"I am big. It's the pictures that got small."

Billy Wilder's venomous, funny and endlessly quotable Hollywood nightmare remains one of cinema's most dazzling acts of self-destruction. Gloria Swanson is unforgettable as Norma Desmond, a silent-screen legend entombed in her decaying mansion and dreaming of a comeback that the world has long since forgotten.

When struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis stumbles into her orbit, admiration, desperation and delusion become impossible to untangle. By turns gothic melodrama, noir thriller and savage industry satire, Sunset Boulevard is a film about fame's afterlife, the stories we tell ourselves, and what happens when reality refuses to match the script.

We could not resist  screening this absolute classic before our upcoming run of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Jane Schoenbrun's slasher-reboot satire, in which Gillian Anderson gives a truly glorious, Norma Desmond-inspired performance as the reclusive final girl Billy Presley.