GB Jones is a musician, filmmaker and artist based in Toronto, Canada and active in the queer/underground scene there since the early 80s. Her many projects over the years have included co-editing the seminal queer zine J.D.s with Bruce LaBruce and later Double Bill with friends and bandmates from her all-girl band Fifth Column. She has also appropriated Tom of Finland art into her own series of Tom Girls drawings. Over the years she has also produced a handful of low-budget, high-drama, super fun Super 8 films including The Troublemakers, The Yo-Yo Gang and her most recent (yet not so recent) film The Lollipop Generation.
I first met GB in 1993 as a cheeky teenager living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania putting out a photocopied zine called Beri-Beri. I started a postal correspondence with GB Jones culminating in her inviting me around to her place for tea, conversation and a mixtape during a chance visit to Canada. She put together a compilation of girl punk sounds that would guide me for years to come and indirectly lead to the work I do now. We returned to our transcontinental written dialouge as I asked her a few questions recently about The Lollipop Generation, a film project started in 1995 and completed in 2008…
JW: What was the intention of Lollipop Generation when you began filming and how has the project changed over the years?
GBJ: I first started filming when I was on tour with Fifth Column and it wasn’t for any particular movie, it was just to be able to remember all the places we were going. So, when I say it took 13 years to make the movie, it includes this early period before I even knew I was making it!
It was after I got home and looked at all the footage that I got the idea for a story about a girl, played by Jena von Brücker, who has to leave home and hitchhike across the country to a big city and live on the street, where her and her friends are preyed upon by an evil pornographer. Then I started filming for real, with producers and everything, until the producers backed out and one of the lead actors left. At that point, more than half the movie had been shot and the story had to be totally re-written around what was already done.
I didn’t have any money so I had to keep saving up to get each roll of film and get it developed. That’s when Jane Danger joined the cast and saved the movie! She was so great. She was always ready to dye her hair bright pink and come up to Toronto to film, so I kept writing more and more scenes for her. It was in the 2000’s that I started filming all the people from Toronto, like Joel Gibb and Scott Treleaven and Paul P. and Andrew Cecil and all the people who came to visit, like Anonymous Boy and Gary Fembot. The story would change each time someone came to visit, so I could put them in the film. But the intention always stayed the same.
I always wanted to make a movie about kids who live on the street because when I was really young I had met all these kids downtown who were living on the street and they became my friends. Most of the things that happen in the film are things that really did happen to them.
At the same time, I really wanted to document all the amazing artists and actors and musicians and filmmakers I know in all the different scenes they are a part of, so I put them all in the film. And in some ways, it was fortuitous that the film took so long to make because it gave me a chance to really capture a whole era on film.
JW: Has it taken on more or less significance (to yourself, those involved, the gay scene) during that time?
The Lollipop Generation has significance for me because it’s really like home movies of all the places I traveled to, and all the people I met, people who I had wrote to and visited and traded zines with. I like that it captures so many of the people from zines and bands and movies from that whole period of time.
I don’t think “The Lollipop Generation” has any signicance to the gay scene. No one involved was part of that scene and I don’t think they’re really interested in all our zines and bands and art and movies.
JW: How important is the medium of super 8 film to your work? What is your relationship with digital interactive, instantaneous on-line media such as YouTube and blogging?
GBJ: I like Super 8 because it’s so easy to use. You can’t really make a mistake with it, and if you do it’s even better. In “The Lollipop Generation” I put in all my mistakes. Everything that people think are mistakes are good. That’s my message.
I have a You Tube channel so obviously I do have a relationship with it, but it’s love/hate. It’s great that people finally have the chance to see ‘underground’ film and videos, but these sites are often highly censored and rigidly formatted. It’s a shame that some people feel they must create work that’s designed to fit the format of these sites. If you can be subversive about it, though, you can get your message across to a lot of people. With blogging it’s probably easier. People just really have to remember to go to their “search preferences” and click the ‘Safe Search’ filter off!
The Lollipop Generation premiered in Toronto in Spring 2008 and is currently screening at cinemas and festivals around the world, including the London premiere at the Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in April 2009.
The 8th of March is International Women’s Day. To insure a good marching beat and help lay down the soundtrack to the revolution, I’m recognizing the day in the spirit of Emma Goldman (”if I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution”) by offering you links to a selection of radio shows around the world hosted by women and featuring playlists of female led punk/indie/electro/dance bands. If you have a girlpunk radio show or webcast I’ve overlooked, go on and drop me a comment with the details.
top row: Gudrun Gut, Karin Luner / middle row: Bettina Köster, Gudrun Gut, Karin Luner (l-r) / bottom row: Eva Gössling
Mania D. was a short-lived band, formed in West Berlin in 1979 when Beate Bartel and Eva Gössling came together with Karin Luner (a.k.a. Johnny Bass) and Bettina Köster and Gudrun Gut, owners of the clothing store Eisengrau. The women started playing together and had their first public appearance at the “Wuppertal-Total” exhibition at the Nordstadt Galerie Kollektiv in September 1979 under the moniker Johnny Bass-Eisengrau-Mania D. The film”Fashion Interlection” was created for this event and although the film itself has been lost, the pictures shown here are stills from the shooting.
They released one 7″ single, Herzschlag, on Monogam Records with Lisa Rosen (the band’s New York singer) before breaking up in December 1980.
I offer you today a clip of live performances and interviews from the 1980 documentary film Girls Bite Back by Wolfgang Büld. The film, which also features footage from Nina Hagen, The Slits, Girlschool, and Siouxsie & Banshees, was released on video in 1992, no word of a DVD release any time soon…
UPDATE: this blog entry was updated in February 201o with images submitted by Eva Gössling and corrections from Beate Bartel. The pictures above were taken in September 1979, during the filming of Karin Luner’s Super 8 film “Fashion Intellection”.
A good mixtape is a narrative, bringing together a well selected series of songs in a seamless progression. Musicophilia has posted a three part mix of post-punk female led bands and it’s a suitable primer - inspiring, comprehensive and lots of fun. The songs and bands included on the mixes are listed below. For full track listing info, liner notes and anecdotes check out Musicophilia’s blog entries (linked below) and download the ca. 45 minute mixes direct from his site.
Hmm, maybe I should start doing this mix thing again…
Link: The Young Lady’s Post-Punk Handbook, Volume 1 01 Laurie Anderson - “Example #22″
02 Delta 5 - “Innocenti”
03 The Go-Go’s - “Automatic”
04 Raincoats - “Red Shoes”
05 X - “The Once Over Twice”
06 Flying Lizards - “Her Story”
07 Jane Hudson - “Mystery Chant”
08 Crass - “Smother Love”
09 Blondie - “Heart of Glass”
10 Sonic Youth - “I Dreamed I Dream”
11 Selecter - “On My Radio”
12 Marine Girls - “A Place in the Sun”
13 Lizzy Mercier-Descloux - “Funky Stuff”
14 Weekend - “Nostalgia”
Link: The Young Lady’s Post-Punk Handbook, Volume 2
01 Family Fodder - “Savoir Faire”
02 Au Pairs - “It’s Obvious”
03 Chris & Cosey - “This Is Me”
04 Plastics - “Back to Wigtown”
05 Pylon - “Cool”
06 The Slits - “Love und Romance”
07 Siouxsie & The Banshees - “Lunar Camel”
08 The B-52’s - “52 Girls”
09 Swamp Children - “Boy”
10 Y Pants - “That’s The Way Boys Are”
11 Antena - “Camino Del Sol”
12 Vivien Goldman - “Launderette”
13 Cocteau Twins - “But I’m Not”
14 Thick Pigeon - “Jess + Bart (Mix)”
Link: The Young Lady’s Post-Punk Handbook, Volume 3 01 Creatures - “Miss The Girl”
02 Eurythmics - “Sing-Sing”
03 Phew - “Doze”
04 E.S.G. - “Moody”
05 Maximum Joy - “Searching for a Feeling”
06 Los Microwaves - “La Voix Humane”
07 Ludus - “My Cherry is in Sherry”
08 Crash Course in Science - “Cardboard Lamb”
09 Grace Jones - “Nightclubbing”
10 Lydia Lunch - “Gloomy Sunday”
11 Marilyn & The Movie Stars - “So Disgraceful”
12 Young Marble Giants - “Music for Evenings”
13 The Pretenders - “Lovers of Today”
This week I’m highlighting the film Born in Flames with an excerpt and an interview with the creator Lizzie Borden. There’s no reason you should not own the DVD re-issue. Really.
“Born in Flames opens ten years after a social democratic revolution when America is starting to swing to the right again. Women, lesbians and minorities who were instrumental in the transformation of society are losing their jobs: a familiar last-hired /first-fired scenario which feeds their doubts about the practical impact of this ‘revolution.’
In this her first narrative feature film, editor and ex-art critic/painter Lizzie Borden creates a kaleidoscope portrait of women splintered into dozens of different political factions. On Phoenix Radio, Honey talks, offering politics based on her intuitions and background. On Radio Regazza, Adele Bertei raps for the people who will chase any excitement. And the pages of the Socialist Youth Review speak in measured bourgeois intellectual phrases, defending the regime and avoiding the deficiencies of social-democratic policies on women and other “out” groups.
As music by The Bloods, Ibis and Red Crayola pounds, events overtake these groups: the Women’s Army- the only faction without a media voice - lays plans for an open revolt…” (Jan Oxenberg & Lucy Winer - The Independent, November 1983)
About ten years ago I had the fortune to meet a woman named Sarah Jacobson, an independent filmmaker, who at that time was touring the US promoting and screening her film “Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore.” I saw her again in 2001 at the Ladyfest in Chicago, the last time we would meet before her tragic passing in early 2004 of cancer. Not only did she inspire me with DIY attitude, tenacity and talent, Sarah also introduced me to a little lost gem of a film from 1981 called “Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains.” She carried a copy of it with her and screened it before her film whenever she got the chance.
Despite Sarah’s endorsement and a growing cult following, the film languished in obscurity - that is until recently, when Rhino re-released it on DVD in autumn 2008. Directed by Lou Adler (Up In Smoke) and produced by Joe Roth, the film stars Diane Lane and Laura Dern as members of The Stains, along with Steve Jones and Paul Cook of The Sex Pistols, Clash bassist Paul Simonon and Fee Waybill of the Tubes.
Surly and sexy in one of her earliest starring roles, a teenage Lane is the prototypical riot grrl. Sporting a skunk hairdo, she verbally assaults the audience and leads her legion of adoring young female fans in the chant, “We don’t put out!” Check out the clip below, depicting the band’s first gig ever, then go and see the entire film in full length. Join the professionals!
