The second day of the 15th Indie Memphis Film Festival is highlighted by Antenna (Playhouse on the Square, 6:30 p.m.), a years-in-the-making Memphis alt/punk-scene portrait from local filmmakers C. Scott McCoy and Laura Jean Hocking, which picks up where last night’s gala screening title, Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me, leaves off — almost literally. An infamous Memphis television appearance by Tav Falco’s Panther Burns, with Chilton on guitar, comes late in the Big Star film, depicted as a kind of landing point for Chilton as power-pop evolved into punk and alt-rock. The same clip is used at the beginning of Antenna as the local-punk Big Bang.
Antenna tells the story of the titular rock club, once located at the corner of Madison and Avalon in Midtown, where so many culturally left-of-center Memphians in the ’80s and ’90s found their voices and each other. Along the way, we get glimpses of early alternative/punk/new wave acts such as the Panther Burns, the Modifiers, and Calculated X and see the rise of the city’s signature ’90s bands, the Grifters and Oblivians.
Antenna trailer:
The doc situates the Antenna as a key part of a growing national indie-rock network via interviews with major figures such as R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, Minutemen’s Mike Watt, and Black Flag’s Greg Ginn. And it takes a great detour into the all-ages hardcore scene that grew up around the club in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
