Lesbians didn’t always get to see themselves on screen. But between Stonewall, the feminist movement, and the experimental cinema of the 1970s, they built visibility, and transformed the social imagination about queerness. Filmmakers Barbara Hammer, Su Friedrich, Rose Troche, Cheryl Dunye, Yoruba Richen, Desiree Akhavan, Vicky Du, film critic B. Ruby Rich, Jenni Olson, and others share moving and often hilarious stories from their lives and discuss how they’ve expressed queer identity through film.

Screening with the short The Morning After by Brooklyn-based director Lauren Minnerath, a 2018 Nitehawk Shorts Fest alum: A young woman must introduce her African American girlfriend to her conservative father the morning after the 2016 presidential election.

Starring: Samantha Mugatsia, Sheila Munyiva, Neville Misati, Nice Githinji

Bursting with the colorful street style & music of Nairobi’s vibrant youth culture, Rafiki is a tender love story between two young women in a country that still criminalizes homosexuality. Kena and Ziki have long been told that “good Kenyan girls become good Kenyan wives” – but they yearn for something more. Despite the political rivalry between their families, the girls encourage each other to pursue their dreams in a conservative society. When love blossoms between them, Kena and Ziki must choose between happiness and safety.

Initially banned in Kenya for its positive portrayal of queer romance, Rafiki won a landmark supreme court case chipping away at Kenyan anti-LGBT legislation. Featuring remarkable performances by newcomers Samantha Mugatsia and Sheila Munyiva, Rafiki is a hip tale of first love “reminiscent of the early work of Spike Lee” (Screen Daily) that’s “impossible not to celebrate” (Variety)!

Nitehawk Cinema partners up with NewFest, New York’s LGBTQ Film & Media Arts Organization, to present a special brunch 35mm screening of rarely seen iconic film from 2000. The screening includes an introduction by Nick McCarthy (Director of Programming, NewFest) and each audience member will receive a complimentary copy of the book, PRIDE: Fifty Years of Parades and Protests, and buttons courtesy Abrams Books.

$15 voucher saves your seat and comes with a free book!

About the film: Celebrated for its candid and realistic depiction of African-American gay men, the groundbreaking Punks premiered at Sundance in 2000 and won awards on the film festival circuit before becoming mostly undistributed and unavailable to see anywhere. Focusing on four friends navigating the dating world to find their mythical Mr. Rights, this vivacious debut film from writer-director Patrik-Ian Polk is an outrageously spirited ensemble comedy with verve and wit. Unprecedented in the way it captures black gay life and romance, Punks also explores universal aspects of friendship in dynamic and surprising ways.

NewFest, New York’s LGBTQ Film and Media Arts Organization, is dedicated to bringing together filmmakers and audiences to build a community that passionately supports queer cinema and storytelling. NewFest give voice and visibility to all facets of the LGBTQ experience by presenting year-round screenings and events that include New York’s annual LGBTQ Film Festival every October, which began in 1988.

Starring: Robert Englund, Mark Patton, Kim Myers, Robert Rusler, Clu Gulager, Hope Lange

To make an additional $10 donation to The Ali Forney Center, select the “Event + Donation” ticket on the checkout screen. Nitehawk will be matching all donations.

Jesse Walsh (Mark Patton) moves with his family into the home of the lone survivor from a series of attacks by dream-stalking monster Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). There, Jesse is bedeviled by nightmares and inexplicably violent impulses. It turns out Freddy needs a host body to carry out his gruesome vendetta against the youth of Springwood, Ohio. While Freddy gains influence, Jesse and his girlfriend, Lisa (Kim Myers), race against the clock trying to figure out what’s going on.

The follow up to the film that introduced Freddy Krueger into our nightmares has become an iconically queer film due to its not so subtle context, tones and explicit desires.

