Film: Hag in a Black Leather Jacket and Roman Candles with live commentary by John Waters

The Academy Museum welcomes back John Waters for a live, in-person commentary presentation of his first two short films. These rarely screened early works were shot on a Brownie 8mm camera and display Waters’s lifelong affinity for boundary-pushing material. His first short film, Hag in a Black Leather Jacket, premiered at a beatnik coffeehouse in Baltimore in 1964. Centering on an interracial wedding officiated by a Ku Klux Klan member and featuring erotic dance and classical ballet, Hag showcases Waters’s ongoing fascination with dance and music that reappears in later films like Hairspray (1988) and Cry-Baby (1990). His second short, Roman Candles (1967), premiered at Baltimore’s Emmanuel Episcopal Church and is the first Dreamland production, featuring Divine, David Lochary, Pat Moran, Mary Vivian Pearce, Bob Skidmore, Maelcum Soul, Mink Stole, and other Waters regulars. First shown as a vertical presentation of three separate 8mm films projected simultaneously, Roman Candles was heavily influenced by Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey’s split-screen, nonnarrative Chelsea Girls (1966).

Presented in newly preserved digital versions, Waters’s first two short films will be accompanied by the filmmaker’s real-time reactions and commentary for this one-time-only, unrecorded performance.

Hag in a Black Leather Jacket
DIRECTED/WRITTEN BY: John Waters. WITH: Mona Montgomery, Mary Vivian Pearce, Bobby Chappel. 1964. 17 min. B&W. USA. English, presented silently. Restoration DCP. Restored by the Academy Film Archive.

Roman Candles
DIRECTED/WRITTEN BY: John Waters. WITH: Divine, Mark Isherwood, David Lochary, Mona Montgomery. 1967. 40 min. Color. USA. English, presented silently. Restoration DCP. Restored by the Academy Film Archive.