Gregg Araki

Born into a Japan­ese-Amer­i­can fam­i­ly in Los Ange­les, Gregg Ara­ki grad­u­at­ed with a degree in film the­o­ry from the Uni­ver­si­ty of San­ta Bar­bara, before study­ing direct­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of California.

Influ­enced by Jean-Luc Godard, John Waters and David Lynch, he direct­ed his first fea­ture film, Three Bewil­dered Peo­ple in the Night, in 1987. Shot in 16mm for under $5,000, it took home three awards from the Locarno Film Fes­ti­val and remains emblem­at­ic of guer­ril­la-style Amer­i­can film­mak­ing. The direc­tor shat­tered the screen with his third fea­ture, The Liv­ing End, in 1992. Tak­ing the AIDS epi­dem­ic head-on, the film was the talk of the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val and launched Gregg Ara­ki as one of the major auteurs of the “New Queer Cin­e­ma” along with Gus Van Sant and Todd Haynes.

With the “Teenage Apoc­a­lypse” tril­o­gy, Gregg Ara­ki rede­fined on-screen rep­re­sen­ta­tion for the LGBTQI+ com­mu­ni­ty and affirmed his style: punk aes­thet­ics, explo­sive sto­ries and col­or­ful char­ac­ters.