Tuesday, September 1, 2009 at 7:30pm
Bijou

Bijou
Wakefield Poole, 16mm, 1972, 77 mins
Introduced by Eileen Myles

I love this movie both because I do love gay male porn, and movies (duh) and also love the 70s and remember it, but Bijou simply smashes the mold to bits in terms of genre. It swerves from a near-documentary, realist mode suddenly into a kind of Russian constructivist passage, to an action car chase, a little grainy Warhol and falling we find ourselves in a Frank Wedekind play. Poole’s consciousness is massively absorbent. It’s hard to watch Bijou and not think that David Lynch is a Wakefield Poole fan, especially in Mulholland Drive. Sex is a such a rabbit hole in this film and we get treated to such a phantasmagoria of groping and grouping and kaleidoscopic rendering of sex. Plus there’s just footage of a New York that even those who were there have long forgotten. You’ll never want to wear underwear again once you’ve seen Bijou. I know this to be true. I watched it this week with a bunch of unconvinced art colonists of a wide variety of sexualities and art practices and everyone was transformed and no we actually didn’t have an orgy but underwear sales in this particular demographic have been totally altered and changed forever. Wakefield Poole is a genius and a sensualist and an artist of surprising complexity and passion. And levity. Come see this screening. You’ll feel so good. - EM

Eileen Myles, named by BUST magazine "the rock star of modern poetry," is the author of more than twenty books of poetry and prose, including Chelsea Girls, Cool for You, Sorry, Tree, and Not Me (Semiotext(e), 1991), and is the coeditor of The New Fuck You (Semiotext(e), 1995). Myles was head of the writing program at University of California, San Diego, from 2002 to 2007, and she has written extensively on art and writing and the cultural scene. Most recently, she received a fellowship from the Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Foundation.

Tickets - $7, available at door.