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‘Rogue Hollywood’ will consist of six classic films of the period, all shown by HOME Manchester from Sunday 30 August until Wednesday 16 September.

Curated by Dr Andy Willis, Professor of Film Studies at the �������� and Senior Visiting Curator at HOME, the films consist of Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece Taxi Driver (1976), Robert Aldrich’s neo-noir thriller Hustle (1975), the Diane Keaton-led Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), William Friedkin’s thriller Cruising (1980), the neo-noir drama Hardcore (1979) and the crime drama Mikey & Nicky (1976).

The series was also co-curated by �������� alumna Ellen Smith, the co-editor of States of Danger and Deceit: The European Political Thriller in the 1970s (Manchester University Press, 2024) with Andy and Rachel Hayward, Head of Film Strategy at HOME Manchester.

Andy said: “Ellen runs a film night at Rare Mags bookshop in Stockport. One of here screenings was Cruising. This film was very controversial when first released due to its representation of the New York leather scene of the time. I asked Ellen how a 2025 audience responded to the film and we started chatting about it and other controversial films of the period such as Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

“From those discussions emerged the idea for a pitch to Cinema Rediscovered festival in Bristol. I had previously done a strand for them called Look Who’s Back about the return of those blacklisted in the red scare during the late 1940s and 1950s to Hollywood. As the idea had come out of a chat inspired by Ellen’s programming, it made sense to work on Rogue Hollywood together.”

Each of the films tackle complex and difficult subject matters and were all released after 1975 which became a seminal year in Hollywood as the year that Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was released, forever creating the blockbuster trend and sparked the emergence of more family-focused films released for American audiences, such as Star Wars (1977), Superman (1978) and Star Trek (1979).

“We wanted to rediscover the films and filmmakers who didn’t follow this trend and kept on making difficult films as the decade continued”, Andy said.

“Our choice of filmmakers in the season also intended to show that there were some who had emerged in the 1950s and were still making great and difficultly dark films such as Robert Aldrich (Hustle) and Richard Brooks (Looking for Mr. Goodbar), and there were those who emerged in the New Hollywood of the early 1950s and continued to do dark stuff such as Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver and then wrote and directed Hardcore as well as William Friedkin, who made Cruising.

“The other film we selected was Mikey and Nicky by Elaine May. A tough and uncompromising exploration of masculinity which had gone missing when released but whose reputation has grown in the years since 1976.”

The season was curated for the Cinema Rediscovered festival at Bristol’s Watershed cinema earlier this summer in association with Wiper & True and was principally sponsored by Park Circus and StudioCanal.

, it will also be available at the Glasgow Film Theatre from Saturday 29 August until Tuesday 29 September and is funded thanks to support from BFI awarded funds from the National Lottery.