“Yikes, respectability…the final outrage” is how John Waters sees the British Film Institute’s new season of his work, in tribute to the Baltimore filmmaker’s 50 years of perverted pop cinema. The September season called It isn’t Very Pretty… The Complete Films of John Waters (Every Goddam One of Them…) will include Waters’ earliest forays into filmmaking. The BFI will show his early short films for the first time in the UK, free of charge.
The man with the pencil line moustache himself will be present for an In Conversation evening with season curator Justin Johnson on 18th September and Waters will also introduce a number of screenings. Waters has also selected a number of British films to show during the season, under the heading Teabaggin’ in the Kitchen Sink: My Favourite British Films. They include Derek Jarman’s Blue, Terence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea and the Quentin Crisp biopic The Naked Civil Servant.
The season will include the films that made Waters notorious in his punkish disregard for boundaries of good taste. Cult classics Pink Flamingo – the one where Divine infamously ate dogshit – will screen alongside his commercial breakthrough Hairspray, the one that also made a star of Ricki Lake, became a Broadway musical megahit and put Waters on the road to respectability.
1st September to 6th October bfi.org.uk