Arne Johnson Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Snag This: Girls Rock!
Filed under: Documentary », Independent », Music & Musicals », Home Entertainment », Cinematical Indie », Trailers and Clips »
She may look like she's 'just' a girl singer, but an electric guitar stands at the ready just behind her waiting for the moment when this ... girl ... will ... rock ... !!! I've been itching to see Girls Rock! ever since I caught a trailer for it eons ago; something about its rough, DIY musical spirit was very appealing. Now you too can watch Girls Rock!, which recently became available for free online streaming, courtesy of our friends at SnagFilms.
The starting point for the documentary is a trip to the annual "Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls" in Portland, Oregon, observed our own Jeffrey M. Anderson. "For their week in camp, the girls, ranging in age from 8 to 18, must form bands, write songs, learn to play instruments, learn to play together and perform their original songs for a crowd of 700 by the last day. ... The best thing Girls Rock! has going for it is the fact that it discards the stagnant PBS documentary formula in favor of a more homemade, exploratory feel. And though it has roughly the same depth and breadth as a 3-minute song, it also has a real rock 'n' roll attitude."
Monika Bartyzel noted the surprising fact that the doc is directed by two men, Arne Johnson and Shane King. "Yet it doesn't really matter," she wrote in her review, "because they understand their subject perfectly. With the driving sounds of notable female rockers from Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon to Veruca Salt, the documentary is an intensely intimate, yet respectful, portrait of the pressures and releases of a group of dynamic young women." More information about the film is available at SnagFilms.
Watch Girls Rock in its entirety -- absolutely free -- after the jump!
Review: Girls Rock!
Filed under: Documentary », Music & Musicals », New Releases », Theatrical Reviews », New in Theaters »
Rock 'n' roll in all its forms has always had an enormous power. As soon as white artists began adapting its catchy rhythms for the mainstream in the 1950s, conservatives began barking and howling, calling it "devil music" and trying to ban it and censor it every which way. Jerry Lee Lewis always believed that he was going to pay with hellfire and damnation, and played that much harder in spite of it. And each time the music grew too comfortable, someone came along with a louder, more ferocious idea, like Jimi Hendrix's feedback, or punk, or hip-hop. The musicians can seem godlike, with their simplified, direct line to poetry, sexual energy, anger, and overall physical, emotional release. Because of this, rock is self-propagating; there's no shortage of young, insecure musicians who yearn for this same kind of power.
This goes double for girls. There's a great list of girl rockers in history: The Ronettes, Patti Smith, Liz Phair, P.J. Harvey, Debbie Harry, The Pretenders, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Go-Gos, The Bangles, Kim Gordon (of Sonic Youth), Lauryn Hill, Sleater-Kinney, The Donnas and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, plus many bands of mixed sex (X, Talking Heads, Smashing Pumpkins, The Velvet Underground, etc.). But for some reason, girls still have a hard time getting into this boy's club. These days it helps if you have a body like Fergie's, but that doesn't exactly send a hopeful message to those same young, insecure, up-and-comers. And so the new documentary Girls Rock!, directed by Shane King and Arne Johnson, begins by taking a trip to the annual "Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls" in Portland, Oregon and comes away with something a bit more.
'Girls Rock!' Helmer Tackles Truth in Documentaries for Filmmaker Mag
Filed under: Documentary », Independent », Newsstand », Cinematical Indie »
Perusing my rss feed today, I came across an interesting scanned article over at Jennifer Venditti's Billy the Kid blog. First, if you've been lurking around Cinematical Indie, it's no surprise that I love Venditti's feature documentary debut. I reviewed the film from Hot Docs, have mentioned Venditti in a few posts, and had a chat with her about her take on indie film. Now she's got a Filmmaker Magazine article up, which was written by Arne Johnson the co-helmer of another favorite 2007 Hot Docs film, Girls Rock!In the piece, Johnson tackles the extreme pressures documentary filmmakers face when it comes to the troubles of truth. He cites his own struggles with the kick-ass tykes in Rock!, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's challenges with Jesus Camp, and Venditti's struggles with Billy criticism -- focusing on the Variety review I posted about in May. It hits a lot of bases, from the need to edit quotes in interviews, or be faced with a terrible-in-text sea of "ums" and awkwardness, to the discussion of whether documentarians taint their source material, or just present a truth that some viewers aren't appreciative of.
Johnson includes a quote from Judy Irving about subjectivity that I found particularly interesting: "When someone throws that at you, like that your film does not have journalistic integrity, or it's not objective, what they're really saying is "I don't agree with you. My subjectivity is different from your subjectivity and I wish you had portrayed what I feel about the subject rather than what you feel." It's a worthy thought -- complaints always come from those who disagree, so do those who agree turn a blind eye to subjectivity, or think that a film covers the bases? And overall, what do you think of this whole argument over truth, subjectivity, and documentary filmmaking?
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