Serial Spring | Cult Classics with Venus Mantrap at the NFSA

Overview

Arc Cinema presents a series of irreverent Friday night filmic feasts, curated and hosted by drag artist and culture warrior Venus Mantrap.

Each event includes a pre-screening introduction and live performance by Venus Mantrap.

While the public's collective curiosity about people who kill may seem like a modern trend, this morbid fascination long predates true-crime podcasts and the rise of serial streaming. This spring, Arc Cinema revisits chilling tales of serial killers that challenge and unsettle audiences. The program opens in September with a close encounter with Hannibal the Cannibal in the 1991 sleeper hit The Silence of the Lambs. From there, it journeys back a decade to Cruising, in which Al Pacino delivers a performance that shocked audiences and outraged gay activists at the time, but is now recognised as a provocatively daring exploration of subterranean Manhattan during a spate of violent attacks on gay men. The season concludes further north and half a decade earlier, with another predator stalking an unsuspecting community in Jaws. Celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2025, this enduring classic continues to remind viewers why it's still just a little scary to go back in the water.