Friends of Metrograph Carvell Wallace, Gabriel Smith, Jenni Olson, and Zoe Dubno each share a film they love, streaming on demand on the Metrograph At Home platform.
Carvell Wallace selects
Thundercrack!
Thundercrack!, dir. Curt McDowell, 1975
Unhinged and wildly campy send-up of the old dark house genre, complete with scenery chewing psycho-biddy played gloriously straight by Marion Eaton. George Kuchar’s script swings from the sublime to the absurd and back again at lightning speed and all the sex is graphically included in every conceivable combination-genders get bent, hairy asses pegged, vegetables defiled. The black and white film stock makes you feel like you’re watching a 30’s movie hopped up on acid and horny goat weed. Some of the acting is bad and the sound can be occasionally difficult, but the film is undeniably funny, and is a fascinating artifact of the raucous and nihilist way queer underground artists celebrated our baser instincts during the brief window of time between the horrors of the Holocaust and nuclear annihilation and the onset of AIDS.
Carvell Wallace is a New York Times bestselling author, memoirist, and award-winning podcaster who covers race, arts, culture, film, and music for a wide variety of news outlets.
GABRIEL SMITH
THE KOUMIKO MYSTERY
The Koumiko Mystery, dir. Chris Marker, 1965
I was daydreaming today, before I got an email from Metrograph asking for this, about having to introduce a Chris Marker film. In my daydream, I said: “Chris Marker informs everything I do. They are one of the few writers I feel I will never be as good as. But I intend to try.” Of course, I would never say something so revealing and egotistical IRL. This film is Marker’s first in Japan. Set during the summer Olympics, it follows Koumiko, a young poet raised in colonial Manchuria and educated at a French-Japanese school. It is, as always, basically perfect. You win again, Marker!
Gabriel Smith is 28 and lives in London. His fiction has appeared in The Drift, New York Tyrant Magazine, and The Moth, and his first novel, Brat, will be published this month.
JENNI OLSON SELECTS
Mädchen in Uniform
Mädchen in Uniform, dir. Leontine Sagan, 1931
Released in Germany in 1931, this moving and lively tale of a student’s passionate love for her teacher at a girls’ boarding school was the first lesbian feature in cinema history. It’s also a powerful (and timely) anti-authoritarian allegory, a pioneering film by and about women with a fantastic all-female ensemble cast, and a cinematically sophisticated early sound film. I was honored to do the audio commentary for the Kino Lorber Blu-ray/DVD release of this beautiful recent restoration-it’s a perfect 2024 LGBTQ Pride month movie.
Jenni Olson is a queer film historian and filmmaker, and proud proprietor of Butch.org.
ZOE DUBNO SELECTS
2 Friends
2 Friends, dir. Jane Campion, 1986
Is Campion’s first feature, 2 Friends, the My Brilliant Friend of Australian arthouse cinema? I guess so, if Ferrante’s Lila were a bleach blonde punk with a feather in her hair. With a screenplay by novelist Helen Garner, the story of two teenage best friends drifting apart is told in reverse, which makes watching their intimacy grow, knowing what’s in store, even more tragic. Plus there are some of the most incredible mullets captured on screen.
Zoe Dubno is a writer from New York. Her first novel, Happiness and Love will be published by Scribner in Spring 2025.