This month, Films We Like is celebrating music lovers’ favourite time of the year… summer festival season! As the days get longer, and spring gives way to summer, music festivals across Canada are getting into full swing, and the team at Films We Like couldn’t be more excited.

To celebrate the return of summer music festivals, Films We Like’s new theme, Summer Festival Season, spotlights our favourite flicks about all things musical. From free jazz, to hardcore Christian rock, this collection of films features wide-ranging narratives from every corner of the world of music. Can’t wait to get out to your favourite festival this summer? Check out our Summer Festival Season selections and get ready for a music-filled month.

Dig! (2008)

From the moment they met, The Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre quickly bonded over a desire to not conform to the tastes of the recording industry. Yet the bands’ choices over how to express their creativity and originality in a profit-driven industry eventually put them at irreconcilable odds. Culled from 1,500 hours of footage and narrated by Courtney Taylor, DIG! follows the underground giant Anton Newcombe, unearthing him to be an important yet largely unnoticed artist of our time.

Gimme Danger (2016)

Emerging from Ann Arbor Michigan amidst a countercultural revolution, The Stooges’ powerful and aggressive style of rock-n-roll blew a crater in the musical landscape of the late 1960s. Assaulting audiences with a blend of rock, blues, R&B, and free jazz, the band planted the seeds for what would be called punk and alternative rock in the decades that followed. Jim Jarmusch’s new film GIMME DANGER chronicles the story of The Stooges, one of the greatest rock-n-roll bands of all time.

Muscle Shoals (2013)

Located on the banks of the Tennessee River, Muscle Shoals, Alabama is the unlikely breeding ground for some of the most creative and defiant music in American history. In this movie legendary artists including Aretha Franklin, Greg Allman, Bono, Clarence Carter, Jimmy Cliff, Mick Jagger, Etta James, Alicia Keys, Wilson Pickett, Keith Richards, Percy Sledge, Steve Winwood and others bear witness to the magnetism and mystery of Muscle Shoals and why it remains a global influence today.

Fire Music (2021)

Fire Music tells the history of the Free Jazz Revolution. Capturing the sights and sounds of one of the most innovative movements in music history. The intensity of the music and the outlandish personalities of the artists who played it make for a compelling story.

The Possibilities Are Endless (2014)

The celebrated lyricist, Edwyn Collins could only say two phrases after waking up: 'Grace Maxwell' and 'The Possibilities Are Endless’. This is the incredible story of Collins, a songwriter who had the contents of his mind effectively deleted after experiencing a stroke. Placed inside Edwyn's mind, we embark on a remarkable journey from the brink of death back to language, music, life and love. With the help of his wife Grace, Edwyn submerges himself in a landscape of memories, as he tries to unlock the story of his past. More than a story of determination against all odds; it is an intimate and life-affirming tale of rediscovery.

Carmine Street Guitars (2018)

Once the centre of the New York bohemia, Greenwich Village is now home to lux restaurants, and buzzer door clothing stores catering to the nouveau riche. But one shop in the heart of the Village remains resilient to the encroaching gentrification: Carmine Street Guitars. There, custom guitar maker Rick Kelly and his young apprentice Cindy Hulej, build handcrafted guitars out of reclaimed wood from old hotels, bars, churches and other local buildings. Featuring a cast of prominent musicians and artists, the film captures five days in the life of Carmine Street Guitars, while examining an all-too-quickly vanishing way of life.

I Called Him Morgan (2016)

On a snowy night in February 1972, celebrated jazz musician Lee Morgan was shot dead by his wife Helen during a gig at a club in New York City. The murder sent shockwaves through the jazz community, and the memory of the event still haunts those who knew the Morgans. This documentary by Swedish filmmaker Kasper Collin (My Name Is Albert Ayler) is a love letter to two unique personalities and the music that brought them together. A film about love, jazz and America with cinematography by Bradford Young (DOP, Selma)

Where Does A Body End? (2019)

Where Does A Body End? is an intimate portrait of the band SWANS, from their roots as a brutal, confrontational post-punk band that emerged from the same early 1980s era NYC that gave us Sonic Youth (and, somehow, Madonna) through their ill-fated bid at mainstream success in the 90s indie-rock goldrush, through breakups and chaos (on and offstage) to their odds-defying current status as one of the most accomplished and ambitious bands in the world, one whose concerts are more like ecstatic rituals than nostalgic trips back through their most popular songs.

ChristCORE (2013)

ChristCORE is an inside look at the explosive subculture of Christian hardcore music which is surging across North America. Filmmaker and atheist punk rocker Justin Ludwig goes on tour with two evangelical hardcore bands — driven newcomers Messengers and Christcore superstars Sleeping Giant — culminating in the important Cornerstone Christian Music Festival. The tribulations of touring combine with the trials of preaching from the stage for these talented musicians and devoted evangelical Christians.

Rocksteady: The Roots of Reggae (2009)

Rocksteady: The Roots of Reggae is a musical journey to Jamaica’s Golden Age of music, Rocksteady. The film features the music and stories of the legendary singers and musicians of the Rocksteady era. They come together after 40 years to record an album of Rocksteady hits, to perform together again at an All-Stars reunion concert in Kingston, Jamaica, and to tell their story.