girl gang season at the star and shadow cinema, newcastle

Girl gang season at the Star and Shadow cinema, Newcastle, September 2012

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Ladies & Gentlemen The Fabulous Stains & Desperate Lovedolls (double bill)

Girl Gang Season

7:30 p.m. Sunday September 2 2012

Director:Lou Adler / David Markey

This double bill marks the launch of the girl gang season! Look out for gangs of girls making their mark on the city during September. The evening will be introduced by Dr. Julia Downes (Durham University/ even clean hands cause damage) who programmed the season and will share her obsession with the mythological curosity of the girl gang.

Ladies & Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains (1981) was made for the major studio Paramount. However the executives refused to release it which left the Stains as a footnote in film history and ended Lou Adler’s movie career (he never directed again). However the film began to make obscure appearances on cable television and became an inspiration for various girls and women who created riot grrrl in the 1990s, including Tobi Vail who decribed the film as 'the most realistic and profound film I have ever seen’. The film which features an all-girl band The Stains struggle for fame and success has since become a recuperated by generations of radical girls and women.

In contrast Desperate Teenage Lovedolls (1984) is a low budget underground film shot on super-8 film by David Markey. The film is about an all-girl rock band of teenage runaways and their misadventures.

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An Evening With Gb Jones (triple bill: the yo-yo gang, the troublemakers & the lollipop generation)

7:30 p.m. Thursday September 6 2012

Director: gb jones

gb jones is a well-known Canadian queer underground film maker and artist. She is a figure of the queercore movement as a fanzine writer, film maker and member of all-girl band Fifth Column. She has had retrospectives of her work at Tanz Gallery in Los Angeles. This evening will feature three of gb jones’ DIY films shot on super-8 film that focus on queer community and the girl gang.

The Yo-Yo Gang is an ‘exploitation film’ about girl gangs that documents the actions of two rival girl gangs the Yo Yo Gang and the Skateboard Bitches. The film features many prominent queer musicians including Leslie Mah (Tribe 8), Donna Dresch (Team Dresch) and members of Fifth Column. The tag line for the film reads: "Gang girls frequently out-curse, out-fight and out-sex every boys' gang around"

The Lollipop Generation tells the story of 'Georgie', a runaway teenager played by Jena von Brücker, and the people she meets. At the same time, the film serves a diaristic function, documenting the people the director has met and the cities she travelled to, capturing an entire generation of underground performers including Vaginal Davis, Calvin Johnson and Jen Smith. The film took 13 years to make, whenever gb could afford a cartridge of film, the band Kids on TV organised a benefit so that gb could finish the film.

gb has agreed to do a q&a by telephone after the films.


(N.B from Melanie: I ♥ gb and interviewed her for Colouring Outside The Lines and Art XX magazine (before it became Aorta magazine), http://issuu.com/​aorta_magazine/docs/artxx2 See pg 24 onwards for the gb interview, which talks, in part, about The Lollipop Generation, which will be shown as part of this Girl Gang season that Julia has curated for the Star & Shadow)

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Times Square (introduced by Dr. Katherine Farrimond)

7:30 p.m. Sunday September 9 2012

Director: Allan Moyle

Times Square is a film about two teenage runaways Nicky Marotta and Pamela Pearl who form an underground punk rock band The Sleez Sisters who gain a cult following after broadcasting their volatile songs and speeches on LaGuardia radio station. The climax of the film features a rooftop concert in Times Square. The story was based on a diary that director Allan Moyle bought that had been found in a sofa which detailed the life of a girl on the streets. The film is controversial in that the studio cut out much of the lesbian content giving it a disjointed feel that Moyle admitted undermined the integrity of the film. Nonetheless the film has been an inspiration for those involved in riot grrrl (Kathleen Hanna, Bikini Kill) and staple of lesbian and gay film festivals.

This film will be introduced by Dr. Katherine Farrimond who knows her stuff about lesbian representation in film and culture.

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From The Back Of The Room (with Q&A with Amy Oden)

7:30 p.m. Thursday September 13 2012

Director: Amy Oden

Many people have the impression that the Riot Grrrl movement in the mid-90s was the end-all, be-all of female involvement in DIY punk. This is definitely not the case! Plenty of amazing ladies prior to this era paved the way for it, and plenty of amazing ladies continue to help keep DIY together today. This documentary (released in 2011) chronicles the past 30 years of female involvement in DIY punk, and has interviews with over 30 women from across the country, ages 17 to 40. Race, gender, sexuality, motherhood, class, and activism are all addressed in this film, giving a more complete picture of how these women participate in the DIY community, and how it affects their daily lives.

Features: Slade Bellum, Cynthia Connolly, Kathleen Hanna, Kirsten Patches, Laura Pleasants, Cristy Road & Allison Wolfe.

After the film stay for a Q&A by Skype with director Amy Oden.