DIRECTOR: Brett Morgan | USA | 2015 | 132min
Ghostly, electric, this biography to end all biographies is like the man himself: a blurred whirlwind of sound, image, memory, pain and legend. Rewind to small-town Abderdeen, where Cobain spent his childhood, rejected and unmanageable, nurturing a creative flame-turned-firestorm which became rock sensation, Nirvana. Titled after an early audio collage, Montage of Heck mashes interview, animation, audio, live footage and diary entries into a scrapbook in four dimensions. But its beating heart is inscribed onto the never-seen-before VHS home movies of the young Cobain family – Kurt, his wife Courtney Love, and daughter Frances – which reveal not just an artist cracking under the responsibility of being a doomed prophet, but a man chasing a dream of happiness he couldn’t believe in.
Festival Appearances
Sundance, Berlinale
Screenings at Encounters 2015
CT: Fri 5 9pm CN V&A | Fri 12 8.45pm CN V&A | Sun 14 8pm Labia
Jozi: Sat 6 8pm CN Rosebank | Wed 10 8.30pm CN Rosebank | Sun 14 5pm CN Rosebank