Beijing Punk/Kiss Bill reviews
Review by on 29 Sep 2010
Chinese punks! What a great film - glad to have discovered it at the film festival, thank you.
Review by on 27 Sep 2010
Brilliantly conceived and produced film, provides stunning insights into the Chinese sub-culture and Shaun Jefford's immersion in the lifestyle lends additional credibility.
Review by on 26 Sep 2010
I loved this film, it takes me into a different world that I never knew existed! The presenter, was cool and really coaxed a very natural and believable story.
Review by on 26 Sep 2010
Shaun Jefford is simply amazing--the insight brought from this documentary mind-blowing!
Review by on 26 Sep 2010
Great stuff.
Review by on 26 Sep 2010
Thrilling, punk is back and it is going to stay
Review by on 26 Sep 2010
A film with heart, humour and the guts to explore probably the biggest counterculture in China - Beijing Punk
Review by on 25 Sep 2010
Great film!
Review by on 25 Sep 2010
this film rocks, bring back punk Jefford!
Review by on 25 Sep 2010
sweet as. how can anyone think china is a monolith....it has the most humans on the planet! well, ok i suppose the guvment of china puts out that impression. great to see this example of humans bein human. give this bloke a camera (and a sober cameraman) and send him off somewhere else i want to see the next one!
Review by on 25 Sep 2010
An important insight and a cogent message of how society cannot contain their youth through imposed norms, and how any rein of oppression can never last when counter-culture is innate. Punks in China should be grateful for an honest and straight portrayal of their existence in this very well made and well edited documentary - Beijing Punk.
Review by on 25 Sep 2010
Awesome film...a must see!
Review by on 25 Sep 2010
Beijing Punk sows an eye opening underside to the authoritarian view of modern China as well as a great cross section of gritty punk rock music and bands
Review by on 25 Sep 2010
I loved Hedgehog, I want to see that little chick bang on the drums when she is in a good mood. The entire movie kept revealing honest people living life as they want to no matter the consequence. Who can ask for more. I didn't want it to end.
Review by on 25 Sep 2010
Simply a masterpiece
Review by on 25 Sep 2010
Cool and seriously edgy this film sets new standards for guerillas around the planet and puts Mao Tse Tung on notice !!!
Review by on 24 Sep 2010
The reviews on this page make clear that Shaun Jefford’s stylish
film deserves a wider audience (by no means just because he
daily downed two bottles of Madame Pearl’s cough-linctus to get
it made, although that wins points!).
BEIJING PUNK’s stylish because it’s in the nature of punk rock to
have its own anti-establishment style, which made me such an
adherent (acolyte?) of The Banshees because of Siouxsie’s
inescapably hip way of doing just about everything - for me, that
aspect (and, amongst other things, a good drummer) was what
made their songs and the band’s and her delivery of them so
effective, whether the doomed ‘Christine, the strawberry girl’, or
the not-so-happy ‘Happy House’.
That means that you can, after all, be so much on the edge that
you’re in the real centre, as there’s really an Einsteinian
continuum that loops around on itself (not any sort of discworld).
Saying that may, itself, seem literally eccentric (in its true sense
of ‘out of the centre’), but I do believe that it’s just as much
relevant to punk as to art and anti-art under the Dadaists or
Surrealists: the essence of punk is not far from those origins in
the post-war time of 1918 on, with the linking theme being not
satisfied with the world as it is, and, more importantly,
dissatisfied with everyone else for putting up with it.
After all, if it wasn’t André Bretton, poet and unchallenged
spokesman of Surrealism, who said that the true surreal act is to
take a loaded gun and go out into the street, shooting at random,
it’s thereabouts. In that statement, there’s very much the feel of
Lee, the lead-singer of one of the three bands with whom Shaun
came into close contact - self-destructive and chaotic though he
is, and despite what Lee puts into his body and ‘helps’ others to
put into theirs whilst seeking to live as a skinhead in China, he’s
obviously really just a pussy-cat. (After all, even cats fight, scrap,
but eventually sleep.)
What matters most, though, about this film is not the bands’
lifestyles, or Shaun the worse for wear, or his often indisposed
camera-man, but the music, which is so much in the punk idiom
that one wonders that it was first caught so fully by trawling the
Internet. For example, the drummer of Hedgehog is compelling in
her playing, and though justly described as hitting really hard, is
so truly in punk fashion.
