Few films capture the intensity and thrill of improvised music as well as this award-winning 1990 documentary on the travels and travails of the musician/composer (and Bay Area resident) Fred Frith. A former member of the seminal British group Henry Cow and frequent collaborator with such New York noise-movement artists as John Zorn, Arto Lindsay, and Bill Laswell, Frith has made a career out of testing, and breaching, the boundaries of “accepted” sounds and composition. Step Across the Border follows this genial genius as he travels from Brooklyn to Brighton, Leipzig to Osaka, in search of new noise, and new collaborators to bend the borders with. Directors Humbert and Penzel match Frith's impromptu, anything-can-be-art approach with an aesthetic that cherishes the unplanned and the anarchic over concrete narrative. Boasting cameos by Robert Frank, Jonas Mekas, Arto Lindsay, and John Zorn, among others, the film was chosen by Cahiers du cinéma in 2000 as one of the hundred most important movies in film history.