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Neil Young and Paul McCartney docs to premiere at Toronto film festival

Albert Maysles documentary follows former Beatle as he organises and prepares to perform a 9/11 benefit concert

Henry Barnes

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 23 August 2011 18.03 BST

With a little help from his friends ... Paul McCartney managed to put together a show in just a month after the 9/11 attacks. Photograph: Victor R. Caivano/AP

New documentaries on Neil Young and Paul McCartney will have their world premieres at this year's Toronto film festival.

Neil Young Life, a documentary on the Toronto-born musician's Le Noise solo tour, directed by Jonathan Demme, will join The Love We Make, Albert Maysles's film about Paul McCartney's performance at the Concert for New York City, in the festival's Mavericks strand.

Maysles's film follows the former Beatle as he prepares to perform at a 9/11 benefit concert in New York. Organised by McCartney in the wake of the attacks on the Twin Towers, the Concert for New York City featured performances from David Bowie, Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, all of whom appear in the film. "It was an honour to be able to help New York and America at that time in its history," said McCartney in July this year. "There was a feeling of shock and fear in the air that I thought we could help alleviate with music."

Demme's Neil Young film – his second concert film on the folk-rock singer – follows Young on a tour of Ontario that culminates in a homecoming performance at Toronto's Massey Hall, where Young recorded the critically acclaimed live album Live at Massey Hall 1971. The documentary one of two new films that Demme is bringing to Toronto. I'm Carolyn Parker: The Good, the Mad and the Beautiful, a documentary following a New Orleans woman through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, will also have its world premiere at the festival.

The Toronto film festival runs from 8-18 September.