Film & Gender Discuss the Nature of Punk, and How DIY is Alive and Well

Film & Gender, currently made up of drummer Anthony Franco and singer/bassist Iss Manzi, have been making waves in the New England/New York DIY scene since the band formed in 2020. Iss is a founding member, along with the previous guitarist/drummer who left the band officially early this year, on good terms. Anthony joined on drums after Film & Gender played a show with his previous band Target Scammers at the Rat Den in Albany. The beginnings of Film & Gender consisted mostly of covers of the 80s punk band The Dead Milkmen, until eventually Issley started writing original songs for the band. Their discography, written primarily by Manzi, covers a wide range of topics, exploring sexuality, gender, anti-fascism, and the benefits of an armed minority. The songs come to life in a shared rehearsal space in Chicopee, where the walls are lined with artwork from friends, including one drawing on a drumhead of what appears to be Bart Simpson singing in a Ska band, memes on printer paper, and mannequins in various states of undress. This is where I met the band.

How did you guys get started playing shows and how has the DIY scene played a part in that?

Issley: Yeah, so we’ve always been like a DIY band. Like, our first show was at a DIY Festival in my friend’s backyard.
Our second show was a student-run show at UMass Amherst. So, you know, we definitely have played shows that are less DIY and are more like official venues, but the band was birthed in DIY. I feel like, just punk music in general works the best in a DIY atmosphere and, yeah. I think it’d be weird if we were like talking about all the things we talk about and then making our shows inaccessible because our tickets cost a ton of money, or were always playing in spaces that are 21+. 
Yeah,so, I feel like it’s just like the natural synergy.

As a DIY band that’s played over 70 shows this year, how do you guys go about recording and touring?

Issley: So recording wise, like a lot of early recordings were in this space. Very basic, like we had a couple of microphones and when we were recording just ourselves at first, we made a big effort into making sure our recordings sounded pretty like, raw as in live and not overproduced. Because, we are a DIY band and we want our music to reflect how we sound live. And then our past three releases “War on the Boulevard”, “I Wish I Never Made You Cum”, and “F.W.A.G.” were all recorded at my friend Monty’s studio. It’s awesome, and he’s a drummer which is really great because we always said the hardest thing to mic up is drums. 

Touring wise it’s like, everything, especially if you’re not signed, is all networking. I mean, some of that is just word of mouth, social media presence-wise, “Oh I saw your band on Instagram, I found you on Bandcamp or Spotify or whatever platform”. Most of it is just meeting people at shows and being like, “Oh, you’re cool”. Both as like, you make good art and you’re a good hang and you have valid politics, and I wouldn’t mind associating myself with you. Especially when you’re getting footing in an area or a scene that you’re not familiar with.
Once you play in an area a few times, word to mouth spreads more, but it’s really hard. Especially as a band who sonically doesn’t really fall into a genre super well.

Speaking of genre, you guys describe yourselves as a punk duo, what does punk mean to you guys and what does it mean for your music?

Anthony: I think punk is like completely like, as most subcultures or countercultures, whatever word you want to use are, I think it’s totally rooted in an ideology that is very congruent with DIY beliefs. Beliefs of like, you don’t need to trust the government, you can organize by yourself and you can do things for yourself that don’t fall into general, you know, general cultural beliefs or general societal beliefs. And there’s definitely aesthetics that come off of that, again, as with any sort of culture. But it is fully like, in my opinion, just like you, it’s like your methodology about how you go about living your life. And I think the music that comes out of that, like we were saying earlier is like a very, is the word protist?

Issley: It’s very protist.

What does that mean?

Issley: There’s the seven families. I’m not a f*cking biology major, but there’s like fungi, plantae and animalia, the different types of bacteria, and one of them is called Protists. So it’s a weird, like subsection of like forms of life that is like very grab-baggy. It’s like, it doesn’t really fit into the other ones, so they just call it a protist. But the protist, but like the rules as of what a protist is are way looser than like, what a plant is or what a fungus is.

I get it, it’s like, the miscellaneous things.

