BBFF26 The Best Summer

Raw, never-before-seen footage takes audiences inside an extraordinary moment in 1990s alternative music, as Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Pavement, Rancid, Beck, The Amps and Bikini Kill tour Australia and Asia at the height of their powers. Filmmaker Tamra Davis had just finished directing Billy Madison when she joined her husband, Beastie Boys’ Mike D, on the road in late 1995. Already an accomplished music-video director and very much part of this circle of musicians and friends, Davis travelled with a Sony Hi8 camera constantly at hand. The result is extraordinary access: electrifying live performances alongside dressing-room conversations, tour-bus downtime, jokes, friendships and candid backstage interviews that could only have been captured by someone inside the group rather than looking in from the outside. Among Davis’s companions is Bikini Kill frontwoman Kathleen Hanna, who joins her in conducting playful interviews with fellow musicians. The cameras catch Hanna getting to know Beastie Boys’ Ad-Rock - the beginnings of a relationship that would continue long after the tour. Nearly 30 years later, Davis rediscovered the extent of what she had captured when she came across the tapes while evacuating during the 2025 Palisades fires. Shaped into an intimate and exhilarating time capsule, The Best Summer transports audiences back to a pre-smartphone era when some of alternative music’s defining artists were young, creatively fearless and, for one remarkable summer, all travelling together. This session includes short films