Nottingham Contemporary

Heady, sumptuous, restless and rebellious visions of youth in eight classic films.

For our summer season of The Screen at Contemporary we look back to the long days, languid nights and haze of our youth.

Girlhood (2014)
Céline Sciamma

A young woman finds kinship and connection with a gang of girls in a Parisian banlieue. From the auteur explorer of contemporary French adolescence, Céline Sciamma, the film evokes intoxicating and vital characters that feel achingly familiar and immediately current.

Persepolis (2007)
Marjane Satrapi

Our spirited heroine Marjane comes of age amid the Iranian revolution of 1979, where she discovers punk and ABBA before moving to Austria as a teen. An exploration in rebelling, revolting, belonging and finding a home when you are without one.

Cruel Intentions (1999)
Roger Kumble

Wealthy, elite step-siblings pass the time manipulating others in sexual conquests for their own entertainment. Both seductive and repulsive, this teen cult classic is an articulation of our base adolescent desire and a morality play about a 1990s egotistical individualism set to come crashing down.

American Graffiti (1973)
George Lucas

Four teens have misadventures and mishaps in their home town the night before starting college. Smart, charming and infused with nostalgia for mid-century Americana, this rites of passage comedy feels simultaneously exotic, aspirational and reassuringly familiar.

Pretty in Pink (1986)
Howard Deutch

Andie is the ultimate misfit teen icon: customised thrift-store clothes, record-shop job and scholarship to 1980s preppy high school. A precursor to the ‘we are the weirdos’ cool of later teen films, this deeper, more humane John Hughes script explores class and gender and has a great soundtrack.

But I’m a Cheerleader (1991)
Jamie Babbit

A special screening to celebrate Pride week. All-American cheerleader Megan doesn’t like kissing her football-team boyfriend, so her parents send her to ‘sexual re-education’ school. A cult classic of Queer cinema, this is a comedy that ridicules the lunacy of the gay rehabilitation movement with wit and frivolity.

Stand By Me (1986)
Rob Reiner

Four boys go in search of a dead body and the repercussions change them forever. Full of pre-emptive nostalgia and pathos, and at times unabashedly heartfelt, this film has entered the collective consciousness of successive generations of teenagers and lingers throughout adulthood.

Splendor in the Grass (1961)
Elia Kazan

Bud and Deanie are high school sweethearts navigating the rigidity of post-war America, where manners, rules and duty outweigh desire, passion and sex to disastrous effect. The mid-century high school iconography combined with Kazan’s scalding social commentary and potent performances from Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty make this one to discover.

Donnie Darko (2001)
Richard Kelly

Six-foot imaginary bunny rabbit, time travel, Sparkle Motion, Fear & Love, the end of the world, Cellardoor. Trippy, original and messily brilliant, this existential meander through the persistent melancholy of puberty was a surprise word-of-mouth phenomenon that has gone on to true teen icon status.

Romeo + Juliet (1996)
Baz Lurhmann

All-encompassing infatuation, drugs, gangs, loyalty, betrayal and the intergenerational feuds– the greatest ever teen tale has them all. Delivered in a gut-punching, visceral and stylish explosion, it articulates the inner feeling of the teen experience in a way very few films have ever neared. Not to be missed on the big screen.