The best new music doc­u­men­taries to look out for this year

“There’s always been a bird inside of me,” con­fess­es the grav­el­ly voice of Bet­ty Davis at the begin­ning of Phil Cox’s lat­est doc­u­men­tary. ​“A black crow, that’s always been with me. But for a long time, crow and I real­ly didn’t know how to speak.”

It’s fit­ting that Bet­ty: They Say I’m Dif­fer­ent, an exper­i­men­tal biopic about the Queen of Funk, was the stand­out film at this year’s IndieLis­boa – since 1173 the crow has been the offi­cial sym­bol of Lis­bon, when a mur­der of crows pur­port­ed­ly escort­ed the body of Saint Vin­cent to the city. The bird’s his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance is also cel­e­brat­ed in the festival’s insignia, a crow’s pro­file, rest­ing on a tilt­ed board.

Cox’s film screened as part of a spe­cial pro­gramme of music doc­u­men­taries and events curat­ed in cel­e­bra­tion of the festival’s 15^th edi­tion. As a fes­ti­val with a rep­u­ta­tion for com­bin­ing the per­son­al with the polit­i­cal, each of these films aimed to high­light the his­tor­i­cal and social con­texts that inspired their sub­jects, in addi­tion to lend­ing the fes­ti­val this year with a par­ty atmosphere.

“When you’re ahead of your time, it also means you’re ahead of your coun­try,” argues one of Davis’ friends as she describes how the singer’s dar­ing dance moves and pro­nounced sex appeal made white Amer­i­ca sweat dur­ing the civ­il rights strug­gle. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Davis’ provoca­tive per­son­al­i­ty also attract­ed a lot of unwant­ed media atten­tion, even­tu­al­ly forc­ing her into hid­ing. That is until late 2012 when, after an inten­sive search, Cox and his team dis­cov­ered Davis liv­ing mod­est­ly in Pittsburgh.

Music biopics are often guilty of falling into one of two cat­e­gories: benign hagiogra­phies that heap praise on their sub­ject, or tor­tured artist pro­files that hinge on the com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of pain, such as Amy, Mon­tage of Heck and Heav­en Adores You, tend­ing to rely too heav­i­ly on depres­sion and addic­tion for dra­mat­ic pur­pose. Bet­ty: They Say I’m Dif­fer­ent breaks from this tra­di­tion. It’s a com­pas­sion­ate doc­u­men­tary that scru­ti­nis­es Davis’ bat­tles with the music indus­try, and her trou­bled mar­riage to Miles Davis by plac­ing them with­in a wider polit­i­cal con­text rather than putting the indi­vid­ual on trial.

Fol­low­ing months of con­ver­sa­tions with Cox, Davis decid­ed to entrust him with her sto­ry; as long as it was done on her terms. Based on these dis­cus­sions, Cox has cre­at­ed a siz­zling biopic detail­ing how she rev­o­lu­tionised the music land­scape for black women. Com­bin­ing talk­ing-head inter­views with fam­i­ly, friends and for­mer band mem­bers, with snip­pets from their con­ver­sa­tions, the film is a cin­e­mat­ic inter­pre­ta­tion of Davis’ life, emu­lat­ing her sub­ver­sive style by blend­ing tes­ti­mo­ny with psy­che­del­ic ani­ma­tion and an assort­ment of uncon­ven­tion­al non­fic­tion techniques.

Bet­ty: They Say I’m Dif­fer­ent rep­re­sents a move away from the music biopic as pure pro­mo­tion­al tool, join­ing a recent surge of doc­u­men­taries that aim to reflect the pro­gres­sive work of their sub­jects. The most inno­v­a­tive of these at IndieLis­boa focused on pio­neer­ing jazz drum­mer and per­cus­sion­ist Mil­ford Graves. Best known for per­form­ing along­side Bill Frisell, Albert Ayler and John Zorn, Mil­ford Graves Full Man­tis is a kalei­do­scop­ic por­trait of the drummer’s belief in the cos­mic poten­tial of music. A film that refus­es to dance to the beat of its own drum, Jake Megin­sky and Neil Young’s hybrid doc­u­men­tary oscil­lates between mul­ti­ple wave­length and forms of storytelling.

A the­o­rist on rhythm being some­thing defined by the inher­ent emo­tion­al impuls­es of the human body, Graves has con­sis­tent­ly cham­pi­oned the idea that music is more than an art form to be mas­tered but some­thing intrin­sic with­in us. It’s no sur­prise then that Megin­sky and Young have embraced Graves’ meth­ods in their film­mak­ing, cre­at­ing a film almost as rad­i­cal as his music.

Cut­ting errat­i­cal­ly between anar­chic live per­for­mances and med­i­ta­tive pas­sages in which Graves talks pas­sion­ate­ly about grow­ing up in South Jamaica, his love of mar­tial arts (includ­ing Yara, the form of jujit­su he devel­oped from African dance) and his obses­sion with car­di­ol­o­gy and the body’s elec­tro­mag­net­ic charge, the film con­stant­ly fluc­tu­ates between chaos and kar­ma. A rebel­lious film about the end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties of music, Mil­ford Graves Full Man­tis is a mould break­ing biog­ra­phy about one of Jazz’s tru­ly sin­gu­lar per­sonas; an ener­getic pro­tag­o­nist with a puz­zling but infec­tious out­look on life.

Not all per­form­ers can pro­vide such an unortho­dox per­spec­tive on how the world works, but there are cas­es when the music doc­u­men­tary can play a vital role in reviv­ing inter­est in neglect­ed fig­ures and Stephen Nomu­ra Schible’s Ryuichi Sakamo­to: Coda, achieves just that. Late-career doc­u­men­tary often revolve around liv­ing leg­ends reflect­ing on their lega­cy, but here Schi­ble under­stands that you can learn far more about a musi­cian by exam­in­ing their work­ing meth­ods rather than explor­ing their past.

Sakamoto’s sound­tracks have left their mark on films such as Mer­ry Christ­mas, Mr Lawrence and The Revenant, but Schible’s pri­ma­ry focus is the cre­ation of the composer’s most recent – and poten­tial­ly final – stu­dio album ​‘Async’. A cin­e­ma-obsessed envi­ron­men­tal activist, Coda switch­es seam­less­ly from dis­cus­sions with Sakamo­to about Oppen­heimer and Tarkovsky, to his bat­tle with throat can­cer, all while observ­ing his unique meth­ods of sculpt­ing with sound.

With the excep­tion of his recent brush with death, Sakamoto’s per­son­al life is nev­er broached, with Schi­ble instead rely­ing on the com­plex­i­ty of the sound­scapes he cre­ates to act as a win­dow into his soul. The result is an inspi­ra­tional and deeply mov­ing biopic that res­onates long after the clos­ing cred­its roll, not only because of the uncer­tain health of its sub­ject, but the tragedies and joys of the human con­di­tion that give mean­ing to his work.

In a year focused on rein­vig­o­rat­ing the music doc­u­men­tary, it was refresh­ing to depart IndieLis­boa not just with audi­to­ry plea­sures, but mem­o­ries of films engag­ing with cos­mol­o­gy, envi­ron­men­tal­ism and the pow­er of art to speak truth to power.