Poison + Sodom

Todd Haynes’s highly controversial queer triptych screens alongside a viscerally graphic short cinematic collage by legendary filmmaker Luther Price.

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Sodom (1989)
Dir. Luther Price
17min, digital

Legendary experimental filmmaker Luther Price shook the canon of queer cinema with this viscerally graphic, hypnotic mirage of human fragments absorbed in mutilation. Based on the biblical story about the destruction of the cities Sodom and Gomorha, the film mirrors this ruination through an editing style that lends itself to a kind of organic image breakdown via a singular collage of moving images.

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Poison (1991)
Dir. Todd Haynes
85min, 35mm
With Edith Meeks, Millie White, Buck Smith, Anne Giotta

This groundbreaking American indie release was one of the most fervently debated films of the early 90s and a trailblazing landmark of queer cinema, the second feature by auteur Todd Haynes (May/December, Carol). Inspired by the writings of Jean Genet, Poison deftly interweaves a trio of transgressive tales—a bizarre suburban patricide, a mad sex experiment gone wrong, and an obsessive tryst between two inmates—that build toward a devastating climax.

Featuring an introduction by writer/curator Ed Halter preceding the November 16 screening.