“I am not giving a star rating to PINK FLAMINGOS, because stars simply seem not to apply. It should be considered not as a film but as a fact, or perhaps as an object.” - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Wednesday, September 6 & Saturday, September 9 | Waters’s subversive counterculture shocker stars the iconic Divine as Babs Johnson, a wanted criminal deemed by tabloids to be the “Filthiest Person Alive.” When her title is challenged by two sociopaths, a foul fight, where no taboo is off limits, begins. Featuring pig heads, cannibalism, and feces—oh my!—the film was given an NC-17 by the MPAA for its “wide range of perversions in explicit details” and banned in Australia, Norway, and—allegedly still to this day—in Hicksville, New York. Beloved by late night and grindhouse audiences from the start, PINK FLAMINGOS celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2022 with a Criterion Collection release (the disc comes with a barf bag) and, in a comforting case of the establishment embracing the indecent, a place in the National Film Registry, a division of the federal government.


Contra/Banned SeriesAs a disturbing wave of bans—on books, on bodies, on identities—continues to sweep across the United States, the Film Center declares: get your censorship off our cinema. With Contra/Banned, we present 10 films that have experienced, in varying absurd degrees, their own bans and outcries, their own protests and regulations. The films of Contra/Banned are at times subversive, controversial, taboo, provocative, and shocking. Sounds like a good time at the movies to us. View full series.


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