Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho (1991) is one of the defining works of New Queer Cinema – a movement that emerged in the early 1990s to challenge mainstream representations of LGBTQIA+ lives with formally adventurous, politically uncompromising filmmaking. This haunting and elliptical road movie features two Hollywood stars at their most luminous: River Phoenix as Mike, a narcoleptic hustler who works the desolate highways of the American Northwest, and Keanu Reeves as his biker friend, Scott. Ranked 10th on the BFI's list of the greatest LGBTQIA+ films of all time, My Own Private Idaho refigured the representation of queer desire on screen.
The screening will be followed by Kenneth Anger's ferociously hypnotic and supremely influential short Scorpio Rising (1963), in which the rituals of leather-clad bikers collide with occult symbolism and 1960s pop music. Seized by police on obscenity charges upon release, Anger's film is now considered a landmark of the American Underground and a blueprint for the modern music video.
The screening will open with an introduction from RMIT academic and guest curator Dr Patrick Kelly, providing context for audiences encountering these works for the first time or revisiting them with fresh eyes.
Don't miss the chance to see these two touchstones of queer cinema history together, on the big screen, for one night only.
