Cinema in Revolt
Cinema in Revolt
14 December 2007 – 29 February 2008
Cinema in Revolt considers the film legacy of Andy Warhol within the broader context of postwar queer experimental cinema, and its links to contemporary independent film and video work from North America. The program considers how artist–filmmakers have explored representations of deviance and camp sensibilities as markers of difference and eschewed dominant expectations for representing desire and sexuality onscreen.
'Cinema in Revolt' curated by Jose Da Silva, with accompanying film notes.
Lecture: The Inventions of the Unknown Demand New Forms: Queer Experimental Cinema / Jose Da Silva
Sat 23 Feb 2.00pm / Cinema A (followed by special 'Cinema in Revolt' shorts program)
KENNETH ANGER (b.1927)
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Fireworks 1947 Ages 18+ ‘A dissatisfied dreamer awakes, goes out in the night seeking a "light" and is drawn through the needle's eye. A dream of a dream, he returns to a bed less empty than before.’ – Kenneth AngerOne of the defining works of postwar experimental cinema, Fireworks is a defiant inscription of desire and the intermeshing of sexual identity with danger. Made at the age of 19, it was hailed by Tennessee Williams as 'the most exciting use of cinema' he had experienced. Fri 14 Dec 6.00pm (with Scorpio Rising, Kustom Kar Kommandos + Rabbit's Moon) / Cinema A |
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Scorpio Rising 1963 Ages 18+ ‘A "death mirror held up to American culture" - Brando, bikes and black leather; Christ, chains and cocaine. A "high" view of the myth of the American motorcyclist. The machine as totem from toy to terror. Thanatos in chrome and black leather and bursting jeans.’ – Kenneth AngerScorpio Rising studies the homoerotic undercurrents of the 1960s' motorcycle subculture, charting a symbolic progression from production (the repairing of a motorcycle) to destruction (the motorcycle’s crash). Fri 14 Dec 6.00pm (with Fireworks, Kustom Kar Kommandos + Rabbit’s Moon) / Cinema A |
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Kustom Kar Kommandos 1965 Ages 15+ In this camp evocation of masculine fetishism and 1960s' youth culture, a young man ritualistically strokes his customised car with a powder puff. The 1950s' hit song ‘Dream Lover’ provides the film’s breathless soundtrack. Anger's combination of sound and image is widely acclaimed as an important precursor to the contemporary music video. Fri 14 Dec 6.00pm (with Fireworks, Scorpio Rising + Rabbit’s Moon) / Cinema A |
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Rabbit’s Moon 1971 Ages 15+ Rabbit’s Moon is a fable of the unattainable (the moon) and combines elements of commedia dell’arte with Japanese myth. Originally shot in 1950 using black and white film, it was stored at the Cinémathèque Française for 20 years before Anger re-edited the footage and soundtrack in 1970 and printed the film through a blue filter. Fri 14 Dec 6.00pm (with Fireworks, Scorpio Rising + Kustom Kar Kommandos) / Cinema A |
GREGG ARAKI (b.1959)
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The Living End 1992 R 18+ The Living End is a road movie that captures the aggressive tone of 1990s' Queer activism in a Republican-lead America. Billed ‘an irresponsible film’, the title represents an intense psychological endgame of LA movie critic Jon (Craig Gilmore) and hustler Luke (Mike Dytri), two HIV positive men who hook up and journey into a ‘desolate, quasi-surrealistic American wasteland’ after murdering a homophobic police officer. As their relationship begins to fracture, Luke becomes increasingly obsessed with suicide – a mode reflected in their physical intimacy. Araki’s soundtrack features industrial bands Coil, Psychic TV and KMFDM, framing the film's caustic eroticism and unforgettable nihilism. Fri 1 Feb 6.00pm / Cinema A |
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Totally F***ed Up 1993 R 18+ Totally F***ed Up is the first film in Gregg Araki’s ‘teen apocalypse trilogy’, described by the director as a 'rag-tag story of fag-and-dyke teen underground . . . a kind of cross between avant-garde experimental cinema and a queer John Hughes flick.' Six alienated friends muse on the problems of sexuality and identity in the 1990s as they move throughout a desolate Los Angeles. Araki presents these ‘lifestyles of the bored and disenfranchised’ in fragmented, documentary-styled vignettes, creating an urgent and raw mode of storytelling. Fri 1 Feb 8.00pm / Cinema A |
CAM ARCHER (b.1982)
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Bobbycrush 2003 Ages 15+ The heartache of adolescent desire is captured in this homo-reverie of best friends Dylan and Bobby. When Dylan takes interest in a girl, Bobby is crushed, lamenting the close connection both once shared. Fri 29 Feb 7.30pm (with Wild Tigers I Have Known) / Cinema A |
