Revisiting the Classics: “Nowhere”

Recently restored from its original 35mm negative and re-released in 4K, Gregg Araki’s Nowhere (1997) is a nervy, kinetic classic of the New Queer Cinema. Nowhere revolves around the zany, polymorphously perverse lives of the young, beautiful, and doomed drifting through the sunbaked inferno of Los Angeles. The movie is the grand finale of Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy, which began with Totally F***ed Up (1993) and The Doom Generation (1995). Featuring early performances from the likes of Christina Applegate, Traci Lords, Debi Mazar, Shannon Doherty, and Healther Graham, and needle drops from Portishead, Nine Inch Nails, Slowdive, Sonic Youth and other iconic bands of the period, Nowhere bristles with millenial angst and desire. As nostalgia for the 1990s and early 2000s sweeps contemporary pop culture, shaping everything from fashion trends to the sound of the Top 40, Nowhere invites us to revisit the so-called “end of history” by offering a raucous, crackling portrait of SoCal teenhood at the end of the millennium.

In this event, writer/director and alumnus of the UCSB Film and Media Studies program Gregg Araki will join Bhaskar Sarkar (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion of Nowhere.