GREY GARDENS

Sunday, June 15, 2:00 p.m. | In Slate, J. Bryan Lowder wrote what makes the documentary GREY GARDENS in part a camp classic, and “one of the most prominent and oft-cited entries in the canon of gay culture,” is that Big Edie and Little Edie Beale, the reclusive cousins of Jackie Onassis, are intimately captured, in their deteriorating house in East Hampton, without an ounce of judgement. “The filmmakers simply allow them to be,” Lowder writes. That uninhibited freedom is, as Sontag writes, a hallmark of camp: “a proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate and the naive.”

Awards & Nominations

Nominee - Gold Hugo, Best Feature, Chicago International Film Festival

Summer Camp | June 2025 Specialty Series

In 1964, the essayist Susan Sontag wrote “Notes on Camp,” where she endeavored to define “camp,” an artistic and cultural sensibility. The essence of camp, Sontag wrote, is “its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.” In the 60 years since that publication (a brisk, 14-page read), camp has evolved and flourished: in drag culture, the queer community, and the fashion and music industries. In cinema, camp can be found in the extravagance of a sweeping melodrama or the movie that’s so-bad-it's-actually-brilliant, a film may read as “campy” because of its opulence or extreme performances, or we might call a movie a camp classic because its earnest seriousness makes us laugh all the way to the credits. For Summer Camp, we abide by one of Sontag’s most salient points: “Camp is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation—not judgement.” Pack your bags, we’re going camping!

The Film Center is ADA accessible. This presentation will be projected without open captions. The theater is hearing-loop equipped. For accessibility requests, please email filmcenter@saic.edu