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American Fame Part One: Drowning River Phoenix 2004 Ages 15+ Lydia Lunch narrates this introspective look at the intoxicating nature of celebrity made explicit in the life and death of River Phoenix. Fri 8 Feb 6.00pm (with American Fame Part Two: Forgetting Jonathan Brandis + Third Known Nest) / Cinema A |
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American Fame Part Two: Forgetting Jonathan Brandis 2005 Ages 15+ Cam Archer revisits the life of child actor Jonathan Brandis who committed suicide in 2003. Lydia Lunch narrates this meditation on fame, the actor’s pressure to remain in the public eye and the surreal events in the lead up to his unexplained death. Fri 8 Feb 6.00pm (with American Fame Part One: Drowning River Phoenix + Third Known Nest) / Cinema A |
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Wild Tigers I Have Known 2007 Ages 18+ Wild Tigers I Have Known enters the fragmented inner world of Logan (Malcolm Stumpf), an androgynous adolescent who daydreams and fantasises over high school wrestler Rodeo (Patrick White). Logan clumsily experiments with cross-dressing, inventing a female persona to make erotic phone calls to an unsuspecting Rodeo. While Logan struggles with his desires, mountain lions stray close to his school, ellicting a form of outsider-identification and becoming a metaphor for the untamed sexual impulses gripping him. Cam Archer's striking first feature was developed through the Sundance Screenwriter's Lab and shot on HD digital video by Aaron Platt, signalling a bold new era of independent queer filmmaking. Fri 29 Feb 7.30pm (with Bobbycrush) / Cinema A |
SADIE BENNING (b.1973)
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Jollies 1990 Ages 15+ Sadie Benning began making videos in her bedroom at the age of 16, using a Fisher-Price Pixelvision 2000 toy camera to produce intensely autobiographical works that recorded her personal rebellions and nascent sexuality. Jollies recounts Benning’s experience as a tomboy growing up in Milwaukee, describing her first sexual encounters with boys and acknowledgment of her lesbian identity. Fri 15 Feb 6.00pm (with If Every Girl Had a Diary, Girl Power, The Judy Spots, German Song + Aerobicide) / Cinema A |
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If Every Girl Had a Diary 1990 Ages 15+ Immense solitude and frustration characterise this confessional video as Benning, sheltered by the confines of her bedroom, discusses feelings of difference and disrespect she encounters as a lesbian and woman. Benning’s videos employs hand written intertitles, basic editing and found materials, constructing a personal and diaristic DIY aesthetic recording narratives of isolation, self-awareness and love. Fri 15 Feb 6.00pm (with Jollies, Girl Power, The Judy Spots, German Song + Aerobicide) / Cinema A |
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Girl Power 1992 Ages 15+ Girl Power is a vision of self-determination and radical girlhood, set to the sound of leading ‘riot grrrl’ band Bikini Kill. As a teenager, Benning would skip school and go on solitary adventures, building a world inside her head with her own rules, imaginary friends and make-believe love. Benning rejoices in these personal rebellions against school, the expectations of her family and more broadly the stereotypes proscribed to teenage girls. Fri 15 Feb 6.00pm (with Jollies, If Every Girl Had a Diary, The Judy Spots, German Song + Aerobicide) / Cinema A |
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The Judy Spots 1995 Ages 15+ The Judy Spots comprises five animated spots produced for the MTV network in which Judy, a papier-mâché puppet, reflects on her position in society. The emotional expectations, behaviours and rivalries encouraged amongst girls lead Judy to surmise: 'I couldn’t find much joy in girlhood'. Fri 15 Feb 6.00pm (with Jollies, If Every Girl Had a Diary, Girl Power, German Song + Aerobicide) / Cinema A |
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German Song 1995 Ages 15+ Departing from the autobiographical narratives of her Pixelvision shorts, Benning shot this intimate Super-8 home movie as a music video for Boston band, Come. Benning follows a disengaged youth as she wanders throughout a suburban neighborhood: roller-skating, visiting a fairground and playing target practice with a female mannequin. Fri 15 Feb 6.00pm (with Jollies, If Every Girl Had a Diary, Girl Power, The Judy Spots + Aerobicide) / Cinema A |
