Trash! The Wildest Films You’ve Ever Seen is the suitably trashy title of a season coming imminently to the BFI Southbank, one which is set to bring some much needed sex, drugs, violence, drag, juvenile delinquency and bad behaviour of every kind to a London which has slipped back into grey.
It is a celebration of the American underground cinema, that strain which has been the underbelly to Hollywood right from the old studio system days. While we have a lineage of underground cinema in the UK – think of Hammer Horrors or the work of Derek Jarman - it is different to the States. Perhaps the sheer geographical size of America meant a) lots more films were made to fill slots in theatres around the country (hence the quick and cheap B-movie traditions, producing film noir, sexploitation, biker films, Roger Corman’s low budget studios (which gave early directorial work to Scorsese, Coppola et al)), and b) there were areas for subcultures to develop, producing certain film-makers working well away from Hollywood and playing by their own rules.
