[September 3rd, 2008] This year’s MusicfestNW has more to offer than hot bands and drunk girls. It also has movies—both of them showing at the Mission Theater, both of them perfect for watching while you sober up from the previous evening’s rocking.

The Gits

In 1993, Mia Zapata was a singer with a voice like honey-covered nails, fronting a punk band on the verge of stardom and serving as de facto den mother to the Seattle music scene. Then, for no reason, she was dead: raped and murdered walking home from an evening with friends at a local bar. Her killing became a cold case, and the inspiration for Home Alive, a women’s self-defense training organization. Ten years after the crime, just as DNA evidence led to a breakthrough in the case, director Kerri O’Kane began to chronicle the reverberations of Zapata’s band, the Gits, on Seattle, girl power and grunge. The movie, which reached its completed version last year, focuses more on Zapata’s life—and that bluesy voice—than on her death. That’s exactly as it should be, though the project is hamstrung somewhat by a lack of recorded concerts, and by the reluctance of Gits members to disclose private feelings onscreen. It’s still worth a look. 1 pm Friday, Sept. 5.

Beautiful Losers

When the camera focuses on the Made in Oregon sign from the window of artist Jo Jackson’s apartment in Aaron Rose’s movie Beautiful Losers, something in the film’s subtext is translated to our city. The film concentrates on New York City in the ’90s, but with the shot of that Portland landmark a parallel is drawn. The world that nurtured artists like Chris Johanson, Mike Mills, Ed Templeton, and Barry McGee was an amalgamation of the subcultures of skateboarding, punk rock and graffiti. Beautiful Losers chronicles the rise of this group from tagging corners to organizing art shows to being enlisted by galleries and companies worldwide. Rose inspects Geoff McFetridge’s work in Pepsi ads and the ubiquity of Shepard Fairey’s OBEY imagery, and he details the life of Margaret Killgallen, whose death robbed the group of their collective consciousness. 1 pm Saturday, Sept. 6.