Top 10 Best Punk Rock Documentaries
Listing the best documentaries on punk rock music and subculture.
Year: 1981
Director: Penelope Spheeris
Bands Featured: Black Flag, The Germs, The Bags, Circle Jerks, X, Fear, Catholic Discipline.
This film covers the Los Angeles punk scene and lifestyle in 1979 and 1980.
Year: 1982
Director: David Markey
Bands Featured: Wasted Youth, Black Flag, Circle One, T.S.O.L., Circle Jerks, Fear, Red Cross, Symbol Six, Chiefs, Sin 34.
Documents the Southern California punk scene during the early '80s. It features live performances, interviews, and the daily lives of many punk bands and their members.
Year: 2012
Director: Jonathan W.C. Mills
Bands Featured: T.S.O.L., The Vandals, Circle Jerks, Black Flag, Iggy Pop, Dead Kennedys, The Ramones, Descendents, Adolescents, and more.
Documentary about the Cuckoo's Nest, a world-famous venue (in the punk rock world at least) in Costa Mesa, California. It's an updated version of the 1981 documentary Urban Struggle.
Year: 1984
Director: Adam Small, Peter Stuart
Bands Featured: Social Distortion, Youth Brigade, Minor Threat.
This film follows Social Distortion and Youth Brigade on tour, featuring road trip footage and live performances. They meet up with Minor Threat while in D.C.
Year: 1978
Director: Don Letts
Bands Featured: Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Slits, Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, X-Ray Spex, Generation X, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and more.
Super 8 footage shot by Roxy's disc jockey Don Letts of punk bands performing at the Roxy in London 1977.
Year: 2007
Director: Joe Losurdo, Christina Tillman
Bands Featured: Big Black, Articles of Faith, Naked Raygun, The Effigies, Strike Under, Subverts, Mentally Ill, and more.
This film documents the Chicago punk scene from 1977 to 1984.
Year: 1981
Director: Lech Kowalski
Bands Featured: Sex Pistols, The Dead Boys, Sham 69, X-Ray Spex, Generation X, and The Rich Kids.
Features interviews and concert footage of some of Punk's earliest bands from the mid to late '70s.
Year: 1993
Director: Todd Phillips
Bands Featured: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies
I'm not much of a GG fan, but if you want to see what a psychopath he was, this is the one to watch. This film shows him defecating on stage and eating it, throwing feces at his audience, attacking his fans and bandmates, and chasing his whole audience out of the venue. It includes a woman urinating in his mouth for his birthday and him doing a "spoken word" at a college, in which he walks in front of the class wearing nothing but a jock strap. He stands there silently and starts peeling a banana. He then shoves the peeled banana in his butt and asks the students, "You guys hungry?" then throws chunks of the banana at the students.
Showcases the transformation of '90s punkers after their respective career success, messing around, going against all odds, to become fathers.