Riot grrrl's in the middle of a cultural victory lap. In the past year alone, the early-'90s punk feminist movement has seen some noteworthy milestones: Sara Marcus published Girls to the Front, a terrific and meticulously documented history of the movement; NYU's Fales library opened the first comprehensive archive of riot grrrl zines; and Kathleen Hanna was honored with a star-studded (Tavi Gevinson! Kim Gordon! Kim Gordon's kid!) Knitting Factory tribute show filmed for an upcoming documentary on her career. Even before it was announced last week that her one-time solo project Julie Ruin is heading back into the studio, Hanna's name seemed to be hovering in the air. Even The New York Times could not resist waxing nostalgic.

Into this fortuitous moment comes the DVD release of Who Took the Bomp?—Kerthy Fix's documentary chronicling Hanna's feminist electro-punk band's final tour in 2004. The recently launched D.C. queer web zine Where the Girls Go screened the film on Saturday night to a sold-out crowd crammed into the imaginatively decorated (life-size, zine-style cut-outs of the band greeted attendees in the doorway), and woefully un-air-conditioned Gold Leaf Studios. The event brought together fans young and old, united by a passion for feminist punk, radical politics, and also that really gross and universally leveling feeling of sweat pooling in the small of your back.

Coupling sequin-laden performance montages with fly-on-the-wall tour footage and interviews with band members, Who Took the Bomp? explores the personal politics that animated Le Tigre over its eight-year run. Worn out from riot-grrrl infighting and the media's misrepresentation of the movement, Hanna—along with beatmaker Johanna Fateman and future queer heartthrob JD Samson—started the band in 1998 as a way to infuse messages of feminist empowerment into the traditionally dudely world of electro music.

Like any good rock doc, Who Took the Bomp? indulges in requisite moments of backstage goofiness. And if this is Le Tigre’s Don’t Look Back, the role of Donovan is played dutifully here by Slipknot, with whom the ladies shared the bill at New Zealand’s Big Day Out Festival and plot, with sarcastic glee, a backstage meeting. (Fateman pretends to have a younger brother who’s a fan, and poses for a picture with one band member whose look can only be described as Hellraiser chic. “Timmy will be so excited!” Hanna squeals.)

But the film's at its best when it digs a little deeper, interrogating the difficulties of bringing queer positivity to a wide audience (the band decides to pull an ad from Jane magazine when the publication shrinks from using the word lesbian) and Hanna’s notoriously prickly relationship with mainstream media. Hanna was always uncomfortable when the media portrayed her as the figurehead of riot grrrl, and here she voices her frustration at journalists who continue to define her legacy through the famous men she’s often associated with. Riffing on another trusty rock doc trope (foreign journalists say the darnedest things!), Fix focuses on an encounter between Hanna and a radio host in New Zealand who won’t stop asking her questions about one of these men in particular. “I understand you once wrote some graffiti on Kurt Cobain’s wall,” he says. “I wrote, ‘Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit,’” Hanna answers, in the polite but wearied tone of somebody who’s had to answer that question incessantly over the past 20 years.

Hanna’s not the only focal point, though. Fix’s film provides well-rounded portraits of the other band members, including Samson, the proudly mustachioed lesbian who’s gone onto become the frontwoman of the band MEN and music’s most visible poster girl for female masculinity. Being a queer icon, the film shows, can be trying. While in New Zealand, she goes on what she thinks to be a date with a woman, but when the woman goes on a homophobic rant about how “nasty” lesbians are, Samson realizes there’s been a misunderstanding: This woman thinks Samson is a gay man. She leaves without correcting her and relays the incident to her bandmates with humor, but it’s maybe the most poignant moment in the film.

Fix, who co-directed last year’s Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields, doesn’t quite plumb the depths of how provocative a moment this was in Le Tigre’s history (er, herstory?): Having just released its unexpectedly glossy major-label debut This Island, the band was courting a new audience and risking alienating fans who’d originally identified with its DIY ethos. But even if this dynamic is only implicit in the film, it still adds up to an engaging portrait of a band navigating the conflicts of making music with a message.

"I always fear erasure," Hanna says toward the end of the film, expressing requisite worries about her band’s legacy. But Who Took the Bomp? should serve as a lasting document of Le Tigre’s message—and the packed house sweating it out on Saturday night proof that there’s are still plenty of people still willing to listen.

1. Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot GRRRL Revolution, by Sara Marcus.

When I saw Bikini Kill and Team Dresch play at a fraternity in Connecticut in 1995 (or was it early 1996?), there were some white hats ("white hats" = fraternity dudes) in the front acting a little too moshingly macho. Little did these white hats suspect that they would face the full fury of a pre-electroclash, pre-Ad Rock Kathleen Hanna who, while wearing sunglasses onstage and making liberal use of the epithets "fuck" and "asshole," ordered these muscular gentlemen to the back of the room, insisting that "This is a show for ladies!" Once exiled to the back, rumors circulated that these excitable lads were offended by Ms. Hanna's "reverse sexism" and plotting revenge that may or may not have included "pantsing" ("pantsing" = a juvenile practice in which an unwitting victim's pants are pulled down) and date rape. Fortunately, 75 percent of those illiberal, testosterone-fueled party-crashers died of binge-drinking later that evening before they could further sabotage the performance or commit sexual assault. The surviving 25 percent were spotted last week at the Fireplace.

