`Hang the DJ. 90 minutes. Colour documentary. Directors Marco and Mauro La Villa. Next showing tonight at 6.15 p.m. at the Liberty Theatre.

I love documentaries. Watching a leopard stalk a gazelle and then lick its lips at the end of a satisfying meal is my favourite Sunday evening entertainment.

Watching a documentary on another form of wildlife -- House music and its sub-culture -- was as glorious as seeing a 20-foot caiman devour a large vulture.

Whether it was the drag queen or the DJ who spun on his turntable on one hand, my gaze as a spectator is that of someone who left the scene just before it splintered into a myriad of sub-genres.

I am unfazed by the exotic or ridiculous, because once you have seen one gory night on the town or Savannah you've seen them all.

Hang the DJ is a documentary in which the narrative is left to the soundtrack and its subjects.

While we learn some of the history of the music and get the best definition of the genres, the underlying text of the film is the legitimacy of the music.

Only one interviewee asks the question: "Is this good music and are the DJ's musicians or at least their equals?''.

Twin brothers Marco and Mauro La Villa assume that someone who takes a piece of music, distorts it and lengthens it is a music producer and performer.

"The basic point of the film is that DJs are artists. Not jukeboxes,'' Mauro La Villa said in a recent Montreal area interview.

But theatre director Victor Garraway asks the question and adds: "Art is nothing but manipulation. Art has to be created by a human being and it has to be a device.'' Garraway goes further when he notes that Leonard Bernstein was not a musician but conducted the best musicians with written music.

The House music DJ conducts each song differently each time he plays it and demands his respect from musicians.

The music itself comes from various sources which, save one, are not touched on in the film. The La Villas do not cover the same ground as `Paris is Burning', nor is the gaze of the camera as exploitive.

Disco of course formed in the Gay community of the late 1960s and early 1970s and was nurtured throughout the 1980s in the aftermath of the "Disco Sucks'' backlash.

From Jamaican DJs the music got the continual mixing of music from vinyl records and of course toasting, which has metamorphosed into rapping.

From New York area teens within Hip Hop they took scratching and other tricks that move the crowd.

Disco transformed into House (my preferred term), or Club, Music which has splintered into Deep House, Techno, Industrial, Acid, Anthem, Euro, Jungle, Hip-house, Gay, and even Hindu/Bhangara.

The La Villa brothers intend for the film to be "Club music 101'' and did not want to focus on the specifics.

The finest point in a film full of fine points is when the different genres are played without a voiceover.

Even with the same plodding four/four beat, the difference between the watered-down Euro and the jackhammer drum machines of Jungle is as marked as the venues the two are played in.

Although marred by an air-conditioner that was not working, Hang the DJ's world premiere was on Sunday at the Little Theatre.

These days, with DJs having bigger audiences on the weekend than live bands, we are all familiar with what the DJ does. `Hang The DJ' makes it clearer.

PATRICK BURGESS NEW YORK DJ Junior Vasquez is featured in `Hang the DJ' MOVIE MPC REVIEW REV