All hail the Pope of Trash!
John Waters, Baltimore’s most disreputable son, is one of cinema’s ground-breaking cult filmmakers – celebrated and reviled, famous and infamous in equal measure.
Waters established himself in the 1970s with a string of controversial and transgressive films made with his regular ensemble of Dreamlanders, which included iconic drag queen Divine alongside outsider artistes such as Cookie Mueller, Mink Stole and David Lochary. Playful, provocative and profane, Waters is the filmmaker who made filth fabulous.
This season showcases films from the first two decades of Waters’ feature filmmaking career – a period that saw the filmmaker move from obscene obscurity to unlikely mainstream acclaim.
We close with one of Waters’ own cult film favourites: Boom! – a beautiful failure from the latter days of the Hollywood studio system, whose uninhibited excesses are a clear influence on Waters’ work. Directed by Joseph Losey in 1968, and boasting a star-studded cast and crew, Boom! features a must-see Elizabeth Taylor performance that even gives Divine a run for her money.
In this season
Cinema
Multiple Maniacs
Made on a shoestring budget in Baltimore, with Waters taking on nearly every technical task, Multiple Maniacs is a gleeful mockery of the peace-and-love ethos…
Cinema
Pink Flamingos + Event
Sleaze queen Divine lives in a caravan with her mad hippie son Crackers and her 250-pound mother Mama Edie, trying to rest quietly on their…
Cinema
Female Trouble + intro
Dawn Davenport is a teenage nightmare – a spoiled brat who throws a tantrum when her parents refuse to buy her some much sought-after cha-cha…
Cinema
Cult/ Boom!
Creative misadventure, commercial flop or camp, cult classic? For John Waters, cinema’s trash-tastemaker in chief, Boom! is one of the greatest films of all time.