Don't Knock the Rock '08

Can't stop the music

A A A Comments By Ernest Hardy Wednesday, Aug 20 2008

Far Off Town: Dunedin to Nashville

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One of this summer’s unexpected film-going pleasures has been the Don’t Knock the Rock Film and Music Festival, the weekly screening series of music-related films and panel discussions that has enjoyed raucous, sellout crowds since it kicked off in early August. Everything from L.A.’s underground but globally influential hip-hop scene to the punk-rock movement in Beijing has been on display, and the genre-leaping programming has been reflected in the diversity of the festival’s audience. Things wrap up in the next two weeks, starting with the August 21 screening of Bill Day’s Under the Covers, in which the ostensible subject — iconic album covers from the late ’60s and early ’70s — is the springboard for riveting trips down memory lane in which the nature of rock’s creativity and debauchery are dissected by the likes of Jackson Browne, Ray Manzarek, Don Henley and more. On the same bill is Derek & Heather Emerson’s Let Me Be Your Band, a low-budget, warm-hearted ode to those eccentrics who surround themselves with a slew of instruments and play them all — some with amazing dexterity, others with more ambition than accomplishment. On August 28, there’s the Los Angeles premiere of Bridget Sutherland’s Far Off Town: Dunedin to Nashville, in which cult New Zealand musician David Kilgour (of the ’80s group the Clean) treks to Nashville to cut a new album. This straightforward look at the making of that album is graced with a sweet wistfulness — a celebration of art for art’s sake that is neither naive nor defensive. (Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theatre; Thursdays at 8 p.m., thru Aug. 28. www.cinefamily.org.)