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]

Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimée, Yvonne Furneaux, Magali Noël, Alain Cuny

From the opening sequence of two helicopters transporting a Christ sculpture over Rome to the very last vision on the beach, Fellini’s La Dolce Vita is a captivating sequence of events revolving around one man, Marcello Rubini. A playboy both confident and unsure, we follow one week of his “sweet” life of bizarre characters such as fading aristocrats, second-rate movie stars, aging playboys and rich women. There are suicidal fiancees, alluring mistresses, and a lecherous father; all of these people affirm the centering around a man who is fruitlessly looking for love and purpose.

La Dolce Vita straddles Fellini’s previous neo-realist films and his future carnivalesque style of filmmaking. Some narratives are straight while others are winding out of control. A comedy-drama, it is expressive in design (those costumes!) and in eccentric characters who wear them. One can never visit Rome without wanting to dive into Trevi Fountain crying, “Marcello! Marcello!” An unforgettable Italian cinematic experience.

Starring: Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring, Robert Helpmann

Containing a story within a story, Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes parallels the ambitions of a young ballerina with the narrative of the ballet she is performing (also called The Red Shoes based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale). Shown in one of the most stunning sequences in cinematic history, the ballet within the film features a young woman purchasing a pair of gleaming red ballet slippers that start her off on a beautiful dance but are ultimately destructive. The dancer, Victoria Page (played by Moira Shearer), also her own demons to confront; does she continue with the passion for her art or cease altogether for the love of a man? In both instances, there is only one way it can end.

Boris Lermontov: Why do you want to dance?
Victoria Page: Why do you want to live?
Boris Lermontov: Well I don’t know exactly why, er, but I must.
Victoria Page: That’s my answer too.

Incorporating a risky material like ballet as the core subject matter and rumored to have gone way over budget, The Red Shoes was met with little fanfare until it debuted in New York and was distributed by Universal. After that, the British audiences got on board and it became one of the highest grossing films in UK history. And with good reason, it’s an artwork unto itself. Painfully beautiful and larger than life, The Red Shoes is a sincere representation of the difficulties one faces when melding art and life together. Pure magic.

A master’s master!

Ricky Jay is a world-renowned magician, author, historian and actor (often a mischievous presence in the films of David Mamet and Paul Thomas Anderson) — and a performer who regularly provokes astonishment from even the most jaded audiences. Deceptive Practice traces Jay’s achievements and influences, from his apprenticeship at age 4 with his grandfather, to such now-forgotten legends as Al Flosso, Slydini, Cardini and his primary mentors, Dai Vernon and Charlie Miller. Featuring rare footage from his 1970s TV appearances (doing 3-card Monte with Steve Martin on The Dinah Shore Show) and told in Jay’s inimitable voice, this is a remarkable journey inside the secretive world of magic and the small circle of eccentrics who are its perpetual devotees.

A sales girl who has sex appeal in spades goes after a wealthy playboy in the third of our Live Sound Cinema Vamps and Virgins program – It with a live score performed by djangOrchestra.

In the cinematic silence of the roaring twenties Clara Bow personified the flapper- a modern woman who wanted to be able to drive, drink and stay out all night if she wanted! She’s a flapper, more fun loving and decadent that the vamp who lures men to certain doom. In It, Clara Bow plays a shopgirl who has her eye on the handsome owner of the department store she works in. Clara has ‘It’ and ‘It’ holds the promise of  many happy nights and sleep-in mornings in the mind of a weak willed prosperous man. Miss Bow’s tangled sleepy-time hair and fleshy bounce is the epitome of Brooklyn sass, manic Jazz Age energy and guilt-free sex appeal. You will love It.

Mary Alouette (award-winning singer, composer, and bandleader) leads djangOrchesta. Together with her four gypsy jazzmen, she’ll orchestrate hot acoustic jazz guitar and blazing horns in the style of legendary guitarist Django Reinhardt that calls forth a sound that can be described as beautiful music and dangerous rhythm. 

It is part of Nitehawk Cinema’s Vamps and Virgins series that explores the two sides of the leading lady spectrum in silent film.