Movie Blog: Sound Unseen Announces 2013 Fest Slate

This November, one of the most hotly anticipated local festivals will open with Hüsker Dü and close with The National, with appearances by The Descendents, Peaches, Madlib & MF Doom, Cloud Cult, Tapes N' Tapes, Lightnin' Hopkins, John Doe from X, and many more in between.

Oh, and did I mention this is a film festival?

The full movie slate for the 14th annual Sound Unseen Film/Music/Art festival has been announced. (The juries, shorts and musical acts won't be announced until later this month.)

The festival takes place from Nov. 13-17 in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

The opening night film will be Every Everything: The Music, Life & Times of Grant Hart, profiling the former singer/songwriter and drummer from beloved Twin Cities band Hüsker Dü, the man who was considered the punk band's "wild one." The film profiles his experiences from the Dü's heyday all the way up to today, as he works on a double-album adaptation of John Milton's "Paradise Lost."

That film shows on Wednesday, Nov. 13 at Landmark Center at 7 p.m. Hart will be present at the screening, along with director Gorman Bechard and producer Jan Radder.

The closing night film is Mistaken for Strangers, Tom Berninger's film profile of his brother Matt Berninger, lead singer for The National. Tom follows his brother's band and struggles to cope with his sibling's flowering success, while he himself seems to have stalled out at age 30, still living at home.

Mistaken for Strangers screens at McNally Smith College of Music on Sunday, Nov. 17 at 7 p.m. Both Tom Berninger and producer Craig Charland are tentatively scheduled to attend.

Other movies in the lineup include:

-- Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton, which "draws on live concert footage, never-before-seen archival material, inner-circle home video and photographs and in-depth interviews with the folks who put Stones Throw on the map to delve deeper into the label's enigmatic artists, history, culture and global following." (Nov. 15; 9 p.m.; McNally Smith College of Music)

-- Pleased to Meet Me, a look at X's John Doe and the efforts of his former partner Laura Klein for the two to assemble a group of musicians into a one-time-only band. (Nov. 15; 9 p.m.; Trylon Microcinema)

-- Death Metal Angola, about the first-ever national rock concert in the war-torn nation of Angola, "aided by social media and propelled by members of the various branches of the death metal hardcore underground, who join together to stage the event." (Nov. 14; 7 p.m.; Trylon Microcinema)

-- Death to Prom, a Minnesota-made feature directed by Matt Stenerson and Jeremy Wilker, about a pair of friends who love indulging in fantasies of rock-oriented fashion design, and the soccer player that gets in between their friendship. Shot in and all around the Twin Cities. (Nov. 16; 7 p.m.; McNally Smith College of Music)

-- A number of programs comprised of short documentaries by Les Blank, who is most famous for Burden of Dreams, his uncompromising look at director Werner Herzog behind-the-scenes of Fitzcarraldo.

Tickets for film and music events will be available on Friday, Oct. 18 on Sound Unseen's website.