Best rave movie!?

If we're talking about raving as a deeply personal, liberating experience, it's Clubbed to Death. It's arty and French, but I can't imagine any better way of conveying the inner experience of raving than an arty, poetic film like this.

If we're talking abotu raving as a communal/cultural thing, it's Human Traffic. Yeah, I said it. It's not perfect, a perfect film about the subject hasn't been made, but it's lots of fun.

and Maestro is crap!!

its easy to get caught up in the simple fact that we never get to see this stuff (although there are some dvd's being sold on ebay that are supposedly the shit), but after the q&a i got the distinct vibe that the filmmakers were 'club scene' dudes that wanted to make a film and thought this would be a great subject for them, rather than serious devotees of the music and the garage who felt a doc needed to be made, you know what i mean?

personally, i would never make a film about the garage unless i could show people - and the actual audio of that footage is essential to this - what it was really like. i thought these filmmakers failed miserably in this.

I enjoyed this a lot.

I don't think his parties are invite only. If you have any contact to him, call and ask.

'small town ecstasy' is a fucking trainwreck. how can you enjoy that?
the producers and director of that were snooping around my outer circle of friends, making inappropriate suggestions (like asking a good friend if she'd take e with her mother) and generally looking to create the most sensationalist story they could. the fact that they found some moronic sucker to go for it pains me.

and who can forget the rave episode of Beverly Hils 90210? anybody got an egg?

Hahahahahahahahahaha....

I suppose I would say that the audio during the available video may have been of sub-par quality, but more importantly, as a 1-2 minute slice, it may not have been representative. Even on a recording of a longer duration like Larry Levan Live at the Paradise Garage CD, I'm not sure that it's truly what a night out there would have been like. I really liked hearing "Timewarp" and some of the other classics heard during the film, despite the fact that the video itself might have had Cher's "Take Me Home" or Company B's "Fascinated" (great tracks of course, but which one of the three is more 'important' as a document of Levan's innovation?).

Also, many of the other interviews in Maestro are really excellent, things like when FK talks about AIDS or just the look in Louie Vega's eyes when he's talking about "Go Bang", or the clips at the end of Keith Haring and even Levan himself dancing. It's a flawed film to be sure, but the highlights are priceless.

human traffic and go, ive never seen but they just sound painful

Not strictly a film, but IMO the best bit of film about raving is Flowered Up's Weekender video, really dated now but 30 minutes that really sum up 'that time'.

"The story of rave outlaw Disco Donnie" is pretty dreadful but kind of realistic (unfortunately)

Somebody should make a movie out of Kureishi's "The black album" - that could be ace.

raves are for faggots

you are a faggot

Duh!

In some ways I think Kids is the best rave movie, even though it only is vaguely related to the rave scene. To me, it accurately portrays the culture you find in New York and various other Northeast clubs/parties (Hartford CT, Nashua NH, Fitchburg MA, etc., etc., etc.)

I'm sorry to say it, but Moodles is right: it's Kids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9UXgB_R5_U

NASA at Shelter was technically a club night, and not a rave — but it was the epicenter of Rave in America at its time. I lived in Chicago in the 90s—not NYC—and I never saw Kids until probably 2010. Everything about this is correct: the noodly dancing, the barrettes, the superfluous chains, the racial balance, the music, the body language, the lights.

I knew a party kid named Teddy who was the absolute spitting image of this doorman from Kids (who was apparently a real employee at Liquid Sky). There was an all-ages club in Chicago that looked exactly like NASA, down to the caged-in half pipe. I threw a party once with a promoter who stole $1000 from the door, with the help of the bouncer, who was exactly like the bouncer in this scene: Med/Slav guy, seemingly slow in the head. We drank 40s, hopped turnstiles, did whip-its, went swimming in our underwear, and skated.

What Kids gets wrong: there were never sloppy makeout sessions at raves, or rampant fucking and date raping. House parties didn't have shirtless 11-year-olds getting stoned. If Larry Clark and Harmony Korine had toned down some of the debauchery, or made the characters even somewhat likeable, this film would be sweet nostalgia. But as it is, I would probably never want to watch it again. I remember the cute Asian girl with the bleached-blond pixie haircut, but she was never cheering on a Black guy getting beaten half to death with skateboards.

Party Girl is also dead-on correct for what it is. However, it revolves around 'outlaw parties', which were slightly rave-adjacent and appealed to slightly older people (20s vs teens). Party Girl is also a fun, watchable movie (unlike Kids) that I could watch over and over again.

Almost every other rave movie is all wrong, with tight jeans and Big Beat music. Honorable mention is the hilarious Vibrations, from 1996. Maybe someone will make a movie about the mid-90s Rave scene and get it right. Maybe it's already out there, but I just don't know about it.

Makeout-wise, I do remember one of my 90s CD etc. store colleagues coming back from Atlanta and reporting that two girls had done that while sitting on his lap at a rave club (didn't use that term but seems about right), and he knew that it was going to be one of his favorite memories ever: maybe he made it up, but didn't seem like that kind of goy, and he wasn't boastful about it, just humble and grateful.
Also in the Deep South, there were raves in fields.

This has reminded me that I have yet to see Beats.

Beats FTW. :-)

what about 'everybody in the place' ? been on my list ...

The only film I've ever seen that really captures the experience is EDEN, literally everything else has been trying way too hard. Helps that the soundtrack is absolutely on point as well.

I was an extra in this, and it was very very bad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaD-NYYe8DU

Seconded for Beats. The sequence with Plastikman - Spastik is <3

I didn't go into this detail in my post 14 years ago, but there was ABSOLUTELY that kind of gross, debauched behavior going on at raves I went to in NYC and elsewhere. There were always groups of thuggish dudes acting badly and doing shitty things. I thought that a lot of stuff in Kids was a wild exaggeration when I first saw it, but realized over time that it was really happening on the margins of the scene.

What's the super cheesy movie from the 90s involving electronic music that had a clip that was making the rounds on the Internet a few years back (well maybe close to 10 years ago)? It had a guy in his bed room explaining his overall music and lightshow setup?

Well... OK Moodles. It was bad at times. I don't think I ever saw a fight break out at a rave, ever. But I had a friend get jacked for his records en route, and another got shot in the leg by a venue owner, and some of the promoters were straight-up gangbangers. Eastern-European gangsters selling 'glass', and shady sexual behavior outside the parties. Chicago kids snuck/broke in to a lot of venues, shoplifted a lot, and had a bad reputation in the Midwest.

Then around 2000, rave culture became 1) outlawed, and 2) extremely low-status — on par with being a Juggalo. I remember mid-90s raves so, so fondly and I wish there was a more positive and accurate representation committed to film.

The LA and SF scenes seemed goofy to me, and crossed over with a lot of Burning Man culture. Chicago and NYC scenes seemed virtually identical.

MarkoP, are you thinking of Vibrations?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEc7O8ChYgs#t=51m20s

The clip you're probably thinking of is at 52 minutes.

Yes! That's what I was thinking of!

I remember them fondly too, but there was a lot of shady shit that lurked on the edges that I luckily managed to avoid for the most part.

Before Kids there was this George Michael video, which rocked my fucking world when I was 13 and it still does:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaeCnGOaE98