Tag: Crosstown Arts Film Series

The Crosstown Arts Film Series presents Serial Mom at Crosstown Theater.

John Waters / 1994 / 95 minutes / Rated R
Tickets: $5 at the door
Doors at 6:30 p.m. | Films begin at 7:00 p.m. (sharp!) at Crosstown Theater

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. Suddenly she has an insatiable taste for murder. Six homicides later, the cops get wise to her crimes. 

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

The Crosstown Arts Film Series presents Valerie And Her Week of Wonders at Crosstown Theater.

Jaromil Jireš / 1970 / 76 minutes / Not Rated
Tickets: $5 at the door
Doors at 6:30 p.m. | Films begin at 7:00 p.m. (sharp!) at Crosstown Theater

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. Ravishingly shot, enchantingly scored, and spilling over with surreal fancies, this enticing phantasmagoria from director Jaromil Jireš is among the most beautiful oddities of the Czechoslovak New Wave.

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

The Crosstown Arts Film Series presents Opening Night at Crosstown Theater.

John Cassavetes / 1977 / 144 minutes / Rated PG-13
Tickets: $5 at the door
Doors at 6:30 p.m. | Films begin at 7:00 p.m. (sharp!) at Crosstown Theater

In a role equally as fragile and mercurial as A Woman Under the Influence’s “Mabel”, Gena Rowlands is Opening Night’s “Myrtle”: a successful actress going kind of crazy in a play about aging crazily. 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. From the first scene, the narrative is peppered with turn-on-a-dime ambiguity. Whole swathes of action take place “onstage” in front of a real-life audience watching the in-character cast — with a permeable membrane between stage and “reality” so tangible it hurts.

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

The Crosstown Arts Film Series presents Little Richard: I Am Everything at Crosstown Theater.

Lisa Cortés / 2023 / 98 minutes / Not Rated
Tickets: $5 at the door
Doors at 6:30 p.m. | Films begin at 7:00 p.m. (sharp!) at Crosstown Theater

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. Testimonials from legendary musicians and cultural figures, Black and queer scholars, and interviews with the artist himself all exuberantly reclaim a history that was willfully appropriated by white artists and institutions. Cortés updates the canon with a treasure trove of rarely seen archival footage of Penniman. Among the gems are scenes with his Black and queer predecessors and contemporaries, like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the mother of rock ’n’ roll who gave 14-year-old Penniman his first break. Cortés depicts Penniman’s complex journey as a conflicted revolutionary who careened between religion, sex, and rock ’n’ roll, navigating the extreme tensions of race and sexuality of his time.

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

The Crosstown Arts Film Series presents Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV at Crosstown Theater.

Amanda Kim / 2023 / 109 minutes / Not Rated
Tickets: $5 at the door
Doors at 6:30 p.m. | Films begin at 7:00 p.m. (sharp!) at Crosstown Theater

The father of video art and coiner of the term “electronic superhighway,” Nam June Paik was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Director Amanda Kim tells the remarkable story of Paik as a citizen of the world and trailblazing artist, who both saw the present and predicted the future with astonishing clairvoyance. With Steven Yeun reading Paik’s own written words — showcasing the artist’s strategic playfulness and immense creativity — Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV is a celebration of perhaps the most modern artist of all time.

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