SpokAnarchy! is a 2011 documentary film that chronicles the 1980s punk rock scene in Spokane, Washington. Mixing vintage music videos, live clips, and found footage with contemporary interviews, the film portrays what happened when a group of disaffected teenagers from a small, isolated Northwest city embraced the music and fashion of the big-city punk scenes. The interviewees reminisce about their early years as rebels and misfits in a conservative town, and reflect on how their participation in the scene continues to influence their lives as middle-aged adults. Several of the cast have achieved notoriety since the period depicted in the film, including Paul D'Amour, the original bassist for the band Tool, circus sideshow performer Zamora the Torture King, and the creator of Internet meme Keyboard Cat.
The film is not credited to a single director, but to the core production team of David W. Halsell, Erica K. Schisler, Jon Swanstrom, Heather Swanstrom, Theresa Halsell, and Cory Wees. SpokAnarchy! is available on DVD, and a soundtrack was released by Flat Field Records featuring musical performances by Sweet Madness, PP-Ku, The Doubtful Nonagenarians, Terror Couple, Strangulon, The Necromancers, S&M, Vampire Lezbos, M’NA M’NA, Social Bondage, TFL, The Moo Cow Orchestra, and Cattle Prod.
SpokAnarchy! began as a 20-minute short about a reunion of punk rockers and like-minded bohemians in Spokane, Washington during the summer of 2009. Realizing that no film had yet attempted to tell the story of punk outside such major urban centers as New York, Los Angeles, and London, several of the reunion’s participants decided to expand the project to feature length. They conducted over 60 interviews and assembled 100 hours of both new and old footage, in addition to hundreds of original photographs, flyers, and fanzines from the 1970s and 1980s.
The film premiered at the Garland Theater in Spokane on August 6, 2011. In addition to regular theatrical runs in Spokane and Seattle, SpokAnarchy! has been shown at The Columbia Gorge International Film Festival in Vancouver, Washington; The Landlocked Film Festival in Iowa City, Iowa; The Astoria/LIC International Film Festival in Long Island City, New York; and the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in Hot Springs, Arkansas. SpokAnarchy! received a Chris Awards' Honorable Mention at the 59th Columbus International Film & Video Festival.
Brian Miller of the Seattle Weekly praised the film as "a well-assembled mosaic of voices", [1] and Andrew Matson of The Seattle Times wrote that "[t]he crowning achievement of the documentary SpokAnarchy! is that it's entertaining for the full hour and 20 minutes, despite being about music you've never heard of from a scene you never knew existed." [2] While Ned Lannamann of The Stranger lauds it as "an inviting, generous overview of that era." Jake Austen of Roctober Magazine called SpokAnarchy! "a nice balance between romanticizing... and making it clear that small town punk life could be hellish." [3] Feature stories about the film also appeared in The Spokesman-Review, [4] CityArts, [5] and on NPR station KPLU’s Artscape program. [6] The free weekly newspaper The Pacific Northwest Inlander rated SpokAnarchy! second place behind Vision Quest as the best local film. [7]
As of July 24, 2012, SpokAnarchy! On DVD is in distribution by MVD Entertainment Group. [8] The film is also available streaming on Amazon Prime [9] and Filmon.
Spokane is the most populous city in and the county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It is in eastern Washington, along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, 92 miles (148 km) south of the Canadian border, 18 miles (30 km) west of the Washington–Idaho border, and 279 miles (449 km) east of Seattle, along Interstate 90.
The U.S. state of Washington has been home to many popular musicians and several major hotbeds of musical innovation throughout its history. The largest city in the state, Seattle, is known for being the birthplace of grunge as well as a major contributor to the evolution of punk rock, indie music, folk, and hip hop. Nearby Tacoma and Olympia have also been centers of influence on popular music.
Julien Temple is a British film, documentary and music video director. He began his career with short films featuring the Sex Pistols, and has continued with various off-beat projects, including The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, Absolute Beginners and a documentary film about Glastonbury.
The Screamers were an American electropunk group founded in 1975. They were among the first wave of the L.A. punk rock scene. The Los Angeles Times applied the label "techno-punk" to the band in 1978. In the documentary Punk: Attitude (2005), vocalist Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys cites the Screamers as a key influence on their group and as one of the great unrecorded groups in rock history.
Hype! (1996) is a documentary directed by Doug Pray about the popularity of grunge rock in the early to mid-1990s United States. It incorporates interviews and rare concert footage to trace the development of the grunge scene from its early beginning in neighborhood basements to its emergence as an explosive pop culture phenomenon. Hype! attempts to dispel some of the myths of the genre promulgated by media hype by depicting the grunge subculture from the point of view of people who were active in the scene. The film generally portrays this mythos in a satirical way while acknowledging that it was media hype that helped propel some of these obscure bands to fame.
