Acting
A definitive landmark series charting the emergence and re-emergence of rock music as a global force, told through the musicians who have shaped this most enduring of genres.
The life and struggles of a notorious rock musician seeping into a pit of loneliness whose everyday life involves friends and family seeking financial aid and favors, inspired by rock music legend Kurt Cobain and his final hours.
John Flansburgh & John Linnell met in the 1970s as junior high students in Lincoln, Massachusetts. A decade later, their band—They Might Be Giants—would stand at the forefront of a burgeoning East Village NYC performance art scene as well as the college music revolution of the late 1980s. Filmed in 2001, ‘Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns)’ is the acclaimed true story, tracing their independent and sometimes hilarious path through two decades in the pop music wilderness. From their legendary Dial-a-Song answering machine, to their Grammy Award-winning theme song for ‘Malcolm in the Middle’, fans and friends gather to tell the oral history of Brooklyn's finest alternative rock band.
An intimate and moving meditation on the late musician and artist Kurt Cobain, based on more than 25 hours of previously unheard audiotaped interviews conducted with Cobain by noted music journalist Michael Azerrad for his book "Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana." In the film, Kurt Cobain recounts his own life - from his childhood and adolescence to his days of musical discovery and later dealings with explosive fame - and offers often piercing insights into his life, music, and times. The conversations heard in the film have never before been made public, and they reveal a highly personal portrait of an artist much discussed but not particularly well understood.
Death By Audio, an underground art and music venue, is forced to close in 2014. The film focuses on the struggles of maintaining a community in the face of Brooklyn property development, hostile construction workers, and a one billion-dollar company.
Taking Punk to the Masses: From Nowhere to Nevermind visually documents the explosion of Grunge, the Seattle Sound, within the context of the underground punk subculture that was developing throughout the U.S. in the late 1970s and 1980s. This decade-and-a-half musical journey will be represented entirely through the lens of EMP’s oral history and permanent object collection, an invaluable and rich cultural archive of over 800 interviews and 140,000 objects - instruments, costumes, posters, records and other ephemera dedicated to the pursuit of rock n roll.
Profiles the birth and growth of the punk rock DIY record label, K Records, based in Olympia, Washington.
Brian Chippendale is the drummer in Lightning Bolt. Greg Saunier is the drummer in Deerhoof. They've teamed up for a self-titled drum duo album—a limited edition LP featuring two side-long improvisations. Checking in at 20 was directed by Matt Conboy of Death by Audio films featuring interviews with members of the Flaming Lips, Les Savy Fav, Thee Oh Sees, and Oneida.
