Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.
China will be owning and running
everything pretty soon, so why not punk rock music as well? The
ultimate form of musical rebellion in a Peoples Republic that, not
too long ago, was a Maoist horror-show dictatorship close to North
Korea in chilly doctrinaire-Marxist total control...? That's the
come-on in Shaun Jefford's rockumentary, and an appealing one it is,
though for me, anyway, the concept (and the deceptively sexed-up
movie poster) is more interesting than the result.
On the eve of the 2008 summer Olympics
in Beijing, Jefford and his shoestring film crew find a nascent
punk-rock movement active in the Chinese metropolis, mostly centered
around a rock club and tiny record labels managed by Western
expatriates. Many of the punkers dwell in a downscale neighborhood
called Tongzhou, and it is quite a revelation to be told this is one
of those slum areas where one hears random gunfire at all hours. One
did assume that the Forbidden City, even in these days of free-market
"democracy" (or whatever it is our Chinese future masters
got going over there for a government) kept tighter policing.
