Short-Sighted: Girls on Film

Girls Rock!, a documentary about the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls, opens this week in various theaters across the country. It's a welcome antidote to America's toxic girl culture; in contrast to Ashlee Simpson braying about how her extensive plastic surgery made her happier in a recent US Weekly, this film shows real teenage girls learning how to speak up, rock out, and preserve their (delicate, and very precious) self-esteem. It's already playing in New York at the Village East cinemas, and there's a concert as well on Saturday, March 22, at Brooklyn's Union Pool with camp alums Magnolia, Mod Rocket, and Care Bears on Fire. I got a little misty just watching the trailer:
[Videos after the jump]


One of the coolest things about this rock camp is that the girls learn guitar from rock gods like Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein.  While Sleater-Kinney is on "indefinite hiatus," Brownstein has become downright ubiquitous on the web, with an NPR music blog, Monitor Mix, a recent article about the video game Rock Band for Slate, and comedy videos with Saturday Night Live's Fred Armisen under the name Thunderant. Here's their best sketch, The Perfect Song. Brownstein's pretty funny!


If you miss Sleater-Kinney (or the downright exotic sight of a girl playing a guitar in a video, which is too rare these days), here's an oldie-but-goodie from 2000, with Browstein windmilling like a rock god:



The director of that video, Brett Vapnek, has a Vimeo site that's a nice showcase for her array of work, all of which is united by a love of music and art: music videos for Matador bands like Cat Power and Spoon and some great short films. The best short, Fan Mail, (25 minutes, shot on 35 mm) features Brownstein as an art student obsessed with a rock band fronted by Casey Spooner (better known as the brain behind electoclash-era art-rockers Fischerspooner). Soundtracked by Spoon, the 2003 piece just predates MySpace, but Vapnek shows a real eye—the film is lovingly shot and pretty—and a strong knack for getting the awkward interactions of goofball teenage fangirls and rock bands just right. 



Even though Brownstein may have hung up the axe for now, there's still waves of rocking girls coming in her wake. One of the most fun, by far, is Jemina Pearl from Nashville punk band Be Your Own Pet. Dorky teenagers when their first album was released, their new album, Get Awkward! just came out, inspiring the always-apt Clap Clap blog to declare that they captured the early snotty punk energy of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs by "writing punk versions of High School Musical."



To promote the new album, they released a good gory (and campy)  video for one song, "The Kelly Affair," featuring the platinum-blonde Jemina dressed up as a nurse, but a quick YouTube search brings up something weirder and awesomer: a fan-made video juxtaposing BYOP with Freaks, Eraserhead, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It goes together surprisingly well.  FYI: If a quick shot of Brigitte Bardot's butt is going to get you in trouble, it's not safe for work. After all, darling, it is from a French film.