A killer’s on the loose at Nitehawk Cinema and he’s serving up a multi-course dinner of fresh meat from The Meat Hook for a special Film Feast presentation of FRIDAY THE 13TH.

Things don’t go so well for the reopening of Camp Crystal Lake as the new counsellors are stalked and slashed…but by whom? As the site for a young boy’s drowning many years earlier, someone or something is none-too-pleased that a new batch of sexually crazed young adults who will be the caretakers of young children. Stemming from tropes established in Italian giallo films like anonymous killer-point-of-view stabs and punishment for sexual activities, Friday the 13th produces one of the most iconic “Final Girls” in horror (Alice Hardy) and has enduringly made teenage activities a frightening cautionary tale.

For our October Film Feast, Nitehawk is teaming up with some folks with blood on their hands, the butchers at The Meat Hook, for a five course meal that’s been stabbed, sliced, and seared like a misbehaving camp counselor.

MENU

“Frank’s Delicatessen Pork Roll Sandwich”
blood pork roll sandwich
Drink pairing: Milk and Honey On The Other Side – milk washed rye whiskey and fresh lemon, orange blossom honey syrup

“Snake Three Ways”
The Meat Hook’s The Cougar, Long Dong Bud, and Lamb Gyro sausages
Drink pairing: Snake Bite and Black – Braven Black Pale Ale, dry English cider, Creme de Mure

“Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”
bacon wrapped Thai shrimp, Devils on horseback, bacon rillette on crostini, The Meat Hook lamb bacon, tomato & bacon lettuce wrap, bacon jam on brioche
Drink pairing: Bloody Bacon – bacon infused Absolut Vodka, smoked house bloody mary mix

“Blackout”
butcher’s cut, roasted mushrooms, potato puree
Drink pairing: Blackout Punch – Bulldog Gin, basil and plum shrub, oleo saccharum, soda water

“Crystal Lake Granita”
coconut water and lime granita
Drink pairing: Water of Death – Death’s Door White Whiskey, Pear Eau de Vie, Lemon Juice, Blanc de Blanc

Click here for more information on The Meat Hook’s new sandwich shop in Brooklyn!

Menu items subject to change, no substitutions.

Nitehawk Cinema’s LOCAL COLOR and Tribeca Film Festival series highlighting New York filmmakers launches with a special presentation of YOUNG BODIES HEAL QUICKLY. Q&A after the screening with director Andrew T. Betzer!

At the age twenty, Older (Gabriel Croft, Fake It So Real)  escapes incarceration and seeks out his ten year old little brother, Younger. Clearly the bad influence, Older gets the boys mixed up in the “accidental” killing of a young girl and they are forced to go into hiding as they wait for their mother to rescue them. Thanks to their mother, the brothers now have a car and enough money to begin their bizarre road trip. Along the way, they encounter a host of people ranging from their unwelcoming sister (Kate Lyn Sheil, Sun Don’t Shine and House of Cards) to a troubled maid and her violent lover. Eventually, they wind up on the doorstep of their father’s compound, wherein the three of them are quickly reminded why they are estranged in the first place. Just as the walls are about to close in, their father packs up his brood and takes them on a road trip of his own. They join several militaria enthusiasts in a remote forest where they re-enact actual Vietnam War battles. Once in the “jungle,” the three of them revert to hostile tendencies building up to a final confrontation between father and sons, leaving the audience to decide what is real and what is make believe.

Part of Nitehawk’s LOCAL COLOR monthly series with the Tribeca Film Festival that features independent New York filmmakers.

Nitehawk Cinema’s LOCAL COLOR and Tribeca Film Festival’s series on New York filmmakers continues with a special screening of APPLESAUCE. Q&A after the screening with writer/director Onur Tukel!

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?

Every Tuesday night, radio talk show host Stevie Bricks invites his listeners to call in and share their stories.  And tonight, Ron Welz (writer/director Onur Tukel) is ready to share his.  But soon after he confesses on the air, Ron finds a severed foot in his laundry… then a cut off finger in his mail… then worse.  His life begins to unravel and his marriage begins to fall apart.  Someone is tormenting him.  Is it his insolent high school student?  Is it his best friend?  His wife?  In a city like New York, there are eight million suspects and each one could have a bone to pick with someone like Ron. 

Take dark comedy, mix it with noir, add a dash of horror and stir in some melodrama, and you have the recipe for one of the most original and unusual movies of the year.

Part of Nitehawk’s LOCAL COLOR monthly series with the Tribeca Film Festival that features independent New York filmmakers.

As part of Nitehawk’s September series SHE MADE IT, ART SEEN presents brunch screenings of Miranda July’s directorial debut, ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW.

Christine Jesperson is a lonely artist and “Eldercab” driver who uses her fantastical artistic visions to draw her aspirations and objects of desire closer to her. Richard Swersey (John Hawkes), a newly single shoe salesman and father of two boys, is prepared for amazing things to happen. But when he meets the captivating Christine, he panics. Life is not so oblique for Richard’s seven-year-old Robby, who is having a risqué internet romance with a stranger, and his fourteen- year-old brother Peter who becomes the guinea pig for neighborhood girls— practicing for their future of romance and marriage.

In July’s modern world, the mundane is transcendent and everyday people become radiant characters who speak their innermost thoughts, act on secret impulses, and experience truthful human moments that at times approach the surreal. They seek together-ness through tortured routes and find redemption in small moments that connect them to someone else on earth.  

Part of Nitehawk’s September SHE MADE IT brunch, midnite, and special event series.

ART SEEN is in partnership with frieze.

Nitehawk’s COUNTRY BRUNCHIN’ presents GAS FOOD LODGING as part of our special “SHE MADE IT” series. A 35mm presentation with a live pre-show serenade by LI’L MO!

Allison Anders’s Gas Food Lodging picks up in a dusty New Mexico town populated by a few waitresses, gravediggers and bored teenagers. Sisters Shade and Trudi cope with the boredom in different ways: Trudi rebels against just about everything, while Shade escapes into fantasies at the movies – but both of them share a desire to get out of dodge. But even in a single stoplight town, both young women are able to find love and heartbreak by the barrel load.

Part of Nitehawk’s September SHE MADE IT brunch, midnite, and special event series.

Nitehawk Cinema & Tribeca Film Institute Summer Documentary Series begins with a presentation of LIVE FROM NEW YORK, the film that opened the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.

Q&A following the screening with Director Bao Nguyen and Producers JL Pomeroy and Tom Broecker, moderated by Alex Hannibal (Manager of Documentary Programming, Tribeca Film Institute). Introduction by Caryn Coleman, Senior Film Programmer, Nitehawk Cinema.

A New York institution and comedy powerhouse, “Saturday Night Live” has been reflecting and influencing life in the United States for 40 years. “Live From New York!” Saturday Night Live has been reflecting and influencing the American Story for 40 years. Live From New York! explores the show’s early years, an experiment from a young Lorne Michaels and his cast of unknowns, and follows its evolution into a comedy institution. The film looks at SNL as a living time capsule, encompassing decades of American politics, media, tragedy, and popular culture with an irreverent edge. goes deep inside this cultural phenomenon exploring the laughter that pulses through American politics, tragedy and popular culture. Archival footage is interwoven with stolen moments and exclusive commentary from SNL legends, journalists, hosts, musical guests, crew and others influenced by the comedy giant.

Live From New York! captures what has enabled SNL to continually refresh itself over nearly 800 episodes and keep America laughing for 40 years.

Part of the 2015 Nitehawk Cinema and Tribeca Film Institute Summer Documentary Series. Visit the film page for LIVE FROM NEW YORK.

Nitehawk Cinema & Tribeca Film Institute Summer Documentary Series presents VERY SEMI-SERIOUS, an offbeat meditation on humor, art and the genius of the single panel.

Q&A following the screening with Executive Producer Deborah Shaffer and graphic novelist Liana Finck, moderated by Jose Rodriguez (Director of Documentary Programming, Tribeca Film Institute). Introduction by Caryn Coleman, Senior Film Programmer, Nitehawk Cinema.

The New Yorker is the undisputed standard bearer of the single panel cartoon. Whether they leave us amused, inspired, or even a little baffled, the iconic cartoons have become an instantly recognizable cultural touchstone over the past 90 years.

With Very Semi-Serious, viewers get an unprecedented glimpse into the process behind the cartoons. Legends Roz Chast and Mort Gerberg submit their work alongside hopefuls like graphic novelist Liana Finck. While on the other side of the desk, Cartoon Editor Bob Mankoff sifts through hundreds of submissions every week to bring readers a carefully curated selection of insightful and humorous work, striving to nurture new talent and represent the magazine’s old guard, while also considering how his industry must evolve to stay relevant. Leah Wolchok’s light-hearted and sometimes poignant debut film offers a window into The New Yorker’s signature brand of subtle, contemplative humor, and perhaps also onto what it means to laugh at ourselves. – Cara Cusumano

Part of the 2015 Nitehawk Cinema and Tribeca Film Institute Summer Documentary Series. Visit the film page for VERY SEMI-SERIOUS.

Nitehawk Cinema & Tribeca Film Institute Summer Documentary Series presents (T)ERROR, a film that illuminates the fragile relationships between individual and surveillance state in modern America.

