March 07 2008 - After a brief round on the festival circuit Girls Rock!, opens in seven cities across the U.S. this week. The documentary film follows four girls of different ages from different parts of the country through their first year at Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls in Portland, Oregon. Check out the trailer now:
A raucous tale of female empowerment, the documentary became a three-year saga for Arne Johnson (co-director, co-editor, producer) and Shane King (co-director, co-editor, cinematographer), whose first collaboration was a Super 8mm movie in seventh grade.
Everyone knows boys easily conceive of themselves as budding rock stars when all they have is a few instruments, an amp, a total lack of musical knowledge and delusions of talent. Girls, the filmmakers learned, do not. In tracing the path of the leads through the transformative experience of rock camp, the filmmakers got a real education in what it’s like out there for girls. They discovered, among other things, what many books and studies have already described— that girls struggle with a bewildering and heartbreaking array of challenges to their self-image.
During the film’s long editing process, the girls who emerged as the center of the story include: Laura, a 15-year-old articulate Korean adoptee obsessed with heavy metal; Misty, a 17-year-old bass player emerging from a life of addiction, homelessness and gang activity; Palace, an adorable 8-year-old with a heavy metal sneer, and Amelia, an eccecntric 8-year-old writing a 14-song cycle about her dog Pippi. Over the course of a week, they learn to play instruments (or play them better), form bands, write songs and perform before an audience of hundreds.
Seeing this film for the music, however, is missing the point. Tackling the myriad of tasks, the featured girls and the rest of the camp engage in an experiment in empowerment that leaves no-one unchanged.
What at first seems simple - rock camp looks sort of like a cooler version of that nerd staple, band camp - proves to be extremely powerful. Learning to be comfortable with who you are - hardly an easy task for even the most self-assured girl - is what rock camp is really all about. Carrie Brownstein, guitarist for the indie-rock band Sleater-Kinney and one of the camp’s teachers, stresses to aspiring young musicians that they really can do it their way, not MTV’s.
Without being dull, the film intersperses footage from the camp with animated sequences that highlight relevant statistics about girls. It’s not a secret that ridiculously unrealistic female body images permeate the media or that girls’ confidence drops precipitously during puberty, but those facts take on new resonance when shown next to interviews with the girls about their experiences. Through video diaries, verite footage, revealing interviews, and issue-driven animations, filmgoers will transform right along with the girls.
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