Was this the best Aussie summer ever? This filmmaker thinks so

Tamra Davis’ new music doco The Best Summer offers an intimate trip back to the spirited alt-’90s.

In January 2025, while evacuating the Los Angeles Palisades fire that threatened her Malibu home, filmmaker Tamra Davis found a mysterious box of unmarked videotapes in her garage.

“I was like, ‘What’s on all these tapes?’ It just said ‘Indonesia’ on it. I had no idea,” says Davis.

She tracked down a Hi8 camera to investigate because the camcorder she’d used to shoot the tapes was long gone. “I started going through them and it was like, ‘The Foo Fighters on stage, what?’, ‘An interview with Kim Gordon, what?’

“It was this weird thing because it was all in my point of view. It felt like a Black Mirror episode, like I was looking into my memory. I was in awe of the vision of the world I had right there.”

The bulk of the tapes, it turns out, were Davis’ recordings from the Summersault music festival that toured Australia in December 1995 and January 1996. The brainchild of famed local promoter Stephen Pavlovic, the tour’s lineup reads like the ultimate ’90s fever dream: the Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Pavement, Beck, Rancid, The Amps, Jawbreaker and Bikini Kill.

Davis at the time was newly married to the Beasties’ Mike D and joined the band on tour with her Sony Hi8 camcorder in hand. “I always shot Beastie Boys stuff, it gave me something to do at the shows and I just always had a camera handy. That’s kind of my thing. Even now, I’m always filming,” she says.

She turned the tapes into The Best Summer, a nostalgic documentary shot through with the DIY spirit of the alternative ’90s, that’s screening at Sydney Film Festival this weekend.

The doco includes in-their-prime performances from indie heroes including Kim Deal, Stephen Malkmus and the late Adam Yauch (aka the Beasties’ MCA), while Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna runs rampant backstage like the best kind of gonzo journalist, peppering her tour mates with existential questions.

“Everyone loved our girl energy,” laughs Davis. “I remember somebody was being interviewed by these Australian journalists with their huge cameras and Kathleen was like, ‘Ugh, look at those dudes, we could do it so much better.’ I was like, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’”

The film also captures an era’s mood. Kurt Cobain’s suicide, which had happened just over a year earlier, lingers in the background like a generation’s dulling cloud. A young Dave Grohl, then on his first tour with the Foo Fighters, is seen discussing his anxiety at being a frontman, jarring footage considering the veteran rock showman he is today.

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