2. C, by Tom McCarthy.
My friend called me the other day. He was like, "Yo, I'm reading this new Booker Prize-nominated work of fiction. Have you heard of it?" I was like, "Yeah," even though I hadn't, and quickly found that shit on Amazon and read the Publisher's Weekly summary back to him so I sounded like someone who knew what the fuck he was talking about. My friend was like, "Cool." Then, I was like, "Well, what do you think of that new work of Booker Prize-nominated work of fiction?" He was like, "I'm not sure, I'm only on Chapter 3." I was like, "That's weak, dude." He was like, "Yeah. That's what always impressed me about you. You're always on top of shit. Whatever I'm reading, you've already read it." So I was like, "Yeah," hung up the phone, went to the bathroom, and sunk deep into a Jacuzzi filled with bubbling liquid gold.

3. The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, by Sam Harris.
I think this guy is one of those Hitchens-esque new atheists with his humanistic, cynical knickers in twist about how we don't need religion to define morality because, despite what the Sarah Palin crowd says, science is capable of helping us distinguish between right and wrong. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. I don't know. I'm just the guy in the back of chemistry class in 11th grade using the digital scale to measure out exactly .25 ounces of marijuana.

4. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, by David Sedaris, illustrated by Ian Falconer.
You know how, sometimes, on Saturday, you're driving around doing errands—getting shit the fuck done, if you know what I mean—and then This American Life comes on, and you hear the fey, lispy voice of Ira Glass, and you're like, "Fuck! I'm fucking psyched that This American Life is on right now as I'm driving to Ikea!"? And you're listening to This American Life, which is probably about the foreclosure crisis or how someone's father wasn't quite the man his family thought he was or something, and then David Sedaris comes on? And Sedaris is in full form, pushing his distinctive brand of biting gay wit, and you're like "Fuck! I'm fucking psyched that David Sedaris is on right now as I'm driving to Target!" but then you get stuck in traffic and something starts to feel wrong and the more you listen to David Sedaris, the more you want to burn every copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day that is prominently displayed on all of your friends' bookshelves before hanging yourself without leaving a suicide note?

5. Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Writers and Artists Who Made the National Lampoon Insanely Great, by Rick Meyerowitz.
You may remember that the National Lampoon diaspora—early Saturday Night Live, Animal House, Caddyshack, Vacation, Ghostbusters, etc.—was funny when you were, like, 13. But that shit is like Sodom—if you order it up on Comcast On-Demand and look back, not only will it probably not be as funny as you remembered, but, like Lot's wife, you'll turn to salt.

Partyline (2005-present): Fascination with the riot grrrl movement burned brightly and briefly, but the members of Bratmobile—which formed in 1991—kept making music, on and off, until 2002. Sort-of based in D.C., Partyline isn't the first other project for singer Allison Wolfe, but it's had the most staying power. The band's name sort of reminds me of that chirpy Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie where they share a phone line, but Partyline's music—snotty, high-adrenaline, feminist—quickly corrects that association. The trio plays at the Velvet Lounge tomorrow night at 9 p.m. with Edie Sedgwick and Noisy Pig. Tickets are $8.

More riot grrrl second acts after the jump: flowcharts, riots in MTV studios, and Christina Aguilera!

Julie Ruin (1998): When Bikini Kill split up in 1998, singer Kathleen Hanna recorded a one-off album under the sobriquet Julie Ruin. Sonically, it's a bridge between Bikini Kill and Hanna's later electroclash outfit Le Tigre. The lyrics, too, are of the same smart, anarcho-feminist mold, but they also irreverently take measure of riot grrrl itself. Take "Aerobicide," whose spoofy video plays with the cop-show aesthetic of Beastie Boys's "Sabotage" promo, and contains mustachioed suits strategizing how to sell riot grrrl. Best shot? A flowchart in which all arrows point to "dance party."

Sleater-Kinney (1994-2006): This jagged Olympia, Wash.-based band emerged from Heavens to Betsy and Excuse 17, and took the riot grrrl ethos to its largest audience yet. The best testament to the trio's success? None of the Sleater-Kinney fans I know have the same favorite album. Also, member Carrie Brownstein's Moniter Mix blog is one of the Web's best blends of hard thinking and excellent taste.

Comet Gain (1993-present): The members of the U.K. band Huggy Bear all joined other groups, none better than Comet Gain. This jangly outfit featuring bassist Jon Slade—one of the few males to play in a riot grrrl band—formed around the time Huggy Bear started a minor riot in an MTV studio, thus earning canonization by British rockists. Production assistants have rested easy since: Comet Gain's vibe is decidedly calmer.

Le Tigre: (1998-present): Kathleen Hanna's second second act. Originally conceived as the back-up band for Julie Ruin, Le Tigre pumped out three loud, rude, and synthy releases beginning in 1999, and is still making music in 2009—with Christina Aguilera. Don't get snooty: A decade after the fact, Le Tigre's "Deceptacon" remains the best part of any dance party where people have the chutzpah to play it.