Screen Notes:
Nightlife

What happens in bars and clubs across the world after dark?

Under cover of darkness, these dedicated spaces offer a place for us to come together, encounter like minds and express our true selves in safe havens – and of course, have a fantastic time.

These films take you on a nocturnal journey full of passion, transgression and joy, through New York’s Studio 54, unified Berlin, neon-lit Taipei, and rough and ready Mexico City, as well as exploring the vanishing queer spaces of London. As part of the season's opening night: Queer Erasure? London's LGBTQ+ Nightlife on Film, we welcome London's Night Czar Amy Lamé to discuss the future of London's queer spaces.

In the 70s in New York City, the legendary Studio 54 nightclub is the centre of sex, drugs and disco music. Young Shane (Ryan Phillippe) catches the eye of the nightclub’s owner, Steve Rubell (Mike Myers), and quickly becomes a bartender there.

When it was originally released in 1998, this vibrant story was cut by 40 minutes, removing some of the darker elements of the story and, crucially, any scenes showing the bisexuality of its central character, played by Ryan Phillippe.

This director’s cut restores the film to the filmmaker’s original vision, a considerably more explicit walk on the wild side, featuring some of the biggest rising stars of the 1990s. Mike Myers, who plays Steve Rubell, the club’s controversial co-founder, gives a career-best performance.

Berlin’s wild side is revealed in this film, which tells the story of the city’s transformation from divided city - to European party metropolis - through three night club bouncers from very different sides of the divide; the trio would go on to become the legendary ‘guardians’ of Berlin’s hippest clubs, including the famous Berghain.

In the late 1980s, Frank Künster came from West Germany to Berlin, where Smiley Baldwin, an American GI, was guarding the border to East Berlin and Sven Marquardt, a young punk and photographer, was living on the other side.

When the Wall fell, nightclubs became some of the first truly reunited spaces in the city. Frank, Smiley and Sven were caught up in this scene and soon became the legendary ‘guardians’ of Berlin’s hippest clubs, including the famous Berghain.

Hou Hsiao-hsien's hypnotic Millennium Mambo takes us on a journey into the city’s techno-scored club scene at the turn of the 21st century, plunging us into Taipei's neon-lit nightlife.

Our guide for this nocturnal tour is Vicky; the film is structured from within her consciousness, remembering her life of ten years earlier, when she was working as a bar hostess. Leading a drifting, neon-lit existence and bored with her possessive DJ boyfriend, she finds herself gravitating towards a gangster named Jack.

With long takes, slo-mo, and close-ups that linger on colours, lights and textures, Vicky’s memories of Taipei’s club scene are distilled into images of amazing radiance and the film as a whole has an appropriately druggy, trance-like feel.

In Juan Ibáñez’s film an affluent couple embark on a whirlwind tour of working-class nightlife in Mexico City.

Leaving a swanky party, upper-class couple Jaime and Paloma take refuge from the rain in what they think is an abandoned car. Little do they know they’ve stumbled upon a set of wheels owned by Captain Gato and his gang, Los Caifanes, who invite the pair out to party with them.

And so begins a tour of the working-class nightlife of the Mexican capital, from cabarets to bars to outdoors taco joints – a night of drinking and dancing that leaves an indelible impression on the wealthy duo. After their adventure, the couple questions whether or not they are right for each other.