Anthony: Okay, I get that, I like that. I think what Iss was saying earlier, like, the music that comes out of a lot of punk ideology is, you know, as you move through time, like it sounds very different. Like a lot of proto-punk stuff was very much about, like, we don’t want to play guitar like other people, and then it’s like, we want to play faster and we want to do all this. And, a lot of it is just kind of based around the idea of doing something in a different way than the norm. But I think where we’re at now, there’s no monoculture anymore, everything is just on the table. 

Issley: And, I feel like if you’re trying to look like that idealized monoculture, it’s been taken away by capitalism. Like, when you think of punk, you think, oh like, mohawks and all of these things and like, that was a thing 30 years ago, 40 years ago. But now that’s just what capitalism has taken and labeled as punk. I think you said this before, Anthony, which I thought was really great; you might dress a certain way because you are a punk.

Anthony: Yeah, but dressing that way does not make you punk. It’s not really a two-way street.
I don’t know, I’m wearing Air Forces right now.

Issley: I’m wearing dress pants and a turtleneck.

Anthony: I think where we exist now where it’s like a lot of the aesthetics of punk are kind of being co-opted. It’s like, the most punk thing you could do is do what’s true to you. Like, you want to decorate your room or you want to look a certain way, you should do it because it calls you. You shouldn’t do it because it’s “punk”.  

Issley: And to tie into that, people, especially people go to shows often, like you can look like a punk band and sound like a punk band, but, if you go and start playing your music, like people can tell pretty quickly. You know, people who “are punk”, like in the sense that Anthony and I are calling punk, they’ll just call you out as a poser. Like, the ideology of what makes a successful artist doesn’t really align with punk in the sense that being a successful artist is like, oh, we’re going to play Carnegie Hall some day. That’s like, I don’t know how you can ethically play Carnegie Hall as a punk. There’s definitely ways to get there, but it’s tough. 

And I feel like, it is really hard; not hard, but it is a constant thought exercise for me, as the band has gotten way bigger than I ever thought it would, how can we keep this ethical? And, yeah. um. Yeah, not selling out, I guess, not ceasing being DIY just because like we have X amount of followers on Instagram or people listen to our music. Like, we could charge more for merch if we wanted to and people would probably still buy it. But I’d like to keep our merch as accessible as possible given that we’re not losing money on it essentially.

Your most popular song “T4T” has over 25 thousand streams across various platforms, what is that song about?

Issley: So, “T4T” is a song about trans hookups. For people that aren’t aware T4T stands for “Trans for Trans”. It’s pretty popular on dating apps for trans people to put T4T to make it explicitly clear they’re only looking for other people who are trans. I’m there, I’m a big fan of Grinder and I’m mostly always T4T. But yeah, that song is a weird half-cover of a song called “HWH” by the Falling Idols. I always liked “HWH” because it’s the stupidest, easiest bass riff, but it’s really catchy. And then I just changed most of the words to be about trans hookups. Yeah, I don’t know what to say about it. It’s a song I wrote in like 10 minutes.

What was the story behind “War on the Boulevard”?

Issley: So, “War on the Boulevard” is another weird half-cover from a Falling Idols song. And, I don’t want to speak for Anthony here but, I don’t like cops. I think cops are legal gangs that are government installs at the town and city level, and at the county level. 
And of course, like wider federal agencies have been given the authority to essentially lynch people and without much, if any, consequences unless there’s like the most explicit proof and even the most cop-loving blue lives matter person can’t deny it. Yeah, that’s a song about what I think about cops.

I wanted to ask about the name, Film and Gender.

Issley: It was the last course I needed to get my bachelor’s degree. The acronym, we realized pretty quickly but like, it wasn’t purposeful. It was when we started texting about it like, how do we abbreviate Film and Gender? And like, the official name of Film and Gender is “Film, ampersand, Gender”, but we take advantage.

Also, when we started the band, like I didn’t know I was trans yet. I definitely knew I was queer, but not genderqueer at least. Yeah, it works out.

What does it mean to reclaim that word for your art?

Issley: Oh, that’s a great question. Yeah, I am someone who’s big on the train of reclaiming the word f*ggot for myself, and taking power over it. I think it’s been done a lot of times by a lot of different groups of people, and yeah, I don’t really have much to say beside that, honestly.

Film and Gender has an upcoming tour in January throughout the Northeast, more information about it can be found on both the flyer below and on their instagram @film_and_gender.