Submarine Channel

Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers

Been following Harmony Korine‘s career ever since I first saw his debut Gummo at the International Rotterdam Film Festival in 1997. Korine -black leather jacket, holding a can of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other- took in the applause from the sold-out room like a pro. America’s avant-garde Wunderkind is back at IFFR this year with his latest feature Trash Humpers –an ode to destruction, shot on VHS and edited on a couple of VCR’s. Korine in an interview with the festival: “This specific movie was supposed to mimic a found artefact, something found buried in a ditch or floating in a Ziploc bag with blood on it, and I thought it would be nice to see it on VHS. I thought if we were doing it correctly it needed to be filled with glitches and mistakes.” Trash Humpers won him an award at CPH:DOX (Korine’s insane acceptance speech is on YouTube). Also worth a watch: The Dirty Ones -a Korine-produced short by Brent Stewart on the YouTube channel of IFFR.