Poly Styrene: I am a Cliche
The X-Ray Spex singer is remembered by her contemporaries and daughter and in this gripping and valuable account of a punk icon and trailblazer.
Director: Celeste Bell and Paul Sng
Cast includes: Poly Styrene, Don Letts, Rhoda Dakar, Pauline Black, Ruth Negga
2 hr 14 min / 2021 / UK
The death of punk icon and X-Ray Spex front-woman Poly Styrene sends her daughter on a journey through her mother's archives in this intimate documentary looking at the life and legacy of the lead singer with the 1970s punk band X-Ray Spex.
Featuring talking heads contributions from Lora Logic, Thurston Moore, Neneh Cherry, Vivienne Westwood, Don Letts, Rhoda Dakar, Pauline Black of The Selecter, and more.
"The X-Ray Spex singer is revealed as a mystic, rebellious working-class woman of colour in this valuable film" - The Guardian
"A film about a woman whose public persona fizzed with energy; whose image, in many viewers’ memories, will be fixed as a teenage punk in Day-glo skirt-suits and Lurex tights, braces on her teeth, bombing around the stage with a voice like an alarm call ... I Am a Cliché celebrates this energy but also asks what happens when it is not nurtured and when it goes wrong. - BFI, Sight and Sound
This film is F-Rated. The F-Rating is applied to all films which are directed by women and/or written by women. Find out more about F-Rating.
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