Tag: Crosstown Arthouse Film Series

The Crosstown Arts Weekly Film Series is an arthouse-style film series showcasing a diverse collection of independent, international, historically significant, artistic, experimental, cult, underground and documentary features.

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

AMERICAN POP (NARRATIVE, 1981)

Ralph Bakshi produced and directed this sweeping animated story of four generations of a Russian Jewish immigrant family all trying to make it in the music business. American Pop incorporates most of what made Bakshi famous, including rotoscoping, primitive computer graphics, live-action film, archival film, and still paintings.

The soundtrack is almost one million licensing dollars worth of classic rock that, much of the time, is incongruent with Bakshi’s imagery – most especially in the penultimate scene when a drug-dealing, songwriting member of the family plays “Night Moves” to get the attention of the musicians and producers he was providing drugs to. With Lee Ving of FEAR as “Punk Rocker #1” – CAN’T MISS!!!

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The Crosstown Arts Weekly Film Series is an arthouse-style film series showcasing a diverse collection of independent, international, historically significant, artistic, experimental, cult, underground and documentary features.

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

SUBURBIA (NARRATIVE, 1984)

Written and directed by Penelope Spheeris and produced by Roger Corman, Suburbia begins with a toddler being killed and eaten by a stray dog and doesn’t really let up from there.

The story centers around a punk rock squat in a semi-abandoned row of tract housing whose young inhabitants brand themselves with the initials T.R., for The Rejected.  There are fights, stabbings, charges of molestation, suicide, funeral crashing, Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers putting a live rat in his mouth, The Vandals, D.I., and True Sounds of Liberty!  Everything any normal person would ever want in a bleak, depressing film about teenage punks you will absolutely find in Suburbia!!

Watch the trailer

The Crosstown Arts Weekly Film Series is an arthouse-style film series showcasing a diverse collection of independent, international, historically significant, artistic, experimental, cult, underground and documentary features.

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

THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY (NARRATIVE, 1978)

Like a low-rent, disco version of a Robert Altman movie, Thank God It’s Friday takes place on one Friday night at a Los Angles nightclub called The Zoo. Produced by Motown Productions the same year they released The Wiz, look for appearances by The Commodores, Donna Summer, Terri Nunn (Berlin), Debra Winger, and Jeff Goldblum and a score by the legendary Giorgio Moroder.

Thank God It’s Friday includes attempted wife-stealing, kids trying to win a disco dance contest to buy KISS tickets, drugging, instrument theft, hot tub parties, and Donna Summer performing “Last Dance,” which went on to win the Academy and Golden Globe awards for Best Original Song and the Grammy Award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance.

Watch the trailer

The Crosstown Arts Weekly Film Series is an arthouse-style film series showcasing a diverse collection of independent, international, historically significant, artistic, experimental, cult, underground and documentary features.

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

STRANDED IN CANTON (DOCUMENTARY, 1974)

Stranded in Canton is photographer Wiliam Eggleston’s infamous, shot-on-video document of what was happening in and around his world in 1974. Described as “strange, otherworldly, and Southern Gothic,” for those of us who spend our nights in Memphis bars, the scenes will seem uncomfortably familiar — long nights of drugs and drink and conversation.

The film features a slew of Memphis Midtown notables like Alex Chilton, Lesa Aldridge, Randall Lyon, legendary tough guy Cambbell Kensinger, bluesman Furry Lewis, and the for-real outlaw country singer Jerry McGill. Stranded in Canton is pieced together from over 30 hours of footage by Eggleston and directed by Robert Gordon, whose MUST-READ It Came From Memphis covers the wild life and times of some of the very people featured in this documentary.

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Join us for an after-party in The Green Room with The Thank You Friends Alex Chilton Revue Band. Celebrate the chaos, the cacophony, the characters and the music of a time and place that only William Eggleston and Alex Chilton could create and capture in sound and vision. Screen the film, Stranded in Canton, at Crosstown Theater and then re-live the music with Ross Johnson, The Klitz (Amy Starks, Gail and Marcia Clifton), Adam Hill, and others at an after-party in The Green Room. More info here.

The Crosstown Arts Weekly Film Series is an arthouse-style film series showcasing a diverse collection of independent, international, historically significant, artistic, experimental, cult, underground and documentary features.

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

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE FABULOUS STAINS (NARRATIVE, 1982) 

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains is the story of Corinne Burns (Diane Lane), a  recently orphaned 17-year-old girl whose life is almost instantly changed through a happenstance interview with the local news. Corinne attends a concert to self-promote her band The Stains, which is made up of her, her sister, and cousin. The Stains end up going on tour, radically changing their look and proclaiming on stage, “We’re the Stains, and we don’t put out.”

Along the way, the girls get famous, manipulate the pre-internet news media in their favor (for a moment at least) and steal a song and sound from their less interesting male tour mates.  Featuring appearances by Steve Jones and Paul Cook of The Sex Pistols and Paul Simonon from the Clash, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains was a box-office failure but gained a large cult following on late-night cable television.

Watch the trailer

The Crosstown Arts Weekly Film Series is an arthouse-style film series showcasing a diverse collection of independent, international, historically significant, artistic, experimental, cult, underground and documentary features.

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

MEMPHIS BI-CENTENNIAL BOOGIE WITH BLUESHIFT ENSEMBLE (FOUND FOOTAGE, 2019)

In celebration of the 200th anniversary of the City of Memphis, Memphis Bi-Centennial Boogie is an introspective visual meditation on the history of the City featuring a live, improvised score created and performed by the innovative Blueshift chamber ensemble. The Blueshift Ensemble features several accomplished Memphis musicians, including Director Jenny Davis (flute) and Jonathan Kirkscey (cello). Jonathan is an accomplished film composer, whose credits include acclaimed documentaries Best of Enemies: Buckley vs. Vidal and Won’t You Be My Neighbor. The found film footage is used with the kind permission of the Memphis Public Library & Information Center and the personal collections of several Memphians.