In 1994 Austin’s SXSW Film Festival (along with the multi-media Interactive Festival) were joined to the musical behemoth that was launched in 1987. About 15,000 participants come for the music, 12,000 for the interactive part, and another 8,000 for the films. Those being official counts, they don’t factor in the influx of stragglers that come in off the radar to take their chances in line for day-of-show and cash-only tickets. Austin is one of the fastest growing cities in the nation and clocked in last year on the U.S. Census estimate with a population of 757,688. For the ten days in March that feature SXSW events, you can add about 50,000 people to that number.

I scored cheap round-trip tickets on airfare about a month ago and decided to take my chances at the ticket line. Knowing I’d get shut out of smaller venues, I focused on films at the historic Paramount theater which seats 1,500. Here are three docs that I caught there that, with a nod at the musical wealth of activities also taking place, all deal with musicians.

Ain’t In It For My Health: A Film About Levon Helm

Directed by Jacob Hatley this was a World Premiere about the drummer behind The Band. Helm is a survivor of the sixties and he outlived bandmates Richard Manuel and Rick Danko, but his raspy voice and frail figure show him to be far too close to death’s door for any sense of comfort. When you add throat cancer and bankruptcy to the equation it gets even more grim. Still, Helm goes out on the road and puts on various gigs to pay the bills. Along the way Hatley also adds some illuminating footage from the past to put some of The Band‘s influence and creative arc into context.  Helm is a charismatic figure with a wink in his eye and a rugged handsomeness intact despite the ravages of age. Clearly, it was Helm’s ties to his cultural past and heritage that gave The Band much of its soul. Had Hatley dug deeper and been less deferential, my sense of Helm is that despite his age and illness he’d have handled it well and probably just rolled himself another joint. Helm’s been through enough already, a little more wouldn’t kill him just yet.

Thunder Soul

Directed by Mark Landsman, an another World Premiere, this documentary looks at the accomplishments of Conrad “Prof” Johnson – a music teacher from an inner-city Houston high school who “would turn the school’s mediocre jazz band into a legendary funk powerhouse.” 35-years-later, his students haven’t forgotten him and stage a re-union to honor their 92-year-old mentor. It’s pure gold on all levels and was a clear audience favorite at the festival. Funny, moving, and topical, it’s a film that is sure to have legs and garner great word-of-mouth. At a time when so many schools are suffering from financial cuts and a slew of other problems, here’s a film that reminds us how important music programs are, not simply on an educational level, but on a motivational level for the entire school, and with far-reaching implications for every child touched who is touched by it.

When You’re Strange – A film about the Doors

This doc by Tom Dicillo was previously screened at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival but has since been, according a programmers introduction, re-tooled by the filmmaker with a voice-over by Johnny Depp and a few nips-and-tucks that only changed the running time by a couple minutes. Variety skewered it at Sundance as taking “vast liberties with U.S. history in order for the director to put the band’s tonally diverse tunes in contexts of peace, love, war, love, peace and, finally, love.” My gripe is that Dicillo never bothers to touch on the various theories regarding Morrison’s death which, admittedly, would cloud the narrative tone set by the director. I disagree with Variety’s assessment that “doors to theatrical distribution deserve to stay shut” – but mainly because of the rare footage here, all on beautiful celluloid, and compiled from various sources, thanks in part to the fact that before they were musicians, The Doors were also film geeks. SXSW bonus: guitarist Robby Krieger in attendance for intro and Q&A.

Speaking of the psychedelic sixties, while the SXSW Film Festival may be over, it’s time to head off to the Alamo Drafthouse for another strange and crazy trip: a revival screening of “the nearly-lost 1968 Tobe Hooper feature Eggshells.” I leave you with these tantalizing program notes:

Made in Austin during the peak of the Age Of Aquarius, it follows a house full of young folks as they talk in riddles, have wild parties, grow up and take psychedelic drugs. The eye-popping restored transfer will take you back in time to an Austin some of us weren’t lucky enough to know: smaller, cheaper; but also the same in a number of fascinating ways. You won’t be able to take your eyes off the screen.

Here’s the original description of the film, a kind of Rosetta Stone of sixties-speak:

“Eggshells, an American Freak Illumination Time & Space Fantasy of the exploding Austin inevitable crypto embryonic hyper-electric presence dueling with itself as Vince Sobrosek goes to the bathroom yelling “listen to yellow dog, goddamn yellow dog!” while the devil’s hose dog tongue loops and lollies through a glory hole and your uninvited dinner guests make love to the ghosts of Don Levy and Nic Roeg in a threesome with Carlos Casteneda in a bedroom that paints itself on it’s way to a wedding and your girlfriend and her lover dance out of the hemoglobin ballon forest while the writer-man takes an axe to the windshield and runs home naked makes love to a girl he loves for her breasts and they all grab a seat under the hair dryer transmogrifyers as Vince proclaims, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth will make you free.”