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Aerobicide 1998 Ages 15+ Aerobicide is a music video created for Julie Ruin, the solo project for Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hannah prior to the formation of Le Tigre with Benning and Johanna Fateman. Benning and Hannah deploy the 'Girls Rule (kind of) Strategy', a satirical marketing campaign that critiques America's commercial music industry and its attempts to market products to women. Fri 15 Feb 6.00pm (with Jollies, If Every Girl Had a Diary, Girl Power, The Judy Spots + German Song) / Cinema A |
JONATHAN CAOUETTE (b.1973)
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Tarnation 2003 M Assembled using Apple’s free iMovie editing software, Tarnation is a portrait of an American family pieced together from photographs, Super-8 films, answering machine messages, pop culture references and dramatic reenactments. After discovering that his schizophrenic mother has overdosed on her lithium medication, director Jonathan Caouette is forced to confront his family history that is marked by horrifying episodes of rape, abandonment, drug addiction, abuse and psychosis. During his childhood Caouette would immerse himself in musical theatre and B-movie horror narratives as a means of escape; 11-year-old Caouette’s onscreen performance as a pregnant and abused junkie is a disturbing and poignant reflection of his damaged life. Fri 15 Feb 7.30pm / Cinema A
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BARBARA HAMMER (b.1930)
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Dyketactics 1974 Ages 18+ Dyketactics is an erotic short featuring 110 images of sensual touching. Described by Hammer as ‘an erotic lesbian commercial – a coming out film, celebrating what it was like to make love to a woman’, the film takes its name from the slang term used to describe the art of converting a straight girl to lesbianism. It was initially restricted to women-only audiences. Fri 8 Feb 7.30pm (with Double Strength + Nitrate Kisses) / Cinema A |
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Double Strength 1978 Ages 15+ Double Strength moves through the stages of a lesbian relationship, from erotic beginnings, through emotional struggle, break up and the enduring friendship of two women. Hammer stars alongside performance artist Terry Sendgraff on suspended trapezes and ropes. Fri 8 Feb 7.30pm (with Dyketactics + Nitrate Kisses) / Cinema A |
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Nitrate Kisses 1992 Ages 15+ Nitrate Kisses is the first film in Hammer’s trilogy of documentaries reappropriating and remaking lesbian and gay American history. Hammer weaves together archival footage and documentary films from the 1930s and focuses on the sexual activity of four lesbian and gay couples to articulate this invisible history. Maria describes the experience of visiting Greenwich Village bars before Stonewall; Ruth relates her fears of being discovered as a lesbian in the Armed forces; Sandy illustrates her attempts at cross dressing and Jerre points to the sexual discrimination of the shipping industry during World War II. Fri 8 Feb 7.30pm (with Dyketactics + Double Strength) / Cinema A |
TODD HAYNES (b.1961)
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Poison 1991 Ages 18+ Poison is a dark and unflinching journey into the world of writer Jean Genet, whose writing reflected the possibilities of homoerotic desire in confinement and the linking of transcendence through self-degradation. Genet’s writing frames three disparate narratives and cinematic idioms: Hero is a mock documentary about adolescent cruelty and sexuality in which a 7-year-old boy shoots his father and ascends into the clouds; Horror is a B-movie variation on the mad scientist genre that becomes an allegory for the medical and social stigmatisation connected with HIV/AIDS; and Homo, a sombre story about the repressed love between two prisoners both bound by the traumas of their shared experiences at a reformatory school. Partly funded by the US National Endowment for the Arts, Haynes’ first feature film courted considerable controversy from right wing Senator Jesse Helms and family-values campaigner Donald Wildmon who condemned the use of taxpayers’ dollars to fund 'gay pornography'. Fri 18 Jan 8.00pm / Cinema A |
TOM KALIN (b.1933)
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Third Known Nest 1991–2000 Ages 18+ Third Known Nest is an intimate visual diary that collects nine short video works interwoven with video quotations from some of Tom Kalin’s favourite authors. Kalin’s work, inspired by his activities with the AIDS activist collective ACT UP and Gran Fury, considers the politics of sexuality, intimacy and memory within the spectre of HIV/AIDS. Fri 8 Feb 6.00pm (with American Fame Part 1 + American Fame Part 2) / Cinema A |
