Trash!
The wildest films you’ve ever seen.
Often received as barbed, playful, nihilistic retorts to the socially and politically rigid, as well as the corrupt, there is much to gain from a date with trash cinema. The hungry beast that is the Hollywood film industry demands a constant turnover of huge budgets and big stars. Not so another American tradition. Trash films delight in low budgets and so-called ‘bad taste’. They are lurid, camp, transgressive, wild and DIY, made by friends and lovers who subvert received ideas about gender, sex and identity. Their history goes back to the carny sideshows of yore, breaking the fourth wall and revelling in audiences’ complicit inclusion in both the shocks and jokes. Shown at cheap drive-ins, alternative art spaces and midnight movie palaces, these queer, divine, eye-popping works challenge the limits of censorship whilst blurring the boundaries between art and exploitation, parody and homage, excess and play. This wild showcase complements our BFI Southbank with a slightly different selection of films, including works from celebrated Trash-masters, Andy Milligan, Al Adamson, Ray Dennis Steckler and Ted V. Mikels.
Trash! The Wildest Films You’ve Ever Seen
Discover more from our Trash! season on the big screen at BFI Southbank.