Silas Howard: Transparent’s First Trans Director

Tribe 8 was one of my favorite bands of the 1990s. I followed them to the end of the earth — well, to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. They changed the world that year, smashing generation gaps and sending the ladies of the land into the moshpit. They never got their due and still don’t; in Pitchfork’s recent list of punk feminist anthems, their seminal voice is woefully MIA — still too rad for that site’s chamber-music cultural feminism aesthetic. So I was thrilled to catch up recently with guitarist Flipper, now going by the name Silas Howard and an accomplished director of film and television. Here‘s how I wrote it up for the LA Weekly.

Vivien Goldman, Punk Renaissance Woman

Vivien Goldman has inspired me for decades. She is a true artist and friend. I got to write about her for NPR.

#GrrrlsOnFiLMU Gets Storified

I think I got it all: Thanks to the amazing powers of Storify, you can see pretty much everything that was posted on Twitter and Instagram about Grrrls on Film right here.

#GrrrlsOnFiLMU in Bust

I just found out that Bust magazine featured Grrrls On Film online. I heart Bust!

#GrrrlsOnFiLMU on KPFK

I’m looking forward to being live on the air again tomorrow with Prof. Sharon Mooney to talk about Grrrls on Film. Tune into the Feminist Magazine KPFK 90.7 FM in LA, or livestream at kpfk.org, at about 3:30 p.m. March 15.

#GrrrlsonFiLMU Lineup Announced

Kim and the Created

I’m extremely pleased to announce the lineup of the Grrrls on Film festival at Loyola Marymount University March 18-20. We have an incredible array of films by, for, and about women. All participating filmmakers will be present, plus a few. There will also be a concert outdoors featuring Kim and the Created, Colleen Green, Peach Kelli Pop, KXLU DJs, spoken word, and more. The press release and complete schedule are below. We will be presenting more details during the upcoming weeks. And, it’s all free!

Loyola Marymount University presents GRRRLS ON FILM, a free festival featuring films and music from groundbreaking female artists, on the LMU campus March 18, 19 and 20, 2016

Confirmed participants include Penelope Spheeris (The Decline of Western Civilization, Wayne’s World), Floria Sigismondi (The Runaways), Karyn Kusama (Girlfight), Alice Bag (the Bags), Kim and the Created, Nao Bustamante, Phranc, Allison Wolfe (Bratmobile), Colleen Green, Kari Krome, Peach Kelli Pop, Nicole Panter, Raquel Gutiérrez, Jill Reiter (In Search of Margo-go) and Lizzie Borden (Born in Flames)

For Immediate Release — Grrrls on Film is a weekend-long celebration of the feminist acts of making sound and vision. The festival and forum at Loyola Marymount University gathers together pioneers in movies, music, art and activism to address what has become one of the hot-button social justice issues of our time: lack of diverse representation and expression in arts and entertainment. The event borrows its name from the Riot Grrrl movement of the 1990s, which fused the Do-It-Yourself credo of punk with Third Wave Feminism’s call for self-determination.

We Will Bury You: Alice, Allison, Punk, and LA: #GrrrlsonFiLMU

Alice Bag and Allison Wolfe are two of my personal heroes. As part of her coursework at USC, where she is an Annenberg Fellow (following in my footsteps!), Allison interviewed Alice. It‘s a great little podcast and article. Alice talks about the omnipresence of violence, which I’ve been thinking a lot about today, occasioned by this powerful article also by a Chicana punk. I’m glad today’s young punks are speaking out about the affronts that seemed casual and inevitable when Alice and I were growing up. It’s called progress, people. Believe.

Shameless plug: Alice will be on the We Will Bury You panel about LA punk at Grrrls on Film on March 19 (with Phranc, Nicole Panter, Raquel Guttierez, and Ruben Martinez), and Allison will be at the concert March 20. We’ll be screening The Decline of Western Civilization that Saturday as well, with director Penelope Spheeris and her daughter Anna Fox in the house. Details and reservation link coming soon; stay tuned to this blog and, always, to KXLU.