The idea of two men directing a documentary about a summer camp for pre-teen girls might inevitably raise some red flags. But Arne Johnson and Shane King use their outsider status to craft an incredibly thoughtful and creative film about the Portland-based Rock'n'Roll Camp for Girls. The result, Girls Rock!, is a moving portrait of (to quote the luminous philosopher, Madonna) what it feels like for a girl, holding equal appeal for documentary film lovers, parents, fans of rock'n'roll and anyone who grew up as a weird kid in a town without pity.

Girls Rock! focuses on four girls attending the camp for the first time. Over the course of one week campers create bands, learn instruments, write songs and then perform for a sold out crowd. Because the concept of Rock'n'Roll camp grew out of a third wave feminist ethos, the campers are also taught basic media literacy, self-defense and how to communicate feelings of isolation or frustration that young people (especially girls) are often told to squelch. Erin Donovan spoke to Arne Johnson before he headed off to the True/False documentary film festival in Columbia, MO.

Girls Rock! opens in select cities March 7th.

By Erin Donovan

These were the best documentaries I saw this year, new to theaters or new to DVD in '07.

51 Birch Street - Doug Block, so incensed by the betrayal of his father getting remarried just 3 months after the death of his mother, turns an investigative lens on the once romanticized memories of his childhood to discover (via decades of journals, interviews with friends and home-made movies) the starkly different inner life his mother was leading to the woman he'd grown up with. Through the discovery of sad and ordinary dysfunctions 51 Birch Street is as much a touching family portrait as it is a window into the generational contrast between expectations about marriage.

Girl 27 - A surprising documentary that played to quiet appreciation at Sundance this year. Girl 27 starts out as a true crime expose about a vicious assault and the cover up by the svengalis of 1930s Hollywood but becomes a touching (platonic) romance about how intertwined a documentary film-makers can become with their subjects.

King Corn - Two affable food activists grow an acre of corn in Iowa and attempt to trace it into our food system only to learn that between starchy fast foods, artificial sweeteners and preservatives Americans eat so much corn that an acre (producing 10,000 pounds) is a mere drop in the bucket. In the vein of Super Size Me, co-stars/directors Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis create an oral history of a declining farm town as well as illuminate some of the absurdities of food production in America.

Read the rest by clicking below:

By Aaron Hillis

Jessica Yu's followup to In the Realms of the Unreal, Protagonist, premiered at Sundance and we had two people on the ground who caught it and sent immediate word to the Daily. Brian Darr sets up the doc: "Posed with the problem of making a documentary with the great tragedician Euripides as an inspiration, Yu put out a call for people ready to tell their stories of a cathartic awakening that they had been traveling for too long down the wrong path." Craig Phillips noted that it "reminds me a bit of Errol Morris's Fast, Cheap, Out of Control, as it's an ambitious film with a quartet of subjects that don't always fully connect with each other but fascinate anyway."

Now that Protagonist is beginning a tour of theaters around the US, Aaron Hillis talks with Yu about interweaving four personal tales of catharsis and resolution.

By Francine Taylor

"Taped conversations between Nirvana front-man Kurt Cobain and music journalist Michael Azerrad form the attention-grabbing center of director AJ Schnack's otherworldly documentary Kurt Cobain About a Son," writes Steve Ramos at indieWIRE. "The true highlights of the film, more than Cobain's never-before-heard commentary on life, death and the price of sudden fame, are Schnack's artful technique, pinpoint editing, clever animation and beautiful collage of Pacific Northwest landscapes and everyday Seattle people."

Here, Francine Taylor talks with AJ Schnack about his unique approach to a tragic story, the differences between documentaries and nonfiction films and what he hopes audiences will take away from Kurt Cobain About a Son.