Starring: Joanne Ritchie, James Lorinz, Patty Mullen

The cinematic life of Frankenstein continues in this offbeat 1990 movie where a young medical student sets out to revive the decapitated head of his dead fiancee with, you guessed it, the body parts of prostitutes. As it always is when trying to make a person from scratch, first you have to do the gruesome task of gathering these body parts and, then, you have to deal with the monster you’ve created. All camp and slutty, Frankenhooker leads us through New York bars, streets, and subway on one sewn together sexy adventure. Some things are better off left dead.

Starring: Dan O’Bannon, Dre Pahich, Brian Narelle

As John Carpenter’s first (read: student) film, Dark Star has a certain unpolished quality to it but, yet, it still bears the markings of what his future feature films would look like. It’s a space adventure story about a crew, twenty years into their mission, who find that things start to go hysterically wrong: there’s a mysterious creature who has gone from pet to terroriser, a dead commander frozen with no advice to offer, and a computer in the throes of an existential crisis. Look beyond its amateur quality (one character is played by multiple actors) and there’s substantive material being addressed here: who am I and why do I exist?

Our September ART SEEN program visits the realm of science fiction and post-apocalyptic representations with Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962) and Ben Rivers’ Slow Action (2011). Artist Film Club presents: Slater Bradley’s she was my la jetée and FRIEZE VIDEO: Remembering Chris Marker.

The first in our post-apocalyptic double-feature is the landmark featurette by Chris Marker, La Jetée, in which a tale of time travel is told through still images. Established in the context of a post-nuclear Third World War, where the survivors live underground in the Palais de Chaillot galleries in post-apocalyptic Paris, La Jetée unfolds into a scientific quest to revisit the past and to ‘rescue the future’. It’s an exploration of memory, time and space, and the advancement of life on our planet in a compelling and succinct manifestation of imagery.

Following La Jetée, is the recent work Slow Action by British filmmaker and artist Ben Rivers. Slow Action is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film which exists somewhere between documentary, ethnographic study and fiction. Earth in the distant future, when the sea level has risen to absurd heights forming new isolated islands and archipelagos. Two narrators read accounts from a great library of Utopias, describing the four islands seen in the film.

Ben Rivers is the recipient of FIPRESCI International Critics Prize, 68th Venice Film Festival for his first feature film Two Years At Sea; the Baloise Art Prize, Art Basel 42, 2011; shortlisted for the Jarman Award 2010/2012; Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists, 2010. 

Artist Film Club:
Slater Bradley‘s she was my la jetée. Shooting on super 8 and HD film and integrating subtly moving stills, in “she was my la jetée” Bradley fixates on the face of an alluring woman, whose hair blows in the wind as she speeds down a river atop a boat. The resulting meditation on the changing nature of film in the modern world is mirrored in the narrative, in which the artist looks back at an unattainable past love, as though recalling a dream.

FRIEZE VIDEO: Remembering Chris Marker (produced in association with Pundersons Gardens). Curator Stuart Comer, artist Beatrice Gibson and artist/writer Jeremy Millar pay tribute to the late Chris Marker.

Part of Nitehawk’s Art Seen signature series. In partnership with frieze.

Contemporary art and street culture collide to create this influential and inspiration group of Beautiful Losers. Playing before the documentary is Cheryl Dunn’s Back Worlds for Words (1999).

Stemming from the DIY culture of the early 1990s (punk, skateboarding, graffiti), the works created by artists like Barry McGee, Harmony Korine, and Margaret Kilgallen changed the landscape of contemporary art. As a documentary, Beautiful Losers profiles these influential artists who have taken their own subcultural inspirations to bridge the gap between public and private, general and art audiences, painting to film, east and west coasts. At the core of this story, like Ferus Gallery in The Cool School, is Aaron Rose’s Alleged Gallery and the home that it became to foster life-long friendships between these connected yet individual artists.

Artist Film Club: Playing before Beautiful Losers is Cheryl Dunn‘s Back Worlds for Words, a 1999 documentation of a skateboard ballet, choreographed and performed by artist and skateboard legend Mark Gonzales at the Stadtisches Museum in Monchengladbach, Germany.

Part of Nitehawk’s Art Seen signature series.

It’s time for SPOONS TOONS & BOOZE AFTER DARK!

Spoons Toons & Booze has been left home alone for the weekend so we’re staying up late past our bedtime to watch the cartoons our parents don’t want us to see! Join us for these special STB midnights where we’ll be watching cartoons from the 1970’s through present day that are all aimed at a more adult and teen audience. You’re definitely going to want to leave the kids at home for this one. Come and enjoy…

– A special menu of cartoons from prime-time & late night, from the 1970’s thru today, not shown at our brunch shows…and YOU get to choose what we watch!

– Satisfy your munchies with our free all you can eat cereal bar filled with all the sugary, marshmallowy, fruity, chocolaty cereal you crave. Soy and regular milk available!

– Special late night, adult themed contests and commercials + live cartoon covers by our STB After Dark Band.

– A White Russian menu including “The Sonny” (a White Russian topped with Cocoa Puffs) and a special late night, green “420 White Russian”!

– Cereal Shots! Drop a shot of Baileys or Kahlua in to booze up your cereal bowl.

– Compete in contests to choose which cartoons we watch and win sweet prizes from Nitehawk Cinema!

SPOONS, TOONS & BOOZE ST. PATRICK’S DAY SPECIAL 

Your Favorite Saturday Morning Cartoons + Booze & Free Cereal + a Special Menu of St. Patrick’s Day Themed Episodes All About the Irish!

