The OPENING NITE screening at the Nitehawk Shorts Festival highlights eight independent New York filmmakers.

The MUSIC DRIVEN section of the Nitehawk Shorts Festival celebrates music and film with a screening of new music videos and documentaries.

The ART SEEN section of the Nitehawk Shorts Festival explores the relationship between art and film in the cinema. 

For one weekend only, Nitehawk presents brunch screenings of FIRST GIRL I LOVED, a poignant coming-of-age tale that captures all the anxiety, bravery, and heartbreak of first love.

Winner of the Best of NEXT Audience Award at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

On assignment for her high-school yearbook, social-misfit Anne (Dylan Gelula) charmingly hits it off with the beautiful star of the softball team, Sasha (Brianna Hildebrand). But when Anne tells her best friend Clifton (Mateo Arias) about her new crush, he reveals a hidden jealousy that threatens more than just the girls’ budding romance.

Starring: Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Danny Kaye, Vera-Ellen

This film is guaranteed to deliver that holiday spirit for all those dreaming of a white Christmas! Singers Bob Wallace and Phil Davis (Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye) join sister act Betty and Judy Haynes (Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen) to perform a Christmas show in rural Vermont. There, they run into Gen. Waverly, the boys’ commander in World War II, who, they learn, is having financial difficulties; his quaint country inn is failing because there’s not a snowflake in site! So what’s the foursome to do but plan a yuletide miracle via a fun-filled musical extravaganza that’s sure to put Waverly and his business in the black!

Starring: Kim Min-hee, Ha Jung-woo, Cho Jin-woong, Moon So-ri, Kim Tae-ri, Lee Yong-nyeo

From Park Chan-wook, the celebrated director of Old Boy, Lady Vengeance, and Stoker, comes a ravishing new crime drama. Park presents a gripping and sensual tale of two women – a young Japanese Lady living on a secluded estate, and a Korean woman who is hired to serve as her new handmaiden, but is secretly plotting with a conman to defraud her of a large inheritance. Inspired by the novel Fingersmith by British author Sarah Waters, The Handmaiden borrows the most dynamic elements of its source material and combines it with Park Chan-wook’s singular vision to create an unforgettable viewing experience.

For the Christmas edition of the KEVIN GEEKS OUT show, comedian Kevin Maher and his guests look at their favorite Holiday Specials, from the obvious to the obscure. This two-hour video variety show will stuff your stocking memorable moments from movies and tv specials. 

NOTE: this is an all-new Kevin Geeks Out, not an encore of the 2015 Christmas show. 

Guests include: 
Erin Farrell (cinephile, video editor) 
Wendy Mays (host, PET CINEMATARY podcast) 
Paul Murphy (filmmaker, RED OBSESSION) 
Steve Flack (tv editor and trivia champion)

Nitehawk’s CRIME series extends into November as we celebrate the 75th anniversary of John Huston’s classic THE MALTESE FALCON.

Nominated for three Academy Awards, including “Best Picture,” The Maltese Falcon is the film noir classic starring Humphrey Bogart as tough San Francisco private detective Sam Spade. The film details this classic story of Spade’s involvement with a deadly band of international thieves who will lie, double-cross, and murder to obtain a small, jewel-encrusted statue known as the Maltese Falcon.Spade’s (Bogart) partner, Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan), accepts a job protecting a young woman (Mary Astor). Neither Spade nor Archer believe the woman or the story she tells them, but they do believe her money. Then, when Archer is murdered, Spade’s search for the killer drags him in the web of lies and death spun by the desperate people seeking the now-famous statue.

The MATINEE ONE section at the Nitehawk Shorts Festival features eight short films that deal with family and finding one’s place in the world.

Nitehawk’s MUSIC DRIVEN presents a special screening of THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION with director Penelope Spheeris!

Q&A with Penelope Spheeris following the film.

Penelope Spheeris’s notorious deep dive into Los Angeles punk culture circa 1980 in The Decline of Western Civilization. The film hit like a bomb on its release in 1981, stirring up such a controversy that the LAPD Chief of Police wrote the filmmaker asking her not to show it again in the city. Along with interviews from band members, the film prominently features raw, bloody, spit-covered performances by groups like Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Fear, Germs, X and more.

Part of Nitehawk’s MUSIC DRIVEN signature series.