RSVP here: https://www.queer-art.org/rsvp-to-totally-fed-up
Streaming links here: https://www.queer-art.org/streaming-links-for-qaf-fall-2020
TOTALLY F**ED UP
1993. 85 minutes. Directed by Gregg Araki.
Totally Fucked Up is a “rag-tag story of (the) fag-and-dyke teen underground…a kind of cross between avant-garde experimental cinema and a queer John Hughes flick,” explains Gregg Araki who wrote and directed this 1992 cinematic ode to queer adolescent angst. But unlike a Hughes film, these teens aren’t worried about losing their virginity or going out with the most popular person in school. Instead, they are dealing with homophobic violence, the tyranny of being different in the homogeneous backdrop of Los Angeles, and the ecstasy and nightmarish pain of young love. Brontez Purnell remembers “watching this as a teenager in my shitty Southern town and praying that I would move to California one day and be as cool as the kids in this movie.” Totally Fucked Up is the first film in Araki’s "Teen Apocalypse trilogy" of the 1990s, queer teenage nihilism with a heart of gold.
Brontez Purnell on TOTALLY F**ED UP
“So Totally F***ed Up is the first installment of director Gregg Araki's ICONIC Teen Doom Trilogy (Doom Generation (1995) and Nowhere (1997) being the latter two concluding the series). Part narrative, part fake documentary, it encapsulates the Gen x queer angst aesthetic that is now a product of yore in these oh so boring times where the term "queer" has been completely co-opted by fuckin' poseurs! (oh c'mon! you know it's true!) I remember watching this as a teenager in my shitty Southern town and prayed that I would move to California one day and be as cool as the kids in this movie- and sure a fuckin' nuff- I did. This movie is like if "Kids" had been queer and had a story line that made sense- if you get the picture. A New Queer Cinema CLASSIC through and through!”
Brontez Purnell is a writer, musician, dancer, filmmaker, and performance artist. He is the author of a graphic novel, a novella, a children’s book, and the novel Since I Laid My Burden Down. Recipient of a 2018 Whiting Award for Fiction, he was named one of the 32 Black Male Writers for Our Time by T: New York Times Style Magazine in 2018. Purnell is also the frontman for the band the Younger Lovers, the co-founder of the experimental dance group the Brontez Purnell Dance Company, the creator of the renowned cult zine Fag School, and the director of several short films, music videos, and, most recently, the documentary Unstoppable Feat: Dances of Ed Mock. Born in Triana, Alabama, he’s lived in Oakland, California, for over 18 years.