Art Seen presents a special one night screening of six art-focused films for the third annual Nitehawk Shorts Festival.

Screening followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers and Caryn Coleman (Senior Film Programmer, Nitehawk Cinema). There will also be free copies of the latest issue of frieze magazine!

Following last year’s screening of works by pioneer filmmaker and artist Aldo Tambellini, Art Seen will again present a special art-focused program for the Nitehawk Shorts Festival. This year, Art Seen screens six short films by contemporary artists and filmmakers that show a fantastical look at the world around us. Real life and the extraordinary collide in Academy Award Nominated director Zachary Heinzerling’s surreal film based on the practice of artist Hugh Hayden as well as in Ronni Thomas’ fascinating documentary on Victorian taxidermist Walter Potter, Julia Oldham’s animated imagining of the dog who orbited the earth, and Marcel Dzama’s Dadaist love story that will feature a live score by Luscious Skin. The imaginative realm goes even further with Takeshi Murata’s giallo and video game inspired CGI animation about a misfit werewolf. Firmly rooting the program in the real world is the new frieze video, in partnership with Arts Council England, on the history and present day artistic struggles in London.

THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Frieze Video with Jonathan P. Watts | 2015 | 17 minutes
Critic Jonathan P. Watts takes a cross-generational look at how artists have survived in London from the 1970s until the present, and why they continue to stay. It’s the first in a three-part series of film and essay projects titled ‘Page and Screen’, supported by Arts Council England.

HUGH THE HUNTER
Zachary Heinzerling | 2014 | USA | 10 ½ minutes
A surrealist recontextualization of themes present in the work of artist Hugh Hayden through the form of a storybook fable.

LAIKA’S LULLABY
Julia Oldham | 2015 | USA | 6 ½ minutes
An animated short that tells the tragic story of the Soviet space dog Laika, who in 1957 became one of the first animals to be launched into space.

WALTER POTTER: THE MAN WHO MARRIED KITTENS
Ronni Thomas | 2015 | USA | 19 minutes
A short documentary on one of Victorian England’s most enigmatic and quirky characters, amateur taxidermist Walter Potter.

OM RIDER
Takeshi Murata | 2014 | USA | 11 ½ minutes
A suspenseful story of a murderous encounter between a punk werewolf and a dapper old man.

UNE DANSE DES BOUFFONS  (A JESTER’S DANCE)
Marcel Dzama | 2013 | USA | 36 minutes
Live score performed by Luscious Skin
In this Dadaist love story, there are many recurring themes: death and rebirth, multiple identities and doppelgängers, false prophets, love and love lost, the corruption of power and fragility of what is real or true.
Courtesy of David Zwirner, New York/London

ART SEEN is in partnership with frieze.
Program is subject to change.

The third annual Nitehawk Shorts Festival opens with a night of incredible documentary and narrative fiction shorts.

Introduction by festival programmers and a Q&A with filmmakers following the screening. 

YOU’RE INVITED! Official opening night party in our downstairs bar, Lo-Res, with complimentary drinks by Reyka Vodka!

MIRROR HEART
Mukunda Angulo | USA | 2015 | 7 minutes
An imaginative tale by The Wolfpack about a cast of dreamlike characters who unify around the necessity to create.

STAG
Kevin Newbury | USA | 2015 | 14 minutes
In the summer of 1963, fifteen-year-old tomboy Francesca  investigates the mysterious comings and goings in her father’s basement.

LET’S HAVE A SEIZURE
Azu Davidson | USA | 2015 | 4 minutes
World Premiere
On any old night alone at home, Harvey’s chaotic misgivings about love and desire wreak havoc on her emotional stability. She’s determined to make you see her worst side, if only she can pick which side it is!

BORN TO LOVE YOU
Jay Buim | USA | 2015 | 11 minutes
World Premiere
The film follows a young man named Khan who, despite an injury, dreams of a better life that can be achieved through playing professional hockey.

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ZOMBIES
Stephen Elliott | USA | 2015 | 8 minutes
The zombie apocalypse won’t solve your relationship problems.

STOP
Reinaldo Marcus Green | USA | 2014 | 9 minutes
A young man’s livelihood is put to the test when he gets stopped by the police on his way home from practice.

YOU SEE WHAT I’M TRYING TO SAY
Henry H P English | USA | 1967 | 9 minutes
A rare film about the great free jazz musician, Marion Brown, in 1967.

