How do you make a documentary about your own mother? And how do you tell that story when you grew up in an unstable environment, with a fractured relationship? That’s the challenge that Celeste Bell faced when crafting “Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché,” a feature-length record of the tumultuous life of her mother, influential early punk rocker Poly Styrene.
Poly Styrene blazed onto Britain’s punk rock scene as an angry teenage cyclone, energized by the creativity and freedom of the music while she confronted racism and sexism as a mixed-race Black woman. But the glory days didn’t last long. After her triumphant entry onto the pop charts, she spent years seeking refuge from fame by joining the Hare Krishna movement while battling mental illness. Her sudden fame and challenging later years are artfully brought to life in the documentary that opens in selected U.S. theaters this week,...
Poly Styrene blazed onto Britain’s punk rock scene as an angry teenage cyclone, energized by the creativity and freedom of the music while she confronted racism and sexism as a mixed-race Black woman. But the glory days didn’t last long. After her triumphant entry onto the pop charts, she spent years seeking refuge from fame by joining the Hare Krishna movement while battling mental illness. Her sudden fame and challenging later years are artfully brought to life in the documentary that opens in selected U.S. theaters this week,...
- 2/1/2022
- by Pat Saperstein
- Variety Film + TV
Vivien Goldman was a pioneering London punk journalist in the 1970s, covering bands like the Slits and the Raincoats, dabbling in music with her indie dub records. Now a professor at NYU, Goldman tells a fascinating tale in Revenge of the She-Punks—as she calls it, “A Feminist Punk History from Poly Styrene to Pussy Riot.” It’s the freewheeling tale of how radical women who could barely play their instruments ended up changing the world. “Punk was exciting and it was doable,” the Raincoats’ Gina Birch tells Goldman. “I thought,...
- 5/30/2019
- by Rob Sheffield
- Rollingstone.com
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