Instrument

The documentary follows Fugazi across more than ten years, from 1987 to 1998. There is concert footage, rehearsal recordings, scenes shot on the road, and conversations with the audience. There are interviews with the band as well, but the film does not put them at the centre as explanation. Jem Cohen shot it. He and the band's founder Ian MacKaye had met at the same high school in Washington in the seventies, and the absence of distance in the film comes from that. The edit took five years and was done by Cohen together with the band. The material was shot on super eight, sixteen millimetre and video, and the three formats sitting side by side determine the texture. It takes its name from a song of the same title on the band's 1993 album. How Fugazi worked is the real subject: their own label, ticket prices kept low, all ages shows, and their refusal to advertise. These are not discussed, they are shown being done. The conversations with the audience are the strangest passages; people describe what they want from the band and most of them contradict each other. Who it is for: viewers who like the history of independent music and documentary in unusual forms. Who it is not for: the structure is loose, there is no chronology, and there is no entry point for a viewer who does not know the band.