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.
** 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.
** 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.
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.
Jennie Livingston’s Paris is Burning documents African-American and Latinx drag culture in 1980s New York City. Focusing on ballroom competition culture, Paris is Burning introduced the rest of America to voguing. Beautifully shot in 16mm, the film told the stories of gay and trans people of color and how, after being rejected by their families and straight society, they managed to find accepting family units and ways to survive (which sometimes included shoplifting and sex work). Paris is Burning was the inspiration for the television show Pose. 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.
It’s probably enough just to say “David Lynch,” but let’s hit on some of Wild at Heart’s high points, like the stars of the movie: Laura Dern (Foxes; Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains); Nicolas Cage (Valley Girl); Thrashers Powermad playing Elvis Presley; Diane Ladd (Laura Dern’s real-life mother) manically covering her face with lipstick; Crispin Glover (Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, River’s Edge) as Jingle Dale; Laura Dern’s cousin, who wants Christmas to be all year long and puts cockroaches in his own underwear; Harry Dean Stanton (Alien, Repo Man, Red Dawn) as Diane Ladd’s pathetic lover; Sherilyn Fenn (The Wraith, Two Moon Junction) in one the best and most traumatic Lynch car wreck scenes ever put to screen; Willem Dafoe (Streets of Fire, The Last Temptation of Christ) as Bobby Peru; a cameo by Laura Palmer herself (Sheryl Lee) as the Good Witch from the Wizard of Oz; Koko Taylor singing a song written by Lynch and composed by longtime collaborator Angelo Badalamenti; and CJack Nance (Eraserhead!!) as a random crazy dude with an invisible dog in a trailer park. The Crosstown Arthouse Film Series showcases a diverse collection of independent, international, historically significant, artistic, experimental, cult, underground and documentary features.
