"With his damning journalism and thorough documentation of Hernandez's real-life gangster activity, Gandhi chips away at such sympathy and alters how to look at someone who wants to always be seen" - a review on RoberEbert.com says about ’69: The Saga of Danny Hernandez’, a documentary about controversial (to put it in mildest terms) New York rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine. Indie Wire says the director Vikram Gandhi "manages to deliver a thoughtful primer on the Tekashi story as it currently stands, and gives this serial troublemaker the tragic documentary he deserves". Hollywood Reporter praises the story for picturing a "funny, energetic and driven kid [being] consumed by the disease of celebrity".

Brooklyn Vegan is recommending 45 music documentaries, including films on the history of hip hop, the '90s ska scene, Nina Simone, Frank Sinatra, legendary punk/alternative superfans Dennis & Lois, Anti-Flag, the UK's Rock Against Racism movement of the late-'70s, and more.

Music Journalism Insider chose six best documentaries about dancing. There are; 'Madonna: Truth or Dare' (1991) about her extravagant Blond Ambition tour; 'Strike A Pose' (2016) tells the story of the dancers from the 'Madonna...' docu, it casts an entirely different light on the former story; 'I'm Tryna Tell Ya' (2014) about Chicago dancers who started out as producers; 'The Summer of Rave 1989' (2006) about times of happiness and euphoria (and some drugs); 'Cunningham' (2019) about influential and somewhat radical choreographer Merce Cunningham; 'Only When I Dance' (2010) about Rio de Janerio teenagers whos only way out of poverty is ballet.

James Erskine’s documentary 'Billie' is constructed entirely from interviews by Linda Lipnack Kuehl, a high-school teacher and Holiday fan, who interviewed almost 200 of Billie Holiday's friends and colleagues. Kuehl was found dead in 1979 from a presumed suicide, and her interviews found their way to a private collector, from whom Erskine bought the rights. His film is a journey through Holiday’s life, narrated by the voices on those tapes – eyewitnesses to one of the 20th century’s most remarkable artists, Guardian says presenting it - "listening to musicians, lovers, pimps, childhood friends and FBI agents recounting their time with Holiday is an evocative and transportive experience".

A great short documentary 'A Sweet Pain: The Rebel Synths of Cabo Verde', based on an amusing myth about a ship headed to Rio De Janeiro carrying keyboards and synthesizers by Moog, Farfisa, Hammond and Korg. The ship gets lost near the Cabo Verde islands, where the descendants of African slaves find the instruments and develop, in resistance to the Portuguese authorities, music that celebrates life and joy, as opposed to Saudade, a nostalgic feel inherent to the Portuguese. ISCHIFI tells the story.

Garrett Bradley's documentary 'Time' tells the story of Sibil Fox Richardson and her 20-year battle to bring home her husband Rob, who was sentenced to 60 years in prison for attempted robbery of a credit union. The docu is set to the music of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, Ethiopian nun and piano player, because, as Bradley says in Pitchfork interview, "it’s got this incredible blending of melodies that is reminiscent of New Orleans. There’s also a fluidity, repetition, and singularity in its range. There is quite a bit of nuance from one track to the next, but overall, you can float through the whole thing. I wanted the film to feel like a river, and not like a collage".

It's a match made in heaven (or hell maybe?) - Johnny Depp produced a documentary about the Pogues leader Shane MacGowan, directed by Julien Temple, responsible for the Sex Pistols movie 'The Great Rock ‘N’ Roll Swindle' as well as docs on the Pistols and the Clash. 'Crock Of Gold — A Few Rounds With Shane MacGowan' features animation by Ralph Steadman, it traces MacGowan’s life, culminating at his 60th birthday blowout on Christmas night 2018 with an all-star tribute concert featuring performances from likes of Bono, Nick Cave, Sinéad O’Connor and Johnny Depp. It's coming to theatres and VOD in December.