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Swoon 1992 M Swoon revisits the infamous Leopold and Loeb trial of 1924 in which two affluent Jewish teenager lovers were convicted of kidnapping and murdering a 13-year-old boy. Nathan Leopold (Craig Chester) and Richard Loeb (Daniel Schlachet) were outsiders: homosexuals in a family-dominated culture, Jews in the Protestant midwest and sensualists in a bourgeois America that valued puritan conformity above all else. In the dawning age of Freudianism, their motives proved disturbing: they wanted to prove to that they were smart enough to get away with their crime. The crime inspired Alfred Hitchcock's Rope 1948 and Richard Fleisher's Compulsion 1959, however Kalin’s emphasises the sexual dynamics between the two lovers/killers missing from the previous films. Fri 18 Jan 6.00pm / Cinema A |
GEORGE KUCHAR (b.1942)
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Corruption of the Damned 1965 Ages 15+ After producing no-budget 8mm films from the age of 12 with brother Mike, George Kuchar made Corruption of the Damned, a feverish 16mm melodrama that Kuchar suggests, 'bursts from its girdle of traditional Hollywood pyrotechnics and falls all over the place in a paroxysm of flabby sensuality, senselessness and insanity'. Fri 21 Dec 6.00pm (with Hold Me While I’m Naked; I, an Actress + Sins of the Fleshapoids) / Cinema A |
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Hold Me While I’m Naked 1966 Ages 15+ Hold Me While I'm Naked is a pastiche of Hollywood melodrama and soft-core eroticism, focusing on the frustrated efforts of an untalented director who loses his female lead and cannot replace her. Fri 21 Dec 6.00pm (with Corruption of the Damned; I, an Actress + Sins of the Fleshapoids) / Cinema A |
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I, an Actress 1977 Ages 15+ I, an Actress is an outrageous exercise in the idea of 'directing' in which Kuchar records himself workshopping a scene with one of his students at the San Francisco Art Institute. The unedited sequence was conceived as a screen-test for the student and satirises the pressures of performing under direction as Kuchar, propelled by the limitations of time, enters the scene to thrust the young actress through a myriad of emotions and scenarios. Fri 21 Dec 6.00pm (with Hold Me While I’m Naked, Corruption of the Damned + Sins of the Fleshapoids) / Cinema A |
MIKE KUCHAR (b.1942)
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Sins of the Fleshapoids 1965 Ages 18+ Sins of the Fleshapoids is a low budget science-fiction melodrama where dialogue plays out in comic book speech bubbles. One million years after the end of organised society, humans dispense with science and concentrate on sensuous activities. Fleshapoids are the dedicated servants for these hedonistic masters, who begin to revolt when they develop an emotional capacity and awareness of their desires. Fri 21 Dec 6.00pm (with Hold Me While I’m Naked; Corruption of the Damned + I, an Actress) / Cinema A |
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BRUCE LABRUCE (b.1964)
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Boy/Girl 1987 Ages 18+ Sexbombs! 1987 Ages 18+ I Know What It's Like to Be Dead 1988 Ages 18+ Bruce and Pepper Wayne Gacy's Home Movies 1989 Ages 18+ Slam! 1989 Ages 18+ Interview with a Zombie 1995 Ages 18+ This shorts program surveys films made during the 1980s in Toronto’s underground scene, where Bruce LaBruce worked alongside writer G B Jones and filmmaker Candy Parker shooting Super 8 films and creating punk zines. These projects helped launch the homocore/queercore movement, fusing aspects of politics, sexuality and pop culture. Fri 25 Jan 6.00pm / Cinema A |
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Super 8 ½ 1993 Ages 18+ Bruce LaBruce stars in his own ‘harrowing cautionary bio-pic’ about an avant-garde porno star/director whose career is on the skids. Unable to cope with his emerging identification as a cineaste, he retreats into self-reflexive cynicism. Lesbian documentary filmmaker Googie (Stacy Friedrich) offers him a chance to make a comeback, an exploitive ploy for her to get financial backing for her own project. Super 8½ is a hardcore spoof complete with an outrageous cameo by drag goddess Vaginal Creme Davis. Fri 25 Jan 7.30pm / Cinema A |
GREGORY J MARKOPOULOS (1928–92)
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The Illiac Passion 1964–67 Ages 18+ The Illiac Passion is a radical interpretation of Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound that re-images the classical text within the realm of postwar American film and culture. Figures from New York's avant-garde community are cast as mythical beings, including Gerard Malanga (Ganymede), Jack Smith (Orpheus), Taylor Mead (The Demon or Sprite) and Andy Warhol (Poseidon) who rides an exercise bike over a sea of plastic sheeting. Markopolous’s most critically acclaimed film features hypnotic imagery and a sparse soundtrack that includes the director reading Thoreau's translation of the Aeschylus text and musical excerpts from Bartok. Fri 4 Jan 6.00pm / Cinema A |
