Tag: Crosstown Arthouse

The Crosstown Arthouse Film Series showcases a diverse collection of independent, international, historically significant, artistic, experimental, cult, underground and documentary features. This week: SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSSS SONG

Films begin at 7:30 pm sharp.
Tickets are $5 (at the door only)

BRAND-NEW 4K RESTORATION! Included in MoMA’s permanent collection and considered to be among the most significant features ever by an African-American filmmaker, SWEET SWEETBACK is a brutal and shocking story of survival and is credited as one of the first blaxploitation films.

Director/writer/producer/editor/composer Melvin Van Peebles stars as a black orphan raised in a brothel and groomed to be a sex show performer. Set up by his boss and two corrupt cops for a murder he didn’t commit, Sweetback escapes custody and is thrust into an increasingly hallucinogenic world of violence and bigotry where no one can be trusted, and the possibility of death lurks at every corner…Cos Featuring a rousing score from a nascent Earth, Wind, & Fire, as well as surrealist visuals from stalwart genre cinematographer Robert Maxwell (THE CANDY SNATCHERS), Van Peebles creates an unforgettable study of perseverance in the face of racism.

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

Films begin at 7:30 pm sharp.
Tickets are $5 (at the door only)

This is it — David Lynch’s 1977 avant-horror masterpiece, ERASERHEAD.  Henry (JACK NANCE!) finds out he has a child with someone he isn’t quite sure he has been with.  Henry invites his girlfriend and the baby to come live with him in his apartment. Dad, mom, and baby bring to life every nightmare you have ever had — on the big screen. Come for the monster baby, and stay for the lady in the radiator singing the great Peter Ivers’ “In Heaven.”

The Crosstown Arthouse Film Series showcases a diverse collection of independent, international, historically significant, artistic, experimental, cult, underground and documentary features. This week: THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE

Films begin at 7:30 pm sharp.
Tickets are $5 (at the door only)

Amy Holden Jones turned down an editing job on E.T. to direct this movie. She made the right choice! Rita Mae Brown wrote the screenplay of THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE sometime between when she wrote the classic lesbian coming-of-age tale Rubyfruit Jungle and her long series of cat mystery novels. SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE was intended to be a commentary on the inherent sexism of the slasher genre but was filmed completely straight. THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE is a terrific inside joke that also delivers the goods as a skid row photocopy of HALLOWEEN, complete with a killer who’s figuratively castrated when the tip of his power drill is hacked off.  With its stylized photography, plot points involving pizza and an endlessly cool homemade synth score, THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE is a drop-dead masterpiece of subversive trash-horror.

The Crosstown Arthouse Film Series showcases a diverse collection of independent, international, historically significant, artistic, experimental, cult, underground and documentary features. This week: BE NATURAL: THE UNTOLD STORY OF ALICE GUY-BLACHÉ

Films begin at 7:30 pm sharp.
Tickets are $5 (at the door only)

Narrated by Jodie Foster, BE NATURAL: THE UNTOLD STORY OF ALICE GUY-BLACHÉ is a documentary about the first female filmmaker, Alice Guy-Blaché, which explores the heights of fame and financial success she achieved before she was shut out from the very industry she helped create.

Guy-Blaché started her career as a secretary to Léon Gaumont and, at 23, was inspired to make her own film called La Fée aux Choux (The Cabbage Fairy), one of the first narrative films ever made. After her filmmaking career at Gaumont (1896-1907), she had a second decade-long career in the U.S., where she built and ran her own studio in Fort Lee, N.J.

Over the span of her career, she wrote, produced, or directed 1,000 films, including 150 with synchronized sound during the silent film era. Her work includes comedies, westerns, and dramas, as well as films with groundbreaking subject matter such as child abuse, immigration, Planned Parenthood, and female empowerment. She also etched a place in history by making the earliest known surviving narrative film with an all-black cast.

Green has dedicated more than eight years of research in order to discover the real story of Alice Guy-Blaché (1873-1968), not only highlighting her pioneering contributions to the birth of cinema but also her acclaim as a creative force and entrepreneur in the earliest years of movie-making. Green interviewed Patty Jenkins, Diablo Cody, Ben Kingsley, Geena Davis, Ava DuVernay, Michel Hazanavicius, and Julie Delpy  to name a few. Green discovered rare footage of televised interviews and long-archived audio interviews which can be heard for the first time in Be Natural, which affords Alice Guy-Blaché to tell her own story.