Post-Punk Double Features:
The Punk Rock Movie +
The Blank Generation
The Silent Movie Theatre – LA
3/5/09
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Don Letts was one of the ultimate British punk insiders, both running the trendy London boutique Acme Attractions and DJing at the Roxy, the short-lived venue where most of the performances in his vital Super-8 document The Punk Rock Movie were recorded.  This, his first film, is an effervescent ground-zero take on one of the hottest flashpoints in all of 20th-century music: that brief, glorious period when the Class of ’77 (The Clash, X-Ray Spex, The Damned et al.) and their fans thought they were poised to smash the state.  The film captures a street-level view of their antics on-stage and off, and the vibe is seismic, as we’re given not only a glimpse of the mythic London punk nightlife, but also a unflinching portrait of the squalor in which the scene existed.  Also screening is The Blank Generation, one of the earliest punk films from another of the first groups of punk filmmakers.  Amos Poe and co-director Ivan Kral’s purposefully rough-hewn document of the nascent NYC scene is centered around now-infamous underground clubs like CBGB, and captures embryonic versions of Talking Heads, Television, Blondie and Ramones in all their grittiness.
The Punk Rock Movie Dir. Don Letts, 1978, digital presentation, 86 min.
The Blank Generation Dirs. Amos Poe & Ivan Kral, 1976, 16mm, 55 min.

The films begin @ 8pm
Tickets – $10
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Purchase tickets here:  http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/56335