Starring: Nanako Matsushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, Miki Nakatani, Yuko Takeuchi, Hitomi Sato
When you think of Japanese horror, chances are that the first film that comes to mind is Hideo Nakata’s brilliant and game-changing Ringu, with its cursed videotape, doom-laden phone calls, and all-timer ending. A major part of the BHFF’s documentary inclusion The J-Horror Virus, the film holds up as one of the scariest ever made, inspiring Gore Verbinski’s hugely popular American remake and turning Nakata into horror royalty. Toast to the film’s enduring 25-year legacy with Brooklyn Horror as we screen the American Genre Film Archive’s 4k restoration. —Matt Barone
Fierce, feminist pioneers of American grunge punk, the L7: Pretend We’re Dead documentary, directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker Sarah Price (American Movie, The Yes Men, Summercamp), is a culmination of the band’s re-ignited enthusiasm fueled by their fans’ outpouring of encouragement and support on social media when the band hinted at the idea of a documentary in early 2015.
Culled from over 100 hours of unearthed vintage home movies taken by the band, never before seen performance footage, and candid interviews, L7: Pretend We’re Dead chronicles the band’s triumphs and failures. It takes viewers on an all access journey into the 1990’s grunge movement that took the world by storm. Charged with lyrics that had political bite and humor which proved irresistible to the disenfranchised, the marginalized, and the punk, they helped define grunge as the genre of a generation.
In 2007, 11 years after one of the most influential American punk bands, Jawbreaker, called it quits, the three members, Blake Schwarzenbach, Chris Bauermeister, and Adam Pfahler reconnect in a San Francisco recording studio to listen back to their albums, reminisce and even perform together one last time. Follow the band as they retell their “rags to riches to rags” story writhe with inner band turmoil, health issues, and the aftermath of signing to a major label. Featuring interviews with Billy Joe Armstrong, Steve Albini, Jessica Hopper, Graham Elliot, Chris Shifflet, Josh Caterer and more.
Starring: Ingrid Jungermann, Ann Carr, Shelia Vand, Shannon O’Neill, Annette O’Toole, Grace Rex, Deborah Rush, Rodrigo Lopresti, Tami Sagher.
Commitment phobic Morgan and her ex-girlfriend Jean are locally famous true crime podcasters obsessed with female serial killers. There’s a chance they may still have feelings for each other, but co-dependence takes a back seat when Morgan meets the mysterious Simone during her Food Coop shift. Blinded by infatuation, Morgan quickly signs up for the relationship, ignoring warnings from friends that her new love interest is practically a stranger.
When Jean shows Morgan proof that Simone may not be who she says she is, Morgan accuses Jean of trying to ruin the best thing that’s ever happened to her. But as she and Simone move into commitment territory, Morgan starts to notice red flags—maybe Jean was right and Simone isn’t as perfect as Morgan’s made her out to be.
Morgan and Jean investigate Simone as if she were a subject of their podcast, they uncover disturbing clues—a death at the Food Coop, a missing friend, a murder weapon—leading them to suspect her not only of mystery, but of murder. In the end, Morgan has to examine all the evidence in front of her: Is she just afraid of what it means to be in a relationship or is her life actually in danger?
Zaynab is a Pakistani, Muslim lawyer living in Chicago who begins a new romance with Alma, a vivacious Mexican-American woman. Zaynab’s recently widowed mother has moved in, spending her days watching Pakistani TV dramas while searching for a potential husband for her only daughter. Alma’s mother is a former professional Luchadora, which Zaynab finds fascinating as she’s recently taken up lucha-style wrestling. Zaynab tries to keep her love life from her mother, who knows more than she lets on.
2016’s THE VOID is pure Lovecraftian: grotesque monsters, hospitals, the gateway to hell and the unknown space of the void.
When police officer Carter discovers a blood-soaked man limping down a deserted road, he rushes him to a local hospital with a barebones, night shift staff. As cloaked, cult-like figures surround the building, the patients and staff inside start to turn ravenously insane. Trying to protect the survivors, Carter leads them into the depths of the hospital where they discover a gateway to immense evil.
Starring: Koji Imada, Sayaka Maeda, Takashi Fujii
Director Masaaki Yuasa’s masterful mash of visual styles, Mind Game is a psychedelic trip into the grave and beyond, following a down-on-his-luck loser named Nishi nursing a lifelong crush on his childhood girlfriend. On a particularly bad day, Nishi finds out that his dream girl’s engaged… and then he’s murdered by the Yakuza. Nishi’s death sets him off on a twist-turny, loop-dee-loop journey where he meets God, winds up in the belly of a whale and beyond. Told using an innovative blend of animation techniques, Mind Game hops from experimental photography to slapdash storyboards to beautifully rendered CG and back again.
This screening of Robot Carnival will feature a 35mm print of the U.S. theatrical dub of the film produced by Streamline Pictures.
Released on video in Japan, but theatrically in the U.S., animated anthology film Robot Carnival collects nine shorts on robotics and artificial intelligence from nine up-and-coming anime directors of the day. Featuring a wide-range of styles and influences, the film kickstarted the careers of directors like Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira), Yasuomi Umetsu (Kite, Mezzo Forte), and Hiroyuki Kitakubo (Roujin Z, Golden Boy) and several others who graduated to some of the most popular titles of the 1980s (Bubblegum Crisis, City Hunter, Char’s Counterattack, Urotsukidoji).
35mm original theatrical print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
