NOW STREAMING AT LARRYCLARK.COM/MARFAGIRL
Cultures collide in Marfa, Texas (pop. 1,800) as small town American life intersects with the international art world and swarms of border patrol agents smothering the community, all the while Adam, a half-white, half-Hispanic teenager, is just trying to navigate the sex, drugs, rock and roll, art, violence and racism.
MARFA GIRL has premiered as one of the 15 films in COMPETITION at The International Rome Film Festival.
Marfa Girl will be released exclusively on larryclark.com on Tuesday, November 20th, 2012 at 6PM (New York) and Midnight (Rome). It will be available in English with options for Italian and French subtitles. It won’t be released in theatres or on DVD.
I will put the film on my first and only website, larryclark.com, which is the only
place one will ever be able to see the film…. It will stream for $5.99 for access to the
film for 24 hours…. This is the future and the future is now…. Most and very soon
almost all the small theaters that show Indie and Art films will be gone….
Everyday another goes out of business because everything is digital now and it is
quite expensive for the wonderful old smaller theaters to bear the cost of switching to
digital…. Anyway I think I am one of the very first directors to release a new film this
way, on a website who’s only purpose is to show his new films…. I think this could be
very successful and it also cuts out the crooked Hollywood distributors.- Larry Clark
Set stills by Morgan Jenkins
SYNPOSIS
Renowned and notorious photographer, artist, and filmmaker, Larry Clark has written and directed his new film, Marfa Girl, which takes place in Marfa, Texas (pop. 1,800).
Marfa exists at a particular cultural nexus with a constant clash between the art community (inspired to come to Marfa by the American sculptor, Donald Judd), the white community and the Mexican American community. On top of that there’s a smothering Border Patrol presence despite the fact the Mexican border is 68 miles away. There is an 11pm curfew for teenagers and they still have corporal punishment in the schools. They paddle kids in school from kindergarten through high school.
Navigating all of this and more is Adam, a half-white half-Hispanic teenager that’s just trying to figure shit out. His mother, Mary, loves him but is mostly consumed with tending to her collection of birds. His neighbor, Donna, a 23 year old mother to a year old son and girlfriend to a jailed drug dealer, is determined to seduce Adam on his 16th birthday despite his loving relationship to his age-appropriate girlfriend, Inez. To further complicate things for Adam, a nameless promiscuous young woman, sweeps into town as an artist-in-residence at a local art foundation and sets out to give Adam a full sex education.
Tom, a border patrol agent with a lot of emotional baggage, is fixated on Adam’s mother and Adam’s girlfriend and Adam too. He longs for the family that he doesn’t have.
The film, ultimately, is about people’s internal life and why people become who they become. One character is a New Age spiritual healer. At the end she performs a much needed spiritual cleansing. The film is very Catholic in that the end is a new beginning, all sins are washed away and life goes on as each new day brings us a new start in life.
