Curating Deviance

In his recently released book, Curating Deviance: Programming the Queer Film Canon, curator and scholar Marc Francis scavenges film history for signs of vibrant, wayward life in the programming of US art house and repertory cinemas between 1968 and 1989. Driven by his incisive new work, he restages for Metrograph this historical double bill of Fellini Satyricon and The Decameron, two classics often exhibited side-by-side in art houses throughout the 1970s.

“This popular twosome plunged audiences into a fantasy of unbridled Dionysian premodern sexuality, channeling also the spirit of an emergent transnational sexual liberation ethos of the time. This double feature pays homage to the perverse imaginations of Italian masters Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini, while also simulating the power of the double bill to immerse audiences into deliciously irreverent and off-kilter deviant worlds.” —Series Curator Marc Francis, Author of Curating Deviance: Programming the Queer Film Canon and Manager of Film Programming (Faculty of Arts and Sciences) at Yale University

Curator and scholar Marc Francis, author of Curating Deviance: Programming the Queer Film Canon, in person