Florida Film Fest brings the noise with music docs

You don’t have to be a film fan to enjoy the Florida Film Festival.

Well, no, that’s just patently untrue. But you can be a fan of other stuff as well and find your interests served. Specifically, music nerds will have three documentaries to geek out over through the festival’s 10-day run, which begins today and ends April 15.

“Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami” follows the fashion model-turned-singerturned-actress-turned-pancultural-icon during the recording and subsequent tour for her 2008 album, “Hurricane” (6:30 p.m. Thursday, 9 p.m. April 14).

“40 Years in the Making: The Magic Music Movie” tells the truly untold tale of a Colorado jam band who earned a following in the 1970s without ever recording anything and the fan who brought them back together (4 p.m. Sunday, 12:30 p.m. April 15).

And any lingering questions about the personal lives of Agnostic Front’s Vinnie Stigma and Roger Miret are summed up in “The Godfathers of Hardcore” (9 p.m. Saturday, 8 COMMENTARY p.m. April 13).

As with most music docs, these three share several common touchstones, most obviously aging and changing mores of the world.

“Godfathers” treats us to condescending news segments from the early-1980s heyday of New York-based hardcore. “It’s called slamdancing, and if you think this looks weird, wait until you see these kids up close,” intones one anchor. The footage is woven into the stories of guitarist/founder Stigma and singer Miret, now 60 and 50, keeping up their anti-establishment ethos, or at least a loud heavy schedule, while meeting the demands of health and family.

Family is also important to Grace Jones, whom we see return to her home country of Jamaica to visit her parents and other relatives. While avoiding narration or any contextualizing clips, the film includes performances cut with scenes of her siblings and neighbors reconnecting and especially reliving the harsh punishments that were common in her childhood at the hands of her step-grandfather.

“40 Years” was a passion project for TV producer Lee Aronsohn, who was a fan of Magic Music, a band that never quite hit it big outside of Boulder, Colo. Through interviews and animated dramatizations, we learn about the reasons this hippie folk group never recorded and where they are now. (Hint: They aren’t all as hippie anymore.) And we’re treated to a tension of will they/won’t they come together for a reunion concert.

There are lessons here for aspiring musicians and human themes to which everyone can relate.

Each of these movies is $11 and showing at the Regal Winter Park Village, 510 N. Orlando Ave. Details at floridafilmfestival.com.