Expected Guests: director Lilly Scourtis Ayers and subject Danielle Santos Bernal

Bay Area punk provocateur Marian Anderson was about more than performing topless and lesbian sex onstage. She was more than powerful vocals and lyrics that would knock you down faster than a Gilman St. mosh-pit. She was more than court cases, censorship and some nefarious business with a banana. Marian Anderson was a visionary musician who spent her life creating art and trying to exorcize her demons through the music of her bands The Insaints, Five Fingers and The Thrill Killers. This is her story.

Featuring interviews and archival footage, the film highlights revelations about Anderson's painful past, her career as a sex worker, which started at age 13, her part-time job as a dominatrix, her musical ambitions and legal problems, and her descent into drug addiction and mental illness. The true heart of the film is revealed as it covers the later part of her life, when she moves to Los Angeles and falls in love with Danielle Santos Bernal. Theirs was a volatile relationship but seemingly Marian’s only true love aside from her music. Never fully able to conquer her drug addiction or mental illness, Marian left behind a legacy of intense music and a life lived hard.

Narrated by pop culture icon Henry Rollins, featuring interviews with punk rock royalty such as Tim Armstrong of Rancid, Dexter Holland of The Offspring, Becky Wreck of Lunachicks, Texas Terri, Daniel deLeon, Greg Langston, Fate Fatal, Ginger Coyote, and more.

— CINDY M. EMCH