Crosstown Arts Film Series

Like a quasar burning past the gaslight, director Lisa Cortés’ eye-opening documentary explodes the whitewashed canon of American pop music. Little Richard: I Am Everything shines a clarifying light on the Black, queer origins of rock ’n’ roll, and establishes the genre’s big bang: Richard Wayne Penniman.

John Cassavetes’ hymn to that berserk business of performing, Opening Night is enhanced by its intense “old Hollywood” pedigree as Ben Gazzara, John Blondell, Paul Stewart and Cassavetes himself are the backing band for Rowlands’ knife-edged soloing.

A girl on the verge of womanhood finds herself in a sensual fantasyland of vampires, witchcraft, and other threats in this eerie and mystical movie daydream. Valerie and Her Week of Wonders serves up an endlessly looping, nonlinear fairy tale, set in a quasi-medieval landscape.

Serial Mom is a 1994 American black comedy written and directed by John Waters. Happy housewife Beverly Sutphin has a charmed life — a beautiful suburban home, a successful dentist husband, and two normal teenagers. However, when one of her son’s teachers speaks disparagingly of the boy at a parent-teacher conference, Bev runs the instructor over in the school parking lot.

One of the most thrilling movie epics of all time, Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai) tells the story of a 16th-century village whose desperate inhabitants hire the eponymous warriors to protect them from invading bandits.

Suture is one of the most outstanding neo-noirs of the 1990s. The wealthy and self-assured Vincent (Michael Harris) meets his blue-collar half-brother Clay (Dennis Haysbert) at their father’s funeral, and is struck by their similarity. He decides to murder Clay and take his identity — only Clay survives the assassination attempt with no memory and is mistaken for Vincent.

Directed by Brian De Palma, Phantom of the Paradise satirizes both horror films and rock groups in the story of a composer of a rock cantata on the theme of Faust, who sells his soul for rock ’n’ roll. Oscar-winner Paul Williams stars and composed the superb rock musical score.

One of the most searing romances of the 1990s, Wong Kar Wai’s emotionally raw, lushly stylized portrait of a relationship in breakdown casts Hong Kong superstars Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung as a couple traveling through Argentina and locked in a turbulent cycle of infatuation and destructive jealousy as they break up, make up, and fall apart again and again.

Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City’s African American and Latinx Harlem drag ball scene.