This Camp Rocks

Girls Find a Place Attuned To Their Hopes & Screams

Band camp is getting a makeover. French horns are out, Fender guitars are in. Counselors teach campers to scream, stomp their feet and wail on their instruments. Oh, and no boys allowed.

Girls-only rock-and-roll camps have been sprouting up all over the country since 2000, and this summer, Washington is getting one of its own. Tomorrow night at a kick-off party at the Avalon Theatre, girls ages 8 to 18 can apply to Girls Rock! DC, hear live music and watch the film "Girls Rock!"

The movie documents a week at the Portland, Ore., Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls, the grandmother of the franchise, which now includes outposts in New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, London and elsewhere. The film follows four girls as they learn instruments, form bands, write songs and perform in front of about 700 people -- all in five days. As in other cities, D.C. campers will learn from local band luminaries: Kathy Cashel, Angela Melkisethian and Katy Otto are among the musicians set to volunteer, according to organizers.

Laura, a Korean adoptee from Oklahoma City who loves death metal, attended the 2005 rock camp at age 16 to meet other female musicians and because she felt tired of hearing girls at school brag about their boyfriends' bands.

"Why don't you start your own band, super genius, you know what I mean?" she says in the film. "That's a lot cooler than having your boyfriend in a band."

The men behind the 90-minute documentary, Arne Johnson, 39, and Shane King, 40, made the film after Johnson heard Carrie Brownstein, guitarist for Sleater-Kinney and a camp volunteer, talk about her mini-proteges at an arts lecture.

During filming, Johnson and King were usually the only males in a warehouse of about 100 females. In the movie, camp organizers teach a workshop in self-defense and encourage open communication within the bands. The girls are supposed to become more assertive -- whether by pounding on a drum set or by speaking up in a group conversation.

The filmmakers soon realized that the story they needed to tell was about empowerment and self-esteem.

"We found that as we talked to them, the girls would say something in passing like, 'I hate my body but everyone hates their body, you know?' " Johnson says. "We would be like, 'No, I don't know what you mean. Can you explain that?' " Johnson says that he felt like a "tourist" in teenage girl land. To supplement their understanding, the filmmakers read the adolescent self-esteem tome "Reviving Ophelia," among other books. The movie includes animation sequences -- set to a pounding soundtrack by bands such as Le Tigre, Bikini Kill and Veruca Salt -- that present telling statistics. Sample: "In 1970, the average age for girls to start dieting was 14. By 1990, it was 8."

"Girls Rock!" is the duo's second film together. They shot their first at age 14 on a Super 8 camera they bought at a thrift store in their home town of Portland.

"And it was so exhausting, we took a 26-year break," King jokes.

Their musical background is almost as illustrious. At age 19, they formed a band called the Fish Cats, which rehearsed two times before breaking up. (Creative differences.) Johnson and King funded "Girls Rock!" by dipping into their own savings and relying on in-kind donations from women in the film industry. The movie is so down-home that the San Francisco-based buddies thank their cat sitters in the closing credits.

The filmmakers have kept in touch with the girls from the film, though after editing 250 hours of footage, they tend to forget that they aren't frozen in time. (Johnson: "Amelia is five inches taller!")

Laura from Oklahoma City is now a high school senior with a 4.6 grade point average. She has returned to rock camp every summer since 2005 and she sings, plays bass and "tried to play keyboards," she says.

The D.C. camp will teach those instruments, along with hip-hop DJ skills, according to local camp organizer Ziska West, who also works for the Avalon. The camp, Aug. 11-15 at the Kingsbury Center in Petworth (in Northwest D.C.) can accommodate about 40 girls -- applications will be available online after tomorrow night's screening at http://www.girlsrockdc.org-- and will culminate in a performance at the 9:30 club.

Laura still loves metal but also would love to meet Glen Hansard and Mark�ta Irglov� of the band the Swell Season and the movie "Once." She says she's "over the whole hating-yourself thing" but ponders the feminist implications of her new skirts and ballet flats for spring. Laura hasn't seen "Girls Rock!"

"I think I'd hate looking at myself on camera," she says. "I'd think, 'She's weird, who's that?' Maybe if they made a special edited version that I'm not in -- I'll definitely see that."

"Girls Rock!" screens at 8 p.m. tomorrow night at the Avalon, 5612 Connecticut Ave. NW, 202-966-6000. $12. Girl Loves Distortion, Blue Black Betty and DJ Natty Boom are scheduled to perform. Special kids screening Saturday at 10 a.m., $7.