Doc’n Roll Festival returns with a new season of underground music films

Since its inception in 2013, Doc’n Roll festival has sought to provide a platform for some of the music and art world’s most niche and underrepresented figures, putting the stories of marginalised voices and new documentary-makers onto the screens of some of the UK’s most respected cultural institutions, from the BFI to the Barbican.

Co-founded and programmed by Vanessa Lobon-Garcia and Colm Forde, what began as a low-key attempt to help screen a handful of subcultural films outside the capital has turned into a year-round project, with premieres up and down the country alongside screenings around the globe, from New York to Dubai. At the centre of it still, however, is Doc’n Roll Festival: a programme of 20-plus films, including world and UK premieres, which will show at cinemas in London, Brighton and Dublin from 23 October to 9 November.

Though the project has scaled up, the idea at the heart of it remains the same. ‘We're looking for things that aren’t the classic, cookie-cutter stuff that would go straight to Sky Arts, that’ve been made by the labels to help sell records,’ explains Forde. ‘It’s about showing people that wouldn’t normally get a look in, like the Big Mama Thornton film this year. I'm really happy to bring that to the Barbican because I know there's an audience there for it, but that kind of thing really flies under the radar of other film programmers. They look at these films and think they’re too much work to market. But that's where we really found our niche: giving a break to subjects and filmmakers that really deserve it.’

Doc’n Roll aren’t trying to compete with the current London Film Festival, or any of the circuit’s major players; instead, they’ve carved out a space of their own based on intense fandom – the kind that’s willing to travel. Last year, they had people fly over from Ireland to the capital just to watch a 23-minute short about punk band Fat White Family; he’s already been messaged by one fan this year who is planning on driving 238 miles to get to a screening of Felix, Dare To Dream – a doc about tattooist Felix Leu. There are bigger names amongst the 2025 programme – the UK premieres of Glenn Matlock’s Sex Pistols documentary, and another about Boy George and Culture Club – but it’s in the embrace of the true underground that Doc’n Roll stands apart.

They operate independently, without corporate sponsors – Forde would be open to working with the right people but has also readily turned down the wrong ones, who’ve tried to put restrictions on their decidedly leftfield programming. ‘If you look at the medium to large festivals across the world, they're all sponsored by banks who are art-washing all of them,’ he says. ‘I would love to be working with a brand that I really believe in, that isn't a bank or an insurance company. But the silver lining of not currently having a sponsor is that we don't have to bend the rules to accommodate any bullshit.’

Instead, Doc’n Roll’s ethos remains impressively pure: to create, as Forde describes, ‘a bit of a vibe for people to meet like-minded people who are into weirdo stuff’. In a saturated market of big-budget Hollywood biopics, Doc’n Roll is the antithesis – a decidedly DIY-minded festival creating a space for the misfits. ‘Those biopics are so drained of the real spirit of it all,’ Forde says. ‘Whereas we just wanted to put our love of leftfield alternative music and independent documentary film together in this crazy thing.’

Colm Forde’s picks of Doc’n Roll Festival 2025

Big Mama Thornton: I Can’t Be Anyone But Me

'Big Mama Thornton influenced people like Elvis, but she would play what they called the Chitlin’ Circuit back in the day, when Black artists couldn’t stay in the same accommodations as the white artists they were touring with. She’s doing what she loves, but as a queer, butch, Black woman, even within her own community, that would have been pretty daunting. It’s a real story of resilience and survival, and then unfortunately, the classic story of white artists coming in and making money from her art and her brilliant songs.'

A Way To Die: The Short Films of Coil

'It’s a collection of seven short films that were all shot in Hackney in the late ’70s/early ’80s, showing the deindustrialisation of the area but through quite a heavy, queer, sadomasochistic point of view. It was shot in Super 8 and 16 by the band – Peter Christopherson and John Balance – back when they were art school kids and just starting out, filming the antics of what they were getting up to behind the scenes of their gigs. There’s a hilarious short film in it that shows the industrial extraction of semen to be sold on; it’s some mad, weirdo shit but it’s hilarious if you’re into dark humour.'

Move Ya Body: The Birth of House

'It’s coming from the political aspect of the birth of house, and the gerrymandering within the southern Chicago ghettos where the music came from, which is still a deeply deprived area. The film isn’t just an A–Z of how house music then spread into London and Manchester and Ibiza; it’s told from a very political angle, in terms of the Black voter and the lack of access to real democracy that the Black voter still has.'

Rockers Don’t Stop: The Revival of Rockers Revenge

'The film is a production by record producer Arthur Baker, who was their key patron back in the mid-to-late ’80s when he found the band working in a record store. The band influenced a lot of early house music; they had a great break in the UK on Top of the Pops but couldn’t afford to fly to London for four nights, so they passed on it and petered out. It’s an interesting story about second chances, and about working-class voices.'

Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt

'The documentary sets the scene for the legendary Texan punk band and through the perspectives of other musicians, comedians and people that got swept up in the whole buzz of their live shows. As well as the music, there’s the context of them going against the grain of Reagan and Reaganomics, which paralleled what was going on at the time in the UK with Thatcherism.'