CHUMBAWAMBA

"I Get Knocked Down" is the untold story of Leeds-based anarcho-pop band Chumbawamba. Founding band-member Dunstan Bruce is 59, and he is struggling with the fact that the world seems to be going to hell in a handcart. Twenty years after his fall from grace, Bruce is angry and frustrated, but how does a retired middle-aged radical get back up again? In this punk version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Dunstan is visited by the antagonistic ghost of his anarchist past – his alter ego, ‘Babyhead’ – who forces him to question his own life, sending him on a search for his long-lost anarchist mojo. Following Bruce’s personal voyage of rediscovery, redemption, and reawakening, I Get Knocked Down acts as a call to arms to those who think activism is best undertaken by someone else. I Get Knocked Down screens as part of our Northern Focus strand in the 2021 Sheffield DocFest programme. At Sheffield DocFest we celebrate and debate documentary film & art as a collective form of engagement. Join the 28th edition of Sheffield DocFest, in Sheffield & online 4–13 June 2021. Visit our website: sheffdocfest.com

Give The Anarchist a Cigarette

Timebomb

I first got into Chumbawamba through a colleague at the bookshop I worked in from back in the eighties and nineties and he gave me 'Anarchy' to listen to and I couldn't stop listening and have pretty much got everything since. I thought Tubthumping as a universal call to arms for lads and lasses of us lefties but it became some kind of anthem for the sidelined and the disadvantaged generally. A positive affirmation if you will to pick yourself up dust your self down and start all over again . . . . to quote another earlier ditty with similar advice!

Give the Anarchist a cigarette stuck in my head . . . . . where HAD I heard that before? . . . it rang down the years and echoed around and then they showed Don't look Back again on the telebox and there it was

Aaaah, now I get it . . . . sad the band disbanded and the above profile programme is going to be well worth the watch