Interweaving promotional videos with rare live-footage of bands such as Discharge, GHB, Peter and the Test Tube Babies, and the Exploited, Ian Glasper takes a glimpse at an often-overlooked era of punk music. BURNING BRITAIN: HISTORY OF UK PUNK 1980-1984 focuses on the second-wave punk bands that emerged in the early 80s in Margaret Thatcher's England, who despite playing harder, angrier, and faster music than predecessors like the Sex Pistols, were often overshadowed by the media-fed myth that punk died in the late 1970s. Making a convincing argument that these bands were even more relevant and influential than those typically aligned with the punk movement, the documentary highlights the aggressive, political intentions of their music. Functioning as a history of forgotten music, BURNING BRITAIN exposes this dismissed period of music for what it was: passionate, creative, and intense.
