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Poster for Go Down Death

Go Down Death

Director: Aaron Schimberg Run Time: 107 min. Format: DCP Rating: NR Release Year: 2013

Starring: Bryant Pappas, Doug Barron, Lucy Kaminsky, Rayvin Disla, Sammy Mena, Simone Xi

Part of the Northside Film Festival, Go Down Death includes a Q&A with Aaron Schimberg after the film with and after-party in Nitehawk’s downstairs bar. Playing before Go Down Death, is the short film Black Metal.

Go Down Death is a wry, sinister realization of a strange new universe, a cross-episodic melange of macabre folktales supposedly penned by the fictitious writer Jonathan Mallory Sinus. An abandoned warehouse in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, stands in for a decrepit village haunted by ghosts, superstition, and disease, while threatening to buckle under rumblings of the apocalypse. Soldiers are lost and found in endless woods; a child gravedigger is menaced by a shape-shifting physician, a syphilitic john bares all to a young prostitute, and a disfigured outcast yearns for the affections of a tone-deaf cabaret singer. Highlighted by offbeat narrative construction, stunning black-and-white 16mm cinematography and immaculately detailed production design, Go Down Death is a distinctively original film informed by American Gothic, folk culture and outsider art.

Playing before Go Down Death is the short film Black Metal (2013, 9 minutes): After a career spent mining his music from the shadows, the actions of one fan create a chain reaction for the lead singer of a black metal band. Directed by Kate Candler and starring Jonny Mars, Heather Kafka. Presented by IFP and NoBudge Films.