“Kids” filmmaker Larry Clark is embracing the digital age. With his latest “Marfa Girl” set to unspool at the Rome Film Festival, the director reveals that will be the only place where you can see his latest on the big screen. “I will put the film on my first and only website, larryclark.com, which is the only place one will ever be able to see the film….It will stream for $5.99 for access to the film for 24 hours….This is the future and the future is now….Most and very soon almost all the small theaters that show Indie and Art films will be gone….” he said in his director’s statement.
Starring Adam Mediano, Mercedes Maxwell, Drake Burnette, Mary Farley, Jessie Tejada, Elizabeth Castro and more, the film follows the intersecting lives of the residents of the tiny town of Marfa, Texas with the usual Clark hallmarks of sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll, art, violence and racism all coming into play. Here’s the (very long) synopsis:
Marfa exists at a particular cultural nexus with a constant clash between the art community (inspired to come to Marfa by the American sculptor, Donald Judd), the white community and the Mexican American community. On top of that there’s a smothering Border Patrol presence despite the fact the Mexican border is 68 miles away. There is an 11pm curfew for teenagers and they still have corporal punishment in the schools. They paddle kids in school from kindergarten through high school. Navigating all of this and more is Adam, a half-white half-Hispanic teenager that’s just trying to figure shit out. His mother, Mary, loves him but is mostly consumed with tending to her collection of birds. His neighbor, Donna, a 23 year old mother to a year old son and girlfriend to a jailed drug dealer, is determined to seduce Adam on his 16th birthday despite his loving relationship to his age-appropriate girlfriend, Inez. To further complicate things for Adam, a nameless promiscuous young woman, sweeps into town as an artist-in-residence at a local art foundation and sets out to give Adam a full sex education. Tom, a border patrol agent with a lot of emotional baggage, is fixated on Adam’s mother and Adam’s girlfriend and Adam too. He longs for the family that he doesn’t have. The film, ultimately, is about people’s internal life and why people become who they become. One character is a New Age spiritual healer. At the end she performs a much needed spiritual cleansing. The film is very Catholic in that the end is a new beginning, all sins are washed away and life goes on as each new day brings us a new start in life.
The film will premiere at the festival on Tuesday, November 12th at 10pm. Pics below.
[Photos: Rome Film Festival/Larry Clark/Tumblr]
