Peter Sillen

One of American cinema’s foremost travelers—not only to places, but between traditional kinds of movies—Jem Cohen’s films excitedly hum as essential transmissions we need to see and hear. Perhaps none of his work is as electric in this way as Counting, an intoxicating mix travelogue and essay film.

Jesse Bernstein, a Seattle native who crossed paths with Nirvana, gained the dubious title as the “godfather of grunge” after a life, as this revealing doc recounts, where hardship and crazy diversions were common currency. Killing himself at 40, he now seems a quintessential doomed American artist.