Come As You Are: ’90s Music on Screen

The decade that broke punk and packaged grunge, the decade of New York Club Kids and Wu Wear and $5 Fugazi shows, the ’90s loom large in our age of hip-hop shout-outs to Kurt Cobain and the re-emergence of JNCOs. Was it the last gasp of American pop and countercultural vitality? A great rock ’n’ roll swindle? The movies playing in this series pose these questions and more, while also putting the spotlight on some of the most charismatic musical performers of the era and offering time capsule documentation of niche scenes—rave-’til-dawn downtown NYC in Party Girl (shot at the nearby Seward Park Library!), LA squatter crust punks in Decline of Western Civilization Part III—the descendants of which walk among us today. Pacifier and glow sticks, flannel and gouged-up jeans, Timbs and hoodie, Jean Paul Gaultier cone bra… All throwbacks are welcome at our veritable cinematic Lollapalooza.