As I mentioned in an earlier post, this is a very busy week for notable indie films coming to DVD for the first time. For fans of documentaries, at least three titles deserve mention.

Kudos to distributor Halo-8 Entertainment for unleashing Frank Pavich's N.Y.H.C. The title refers to the mid-90s New York hardcore music scene; the film itself was originally released on an underground VHS tape in 1999. Digitally remastered, the doc looks smashing, and, even if you're not a fan of the music, it's a terrific, well-told, engaging story. Musicians and fans open up about mothers, drugs, death, lyrics (one fan says, "You can't understand what they're saying, but if [the singer is] saying what he's saying he's saying, it's pretty cool"), day jobs, piercing, tattoos, violence, and above all, a love of music.

The two-disk edition features plenty of supplemental material, including deleted scenes, bonus segments, director's commentary, complete live performances of songs by the seven bands highlighted in the film, and more than three hours of updated interviews, in which those involved with the scene talk about what's happened to them. The DVD is available directly from Halo-8.

"Mind blowing!" Shot in Bombay, a documentary by Liz Mermin on the making of the 2007 action crime film Shootout at Lokhandwala, provides an illuminating peak behind the scenes of the Indian film industry, but becomes even more fascinating when it weaves together disparate strands about the controversial events that inspired Shootout and a years-long legal case against one of India's biggest stars.

Approached to make a doc about Indian movies, Mermin encountered resistance from local filmmakers, who felt Western media outlets have not been fair in their treatment of the industry. Finally, the makers of Shootout at Lokhandwala agreed, and Mermin arrived on location in January 2007 just in time to observe a production in crisis. Director Apoorva Lakhia was under tremendous pressure to complete the film, despite his lead actor's temperamental nature. Sanjay Dutt's frequent absences from the set might be understandable, since he was simultaneously dealing with the culmination of a 13-year-long criminal trial that might send him to prison for years.