Doc’n Roll Festival 2024 – preview

If you love music as well as films (which is very much my case), the imminent arrival of the 11th edition of the Doc’n Roll Festival should not slip away from your radar. Taking place from 24th October to the 10th of November 2024, this year’s line up of music documentaries continues the festival’s mission to champion the marginalised voices and the DIY spirit as well as give platform to ‘the trailblazers, transgressors and inspirational outliers’ that they showcase. This year’s programme consists of 26 feature films, including 4 world and 7 international premieres and will take place during 80 UK-wide events.

The Doc’n Roll Festival Jury Award For Documentary Of The Year will be awarded to one of the below features:

Teaches of Peaches
S/He Is Still Her/e – The Official Genesis P-Orridge Documentary
Swamp Dog Gets His Pool Painted
Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story
Scream of My Blood: A Gogol Bordello Story
Hakeem

And the Jury this year is comprised of inspiring music and film luminaries:

Caroline Catz (actress and director)
DJ Paulette (DJ and broadcaster)
Adam Thorsmark (CPH:DOX Film Festival programmer)
Daniel Dylan Wray (music journalist)
Nihal Arthanayake (broadcaster)
Günseli Yalcinkaya (Features editor, Dazed Digital)

Screenings will take place across multiple venues and locations, from London to Dublin via Cardiff, Birmingham, Nottingham, Coventry, Edinburgh and more – you can browse the full listings and organise them by film, date or location here. It is packed full of goodness, so allow me to point you in the direction (pun unintended) of some standout docs to check out.

TEACHES OF PEACHES, dirs. Judy Landkammer & Phillipp Fussenegger, Germany 2024m 102 mins

This documentary follows the journey of Merrill Nisker to becoming Peaches, the feminist musician, producer, performance artist, cultural powerhouse and LGBTQIA+ rights activist. Filmed on her 2022 tour and weaving together new and archival footage, the doc opens the backstage door to the world of Peaches to chronicle how she challenged stereotypes over the course of two decades. I have been lucky enough to see Peaches perform in Belgium forever ago and it was a formative experience – I will be lining up for this one for sure.

The film is one of the contenders to the Jury Award and will have multiple screenings across the UK, including one with a Q&A with Peaches herself at The Barbican Cinema in London on 24th October [tickets here].

SINCE YESTERDAY: THE UNTOLD STORY OF SCOTLAND’S GIRL BANDS, dirs. Carla J. Easton, Blair Young 2024, UK, 95 mins

A very LOUD WOMEN-coded feature documentary unearthing Scottish girl bands from the 1960s onwards, who were (and often continue to be) ignored by the (still) male-dominated music industry. Titled after Strawberry Switchblade‘s only hit single ‘Since Yesterday’, the film follows bands such as The Ettes, His Latest Flame, The Hedrons and more to give an insight into the struggles those pioneering women faced in the industry and asks a simple question: why do we even use a term ‘girl band’ rather than just… a band.

The film will have a screening and a UK premiere with Q&A at RIO Cinema in Dalston, London, on 30th October [tickets here].

PRETTY UGLY: THE STORY OF THE LUNACHICKS, Dir. Ilya Chaiken, US, 2024, 91 mins

Lunachicks are a punk-rock quartet from New York who formed in 1987 as teenagers and the documentary centres on their monumental reunion in 2019 to write their (now critically acclaimed) memoir ‘Fallopian Rhapsody’ 30 years after their debut. Lunachicks inspired generations of women and the New York City music scene in general, their achievements include being one of only three female bands at the Warped Tour ’99. The doc premiered at the DOC NYC Festival in 2023, where it was a runner up for the Audience Award. We meet Gina, Theo, Squid and Sindi as they begin to write their memoir and the film is peppered with archival footage and interviews from Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie, Dexter Holland from The Offspring and Jennifer Finch of L7 to name a few.

There with be a live Q&A screening at Rio Cinema in Dalston on 26th October [tickets here] with another screening with zoom Q&A at Hackney Picturehouse on 10th November [tickets here].

1-800-ON-HER-OWN: ANI DIFRANCO, Dir. Dana Flor, US, 2024, 77 mins

Ani DiFranco was called ‘My hero’ by none other than Prince himself. She is a feminist punk-folk pioneer and a founder of Righteous Babe Records, a “woman-run non-corporate queer-happy” label she founded in 1989 at the ripe age of 19 to release her own music outside of the bounds of the hostile music industry, she later expanded it to create space for others on the margins. The documentary focuses its lens on Ani’s life as a passionate activist, rock star and mother and the struggles of marrying those identities while remaining a fiercely independent icon and a force of nature.

The film will have its UK premiere with a Q&A at Rio Cinema in Dalston, London on 27th October [tickets here].

ANY OTHER WAY: THE JACKIE SHANE STORY, dirs. Michael Mabbott, Lucah Rosenberg-Lee, Canada, 2024, 98 mins

Jackie Shane rotoscope, image courtesy of Banger Films

Jackie Shane was a trailblazing transgender black soul singer who rose to fame, suddenly disappeared from public view at the edge of stardom in the 1960s and mysteriously resurged 40 years later. This critically acclaimed documentary (100% on Rotten Tomatoes!) gives her the opportunity to share the untold story of her life and career through never-before heard phone conversations. Due to the lack of video footage of Shane herself, the producers use animation, specifically superimposing photos of Jackie Shane over rotoscoped footage of drag artist Makayla Couture. Executive produced by Elliot Page, the doc premiered at 2024 SXSW Festival and won the DGC Ontario Special Jury Prize for the Best Canadian Feature Documentary at Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival as well as Out In The Silence Award at Frameline Festival, which is awarded to an outstanding film project that highlights brave acts of LGBTQ+ visibility in places where such acts are not common.

The film is also in the running for the Doc’n Roll Jury Award and will have a screening with a zoom Q&A at The Barbican Cinema in London on 2nd November [tickets here].

S/HE IS STILL HER/E – THE OFFICIAL GENESIS P-ORRIDGE DOC, dir. David Charles Rodrigues, US, 2024, 98 mins

‘There is always a very thin line between jail and creativity’ says Genesis P-Orridge, a pioneering musician, avant-garde artist and gender revolutionary at the end of the trailer to the documentary offering a deeply intimate insight into their life as they were facing mortality. Manchester-born, Genesis P-Orridge dropped out of the University of Hull to eventually move to London to a counter-cultural commune. Together with Cosey Fanni Tutti, they founded COUM Transmissions, a music and performance collective active between 1969 – 1676 and inspired by the surrealist and Dada movements, the Beat Generation and underground music. P-Orridge and Tutti later became the founding members of pioneering industrial band Throbbing Gristle. The documentary chronicles P-Orridge’s extraordinary life through the use of archival and new interview footage, with the new portion largely lensed as Genesis was sitting for a portrait by artist Clarity Haynes and after their terminal leukaemia diagnosis.

Another one of Jury Award nominated films, it will have a premiere with Q&A at the BFI in London on the 25th October [tickets here] with further screenings in Dublin and at the ICA in London.