Front Row

Musician, filmmaker and DJ, Don Letts has curated a season of films about punk for the British Film Institute, in London. He explains how Punk on Film brings together a broad range of documentary, archive footage and feature films that draw attention to the diversity of the punk movement, its lineage, and influence today.A significant aspect of punk was that allowed women to defy the music industry's notions of beauty and sex appeal. Women became performers in their own right, wrote their own songs, played their own instruments, and even became the main protagonist of movies about the music industry - such as Hazel O'Connor in Breaking Glass. We hear about the role of women in punk from Hazel O'Connor, vocalist and guitarist Jess Allanic, and Dr Helen Reddington.Photographers George Quann-Barnett and Marco Grey - from Wot Do You Call It - and Olivia Rose discuss the importance of documenting the grime scene, which they argue is the most unique and significant music subculture to explode in Britain since punk.