Screening on 35mm! With a tribute to director Steve Yeager, who will be in attendance.
John Waters’ Pink Flamingos is one of the most notorious cult films ever made. Filmmaker Steve Yeager was shooting behind-the-scenes footage of the production. Decades later, he combined that footage with other archival materials and newly shot interviews with the likes of Steve Buscemi, Hal Hartley, Jim Jarmusch, to create Divine Trash, a documentary that serves as not only a time capsule of Waters’ early Dreamland Productions days, but also the 1990s world of indie filmmaking. The film features the charming look of that decade’s low-budget 16mm filmmaking, just before the digital revolution changed the indie film landscape.
Divine Trash premiered at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize, and brought home the prestigious Filmmakers Trophy for Best Documentary. The following year it screened at the inaugural Maryland Film Festival.