Starring: Michelle Krusiec, Joan Chen, Lynn Chen, Li Zhiyu, Jin Wang, Guanglan Shen

Wil (Michelle Krusiec) is a lesbian, but she not dare tell her widowed mother, Hwei-lan (Joan Chen), or her very traditional grandparents. She’s shocked, however, to find out she’s not the only one in her family with romantic secrets when she learns that her 48-year-old mother is pregnant. Unwilling to reveal who the father is, Hwei-lan is kicked out of her parents’ home and must move in with Wil, which puts a strain on Wil’s budding relationship with openly gay Vivian (Lynn Chen).

Prizewinning and Audience Favorite Short Live Action Films of Children’s Film Festival Seattle 2019

Recommended for ages 8+

Get globally aware with this program of award-winning and audience favorite short live-action films from Children‘s Film Festival Seattle. The young people in these films are determined to make new friends, follow their passions and create bright futures for themselves and others. You’ll hear the music of other languages in this program and realize that despite cultural differences, kids everywhere yearn for the same things — to love, to laugh, and dream the future.

Jelly Fish
(Marcin Gizycki, USA/Poland, live-action, 2018, 6 min, English)
A school trip turns wild when a giant cephalopod takes an unexpected star turn!

Doctor of Monster
(Gustavo Teixeira, Brazil, live-action, 2017, 11 min, Portuguese with English subtitles)
A boy has already chosen his future profession, now will have to face his fears to become a doctor of monsters.
Watch the trailer

Sherbert Rosencranz, You’re Beautiful
(Natalie van den Dungen, Australia, live-action, 2018, 10 min,  English)
Milly’s world revolves around her pet guinea pig until her mother attempts to engineer finding her a “real” friend.
Watch the trailer

Dear Henri
(Matthew Sandager, USA, live-action, 2017, 13 min, English)
Nine-year-old Henri recently lost her beloved namesake and pen pal, Grandpa Henry. She misses him deeply – but then she thinks of a way to continue their correspondence.
Watch the trailer

3feet — winner of a Children’s Film Festival Seattle Children’s Jury Prize for Best Live Action Short Film
(Giselle Geney, Colombia, live-action, 2018, 14 min, Spanish with English subtitles)
Gonzalo is an imaginative and tenacious 10-year old facing the most difficult task of his life: get to school with clean shoes.
Watch the trailer

Spelliasmous
(Ben Garfield, Cuba/UK, live-action, 2017, 4 min, Spanish with English subtitles)
Three friends reveal what the Harry Potter stories mean to them, transforming their sleepy Cuban town into a world of wizards, witches and monsters.

199 Little Heroes: Miral from Palestine
(Sigrid Klausmann-Sittler, Germany,  live-action, 2018, 14 min, Arabic with English subtitles)
Miral is an exuberant girl who has amazing athletic ability. Her life is beautiful and full, in spite of the walls that surround her.

Starring: John Dresden, Geoff Binney, Jillian Kessner, Rey King, Cameron Mitchell

This August brings Kung-fu guru Grady Hendrix and Subway Cinema back to THE DEUCE with the ridiculously outre and outrageous RAW FORCE! Edward (NOT Eddie) D. Murphy’s 1982 shlock-sockey silliness – straight from the Philippines to your heart… and skipping your mind completely!

Ribald! Raucous!! A riot of wrong!! Kickboxing swingers at sea hit stormy waters when their delirious disco-party turns disastrous due to an ill-advised sojourn to “Warrior Island”… where everything – including the kitchen sink – that karate-horror could possibly offer awaits!!! A dastardly mini-mustachioed dictator, murder-minded monks… slave-trading and severed limbs… cannibalism… and an army of zombie-ghost kung-fu killers!! Mind-numbing nuttiness in a flick that doesn’t make a lick of sense! Gratuitous, goofy, and gonzo… jaw-droppingly jejune!

With cantankerous Cameron Mitchell as captain of said kickboxing swingers ship and Camille Keaton as “Girl in toilet”… You want more? Well, Raw Force has “more” in spades – leaving no stone unturned – and seeming like it just crawled out from under one!… A Raw Force to be reckoned with!!

