“ MEET ME AT THE MOVIES! ”

MALA NOCHE
Directed by Gus Van Sant
August 29th at 7:30pm
Byron-Carlyle Theater, 500 71st Street, Miami Beach

MALA NOCHE

With its low budget and lush black-and-white imagery, Gus Van Sant's debut feature Mala Noche heralded an idiosyncratic, provocative new voice in American independent film. Set in Van Sant's hometown of Portland, Oregon, the film evokes a world of transient workers, dead-end day-shifters, and bars and seedy apartments bathed in a profound nighttime, as it follows a romantic deadbeat with a wayward crush on a handsome Mexican immigrant. Mala Noche was an important prelude to the New Queer Cinema of the nineties and is a fascinating time capsule from a time and place that continues to haunt its director's work.

The first feature from acclaimed director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Drugstore Cowboy, Last Days), Mala Noche is a hauntingly beautiful black-and-white meditation on lust, love, obsession, and class. Stuck behind the cash register of a convenience store in Portland's skid row, young-ish Walt (Tim Streeter) becomes infatuated with Johnny (Doug Cooeyate), a Mexican teenager and illegal immigrant who is willing to reciprocate Walt's attentions to a point. Although Walt subsequently turns to Johnny's friend Pepper (Ray Monge), he is unable to shake his fixation, and finds his crush becoming an all-consuming amour fou. Screened intermittently since 1985, but never given a proper theatrical release, foreign and classic film distributor Janus Films presents a new 35mm print. The Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival is proud to bring you this seminal work of cinema from one of the art forms most important living artists.