Super 8 1/2

Sunday, October 4, 2026

Special Events

  • Sun Oct 4 : 

    Extended intro by director Bruce LaBruce!

    Buy Tickets

SHOWTIMES AT IFC CENTER

Sun, Oct 4 at 8:15: Exteneded intro by director Bruce LaBruce!

New Digital Restoration!

Bruce LaBruce on SUPER 8½:

“SUPER 8½ is my second feature (some mean critics would say my sophomore slump), a low-budget, queer-punk riff on Fellini’s 8½, starring me as Bruce, a washed-up underground filmmaker and porn star who is having a nervous breakdown and trying to make a comeback. It may be considered a tad autobiographical, and is indeed subtitled “A Cautionary Bio-Pic.”

The movie was really my response to the unexpected success of NO SKIN OFF MY ASS. I had made that film with my boyfriend and friends, never imagining that anyone outside our little world of punk clubs and alternative art spaces would ever see it. Then suddenly it was playing at festivals all over the world, with my private sex life projected onto enormous screens. It wreaked havoc on my relationship, strained some of my friendships, and saddled me with a newfound reputation as a dirty, worthless faggot pornographer. Naturally, I made another movie about it.

In SUPER 8½, Bruce is broke, creatively blocked and desperate to resurrect his career when Googie, an ambitious underground lesbian filmmaker, offers to make a documentary about him. He imagines this will be his triumphant comeback, but Googie has other ideas: she is ruthlessly exploiting him for her own movie. Bruce, meanwhile, is quite capable of exploiting himself without anybody’s assistance.

The movie is also a loose remake of the Tuesday Weld vehicle Frank Perry’s Play It As it Lays, and it blurs autobiography, fiction and pornography until it becomes difficult to tell where Bruce LaBruce ends and “Bruce LaBruce” begins. Everyone is using everyone else, everybody wants to be famous, and the camera becomes both confessional booth and glory hole.

SUPER 8½ took two torturous years to make and was my first feature shot on 16mm, a process of trial and error because I basically had no idea what I was doing. It’s about narcissism, sexual exhibitionism, exploitation, artistic failure and the strange consequences of turning yourself into a spectacle.

Basically, I had a semi-nervous breakdown and made a movie out of it. Waste not, want not.”

  • Country Canada
  • Year 1994
  • Running Time 100 minutes
  • Format DCP
  • Distributor Strand Releasing
  • Director Bruce LaBruce
  • Cast Bruce LaBruce, Stacy Friedrich, Mikey Mike
  • Accessibility Assistive Listening, T-Coil

IFC Center does not generally provide advisories about subject matter or potentially triggering content in films, as sensitivities vary from person to person. In addition to the synopses, trailers and other links on our website, further information about content and age-appropriateness for specific films can be found on Common Sense Media, IMDb and DoesTheDogDie.com as well as through general internet searches.