New York Surf Film Festival presents a screening of Step N’ Soul, Cactus Wagon, and The North Canyon: Nazaré Calling…

Step N’ Soul  (2012) directed by Toma Jablon, starring Sam Bleakley (5 minutes)
Step N Soul is a short film that explores the synergy between jazz, surfing, dance and improvisation by capturing a series of surfing performances choreographed and synchronised to Wynton Marsalis Sunflowers track. It features English pro surfer Sam Bleakley who uses an mp3 waterproof player and surfs his longboard while listening to Marsalis track.

This is a unique approach to surf film making and surfing itself. The goal is to explore more of the potential the music brings to our experiences through action sport and life in general.

Cactus Wagon  (2012) directed by Denny Aaberg, starring Jan-Michael Vincent and Denny Aaberg (10 minutes)
When Big Wednesday went south, so did its star, Jan-Michael Vincent. He hauled the film’s screenwriter, Denny Aaberg, with him. Turns out Denny had a Super-8 Camera. Across the border and into the hills they went. To the ag towns and bracero buses of the Valle de San Quintin. Through the sage-to-Sonoran transition zone of Roasario de Arriba. Past the charismatic mega flora of the Valle de los Cirios. Onward through the featureless Vizcaino. And finally – finally! To San Juanicio. Rattlesnake Point. Punta Pequena. Scorpion Bay.

In this short film you’ll see Scorpion one year after the trans-peninsula highway was opened. No streets, no services, no Gringo Hill. Hardscrabble, empty, and perfect. Aaberg and Vincent surfed, drank, and licked their wounds. As the film’s Matt Barlow, Jan-Michael, said, “I surf just ’cause it’s good to ride with your friends.” Here’s Jan – and Denny – doing just that.

The North Canyon: Nazaré Calling (2011) with Garrett McNamara directed by Garrett McNamara, Polvo Concepts, Paulo Caldeira, Gustavo Neves, starring Garrett McNamara, Nicole Macias, Cj Macias, Andrew Cotton, Al Mennie (60 minutes)
In October 2011 Garrett McNamara returned to explore the giant waves formed by the Nazaré Canyon. This is the story of one month leading up to an incredible ride, told by a group of people who helped to shine light on one of the biggest wave spots in the world.

Coming back to Nitehawk on Friday, October 25! A re-imagining of the 2010 Mexican film of the same name, director Jim Mickle paints a gripping portrait of an introverted family struggling to keep their macabre traditions alive.

In WE ARE WHAT WE ARE, a seemingly wholesome and benevolent family, the Parkers have always kept to themselves, and for good reason. Behind closed doors, patriarch Frank (Bill Sage, BOARDWALK EMPIRE) rules his family with a rigorous fervor, determined to keep his ancestral customs intact at any cost. As a torrential rainstorm moves into the area, tragedy strikes and his daughters Iris (Ambyr Childers, THE MASTER) and Rose (Julia Garner, MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE, SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR) are forced to assume responsibilities that extend beyond those of a typical family. As the unrelenting downpour continues to flood their small town, the local authorities begin to uncover clues that bring them closer to the secret that the Parkers have held closely for so many years.

Danny Trejo returns as ex-Federale agent MACHETE in Robert Rodriguez’s MACHETE KILLS! 

Machete Kills is an action-packed thrill ride about the adventures of legendary secret agent Machete Cortez (Danny Trejo). In his latest mission, Machete is recruited by the U.S. President (Carlos Estevez) to stop a crazed global terrorist (Mel Gibson) from starting a nuclear war. With a bounty on his head, Machete faces death at every turn from an all-star cast of deadly assassins. Breaking all the rules, visionary director Robert Rodriguez leads this star-studded ensemble on one of the wildest adventures to save the world ever captured on film!

A documentary that celebrates Rick Hall, the founder of FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and the signature sound he developed in songs such as “I’ll Take You There”, “Brown Sugar”, and “When a Man Loves a Woman”.

Muscle Shoals a place filled with magic and music, legend and folklore, where the river is inhabited by a Native American spirit who has lured some of the greatest Rock and Roll and Soul legends of all time, and drawn from them some of the most uplifting, defiant, and important music ever created. In Muscle Shoals, Alabama, music runs through the hills, the river, and the spirit of the people. It is a place where, even before the Civil Rights Movement really took shape, the color of your skin didn’t matter inside the studio.

Long lost but now found – An American Hippie in Israel in 35mm! 

American hippie-soldier Mike (Asher Tzarfati) travels to Israel shortly after his involvement in the Vietnam War. He gets to know three Israelis — stage actress Elizabeth (Lily Avidan), a female hippie friend (Tzila Karney), and her Hebrew-speaking boyfriend Komo (Shmuel Wolf). They join a bigger group of hippies and barely survive when a duo of stalking mimes gun down the crowd. The quartet flee to an uninhabited island along with a goat. They settle down and wake up the following sunrise to find that their boat and goat have vanished. The shark-infested waters make it impossible for them to swim to the mainland. Suddenly, they turn from friends to fiends as they attempt to kill each other.

