Moments Like This Never Last is a filmic exploration of the life and legacy of the late artist Dash Snow. Born Dashiell Alexander Whitney Snow, Dash Snow rejected a life of privilege to make his own way as an artist on the streets of downtown New York City in the late 1990s. Developing from a notorious graffiti tagger into an international art star, he documented his drug- and alcohol-fueled nights with the surrogate family he formed with friends and fellow artists Ryan McGinley, Dan Colen and Kunle Martins before his death by heroin overdose in an East Village hotel room at the age of 27. Downtown was an abandoned wasteland that became ripe for artists to have their way, drawing the attention of the art world ready to cash in on it. High stakes, drugs and the pressure to keep producing took its toll becoming a cautionary tale and forever changing the course of art history.

Starring: Hiam Abbass, Nassima Benchicou, Nadia Kaci, Biyouna, Fadila Belkebla

Nine women of various backgrounds gather in an Algerian hammam to talk about their lives.

Starring: Anthony Quinn, Giulietta Masina, Richard Basehart, Aldo Silvani, Marcella Rovena

4K restoration

When Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina), a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò (Anthony Quinn) to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband’s coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto (Richard Basehart), the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.

Starring: Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima, Yukiko Shimazaki, Kamatari Fujiwara, Daisuke Katô, Isao Kimura, Minoru Chiaki, Seiji Miyaguchi

There will be a 15 minute intermission about halfway through the film

A samurai answers a village’s request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six others to help him teach the people how to defend themselves, and the villagers provide the soldiers with food. A giant battle occurs when 40 bandits attack the village.

Starring: William Hopper, Nancy Kelly, Patty McCormack, Evelyn Varden

Air Force Colonel Kenneth Penmark (William Hopper) and his wife, Christine (Nancy Kelly), dote on their pig-tailed daughter, Rhoda (Patty McCormack) — as does their lonely landlady, Monica Breedlove (Evelyn Varden). But self-centered Rhoda has a secret tendency for selfishness and loves to accumulate gifts, whether given or stolen, in her room. Christine keeps her knowledge of her daughter’s darker side to herself, but when a schoolmate of Rhoda’s dies mysteriously, her self-deception unravels.

Starring: Jack Hedley, Almanta Suska, Howard Ross, Andrea Occhipinti

A burned-out New York police detective teams up with a college psychoanalyst to track down a vicious serial killer randomly stalking and killing various young women around the city.

Starring: Christopher Connelly, Laura Lenzi, Brigitta Boccoli, Giovanni Frezza, Cinzia de Ponti

An archaeologist opens an Egyptian tomb and accidently releases an evil spirit. His young daughter becomes possessed by the freed entity and, upon their arrival back in New York, the gory murders begin.

Starring: Auggi Alvarez, Jody Rovick, Jerry Angell, Carol Barta, Rodney Joiner

Vinyl DJ set pre-party at 7:30

Members of a teenage street gang break into an abandoned movie theater, kill the owners, and dump their bodies in the basement. But by doing so they have unknowingly awakened an army of satanic beasts led by an ancient witch named Haggis, who have been waiting over 100 years to escape the theater and destroy all life on earth. The gang must fight to the last drop during a gore-soused night of slaughter to stop the demons from breaking loose, while they are torn to pieces and devoured!

Director/ producer/ co-writer Todd Sheets graduates with full honors from his SOV undergrad work in his previous Zombie Rampage and Moonchild with this 1993 opus, that is stuffed to the edges with action, clever camera and lighting work, and truckloads of the sloppy red stuff that would become his trademark in the low budget realm. He outdoes himself at every turn with the splatter set pieces and inventive kills, and gives nods to everything from Deadbeat at Dawn, Hellraiser and Demons, all set in the ultimate filming location – an actual vintage movie palace.

“America’s religion is money… if you don’t have money, you’re just nothing – a used condom.” So proclaims one of the many denizens of the “Crossroads of the World” documented in Richard Sandler’s astounding, two-hour odyssey THE GODS OF TIMES SQUARE.

A visual spectacle, THE GODS OF TIMES SQUARE is a dizzying tour down the late-20th Century Deuce, with vertiginous, kaleidoscopic B-roll… as chaotic and exciting as any late-night dissent into the district: shots of condemned buildings adorned with Calvin Klein ads and shuttered, once glorious movie palaces featuring Jenny Holzer’s dystopian haiku on their marquees. Sandler, who spent decades capturing NYC streets via his black & white still images, embraces the inhabitants of this forsaken zone and asks deeply empathetic questions with an earnest curiosity about and concern for the human condition. Says one pseudo-prophet, “God has directed us to meet here.”

And we meet born-again zealots of all denominations: gospel-singing buskers, unhoused shamans, wannabe priests, makeshift rabbis, phony evangelicals, and an alcoholic, self-described “porno addict.” (“I love Lucifer’s kinkiness.”) Most heartbreaking is “Jim,” who’s convinced that he is Jesus incarnate and, in 1994, will marry Madonna (the pop icon, not the mother of God), release a triple-platinum grunge album, then “enter into international affairs.”

Shot over six years during the most significant transition of power and property in the neighborhood’s history, THE GODS OF TIMES SQUARE features a second-act eulogy for Frank Hakim and his restaurant Grand Luncheonette, located adjacent to the Selwyn Theatre’s lobby, which he was forced to close after 58 years in operation. Frank’s wife laments, “There is no room on the same block for Walt Disney and us.”

Profoundly elegiac, THE GODS OF TIMES SQUARE affirms the breadth and mystery of humanity – urban or otherwise. At one point, Richard and a bystander conclude, while watching a man defecating in the gutter outside of the Howard Johnson’s, that “everybody’s equal in shit.”

This restoration, made possible by Jake Perlin and The Safdie Brothers, commemorates an undeniably urgent and vital moment in documentary filmmaking and New York history. Says Josh Safdie of Richard Sandler’s masterpiece:

“Once upon a time, town squares were comment sections, where people brave enough to shout their opinions did it face to face.  There is no stronger belief than one’s faith, and what used to be Times Square was a town square on steroids.  As the 20th century came to an end, we entered the corporatized Y2K age.  Spirituality seemed an essential grounding force, something to unify us.  But whose God is supreme? What is God? What is God’s place in the digital age? When Disney invaded Times Square, it went up against the smut.  It was a magnet for all things good and bad.  It was hell with attractions.  I still secretly wish to be yelled at whenever I enter Times Square…”