The Punk Singer

Kathleen Hanna founded the band Bikini Kill at the start of the nineties. At shows she asked the girls to come to the front and said so into the microphone. She made zines, wrote manifestos and stood at the centre of the movement called riot grrrl. Then she made different music with Le Tigre. In 2005 she stopped performing. She told nobody why and disappeared for years. The documentary gives the reason for that silence: she was ill, no diagnosis could be reached, and that it was Lyme disease was understood much later. Sini Anderson directs. Kathleen Hanna, Adam Horovitz, Joan Jett and Kim Gordon are among those speaking. The documentary is rich in archive; concert recordings from the nineties and pages of zines are used directly. The matter it treats is how a movement was built; riot grrrl is described as a form of organising rather than a musical genre. Hanna's relation with the press is a section of its own; for a period she stopped speaking to journalists and the reason is shown. The illness carries the second half and the course of treatment is not hidden. The documentary also touches on the arguments inside the movement. Its limit is distance; the narrative stands close to its subject and the critical view is weak. Who it is for: anyone curious about music documentary and independent culture of the nineties. Who it is not for: the tone of admiration dominates, the structure is conventional, and it moves fast for anyone new to the subject.