A festival dedicated to films about music—it sounds like a perfect pairing of form and subject, and an excuse to watch a bunch of fun movies too. Yet until 2000 no one had really made a go of it.

Here's what you'll find on Twin Cities area screens this week.

A fifth-grader when Minneapolis’ fabled M-80 rock festival took place in 1979, Chris Strouth is happy to confirm it lives up to the hype he’d been hearing for decades. “All the boomers in this scene ...