Anthology Film Archives

Film Screenings / Programs / Retrospectives

GARY INDIANA (1950-2024)

January 28 – January 29

This two-day program pays tribute to the inimitable writer, critic, actor, and artist Gary Indiana, who passed away in October at the age of 74. Indiana was the author of some of the most incisive, witty, and sometimes savagely perceptive literary works of the past half century. His literary output includes seminal works of cultural criticism such as “The Schwarzenegger Syndrome: Politics and Celebrity in the Age of Contempt”; extraordinary novels like “Horse Crazy,” “Rent Boy,” and the true-crime trilogy comprising “Resentment,” “Three Month Fever,” and “Depraved Indifference”; the masterful memoir “I Can Give You Anything But Love”; numerous essays on artists and filmmakers including Barbara Kruger, John Waters, Cookie Mueller, Andy Warhol, and many, many others; monographs on Pasolini’s SALÒ and Buñuel’s VIRIDIANA; and countless articles written before, during, and after his legendary stint as art critic for the Village Voice from 1985-88.

Hilarious, uncompromising, and prickly, Indiana was a crucially important part of the countercultural firmament, in New York and beyond, and his passing represents a profound loss. This program – organized in collaboration with Alex Auder – celebrates him by bringing together several of the films that he graced with his peerlessly vivid presence, as well as a selection of the video works that he created himself over the past twenty years.

“When I was a little kid Gary Indiana would ask me what to do about his various lovers, his broken heart. He let me believe I knew better than him. He let me in on the gossip, still my favorite pastime. I was way too old when I finally discovered him on the page and realized he was my favorite writer. I thought: Wait, this comic genius was once my hapless sidekick? On screen, though, Gary is quintessentially Gary. It’s a hard thing to do: be yourself. His film work is where he wears his heart on his sleeve, where you get to see his tender, watery eyes and hear his raspy cackle.” –Alex Auder

Special thanks to Alex Auder; Michel Auder; Hedi El Kholti (Semiotext(e)); Lia Gangitano (Participant Inc), and Jackie Raynal.

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