American filmmaker and drummer.
Dave Markey (born December 3, 1963 in Burbank, California) is an American self-taught film director and musician, Dave Markey directed, produced, edited, and photographed most of his films, the majority of which has been self-funded and distributed. His work documents the punk scene in Southern California throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Markey has worked with Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Mudhoney, Redd Kross, The Ramones, Black Flag and the Meat Puppets.
Markey made his first film in 1974 at the age of 11 with his father’s hand-wound 8mm Brownie camera, cast from the children of his Santa Monica, California neighborhood. Markey soon discovered the burgeoning LA Punk Scene a few years hence through bands like X, Black Flag, and Redd Kross in 1980. Markey was driven to form his own band, Sin 34, in 1981 as well as Painted Willie in 1984. He also started We Got Power fanzine that year along with Jordan Schwartz spawning Markey’s cinematic Super-8 cult punk scene documents. These films were distributed underground and critically well received, putting Markey on the Cinematic Punk map before he was of legal age. Markey's work has since been exhibited internationally, including theatrical release in the US and Canada of 1991: The Year Punk Broke, theatrical screenings in Los Angeles of Desperate Teenage Lovedolls and Lovedolls Superstar and inclusion in international film festivals in Argentina, England, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Portugal, Angola, China, Korea, Italy and The Netherlands.