Unlike the explosion of punk in the UK and US, though, there is
no one to latch on, making money out of bondage-trousers or
whatever, and, as far as I could see, no other media manipulators
in the mode of those behind the Pistols would have scope for
doing that in China. The excellent music is what counts, and,
despite underground sales of recordings, there’s no hope of a
wider home audience.
Thanks for showing us, Shaun - if they want, maybe those bands
can find unleashed fans elsewhere...
film deserves a wider audience (by no means just because he
daily downed two bottles of Madame Pearl’s cough-linctus to get
it made, although that wins points!).
BEIJING PUNK’s stylish because it’s in the nature of punk rock to
have its own anti-establishment style, which made me such an
adherent (acolyte?) of The Banshees because of Siouxsie’s
inescapably hip way of doing just about everything - for me, that
aspect (and, amongst other things, a good drummer) was what
made their songs and the band’s and her delivery of them so
effective, whether the doomed ‘Christine, the strawberry girl’, or
the not-so-happy ‘Happy House’.
That means that you can, after all, be so much on the edge that
you’re in the real centre, as there’s really an Einsteinian
continuum that loops around on itself (not any sort of discworld).
Saying that may, itself, seem literally eccentric (in its true sense
of ‘out of the centre’), but I do believe that it’s just as much
relevant to punk as to art and anti-art under the Dadaists or
Surrealists: the essence of punk is not far from those origins in
the post-war time of 1918 on, with the linking theme being not
satisfied with the world as it is, and, more importantly,
dissatisfied with everyone else for putting up with it.
After all, if it wasn’t André Bretton, poet and unchallenged
spokesman of Surrealism, who said that the true surreal act is to
take a loaded gun and go out into the street, shooting at random,
it’s thereabouts. In that statement, there’s very much the feel of
Lee, the lead-singer of one of the three bands with whom Shaun
came into close contact - self-destructive and chaotic though he
is, and despite what Lee puts into his body and ‘helps’ others to
put into theirs whilst seeking to live as a skinhead in China, he’s
obviously really just a pussy-cat. (After all, even cats fight, scrap,
but eventually sleep.)
What matters most, though, about this film is not the bands’
lifestyles, or Shaun the worse for wear, or his often indisposed
camera-man, but the music, which is so much in the punk idiom
that one wonders that it was first caught so fully by trawling the
Internet. For example, the drummer of Hedgehog is compelling in
her playing, and though justly described as hitting really hard, is
so truly in punk fashion.
Unlike the explosion of punk in the UK and US, though, there is
no one to latch on, making money out of bondage-trousers or
whatever, and, as far as I could see, no other media manipulators
in the mode of those behind the Pistols would have scope for
doing that in China. The excellent music is what counts, and,
despite underground sales of recordings, there’s no hope of a
wider home audience.
Thanks for showing us, Shaun - if they want, maybe those bands
can find unleashed fans elsewhere...
Review by on 23 Sep 2010
This is punk, but not as we know it! Director Shaun M. Jefford takes us on a codeine-fuelled rampage through the world of Chinese punk and skinhead culture.
Having only recently been exposed to rock culture through the Internet, the Chinese punk scene is as fresh as it is raw and Jefford’s mix of Super-8 footage, high-energy cuts and hardcore soundtrack perfectly expresses the vitality and rebellion of Chinese punk.
BEIJING PUNK follows three bands in their struggle to make music their own way in a country that wants anything but. Censored lyrics, denied touring visas and an arrest or two are all in a days work for the groups as they struggle to get themselves known outside of china.
Jefford has created a documentary that will not only have you grinning from ear to ear but also feeling for the bands in what turns from a rampant rock fest into a heart warming story about expression under an authoritarian state. The handheld camerawork puts you right in the centre of the action from alcohol induced romps through Beijing’s back streets to strikingly honest comments about china’s power over its population.
Watch this film if you enjoyed JACKASS but for those of you who enjoy political commentary this film has a whole lot to offer you as well. You will leave with an urge to don your Doc Martins, throw your fist in the air and shout “NO” to the establishment!
Jennie Devine
Having only recently been exposed to rock culture through the Internet, the Chinese punk scene is as fresh as it is raw and Jefford’s mix of Super-8 footage, high-energy cuts and hardcore soundtrack perfectly expresses the vitality and rebellion of Chinese punk.
BEIJING PUNK follows three bands in their struggle to make music their own way in a country that wants anything but. Censored lyrics, denied touring visas and an arrest or two are all in a days work for the groups as they struggle to get themselves known outside of china.
