David Markey, revered director of Desperate Teenage Lovedolls, 1991: The Year Punk Broke, and The Slog Movie, not to mention coauthor of WE GOT POWER!: Hardcore Punk Scenes From 1980s Southern California, recently made available one of his early filmmaking efforts, Summer Has Been Over for a Long Time.
The poignant three-and-a-half minute movie extracts and brings to life the youth beach continuum depicted in his highly-detailed photographs in WE GOT POWER! The Santa Monica idyll is fractured, however, by a change in the cultural weather that brings on aggression and frustration in a skateboard-wielding punk rock guise. It’s poignant and beautiful,
Cinematic maestro Markey, all of sixteen when he made the film, presents a poignant and beautiful montage of transformation with a rhythmic onslaught of boardwalks, freeways, surfers, backyard pool skaters, Space Invaders, Walkmen, pinball players, and seaside Pacific sun-worshippers, along with with a rebellious loner in a Buzzcocks t-shirt and a solo slam-dancer, all set to “Gut Feeling” by Devo.
In other words, summer, adolescence, and liberating cathartic music come raging to life for three-and-a-half exploding minutes.
Watch, and then dig the long-form photos, essays, and madcap zines of WE GOT POWER!: Hardcore Punk Scenes From 1980s Southern California
