The documentary “Punk Is Not Really Dead?!” asks the question to the actors of French alternative rock of the 1980s

A documentary offered on France 5, Friday January 12, looks back at French alternative rock of the 1980s, meets some of its figures and questions what the punk rebellion has become. Rejoicing.

They were called Bérurier noir, Les Olivensteins, Oberkampf, La Souris déglingué, Washington Dead Cats, Ludwig Von 88 or Les Endimanchés: if you were between 15 and 25 years old in the 1980s, you inevitably remember these group names, who made the rich days of French punk, also known as the alternative rock movement.

Committed, in particular against the extreme right, non-conformist and for some slightly eccentric, they brought together a whole rebellious youth, eager for freedom, who loved nothing more than to shock the bourgeois and “piss off society”as Pat Kebra from Oberkampf summarizes.

A collective musical and political adventure

For Punk Is Not Really Dead?!, a 52-minute documentary offered on France 5, Friday January 12 at 10:35 p.m. (then in replay on France.tv), director Lionel Boisseau went to meet several members of this scene, such as MastO (ex-Lucrate Milk and ex-Bérurier Noir), Loran (ex-Bérurier Noir, who today leads the Chimney Sweeps of Menhirs), Mat Firehair of the Washington Dead Cats, Pat Kebra of Oberkampf and Roger des prés des Endimanchés. With a few others, including the actress and punk muse Béatrice Dalle, Professor Shoum (aka Marsu, ex-manager of Bérurier Noir) and the journalist Jean-Lou Janeir (who hosted the show Decibels on France 3), they tell “a collective musical and political adventure”but also, implicitly, a whole era.

Punctuated with numerous delightful archive images, including launches of television news shows showing presenters totally overwhelmed by this movement and television programs from the period, but also unpublished videos lovingly preserved by a certain René, the film briefly returns on English punk.

Then, it switches to the arrival of the left to power in France with Mitterrand in 1981, the explosion of free radios and the advent of all these “little restless ones” punks expressing their rebellion in the language of Molière.

Stencils, fanzines and self-management

Loran (ex-Bérurier Noir) would like to emphasize that his “first direct artistic actions as punk”it wasn’t the music but “stencils” street whose walls he adorned. And to recall that Oberkampf had written a song on the subject, Colors in Pariswho said in particular “Take some spray paint and spray everything / Write what you think on the walls (…) Imagine the streets of Paris / So sprayed would be much less sad / The walls filled with graffiti / It would finally brighten up your eyes.”

Also mentioned are the fanzines, created by enthusiasts, which at the time served as a social network for the groups who spoke there, like the legendary fanzine Canoethen sold with its audio cassette in a network of around twenty stores.

An edifying excerpt from a Christophe Dechavanne show with the Bérurier Noir reminds us to what extent this youth movement was misunderstood and rejected, but also despised by the record companies, which pushed to create an alternative scene (hence his name) able to do without major record labels, show producers and traditional media.

Thus, many groups decided to self-produce and set up independent record labels like Bérurier Noir with Bondage Records, also host to Nuclear Device, Washington Dead Cats and Ludwig Von 88, among others.

Ecology, a new punk fight?

The great merit of this film is ultimately to ask the only valid question: what remains of punk? Is the spirit of this movement still moving? In any case, it survives among a good number of members interviewed, in particular Loran of the Bérurier Noir, who has the political fight deeply rooted in his body and always invokes the spirit of insubordination with his Chimney Sweeps of Menhirs. If this Breton folk punk group can make you smile, it continues to perform for a good cause and to raise awareness wherever it goes. Loran also impresses with his quiet philosophy: if he prides himself on being a “non-musician” who has always been content with three chords, it is to better, he says, put his ego on hold. We expected no less from this ex-member of Bérurier Noir, a group which knew how to hara-kiri with panache in full glory by rejecting the great circus of the star-system, with three memorable farewell concerts at L’ Olympia on November 9-10 and 11, 1989, the images of which shown here still remain as galvanizing more than thirty years later.

But then, what are the struggles of punks today? “The major political emergency is ecology“, replies the ex-Endimanchés Roger des prés, because “How are we going to survive this shit?“. The last images of the documentary, which show him hard at work in his corn, textile hemp and buckwheat plantations, in his Ferme du Bonheur, stuck between a motorway ramp and the Nanterre RER, and struggling with the town hall, are admirable. Definitely not deadpunk is not yet ready to eat dandelions by the roots.

“Punk Is Not Really Dead ?!” by Lionel Boisseau (52 minutes) received the 2023 Sacem Musical Documentary prize. It can be seen on Friday January 12 on France 5 at 10:35 p.m. then in replay on France.tv