Q&A following the screening with Co-Director David Felix Sutcliffe along with Ramzi Kassem and Diala Shamas, attorneys with Project C.L.E.A.R. (Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility). Moderated by Cara Cusumano (Senior Film Programmer, Tribeca Film Festival). Introduction by Caryn Coleman, Senior Film Programmer, Nitehawk Cinema.

(T)ERROR is the first documentary to place filmmakers on the ground during an active FBI counterterrorism sting operation. Through the perspective of Saeed “Shariff” Torres, a 63-year-old Black revolutionary turned informant, viewers get an unfettered glimpse of the government’s counterterrorism tactics and the murky justifications behind them.

Winner of a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, (T)ERROR follows a 63-year-old FBI informant from Brooklyn to Pittsburgh on an assignment to befriend a suspected Taliban sympathizer. Yet first-time filmmaking team Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe soon conducts an investigation of its own. Without notifying their subject or the FBI, they interview the suspect and set the statements of the watched against the opinions of the watchers, until that inevitable moment when the Feds decide how to act on their information. A rare inside look at FBI undercover tactics in progress, (T)ERROR offers a thought-provoking analysis of the FBI as crime stoppers rather than investigators in post-9/11 America. Cabral and Sutcliffe create an impressive and courageous documentary that underlines the troubling results of an all-anti-terror mandate: a reliance on past offenders for access and new agents, a growing tendency to equate suspicion with guilt, a scandal-driven press, and methods that stretch the definition of entrapment. Intense and intricately crafted, (T)ERROR explores just how far we are going to prevent terror and exactly what liberties we are sacrificing to get there. —Arthur Ryel-Lindsey

Part of the 2015 Nitehawk Cinema and Tribeca Film Institute Summer Documentary Series. Visit the film page for (T)ERROR. 

ART SEEN presents PIERCING BRIGHTNESS, the British science-fiction film by internationally acclaimed artist Shezad Dawood. Q&A with Dawood following the screening.

Two youths land in a spaceship outside Preston. Their mission: to re-establish contact and affect the retrieval of the ‘Glorious 100’ sent to earth millennia ago in human form to study and observe the development of another race. After making contact with one of the 100, now a Pakistani shopkeeper (Bhasker Patel), they discover that many of their kind have become corrupted, forgetting their original purpose and slowly becoming influenced by and in turn influencing their adopted home.

Inspired by Lancashire having the highest rate of UFO sightings in the UK, as well as hosting one of the earliest splinter Mormon communities in the world, Piercing Brightness uses Preston and its inhabitants as a springboard to investigate religious, racial and class-based social hierarchies. Eerily beautiful, the film employs different formats and archival footage of UFO sightings to create a film that is as experimental as it is entertaining.

Piercing Brightness utilizes science fiction as a backdrop from which to contest fixed notions of race, migration and identity. It addresses issues of time, memory and belonging through a careful interplay of mainstream science fiction and its ongoing relationship to more experimental modes of film making. It is the debut feature film directed by acclaimed visual artist Shezad Dawood, scripted by cult novelist Kirk Lake with an original score by Makoto Kawabata of Acid Mothers Temple (Japan) and featuring music by Alexander Tucker. 

ART SEEN is in partnership with frieze.

Nitehawk’s LIVE SOUND CINEMA presents DADA BRUNCH: DREAMS THAT MONEY CAN BUY and  short films featuring a live score by PARLOR WALLS!

Artist Hans Richter, a pioneer in cinematic exploration, was an important Dadaist figure in the early 20th Century. His feature film, Dreams that Money Can Buy, involves contributions by a “who’s who” of important artists of this time period: Man Ray, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Fernand Léger, and Alexander Calder.

Made shortly after the end of the Second World War, at a time when the compulsive madness of the Dadaist and surrealist movements had been overtaken by even more darkly irrational events, the film reflects an unease amongst contemporary artists about their role in the world and their relation to the dominant art form of the time, popular cinema. Richter’s main narrative concerns a down-on-his-luck artist named Joe who discovers that he has the ability to show individuals their innermost dreams, and sets about trying to turn his talent into a profitable business (somewhere between entertainment and therapy) so that he can win back his ‘dream girl’. The rhyming voice-over and film noir stylings become rather twee (even if they are designed to parody as much as exploit the conventions of mainstream cinema), but all this is merely the framing device for the film’s real raison d’être: seven surreal sequences conceived and directed by prominent members of the avant garde as an aesthetic alternative to Hollywood’s dream machine. – Anton Bitel, Film 4 Review

Screening before Dreams that Money Can Buy will be the short films Ghosts Before Breakfast (Hans Richter, 1927) and Symphonie Diagonale (Viking Eggleing, 1924).

Providing the live score to Dada Brunch: Dreams that Money Can Buy is Parlor Walls, an experimental duo formed by singer/guitarist Alyse Lamb (EULA) and drummer/keyboardist Chris Mulligan.