Presented in partnership with Girls Rock School NI

Dir. Samantha Dinning, Hylton Shaw / 2019 / Australia / 82 min / All Ages

During a long hot summer, 40 girls and gender diverse youth aged 11 to 17 converge for the inaugural week-long GIRLS ROCK! MELBOURNE Camp. Greeting them are local female rock legends like Courtney Barnett, punked up teachers, students and youth workers, all keen to empower each of the participants through rock n roll. Over the course of the week, and months after camp, we follow three participants as they struggle to find their sense of belonging and identity through music.

No Time For Quiet shows the positive impact of immersive music experiences and spaces that embody a strong sense of community, reinforce belonging and provide support and mentorship for young people who feel disempowered.

This is an all ages event, presented in partnership with Girls Rock School NI, which offers workshops and mentoring in electric guitar, bass, drums and vocals to women and girls of all ages. GRSNI is part of a global Girls Rock! movement, united by the common desire for gender equality in the music industry. They are a small but dedicated collective, with each of the team giving their time all in the name of “empowering girls and women of all ages to riff, rock and roll!”

Presented in partnership with QFT

Dir. Posy Dixon / 2019 / USA / 63 min / 14+

Get ready to meet a new queer music legend, in a visual lullaby to soothe the soul in chaotic times.

Narrowly escaping hospitalisation for being lesbian in 1960s Philadelphia, classically trained Beverly Copeland fled to Canada where they became immersed in the emerging folk-jazz scene. Talented but still unsuccessful after a few albums, they lived for many years as a near recluse.

In 1986, sci fi obsessed Copeland wrote and self-released Keyboard Fantasies, a seven-track cassette recorded in an Atari-powered home studio, with a curious folk-electronica hybrid sound that was way ahead of its time. It remained in obscurity until three decades later when the musician – now Glenn Copeland – started getting emails from people across the world, thanking him for the deeply affecting music they’d recently discovered. Courtesy of a rare-record collector in Japan, a reissue of Keyboard Fantasies and plays by FourTet, the music finally found a cult audience two generations down the line, including fans like The XX and Courtney Barnett.

Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story sees Glenn commit his story and his music to screen for the first time, in an intimate portrait that spins the pain of prejudice into beauty and hope. Half aural-visual history, half DIY tour-video, the film comes hot on the heels of Transmissions, a career retrospective album released September 2020 that’s set to bring this gentle and joyful musical pioneer to a much-deserved wider audience.

Subtitles and Captions available