A festival of traditional folk music high in the Bulgarian mountains; a rock band sharing a house in Los Angeles; a well-known performer about to release an album and embark on tour – whatever the context, musician and filmmaker Joe DeNardo’s vibrant body of 16mm work over the course of the last five years has eschewed traditional performance documentary aesthetics, favoring an experimental, jaggedly playful approach that combines contemplative distance with rehearsal footage and scripted dramatization. Peculiar intimacy ensues – a filmic correlative to live performance, documenting lives lived in and through music.

Joe DeNardo was born in 1979, and grew up in various midwestern suburbs. His immersion in punk rock led him to school in Olympia, Washington, where his studies branched out from Photography and Electronic Music into Film and Political Economy. He has been a member of the art-punk group GROWING for 12 years and has directed and photographed various music films, including IMA NEMA, an expressionistic movement around Bulgarian folk singing. He continues to explore expanded shapes of sound and image in his collages, films, and music.

Paul Felten received his BA from the Evergreen State College and his MFA from Columbia University’s Film Division. His writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail and in the anthology Lost and Found: Stories From New York (ed. Thomas Beller). A 2011 Sundance Screenwriting Fellow, he is the writer (with Ian Olds) of the scripts for the short film Bomb and the experimental feature Francophrenia (or: Don’t Kill Me, I Know Where the Baby Is).

At a time when most female singer-songwriters perform as alter egos, Eleanor Friedberger is simply, refreshingly herself. And that’s just the way her fans like it. Having spent the last decade fronting the indie-rock institution The Fiery Furnaces (currently on hiatus) with her brother Matthew, in 2011 she emerged as a formidable solo artist with Last Summer, a thoughtfully crafted tale of memory and place couched in the organic pop of her ’70s idols. Instantly, Friedberger established herself as a modern-day heir to the tradition of Donovan, Todd Rundgren, Ronnie Lane, and their ilk: warm, nuanced, timeless songs. No gimmicks necessary.