PUNK AT 50
3 films in this collection
Half a century ago, The Damned and the Sex Pistols released their first singles, and everything shifted. A nihilistic and violent reaction to the grim artifice of late capitalism, social conformity, and lost future.
This year, The Nickel will explore punk filmmaking in all its forms, from raw DIY independent filmmaking to features that incapsulate the chaotic refusal of order.
Punk cinema is less about style than stance. It refuses polish, refuses comfort, refuses explanation. Fifty years in, these films are still raw and alive.
This year, The Nickel will explore punk filmmaking in all its forms, from raw DIY independent filmmaking to features that incapsulate the chaotic refusal of order.
Punk cinema is less about style than stance. It refuses polish, refuses comfort, refuses explanation. Fifty years in, these films are still raw and alive.
THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILISATION
(1981, USA, Penelope Spheeris)
100 mins18
PUNK AT 50 presents:
Filmed in the clubs, rehearsal rooms, and cramped apartments of late-1970s Los Angeles, Spheeris’s documentary embeds itself within the city’s punk underground at a moment of raw volatility. Interviews with musicians, fans, and fringe figures intertwine with blistering live performances by Black Flag, X, the Germs, Fear, and others. Through irritation, humour, nihilism, and defiance, the film captures a subculture wrestling with alienation, economic precarity, and a sense of improvisational community built from noise and shared discontent.
A foundational work of music documentary, The Decline of Western Civilization rejects nostalgia in favour of immediacy, observing a scene before mythology could calcify around it. Spheeris’s direct, unadorned approach foregrounds environment and attitude over narrative, offering a sociological snapshot of Los Angeles during a cultural rupture. The result is a stark, unvarnished record of a movement defined by energy, instability, and the refusal to conform.
Filmed in the clubs, rehearsal rooms, and cramped apartments of late-1970s Los Angeles, Spheeris’s documentary embeds itself within the city’s punk underground at a moment of raw volatility. Interviews with musicians, fans, and fringe figures intertwine with blistering live performances by Black Flag, X, the Germs, Fear, and others. Through irritation, humour, nihilism, and defiance, the film captures a subculture wrestling with alienation, economic precarity, and a sense of improvisational community built from noise and shared discontent.
A foundational work of music documentary, The Decline of Western Civilization rejects nostalgia in favour of immediacy, observing a scene before mythology could calcify around it. Spheeris’s direct, unadorned approach foregrounds environment and attitude over narrative, offering a sociological snapshot of Los Angeles during a cultural rupture. The result is a stark, unvarnished record of a movement defined by energy, instability, and the refusal to conform.
Upcoming Screenings
BLONDE DEATH (ON VHS)
(1984, USA, James Robert Baker)
98 mins18
Shot on consumer-grade video and circulating for decades as a near-mythic underground tape, Blonde Death follows the runaway odyssey of Tammy, a teenage misfit fleeing an abusive home with two queer outsiders who christen themselves her new family. Their improvised road trip blends impulsive romance, petty crime, and manic self-invention, gradually collapsing into violence as the trio drifts further from stability. The film’s messy exuberance is threaded with a growing sense of doom, capturing the volatility of youth pushed to the margins.
A seminal artifact of queer DIY cinema, Blonde Death fuses melodrama, punk energy, and camp excess with unexpectedly sharp social commentary. Director James Robert Baker — better known for his incendiary fiction — uses the limitations of shot-on-video production to amplify the film’s immediacy and emotional rawness. The result is a rare, transgressive work whose jagged form reflects the precarity, rebellion, and desperation of its characters, standing at the intersection of outsider art and queer counterculture.
A seminal artifact of queer DIY cinema, Blonde Death fuses melodrama, punk energy, and camp excess with unexpectedly sharp social commentary. Director James Robert Baker — better known for his incendiary fiction — uses the limitations of shot-on-video production to amplify the film’s immediacy and emotional rawness. The result is a rare, transgressive work whose jagged form reflects the precarity, rebellion, and desperation of its characters, standing at the intersection of outsider art and queer counterculture.
Upcoming Screenings
DOA: A RIGHT OF PASSAGE
(1980, , Lech Kowalski)
96 mins18
Filmed across the late 1970s, D.O.A.: A Right of Passage documents the early international eruption of punk with an emphasis on the Sex Pistols’ chaotic and short-lived U.S. tour. Interspersed with candid interviews, club performances, and street-level encounters, the film captures a moment when punk existed as raw impulse rather than codified style: a collision of youthful antagonism, cultural anxiety, and institutional backlash. Alongside the Pistols, Kowalski’s camera turns to other emerging acts — including The Dead Boys and Generation X — as well as the fans and detractors who defined the scene’s volatile public face.
Kowalski’s approach is observational and unvarnished, favouring immediacy over narrative cohesion. The result is a documentary that functions less as a polished historical record than as a sociological snapshot of subcultural energy at breaking point — a portrait of a movement still forming its identity in real time, as commercial forces and moral panic gathered at its edges.
Kowalski’s approach is observational and unvarnished, favouring immediacy over narrative cohesion. The result is a documentary that functions less as a polished historical record than as a sociological snapshot of subcultural energy at breaking point — a portrait of a movement still forming its identity in real time, as commercial forces and moral panic gathered at its edges.