'Shellshock Rock': When Punk Was Polite

Nearly 30 years on, "Shellshock Rock" remains an enduring embrace of youthful idealism -- an idealism that resonates in the form of blue hair, power chords and scuzzy teeth.

Screening tonight only at the American Film Institute in Silver Spring, this lyrical snapshot of Belfast's punk-rock scene in the late 1970s offers a perspective we rarely see in other documentaries from the same period -- a geniality behind the camera and a rather adorable innocence in front of it.

The young musicians in John T. Davis's 1979 movie -- members of bands such as the Undertones, Stiff Little Fingers and Rudi -- are dealing with a different world than their more famous counterparts in England, such as the Sex Pistols and the Clash. Brought up with the Troubles, these Protestant and Catholic rockers are looking more to avoid political trouble. Could this be punk rock as escapism?

Sure, they attract stares in the city center with their dyed hair, sausage-skin jeans and air of exuberance, but compared with the intimidating likes of Johnny Rotten, their attitude seems practically welcoming. There are no lips, noses and ears harpooned with safety pins, no talk of toppling the towers of political corruption. And in the clubs there is none of that affected enmity between band and audience: When one group concludes a number to overall silence, the singer pipes up: "No applause?" The audience immediately claps.

More interested in artistic expression and communal celebration than break-the-chairs revolution, these Kids Are Alright. And perhaps none articulates this 44-minute film's unequivocal attitude more cogently than the carny with the porkpie hat, cigarette wedged behind his right ear, who says of the local punksters: "They're all young and enjoying themselves, aren't they? Part of their life, part of their game, isn't it? . . . . Wish I was young meself."

"Shellshock Rock" makes no effort to orientate the viewer. There are no subtitles, for instance, to help non-Irish ears with that Belfast brogue -- as impenetrable as yesterday's leftover suet pudding. Nor is anyone identified. Here's a youth -- dressed in what appears to be a schoolboy's white shirt -- talking about how punk unites fans otherwise at political odds. And there's a band playing an energetic, toe-tapping song before an audience in some rock joint -- could it be the storied Harp club that was once surrounded by a barbed wire fence? And there's another circle of musicians recording a song at a studio. Only the punk - noscenti will recognize the key players of Stiff Little Fingers or, in other scenes, Terri Hooley, the small-time impresario whose Good Vibrations studio became the central hub of the Belfast scene.

Yet we understand everything emotionally. The movie unfolds impressionistically, as if in direct response to the vibrant synapses of Davis's brain. It paints its subject from an emotional palette of look, feeling and atmosphere, and we become deeply involved across the span of geography and time.

"Shellshock Rock" will be shown with Tom Collins's 46-minute documentary "Teenage Kicks: The Undertones," which features that band revisiting the old haunts in its home town of Derry with Great Britain's beloved late DJ John Peel. Davis himself is scheduled to address the audience's questions after tonight's double bill.

Shellshock Rock (44 minutes) at the AFI Silver Theatre at 9:30 tonight) is not rated and contains the occasional profanity -- assuming you can decipher it.