By Sheri Linden

Sidetrack Films

Taking an unconventional approach to biography, documentarian AJ Schnack has created an intimate, lyrical meditation on the making of an artist. "Kurt Cobain: About a Son" is a true gift to fans of this important musician, whose 1994 suicide was international Page One news. No one speaks for the grunge great but Cobain in well-chosen excerpts from previously unreleased audiotape interviews. The docu, which screens Saturday and Sunday in AFI Fest's international docu competition, could carve out a specialty release niche and is sure to have a long life among Nirvana faithful.

It's a rare treat to hear an artist tell his own story, especially for performers of Cobain's stature. In "About a Son," there's not an intermediary talking head in sight, not a childhood photo -- indeed, images of Cobain and Nirvana appear only briefly, an hour into the proceedings and again at film's end. For most of the 97-minute running time, Cobain's disembodied voice-over narration is the only archival material; visuals consist of newly filmed footage of his stamping grounds in Washington state.

The artist's reflections are drawn from 25-plus hours of interviews that journalist Michael Azerrad conducted for his highly regarded book "Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana." The conversations took place in late 1992 and early '93, at the height of Nirvana's post-"Nevermind" fame. Cobain's keen intelligence, self-awareness and dry humor are evident throughout, the same mix of sarcasm and sincerity that he says he strove for in his lyrics.

As the filmmaker proved in "Gigantic," his affectionate, lively portrait of alt-pop duo They Might Be Giants, Schnack has a deft feel for matching cinematic tone to his subject's sensibility. He builds a strong sense of place and mood as he traces Cobain's odyssey from Aberdeen to Olympia to Seattle, the landscapes and cityscapes accumulating power. The seen-but-not-heard kids on the street are interesting to a point, but Schnack miscalculates with footage of the "average people" Cobain so dreaded. Even Olympia's outcast culture was something Cobain enjoyed only from a sequestered distance.

For those who can get past the visual absence of Cobain and the aural absence of his music on the excellent soundtrack, this is an indelible autobiographical document.