Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Shot in 1996 by the then high-school student Michael Lucid on a handheld camera at his school in Santa Monica, California, Dirty Girls was released and screened around Los Angeles in 2000 before gaining popularity on the internet in 2013. The film centres on a group of teens deemed ‘dirty girls’ by their peers for their rejection of school social norms – especially their purposely unkempt, grunge-influenced style. Identifying as part of the Riot Grrrl feminist punk movement of the 1990s, the girls share their perspective on capitalism, feminism and rape culture in their self-published zine, mostly to the mockery of their classmates. A microcosm of the high-school social experience familiar to many, Lucid’s film is also a window into the early days of third-wave feminism, before many of the ideas that the ‘dirty girls’ embraced gained traction in mainstream culture.
Director: Michael Lucid
video
Personality
A ‘little thief’ turned career criminal recounts a life on the wrong side of the law
5 minutes
video
Consciousness and altered states
‘I want me back’ – after a head injury, Nick struggles with his altered reality
7 minutes
video
War and peace
Two Ukrainian boys’ summer unfolds just miles from the frontlines
22 minutes
video
Virtues and vices
Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later
16 minutes
video
Technology and the self
The commodified childhood – scenes from two sisters’ lives in the creator economy
14 minutes
video
Sports and games
Havana’s streets become racetracks in this exhilarating portrait of children at play
5 minutes
video
Home
How an artist transformed a dilapidated hunting lodge into a house made of dreams
8 minutes
video
Animals and humans
The wild tale of a young animal keeper, an angry tiger and a torn circle net
10 minutes
video
Childhood and adolescence
The police camp where tween girls enter a sisterhood of law and order
28 minutes