Crosstown Arthouse Film Series

** This event is postponed until further notice.
Black Orpheus is a retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, set in the streets of Rio during Carnival. When released in 1959, Black Orpheus was an arthouse hit, driven by incredible cinematography, location, and bossa nova music. 

Only later, people started to re-examine Black Orpheus, its popularity, and its audience — especially the idea of an all-black cast being shoehorned into a Greek myth through the lens of a white French director.

The Crosstown Arthouse Film Series showcases a diverse collection of independent, international, historically significant, artistic, experimental, cult, underground and documentary features.

** This event is postponed until further notice.
We can’t say it better than the incredible American Genre Film Archive, who are lovingly saving films like this for folks like us to show again in all their glory on a giant screen!

Says the American Genre Film Archive: “Sleaze ahoy! Directed by heroic smut merchant Cirio Santiago (TNT Jackson, Vampire Hookers) and shot on-the-cheap in the Philippines, The Muthers is like stepping into one of Martin Denny's exotica LPs while it plays in Jess Franco's living room. Filled with karate chops and epic psychedelic-funk jams, this is the story of two pirates (Jeanne Bell and Rosanne Katon) who rob and loot on the China Seas, get sent to a women's prison presided over by a sadistic warden, then revolt and turn the sky black with the smoke from their machine guns. In other words, this is the only revolutionary-pirate-women-in-prison movie that you'll ever need. Restored from the original negative for maximum savagery!”
The Crosstown Arthouse Film Series showcases a diverse collection of independent, international, historically significant, artistic, experimental, cult, underground and documentary features.

** This event is postponed until further notice.
Walking Tall fictionalizes Buford Puser’s journey from bear wrestler to one-man crime crusader. Starring character actor Jo Don Baker (Joysticks and Fletch) as Buford Pusser and Elizabeth Hartman (A Patch of Blue and The Secret of NIMH) as his wife Pauline, plus Lief Garrett (Macon Count Line, Walking Tall Part II, Final Chapter: Walking Tall, Tiger Beat Cover Model) and Lief’s real-life sister Dawn Lyn as the Pusser kids!

The Crosstown Arthouse Film Series showcases a diverse collection of independent, international, historically significant, artistic, experimental, cult, underground and documentary features.

Crosstown Arts is excited to kick off its post-pandemic return to the Crosstown Arthouse Film Series with a screening of the 1930 silent film Hell-Bound Train with musical accompaniment by Bible & Tire recording artist Elizabeth King. She'll be joined by Will Sexton (guitar), Matt Ross-Spang (guitar), and Will McCarley (percussion).

Hell-Bound Train was shot by a pair of self-taught Christian evangelists, James and Eloyce Gist, on 16 mm film. The Gists toured Black churches to show the film,  paired with a sermon. Elizabeth King is a Memphis-based gospel singer who, after leaving music for some time to raise a family, has returned at 77 years young to release the extremely well-reviewed, gospel masterpiece Living in the Last Days. Crosstown Arts is thrilled to pair this early example of Black filmmaking with the incomparable voice of Elizabeth King.

Crosstown Arthouse Film Series presents David Lynch's Wild at Heart in Crosstown Theater. 1990/124 minutes

The Crosstown Arthouse film series presents Frank Perry's The Swimmer at Crosstown Theater. 1968/95 minutes/Rated PG

Burt Lancaster (From Here to Eternity and Voyage of Terror: The Achille Lauro Affair) plays the character of Ned Merrill in The Swimmer. Ned goes on an adventure of sorts as he swims from pool to pool through his well-heeled neighborhood. That is it. Or is it? As Ned swims toward his goal of making it home to his own pool, the audience is slowly let in on what is perhaps a psychotic break. With Joan Rivers, Janice Rule (3 Women!!), Kim Hunter (STELLA!!!!!!!!!) and Bernie Hamilton (Captain Dobey!!).

The Crosstown Arthouse Film Series presents Marcel Camus' Black Orpheus at Crosstown Theater. 1959/107 minutes/Rated PG

Black Orpheus is a retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus (Breno Mello) and Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn) and is set in the streets of Rio during Carnival. When released in 1959, Black Orpheus was an arthouse hit, driven by the incredible cinematography, the location, and the bossa nova music.

The Crosstown Arthouse Film Series presents Martin Scorsese's After Hours at Crosstown Theater. 1985/97 minutes/Rated R

Ever have a night where nothing seems to go right? After releasing The King of Comedy just a few years before, Martin Scorsese kept working on his “comedy chops” with After Hours — the story of one night in the life of everyman, data entry worker Paul Hackett, played by Griffin Dunne (An American Werewolf in London and My Girl).

The Crosstown Arthouse Film Series presents Lisa Rovner's Sisters With Transistors at Crosstown Theater. 2020/86 minutes/Rated M

Sisters With Transistors is the remarkable untold story of electronic music’s female pioneers, composers who embraced machines and their liberating technologies to utterly transform how we produce and listen to music today. The film maps a new history of electronic music through the visionary women whose radical experimentations with machines redefined the boundaries of music, including Clara Rockmore, Daphne Oram, Bebe Barron, Pauline Oliveros, Delia Derbyshire, Maryanne Amacher, Eliane Radigue, Suzanne Ciani, and Laurie Spiegel.

The Crosstown Arthouse Film Series presents Juzo Itami's Tampopo at Crosstown Theater. 1987/118 minutes/Rated M

Tampopo is a 1985 Japanese satirical “ramen western” comedy by Juzo Itami that tells the story of two truck drivers, Goro and Gun, who embark on a search for the perfect ramen restaurant, but have yet to find it. They meet Tampopo, a young ramen-making widow whose restaurant is besieged by mediocrity and overrun with unpleasant patrons. Goro takes Tampopo under his wing and helps guide her on her quest to find the perfect ramen recipe.