Starring: Luciane Buchanan, Hunter Doohan, Souheila Yacoub, Victory Ndukwe, Tandi Wright, Erroll Shand
After the loss of her husband, a woman seeks solace with her in-laws in their secluded family home. As one by one they are transformed into Deadites—turning the gathering into a family reunion from hell—she comes to discover that the vows she took in life live on… even in death.
Starring: Diane Lane, Ray Winstone, Laura Dern, Marin Kanter, David Clennon
Celebrate the release of Fun City Edition’s 4K Blu-ray restoration. Special guests TBA & post screening DJ in Tree’s Lounge.
Join us for Night Flight’s 45th anniversary celebration! We’re presenting a true underground classic, one Night Flight itself helped turn into legend: Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains, newly-restored in 4K from its original 35mm camera negative by Fun City Editions.
The Stains, a fledgling punk band comprised of three teenage girls, rise, fall and rise again in this rock ’n roll parody. Released in 1982, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains found its US audience not in theaters, but on late-night airwaves where Night Flight beamed it into cult immortality. What might have been a “lost film” became a generational touchstone, passed on by VHS tapes and now fully immersed into Night Flight’s punk DNA.
There will be a new 15 minute Night Flight pre-show featuring the legends from the original broadcast. Be part of this full circle screening, 45 years after Night Flight’s first broadcast June 1981!
Shakedown is the story of Los Angeles’ black lesbian strip club scene and its genesis. Owned and operated by women, underground and illegal in nature, the club Shakedown is the darker, faster, younger iteration of this dance culture. The film is a window into this world. Shakedown emerged from a post-RIOTS, post-OJ, post-integration but still very racially divided Los Angeles. In this divided city Shakedown is an independent, all black and all female cash economy. Shakedown chronicles the explicit performances and personal relationships of the party’s dancers and organizers including Ronnie-Ron, Shakedown Productions’ creator and emcee; Mahogany, the legendary “mother” of the community; Egypt, their star performer; and Jazmine, the “Queen” of Shakedown.
Starring: Milton Gonçalves, Odete Lara, Stepan Nercessian, Nelson Xavier, Yara Cortes, Wilson Grey
4K restoration
Rio de Janeiro’s criminal underworld is run by an unexpected boss: Diaba (Milton Gonçalves), a femme queen with a taste for power and violence. When the police come after her boy toy, Diaba attempts to find a scapegoat to take the blame and a plot to dethrone Her Majesty arises! Always clad in gloriously colourful outfits and accessories inspired by Afro-Brazilian culture, Diaba runs a mob of eccentric misfits made up of drag queens, pimps, prostitutes, and queer folks of all stripes. The movie’s bold and audacious color palette and camp aesthetic evokes the early films of Pedro Almodóvar, while its stylized and over-the-top violence is giving Quentin Tarantino queer fever dream.
Starring: Lily Gladstone, Isabel Deroy-Olson, Shea Whigham
Since her sister’s disappearance, Jax (Lily Gladstone) has cared for her niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson) by scraping by on the Seneca-Cayuga reservation in Oklahoma. Every spare minute goes into finding her missing sister while also helping Roki prepare for an upcoming powwow. At the risk of Jax losing custody to Roki’s grandfather, Frank (Shea Whigham), the pair hit the road and scour the backcountry to track down Roki’s mother in time for the powwow. What begins as a search gradually turns into a far deeper investigation into the complexities and contradictions of Indigenous women moving through a colonized world while at the mercy of a failed justice system.
Starring: Suzanne Gregg Ferguson, Dudley Findlay Jr., Michael Hyatt, Jon Kit Lee, Michael Lynch, Claude E. Sloan
4K restoration
Through a campaign of fabulous surprise attacks, an underground band of radical queer HIV+ activists, addicts, and drag queens take to the streets of New York City to combat conservative politicians and government apathy towards the AIDS crisis. A frenetic debut feature from writer/director Stephen Winter, Chocolate Babies unleashes a world of anarchic camp and unapologetic Black queer power in one of the hidden gems of New Queer Cinema, ripe for rediscovery and ready to be introduced to new audiences.
For the film’s 25th anniversary, Frameline has commissioned a 4K restoration of Chocolate Babies in partnership with the National Film Preservation Foundation, the UCLA Film & Television Archive, and the Outfest Legacy Project. Following its festival run in the mid-1990s (playing at SXSW, the Berlinale, and Frameline21), Chocolate Babies struggled to secure major distribution due to its radically independent Black queer vision, but eventually found a home at Frameline Distribution who championed the film and continued to bring it to new audiences. Frameline proudly presents the world premiere of this pristine restoration in rich color and vivid detail like never before.
Starring: Farley Granger, Robert Walker, Ruth Roman, Leo G. Carroll, Patricia Hitchcock, Kasey Rogers
In Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s thriller, tennis star Guy Haines is enraged by his trampy wife’s refusal to finalize their divorce so he can wed senator’s daughter Anne. He strikes up a conversation with a stranger, Bruno Anthony, and unwittingly sets in motion a deadly chain of events. Psychopathic Bruno kills Guy’s wife, then urges Guy to reciprocate by killing Bruno’s father. Meanwhile, Guy is murder suspect number one.
Starring: Dirk Bogarde, Sylvia Syms, Peter McEnery
In early 1960s London, barrister Melville Farr (Dirk Bogarde) is on the path to success. With his practice winning cases and a loving marriage to his wife (Sylvia Syms), Farr’s career and personal life are nearly idyllic. However, when blackmailers link Farr to a young gay man (Peter McEnery), everything Farr has worked for is threatened. As it turns out, Farr is a closeted homosexual — which is problematic, due to Britain’s anti-sodomy laws. But instead of giving in, Farr decides to fight.
Starring: Silas Howard, Harry Dodge, Stanya Kahn, Carina Gia
A buddy film that chronicles three weeks in the life of a handsome, gender-bending, small-town butch with a nagging messiah-complex. Emotionally defeated since the death of her father, Shy heads to the big city to sink herself into a life of crime. She is quickly distracted by Valentine, a deliriously expressive, wise-acre adoptee on a misguided search for her birth mother. The two freaky grifters join forces and learn the true meaning of poise under pressure.
