The Best Summer

Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Bikini Kill, Pavement and more, all at one fateful Aussie music festival.

Get in line – we’re heading to 1995.

December 1995: riding high on her hit comedy Billy Madison and numerous celebrated music videos, Tamra Davis (Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, MIFF 2010) brought her Sony Hi8 camcorder to Australia on tour with her new husband, Mike D of the Beastie Boys. At Summersault, an upstart festival hoping to outshine the Big Day Out, Davis recorded electric live sets from the Beasties and pals Pavement, Sonic Youth, Dave Grohl’s new band Foo Fighters and Kim Deal’s Breeders-hiatus project The Amps. And as Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna playfully interviewed other musos backstage, Davis unknowingly documented the riot grrrl icon falling for future husband Adam ‘Ad-Rock’ Horovitz.

Thirty years later, Davis found a shoebox of old 8mm videotapes while evacuating her home during the Los Angeles Palisades wildfire. This precious time capsule – a last hurrah of scrappy underground camaraderie before landmark albums and arena superstardom – formed the basis for this wistful feature-length window into another era. Summersault didn’t last, but its young promoter Steve Pavlovic went on to found cult label Modular Recordings, decisively shaping Australian indie music. “It was such a different time,” Davis told the crowd at the film’s 2026 Sundance premiere – and this shaggy hangout travelogue will take you right back there.

Content: Melbourne International Film Festival