How Long Is “The Gits”?

Documentary specialist Kerri O'Kane details the rise of promising Seattle-based punk outfit The Gits while simultaneously exploring the brutal murder of the band's charismatic front-woman Mia Zapata. In the early-1990s, Seattle music fans longing to distance themselves from the exploding "grunge" movement found themselves drawn to the soulful street punk of an emerging band that distinguished themselves not only by their non-traditional sound, but by their ability to obliterate the barrier between the performer and the audience as well. Their 1992 debut Frenching the Bully gaining the band a sizable following in their hometown, Portland, San Francisco, and all across the Pacific Northwest, it appeared as if The Gits were about to break big. It was the summer of 1993, as The Gits took to the studio to begin recording their sophomore follow-up Enter: The Conquering Chicken, that the reprehensible actions of a deranged madman would tragically derail the career of a band who by all accounts were poised for greatness. As the sun rose over Seattle on the morning of July 7, 1993, The Gits learned to their horror that singer Zapata had been raped and murdered by an unknown assailant the previous night. Stricken with ovarian cancer and determined to document her struggle against the sickness in a documentary entitled Walking Wounded, rising filmmaker O'Kane discovered a non-profit Seattle collective called "Home Alive" while conducting research for her film. An organization founded in the wake of Zapata's death, "Home Alive" raises public awareness about violence by providing self-defense classes to women free-of-charge as a community service. Deeply moved by Zapata's tragic story and inspired by the action the community took to ensure that other women didn't meet a similarly grim fate, O'Kane set about researching the history of the band and bringing their story to the screen for the benefit of Gits fans and anti-violence activists alike.