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

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15443 in DVD
• 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

A Gritty, Graphic Vision of Raw Suburban Hell
This is gorilla film making. Ken Park is an incredibly difficult film to watch - in fact it will be impossible to watch for some. Yet, if you allow yourself to be taken into its world, the film paints a disturbingly accurate portrait of a certain culture which is not at all hard to believe.

We see the majority of characters longing, wanting to make a connection with other humans yet feeling alienated. We see, remarkably, the confusion and disinterest of a major portion of an entire generation that views life as hopeless.

The violence, nudity, graphic (and actual) sex never feel like exploitation or pornography, but they will surely keep a majority of Americans from viewing it. Good thing too, or they'd be asking for Larry Clark's head on a silver platter!

If you try to watch this with an open mind, and can leave your inhabitions and judgment at the door, it will be impossible not to be moved - and powerfully so - by this raw and disturbing film.

W-H-I-P-L-A-S-H
Folks, this movie is alright, it's not THAT BAD. Probably the best-worded review I've read for "Ken Park" so far is on IMDB.COM. I think someone named "peedur" wrote it or something. Not that I agree with him 100%, but the good that can be taken out of this film is well expressed in his critique.

Look, FCC and MPAA, you don't want me to see something, then for Chrissake don't ban it. That just makes me want to watch it even more. In all honesty, I don't know if this film should be banned here in America. "Kids" and "Bully" made it through okay, even into theaters. When it comes to teens and sexuality, "Ken Park" might be Clark's most truthful presentation of it. Now I know that's gonna send many parents tearing their hair out, and screaming, "What can I do? How can I save them from this?" Well... you can't.

If you don't want to believe that any of what happens in "Ken Park" is real, then you'd better just not watch it altogether. Parents, the heartbreaking truth is that almost all of what happens in here has happened several times and will continue to happen unabated. I've never lived in Visalia, CA, but have spent ample time there. However, I was born and spent the first 19 years of my life in Fresno (the two are remarkably similar and close geographically). Same stagnant lifestyle, same tendency to listen to punk and hip-hop, same heat, etc.

I appreciate Clark's effort to humanize these kids this time; none of them are what I would call "bad." "Kids" made kids look bad. "Ken Park" makes kids look bored, which is what they really are. Don't scream to the heavens, asking why they would think to do such things, that's nonsense. Why do they smoke dope, drink ad nauseum, jerk off and have frivolous sex...? Because there - is - nothing - else - to - do - there. Gotta alleviate the boredom somehow. For instance, when the devout Father scorns his daughter with the Bible... referring to her as a beast and a whore... nope, she just a teenager. All teenagers are beasts and whores because YOU can't think of any other label for it.

Did I personally have sex with supple young teenage Filipino girls in their parents' Catholicism-adorned house? Actually, right in the parents' bed. I was only 17 at the time. I've challenged my father to a fight, I've gotten impatient with grandparents for taking too long a turn playing a game, I've sat around that living room watching MTV while hitting the bong and bitching about how I couldn't wait to leave the wretched town. I've done it; it happens.

Never jerked off to womens' tennis while asphyxiating myself with a robe belt, but...

It's areas like these that Clark starts to lose me. There is much more male nudity in "Ken Park" than female, so don't be expecting some wild teenaged orgy. There is not even that much actual sex in the movie. In fact, if the main characters in this film were but... 4 years older... I guarantee you this would not be banned here in America.

Visalia has - NEVER - looked as good as it does in "Ken Park" and never will again. It is photographed and directed by two ace DPs after all, so the screen composition, lighting and shading are all luminous and... for lack of a better adjective: warm. As in hospitable. The film looks more expensive than it is.

My favorite scenes are actually the opening scene and the VERY final scene. Without these strong bookends, I'd easily knock off another half-star. I personally detest Harmony Korine (the kid is just a pretentious skater prick that thinks he's Tarantino to the 12th power), however I do like this script... because it's ripped right out of the headlines.

Parents, this is not every teenager. It's really not. But it is a lot of them. "Ken Park" does not seek to illuminate the teenaged psyche en masse, but to offer examples of what we think is tragic and squalid... to be rather mundane existence. With the rather few exceptions of "shock for shock's sake" scenes, it deserves more credit than it's been given. Clark's best film is still "Bully", but "Ken Park" has its merits.

Only for those with less discriminating tastes, obviously. Tread lightly, but if you like your cinema to ignore boundaries (a la Miike Takashi) this one'll send you past the envelope.

3.5 stars, but I'll round up for audacity.

Had to see what the hoopla was about
Hard to watch at times due to its unflinching realism and unsympathetic characters, Larry Clarke's hard to find "Ken Park" centers around a quartet of dysfunctional friends in Visalia, California after the death of a fellow student (named Ken Park). Clarke takes his camera into the lives of the teens whose own lives aren't exactly rosy. Shawn is having an affair with his girlfriends mother; Peaches is the surrogate wife for her widowed father who is still in mourning; Claude is having difficulty with his parents (particularly his obnoxious father), who are about to have another child, but should have instead been sterilized; and lastly there is Tate, the psycho who lives with his parents and has a passion for women's tennis. With real actors playing alongside the teens, it is difficult to watch at times due to the lack of acting talent, but the adults rounding out the cast - including the always riveting Amanda Plummer as Claude's pregnant mother - make up for it.

It's explict and really hard to find - pretty much banned in the US, but I purchased my copy off eBay for $10.