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Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché

Friday, October 15th, 2021
8:45 pm - 10:15 pm
Details
UK | 2021 | 96 min | English
Category
2021 VT International Film Festival
Film Type
Documentary
Cost
Early Bird: $10/$5; During Festival: $12/$6; Virtual: $12
Location
Main Street Landing Film House
60 Lake Street, 3rd floor
Burlington, VT

Get Tickets Festival Pass

Director
Celeste Bell
Source
Circle Collective/Utopia
Sponsors
Brian Ortelere & Gretchen Santamour

Also showing: Sun, Oct 17 | 10:00 am – 11:59 pm | Virtual ​| Geoblocked to VT

Tickets are on sale now for Members and Pass purchasers and will be on sale to individual ticket purchasers at 10am, Wednesday, September 29.

Celeste Bell tells the story of her mother, Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, better known by her stage name, Poly Styrene. Styrene sang with a rare prescience about identity, consumerism, postmodernism, and everything she saw unfolding in late 1970s Britain. As the frontwoman of X-Ray Spex, the Anglo-Somali punk musician was also a key inspiration for the riot grrrl and Afropunk movements. Compelling and timely, Poly Styrene encompasses issues of belonging and the complexities of race, mental health and feminism, along with wonderful use of archival footage — especially the scenes of punk rock in mid-1970s London and the rise of the Right and its racism toward Blacks, who at that time came to the U.K. primarily from the ex-British colonies in the Caribbean. The film includes comments from icons such as Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Vivienne Westwood and Neneh Cherry. ~Orly Yadin