Jay's Longhorn Bar was a nexus of the punk rock and New Wave scenes in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The Gits were an American punk rock band formed in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in 1986. As part of the burgeoning Seattle music scene of the early 1990s, they were known for their fiery live performances. Members included singer Mia Zapata, guitarist Joe Spleen, bassist Matt Dresdner and drummers Steve Moriarty, Bruce Ducheneaux and Bob Lee. They dissolved in 1993 after the murder of Zapata.
The Mutants are an American band, notable in the history of San Francisco punk rock and new wave music. They are known for their theatrical performances which often include elaborate props, projections, and comical antics. They are credited with being one of the first "Art-punk" bands in San Francisco, and were one of the most popular bands of the San Francisco punk scene during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Bill Daniel is an American experimental documentary film artist, photographer, film editor, and cinematographer. He is also an installation artist, curator, and former zine publisher. His full-length film, Who is Bozo Texino? about the tradition of hobo and railworker boxcar graffiti was completed in 2005 and has screened extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Daniel has collaborated with several artists from the Bay Area Mission School art movement, notably Margaret Kilgallen and has worked on multiple projects with underground director Craig Baldwin. Film/video artist Rankin Renwick of the Oregon Department of Kick Ass has been a frequent touring partner, collaborator and co-curator.
Burst City is a Japanese dystopian punk rock musical / action film. Released in 1982, the film was directed by Gakuryū Ishii. Primarily a showcase for various specific punk rock bands of the time such as The Roosters, The Rockers, and The Stalin, the film is also purely demonstrative of the culture and attitude of the punk rock community of Japan in the mid-to-late 1970s and the early 1980s, and is considered a defining film of that subculture.
The Scenics are a band from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, active from 1976 to 1982, and from 2008 to the present.
Friends Stand United (FSU) is an American anti-fascist, anti-racist, and anti-drug group. It was founded in the late 1980s by Elgin James in Boston, Massachusetts, evolving out of the hardcore punk scene and in particular the straight edge subculture. While originally having a reputation for fighting against Neo-Nazis and racist groups, in later years FSU members were accused of unprovoked violence and intimidation tactics. The group is classified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as a street gang.
Connected: An Autoblogography About Love, Death, & Technology is an autobiographical documentary film directed by Tiffany Shlain, dedicated to her father. The film unfolds during a year in which technology and science literally become a matter of life and death for the director. As Tiffany's father Dr. Leonard Shlain, MD battles brain cancer and she confronts a high-risk pregnancy, her very understanding of connection is challenged. Using a mix of animation, archival footage, and home movies, Shlain attempts to reveal the ties that link us not only to the people we love but also to the world at large. Connected explores how, after centuries of declaring our independence, it may be time for us to declare our interdependence instead.
Color Me Obsessed is a 2011 American documentary film directed, edited and co-produced by Gorman Bechard about the alternative rock band the Replacements.
The Jeffrey Dahmer Files is an independent documentary film about serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer during the summer of his arrest. The film was directed by Chris James Thompson and stars Andrew Swant as Dahmer in fictionalized re-enactment segments which are interwoven with interviews of the medical examiner assigned to the case, the lead detective, and Dahmer's next door neighbor.
What Did You Expect? is a live concert documentary capturing the Archers of Loaf reunion tour. Directed by Gorman Bechard, it made its film festival debut in June, 2012.
Kill Your Idols is a documentary film about three decades of art punk bands in New York City, directed and produced by Scott Crary and executive produced by Dan Braun and Josh Braun. The film debuted at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Documentary.
Yoyo A Go Go, usually abbreviated to Yoyo and often typeset in various ways, was an independent music festival in Olympia, Washington, first held in 1994 and followed by successor festivals in 1997, 1999, and 2001. Five- and six-day concert marathons featured dozens of punk and indie rock acts stacked back to back, as well as a variety of associated entertainment and small-scale local retail. The concerts took place at the historic Capitol Theater and showcased performers from the local Olympia music scene, while also including national and international artists.
GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling is a documentary film about professional wrestling. Released in 2012, it tells the story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, a women's wrestling promotion. GLOW staged live events that were filmed and then shown on American television for four seasons in the late 1980s. The documentary includes footage from the TV series, combined with then-recent interviews of some of the participants.
Spokane International Film Festival is a film festival held annually in Spokane, Washington, United States, during the first weekend of February. It emphasizes films made by or featuring individuals from the Pacific Northwest and is one of the largest film festivals in Washington and the region.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)