“Showgirls”

The Minneapolis/St. Paul LGBT Film Festival opens for its 15th year this Thursday, Nov. 11. “Showgirls” will kick off the festival, and the screening will be accompanied by an analysis from Seattle writer and performer David Schmader. An opening night premiere party will follow the screening, and all films will show at the Oak Street Cinema.

“Showgirls” represents Paul Verhoeven’s attempt at satire-but-not-quite-satire, whatever that may be. The film features Elizabeth Berkeley as a young girl with dreams of making it as a dancer in Vegas, a now infamous sequence with Berkeley and Gina Gershon, and the requisite glitz and glamour that provokes both audacious laughter and somber rumination. Maybe.

Written by Joe Eszterhas, the film reunites the successful “Basic Instinct” team, with far more debatable and controversial results. “Showgirls” in fact was deemed the “Worst Picture of the Decade” by the Razzie Awards, and Verhoeven graciously accepted responsibility for his film and picked up his “Worst Director-1996” Razzie in person—the only filmmaker ever to do so.
 

“The Battle of Algiers”

Banned upon its release in France in 1966, “The Battle of Algiers” depicts the Algerian struggle for independence duringthe late 1950s.

This revolutionary film, while fictional, is shot in the style of a documentary, and features music by Ennio Morricone.

The new Criterion DVD release includes a documentary narrated by the late Edward Said and a discussion of the film featuring Spike Lee, Mira Nair, Julian Schnabel, Steven Soderbergh and Oliver Stone, among other features on the release’s three discs.