There are two parts to this project, whose early stages developed under the
Undergraduate Research Fellows Program. The first part is an exploration of the community which surrounds the campy, vulgar classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show, focusing specifically on the group Sins O The Flesh at the Nuart Theater in Los AngelesThis project combines observational and investigative documentary filmmaking in order to compile a cohesive portrait of the origins of Rocky Horror’s foray into queer performance, and the importance of Rocky
Horror, and the Nuart itself, as a self-proclaimed “safe space” for alternate gender expression, Los Angeles queer and drag culture, and public sexual experimentation and vocal affirmation of non-heterosexual orientations as a form of claiming identity. Accompanying this short documentary investigation is a video essay in the same vein of study into queer cult film, on the other side of the world. This explores cult filmmaker and divisive Spanish hero Pedro Almodovar’s relationship to the Madrid of the early 1970s, and his evolving depiction of Madrid as his filmmaking gained international success and academic notoriety. The research conducted for this short attempts to visually capture and textually explain Almodovar’s evolution from cult film to mainstream film in a parallel path with Madrid’s evolution from the sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll era of la Movida (Madrid’s explosion of punk and queer culture directly after the fall of the Franco regime in 1975), to its current continuing
gentrification of historically gay and lesbian areas which were prominently featured in Almodovar’s earliest work.