Room Temperature screens at greengrassi. Directors Dennis Cooper and Zac Farley will be in attendance for a Q&A with Andrew Durbin.

"One night every year a family transforms their home and yard into a haunted house and invite their neighbors to walk through it. What used to be a group effort has increasingly become the dad’s obsessive fantasy that his family is expected to enact."

A Screening of Room Temperature, by Dennis Cooper & Zac Farley at greengrassi on Saturday, 31st of October

1A Kempsford Road, London SE11 4NU

The film runs for 92 mins and will be followed by a Q&A with the directors, Dennis Cooper and Zac Farley, moderated by Andrew Durbin.

6:15pm: Doors open

6:30pm: Screening

8:00pm: Q&A

DESCRIPTION

Set against the barren sprawl of the California desert, Room Temperature follows a family’s annual tradition of transforming their home into a DIY haunted house—an increasingly unhinged ritual now hijacked by the father’s obsessive vision.

Rejecting the tropes of traditional horror while steeped in its atmosphere, Room Temperature builds its haunted house from plywood, grief, and quiet despair. The cast, comprised of artists, non-actors, and one possibly spectral French teen known only as “Extra,” wanders through the film like costumed ghosts in a stage set they didn’t design. Shot in muted tones and marked by deadpan performances and disorienting emotional shifts, the film lingers in the liminal space between artifice and collapse.

DENNIS COOPER

Complex yet ruthlessly clear, Dennis Cooper’s(b. 1953, US) prose recounts the emotional and erotic lives of troubled teenagers. His characteristic ability to combine cruelty with tenderness, and sadism with anxiety, has made him one of his generation’s essential voices. In addition to his film collaborations with Zac Farley, he is known for novels such as the five novel quintology THE GEORGE MILES CYCLE (1989 – 2000), THE SLUTS (2004), THE MARBLED SWARM (2011), and I WISHED (2021). He has written widely on art, film, music, and literature, and has been a Contributing Editor of ARTFORUM since the late 1990s. Since moving from Los Angeles to Paris in 2005, he has written nine theatre pieces for the director-choreographer Gisèle Vienne and composed a series of innovative GIF novels, most recently ZAC’S DRUG BINGE (2020).

ZAC FARLEY

Zac Farley (b. 1988) is a Franco-American artist and filmmaker living in Paris. He studied at the California Institute of the Arts and at Northwestern University. In collaboration with Dennis Cooper, he co-wrote and directed LIKE CATTLE TOWARDS GLOW (2015), PERMANENT GREEN LIGHT (2018) and ROOM TEMPERATURE (2025).

www.greengrassi.com/contact/ (https://www.greengrassi.com/contact/)

Description supplied by the event organiser.