Come As You Are: ’90s Music on Screen
The decade that broke punk and packaged grunge, the decade of New York Club Kids and Wu Wear and $5 Fugazi shows, the ’90s loom large in our age of hip-hop shout-outs to Kurt Cobain and the re-emergence of JNCOs. Was it the last gasp of American pop and countercultural vitality? A great rock ’n’ roll swindle? The movies playing in this series pose these questions and more, while also putting the spotlight on some of the most charismatic musical performers of the era and offering time capsule documentation of niche scenes—rave-’til-dawn downtown NYC in "Party Girl" (shot at the nearby Seward Park Library!), LA squatter crust punks in "Decline of Western Civilization Part III"—the descendants of which walk among us today. Pacifier and glow sticks, flannel and gouged-up jeans, Timbs and hoodie, Jean Paul Gaultier cone bra… All throwbacks are welcome at our veritable cinematic Lollapalooza.
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Party Girl
Directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer | 94 mins | 1995
With her beguiling presence and spry, screwball energy, Parker Posey made her name as the queen of American indie cinema during its ’90s boom. The recently restored "Party Girl" captures an ascendent Posey in wickedly fine form as Mary, the to... -
Fear of a Black Hat
Directed by Rusty Cundieff | 88 mins | 1993
Overshadowed somewhat at the time of its release by another gangsta rap mockumentary send-up of the same year, the Chris Rock vehicle "CB4," Cundieff’s shoestring-budget feature debut gets just as many laughs at a fraction of the price, following sociol... -
The Decline of Western Civilization Part III
Directed by Penelope Spheeris | 86 mins | 1998
After a detour into the high heady heyday of Sunset Strip hair metal in the second film of her essential social history of rock ’n’ roll in southern California, Spheeris returned to the hardcore punk roots of her first Decline, embedding herself amon...
