Mala Noche
Mala Noche • 1h 17m
Directed by Gus Van Sant • 1985 • United States
Starring Tim Streeter, Doug Cooeyate, Ray Monge
With its low budget and lush black-and-white imagery, Gus Van Sant’s debut feature MALA NOCHE heralded an idiosyncratic, provocative new voice in American independent film. Set in Van Sant’s hometown of Portland, Oregon, the film evokes a world of transient workers, dead-end day-shifters, and bars and seedy apartments bathed in a profound nighttime, as it follows a romantic deadbeat with a wayward crush on a handsome Mexican immigrant. MALA NOCHE was an important prelude to the New Queer Cinema of the nineties and is a fascinating capsule from a time and place that continues to haunt its director’s work.
Up Next in Mala Noche
-
Gus Van Sant on MALA NOCHE
The following interview with writer-director Gus Van Sant was recorded in January 2007.
-
Walt Curtis: The Peckerneck Poet
Directed by animator and filmmaker Bill Plympton, this 1995 documentary provides a glimpse into the life of poet Walt Curtis, on whose memoir MALA NOCHE is based.
