Pulp Fiction

Pulp Fiction

Season

Please note : this season finished in Feb 2024

In a nod to Cord Jefferson's hilarious directorial debut American Fiction – a wicked satire about the commodification of marginalised voices – we have an entire Sunday Season dedicated to classic satires, exploring the creative tension between high and low culture.

Jefferson's American Fiction pits a frustrated Black novelist against the harsh realities of the audience’s appetite for racial cliches and stereotypes. He decides to reveal the crude representations of the popular form by writing under a streetwise pseudonym only for the book to be a literary sensation.

This creative struggle goes to the heart of Hollywood: Is the artist's responsibility to their muse or the audience? This selection of films in our season aptly named Pulp Fiction, depicts that struggle played out over the decades in Hollywood.

From Preston Sturges' comedy Sullivan’s Travels (1941) where a Hollywood director longs to make a socially relevant drama and Billy Wilder’s noir classic Sunset Boulevard (1950) which memorably opens with the film’s narrator - Hollywood writer Joe Gillis - lying dead in a mansion swimming pool, to more contemporary takes such as Robert Townsend’s semi-autobiographical comedy Hollywood Shuffle (1987). The film follows a young Black man aspiring to be an actor who comes up against the litany of racial stereotypes in film and television. Plus, the Coen Brother’s darkly hilarious Barton Fink (1991) where a celebrated New York playwright is summoned to Hollywood and succumbs to writer’s block as he struggles to write a wrestling B picture.


Previous screenings in this season

Barton Fink

classified 15 Pulp Fiction
Barton Fink
Please note: This was screened in Feb 2024
Film

Welcome to the Hotel Earle. What a dump. Mosquito-ravaged, peeling wallpaper, springy mattresses and boy is it hot in here. This is the symbolic backdrop of the Coen Brothers' brilliant satire about an arrogant playwright lured to 1940’s Hollywood to write for the movies who gets more than he bargained for.

Hollywood Shuffle

classified 15 Pulp Fiction
Hollywood Shuffle
Please note: This was screened in Feb 2024
Film

Robert Townsend's debut feature is an ingenious satirical landmark that takes riotous aim at the typecasting of Black actors in 1980s Hollywood.

Sunset Boulevard

classified PG Pulp Fiction
Sunset Boulevard
Please note: This was screened in Feb 2024
Film

Austrian emigre filmmaker Billy Wilder’s takedown of Hollywood and celebrity culture.

Sullivan’s Travels

classified PG Pulp Fiction
Sullivan’s Travels
Please note: This was screened in Feb 2024
Film

Preston Sturges works his magic in a screwball tale of a film director who goes on the road as a 'tramp' to help write his socially significant screenplay.

× Close

Help us make our website work better for you

Allow analytics cookies Deny analytics cookies

We use Google Analytics to gather information on how our website is used. This helps us to make changes to our website that improve the usefulness and overall experience for our visitors.