† NillaMora †

From last year's Toronto International Film Festival:

August 16, 2007

Kurt Cobain About A Son will have its Oscar qualifying run starting this Friday at the Arclight Cinemas in Los Angeles, part of the International Documentary Association's DocuWeek, which showcases some of the year's top documentary films.  This run is in advance of the film's official LA theatrical premiere at the Landmark Nuart, which begins October 5.

Screening dates and times for the Arclight and other DocuWeek films are at the Arclight website and the IDA's online home.

by ALISTAIR HARKNESS

DIRECTED BY: AJ SCHNACK

UNLIKE Joy Division's Ian Curtis, who was a marginal figure when he hanged himself, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was the biggest rock star in the world when he shot himself in 1994.

In many people's eyes that immediately turned him into just another rock'n'roll cliché. While there's no disputing the fact that - like Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin before him - he is another dead-at-27 rockstar who expired at the height of his fame. However, we've mercifully been spared rubbish "live-fast, die-young" films about him.

That's surprising given the lurid tabloid interest in his life, particularly after his marriage to Courtney Love. Instead we've had Gus Van Sant's barely fictionalised film Last Days, which artfully appropriated tiny, mundane details from the singer's life to create a hypnotic, gripping portrait of…

August 16, 2007

We've just booked six more cities for theatrical engagements this fall.  Look for even more dates to be announced in the coming weeks.

New York City
IFC Center
Opens October 3

Los Angeles
Landmark Nuart
Opens October 5

Seattle
Landmark Varsity
Opens October 12

Boston
Landmark Kendall Square
Opens October 19

Philadelphia
Ritz Theatre
Opens October 19

Washington DC
E Street Cinema
Opens October 26

Denver
Starz Film Center
Opens November 2

Nashville
The Belcourt
Opens November 2

St Louis
Landmark Tivoli
Opens November 2

Schnack speaking after receiving an award from the SilverDocs film festival for his film Kurt Cobain About A Son
:: In June I spoke with director AJ Schnack about his wildly creative documentary Kurt Cobain About A Son (blog, MySpace), which is about the deceased Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain. The film uses elements of recorded conversations/Cobain speaking and visuals from three Washington state cities to reveal aspects of Cobain's life that may be unfamiliar to many audience members. See my review of the movie here. This interview happened during the 2007 SilverDocs film festival in Silver Spring, Maryland, about an hour before About A Son won the Cinematic Vision Feature Award from the fest. . Sujewa: AJ, thanks a lot for taking some time out for this interview. So, how did you get into filmmaking &…