Starring: Masataka Kubota, Nao Omori, Shota Sometani, Sakurako Konishi
The film is the prolific auteur Takashi Miike at his most fun and anarchic. A noir-tinged yakuza film blending genres in the story of a young boxer and a call girl who fall passionately in love while getting innocently caught up in a drug-smuggling scheme over the course of one night in Tokyo.
We close the 2019 Nitehawk Shorts Festival with eight short films that present stories on the intimacy of the nail salon, absurdist, dark comedies, and powerful coming-of-age stories about friendship.
Q&A WITH FILMMAKERS
PROGRAM
THE NEIGHBORS’ WINDOW
MARSHALL CURRY / U.S.A. / 2019 / DRAMA / 20 MIN
A mother of young children who’s grown frustrated with her daily routine and husband has her life shaken up when two free-spirited twenty-somethings move in across the street and she discovers that she can see into their apartment.
SEE YOU NEXT TIME
CRYSTAL KAYIZA / U.S.A. / 2019 / DOCUMENTARY / ENGLISH & MANDARIN WITH SUBTITLES / 6 MIN
See You Next Time reaches across the nail salon table to capture the intimate moments shared between a Chinese nail artist and her Black client.
PRINCESS RITA
BLAIR WATERS / U.S.A. / 2019 / DARK COMEDY / 10 MIN / NEW YORK PREMIERE
A lonely insurance adjuster becomes consumed by his desire to meet his internet girlfriend, who claims to be a princess from a faraway country.
LAYING OUT
JOANNA ARROW / U.S.A. / 2019 / COMEDY, FANTASY, DRAMA / 5 MIN
An absurd comedy about a woman who examines her relationship with a man she has just started seeing in depth, and begins to explore her own misogyny, fantasies about having a penis and hatred for traditional gender roles.
THE DISHWASHER
NICK HARTANTO & SAM RODEN / U.S.A. / 2019 / DRAMA, COMEDY / ENGLISH & SPANISH WITH SUBTITLES / 13 MIN
A chef at a fine dining restaurant in New York City asks a Mexican dishwasher to find good tortillas.
ADA
ELEANORE PIENTA / U.S.A. / 2018 / SILENT COMEDY / 16MM TO DIGITAL / 11 MIN
Ada is an unlikeable competitive walker who makes a dress out of toilet paper and has an unfortunate run-in with a hose.
NIGHT SWIM
VICTORIA RIVERA / U.S.A. / 2019 / DRAMA / 12 MIN
Three teenage girls break into a shut down pool. When uninvited guests show up, their friendship is tested and one of them is left behind.
SKIP DAY
IVETE LUCAS & PATRICK BRESNAN / U.S.A. / 2018 / DOCUMENTARY / 17 MIN
Intimate glimpses of one very special day in the lives of high-school seniors from an industrial corner of the Florida Everglades: prom’s over, the future is uncertain, and the irresistible pull of the beach makes the long-time friends drive 60 miles to chill, pose and revel in the waves.
The eight shorts in the NSF19 OPENING NITE program feature documentaries on New York communities, Brooklyn drag queens, and a firefighter’s love of cinema along with narrative stories about immigration, coming of age, sex, and self-pleasure.
Q&A WITH FILMMAKERS
PROGRAM
SYMPHONY
JAI MOSELEY / U.S.A. / 2019 / DOCUMENTARY / 4 MIN
A kaleidoscopic film of unencumbered moments between people and places, centered in feelings, memory, and experiences that are intrinsic to us all. Filmed in Harlem, Inwood, and Washington Heights, New York.
FEATHERS
A.V. ROCKWELL / U.S.A. / 2018 / DRAMA / 20 MIN
Elizier, an emotionally-dejected new enrollee at The Edward R. Mill School for Lost Boys, must overcome memories of a tragic past and the present hazing by his peers in order to tackle larger issues dominating his young life.
A LINE BIRDS CANNOT SEE
AMY BENCH / U.S.A. / 2019 / DOCUMENTARY, ANIMATION / 9 MIN / NEW YORK PREMIERE
Separated from her mother by smugglers, a determined 12-year-old sets out across a desert with only a plastic sack for cover, survives starvation on the streets of Ciudad Juarez, and escapes kidnappers to seek her mother and a place where they can be safe again.
NARMIN’S BIRTHDAY
JENNY GROZA & LYDIA CORNETT / U.S.A. / 2018 / DOCUMENTARY / 18 MIN
The story of Narmin, an Azerbaijani teenager living in Brooklyn, and her grandmother Ismat, as Narmin plans her 16th birthday party to be as “American” as possible–much to the dismay of Ismat.
MEMORY XPERIMENT: KATHY ACKER
AIDA RUILOVA / U.S.A. / 2019 / DRAMA / 16MM & VIDEO TO DIGITAL / 7 MIN / WORLD PREMIERE
A short film based on the literary work of author Kathy Acker. Set in the 70’s, the film is a coming of age story of a young female writer exploring her identity through sex and her writing.
HOW DOES IT START
AMBER SEALEY / U.S.A. / 2019 / DRAMA / 16 MIN
It’s 1983 and 12-year-old Rain wants sex, the only problem is she has no idea what that means. With her self-absorbed parents distracted by their recent divorce, Rain is left alone to navigate the complexities of love and adulthood, and learns to do it her own way.