ONE MAN’S TRASH
Kelly Adams | USA | 2015 | 17 minutes
A short documentary on NYC Department of Sanitation’s Nelson Molina and his collection of found objects in a sanitation garage in East Harlem, “Treasures in the Trash.”

THE STICK
Hail Mary (Perry Strong, John Orphan, Greg Wayne) | USA | 2014 | 9 minutes
A comedic film about two thieves break into a house and try to outsmart a crime boss.

Program is subject to change.

Prize sponsorship provided by Heard City, a boutique audio post-production facility, and Nice Shoes, the full service, artist-driven design, animation, visual effects and color grading studio specializing in high-end commercials, web content, film, TV and music videos. One filmmaker will receive 14 hours (2 days) of Sound Design and/or Mix with one Sound Designer/Mixer courtesy of Heard City as well as 20 hours of color grading with a night colorist (valued at $16k) from Nice Shoes. The winner is selected by festival organizers and invited guests.

Nitehawk Cinema’s LOCAL COLOR and Tribeca Film Festival’s series on New York filmmakers presents a special screening of 3RD STREET BLACKOUT. Q&A after the screening with directors Negin Farsad and Jeremy Redleaf!

Mina and Rudy are that couple: adorable but not obnoxious. Intellectual but not condescending. Busy but still have time to post on Instagram. Yet, sometimes it seems this technology-obsessed duo can’t take their eyes off their screens.

3rd Street Blackout is a dark comedy – literally – that follows Mina and Rudy in the days after Hurricane Sandy left large parts of New York City without power. In this analogue world, their flaws are exposed, their commitment challenged and their mettle tested. How much would you pay to deliver a message during a blackout?

From the filmmakers, “We may lovingly satirize TED, web development and our over-dependency on technology, but we’re starting a conversation about intimacy in the world of hyper-connectivity and community-building in a world where we’ve all but forgotten our neighbors.” Rest assured, you’ve never laughed this hard in dim-lighting.

Starring: Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea, Karl Hardman, Judith Ridley, Keith Wayne, Marilyn Eastman

NOTE: This is a live music event creating a new film score for Night of the Living Dead. The original dialogue will be included!

What can be said about George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead? Not only did it give birth to the modern notion of what a “zombie” is and provided a socio-political context in which we can view the zombie (and horror film as a genre) but it is also one of the most important films of the 20th century. A true case of underground filmmaking capturing the current climate, Night of the Living Dead shows what happens when seven strangers wind up in a barnhouse during the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. And while the dead are rising, it’s the alive ones they really have to worry about.

Comedian Kevin Maher presents a two-hour video variety show of Horror footage and pop culture commentary.

LISTEN TO ME MARLON utilizes hundreds of hours of audio that Marlon Brandon recorded over the course of his life to tell the screen legend’s story.

With exclusive access to his extraordinary unseen and unheard personal archive including hundreds of hours of audio recorded over the course of his life, this is the definitive Marlon Brando cinema documentary. Charting his exceptional career as an actor and his extraordinary life away from the stage and screen with Brando himself as your guide, the film will fully explore the complexities of the man by telling the story uniquely from Marlon’s perspective, entirely in his own voice. No talking heads, no interviewees, just Brando on Brando and life.

Nitehawk Cinema presents two midnite screenings of APPLESAUCE featuring surprise prizes and an introduction by 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.

Nitehawk is proud to bring back APPLESAUCE after our debut screening in our LOCAL COLOR monthly series with the Tribeca Film Festival that features independent New York filmmakers.

Turning transparent isn’t the only result of Jack’s scientific experiment in James Whale’s mesmerizing THE INVISIBLE MAN!

It’s inevitable that complications would arise after chemically altering the fundamental fabric of one’s own body to turn invisible. For Dr. Jack Griffen, the main side-effects seem to be anger, hostility, and severe case sarcasm. Made only a couple of years after the breakout release of Frankenstein in 1931, The Invisible Man continues Whales’ directorial adaptation of literature’s misunderstood and marginalized characters onto the big screen. Whales’ treatment of these misanthropic characters is simultaneously heart-breaking and angering but, unlike our dear Frankenstein’s monster, Jack is a monster of his own making, a victim of his own greed for knowledge. Based on H.G. Wells’ science-fiction novella, the film serves (like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein) as a cautionary tale of humans playing “god.”

Part of Nitehawk’s October SCIENCE! midnite and brunch series.