Screening Room : Highlighting the Diverse Sounds of Music

Three music films by Robert Mugge will be shown this weekend at the Sunset 5. A Friday and Saturday midnight run of “Pride and Joy: The Story of Alligator Records” will be shown, preceded this weekend only by a live performance by Los Angeles blues artist Janiva Magness and her band. “Gather at the River: A Bluegrass Celebration” and “The Kingdom of Zydeco” will screen in separate theaters at 11 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, beginning this weekend.

Mugge’s straightforward and infectious 87-minute film “Pride and Joy” intercuts portions of one of the record company’s 20th anniversary concerts (held at Philadelphia’s jam-packed Chestnut Cabaret) with Alligator’s founder Bruce Iglauer. It also shows, more briefly, Iglauer’s recording artists including pianist-singer Katie Webster and blues shouter Koko Taylor in exuberant performances. The Chicago-based Iglauer, who remarks that blues “reaches in and wrings you out,” comes across as savvy and dedicated.

“Gather at the River,” a 101-minute documentary on last September’s annual convention of the International Bluegrass Music Assn., held in Owensboro, Ky., offers a generous selection of major artists in performance and in interviews, ranging from living legends like Ralph Stanley and Doc Watson, to bands from Russia and Japan. The well-organized film traces the roots of bluegrass to its African and Celtic sources. But for all the repeated credit given African Americans, not one is on view, let alone in performance, in the entire film. Legendary singer Hazel Dickens, specially honored at the event, speaks of bluegrass as having been a “white male dominated” art form--and from the looks of things, it still is.

The leaders of bluegrass express the need to preserve its traditional form yet continue to grow, and we’re given the impression that both impulses are being accommodated harmoniously.

Judging from the 75-minute “Kingdom of Zydeco,” that’s not the case with the black Creole music scene in southwestern Louisiana. The music may be irresistible but the crowning of veteran accordionist Boozoo Chavis as zydeco’s new king in April (following the deaths of the legendary Clifton Chenier in 1987 and his successor, Rockin’ Dopsie, last August) sparked a controversy.

Chavis was crowned zydeco’s new king by Lou Gabus, founder and president of the Louisiana Hall of Fame, who insists that Dopsie designated Chavis as his heir. However, many African American Creoles disagree with the selection and believe they should have been able to vote for the new king. It is believed that if they had been allowed to vote, the title would have gone to the young and burly Beau Jocque, currently the most popular zydeco musician on the scene. Jocque sings in English and has a much faster tempo than the still enormously vigorous 63-year-old Chavis. (213) 848-3500.

Luc Besson’s “Atlantis” (at the Nuart Sunday through Tuesday) plunges us into a shimmeringly beautiful undersea world teeming with constant movement--rapidly darting schools of tiny fish; stately, leisurely enormous sharks; waltzing manta rays and lively, playful sea lions. Eric Serra’s soaring score echoes every change of tempo in this vast, eerie universe with its constant play of light and shadow as the camera plunges into deep, ominous crevasses illuminated by only the slightest slivers of light. Besson and his cameraman Christian Petron photographed at locales all around the world, but the film has a rhythmic, flowing sense of unity, climaxing in a stunning finish symbolic of the birth of life itself. A distinctive, poetic experience from the director of “Subway,” “La Femme Nikita” and “The Big Blue.” (310) 478-6379.