be a lot more music and a lot less proselytizing, and there's literally nothing about the wives, family members and friends of the band and how they're coping. But when the music's on, this movie, well, rocks. "If you really want to know why we play, look around," lead vocalist Faisal says as mortars explode. "We're living in a heavy metal world."

This has to be the ultimate revenge of the nerds. The geeks who got beat up in grade school for watching "Star Trek" and playing Magic: The Gathering have now staked claim to the roughest, toughest genre in music: hip-hop. They call their version "nerdcore" -- and it's about the goofiest thing you've ever heard. This documentary follows nerdcore's biggest star, MC Frontalot, as he tours the country urging other dorks to join the nerdcore cause. But geeky white dudes rhyming (terribly) about Trekkies and role-playing games only stays amusing for so long before it becomes a novelty act. Director Negin Farsad fine-tunes this little romp with insight from nerd-culture luminaries such as Weird Al Yankovic and comedian Brian Posehn. She also confronts nerdcore's possible racist undertones (is it just another minstrel show?). But it's a point she could have explored further.

Billed as a "real-life Spinal Tap," "Anvil: The Story of Anvil" is the year's most entertaining documentary. Director Sacha Gervasi follows Steve "Lips" Kudlow and Robb Reiner, 50-ish founding members of the band, as they head on a disastrous European tour and drop a fortune into producing their 13th album, hoping for a sweet record deal and the fame that has eluded them. As they take this quixotic journey, we discover that Kudlow, the eternal optimist, and Reiner, the down-to-earth realist, are at once hilarious, irritating, endearing and, ultimately, possessed of great dignity. What might at first appear to be a silly romp soon reveals itself to be a touching examination of the nature of friendship, art and sacrifice. In fact, the film leaves one wondering if it is the duo's grace and human decency -- and not any lack of passion or talent -- that kept them from fame. The screening is followed by a closing party at Stasiu's with local band Strut & Shock and DJ Lori Barbero.