Starring: Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Andrea Checchi

1960 saw the release of three of horror’s best films: Alfred Hitchock’s Psycho, Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, and Mario Bava’s Black Sunday (originally La maschera del demonio or The Mask of Satan). While the others deal with real horrors, Bava’s story is about a vengeful witch whose pact with Satan carries over centuries, long after her execution. In fact, her death is so brutally depicted in the film’s opening sequence that caused the film to be banned in the UK. When she’s awakened by the blood of a traveling doctor, the witch and her minion haunt the cursed family that killed her with the ever-stunning Barbara Steele playing both the witch and the family’s young daughter. As you get with Bava, the film is all contrast, lights and darks, scenery with depth and innovative cinematography.

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.

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.

Back by popular demand…A BAND CALLED DEATH returns for another weekend midnite run!

Before Bad Brains, the Sex Pistols or even the Ramones, there was a band called Death.

Punk before punk existed, three teenage brothers in the early ’70s formed a band in their spare bedroom, began playing a few local gigs and even pressed a single in the hopes of getting signed. But this was the era of Motown and emerging disco. Record companies found Death’s music— and band name—too intimidating, and the group were never given a fair shot, disbanding before they even completed one album. Equal parts electrifying rockumentary and epic family love story, A Band Called Death chronicles the incredible fairy-tale journey of what happened almost three decades later, when a dusty 1974 demo tape made its way out of the attic and found an audience several generations younger. Playing music impossibly ahead of its time, Death is now being credited as the first black punk band (hell…the first punk band!), and are finally receiving their long overdue recognition as true rock pioneers.

The Invader (NY premiere organized by Filmmaker Mag) and the short Play House are part of the Northside Film Festival. There will be a Q&A after the screening with Nicoloas Provost.

Amadou, a strong and charismatic African man, is washed up on a beach in southern Europe. Fate leads him to Brussels where, full of optimism, he tries to make a better life for himself. Exploited by traffickers, his daily life is slowly drained of hope, until he meets Agnès, a beautiful and brilliant businesswoman. She is seduced by his charm and force of character, while he projects all his hope and dreams onto her. The illusion quickly shatters, and Agnès breaks all contact with Amadou, who little by little sinks into destructive violence, struggling with his inner demons.

Play House (Brandon LaGanke, 2012, 10 Mins). The only thing keeping Harold’s family bound is his unconditional love for them. Starring Larry Petersen, Angela Pierce, John Reese, Gianna LePera and Megan Mann.

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.

Part of the Northside Film Festival, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is a 1968 experimental docu-drama film written, directed, and conceived by African-American film director and documentarian William Greaves. Playing before Symbiopsychotaximplasm: Take One is the BFC Short film, Leal.

Part of the Northside Film Festival, The Look of Love includes the BFC short, Gawking Red, and a closing party after the film in Nitehawk’s downstairs bar.

The Look of Love tells the true story of British adult magazine publisher and entrepreneur Paul Raymond. A modern day King Midas story, Raymond became one of the richest men in Britain at the cost of losing those closest to him.

Part of the Northside Film Festival, the Kopfstand screening includes the BFC short film, Unstrung.

In Kopfstand, Markus Dorn (Christoph Waltz) does not get along with his mother. When an argument between then escalates and she calls the police, Markus refuses to cooperate. He is sent to a mental institution, where they administer unnecessary electroshock treatment.

Presented by The L Magazine.

Part of the Northside Film Festival, All the Light in the Sky includes the BFC short, Amateur, and a Q&A after the film with Sophia Takal.

Jane Adams plays a woman living in a house perched precariously on stilts above the beach in Malibu who clings to her life’s ambitions in much the same way. With her age exempting her from more and more acting opportunities, her future is uncertain. That’s when her young niece — a superb Sophia Takal — comes for a weekend stay. The film captures their night conversations, fears and stories that emerge in the witching hours. Swanberg has become a master at eliciting inspired performances from his actors. Here, he’s working at the height of his powers and, with Adams, he’s clearly tapped into an actor with creative reserves. Negotiating the language and relationships of 21st century Americans, Swanberg’s alchemy is at its best. [Synopsis courtesy of Lane Kneedler and AFI Fest]