Filmmaker Jem Cohen’s Fugazi documentary, Instrument, is finally finished after more than 10 years in the making and a year-and-a-half of arduous editing. “I’ll be relieved when I see it in some kid’s hands, but for now it still doesn’t feel like it’s finished,” says Cohen. Dischord is tentatively scheduling a video release and companion soundtrack album at the end of February. Cohen says he is planning to bring the film to international festivals and hopes to screen it locally in late January. Instrument clocks in at 1 hour and 56 minutes of live footage and interviews with the band, shot in 16 mm, Super 8, and video; Cohen calls it a “portrait of musicians at work.” The filmmaker has worked on several previous projects with Fugazi. He cut his directorial teeth on independent films (most recently Lost Book Found and Buried in Light) and video collaborations with R.E.M., Jonathan Richman, Vic Chestnut, and even harDCore pioneers Void. Cohen also has shorter video “artist portraits” on indie-folk guy Elliot Smith and Atlanta-based rockers Smoke in post-production, as well as a forthcoming documentary about Pisa, Italy. Look for Cohen in the crowds—perhaps without a camera for a change—as Fugazi wraps up a three-week tour this week with local appearances Thursday, Dec. 3, at Sanctuary Theater (a Positive Force benefit for Casa Del Pueblo, with Lungfish and Bald Rapunzel) and Friday, Dec. 4, at George Mason University’s Johnson Center (a Positive Force benefit for the Fund for a Feminist Majority’s Clinic Access Program, with The Most Secret Method and Princessed). Lungfish, in addition to its gig with Fugazi, will be playing this Saturday, Nov. 28, at the Workhorse Art Gallery, a new alternative arts space in Baltimore (1601 Guilford Avenue, (401) 784-9675), before heading into the studio in mid-December to record its seventh full-length album for Dischord, due in early 1999. (CB)