Grrrl Love and Revolution: Riot Grrrl NYC

Director Abby Moser compiles new and archival material for this sympathetic if somewhat unstructured profile of the New York chapter of the Olympia, WA-bred riot grrrl movement. Captions identify most performers, and the camerawork—capturing interviews and meetings from the 1990s—sports a non-professional look that seems to be in keeping with the D.I.Y. spirit of the genre. Sara Marcus (Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution) explains that riot grrrl began as a response to the lack of female voices in punk, creating a space to speak about rape and sexual abuse in songs and fanzines. Marcus and other writers, including Evelyn McDonnell (Mamarama: A Memoir of Sex, Kids and Rock 'n' Roll) and Gayle Wald (who penned the essay Smells Like Teen Spirit: Riot Grrrls, Revolution, and Independent Rock), note that commercialization set in when the mainstream media took notice, leading to "girl power" acts such as the Spice Girls, who had little relation to the movement's guiding principles, such as self-distribution and free speech. Grrrl Love and Revolution makes a case for riot grrrl as a necessary sociopolitical phenomenon—essentially an extension of the feminism of the 1960s and 1970s—but the music sometimes works against the message in acts who prioritized self-expression over any other considerations, with the exception of top-tier outfits such as Bikini Kill, who could write actual songs. A strong optional purchase. Aud: C, P. (K. Fennessy)