Synopsis
The Punk Singer (2013) is a documentary about Kathleen Hanna, ready to watch online on iFILM. Director Sini Anderson assembles a portrait of the woman whose scream from the early-1990s punk stage grew into a whole movement.
Hanna started the band Bikini Kill and became the loudest voice of riot grrrl — that wave of girls with guitars who scrawled "slut" across their stomachs to strip the word of its power and demanded space in rooms built to push them out. The film moves from cramped house shows and stapled fanzines to a sudden silence: at one point Hanna simply walked off the stage, and no one knew why. Anderson treats that gap honestly, right down to the late diagnosis of Lyme disease that went unnamed for years.
The people who were there speak on camera: Joan Jett, Kim Gordon, Carrie Brownstein, and Hanna's husband Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys. It works both as the biography of a feminist-punk icon and as a living record of how private rage turns into politics. If you came for '90s music and the story of the DIY scene, this is your film. Stream The Punk Singer (2013) online on iFILM.
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