Do you miss your childhood Saturday mornings waking up early to gorge on cereal and cartoons? If so, Secret Formula has the ultimate brunch for the kid in you…Spoons, Toons & Booze! We’ve got all your favorite Saturday morning cartoons, delicious cocktails and a free all you can eat sugar cereal bar, not to mention Nitehawk Cinema’s excellent brunch menu.

You’ll never get me Lucky Charms! Oh, alright, you can have some at our free cereal bar because Spoons, Toons & Booze is back in March and celebrating our Irish roots with a special menu of St. Patrick’s Day cartoon episodes full of leprechauns, redheads, four leaf clovers, Irish lasses and laddies and trips to the Emerald Isle! 

– Over 80 cartoon series from the 1930?s through the 90?s and YOU get to choose what we watch!
 – Special menu of St. Patrick’s Day themed episodes featuring leprechauns, four leaf clovers, Irish lasses and laddies, pots o’ gold, red hair and trips to the Emerald Isle!
 
 – Play along with cartoon drinking games and Irish style sing-alongs to help you relive your St. Pattys Day!

– A free all you can eat cereal bar filled with all the sugary, marshmallowy, fruity, chocolaty cereal you crave! Soy and regular milk available. 

–  A White Russian menu including “The Sonny”, a White Russian topped with Cocoa Puffs, and a special green “Emerald White Russian”!

– Cereal Shots! Drop a shot of Baileys or Kahlua in to booze up your cereal bowl.

– Compete in contests to choose which cartoons we watch and win sweet prizes from Nitehawk Cinema!

Rushmore is part of THE WORKS – BILL MURRAY and our August WE CAN BE HEROES series.

Max Fischer is a unique young man. More adept to the extracurriculars (including playwriting and revenge) Max’s insular world contained within the prep school of Rushmore breaks open when he’s put on academic probation. But instead of focusing on his studies, he finds a new distraction in the form of a young teacher and a strange friendship with the father of his two bully classmates. He’s his own worst enemy.

Rushmore is the second writing collaboration between Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson; it’s style, quick wit, and spot-on soundtrack have since become the trademark for Anderson. It’s also the acting debut of Jason Schwartzman. As for Bill Murray? As usual, he steals the show…in the same suit throughout no less.

 Part of Nitehawk’s WE CAN BE HEROES August brunch series.

Nitehawk’s August Country Brunchin’ pays homage to Loretta Lynn with Coal Miner’s Daughter and live pre-show serenade by Lil’ Mo and the Monicats.

She was married at 13. She had four kids by the time she was 20. She’s been hungry and poor. She’s been loved and cheated on. She became a singer because it was the only thing she could do. She became a star because it was the only way she could do it.

We love Loretta! Coal Miner’s Daughter is a biographical film about the life of Loretta Lynn, the legendary country singer whose talented far surpassed her poor upbringing. In an Academy Award Winning performance by Sissy Spacek (as Loretta), the film also stars Tommy Lee Jones as Loretta’s husband (Mooney Lynn) aka the man who believed in her talent. With strife, songs, and tears, the film tracks her rise and her inevitable struggle between family life and a professional career.

Lil’ Mo and the Monicats: There may be bands like Monica Passin’s long-thriving rockabilly outfit in a lot of cities, but hers, popular in NYC in various configurations for about two decades, has the benefit of her fetching, time-warp creating vocals—good for lilting jive, Buddy Holly-like original ‘billy ballads, and blues, too—This latest [album, Whole Lotta Lovin’] features that typical Li’l Mo mix, and reminds us that when there was still a lot of straight country boogie in rock ‘n’ roll, the vocal demands and results were often considerable.  And they still are, here.  – Barry Mazor, Engine 145

Q&As with filmmaker Paul Rachman on Saturday and writer Steven Blush on Sunday.

Nitehawk and Noisey present July’s MUSIC DRIVEN FILM American Hardcore – witness the radical birth and explosion of the socio-political underground movement brought to America by Reagan-era misfits.

Based on the book American Hardcore: A Tribal History written by Steven Blush (who wrote the film), this incredible documentary focuses on the birth and evolution of the hardcore punk rock seen from the late 1970s to mid-1980s. Including archival footage and feature interviews with members of bands such as Bad Brains, Minor Threat, The Minutemen, Black Flag, Circle Circles, and D.O.A., American Hardcore focuses on the seminal influence of the Los Angeles punk scene and how the hardcore explosion spread east. From Flipper to Big Boys, the American Hardcore soundtrack also boasts some of the best songs from the era.

Sign Painters, the first anecdotal history of the craft, features the stories of more than two dozen sign painters working in cities throughout the United States. Filmmakers in person for a Q&A!

There was a time, as recently as the 1980s, when storefronts, murals, banners, barn signs, billboards, and even street signs were all hand-lettered with brush and paint. But, like many skilled trades, the sign industry has been overrun by the techno-fueled promise of quicker and cheaper. The resulting proliferation of computer-designed, die-cut vinyl lettering and inkjet printers has ushered a creeping sameness into our landscape. Fortunately, there is a growing trend to seek out traditional sign painters and a renaissance in the trade.

The documentary and book by filmmakers Faythe Levine and Sam Macon profiles sign painters young and old, from the new vanguard working solo to collaborative shops such as San Francisco’s New Bohemia Signs and New York’s Colossal Media’s Sky High Murals.