Godfrey Reggio, Lee Friedlander, Nan Goldin, Edmund Teske, Charles Peterson, DA Pennebaker, David and Albert Maysles, Jonathan Demme, Martin Scorsese, Penelope Spheeris, Gus Van Sant
Directors
AJ Schnack
Awards
Winner - Maysles Brothers Award for Best Documentary - 29th Annual Starz Denver Film Festival Nominated - Film Independent’s Spirit Awards - Truer Than Fiction Award Winner - Cinematic Vision Award - AFI/Discovery Channel Silverdocs Winner - Best Documentary - San Diego Film Festival Winner - Best International Documentary - In-Edit Documentary Festival Barcelona
Festivals
World Premiere 2006 Toronto International Film Festival 2006 CINEMA Festa Internazionale di Roma 2006 AFI Fest, Los Angeles 2006 Starz Denver Film Festival **Winner - Maysles Brothers Award for Best Documentary 2006 International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) 2007 Istanbul (Turkey) Film Festival 2007 True/False Film Festival (Columbia, MO) 2007 SXSW Film Festival 2007 Mar del Plata (Argentina) Film Festival 2007 Thessaloniki (Greece) Documentary Festival 2007 Cleveland International Film Festival 2007 NAT Film Festival Copenhagen (Denmark) 2007 AFI Dallas International Film Festival 2007 Philadelphia Film Festival 2007 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival (Durham, NC) 2007 Indie Lisboa (Lisbon, Portugal) 2007 Sarasota (Florida) Film Festival 2007 Seattle International Film Festival 2007 Newport International Film Festival 2007 CineVegas Film Festival 2007 AFI Silverdocs **Winner - Cinematic Vision Award 2007 Sydney (Australia) Film Festival 2007 BritDoc Fest 2007 Edinburgh Film Festival 2007 IDA DocuWeek 2007 Atlantic Film Festival 2007 San Diego Film Festival **Winner - Best Documentary 2007 In-Edit Documentary Festival, Barcelona **Winner - Best International Documentary 2008 Ambulante Traveling Documentary Festival Mexico
Kurt Cobain About A Son's Interests
Music
Featuring music by Arlo Guthrie, Bad Brains, Big Black, Breeders, Butthole Surfers, Cheap Trick, Creedence Clearwater Revival, David Bowie, Half Japanese, Iggy Pop, Leadbelly, The Melvins, MDC, Mark Lanegan, Mudhoney, Queen, R.E.M., Scratch Acid, Teenage Fanclub, The Vaselines, Young Marble Giants and a score by Steve Fisk and Benjamin Gibbard.
Soundtrack available via BARSUK RECORDS:
Books
Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana by Michael Azerrad
Official Motion Picture Soundtrack now available from Barsuk Records. Original Motion Picture Score by Steve Fisk and Benjamin Gibbard available soon from Barsuk.
Kurt Cobain About A Son is an intimate and moving meditation on the late musician and artist Kurt Cobain told entirely in his own voice - without celebrity sound bytes, news clips, sensational tabloid angles or attempts to mimic a grunge aesthetic. Instead, filmmaker AJ Schnack has created something closer to an autobiography of Cobain - a profound first hand account of Cobain's own successes and failures, thoughts and experiences, allowing the audience unprecedented intimacy with a legendary figure in popular culture - set against the wildly divergent Pacific Northwest locations that loomed so large in Cobain's life.
Based on more than 25 hours of never-before-heard audiotaped interviews conducted by noted music journalist Michael Azerrad for his book "Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana," the film offers audiences a compelling re-introduction to one of the most interesting and important cultural figures of the late 20th century. The conversations are informal, humorous, angry and candid. Here, 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.
Shot entirely on 35mm film, Schnack brings Cobain's Northwest to life in vivid detail: the logging industry where Cobain's father worked, the small bars where local bands played their first shows, the endlessly overcast sky. These images, nearly all of which were filmed in locations that were key to Cobain's life - his home, apartment, school, record label, etc. - are set to an evocative original score by noted Northwest musician and producer Steve Fisk, who produced Nirvana's Blew EP, and Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard, as well as the music of more than 20 artists who influenced or touched Cobain during his life. These elements - his own words, places that he say and the music that he listened to - come together to create an extraordinary look at a man who went from impoverished indie rocker to world famous iconic figure in less than a year.
Through Cobain's recounting, we see a portrait of a specific moment in American history, of a generation of individuals who grew up in the midst of the wrenching societal and cultural upheavals of the 1970s and 1980s. While Cobain never embraced the label of generational spokesperson, the film makes clear that he was a thoughtful and introspective figure, and that these societal and cultural changes had a huge and profound influence on his life and art.
i have the dvd kurt cobain about a son and appreciate getting the opportunity to hear him tell us about his life i will always hold him and his music so close to my heart much lovechristie