The third annual Nitehawk Shorts Festival opens with a night of incredible documentary and narrative fiction shorts.

Introduction by festival programmers and a Q&A with filmmakers following the screening. 

YOU’RE INVITED! Official opening night party in our downstairs bar, Lo-Res, with complimentary drinks by Reyka Vodka!

MIRROR HEART
Mukunda Angulo | USA | 2015 | 7 minutes
An imaginative tale by The Wolfpack about a cast of dreamlike characters who unify around the necessity to create.

STAG
Kevin Newbury | USA | 2015 | 14 minutes
In the summer of 1963, fifteen-year-old tomboy Francesca  investigates the mysterious comings and goings in her father’s basement.

LET’S HAVE A SEIZURE
Azu Davidson | USA | 2015 | 4 minutes
World Premiere
On any old night alone at home, Harvey’s chaotic misgivings about love and desire wreak havoc on her emotional stability. She’s determined to make you see her worst side, if only she can pick which side it is!

BORN TO LOVE YOU
Jay Buim | USA | 2015 | 11 minutes
World Premiere
The film follows a young man named Khan who, despite an injury, dreams of a better life that can be achieved through playing professional hockey.

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ZOMBIES
Stephen Elliott | USA | 2015 | 8 minutes
The zombie apocalypse won’t solve your relationship problems.

STOP
Reinaldo Marcus Green | USA | 2014 | 9 minutes
A young man’s livelihood is put to the test when he gets stopped by the police on his way home from practice.

YOU SEE WHAT I’M TRYING TO SAY
Henry H P English | USA | 1967 | 9 minutes
A rare film about the great free jazz musician, Marion Brown, in 1967.

ONE MAN’S TRASH
Kelly Adams | USA | 2015 | 17 minutes
A short documentary on NYC Department of Sanitation’s Nelson Molina and his collection of found objects in a sanitation garage in East Harlem, “Treasures in the Trash.”

THE STICK
Hail Mary (Perry Strong, John Orphan, Greg Wayne) | USA | 2014 | 9 minutes
A comedic film about two thieves break into a house and try to outsmart a crime boss.

Program is subject to change.

Prize sponsorship provided by Heard City, a boutique audio post-production facility, and Nice Shoes, the full service, artist-driven design, animation, visual effects and color grading studio specializing in high-end commercials, web content, film, TV and music videos. One filmmaker will receive 14 hours (2 days) of Sound Design and/or Mix with one Sound Designer/Mixer courtesy of Heard City as well as 20 hours of color grading with a night colorist (valued at $16k) from Nice Shoes. The winner is selected by festival organizers and invited guests.

All bets are ON this holiday as Nitehawk Cinema and Victory Brewing Company team up for a special holiday Film Feast presentation of TRADING PLACES!

What happens when you combine the comic genius of Eddie Murphy with Dan Aykroyd and director John Landis? You get a timeless comedy classic laced with sidesplitting, satiric humor. Murphy stars as a small-time con artist who gets a chance to switch lives with Aykroyd’s big-time stock market maven. But their reversal of fortunes is just a cruel joke perpetrated by two bored mega-rich brothers as part of an idle bet. When the truth comes out…the consequences are sheer comedy gold!

Our five course menu paired with beer from Victory Brewing Company will surely put you into the holiday spirit (if you know what we mean). As always, the best part is that each dish will be served at the moment its inspirational scene comes on the screen!

MENU

Starring:  Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Conchita Alonso, Yaphet Kotto, Jim Brown, Jesse Ventura, Erland van Lidth

The future’s not so bright in The Running Man. Set in a dystopian American circa 2019, Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as a wrongly convicted cop in this science fiction action film. Accused of killing rioters, Ben Richards is sent to jail but escapes only to find himself on the popular television show called, you guessed, it “The Running Man.” In order to regain his freedom, he must battle a bunch of professional killers on this brutal execution slash game-show. In order to prove his innocence, he has to tap into government computers to prove the guilt of the regime who’s trying to frame him.

A cop hunts down rogue replicants in the futuristic detective thriller BLADE RUNNER (Final Cut).