“The history of women has been a story of silence, and music is no exception” - Lisa Rovner told Dazed about her documentary 'Sisters with Transistors' which tells the story of (almost) forgotten women who helped invent and create electronic music. The film is narrated by Laurie Anderson, features guest appearances by Aura Satz, Holly Herndon, and Kim Gordon, and it tells the stories of women like Bebe Barron who composed the first completely electronic score for any mainstream film, for 1956’s 'Forbidden Planet'.

Apple TV+ has dropped the first trailer for Bruce Springsteen’s 'Letter to You' documentary on the recording of his upcoming album, the first collaboration with his E Street Band since 2014. “I’m in the middle of a 45-year conversation with the men and women I’m surrounded by,” Springsteen says in voiceover - “the years of playing together have created an efficiency in the studio. Ideas tumble around the room, confusion often reigns. And then, suddenly, dynamite. Alright, what can I say? The greatest thrill of my life is standing at that microphone with you guys behind me. Let’s do it”.

"They are lifers. They are great songwriters. They plant their flag wherever they show up and fully commit" - Rise Against's Tim McIlrath said about Anti-Flag, who have a new documentary 'Beyond Barricades: The Story of Anti-Flag' premiering today. It was directed by Jon Nix, it features live and behind-the-scenes footage from over the years, interviews with all four members of Anti-Flag, and interviews with Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine), Billy Bragg, McIlrath, Brian Baker (Bad Religion), and others. The film is as much about politics as it's about the last 30 years of punk rock as it's about Anti-Flag themselves, Brooklyn Vegan says in an announcement.

"Khadifa Wong’s new documentary, 'Uprooted', reveals that the popular image of jazz obscures the true history of a dance form of African descent, born of slavery and enmeshed with the African American experience – from cakewalk to Charleston to Lindy hop – but then dominated by a series of white mem" - Guardian says in a review of the new documentary about jazz dance. It covers Marilyn Monroe’s choreographer Jack Cole, Patrick Swayze’s mum, Patsy, the only teacher in Texas who took black students alongside white, JoJo Smith, who was John Travolta’s dance consultant on 'Saturday Night Fever' etc.

"An excellent brief documentary about a heroic grassroots political movement whose importance reveals itself more clearly in retrospect with every year that passes" - Peter Bradshaw writes about the new documentary 'White Riot'. Director Rebecca Shah mixes archival images and interviews with key figures of the grassroots organization Rock Against Racism that bonded together punk, ska, reggae and new wave scenes to stand against the far right. The documentary closes with images of the Carnival Against Nazis, which drew in an audience of 100,000 in support of their cause.

The Beatles were falling apart as they were making their latest album 'Let It Be', and the new book 'The Beatles: Get Back' is going to tell the story of those last days, Guardian reports. It is drawn from over 120 hours of transcribed conversations from the band’s studio sessions. The book will be accompanied by Peter Jackson’s feature documentary of the same name. Both are coming out in August 2021. In related Beatles news, Canadian filmmaker Paul Saltzman has released a documentary 'Meeting The Beatles in India' about how he met the fab four at an ashram on the Ganges. Narrated by Morgan Freeman and produced by David Lynch, the film, among other things, contains rare images of the band taken by Saltzman. They are wistful vignettes of the rock stars in their prime, unguarded and relaxed, BBC reports.

The new documentary 'Sleep' by Natalie Johns is about what many consider Max Richter's magnum opus - an eight-and-a-half-hour composition 'Sleep' with 204 movements in a plangent, ambient and mellow vein, designed to be listened to while the audience is asleep. This new docu focuses on an open-air event in the Grand Park in Los Angeles. Guardian's Peter Bradshaw says the docu on "this toweringly quixotic work" is a "beguiling film" and "anything but a snooze".

