User Reviews

Really good interviews and live performances but as a documentary this did a really poor job at informing me how was talking and what was the band that was playing.

Famous and forgotten female singers and musicians talk about women (themselves and others) in rock. When does this happen? The film doesn't tell us. Who are the bands and the talking heads? We'll be out of luck if we don't otherwise know them, as the film rarely identifies anybody. The date and place of any live footage: this information, too, is missing. A dozen or so captions would have increased the value of this film enormously.

Of the acts active in 1980, Patti Smith, The B-52's, or even The Go-Go's would have been interesting, but I guess the director and crew didn't have much time and shot whoever they could.

All in all, the missing facts let down a good music documentary with some historical value.

Shot in 1980 by the German team responsible for 'Punk in London' and 'Punk In England' DVDs, this 38-minute documentary appears as an extra on the latter. Just as well, because this 'extra' is a far better artifact than the misleadingly titled main feature (which actually features mostly post-punk ska and pop acts). Canvassing a selection of female musicians squarely at the forefront of the post-punk tide, director Wolfgang Buld finds plenty of restless, spiky personalities and intriguing approaches to music and performance to build a fine documentary from. Metallers Girlschool, tribal dub merchants the Slits, No Wave experimentalists Mania D, and operatic rock diva Nina Hagen are all featured in live performances, but best of all is a supremely sarcastic Siouxsie, filmed and interviewed on tour in Berlin. The excellent Banshees live footage is a small treasure trove for their fans, and worth the modest price of the entire DVD alone. As pointed out by the interviewees themselves, the idea of making a documentary about 'women in rock' was becoming redundant in the post-punk environment, and indeed the stylistic breadth of the music on offer here bears this out. Even so, we can thank Buld now for going to the trouble. If you're at all interested in the post-punk era or the history of female rock musicians, you'll seriously want this. It's a fascinating time capsule with some fantastic live footage, and hey, you get a similar but less interesting (though still worthy) 'main feature' into the bargain.