Product Description

This is PAL VIDEO FORMAT (not NTSC and will not play in regular American DVD-player) and an only official release of Larry Clark's "Ken Park" movie on DVD over the world by Russian company "CP Digital". Larry Clark's Ken Park has sent ripples with explicit scenes, and acts, overshadowing other movies on display. The story of four dysfunctional families in the skateboarding hotbed of Visalia, Calif., unspooled in the experimental Upstream competition. "But I didn't want to cut a single frame," the cult film director and photographer told. "All my life I've seen the camera turn away, but these scenes are part of the reality ... of this generation." The film was co-directed by Clark who made the controversial 1995 movie "Kids", renowned cinematographer Ed Lachman, who shot Steven Soderbergh's award-winning "Erin Brockovich" and Todd Haynes' "Far From Heaven". The movie features violence involving not only the restless teenagers in the small town, but also their parents. But Clark says the film is an "uplifting" look at modern youth that shows some of the kids overcoming the odds..."My first film Kids was about the secret world of children, where parents are not allowed. In Ken Park we go inside the houses of four families and meet the parents. Ken Park is the story of children and their parents in Visalia, California, an isolated inland town between Los Angeles and Fresno. The story flows through the lives of three young boys and one girl, all childhood friends, and their parents. The childrens and parents lives are unmasked and you see the ascent of violence, sex, hatred, love and the manic episodes of emotional confusion." - Larry Clark

Product Details

• Published on: 2003
• Rating: Unrated
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen, Color, Import, Director's Cut
• Subtitled in: Russian
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 92 minutes

Customer Reviews

Shocking
I honestly have been looking for this film for months and I'm very pleased that I bought it. I loved the film but I was a little surprised by how pornographic it was. When Larry Clark he decided he wasn't going to shoot from the waist up or close any doors he really meant it. Wonderfully done and pretty decent acting. I recommend it to all Larry Clark fans.

Sick, Depressing and Worthless
"Ken Park" appears to have a single purpose: to portray on film nothing but sick, depraved and dysfunctional examples of American teenagers--and their morally deficient, emotionally disturbed parents. In this vision of youth, there is no hope, joy or purpose in life beyond the emptiness of meaningless sex, drug consumption and mindless pop culture.

"Ken Park" is a truly abysmal waste of celluloid. You know you're in for a depressing ride when the film opens with a young teen (who works at a hot dog stand) skating his way to a skateboard park, only to happily pull out a gun and put a bullet through his head. Turns out he got his girlfriend pregnant and she wants to keep the baby. Things go downhill from there.

For the remainder of the film we get a collection of vignettes featuring different dysfunctional kids and their just-as-dysfunctional parents. One boy (who looks 13) has a foul-mouthed Mom and is having frequent sex with a girlfriend AND her mother. Another boy, living with his loving grandparents, repeatedly screams obscenities at them and finally murders them both in their bed with a butcher knife--that is, after a graphic scene showing him masturbating while engaging in sexual self-asphyxiation.

A female teen character, "Peaches," has a widowed Christian father. Of course, the father HAS to be portrayed as a fanatical, fundamentalist lunatic. When he catches his daughter having B&D sex in her bedroom, he beats the boyfriend half to death and loudly berates the daughter with scriptures, accusing her of being "the whore of Babylon." He then forces her into her mother's wedding dress and "marries" his daughter, complete with kiss and wedding dance.

There's another teen boy--also a skateboarder. His Mom is close to giving birth, yet smokes and drinks. His abusive, alcoholic stepfather likes to troll for hookers and one night finally attempts to sexually molest the boy in his bed.

Yes, it's all very sick stuff. But then, what else can we possibly expect from a film like this? The situations in "Ken Park" are relevant to perhaps only .0001% of society, but it would seem the director would like us to think this kind of debauchery is far, far more prevalent. Sadly, "Ken Park" offers no solutions and no hope. So what's the "redeeming social value" of this piece of cinematic trash? None that I can detect. To me, "Ken Park" is nothing more than a thinly-veiled vehicle for softcore porn and a deeply depressing look at some hopelessly lost and spiritually starving souls.

Trust me: you'll regret watching this. I certainly did.

Larry clark's worst film but his most disturbing.
I've been a fan of larry clark since i saw kids which was good and then bully which is his best movie in my opinion. Ken park well I found it extremely disturbing, the movie looked very low budget,has a simple story, It has many explicit scenes,like drug use,some actual sex and violence and lots and lots of offensive language. The movie is slow paced and uses the shock factor to keep the viewer watching rather than plot but it still doesn't make the movie any better,I will say that it was one of the most disurbing movies i've ever watched and probably ever made.

After watching this movie i literely felt sick in my stomach and i don't think i could ever watch it again. If your a Larry clark fan or if you like watching disturbing movies as i do sometimes then you might find this worth watching otherwise you may be very disappointed. Watch the movie if you want but don't say I didn't warn you.