Saw three music documentaries at a film festival this weekend.
Until The Light Takes Us - rather amateurish documentary about the Norwegian Black Metal scene. Mostly concentrates on Fenriz (of Darkthrone) and Varg Vikernes (aka Burzum). These two are very interesting people and quite charismatic so they make the movie worthwhile. Unfortunately the film doesn't spend enough time on the music itself and I didn't understand the relevance of about a quarter of the stuff included in the film. I am not sure fans of the genre would get much out of the film whereas non-fans such as myself would feel lost a lot of the time.
We Don't Care About Music Anyway - this is what a music documentary should be like. No interviews, over half the running time taken up by the music in question and beautifully shot and edited. This film concentrates on the Japanese experimental/noise scene (Otomo Yoshihide, Sakamoto Hiromichi...). There's about a dozen musicians participating. You get alternating scenes of them sitting around a round table talking about their music and then a performance. Really enjoyed this.
Wheedle's Groove - this covers the soul scene of Seattle in the late 60's - early 70's. Interviews with some key bands. You get to hear some of the songs. There's not really any footage from the time so you only get some photographs. There's a crate digger guy who I could relate to a little, he tells some interesting stories about record hunting. The stories the bands tell could apply to any black band at the time: the club scene, racism, the coming of disco, trying to get paid and get a record contract etc. I would strongly recommend it to fans of this music.
Also, I compiled this list of films/books related to dance music:
http://www.ilyay.com/serv.php?file=music/books_and_films
It's a bit out of date, I lost a more updated version of it. Working on recovering it.