Like tears in the rain, the visibility of replicants amongst humans in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner future aren’t so clearly discernible. Blade Runner is set in a dystopic 2019 Los Angeles where the rain constantly pours over a dirty, crowded, neon city full of mystery. A retired “Blade Runner” cop named Deckard is brought back into the force to eliminate four replicants who have stolen a spaceship and left their work colony to illegally return to Earth. His quest leaves him with more questions than answers. Blade Runner is a science fiction classic that questions what it means to be human through a depiction of a technologically-dependent and class culture that doesn’t look so different than our current times.

Part of Nitehawk’s November SCI-FIGHTERS midnite series.

Starring: Sigourney Weaver,  Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto

Slow, pulsating, and terrifying, Ridley Scott’s Alien is the pinnacle science fiction film. It features the crew of the commercial starship Nostromo who are woken up from their cyro-sleep to answer a distress call from an alien vessel. When a couple crew members come back from investigating, they bring with them an alien life form with extraordinary adaptability. Within their close quarters, the crew battles against the mother of all aliens but who will survive? Featuring the iconic creature and environmental design by H.R. Gieger and Sigourney Weaver in the role that would define women in action film, Alien is the ultimate fight in space.

Starring: Roddy Piper, Keith David, Meg Foster, Peter Jason, Sly Richardson, George “Buck” Flower

Subliminal messaging, consumerism, and alienness make up John Carpenter’s iconic vision of Los Angeles in They Live. Nada (Roddy Piper, RIP) is an out of work construction worker who accidentally discovers a pair of sunglasses that allow him to see much of humanity’s true identity…and it’s not of this world. Reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984, there is a plot to keep the human race in line but it doesn’t come from Big Brother government but, instead, from alien invaders. Carpenter takes Los Angeles’ reputation for loving beautiful facades and turns it into something poignant. This is your God.

Take a tour of Los Angeles’ seedy side in John Cassavetes’s THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE. A 35mm presentation!

Los Angeles always feels personal when John Cassavetes sets it as the background for his films. In his stylistic noir vision, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, the city becomes a landscape where morals and masculine identity are tested after the unhealthy appetite of gentleman’s club owner, Cosmo Vitelli (Ben Gazzara), puts him in an impossible situation. Having to answer to his angry loan sharks, he must choose how far he’ll go in order to appease the gangsters. Cassavetes gives L.A. a surreal and gritty atmosphere here; it’s a city you certainly don’t want to mess with.

Part of Nitehawk’s November L.A. STRANGE brunch series.

Starring: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston

Roman Polanski takes the real life California Water Wars as inspiration in his neo-noir masterpiece, Chinatown. At the center of it is Los Angeles, a city that originated as a desert therefore being a place where he who controla the water, controls the town. It’s precisely this ring of corruption that private investigator Jack Gittes (Jack Nicholson) uncovers when he’s on a not-so-typical adulterer case for a beautiful young wife named Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway). Polanski excels at making a familiar city like Los Angeles strange; in Chinatown it becomes extraordinarily mysterious and the site of very unexpected happenings.

Nitehawk presents two midnite screenings of the documentary, FINDERS KEEPERS.

When his amputated leg is discovered in a grill sold at a North Carolina auction, John Wood finds himself at the center of a worldwide media frenzy. Believing the new-found attention to be his chance at doing some great things in an otherwise disappointing, wayward life, he’s quickly swept up in the hysteria as the leg’s enterprising buyer, Shannon Whisnant, then sues to regain its custody. But the stranger-than-fiction chain of events, fueling John’s drug addiction and compounded by generations of his familial dysfunction, soon sets John on the streets and heading to his certain demise. Just in time, however, another twist in these fantastical occurrences gives John a final shot at becoming whole for the first time in his life.

The world’s most dangerous times created the world’s most dangerous group.

In 1987, five young men, using brutally honest rhymes and hardcore beats, put their frustration and anger about life in the most dangerous place in America into the most powerful weapon they had: their music. Taking us back to where it all began, Straight Outta Compton tells the true story of how these cultural rebels—armed only with their lyrics, swagger, bravado and raw talent—stood up to the authorities that meant to keep them down and formed the world’s most dangerous group, N.W.A. And as they spoke the truth that no one had before and exposed life in the hood, their voice ignited a social revolution that is still reverberating today.