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Himself as Herself 1967 Ages 18+ Based loosely on Balzac's Seraphita, Himself as Herself has been described by the Harvard Film Archive as a ‘shimmering nearly plotless evocation of gender identity in flux, that contains within it some of the most haunting and densely interlaced images from Markopoulos's films'. The film was dedicated to the American artist Emlen Pope Etting and features a musical excerpt from Poulenc's Gloria. Fri 4 Jan 8.00pm / Cinema A |
GUS VAN SANT (b.1952)
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Elephant 2003 MA 15+ Gus Van Sant’s Palm d’Or winning Elephant is an examination of violence made explicit by the 1999 Columbine massacre. The title references Alan Clarke’s 1989 film about violence in Northern Ireland, and that film’s proverbial ‘elephant’ in the room that no one wants to acknowledge. Extended tracking shots survey the school’s topography, repeating the interaction between students from different perspectives, all interconnected as the film spirals towards tragedy. The film points simultaneously to the senseless consequences of the scenario, the cultural context of modern entertainment, the co-opting of historical signifiers and the confused sexuality of the two killers. Fri 22 Feb 6.00pm / Cinema A |
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Last Days 2005 M Last Days is the concluding chapter of Gus Van Sant’s ‘death trilogy’ and a sensuous, contemplative study of Blake, a reclusive rock star styled on the late Kurt Cobain, who committed suicide in 1994. Blake (Michael Pitt) spends his last days in an exhausted, drug-induced malaise, muttering and stumbling around a remote mansion and its surrounding forests and evading contact with the outside world and his entourage of friends. Van Sant shows restraint, offering little insights or reasons for Blake’s eventual suicide; Blake seemingly already embodies a version of the living-dead. Fri 22 Feb 7.45pm / Cinema A |
CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN (b.1939)
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Fuses 1964–66 Ages 18+ Fuses is an intimate exploration of pleasure and female sexuality that records sequences of lovemaking between Carolee Schneeman and her then partner, composer James Tenney. Schneeman took three years to complete the film, working by hand to layer the imagery by cutting, superimposing, scratching and exposing the celluloid to the natural elements. Fri 21 Dec 8.30pm (with Overstimulated + Flaming Creatures) / Cinema A |
JACK SMITH (1932–89)
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Overstimulated 1959–63 Ages 18+ Overstimulated is an early example of Jack Smith’s 'aesthetics of delirium' and features a frenzied Jerry Sims and filmmaker Bob Fleischer dressed in long gowns, jumping up and down in front of a flickering television set. The film’s soundtrack is an audio cassette that features 12 minutes of music to be played at any point in the duration of the film. Fri 21 Dec 8.30pm (with Flaming Creatures + Fuses) / Cinema A |
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Flaming Creatures 1963 Ages 18+ ‘In Flaming Creatures Smith has graced the anarchic liberation of new American cinema with graphic and rhythmic power worthy of the best of formal cinema. He has attained for the first time in motion pictures a high level of art which is absolutely lacking in decorum; and a treatment of sex which makes us aware of the restraint of all previous filmmakers’ – Jonas Mekas, Film Culture 1963Flaming Creatures features an Arabian harem of erotically possessed creatures amid a wild bacchanalia that blurs all gender and sexual norms. Banned in 22 states of the US and four countries, the film was subject to an obscenity case that famously reached the US Supreme Court. The scandal around Flaming Creatures, the only film Smith actually completed, made the artist determined never to complete another film. Smith would later assert the discourse about censorship and sexuality that was generated prevented audiences from appreciating its intended humour. Fri 21 Dec 8.30pm (with Overstimulated + Fuses) / Cinema A |
WARREN SONBERT (1947–95)
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Amphetamine 1966 Ages 18+ Amphetamine is an elegy to the transgressive pleasures of 1960s counterculture, in which several young men talk, laugh and shoot up amphetamines. Warren Sonbert employs a circular tracking shot to also swoop round two lovers - a homage to the famous 360-degree kiss in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Filmed with out-of-date film and borrowed equipment, Amphetamine was Sonbert’s first film made at the age of 19 while a student at New York University’s film school. Fri 14 Dec 7.30pm (with Where Did Our Love Go, Hall of Mirrors + The Bad and the Beautiful) / Cinema A