Jefford has created a documentary that will not only have you grinning from ear to ear but also feeling for the bands in what turns from a rampant rock fest into a heart warming story about expression under an authoritarian state. The handheld camerawork puts you right in the centre of the action from alcohol induced romps through Beijing’s back streets to strikingly honest comments about china’s power over its population.
Watch this film if you enjoyed JACKASS but for those of you who enjoy political commentary this film has a whole lot to offer you as well. You will leave with an urge to don your Doc Martins, throw your fist in the air and shout “NO” to the establishment!
Jennie Devine
Review by on 23 Sep 2010
Chinese punks – who knew? Yet thanks to this documentary by Australian filmmaker Shaun Jefford, we get a glimpse into their nascent underground scene, on the eve of Beijing’s 2008 Olympics.
Filmed with appropriate graininess and supplemented with bootleg gig footage, Jefford has found a diverse and fascinating movement. Primarily exploring the lives of two bands, MiSanDao (self-proclaimed “Chinese skinheads”) and Demerit, the difficulties they face in trying to do what they love are highlighted. The government censor lyrics (stymieing album launches), the bands give up on money (most jobs requiring twelve-hour-days), and their families are unwilling to support them. Yet with the nightclub D-22 as their base, punk is what they do.
More searching questions might have been asked. The appropriation of the “skinhead” tag by MiSanDao is not addressed until towards the end of the film (to reassure the audience that the band are not neo-Nazis, after they are shown playing a German skinhead festival!) The cultural analysis of Michael Pettis, the American founder of D-22, is the only critical voice throughout the film (albeit learned) and language also seems to have been a barrier.
But the music provides its own justification and thankfully Jefford has made it the main event. This is China as never before seen – you’ll just be grateful for a look inside. Spike, Demerit’s singer, proudly claims “we live punk ... we are punk”, and arguably rebellious punk-rock has never been more needed than in modern China. You’ll think about music in a new light.
Oliver Ford
Filmed with appropriate graininess and supplemented with bootleg gig footage, Jefford has found a diverse and fascinating movement. Primarily exploring the lives of two bands, MiSanDao (self-proclaimed “Chinese skinheads”) and Demerit, the difficulties they face in trying to do what they love are highlighted. The government censor lyrics (stymieing album launches), the bands give up on money (most jobs requiring twelve-hour-days), and their families are unwilling to support them. Yet with the nightclub D-22 as their base, punk is what they do.
More searching questions might have been asked. The appropriation of the “skinhead” tag by MiSanDao is not addressed until towards the end of the film (to reassure the audience that the band are not neo-Nazis, after they are shown playing a German skinhead festival!) The cultural analysis of Michael Pettis, the American founder of D-22, is the only critical voice throughout the film (albeit learned) and language also seems to have been a barrier.
But the music provides its own justification and thankfully Jefford has made it the main event. This is China as never before seen – you’ll just be grateful for a look inside. Spike, Demerit’s singer, proudly claims “we live punk ... we are punk”, and arguably rebellious punk-rock has never been more needed than in modern China. You’ll think about music in a new light.
Oliver Ford
Review by on 21 Sep 2010
A revelation, who knew Beijing had punks? And that they played such good music?
Well I had heard a little of them but not actually sought them out on my visits there, but I will certainly seek out the music if I am lucky enough to visit again.
Well I had heard a little of them but not actually sought them out on my visits there, but I will certainly seek out the music if I am lucky enough to visit again.
Review by on 19 Sep 2010
Excellent film highlighting a little known part of the Chinese underground music scene. Excellent soundtrack and well shot, there's some really interesting scenes. You'd definitely want to go for a drink with these guys! Will the punk scene survive for much longer or will the Chinese Government crack down? These punks have given up a lot to do what they love and it's a shame that there's only a limited number of clubs for them in China and little chance of them to go overseas to raise money.
Review by on 19 Sep 2010
Go see this film!
It has it all - great footage, nice characters, and some intriguing insights into contemporary China. Plus some great music. And personally, I had a bit of a cry at the end but that might just be me.
It has it all - great footage, nice characters, and some intriguing insights into contemporary China. Plus some great music. And personally, I had a bit of a cry at the end but that might just be me.
Film details
Beijing Punk/Kiss Bill
Director: Shaun M. Jefford
USA/China/Australia/UK, 2010.
113 mins. English/Mandarin/Swedish with English subtitles.
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