Jane SCHOENBRUN © Mila Matveeva
UN CERTAIN REGARD OPENING FILM — Who is Jane Schoenbrun, the filmmaker behind Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma?
After the buzz of excitement around their last feature film, I Saw the TV Glow, whose gloomy atmosphere made an impression on movie-lovers, fans eagerly awaited the next film by Jane Schoenbrun. They open the Un Certain Regard screenings with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, a queer fantasy slasher. Let’s take a deep dive into the world of Jane Schoenbrun.
Jane Schoenbrun’s hybrid films, bathed in their signature blue and pink hues that light up the faces of screen-hypnotized teens, evoke both the series Euphoria, and Gregg Araki’s filmography. This visual affiliation with the queer world is dear to the filmmaker, who asserts their non-binary identity, and inspires their films about diverse identities.
Born in 1987 in Queens, New York, Jane Schoenbrun grew up in the 1990s, and this decade is very much reflected in their filmmaking with its nostalgic references to pop culture and to the beginnings of the Internet and CRT TV.
A product of their generation, they released their first documentary, A Self-Induced Hallucination, on Vimeo in 2018, after having worked as a production assistant on short films produced by the Safdie brothers. While We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021) followed the story of an adolescent taking part in an occult game online, I Saw the TV Glow explored the downward spiral of two teenagers drawn into their favorite TV show. The dissociation between reality and fiction is seen by some as an allegory of transidentity.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma closes off what Jane Schoenbrun calls her “Screen Trilogy”, and follows the filming of a horror film remake in which the director is obsessed with the enigmatic original actress. This is played by the heroine of the X-Files series, Gillian Anderson. The trailer pegs the film somewhere between the nightmares of Lynch, the gory queer of Yann Gonzalez and Ti West’s X trilogy.
