Dead rock stars – no matter how young or old, how sad or tragic the death – live on forever in the popular imagination and culture. Their names, like an honor roll from pop’s hall of fame, capture a singular image; an icon of youthful passion, independence and rebellion. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Buddy Holly, Kurt Cobain, Curtis Mayfield, Elvis Presley, Hank Williams Sr., Patsy Cline, Ritchie Valens, John Lennon, Ian Curtis and Sid Vicious – and legions of others -- evoke nostalgic sentiment to an era associated with their name. At this year’s Seattle International Film Festival, an assortment of narrative and nonfiction works culled from the program will focus on music films and personalities – living and dead. This is not the fest’s emphasis this year; rather, just a thread running through some of the films – out of some 350 – in the program. Feast your eyes -- and ears in SIFF's Face the Music program.

In tribute to two local stars whose careers and lives were cut short from early deaths, The Gits – part-memoir of the late Mia Zapata, and Malfunkshun: The Andrew Wood Story will have their World Premieres at SIFF this year. The Gits, directed by Kerri O’Kane, profiles the local hardcore punk band of the same name whose hard-edged sound and charismatic charge was sparked by frontwoman Mia Zapata. The band’s infectious popularity was gaining a foothold in the Seattle hardcore scene, until Zapata’s life was short-circuited in the early-1990s. She was murdered on Capitol Hill by a drifter from Florida. Zapata and The Gits’ energetic live performances in the Northwest are remembered by surviving band members, friends, and others who experienced their mercurial emergence in Seattle’s heady music scene.

Malfunkshun: The Andrew Wood Story also looks back to roughly the same period, but earlier to the late Eighties when the Northwest grunge scene surfaced and injected some vigor in rock music. Andrew Wood, who died from an untimely drug overdose in 1990 at age 24 when his band Mother Love Bone was gaining national attention, was active in the Seattle music scene. Before Mother Love Bone was formed with members of local band Green River, Wood recorded solo work and performed in the band Malfunkshun. Malfunkshun: The Andrew Wood Story, directed by Scot Barbour, brings together friends, including local rock musicians Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, Chris Cornell, and Kim Thayil, who remember Wood’s active contribution to Seattle’s burgeoning grunge era.

Echoing these documentaries about deceased Northwest music idols, Filmmaker Gus van Sant comments on the Northwest grunge scene in a fictionalized exploration of a tortured musician’s last days. Van Sant’s new film, simply called Last Days, takes its inspiration from Kurt Cobain and the period leading up to his death. Last Days will have its North American premiere as SIFF’s Closing Night film on June 12.

Documentary portraits of other dead musicians include the following films: Amazing Grace: Jeff Buckley, Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt, and Fallen Angel: Gram Parsons. Jeff Buckley, whose singing career had a following in Manhattan coffee houses and across Europe and Australia, is profiled in the film Amazing Grace: Jeff Buckley directed by Nyla Bialek Adams and Laurie Trombley. Before a drowning accident in Memphis in 1997 at the age of 30, Buckley earned a world-wide cult following for singing jazz and folk songs, including Billie Holiday and Judy Garland covers, and recorded only one album.

Folk singer Townes Van Zandt, whose influence on many musicians span across folk, country and rock genres, is given a warm tribute in Margaret Brown’s film Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt. And Gram Parsons, who died from a drug overdose at 27, is the subject of Fallen Angel: Gram Parsons. Former member of The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers in the Sixties, Parsons’ musical career pursued a fusion of soul, rock and country, or Cosmic American Music, and spawned many imitators and influenced the emergence of alt country. Former Byrd member Chris Hillman, Keith Richards, Emmylou Harris, among others, remembers Parsons’ active career, his death, and subsequent mysterious body-snatching where his remains were burned at Joshua Tree in California.

While these films pay tribute to the deceased and celebrated heroes in pop music, two films profile the past and present in rock -- much like bookends of the music films at this year’s fest spanning the past thirty years or more. Punk: Attitude, directed by Don Letts, looks back to the formative hey days of punk, featuring plenty of archival footage from the late 1970s when the punk scene in London and New York took the world by storm. Rock School directed by Don Argott is a glimpse at the future generation of rock. Philadelphia musician Paul Green leads a class of young students, ages 9-17, at the School of Rock Music about playing classic rock music from the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath and Frank Zappa. In conjunction with this screening, SIFF will be presenting a Rock School Jam at Neumos on Capitol Hill featuring the young performers appearing in the film Rock School, and surprise special guests from Seattle to jam with them.

French filmmaker Olivier Assayas ties together some of the themes and subjects of these films in a melodramatic new film Clean starring Maggie Cheung as a punk rock musician on the cusp of bigger things but saddled with burdens when things go awry. Addicted to heroin, Cheung’s character Emily Wang ends up charged with her boyfriend’s (James Johnston) heroin overdose in a Hamilton, Ontario, motel room and sentenced to prison. When released, Emily tries to get a clean start on her life and music career in Paris, but extended family ties to her young son raised by her late-boyfriend’s parents (Nick Nolte and Martha Henry) in Vancouver, B.C., compel her to make some tough choices. Handsomely shot on location in Hamilton, Paris, London, Vancouver and San Francisco, Clean’s familiar family drama is infused with Assayas’ portrait of a woman who can get it together against the odds.

On the other side of the dial, SIFF’s selections of music-related films encompass music beyond the world of rock, punk and grunge. Drive Well, Sleep Carefully: On the Road with Death Cab For Cutie chronicles the local Seattle band’s recent U.S. tour. Arvo Pärt, “24 Preludes for a Fugue” assembles a portrait of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt in twenty-four vignettes about his liturgical-inspired and choral music. Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie, who is nearly deaf, plays music she describes that her body can hear. Thomas Riedelsheimer, who directed Rivers and Tides, profiles Glennie’s dramatic physical connection to sound and music through her body in Touch the Sound. And Tudo Azul’s pan-national portrait of the samba, from Salvador de Bahia to Rio de Janeiro, explores the depth and sound of samba music and dance in Brazil.

For more information about these and other films included in this year’s 31st Seattle International Film Festival, check out http://www.seattlefilm.com/ for details. SIFF screenings are held daily at select Capitol Hill, University District, and Lower Queen Anne theaters. Additional events will be at EMP, neumos, and the Guild 45th in Wallingford. SIFF’s three-week run is from May 19 – June 12. Tickets now available online, and at Pacific Place downtown and at the Broadway Performance Hall on Capitol Hill.