Join the ACF DC for a screening of the film The Life of Sean DeLear by Austrian director Markus Zizenbacher during the EUNIC DC (European Union National Institutes for Culture in Washington DC) series EU Capitals Underground at Dupont Underground!
The Life of Sean DeLear is a vibrant, multi-faceted, propulsive documentary portraying this multidisciplinary artist and scene queen in a variety of different circles, from the beautiful elite to the queer punks of LA in the late 1990s and 2000s. DeLear broke barriers by being black and gay in the art world and in the music scene. After he relocated to Vienna in the early 2010s, he befriended Zizenbacher and entrusted his treasure-trove audiovisual archive to him. These jagged hand-held snapshots offer a glimpse into the electric days and nights a quarter of a century ago, placed in retrospective context by present-day testimony from people who knew SeanDe best and loved him the most.
Original Title: The Life of Sean DeLear
Year: 2024
Country: Austria
Duration: 82 min
Filming locations: United States, England, Austria
Director: Markus Zizenbacher
(Explicit language, nudity, drugs, smoking)
ABOUT SEAN DELEAR
A blazingly colourful and exuberantly transgressive personality who dazzled Los Angeles' underground musical and artistic scenes in the late-1990s and 2000s, Sean DeLear (1964-2017) suddenly emerged as a genuinely seminal cultural figure via the posthumous 2022 publication of their intimate and explicit teenage diaries from 1979. I Could Not Believe It joyously chronicles the experiences of a young Black, queer creative finding their identity, voice and style decades before Barry Jenkins' Moonlight.
ABOUT THE SERIES
EU Capitals Underground
May 14 – June 29, 2025
Join us for an unforgettable series of film, music and dance as EUNIC DC (European Union National Institutes for Culture in Washington DC) member countries present EU Capitals Underground at Dupont Underground this May and June.
Participating countries: Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland
Trailer: The Life of Sean DeLear
Design by This January
This event is part of a program series at Dupont Underground by members of EUNIC DC – the European Union National Institutes for Culture – in connection with World Pride and the Berlin Underground exhibition. For all events visit dupontunderground.org/events.