Starring: Takuya Kimura, Yū Aoi, Tadanobu Asano

A daredevil driver and his secret love face off in the most dangerous and exciting car race in the universe, the Redline. Takeshi Koike (The Animatrix) directs and animates this high-speed thrill.

NoBudge is happy to present new work from a group of emerging indie filmmakers mostly based in New York. These eleven short films reflect a wide-ranging sampling of some of our preferred genres: character studies, animated films, realistic portraits, and absurd comedies. Seven of the films are NYC or Brooklyn premieres, and all directors will be in attendance for a post-film Q&A and Afterparty.

NoBudge is an online platform spotlighting the best in low-budget indie filmmaking. “One of the best places to sample what’s happening in low-budget cinema worldwide,” says Glenn Kenny of The New York Times. Its mission is to provide a supportive home for emerging indie filmmakers working with limited resources and without major industry connections, and to be a trusted discovery platform.

The movies:

The Pressure of Sweetness
New York Premiere
Director Jinho Myung present.
Unsure of the status and feelings of their complicated relationship, two undergraduates discuss their moments of intimacy.
(10 min)

In Our Secret Penthouse
New York Premiere
Director Max Tullio present.
After spending the day playing video games and hanging out, unexpected tension bubbles up between Derek and Blake as they go through a stolen issue of Penthouse magazine.
(5 min)

4622 Stillwater Circle
New York Premiere
Director Kati Rehbeck present.
Sadie spends a summer afternoon around her hometown in Wisconsin, while an old flame tries to find a new spot in her life.
(11 min)

Small Hours
New York Premiere
Director Charlie Weber present.
Inspired by the photo book format, this short documentary focuses on summer seasonal workers on a small island.
(7 min)

Ciervo
Director Pilar Garcia-Fernandezsesma present.
A young girl struggles to understand her uneasy balance between independence and submission.
(10 min)

Our Mine
Director Shayna Strype present.
A handful of greedy businessmen exploit a mountain’s riches in this ecofeminist tragicomedy.
(10 min)

Mary Mary Quite Contrary
New York Premiere
Director Rachel Moton present.
When aliens land in America looking for a female virgin to abduct, a sexually repressed young woman desperately attempts to lose her virginity.
(7 min)

Scary Car
Filmmakers Simple Town present.
Four friends do a ceremony in a car. It goes badly.
(14 min)

Good Samaritans
Directors Jeremy Levick and Johnny Frohman present.
A friendly neighbor returns a package to its proper owner.
(5 min)

Play This at My Funeral
New York Premiere
Director Ray Smiling present.
Three NYC vignettes revolving around music. Or, the songs you’d play at your funeral and only a few people would know why.
(8 min)

Squeegee
New York Premiere
Director Morgan Krantz present.
High-powered executive meets high-rise window-washer for an erotic rendezvous on opposite sides of her skyscraper window.
(11 min)

Starring: Sharon Mitchell, Tigr

Alternately distressing, instructive, contestable and fascinating, Juliet Bashore’s quasi-documentary plunge into the 1980s porn industry takes an unsparing look at issues of misogyny, drug abuse, and exploitation via the story of two women–the naïve newcomer Tigr and her partner, the magnetic, imperious porn veteran Sharon Mitchell–caught in a toxic romance.

By turns mesmerizing and unsettling, Kamikaze Hearts is both a fascinating record of pre-gentrification San Francisco’s X-rated underground and an intense, searing love story. The film offers a disturbing glimpse of the modification of bodies, feelings, and lives.

Starring: Buddy Hackett, Yasmine Bleeth

The Deuce does duty to “global warming” this August with a May/December – more like April/February!! – (g)ro(an)mance on the grimy streets of 1983 NYC in Rafal (“Screwballs”/”Loose Screws”) Zielinski’s HEY BABE! aka BABA! aka just BABE!

