Last Summer

An ultra-rare opportunity to see Frank and Eleanor Perry’s exploration of the power plays and casual cruelties that surface between a group of teenagers over one summer.

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  • Director

    Frank Perry

  • With

    Barbara Hershey, Richard Thomas, Bruce Davison, Catherine Burns

  • USA 1969. 95min

  • 35mm

  • Certificate

    18

Following the screening of the Perrys’ The Swimmer at the 2023 festival, we’re showing their unsettling film about the dawning sexual and class-based tensions between four teenagers over a summer on Fire Island. What begins as typical adolescent exploration between entitled Dan, sensitive Peter and precocious Sandy, turns in a darker direction when they meet bright but awkward Rhoda (an impressive, Oscar-nominated performance by Burns). Unavailable on home video and for many years accessible only from a solitary 16mm print held in Australia, this 35mm print from the BFI National Archive does show very considerable wear, and has faded with a blue cast, but it offers a vanishingly rare opportunity to see one of the essential, yet missing, American films of its era.

James Bell

Contains sexual violence.

Presented in association with Lost Reels, an independent organisation dedicated to showing lost, unavailable and out-of-circulation films.