NME's columnist wrote, as usual, a warm and funny text, this time about music docus: "One of the main reasons we can watch documentaries about hugely successful bands without seething with envy is the knowledge that, had we followed that career path ourselves, our odds weren’t too great of living to be in the documentary"!!! The last one he liked is the one about The Band - "a rare example of bit players striking it big on their own terms, then watching on helplessly as success tugged at their stray flaws until the whole thing unravelled".

Former American president Jimmy Carter said that Willie Nelson smoked weed with his on the roof of the White House in 1978, not with an employee, as the country legend had originally claimed, the 95-year-old politician said in a new documentary, 'Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President'. The new docu explores the 39th president’s connection to the music community during his four-year term, Huff Post reports. The core of Mary Wharton’s film argues that stars like the Allman Brothers, Bob Dylan and Crosby, Stills & Nash, as well as outlaw country artists like Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash, played a crucial role in getting Carter into the White House in 1976.

A Spike Lee documentary 'American Utopia' about Talking Heads frontman David Byrne's 2019 concert show has opened the 2020 Toronto Film Festival, and the critics love it, BBC reports. 'American Utopia' shares its name with Byrne's 2018 album and 2019 Broadway show. Variety said it was "playful and entrancing", the Hollywood Reporter called it "simply spectacular", while IndieWire says it isn't "just a concert doc, but also a life-affirming, euphoria-producing, soul-energising sing-along protest film".

"The Band’s story seems perfectly concise and contained, ideal celluloid fare, and 'Once Were Brothers' director Daniel Roher does a fabulous job of scooping it up in one piece and placing it neatly on film" - Mark Beaumont writes in the review of the new documentary about the Americana godfathers. "Everything about The Band feels so steeped in dust and mythology that the entire film feels like a window into something strangely arcane".

American John Shepherd devoted nearly 30 years of his life to beaming records into space from his grandparents' home crammed with a mountain of electronic equipment. The records Shepherd transmitted were from a collection of 4,000 LPs, including Can, Harmonia, Fela Kuti, Ornette Coleman, Keith Jarrett, K. Leimer... 16 minute 'John Was Trying To Contact Aliens' is now available on Netflix.

Woodstock ’99 was planned as a music festival of "peace and love" featuring Limp Bizkit, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine, and Insane Clown Posse, but it devolved into squalid havoc, with arson, injuries, and sexual assaults, Deadline reports. Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst infamously incited the crowd to actually break stuff as the band performed their song 'Break Stuff'. An activist group in attendance passed out candles to the crowd as part of a planned anti-gun vigil during the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ set, but it quickly went awry - uncontrolled bonfires erupted and plywood pieces from the Woodstock Peace Wall caught fire. These, and other events, are being recollected into a Netflix documentary.

"We came around to this idea that maybe what was significant about this moment in time with records was that the person we imagined being someone who liked records was changing. And that records were becoming a people's medium rather than a weirdo's or an eccentric's medium. When Chris said, 'Well, maybe this is a story about inclusion and connection', that was the moment I leapt off the chair and said, 'That's our movie'" - co-director Kevin Smokler said about his new documentary 'Vinyl Nation' (the other co-director being Christopher Boone). It documents he rise, fall and resurgence of vinyl through the eyes of musicians, labels, manufacturers, collectors and record store clerks. It's online now.

Martin Scorsese is directing a documentary about New York Dolls frontman David Johansen, based around a performance Johansen gave at NYC's Café Carlyle, Variety reports. "His music has been a touchstone ever since I listened to the Dolls when I was making 'Mean Streets'" says Scorsese, adding - "Then and now, David's music captures the energy and excitement of New York City". The film will follow Johansen’s arrival in New York’s East Village in the late 1960s and the start of his musical career started in the 1970s as lead singer for the punk/glam pioneers the New York Dolls, along with his role in the swing revival as Buster Poindexter in the 1980s and in the blues as part of the Harry Smiths in the 1990s.

