Ultis’ search for his friend, the punk fan Gino, leads him from the streets of Mexico City to the cemetery. Both were, like many of their friends, part of the gang Los Panchitos, which caused a stir in the 1980s and quickly confronted repression. The Mexican director Gustavo Gamou presents a group of aging punks who wrestle with the loss of friends, the health consequences of their lives, and a city that has stubbornly moved on with time past them. Gamou’s documentary Sex Panchitos is a multilayered portrait that shows that punk is not a question of age (October 25, with English subtitles, plus short films).
This year the Punk Film Festival marks its twelfth edition, and once again combines concerts and live performances with films. It begins with two concert evenings at Badehaus (Pre-Opening on October 19, 7 pm with Faintest Idea and KMan & The 45s) and at Schokoladen (October 20, 7 pm with M.O.R.A. + Goatburner), most of the film programs run at Lichtblick Kino, with a side trip for short film programs to Syndikat and Café Lutetia. As in previous years, the festival—with its modest dozen feature films and four short-film programs—invites a small journey to punk worldwide.
The festival opens with Diggen, a portrait of the former frontman of the band Slime, Dirk Jora “Diggen.” The film allows Jora to speak about his politically engaged musical life, from the beginnings in the anti-nuclear movement to punk and football. The opening program is completed by three short films.
Directly afterwards runs Ara Ball’s punk coming-of-age road trip L’Ouragan F.Y.T., in which the young Delphis, known as “The Hurricane,” in early 1990s Montreal, on the run from his family and the circumstances, finds himself.
The musician and artist Ivette Spradlin interviews in The Wild Wild West End Oral History former tenants who, in the late 1990s, expanded a warehouse complex in Atlanta into a vast free space where they lived, where there was room for concerts and parties, and a halfpipe stood next to the stage. Spradlin’s film is an oral history of the place, but also of the changes that Atlanta as a city and the participants have undergone individually.
The Malaysian documentary filmmaker and journalist Yihwen Chen portrays in Queer as Punk the LGBT-punk band “Shh…Diam!”, which with a huge dose of charm and steadfastness navigates a tightrope in a country where there are no LGBT rights, fighting for visibility. Queer as Punk is a complex, clever, and despite the seriousness, a little gem of punk documentary cinema that spreads good mood.
This year as well, the Punk Film Festival Berlin again presents the opportunity to explore the full diversity of punk’s present and to let the music carry you out of your cinema seat. Conveniently, there is sometimes another concert right afterward.
