Zappa

Zappa (2020) is the documentary on musician Frank Zappa you can watch online on iFILM. Director Alex Winter got the keys to Zappa's private vault and built the film from reels almost nobody outside the family had ever seen.

Zappa refused every label — rock, avant-garde, full orchestral scores, scalpel-sharp satire, often in the same breath. The film tracks him from a Baltimore childhood and an early obsession with Edgard Varèse's dissonance through the break-up of The Mothers of Invention to his final concerts. Collaborators like Mike Keneally, Ruth Underwood and Steve Vai speak, and his widow Gail Zappa anchors much of the story.

To digitize thousands of hours from Zappa's chaotic archive, Winter turned to crowdfunding, and more than ten thousand fans chipped in to rescue it. The result is an honest portrait of a stubborn perfectionist rather than a tidy tribute. One for anyone who likes their music docs unvarnished. Stream Zappa (2020) online on iFILM.