Girls Rock! is a documentary celebrating its World Premiere at the 2007 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival on April 21. Co-directed by Arne Johnson and Shane King, the film focuses on girls ranging in age from 8-18 who are participants at a girls only Rock n’ Roll camp. Campers pick instruments, form bands, and write original songs to be performed on stage for 750 people at the conclusion of the five day camp which is designed to help them gain self-esteem in the process. Filmmakers Johnson and King graciously participated in the following e-mail interview concerning their new documentary.   

Question:  How did you first learn of the camp depicted in your film?

Johnson: I was at a panel discussion about music and art that (camp teacher) Carrie Brownstein was at, and she gave a speech about having just come from teaching at the Girls Rock Camp that literally made the hairs on my neck stand up.

King: It also turned out that my sister knew many of the founding members, although it was still difficult for us gain access to the camp, as the women who run it are very protective of the girls, as we have become ourselves.

Question: One of the camp counselors stated that even girls who never play an instrument again after this experience believe they turned out to be success stories. Do you agree or disagree with that assessment?

King: The camp is about much more than teaching music. The music is this great catalyst and probably the best possible catalyst to teach girls to take up the space they are in.  As boys we were always encouraged in a thousand invisible ways to fill the space we are in and girls just aren’t.  If you put five 10-year-old boys in a room with a drum set, one of them is going jump into the seat and start pounding away.  Girls are so much more timid about things like that and the camp is a place where don’t have to be timid.

Johnson: Yeah, as a matter of fact, we put on a benefit concert where girls were allowed to go on stage and play the drums in between sets, or make noise on guitars or keyboards scattered around the club. There were probably about fifty girls there at the very beginning, and three boys. The three boys immediately went to the instruments and started making a din, while the girls stood around nervously and watched, despite the fact that the event was billed a “Girls Rock Fest”. The wonderful volunteers encouraged just a couple girls to go to the instruments, and suddenly there was a deluge of girls at the stations. Watching that unfold was really heart-wrenching and inspiring at the same time. You can see how Rock is just a metaphor, that these girls are dancing between so many invisible barriers most of us miss and just need a little encouragement. At the camp, they just want to use Rock to teach the girls they don’t have to dance around anymore.

Question: After five days spent at the camp, participants put on a musical showcase for 750 audience members. How have parents reacted to what their daughters created on stage?

King: The parents just go to pieces.  They, as one puts it in our movie “bawled their eyes out.” And that’s to be expected.  The surprising thing is that everyone else in the audience is moved too, parents, siblings, counselors, old people, hipsters, men, women everybody. Not that its not a joyous event, but there is something very profound about seeing a little girl who maybe never has been asked to share her opinion standing in front of nearly a thousand people and singing a song she wrote.  It is a shockingly moving, revolutionary thing for a girl to do.

Johnson: One of the founders told us a story about a girl who came to the camp and got in line for drum instruction. The volunteers had her signed up for vocals and asked her about it, but she said it was a mistake and did drums that week. When her mom came to the showcase and learned her daughter was playing drums, she got really angry because she wanted her daughter to do something more feminine like singing. At the end of the show, however, she was so overwhelmed with pride that she ended the show crying and hugged her daughter incessantly, muttering about how proud she was. So it’s not just the girls that change at the camp, their parents get to see a whole new side of their daughters.

Question:  Palace is a very troubled 8-year-old who gets into a lot of trouble at camp -- from biting and punching someone to becoming uncooperative when she doesn't get her own way. How has she progressed since the film?

King: Palace seems to be doing well since camp.  We had an event in Portland where we showed the movie to the counselors and many of the girls who had been at the 2005 camp and we had a bbq at my sister’s house afterwards. Palace was all dressed to the nines and politely sitting with the adults for a while, but after a very short time she was in the back yard running around like a goofy little kid with a pack of other kids. It was such a pleasure to see after spending over a year working with the footage of these very rough scenes of her fighting with her band, and struggling with trying to shape her own image. 

Johnson: I think all I would add is that we didn’t want the audience to feel at the end of the movie that the girls had solved everything and were going to go back to the real world as super girls or something. So Palace, like all the girls, will hopefully have had a chance to get some insight and carry it back with her.

Question: Laura's parents indicated in the film that their daughter is always bubbly and able to draw people out of their shell. Why do you think she felt she had to be quiet and not come out of her own shell when she's not truly an introvert?

King: The pressure on girls to be quiet is alarming.  When it can shut down someone as alive and intelligent as Laura, you know there is something very intense going on.

Johnson: Yeah, in fact Laura was one of the first girls we met (we went and interviewed a bunch of them before the camp), and she really turned our heads around about this stuff. You can read all you want about girls doing better in school and all that, and even look at someone like Laura as a success story, but pry a little deeper and you’ll see the same old demons chasing her around. Also, everyone’s got their own journey to make. For some girls like Marissa (Laura’s friend in the movie), it could be just getting on stage and whispering that’s revolutionary. Being heard at all. For Laura, it seemed like it was being happy with who she already knew she was. Not fighting herself anymore. So the talking about keeping her mouth shut was in some ways about letting her natural energy be poured into something she really cared about without worrying about being judged.

Question: When the camp begins, Misty -- who lives in a group home -- has spent 10 months in a treatment facility for drug abuse before coming to camp. What progress has she made since the film was completed?

King: Misty seems to be doing well.  She is still a teenager so she does some self-destructive things, but for the most part she seems to be building a life for herself that will keep her away from drug addiction and her other traps.

Johnson: Yeah, every time I talk to Misty I take a deep breath and pray she’s still together. And so far, all seems well despite many bumps and wrong turns. She hasn’t gone back down to the bottom again.

(Girls Rock! screens on April 21 and April 24 at the 2007 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. For tickets, call the festival box office at 416.588.8362 or go to www.hotdocs.ca. Visit the Girls Rock! official site at www.girlsrockmovie.com for more information about this film.)