Introduced by Jon Davies, General Idea Fellow, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Hail the New Puritan is a highly stylized, faux-verité “docufantasy” about British dance sensation Michael Clark, contextualizing his “ballet-based but punk-fueled choreographies” in his glamorously and decadently queer, post-punk milieu in mid-1980s East London. Clark’s formidable choreography and his deliriously imaginative visual design is a study in the self-conscious fabrication (or fabulation?) of personality, the beguiling aura of a singular individual, and how the dynamic interplay with other “fantastics” can forge a cultural moment that reverberates long after its passing. – JD (Charles Atlas, 1986, 16mm to digital, 85 minutes)

Image caption: Still from Charles Atlas’s Hail the New Puritan (1985) courtesy of EAI