THE MAKING OF PANTHERA
SAVANNAH O’LEARY & RENEE MAO / U.S.A. / 2019 / DOCUMENTARY / 5 MIN
Weaving cinéma vérité and choreographed drama, this short documentary follows Brooklyn-based drag queen Panthera Lush and her chameleonic friends to take a closer look at the creative process behind the ever-evolving art form of drag.
ME TIME
IYABO BOYD / U.S.A. / 2019 / COMEDY / 11 MIN
After a stressful work day, DEBORAH settles in for some intimate “me time” at home until three other aspects of her psyche appear, dredge up deep-seated inhibitions, and threaten to derail her plan.
BEST PICTURE
JAY GIAMPIETRO / U.S.A. / 2019 / DOCUMENTARY / 6 1/2 MIN
Surprises are in store for a movie-obsessed firefighter who hosts an annual Academy Awards party.
A film about the love affair between Jamaican and British Youth culture told through the prism of one the most iconic record labels in history, Trojan Records. Combining archive footage, interview and drama, Rudeboy tells the story of Trojan Records by placing it at the heart of a cultural revolution that unfolded in the council estates and dance floors of late 60’s and early 70’s Britain and how that period of immigration and innovation transformed popular music and culture.
Featuring a cast of legendary artists including Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Toots Hibbert, Ken Boothe, Neville Staple, Marcia Griffiths, Dave Barker, Dandy Livingstone, Lloyd Coxsone, Pauline Black, Derrick Morgan and more.
Across 2017/2018 Depeche Mode embarked on their Global Spirit Tour, in which they performed to more than 3 million fans at 115 shows across the globe. This new visually-striking film, directed by award-winning filmmaker and longtime artistic collaborator Anton Corbijn, captures the energy and spectacle of the band’s performance from the tour along with a deeper look into how their music and shows have been woven into the fabric of their fans’ lives.
Through the deeply emotional stories of six special Depeche Mode fans, the film shows not only how and why the band’s popularity and relevance has continued to grow over the course of their career, but provides a unique look into music’s incredible power to build communities, enable people to overcome adversity, and create connections across the boundaries of language, location, gender, age, and circumstance.
Artfully shot and expertly edited, Depeche Mode: SPIRITS in the Forest goes beyond the typical concert film, weaving together exhilarating musical performances, filmed at the final shows of the Global Spirit Tour in Berlin’s famed Waldbühne (“Forest Stage”), with intimate documentary footage filmed in fans’ hometowns across the globe.
Just can’t get enough? After the movie, join us in upstairs bar for Music Video Time Machine presents DARKWAVE! Enjoy on-screen projections of music videos by Depeche Mode, along with clips by the Cure, New Order, Erasure, Yaz, the Jesus & Mary Chain, OMD, Sisters of Mercy, INXS, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Love & Rockets and more.
(Hint) Anthology with each episode starring the same person. Paint it Black.
(Hint) Boy kills girl, boy hides in house. It’s not bad.
(Hint) Anthology with culture. Submitted for your approval.
Starring: Frankie Avalon, Dwayne Hickman, Deborah Walley
Hit the slopes of hilarity with THE DEUCE this December, for a SKI PARTY with all the “ski-nicks and ski-chicks” at Times Square’s Lyric Theatre – where it opened on October 22, 1965… on a double bill with SERGEANT DEADHEAD (also starring Frankie Avalon!)!
“Beach Movie” bozos Frankie Avalon and Dwayne Hickman are college besties who find that their feeble attempts at dating are falling flat with the girls… so they decide to become some themselves – donning dresses and tresses in a desperate attempt to sneak a peek at the feminine psyche during a school ski trip! And while they’re learning nothing about what the girls want in a guy, the BMOC uber-hunk “somehow” develops the hots for “lady” Dwayne!
It’s powder-puffs in the powder as the Beach-Blanket-Bingo crowd take their bikinis to the snowy slopes for a surreal swirl of sight-gags, slapstick, stupid stunts and lo-fi special-effects in Sun Valley! Hijinks and high-jumps! Lesley Gore go-go-ing on a school bus!! James Brown and The Famous Flames as a cardigan’d singing ski-patrol! With genre-fave Dick Miller taking a turn as a taxi-cab driver, and a pesky yodeling polar bear that keeps randomly popping up?!?
Sandwiched right in the middle of AIP’s twelve “official” Beach Party movies – and the second of FIVE released in 1965 alone (!) – SKI PARTY hits a high point of strange for the series, playing with what had already become a standard formula for the films and seemingly adhering to no sense of logic… with enough energy and youthful exuberance to keep it all on track, just before the series took its decidedly “downhill” turn… (get it??)
Starring: Dora Madison, Tru Collins, Rhys Wakefield, Jeremy Gardner, Graham Skipper, George Wendt
A brilliant painter facing the worst creative block of her life turns to anything she can to complete her masterpiece, spiraling into a hallucinatory hellscape of drugs, sex, and murder in the sleazy underbelly of Los Angeles.
