Photo by Amy Hairston The Elephant 6 music collective, which includes the Apples in Stereo, the Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel and other notable bands, is the subject of “The Elephant 6 Recording Co.,” which plays Friday night as part of the 41 North Film Festival. Robert Schneider, an Elephant 6 co-founder and associate professor of mathematics at Michigan Technological University, will be part of a question-and-answer session after the screening.

HOUGHTON — It began in Ruston, Louisiana, a small rural town with a technical university, where four high-school friends — Robert Schneider, Bill Doss, Will Cullen Hart and Jeff Mangum — began making home recordings inspired by ’60s pop and psychedelia.

For college, Schneider moved to Denver, while the other three to Athens, Georgia. They stayed connected, found more like-minded friends and began releasing records.

Those bands — The Apples in Stereo, The Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel, Of Montreal, Elf Power and dozens more — shaped the sound of indie music starting in the ’90s and inspired bands throughout.

They also inspired a fan whose documentary is bringing the collective’s story to old fans and new audiences more than 30 years after their first releases.

That movie, “The Elephant 6 Recording Co.,” will screen at the Rozsa Center 7:30 p.m. Friday night as part of the 41 North Film Festival.

“They created that world within a world from Ruston, they found their friends there and built from there,” said Daniel Efram, who executive produced the film. “It’s all about who you surround yourself with. If you surround yourself with open, creative people, you can build something great. You don’t have to be from New York or Los Angeles.”

Efram will participate in a panel discussion after the movie with Schneider — Elephant 6 co-founder, lead singer of the Apples in Stereo and now an assistant professor of mathematics at Michigan Technological University. A reception will follow in the Rozsa lobby with music by Marquette band Liquid Mike, which includes Michigan Tech alumni.

The road to the movie began more than a decade ago when director C.B. Stockfleth was interested in filming the Olivia Tremor Control, his favorite group from the Elephant 6 collective. At the time, the group was on hiatus. He approached Schneider to help him get in contact with members of the band.

As Stockfleth began talking to Schneider and other members of the collective, they grew more comfortable with him and he became part of the fabric. And the project that began focused on one band grew into something larger.

“I think he just wanted to get this really small thing, capture some small bits of content about his favorite group, and then it became this big project eventually, because there were people interested in speaking to him,” Efram said. “Robert thought if a film was to be made about the Elephant 6 collective, Chad should be involved in doing that.”

Efram, the longtime manager for both Schneider and the Apples in Stereo, was brought in to help line up funding, as well as other people interested in participating. He reached out to fans like James Mercer of the Shins, Elijah Wood and David Cross.

The finished product transcended Efram’s expectations. And it’s found an audience beyond just fans of the music, Efram said.

“As much as it’s a historical document, it’s also about basically a big extended family of friends that tried to lift each other up,” he said. “Worldwide we’re in pretty dark times right now. It’s a film that has such a positive, you-can-do-it feeling. It’s more than about Elephant 6, it’s about how they got inspired and why.”

For Elephant 6 fans and members, it’s also helped with closure. The film has the final interviews with Doss, who died in 2012.

“There are people seeing this now who haven’t understood how to grieve,” Efram said. “He was one of the founders of Elephant 6 and one of Robert’s best friends. When he passed away suddenly, it left a void … Whenever I see the film, I think emotionally about Bill and what a talented, beautiful person he was, and how this film pays an amazing homage to the person we love and respect so much.”

The film has opened in more than 30 cities. With the size of the collective and the moves over time, many of them had an Elephant 6 member nearby. The Minders’ lead singer and guitarist Martyn Leaper did a question-and-answer session in Portland; cellist Heather McIntosh, who played with several Elephant 6 bands, did the same in Los Angeles.

“That’s part of why there’s been so many opportunities to share the film, is because they’ve moved to so many places,” Efram said.

The universality of the story also helps. The bands lived in an almost communal way, scraping together money for low-budget recording gear. They weren’t thinking from a business standpoint, Efram said. It was about believing in the quality of their work, and the drive to match the sounds they imagined using the tools they had at hand.

In a rivalry reminiscent of the Beatles and Beach Boys 30 years earlier, Schneider and Doss had an ongoing battle over “who’s going to write the biggest pop song first,” Efram said.

“It’s about who can make the biggest sound with a lo-fi recording device,” he said. “That competition, as friendly as it was, was serious. And they drove each other to great heights because of that.”

A photojournalist and photographer, Efram works with a 10-year-old camera. He’s also worked on other projects with people whose vision is more important than the complexity of the equipment.

He was editor of “The Steve Keene Art Book,” about the work of Keene, best known for art work for Pavement, the Apples in Stereo and other bands. He’s also making “The State of Yo,” a movie about Tom Kuhn, a dentist and yoyomaker described as “the father of the modern yo-yo.”

Efram’s proud to see the film reach so many people. He compared Elephant 6 to R.E.M., which came out of the Athens scene of a decade earlier.

“R.E.M. gave thousands of musicians the idea that what they did could be acceptable, could be discovered,” he said. “In Athens, they were the next generation, incubator of music at that time. I think they’re incredibly important to the music world, and I’m just happy this film represents so many people in such a beautiful way.”