"Kill Your Idols" is a lively, unpolished, and potent music documentary

that will play as part of the Gene Siskel Center’s new music film series

It will play at the center on Sunday, September 4 at 7:45 and Thursday, September 8 at 8:15.

The film was made for less than $300 but it’s far more compelling and entertaining than virtually any of this summer’s big budget blockbuster movies.

The name is a variation of a title of the great Sonic Youth song, "Kill Y’r Idols." There is also a book called "Kill Your Idols" (co-edited by the "Chicago Tribune" rock critic, Jim DeRogatis) in which many newer rock writers attack "classic" rock recordings.

No wave was a late ’70s movement that was inspired by punk rock and new wave, but it was even more radical, underground and revolutionary. No wave performers such as James Chance and Lydia Lunch rejected the blues base of punk, and they consciously tried to get rid of all traces of their influences. Many of them also used some non-rock instruments, and they experimented with avant-garde and jazz sounds as well as atonality.

"Kill Your Idols" looks at the New York no wave scene of the ‘70s in a chorological fashion. It includes many classic clips of performances by No Wave bands such as Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, DNA, and the Contortions.

There are also interviews with survivors of the no wave scene; as well as members of bands from the ‘80s, ‘90s and today that were influenced by the movement. Some of the new bands come off poorly. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs make good recordings, but they come off as shallow and mainstream in their interviews.

Punk poet/ performance artist Lydia Lunch comes up with some of the film’s greatest lines. She says that the ‘70s no wave musicians were "freaks that came together to purge themselves of their specific sicknesses." But she says many of the recent New York bands gaining media attention are "a pandering bunch of post punk mamma’s boys that are desperate to be loved." She accuses them of being careerists that make derivative homogenized music. She says her generation of musicians made music to "stop them killing themselves or someone else."

The film is unrated but it has some explicit language and it is not recommended for children.

"Kill Your Idols" is just as powerful and disturbing as the music scene that inspired it.