Liquid Sky (Tsukrman, 1982) & Cafe Flesh (Sayadian, 1982):
Roxy Bar and Screen, London Bridge, 7pm
This is part of the Scala Forever season, a programme of 111 films and events at 26 venues through to October 2 that will celebrate the wonderful Scala cinema at King's Cross which closed in 1993. Here is an article I wrote in the Guardian on the history of the cinema and the season and here are the details of all the movies and special events on offer, via the Scala Forever website.
Here is the Roxy Bar and Screen preview: The evening is hosted by Little Joe, a magazine about queers and cinema mostly, which was launched in 2010 to create a new dialogue around film criticism, to avoid traditional review formats to celebrate and chart a history of lost queer cinema. Previously screening in London, Berlin and New York, Little Joe steps into the Scala’s shoes by presenting a striking double-bill that unashamedly mixes sex and science-fiction.
These were two of the most popular films screened at the Scala in it heyday in King's Cross.
Time Out review of Liquid Sky:
'Film-maker Tsukerman's personal comment on, er, the State of Western Man, magnified through a thoroughly unpleasant bunch of New York junkies, poseurs and twits. Claiming to subvert a host of Hollywood verities, Tsukerman unleashes a parasitic alien being on the New York smack'n'sex demi-monde. Junkies and sex fiends start dropping like flies, and not even the Bruno Ganz-alike scientist can stop the voracious bug. Tsukerman stops short of his original intention of offing the whole cast, allowing for an extraordinary fairy-tale ascension at the end, but his aim of highlighting social malaise gets happily mislaid in a bizarre, often hilarious melee of weird drugs, weird sex and off-the-wall camp SF. Close Encounters for acid casualties.' John Gill
Here is the fashion show scene.
Time Out review of Cafe Flesh:
'Though hardly on a par with the 1898 novel which foreshadowed, in most significant details, the wreck of the Titanic 14 years later, this slice of sci-fi porn does show a certain eerie prescience. Produced on the very eve of the AIDS pandemic, it proposes a future in which, following some plague-like visitation, the world's population is either Sex Positive or Sex Negative. In this tale, though, 'Positive' is good, means you can do it, whereas the unhappy Negatives can only congregate at Café Flesh, just to sit and watch. This is merely the framework for the standard hardcore action that follows - thought-provoking framework all the same.'' Bob Baker
Here is an extract from Cafe Flesh.
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