Digital Video magazine — December 2013
‘The Punk Singer’: Tracing the Trajectory of Riot Grrrl Kathleen Hanna

Kathleen Hanna, lead singer of the punk band Bikini Kill and dance-punk trio Le Tigre, rose to national attention as the voice of the riot grrrl movement, becoming one of the most famously outspoken icons of the third-wave feminist movement of the 1990s and early aughts. The documentary feature The Punk Singer, directed by Sini Anderson and shot by cinematographers Jennie Jeddry and Moira Morel, details Hanna’s story as cultural lightning rod and private citizen, including her marriage to Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz and her decision, in 2005, to stop performing.

The Punk Singer premiered earlier this year at the SXSW Film Festival, where it was picked up by IFC, and saw a limited theatrical release beginning in November. With virtually no budget, production was achieved largely through donations of equipment and expertise. Interviews and b-roll footage were captured using a combination of Panasonic AG HVX200 and HPX170 cameras outfitted with Letus adapters and a set of Zeiss compact prime lenses.

“We shot on the HVX and HPX because, at the time they were actually, in my opinion, the best HD prosumer cameras on the market,” Morel says. “The color space, latitude and lenses were perfect for what we were doing and the XLR inputs for the microphones made recording sound on-location so much easier to capture and monitor while we were shooting, something that the 5D and 7D couldn’t offer. Also, both of those cameras were capable of shooting 1080, which we knew we needed if the film was ever to be projected on the big screen.” (Read full story…)