Where Did Our Love Go 1966 Ages 18+ Never without his camera, Warren Sonbert was a diarist in the spirit of Jonas Mekas, capturing intimate glimpses into the lives of friends and family with a sound track of pop songs from the era. Where Did Our Love Go documents outings to the movies, shopping for clothes and eating. Fri 14 Dec 7.30pm (with Amphetamine, Hall of Mirrors + The Bad and the Beautiful) / Cinema A
Hall of Mirrors 1966 Ages 18+ Hall of Mirrors is bracketed by scenes of figures moving among their reflections. It opens with outtakes from Michael Gordon’s An Act of Murder 1948 in which the lead characters get lost in a hall of mirrors and segues into a reflective sequence of poet/artist René Ricard crying in his dimly lit apartment. The final sequence shows Gerard Malanga walking through a mirror sculpture by Lucas Samaras. The soundtrack includes “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted”, “Walk Away Renee” and a portion of Georges Delerue’s score for Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt. Fri 14 Dec 7.30pm (with Amphetamine, Where Did Our Love Go + The Bad and the Beautiful) / Cinema A
The Bad and the Beautiful 1967 Ages 18+ The Bad and the Beautiful is a portrait of ten couples that Phillip Lopate suggests 'tells us everything we need to know about couple-love, the tenderness, the silly horsing-around, the compromises, the dead spots, the clinging to each other'. Sonbert employs in-camera editing and later revealed that all twenty characters were either homosexual or bisexual. Fri 14 Dec 7.30pm (with Amphetamine, Where Did Our Love Go + Hall of Mirrors) / Cinema A |
RYAN TRECARTIN (b.1981)
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A Family Finds Entertainment 2005 Ages 15+ A Family Finds Entertainment follows the clownish teenager Skippy (Ryan Trecartin) and his misadventures in ‘coming out’. In the spirit of early films by John Waters and Jack Smith, Trecartin mines the tropes of melodrama and the language of youth culture, reflecting “a generation both damaged and affirmed by media consumption”. Made before his house was swept away by Hurricane Katrina, Trecartin’s video was included in the 2006 Whitney Biennale after a curator stumbled onto it via Friendster. Fri 29 Feb 6.00pm (with Tommy-Chat Just E-mailed Me) / Cinema A |
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(Tommy-Chat Just E-mailed Me) 2006 Ages 15+ Ryan Trecartin surfs online communication and the relationships that take place inside and outside an email in this manic take on the perils of Internet dating, single motherhood and constipation. While Tommy waits to use the toilet in a secluded lake house, Tammy and Beth are on the phone with Beth’s girlfriend Pam, who is struggling with a screaming baby and refusing to go out. Meanwhile, inside the toilet cubicle Catherine Pimples discusses her cramps with Betraya. Fri 29 Feb 6.00pm (with A Family Finds Entertainment) / Cinema A |
JOHN WATERS (b.1946)
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Pink Flamingos 1972 Ages 18+ Pink Flamingos follows the exploits of two competing Baltimore families as they vie for the title of ‘filthiest person alive’. Babs Johnson (Divine) is the style-obsessed criminal hiding out in a trailer with her travelling companion Cotton (Mary Vivian Pearce), delinquent son Crackers (Danny Mills) and retarded mother Edie (Edith Massey). Connie and Raymond Marble are two jealous perverts who kidnap and impregnate hitchhikers, selling the babies to lesbian couples in order to finance an inner city heroin ring catering to high school students. John Waters’s self-described ‘exercise in bad taste’ has been the quintessential midnight movie for over 30 years and abounds in camp hysteria and intelligent, idiosyncratic humour. Fri 11 Jan 6.00pm / Cinema A |
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Female Trouble 1974 Ages 18+ Female Trouble is the sordid story of Dawn Davenport (Divine), a high school slacker who turns to a life of crime and modelling before frying in the electric chair. Along the way she gives birth to an obnoxious child named Taffy (Mink Stole), becomes a crime model for Lipstick Beauty Salon owners the Dashers (David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pierce) and gets hooked on mainlining liquid eyeliner. John Waters’ follow up to Pink Flamingos is a savagely funny satire on fame and the marketing of celebrity murders in American culture. A melodrama in the spirit of Jean Genet where crime is beauty, beauty treatments are a cult-religion, and mass murder is the ultimate gesture of performance art. Fri 11 Jan 8.00pm / Cinema A |