Nitehawk’s annual Halloween nite Live Sound Cinema event returns this year with a presentation of Phantom of the Opera featuring a live score by Black Lodge!

Ghosts! Deaths! Romance! The man of a thousand faces, Lon Chaney, stars in this 1925 classic American silent film in which a mad, disfigured composer seeks love with a lovely young opera singer. Adapted from Gaston Leroux’s novel of the same name, the Phantom haunts the Paris Opera House, murdering those who stand in the way of the women he loves becoming a star. The movie remains most famous for Chaney’s intentionally horrific, self-applied make-up, which was kept a studio secret until the film’s premiere. Just like every other year, there’s no better way to kick off your Halloween nite than with Nitehawk and our spooky silent films!

Black Lodge, lead by guitarist/composer Geoff Gersh, is a collective of black metal inspired musicians who re-score films then perform live to the film.

MASSACRE VIDEO PRESENTS: Nitehawk’s ONE NITE ONLY presentation of the re-released Black Devil Doll from Hell includes a Q&A with Director Chester N. Turner, moderated by Matt Desaderio from Horror Boobs.

Helen, a God fearing and good Christian woman is surrounded by a world obsessed with sex while she still believes sex should only occur between a married couple, no matter what her desires tell her. After stopping by a strange store, Helen finds herself drawn to an unusual doll that supposedly has the ability to make a person’s desires come true. When Helen takes the doll home, she finds out that there is truth to that promise and there is a price that comes with it.

This October The Deuce dispels your doldrums and delivers with a 35mm screening of Abel Ferrara’s THE DRILLER KILLER in the Times Square Theater at Nitehawk Cinema!

Followed by a Q&A with very special guest, cinematographer Ken Kelsch!

With Times Square Theater history, prizes, surprises, music by DJ BONES, and drink special at the after-party! Hosted and presented by ‘The Deuce Boys’: Jeff, Andy, and Joe. Seating begins approximately around 9pm.

NYC circa the late seventies – making it here can be MURDER! Director Abel Ferrara delineates the Hell of trying to hack it in the heart of this decrepit core-rotten Big Apple. Equal parts Art-house and Exploitation – loud and lucid, acute and cutting to the quick – THE DRILLER KILLER tells an almost all-too-understandable tale of madness in a maddening city. Looming eviction, overdue bills, oblivious roommates, the cacophony of noisy neighbors and the pressure-cooker of the “art” world, all spiral head-first into a hallucination of homicide and horror! No-Wave Punks, Pop-Art and power drills! Bums and bombast! A portrait of the artist pushed too far until…There are those who kill violently!

Shot over the two years of 1977/78 in and around Ferrara’s own Union Square apartment with many the same people he would work with for years to come – THE DRILLER KILLER quickly becomes less your standard slasher/horror and more a personal and pointed look at subcultures and fringe-dwellers in a city impossibly riddled with a readiness to squelch those values it professes to embrace.. Sold and promoted as grindhouse-gore-fest (even to the point of being banned on video in the U.K.) – Ferrara’s ferocious fable found its way from the downtown 8th Street Playhouse to fester like a tumor for years on 42nd Street. Burrowing into the brains of Deuce denizens on December 14, 1979 at the area’s namesake movie-house – The Times Square Theater – this month the skull THE DRILLER KILLER cracks may be your own!

Abel Ferrara, director and star of THE DRILLER KILLER, is the world renowned NYC-based filmmaker of modern classics like BAD LIEUTENANT, KING OF NEW YORK, MS. 45, FEAR CITY, and 4:44 LAST DAY ON EARTH.

In celebration of Nitehawk’s 5th anniversary, The Deuce Jockey’s leave Time Square to stump stagger around the streets of old Williamsburg with STREET TRASH. Presented in 35mm and will have writer/producer ROY FRUMKES in person!

Anniversary Note: Nitehawk first screened Street Trash in April 2012. THE DEUCE debuted at Nitehawk in September 2013 with a screening of Vice Squad.

Get off the Glittering Gulch and head east for a walkabout of ol’ WillyB…

When the owner of a liquor store starts selling 60 year old bad/cheap wine to the local hobos, they literally start melting to death. An overzealous cop tries to get to the bottom of all these strange deaths while also dealing with a deranged Vietnam vet. Street Trash is the kind of ridiculous, gross-out midnight fair you can enjoy regardless of where you live, but the film holds a special place in our hearts here at Nitehawk because much of it was filmed right up the road in Greenpoint in mid-1980’s, capturing the neighborhood before the wave of cultural and economic changes swept through the neighborhood, taking much of Street Trash’s trash with it.

Nitehawk’s blog traces Street Trash’s filming locations through Greenpoint with this handy map!

Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans

Darren Aronofsky will certainly break your heart with his second feature, Requiem for a Dream. Yes, it’s depressing but the film is also an exquisite piece of art that chronicles the desperation and sadness that surrounds drug addiction. On the one hand there is the young and beautiful couple who, with their friends, tumble down the dark road of hard drugs. On the other hand there’s the lonely mother whose delusional solitude leads to a dependency on diet pills/uppers. Somewhere in the middle is either the escape or the end.