By Noma Faingold

Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, co-directing, co-producing and co-writing partners since 1978, are promoting their latest documentary, “Música!” during the fall film festival circuit. Despite winning Oscars, Emmys and a Grammy, creating and releasing new work never gets old.

“The enthusiasm to make films was there since age 19 when I started out,” said longtime San Francisco resident Epstein, 68. “It has never abated. With each film, it’s like entering a new world. But it’s also really hard.”

Epstein moved by bus from New York City to San Francisco at age 19. His first job in the City was as an usher at the Castro Theatre back when there was still a smoking section. While taking a filmmaking class at San Francisco State University, he became a production assistant on a documentary in early development where he met his mentor, Peter Adair. He quickly rose to co-director, with the other members of the Mariposa Film Group. The film became the landmark documentary “Word Is Out,” released in theaters in 1978, airing nationally on prime-time public television, and recently restored and re-released by Milestone.

His most recent work, “Música!” follows four devoted Cuban musical prodigies who play in a jazz ensemble at the prestigious high school conservatory Amadeo Roldán. They get the opportunity to play with seasoned jazz musicians in New Orleans, which looks and feels like a sister city to Havana in the documentary. Just jamming with the New Orleans players is revelatory for the Cuban youths. Then they have a residence at the legendary Preservation Hall.

“The film was a labor of love,” said Epstein. “We had no funding.”

“Música!” which will have two screenings at the Mill Valley Film Festival, Oct. 5-15, is the culmination of an eight-year journey that started with Epstein tagging along on a trip with his sister and brother-in-law, members of Horns for Havana, a non-profit organization which repairs and brings instruments to aspiring musicians in Havana.

“When I heard the jazz band and saw their joy, I didn’t want to leave the room,” Epstein said. “I started filming right then and there.”

Epstein, born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, arrived in San Francisco during what he refers to as “the gay migration” of the 1970s. He has lived in the Castro-Duboce Triangle neighborhood for several decades. He is co-chair of the film program at the California College of Arts.

Aside from trust, mutual respect, shared sensibility and a like-minded sense of humor, the Epstein/Friedman partnership continues to work because of their commitment to each project.

“We want to tell stories that haven’t been told and need to be,” he said. “Come hell or high water.”

Epstein was willing to comment on several of the celebrated films he and his partner have created.

“Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music” (2023)

Epstein/Friedman documented a one-time-only 24-hour performance in New York by maximalist musical performer Taylor Mac, which covers 240 years of American music and history (streaming on Max). There are exuberant, intimate and sobering moments. The audience committed to the 24 hours, too. The most elaborate, glittery costumes enhance the spectacle.

“There’s a reason why Taylor won a MacArthur Genius Award,” Epstein said. “It’s because he’s a genius. He’s such a humanist, provocateur and clown. His foundation comes from a love of humanity. His work has so much to say about the world we live in and our history. Doing it was joyful, but hard. We had to take 24 hours of material and whittle it down into a feature-length film. The mechanics were challenging. We also felt it needed a backstory, which we added.”

“Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice” (2019)

Winning a Grammy Award for the moving documentary (streaming on Max), the directing/producing team is now three quarters to EGOT status. The film follows Ronstadt’s lengthy, eclectic career chronologically, from her rise as one of the only female rock stars in the male-dominated 1970s music scene to the present day, living a quiet life in San Francisco’s Sea Cliff neighborhood, unable to sing, having been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2013.

The film shows the purity of Ronstadt’s voice in every musical genre she insisted on exploring: country rock (1970s), straight-ahead rock (“Simple Dreams,” “Living in the USA”), light opera (performing “The Pirates of Penzance” on Broadway), new wave (“Mad Love”), traditional pop standards with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra (three albums), traditional country harmony-rich collaborations with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris (“Trio” and “Trio II”), traditional Mexican Mariachi (“Canciones de Mi Padre,” “Mas Canciones”), pop/r&b featuring Grammy-winning duets with Aaron Neville (“Cry Like a Rainstorm”).

“I’m so pleased her music continues to get the attention it deserves,” Epstein said. ‘The Leftovers’ used a song (‘Long, Long Time’), which brought more interest to our film. She’s very smart, incredibly well read and informed. I was taken by her humility.

“At first, she didn’t have any interest in a film being made. We pursued her for a year and finally she relented. I think she’s glad she did. There’s not an ounce of self-pity in her. She continues to enjoy her life and she has an ever-curious mind.”

“Lovelace” (2013)

For the largely overlooked biopic – Epstein said that he doesn’t like that term – the source material was the 1980 Linda Lovelace (born Linda Susan Boreman) autobiography, “Ordeal.” The film depicts how the young woman was groomed by her sleazy, abusive husband, Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard giving his all in portraying the desperate and exploitive character) into becoming a famous porn star, starring in 1972’s enormously successful “Deep Throat,” which took in $600 million at the box office.

