The Cinematheque

“Picasso was the most important artist of the first half of the twentieth century, inasmuch as he revolutionized painting and sculpture in deep and liberating ways. Warhol revolutionized art.”

Arthur Danto, writer and critic

Andy Warhol’s brilliantly bitchy masterpiece of voyeurism, desire, and boredom unfolds on a lazy afternoon on Fire Island where a threesome of libertines compete for the attention of a buff, dipped-blonde ​“Dial-a-Hustler.” Middle-aged ​“Queen Ed” (Ed Hood) plays resigned beach house host for a boozy impromptu gathering of his lithe neighbour Genevieve (Genevieve Charbon), who has a history of swooping on his tricks, and the ​“Sugar Plum Fairy” (John Campbell), a storied hustler in his own right. Perhaps Warhol’s most explicitly entertaining and accessible film work, My Hustler casts a sharp eye on gender, sexuality, and the commodification of desire while passing as lightly as a summer divertissement. – Paul Malcolm

Print courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York

“The talk is outrageously funny and worthy of Restoration comedy.” Andrew Sarris, Village Voice

“Warhol’s movies are central to his accomplishment … recording with galvanizing (and often hilarious) immediacy the avant-garde community of the ​’60s, with its artists and poseurs, hustlers and burn-outs all being their happy exhibitionist selves.” Dave Kehr, Chicago Tribune

preceded by

Memento Mori
USA 1995
Jim Hubbard
16 min. 16mm

A moving, queer meditation that individualizes the immeasurable collective trauma left in the wake of the AIDS epidemic. Stylistically, Jim Hubbard powerfully departs from the small film gauge formats that dominate his documentary work, instead utilizing widescreen CinemaScope that illuminates the enormous scale of loss for each individual that has perished. Hubbard’s dream-like elegy transports the viewer to a deep, universal state-of-consciousness that anyone that has lost a loved one will instantly recognize. – Mark Quigley

Print courtesy of Jim Hubbard

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Confessions
USA 1971
Curt McDowell
16 min. DCP

This outrageous work was conceived and executed in trailblazing queer artist and filmmaker Curt McDowell’s San Francisco apartment. Employing the confrontational method of direct address, he discloses his carnal sins to his parents. ​“Graphic in its sexuality both visually and verbally,” writes gay rights historian and activist Bob Hawk, ​“the filmmaker manages to maintain a drolly humorous humanity in this pre-AIDS ​‘underground’ document.” – K.J. Relth-Miller

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Jerovi
USA 1965
José Rodriguez-Soltero
11 min. 16mm

This erotic retelling of the Narcissus myth, saturated with Sirkian colour and revelling in nature and adoration of the flesh, is a singular, seductive vision from Latinx, queer, psychedelic artist José Rodriguez-Soltero. Like other explicit films before it, Jerovi was censored at the time, rejected from film festivals and other public exhibitions for its ​“pornographic” content. – K.J. Relth-Miller, with thanks to Bradford Nordeen

Print courtesy of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative