Thank You Skinhead Girl
By Daniel Buckley at 29 July, 2010, 10:34 pm
ACTORS, directors and writers often talk of making deeply personal films, but it is to the indie documentary scene that most often you must look for truly intimate insights into people’s lives.
Straight from being crowned Best Documentary at the 8th International Short Film Festival in Balchik, Bulgaria, and making it’s debut at the Edinburgh Fringe, Thank You Skinhead Girl is director Sharon Woodward’s examination of the skinhead subculture in Oxford in the 1970s and ‘80s.
Ms. Woodward grew up in care, and uses her own experiences, as well as archive material and interviews with other skinheads, to explain the role such gangs played for young people who felt lost and alone.
Though simple in their execution, the film’s straightforward, intimate interviews give the viewer a window into a world that many see as merely violent and delinquent.
And it is this charmingly unpretentious approach which must partly account for its popularity at film festivals around the country, considering its otherwise niche audience.
Otherwise, there are few real quibbles with the film. It tends to rely on a fairly limited soundtrack – ‘Skinhead Girl’ by The Oppressed is a catchy and undeservedly forgotten song, but is used perhaps a little too extensively.
And whilst probably a symptom of the documentary’s small budget it is a shame, especially considering the importance of music to the skinhead gangs.
The other main bugbear is the recitation of a poem at intervals throughout the documentary. Not only are these intervals annoyingly uneven, but the poem itself serves to jarringly break the flow of proceedings.
Though its subject matter will probably mean that Thank You Skinhead Girl won’t find a massive audience beyond critics and skinheads, anyone with an interest in ’70s and ‘80s culture would be well-advised to give this a gander.
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Thank You Skinhead Girl will be shown weekly from August 3rd to 30th at C soco urban garden. The screenings are free to the public.
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C FILM FESTIVAL – Film at the Edinburgh Fringe, Hand Island, Hip Hip Hooray, Knock Knock and The End of the Pier Show
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