The Emory Cinematheque, a series of professional film screenings offered by the Department of Film and Media and Emory College of Arts and Sciences, is pleased to present a celebration of “Camp Vibes, Queer Feelings” in Spring 2023. This series champions camp-themed movies and TV shows from a variety of often critically disparaged genres that, nonetheless, hold emotional significance for and feature the talents of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA+) media makers. The program begins with films and programs from the early 1960s, around the time that Susan Sontag’s pioneering essay “Notes on Camp” first appeared in print and extends to present-day queerly influential camp media.
“Camp is too often used as a synonym for ‘unserious’ or as a derogatory term to devalue queer pleasures when, in fact, camp media offers radical possibilities for advancing LGBTQ+ politics, feelings, and subjectivities” says Dr. Ben Kruger-Robbins of the Department of Film and Media, who curated the series. “This series highlights emotional, visceral, outrageous, and downright fun examples of queer and camp play across diverse media genres, but these movies and shows also carry universal themes for everyone to savor and enjoy.”
Click here for a full list of screenings.
The series begins on January 18 with Robert Aldrich’s 1962 horror classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, which activist, author, and academic Andrew Ross lauded for “[bringing] together for the first time the aging, uncrowned royalty of early Hollywood – Bette Davis and Joan Crawford” for a “House of Usheresque present [that] refracts the Babylon history of Hollywood stardom while it creates a new horror film subgenre.” The series concludes with Brian Dannely’s 2004 Saved!, a flamboyant religious satire that the Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday described as “a sort of born-again Mean Girls wherein the usual adolescent cliques, cruelties and anxieties about conformity are given an even higher charge than usual by the looming threat of burning in hell.” This final feature will be paired with the outrageous second season premiere of HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones, another glittering and cutting critique of commercialized evangelicalism.
All screenings are on Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. in White Hall, Room 208. The Cinematheque runs from January 18 until April 19 and is free and open to the public. Unless otherwise noted, all screenings will be 4k restorations on DCP. They will be introduced by curator Ben Kruger-Robbins.