🔞 “Objectionable Content: Banned Retro Shorts” (shorts program), 112 minutes total
Thursday, June 18, 2026, 5:30 PM, Roxie Theater
- 👎 Un chant d’amour, dir. Jean Genet, 1950, France, 26 min., no sound
- 🚨💩🚨💩🚨 Flaming Creatures, dir. Jack Smith, 1963, USA, 44 min.
- 🙂 Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, dir. Todd Haynes, 1987, USA, 43 min.
I actually ducked out of Time Warp before the live performance by the person at the center of that documentary, to rush over to the Roxie for this screening. I think I would have had a much better time staying for that song and then for Girls Like Girls, which I certainly hope I get another chance to see.
👎 Un chant d’amour (Song of Love), dir. Jean Genet, 1950, France, 26 min., no sound
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Un chant d’amour (Song of Love) |
Frameline blurb: Banned in its native France and heavily censored around the world, the only film directed by novelist Jean Genet is a masterpiece in poetic homoerotic longing. Two prisoners in complete isolation, separated by the thick brick walls, and desperately in need of human contact, devise a most unusual kind of communication. Courtesy of Cult Epics.
My take: There is not only no dialogue, there is no sound at all, nor any intertitles or anything else to give context to the images. Two men are in adjacent prison cells, separated by a thick stone wall that apparently can be poked through by a piece of hay. As the pervy prison guard peeps in on them, the two men, along with some other prisoners we see briefly, pleasure themselves, and also pass the time by blowing cigarette smoke through the hole in the wall. They also try repeatedly to toss some flowers to one another, which clearly has Great Significance. Occasionally we pop out of the prison into the nearby countryside in what I would have to guess are fantasies of the two men, but we just cut back and forth. Definitely not worth seeing, a waste of 26 minutes of your life that you will never get back.
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🚨💩🚨💩🚨
Flaming Creatures, dir. Jack Smith, 1963, USA, 44 min.
⚠️ prolonged and repeated non-consensual intimate touch, explicit sex
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Flaming Crap, umm, I mean, Flaming Creatures |
Frameline blurb: Banned in 22 states and four countries, this landmark work of the American avant-garde by Jack Smith is a hedonistic tableaux of Hollywood iconography, gender subversion and expansion, classic melodrama, and torrid sexuality.
My take: Well, if you thought Un chant d’amour was bad, just wait for the second short in the program. It’s a series of black-and-white images of many human bodies in varying states of undress, touching one another intimately without the slightest indication that the people at the center of the action were asked, much less that they consented. Indeed, there are a couple of prolonged scenes in which one or more women seem to be screaming in horror. Add to that camera work that is intentionally jiggly to make the images hard to track, purely to annoy the viewer, plus multiple interludes where we watch a glass light fixture swing back and forth for no reason.
Utterly without redeeming feature of any kind. Worse than a waste of time, it leaves a foul taste in your mouth well after the film ends. Emphatically not recommended. Please, please, do anything else to avoid watching this film. In a screening with more than 100 in the audience, primed to clap for almost anything, zero people clapped for Flaming Creatures.
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🙂 Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story,
dir. Todd Haynes, 1987, USA, 43 min.
⚠️ Eating disorders
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Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story |
Frameline blurb: Surprise Film: Don't miss this rare opportunity to catch a newly-restored early masterpiece by recent Frameline Queer Lens Award recipient Todd Haynes! The iconic American auteur lays the groundwork for his later forays into unconventional and unforgettable music films like Velvet Goldmine (1998), I'm Not There (2007), and The Velvet Underground (2021).
My take: The opportunity to catch this film is rare because it got embroiled in serious legal issues, since the filmmaker did not acquire the rights to the music. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story is a “docudrama” about the singer’s rise to fame and descent into anorexia and bulimia, plus some salacious hints at her brother Richard having a secret. It’s interesting, although it’s hard to tell how accurate the story is. It’s interesting, and a cult phenomenon, probably mostly because it’s so difficult to find. Recommended.
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