CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH Young artists are taught self-empowerment through music at the Rock ’n’ Roll Camp for Girls.

In Portland, Oregon, a supercool posse of lesbians is teaching a generation of young girls to be true to themselves. No, it’s not some sort of conversion-therapy school, but a rock camp for girls 18 or younger, where most of the women teaching the feminist, rock-out principles just happen to be queer.

“Queers, punks, feminists—we’re all involved in the camp,” says STS, 35, a drummer and drum instructor who appears just briefly in a new documentary film about the Portland Rock ’n’ Roll Camp for Girls, Girls Rock!, opening Friday 7. Though it’s not a subject explored in the film, the queer angle figures strongly in the ethos of the place.

“There’s a big homocore movement in Portland,” explains STS, whose most recent band was the Haggard. “Dyke rock bands were everywhere years ago, and that’s the scene I came of age in. And so many from that scene have wound up teaching at rock camp. For me, being a lesbian musician, it feels like the camp is a part of the queer community.”

Founded in 2001, the rock camp has been operating every summer since, offering one-week sessions that teach girls from across the country how to sing or play an instrument (guitar, drum, bass, keyboards), form a band, write songs and perform what they’ve accomplished at a final showcase. Its mission, “to build self-esteem through music creation and performance,” is simple yet incredibly powerful, as the new film—created, surprisingly, by a pair of men—makes clear.

“Both [codirector] Shane [King] and I grew up with feminist mothers and in sort of radical families, so we thought we knew it all already,” admits producer and codirector Arne Johnson, based in Portland, who explains that he and King were inspired to make the film when they heard that a member of the band Sleater-Kinney, which they loved, taught there. “But we didn’t really get it. Once you sit down in a room with an 11-year-old girl, [feminist issues] become something not to argue about. She’s telling you how she feels. So I learned that you can have a knee-jerk agreement, but you’re really not listening. And I think both of us confronted what a lot of boys have—an inherent oblivion to what’s surrounding them.”

In the film, we meet 15-year-old Laura, a singer with self-esteem issues; Misty, a 17-year-old former gang member and group-home resident who must manage her anger to learn bass; Amelia, an eccentric eight-year-old who makes screechy noises with her guitar; and Palace, 7, who seethes punk-rock anger when she screams into the microphone. Watching them transform during the film, through working with others and expressing themselves, is quite moving—as it was for the filmmakers to see it in real time.

Johnson says they thought it best that, as men, they stay away from any issues of sexuality in the film. Plus, he adds, “There’s a lot of gender playfulness out here [in Portland], and figuring that out was a game we didn’t feel like playing.”

Camp executive director Winner Bell, a 25-year-old lesbian who’s adept at every instrument taught at the camp and is in a band called Chupacabra, says she was pleasantly surprised by the film’s outcome. “The fact that they’re men and they made that film is really cool,” she says. “I think it brings in a perspective that maybe wouldn’t be there otherwise.”

Acknowledging the Portland-homocore spillover into the camp, Bell adds that they also partner with a local queer youth organization, SMYRC (Sexual Minority Youth Resource Center), for their outreach and fund-raising efforts. But, she adds, “I think we’re foremost a feminist organization, and that just having women here who are aware and who navigate the world with strength is helpful for the girls.”

It’s also a great support for campers who may be awakening sexually, who may feel isolated by what they discover in themselves. “We definitely try to have resources for the girls, as it’s really hard for those who are just figuring out who they are,” Bell says. “But it feels like the rock camp is a little bit of a bubble—we don’t tolerate bullying or anything. Everyone is accepted here.”

Girls Rock! opens Fri 7 at the Angelika Film Center.