Create the Ultimate At-Home Summer Music Festival With These 12 Films

As summer winds down, what better note to end on than with a music festival? If you can’t get to an actual festival, we have the next best thing: a curation of some of the best music films and documentaries from around the world. Tap your feet to jazz giants Louis Armstrong and Nina Simone, bop your head to Britain’s underground reggae scene, and go backstage with punk legends The Clash. These are just a few of the genres and artists we have in our dream festival lineup. Put on your best concert gear, invite your friends over, and stream these films now on Kino Film Collection – we recommend cranking the volume up.

Beware Mr. Baker (2012)

Ginger Baker is the original rock ‘n roll madman-junkie-superstar who everyone thought was dead but somehow survived 50+ years of drug abuse, disastrous experiments, and four marriages on three continents. His hands and feet narrate this epic quest for rhythmic perfection, always on the forefront of musical experimentation and innovation. This no-holds- barred, moving, and hilarious portrait of the man referred to as rock’s first great drummer (and perhaps still its best) lets him tell his own story, intercut with footage of his continent-hopping life, from London to L.A., Nigeria, Italy, South Africa, and (way) beyond.

Let’s Get Lost (1988)

Traveling with the elusive jazz vocalist and trumpeter Chet Baker, Bruce Weber weaves together the life story of a jazz great. The film uses excerpts from Italian B movies, rare performance footage, and candid interviews with Baker, musicians, friends, battling ex-wives, and his children in what turned out to be the last year of his life. Winner of the 1989 Critics Prize at the Venice Film Festival and nominated for an Academy Award, Let's Get Lost has become an important document in the career of the filmmaker on the life of a jazz legend. Since its release in 1989, Let's Get Lost has introduced a whole new generation of jazz enthusiasts to the timeless talent of the late Chet Baker.

Babylon (1980)

Franco Rosso's incendiary Babylon follows a young dancehall DJ (Brinsley Forde, frontman of landmark British reggae group Aswad) in South London as he pursues his musical ambitions, battling fiercely against the racism and xenophobia of employers, neighbors, police, and the National Front. Fearless, unsentimental, yet tempered by the hazy bliss of a blistering reggae and lovers rock soundtrack.

The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye (2011)

This tender portrait of music pioneer Genesis P-Orridge and their partner, dominatrix Lady Jaye, was filmed over the course of seven years and completed following Lady Jaye’s sudden death in 2007. Integrating home movies, stylishly staged tableaux, and archival footage, this documentary poignantly centers on the body modification that brought the couple together.

Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959)

Filmed at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival and directed by renowned photographer Bert Stern, this film features intimate performances by an all-star line-up of musical legends including Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Gerry Mulligan, Anita O'Day, Chuck Berry, Dinah Washington, and closes with a beautiful rendition of "The Lord's Prayer" by Mahalia Jackson at midnight to usher in Sunday morning.

Rude Boy (1980)

Set against a background of riots, anti-racist demos, and police hostility, this unforgettable film portraits the UK at a moment when subcultural shock troops met those of a rising right wing in the streets. Merging documentary and fiction, Rude Boy follows a roadie for The Clash—the most fiery, revolutionary rock ’n’ roll band of the era, seen in this film at the dizzying peak of their powers.

The Idol (2016)

In Palestine's entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th Academy Awards, talented teenage singer Mohammed Assaf travels from the Gaza Strip to Egypt to audition for the television show Arab Idol. Even as the siege around Gaza intensifies, the prison around them ever more forbidding, Mohammed knows he has the rare gift to make people smile and forget their troubles.

Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over (2021)

Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over by Beth B is the first career-spanning retrospective of Lydia Lunch’s confrontational, acerbic and electric artistry. As New York City’s preeminent No Wave icon from the late 70’s, Lunch has forged a lifetime of music and spoken word performance devoted to the utter right of any woman to indulge, seek pleasure, and to raise voice in a rage as loud as any man.

Heartworn Highways (1976)

In the mid-‘70s, filmmaker James Szalapski documented the then-nascent country music movement that would become known as “outlaw country.” Inspired, in part, by newly-long-haired Willie Nelson’s embrace of hippie attitudes and audiences, a younger generation of artists including Townes Van Zandt, David Alan Coe, Steve Earle and Guy Clark popularized and developed the outlaw sound.

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (2024)

This 2025 Oscar® nominee for Best Documentary Feature and Sundance award winner tells the story of the U.S. government's jazz ambassador program in Africa and the CIA's involvement with the assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. A provocative, real-life Cold War thriller, Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat intertwines jazz, espionage, and colonialism – uncovering a scandal whose urgency is still resonant in today's geopolitical climate.

Prey For Rock and Roll (2003)

This fist-pumping LGBTQ+ touchstone and rock and roll cult classic stars the electrifying Gina Gershon as Jacki, a rocker who worries she may never make it big. Along with bandmates played by Drea de Matteo, Lori Petty, and Shelly Cole, she has spent years of struggle playing gigs up and down the Sunset Strip. But when that break finally arrives, their lives are turned upside down.

The Blues Under the Skin (1973)

In the early 1970s, music documentarian Robert Manthoulis traveled to the Mississippi Delta to capture the remnants of the authentic American blues. Virtually unseen in the U.S., The Blues Under the Skin is a thrilling rediscovery, an untapped treasury of musical performances that not only captures a vanishing musical form, but offers a priceless glimpse of 70s Black life in the rural South.