Programmed December 2024

Directed by John Waters

The one and only “Pope of Trash,” John Waters has always pushed the envelope of independent cinema to bizarre, grotesque, and subversive extremes with a sense of humor and panache that makes the outrageous infectious and the blasphemous a blast. Beyond shock and thrills, his deep empathy for his characters made unlikely movie stars of Baltimore’s counterculture misfits (most famously the outré diva Divine). From scuzzy underground transgressions like Multiple Maniacs and Female Trouble to more mainstream but equally personal works like Hairspray and Cry-Baby , Waters’s gleefully perverse, wickedly funny films are celebrations of the outsiders, iconoclasts, and weirdos who refuse to conform.