TACKLING THE TRUTH

With films ranging in subject matter from Zinedine Zidane to the Pixies, Stranger Than Fiction is an apt title for a fascinating festival of documentary films, writes Donald Clarke

THE fifth Stranger Than Fiction Festival kicks off at the Irish Film Institute on September 28th. As always, the event offers punters the chance to view an eclectic array of documentaries from around the world. Black Gold locates the victims of the multi-billion dollar coffee trade. Brian Reddin's Connemara Monster seeks our own version of the Loch Ness Monster. Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait brings an avant-garde sensibility to the beautiful game.

There is plenty of interesting, varied stuff here, and much of it will later be available outside the capital thanks to the IFI's commitment to touring. But one's eye is particularly drawn to those tent-peg movies focusing on music.

Stranger than Fiction opens with Caroline Libresco's Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man, which pays tribute to the famously lugubrious Canadian singer, weaving together concert footage and interviews to seductive effect. The following morning the volume is turned up for loudQUIETloud: a Film About Pixies, which, for anybody familiar with the greatest noise merchants of the late 1980s, requires little further explanation. In the picture, which focuses on the band's 2004 tour, the usual frictions come into play and, once again, we learn that those proverbial "musical differences" are usually quite personal in nature.

Elsewhere, the festival will offer a study of the Brazilian singer Maria Bethania and a chance to enjoy the Air Guitar Championships in Finland.

The pop music documentary has long been a staple of the genre. We have, I suppose, DA Pennebaker to thank (or blame) for the prevalence of rock in film. Until the great documentarist followed Bob Dylan around for 1967's Don't Look Back, the music, still barely a decade old remember, was regarded by most commentators as an irritating novelty, soon to go the way of the hula hoop. The studios, eager to milk such perceived crazes, were prepared to churn out dramatic features starring Elvis or, somewhat more satisfactorily, The Beatles. But who would want to see these screaming loons as they actually are?

Don't Look Back showed that rock music and film could combine to make something a little like art. Monterey Pop, Pennebaker's 1968 concert film, suggested, more significantly, that such a fusion might generate money. Two years later, Woodstock, though featuring distinctly uneven performances, proved the case beyond doubt.

Still, notwithstanding the occasional phenomenon such as Fahrenheit 9/11, documentaries have tended to remain a minority interest. Films focusing on musicians played well to the fans and remained ignored by the uninitiated. Followers of The Who were delighted by The Kids Are Alright; neutral observers failed to notice its existence. When Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz, a record of the final concert of The Band, was released in 1978, The Irish Times's rock critic (Joe Breen, still seen in these pages), rather than the paper's film writer, was asked to review it. Rock documentaries were - and to an extent still are - regarded as being so particular in their appeal that they are barely films at all.

Anybody who attended a late-night screening of Stop Making Sense, Jonathan Demme's great record of Talking Heads in action, at Dublin's Ambassador Cinema in the 1980s will confirm that the experience was akin to that of actually seeing the band in action. If you liked Talking Heads, then you might go and see them play. If you enjoyed that, then you might like Stop Making Sense. If, by contrast, you cared little for the group, then why on earth would you trundle down to the bottom of O'Connell Street to sway with agitated drunks?

Of course, those rock films that offer more than just concert footage will tend to drag in a larger audience. Indeed anybody who loathes Metallica should immediately grab a DVD of Some Kind of Monster, which reveals the band to be a gang of prissy, self-obsessed buffoons. Similarly, the fraught personal drama in loudQUIETloud may win over the odd punter previously immune to the charms of the Pixies.

For all that, the most memorable music in movies tends to be that which complements dramatic action. With that in mind, fans of Mogwai, those Scottish art rockers par excellence, may wish to seek out their heroes' throbs and strums in the background of Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait. Now, this is the way to disseminate your favourite music: stealthily, but with head-butts.

Stranger Than Fiction runs from September 28th-October 1st. www.irishfilm.ie, 01-6793477