Skip to main content
Film/Screening

Stanford Cinematheque: SUPERSTAR: THE KAREN CARPENTER STORY and TERMINAL USA

Sponsored by

This event is over.

Restricted to: Stanford affiliates

Event Details:

It’s 1987, and Karen Carpenter has been dead five years, but there’s someone in the MFA program at Bard College with something to say about it. Carpenter, one-half of the brother-sister musical duo The Carpenters, charmed the world with her distinctive three-octave contralto range; all the while, she battled fiercely with anorexia behind the scenes, ultimately dying of a drug overdose caused by the illness. SUPERSTAR: THE KAREN CARPENTER STORY, Todd Haynes’ 43-minute directorial debut, restages these last years of Carpenter’s life, trading flesh and blood actors for Barbie dolls and toy sets. To make visible the sick body by absenting it; to mediate by fantasy.

Don’t miss your opportunity to watch the long-redacted unauthorized biopic from the director of CAROL, MAY DECEMBER, SAFE, et cetera. SUPERSTAR screens alongside TERMINAL USA, Jon Moritsugu’s Japanese-American family dramedy which uses sex and gore in ways that (maybe paradoxically) cannot be called explicit. Loneliness is such a sad affair. All that is plastic melts into air.

As a graduate student-run film collective based in the Department of Art & Art History, Cinematheque advances a dynamic programming effort of film and video for the greater Stanford community. Cinematheque aims to serve as a generative hub of ongoing discovery for current students thinking about film and media across the University as well as a connective link between the University and the broader regional film culture. Please visit us in the 115 screening room on Sundays at 7!

VISITOR INFORMATION: Room 115 is located in the McMurtry Building on Stanford campus at 355 Roth Way. Visitor parking is available in designated areas and payment is managed through ParkMobile (free after 4pm, except by the Oval). Alternatively, take the Caltrain to Palo Alto Transit Center and hop on the free Stanford Marguerite Shuttle. If you need a disability-related accommodation or wheelchair access information, please contact Julianne Garcia at juggarci@stanford.edu. This screening event is open to Stanford affiliates only.

Connect with the Department of Art & Art History! Subscribe to our mailing list and follow us on Instagram and Facebook.

Location: