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Eyeslicer Fest Closing Night Film: Knives and Skin

This September, DIY variety TV show The Eyeslicer is celebrating the release of their second season with a 4-day mini-fest of parties, events and screenings happening all around Brooklyn. They’re only showing one feature film during the entire fest, and it’s one of the best films of the year: Jennifer Reeder’s feminist, musical teenage dream Knives and Skin.

Knives and Skin follows the investigation of a young girl’s disappearance in a stylized version of a rural Midwest town that hovers just above reality, led by an inexperienced local sheriff. Unusual coping techniques develop among the traumatized small-town residents with each new secret revealed. The ripple of fear and suspicion destroys some relationships and strengthens others. The backdrop of trauma colors quintessential rituals—classrooms, dances, courtship, football games—in which the teenagers experience an accelerated loss of innocence while their parents are forced to confront adulthood failures. This mystical teen noir presents coming of age as a lifelong process and examines the profound impact of grief.

Please join us after the screening for a casual celebration in Nitehawk’s Lo-Res Bar.

Ready or Not

Starring: Samara Weaving, Adam Brody, Mark O’Brien, Henry Czerny, Andie MacDowell

Ready or Not follows a young bride (Samara Weaving) as she joins her new husband’s (Mark O’Brien) rich, eccentric family (Adam Brody, Henry Czerny, Andie MacDowell) in a time-honored tradition that turns into a lethal game with everyone fighting for their survival.

The Farewell

Starring: Awkwafina, Tzi Ma, Diana Lin

The film follows a Chinese family who, when they discover their beloved grandmother has only a short while left to live, decide to keep her in the dark and schedule an impromptu wedding to gather before she passes. Billi, feeling like a fish out of water in her home country, struggles with the family’s decision to hide the truth from her grandmother.

Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am

Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am offers an artful and intimate meditation on the life and works of the acclaimed novelist. From her childhood in the steel town of Lorain, Ohio to ‘70s-era book tours with Muhammad Ali, from the front lines with Angela Davis to her own riverfront writing room, Toni Morrison leads an assembly of her peers, critics and colleagues on an exploration of race, America, history and the human condition as seen through the prism of her own literature. Woven together with a rich collection of art, history, literature and personality, the film includes discussions about her many critically acclaimed works, including novels “The Bluest Eye,” “Sula” and “Song of Solomon,” her role as an editor of iconic African-American literature and her time teaching at Princeton University.

The Angry Birds Movie 2

Starring: Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Leslie Jones, Bill Hader, Rachel Bloom, Awkwafina, Danny McBride, Peter Dinklage, Sterling K. Brown

Screening in 2D

The flightless angry birds and the scheming green piggies take their beef to the next level in The Angry Birds Movie 2! When a new threat emerges that puts both Bird and Pig Island in danger, Red (Jason Sudeikis), Chuck (Josh Gad), Bomb (Danny McBride), and Mighty Eagle (Peter Dinklage) recruit Chuck’s sister Silver (Rachel Bloom) and team up with pigs Leonard (Bill Hader), his assistant Courtney (Awkwafina), and techpig Garry (Sterling K. Brown) to forge an unsteady truce and form an unlikely superteam to save their homes.

We Live in Public

Ten years ago, Dig! director Ondi Timoner became the only person to win the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance twice – this time for We Live in Public, a riveting cautionary tale about what to expect as the virtual world takes control of our lives.

Ten years in the making and culled from 5,000 hours of footage, We Live in Public reveals the effects the internet will have on our society through a series of startling social experiments funded by “the greatest internet pioneer you’ve never heard of” – former internet mogul, artist and visionary, Josh Harris. Called the “Warhol of the Web”, Harris founded Pseudo.com, the first internet television network during the dot-com boom of the 1990s before inviting 150 people into an underground bunker in downtown NYC at the turn of the Millenium, to live together on camera for 30 days, broadcasting every moment of their lives on a closed-circuit network. Before reality television and the existence of online social networks, the bunker demonstrated how willing we are to trade our privacy for the elusive and often unrealized promise of recognition and connection offered by technological advances. Harris’ next experiment, WeLiveinPublic.com, was a 6 month stint broadcasting every moment of his life with his girlfriend from 32 motion-controlled surveillance cameras and 66 microphones, leading to his mental collapse and demonstrating the heavy price we can pay for living in public.

Punk the Capital

When punk erupted in the nation’s capital in the mid to late 1970’s, it was a mighty convergence of powerful music, friendships and clear minds. The sounds and ideas that emerged from those early years of punk/hardcore-punk continue to influence and inspire around the world. Punk the Capital captures that explosive time and situates D.C. punk history within the larger narratives of punk and rock and roll.

The film takes us through the untold story of how the DC punk scene was built from the ground up despite the “hostile environment” of Washington D.C. A legendary artist’s co-op named Madams Organ looms large in the film, as a “free space” where many great punk bands got their foothold (1979-1980). Punk the Capital includes a large amount of never before seen Super 8 footage from the co-op. From the perspective of that family-sized row house, this film dives back into an array of D.C. area bands of the late 1970’s (Slickee Boys, White Boy) and looks forward into the growth of DC’s hardcore punk scene of the early 1980’s (Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Faith).

Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance

Starring: Kotono Mitsuishi, Megumi Ogata, Megumi Hayashibara

Under constant attack by Angels, NERV introduces two new pilots: the mysterious Makinami Mari Illustrous and the intense Asuka Langley Shikinami. Parallel to the incursion, Gendo Ikari and SEELE proceed the secret project that involves both Rei and Shinji.

Wicked City

Starring: Yûsaku Yara, Toshiko Fujita, Ichirô Nagai

Two agents – a lady-killer human and a voluptuous demon – attempt to protect a signatory to a peace ceremony between the human world and the “Black World” from radicalized demons.

Memories

Starring: Shigeru Chiba, Hisao Egawa, Kayoko Fujii

Memories is made up of three separate science-fiction stories. In the first, “Magnetic Rose,” four space travelers are drawn into an abandoned spaceship that contains a world created by one woman’s memories. In “Stink Bomb,” a young lab assistant accidentally transforms himself into a human biological weapon set on a direct course for Tôkyô. The final episode, “Cannon Fodder,” depicts a day in the life of a city whose entire purpose is the firing of cannons at an unseen enemy.