In 1990, Richard Shannon Hoon started filming himself, and continued doing so during his days in psychedelic rock band Blind Melon, until he died of an overdose in 1995. His recordings are assembled in a new documentary 'All I Can Say' where everybody can see "the disillusionment of stardom psychically shut somebody down, piece by piece, before your eyes", as Rolling Stone says in their review.

Documentary film 'Carmine Street Guitars' is "the digital equivalent of hanging out in the Manhattan shop of the title, a Greenwich Village institution of sorts... It is 80 minutes of pure woodwork-musicianship-upcycling erotica for a very specialist but passionate market", Guardian says in a review. "If a film had a smell, this one would be of sawdust, varnish and pure love" - the G says in its verdict. It's available on digital platforms now.

"It's not often that a film leaves you totally envious of the people who were there, but this is one of them" - Brooklyn Vegan writes in a review of new documentary 'Desolation Center', a series of DIY shows put on in the California desert in the 1980s. Desolation Center shows were the brainchild of Stuart Swezey who has now made a documentary about the concerts and the time. Those desert shows were highly influential, BV argues - among those in attendance at least one of the Desolation Center shows were Perry Farrell who would go on to found Lollapalooza, and Gary Tovar who would go on to found Coachella.

"'Laurel Canyon' is a nearly four-hour exercise in bliss, throwing us back to a fleeting time when musical warmth and formal excellence went hand in hand and made the whole world want to go “California Dreamin’". With apologies to Joni Mitchell, this, not Woodstock, is the garden you’ll be left wanting to get back to" - Variety writes in a review of a new documentary by Alison Ellwood (first episode aired on Epix on Sunday). The Los Angeles neighborhood has in the ‘60s and ‘70 housed rising artists including Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Frank Zappa, James Taylor, Jackson Browne and members of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, the Doors, the Mamas & the Papas, the Monkees, Love, the Eagles and dozens of other soon-to-be-famous artists. Hollywood Reporter says "the director has a sure feel for the essence of the period and its players, and for the social and emotional impact of their songs".

The Streets have shared a new documentary on the making of their upcoming mixtape ‘None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive’, NME reports. The new documentary features a number of the mixtape’s collaborators, including Tame Impala‘s Kevin Parker, IDLES, Slowthai and more. Mixtape, The Streets’ first full-length project since 2011 album ‘Computers And Blues’ and mixtape ‘Cyberspace And Reds’, is out July 10.

'On the Record' by HBO Max is about Drew Dixon, who spoke publicly of alleged assault and abuse by hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons. The documentary is about her trauma, her music career abruptly stopped when she couldn't stand the abuse anymore, being stripped down to a person with just one dimension - "the abused one", about coming forward as a black woman against a hero in the black community. The abuse seemingly continues to this day - the film received a standing ovation at Sundance, but the response from the music industry since has been mostly silence. Guardian reports on the heavy and important issue.

'Electronic India' is "a wonderful, warm, and eye-opening documentary" by Paul Purgas about pioneers of Indian electronic music, who produced innovating music at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad from 1969 to 1973, but then got forgotten about. The Quietus talked to Purgas about his docu, and that moment of fresh creative energy from 50 years ago - "there was a really beautiful scene that emerged in some of the conversations we had while making the documentary, this idea that at that moment India was still dreaming, there was this sense of a possibility of imagination, a utopian set of ideals and ideologies that were emerging around shaping India post-independence". Listen to the documentary at BBC.

“Drugs can be dangerous but they can also be hilarious” - is the idea behind the new documentary 'Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics' where numerous musicians share stories about taking psychedelic drugs. Among those are Ad Rock (Beastie Boys), ASAP Rocky, The Grateful Dead‘s Bill Kreutzmann, Sting, Donovan, Reggie Watts, Jim James (My Morning Jacket). It was directed by Donick Cary, who is a comedy writer who’s written for 'The Simpsons', 'Silicon Valley', 'Parks & Recreation', 'The New Girl', 'Bored to Death', hence the original idea... Watch the trailer below.