Screening in 2D

Starring: Wei Tang, Jue Huang, Sylvia Chang

Bi Gan follows up his knockout debut, Kaili Blues, with this noir-tinged fever dream about a lost soul (Jue Huang) on a quest to find a missing woman from his past (Wei Tang). Following leads across Guizhou province, he crosses paths with a series of characters, among them a prickly hairdresser played by Taiwanese superstar Sylvia Chang. When the search leads him to a dingy movie theater, the film launches into a hour-long, gravity-defying shot that plunges its protagonist into a labyrinthine cityscape and leaves the viewer breathless.

Glenn Kenny in the New York Times writes: “Midnight movies are no longer the attraction they were back in the late ’70s and early ’80s. This sometimes seems like a shame. Long Day’s Journey Into Night, the second feature by the Chinese director Bi Gan (whose 2016 debut Kaili Blues made an impression in art houses the world over), would make exemplary late-night communal viewing. Very often, and particularly in its second half, watching it feels like dreaming with your eyes open.” So Glenn, we’re doing it at midnight just like another film you mentioned, Inland Empire!

Starring: Bernadette Peters, Adam Coleman Howard, Nick Corri, Madeleine Potter, Chris Sarandon, Mary Beth Hurt

As downtown rent prices increase and money fails to trickle down to the avant-garde artist set, Eleanor feels trapped in her live-in relationship with her boyfriend Stash (Adam Coleman Howard), a volatile artist whose temper might be more negligible than his talent. What he lacks in real feeling Stash makes up for in real estate, and the waifish but worldly Eleanor endures Stash’s infidelities with his rich groupie Daria (Madeleine Potter) as she struggles for recognition as an artist in her own right.

Taking their cue from Tama Janowitz’s edgy prose, on which she based her screenplay for the film, director James Ivory and cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts use a bold palate of colors and light to evoke New York as seen through the eyes of young artists. The avant-garde art world is here in form as well as content: split screen techniques that evoke Warhol (who was interested in filming these stories) and a relentless use of primary colors are the visual counterpart of these characters’ artistic styles and artistic temperaments. Slaves, which was very well received by European audiences, features some of Merchant Ivory’s most thoroughly realized design elements by production designer David Gropman and costume designer Carol Ramsey. Janowitz called the characters in her stories ‘modern saints,’ and ‘early Madonna’ might best describe the bold and outrageous clothes Ramsey creates for Eleanor and her circle.

Though many audiences, expecting another ‘frock film,’ were surprised by Merchant and Ivory’s unusual choice of subject matter in 1989, Eleanor has come to fit into the Merchant Ivory canon both as a displaced wanderer – a subject explored by the filmmakers again and again – and as a young female artist whose own talents are dominated by a temperamental male artist, the province of Francoise Gilot in Surviving Picasso.

A person talking during a film can be the most annoying thing imaginable – unless that person is the director. Join Vimeo curator Jeffrey Bowers as he screens recent and upcoming Staff Picked films with live, unscripted commentary from some of the best creators on Vimeo. Founded in 2008, Vimeo Staff Picks has emerged as one of the preeminent channels for online video and one of the most coveted awards for young filmmakers, having helped launch the careers of many celebrated directors. Hear from the next generation of storytellers in a format that’s sure to be eclectic and insightful.

The entire program will screen once, then a second time with commentary by the directors.

the Scared is Scared
Director Bianca Giaever
2013 / 8 MIN
I asked a six-year-old what my movie should be about, and this is what he told me.

A Brief History of John Baldessari
Directors Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman
2012 / 6 MIN
The life and work of artist John Baldessari.

Hurray for the Riff Raff – Pa’lante
Director Kristian Mercado
2018 / 8 MIN
Pa’lante is the story of an estranged family trying to reconnect in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

Prom Night
Director Celia Rowlson Hall
2010 / 9 MIN
Prom night is ritual, disco balls, expectation, corsages, dresses, holding, sweating, status, dancing slow and fast.

Young Thug – Wyclef Jean
Directors Ryan Staake and Young Thug
2018 / 5 MIN
Ryan Staake co-directed this music video with Young Thug, but never met him and he’s the star.