INTERVIEW! Celeste Bell talks to John Robb about her new film about her mother Poly Styrene

“My mum wasn’t like other mums.” Celeste Bell tells John Robb in this interview about her new film about her iconic mother, Marianne Joan Elliott-Said who found fame as her brilliant Poly Styrene creation. It looks it’s going to be one of the music films of the year.

The film is enthralling a gripping journey into a fascinating life but also has a real depth as it explores their mother/daughter relationship. With rare archive footage, and of course a great soundtrack and Poly’s eternal charisma and beautifully eccentric life journey.

It’s a fascinating story of a true icon that deals with growing up on the outside of a very white sixties England, a hippie tearaway who loved music like Trex finding a space in punk with the brilliant Poly Styrene creation, her clothes, music, style and lyrics that have made her a posthumous 21st-century icon. Then the breakdown and eventual salvation in the Hare Krishna movement that Celeste grew up in…it’s not a normal life and Poly was not a normal woman!

The death of the punk icon and X-Ray Spex frontwoman sent Celeste on a journey across the world and through her mother’s archives to reconcile their fraught relationship in this new documentary feature.

Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché will be released via Modern Films from Friday 5th March. By purchasing a ‘virtual ticket’, viewers will be able to support a participating local independent cinema – the revenue will be shared with the venue. The World Premiere is the week before at the Glasgow Film Festival (details here).