12-year-old Broadway wanna-be (Yasmine Bleeth, in her debut) butts heads and “hooks up” with hoofer has-been booze-hound BUDDY HACKETT!! Stealing, strip-teasing, roller skating!! Show tunes and smelly socks! A surrealistic ride to the edge of good taste – and then over it!! Head-scratchingly strange… wildly wrongheaded… wholly wackadoo fun!! See this wonderful weirdness unfurl before your disbelieving eyes at The Deuce!!

Starring: Kristine Froseth, Jon Bernthal, Luka Sabbat, Scott Speedman, Lena Dunham, Ebon Moss-Bachrach

Sarah Jo (Kristine Froseth) is a sensitive and naïve 26-year-old living on the fringes of Hollywood with her disillusioned mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and influencer sister (Taylour Paige). Working as a caregiver and just longing to be seen, she begins an exploratory affair with her older, married employer (Jon Bernthal), and is thrust into a startling education on sexuality, loss and power.

Starring: Jasmine Batchelor, Chris Perfetti, Sullivan Jones, Brooke Bloom

The Gotham and The Future of Film is Female present a special screening of Jeremy Hersh’s Gotham supported feature, The Surrogate. To make an additional $10 donation to The Future of Film is Female, select the “Event + Donation” ticket on the checkout screen.

Jess Harris, a 29 year old web designer for a nonprofit in Brooklyn, is ecstatic to be the surrogate and egg-donor for her best friend Josh and his husband Aaron. Twelve weeks into the pregnancy, a prenatal test comes back with unexpected results that pose a moral dilemma. As they all consider the best course of action, the relationship between the three friends is put to the test. The Surrogate has its World Premiere at SXSW in 2020.

The Gotham celebrates and nurtures independent film and media creators, providing career-building resources, access to industry influencers, and pathways to wider recognition.

Art-rock duo Parlor Walls will be performing a live score to Kino’s forthcoming release, Cinema’s First Nasty Women.  The program features a series of feminist shorts from the early Twentieth century featuring feminist protest, anarchic slapstick destruction, and suggestive gender play.  These rare and never-before-seen silent films were sourced from 13 international film archives and libraries, spotlighting an electrified parade of strong female leads.

Program:

1. Le bateau de Léontine (Léontine’s Boat) (France 1911), 5 min.

Co-presented by Screen Slate. Choose the “Repertory Reserved + $5 donation” ticket to add on a $5 donation to support Screen Slate with your ticket purchase!

An Orlando McMansion rigged with cameras is the setting for the website CollegeBoysLive.com, where thousands of viewers watch and virtually interact with the inhabitants of the house. The young men who end up here are escaping troubled pasts, and endeavor to find a makeshift family among themselves. George O’Donnell’s documentary captures the turbulence of their lives, and the friction from surrounding neighbors who deem the house to be no more than a hub of pornography and prostitution.

Starring: Alex Cox, Niketa Roman, Satish Ratakonda, Harper Taylor, Brynn Taylor

Join us for this feat of animation from legendary visual effects and stop-motion craftsman Phil Tippett (Return of the Jedi, Jurassic Park), a passion project decades in the making!

Follow The Assassin through a forbidding world of tortured souls, decrepit bunkers, and wretched monstrosities forged from the most primordial horrors of the subconscious mind. Every set, creature, and effigy in this macabre masterpiece is hand-crafted and painstakingly animated using traditional stop-motion techniques.

Mad God is a labor of love, a testament to the power of creative grit, and an homage to the timeless art of stop-motion animation. Ready your eyes. Ready your spirit. Prepare to meet your maker.

The Future of Film is Female presents a preview screening of Emelie Mahdavian’s sweeping documentary Bitterbrush. To make an additional $10 donation to The Future of Film is Female, select the “Event + Donation” ticket on the checkout screen.

Bitterbrush follows Hollyn Patterson and Colie Moline, range riders who are spending their last summer herding cattle in remote Idaho. Totally off the grid with only their dogs as companions, Hollyn and Colie brave inclement weather and perilous work conditions while pondering their futures. A portrait of friendship, life transitions and the work of two skilled young women in the isolated and beautiful landscape of the American West, Bitterbrush is an intimate portrayal of a way of life rarely seen on film.