Part of DEEP WATERS -- a twisted series of early work by John Waters, one of cinema's greatest and boldest button-pushing moviemakers. Waters is the 2016 recipient of FilmScene's annual Cinema Savant honors. See the films before his live show at the Englert on October 1, where he will also receive the Cinema Savant award.

FEMALE TROUBLE

Waters' hysterical, full-throated assault on celebrity culture pivots on an unforgettable performance by Divine as Dawn Davenport, a runaway teen who falls into a life of petty thievery only to becomes a media icon with the help of a pair of sexually repressed, upper-crust hairdressers.

Divine called FEMALE TROUBLE his favorite of his own films, and it's not hard to see why: everything about the film, from the theme song down, is marked by his electric, gender-defying presence. (He also plays the male truck driver who, in one of the movie’s most grotesque scenes, knocks Dawn up.) But it's the couple, played by David Lochary ("we rarely eat any form of noodle") and Mary Vivian Pearce ("spare me your anatomy"), who become both the chief targets of Waters' satire and, with their theory of beauty's relationship to transgression and crime, improbable mouthpieces for his filmmaking philosophy. With memorable turns by Mink Stole as Dawn’s ill-fated daughter and Edith Massey as their hot-blooded next-door neighbor. (Film Society of Lincoln Center).

"The pope of trash." -William S. Burroughs