Director Gregg Araki is back in the cinemas with his latest film I Want Your Sex, but Luna Leederville is also presenting a double-bill of two of his classic works.
Araki has been hailed as one of cinema’s most unique voices and over his career he’s made many memorable and stylistic films. He burst onto the scene in the early 90s as part of the New Queer cinema movement with low budget films including The Living End and Totally F***ed Up. He would later go on to make a trilogy of films thematically linked that included The Doom Generation, Nowhere and Splendor.
His work turned a corner when he adapted the novel Mysterious Skin in 2004, a film that brought him widespread acclaim. Since then he’s gone on to make more films and a television series Now Appocalyse, as well as directing other well known shows.
On 14 September you can head down to a screening of The Doom Generation (1995) and Mysterious Skin (2004).
In Doom Generation Gregg Araki takes a road trip to hell in this wild joyride through the margins of a menacing American wasteland.
When they inadvertently link up with a dangerously alluring drifter (Johnathon Schaech), a chilled-out Cali bro (James Duval) and his spiky, foulmouthed girlfriend (Rose McGowan) find themselves on an increasingly violent, kinky, and darkly comic journey in which erotic tensions rise along with the body count.
Working with a significant budget for the first time, Araki employs boldly stylised lighting and art direction to create a heightened sense of unreality in a shocking, shoegaze-soundtracked chronicle of young lives careening toward oblivion.
Adapted from Scott Heim’s acclaimed novel, Mysterious Skin is an intensely powerful chronicle of childhood innocence lost, featuring star-making turns from Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Brady Corbet alongside outstanding performances from co-stars Michelle Trachtenberg and Academy Award nominee Elizabeth Shue.
At the age of eight, Kansas youngsters Neil and Brian played on the same little league baseball team. Now, ten years later, the two boys couldn’t be more different. Neil is a charismatic but emotionally aloof male hustler while Brian is a nervous introvert obsessed with the idea that he has been abducted by a UFO. When the boys’ parallel lives inevitably intersect, the pair unearth dark, repressed secrets on a harrowing and unforgettable journey of self-discovery.
Tickets to the one-off double feature are on sale now.