We see Lovelace (played like a girl next door by Amanda Seyfried) almost destroyed by not just Traynor, but by men in the industry, from Hugh Hefner (James Franco) to porn producer Anthony Romano (Chris Noth). The film is another cautionary tale about the porn industry, along the same lines as Bob Fosse’s “Star 80.”

“We were directors for hire. It was not our script,” Epstein explained. “I should watch it again to see if my perceptions of it have changed. What interested us in making the film was the notion of the psychology of Linda Lovelace when she was making ‘Deep Throat,’ once she stepped out of that character and how she changed (becoming an anti-porn activist). We wanted to get at that dichotomy. Why she felt she had to live one way and live another way after the fact. I wish the film had made more of an impression. The performances are stellar. The cast was great – Amanda, Peter, Sharon Stone, Chris and Bobby Cannavale.”

“HOWL” (2010)

The filmmaking partners’ first foray into narrative work, “HOWL,” set in San Francisco, centers around Beat poet Allen Ginsberg’s opus, “Howl,” for which he was put on trial (for obscenity) in 1957. The film’s style has an appropriate counterculture style, combining animation, black-and-white cinematography and touches of documentary techniques. (Streaming on Peacock.)

“‘Howl’ was intentionally more experimental,” Epstein said. “It defies category. Every word in the film is artifact but spoken by actors. To make all those elements fit together into one film was the big challenge. We tried to make it cohesive. It was the cinematic expression of what Ginsberg was doing with the poem. Living in San Francisco, I was drawn to the Beat poets and what the era symbolized. I was curious to deconstruct the myth and message of ‘Howl’ and Ginsberg’s personal history imbedded within it.”

“Celluloid Closet” (1995)

The film is a fast-moving, entertaining look at how mainstream movies portrayed homosexuals from the early days of cinema through more nuanced characters in 1993’s “Philadelphia.” The Emmy and Peabody Award-winning doc (streaming on Tubi and Amazon Prime), based on the 1981 book by Vito Russo, Epstein/Friedman make the material come alive, showing the absurdity and demonization of gay and lesbian characters in film. There’s also an amusing segment covering Rock Hudson/Doris Day romantic comedies. The closeted Hudson was in on the irony in films like “Pillow Talk,” where his character pretends to be gay to win over the Doris Day character.

“We’re proud of the new restoration the film just got from Sony Classics,” Epstein said. “We were trying to change how gays were depicted in film. Our agenda was not activist, but the result was. It was a historical analysis about stereotype structures.”

“Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt” (1989)

The first Epstein and Friedman collaboration won an Academy Award for best documentary. It sensitively tells the story of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, profiling several people who are represented by panels in the quilt. It sparks empathy in dealing with loss, grief, family connections and the magnitude of AIDS in the early years of the epidemic. The first display of the complete quilt on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. in 1987 elicits awe. (Streaming on Amazon Prime.)

“We were looking at the devastation of AIDS, losing partners, family members and the community that was being built because of all that loss,” Epstein recalled. “The quilt became emblematic of this enormous devastation. Literally the fabric. What you look for as a filmmaker is creating something that can reverberate and resonate.”

“The Times of Harvey Milk” (1984)

Before the Epstein-Friedman partnership, Epstein directed, co-produced and co-wrote “The Times of Harvey Milk” (streaming on Max) and won an Academy Award for best documentary. Narrated by writer/actor Harvey Fierstein, the influential film about the rise and assassination of the first openly gay man elected to public office in California (as member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors) has relevance today in an ominous way, with the anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation and rise in hate in parts of the U.S.

“The politics of it all seems regressive now,” Epstein said. “But socially we’ve made great gains. The cycle of these things get re-politicized. I wanted to make this film because I lived the story. I was already living in San Francisco. Before Harvey was murdered, I was working on a film about the emerging gay rights movement. I had started making a film about gays coming out and self-identifying and the backlash to that. Then, the assassination became the whole embodiment of what I set out to do. The film is less biography than the telling of when he became such an important political figure and why, while providing context.

“I was completely surprised to win the Academy Award. There was momentum, but it was all new to me. I had no idea what to expect but had to be prepared because it would be a historic moment. It gave me a certain level of acknowledgement and the feeling that I should keep going.”

“Música!” screens at the Mill Valley Film Festival, Oct. 9, 5 p.m., Sequoia 2 and Oct. 10, 6:30 p.m., Roxie Theater, San Francisco. Co-directors/co-producers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman are expected guests. Information and tickets: mvff.com.