After two sell out screenings, it’s back! Heavy Metal Splatterfest DEATHGASM shreds again at midnite.
After his mother is institutionalized, misfit Brodie is sent to live with his Uncle Albert and Aunt Mary, whose son David torments him. A heavy metal fan, Brodie forms a band called DEATHGASM with his friends Zakk, Dion, and Giles. When bandmates break into a local house, they discover that one of their idols, reclusive musician Rikki Daggers, lives there. Daggers gives the band magical sheet music, which a cult later murders him to find. Skeptical of the sheet music’s power, the band plays it, only to summon a demon. With the help of his crush, Medina, and his bandmates, Brodie must find a way to defeat the demon.
Exploitation pioneer Doris Wishman makes the move from nudies to slasher with A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER.
A mondo splatterfest from cult director Doris Wishman, A Night to Dismember chronicles a single bloody night in the life of the only remaining member of a cursed family. Production began for the film after Wishman witnessed the runaway success of Halloween and its imitators – smelling money in the air, the seasoned director hopped on the slasher bandwagon, casting porn actress Samantha Fox in the lead. Troubled from the get go, bankruptcy caused the project’s film lab to shut down and over half of the film ended up in the dumpster. Ever vigilant, Wishman finished her frankenfilm with reshoots and overdubs, amounting in a bizarro slasher mess for the ages.
Part of Nitehawk’s September SHE MADE IT brunch, midnite, and special event series.
Nitehawk and Nerd York City celebrate the 30th anniversary of cult horror anime VAMPIRE HUNTER D with a freshly remastered HD presentation from Sentai Filmworks and giveaways courtesy of Dark Horse Comics.
Humans have a rough run in the 10,000 year gap between our time and the blighted future of Vampire Hunter D. It’s the year 12,090 A.D., and humans live as serfs under the fierce rule of ancient aristocratic vampires and their personal cadre of ghouls, bandits and beasties. When one such lord falls for a young farm girl, she hires a wandering stranger as a bodyguard. Fortunately for her, this wandering loner is D, a legendary vampire hunter and the only person capable of standing up to the powerful vampire lord.
Directed by Toyoo Ashida of Fist of the North Star fame and based on a popular series of horror novels by Hideyuki Kikuchi, Vampire Hunter D is one of anime’s first blood-and-guts fantasies, blending elements of American westerns with classic European horror and cyber punk. The film garnered an international cult following thanks to the import-friendly home video market.
Part of Nitehawk’s September ANIME AFTER DARK midnite series.
Starring: Kôichi Yamadera, Emi Shinohara, Takeshi Aono, Daisuke Gôri
A dark fantasy set in feudal Japan, Ninja Scroll spins a wild yarn about a wandering samurai, Jubei Kibagami, who’s hired to thwart a lesser lord’s plot to smuggle a boatload of gold from under the Shogun’s nose. Protecting the shipment are The Eight Devils of Kimon, a nasty gang of super-powered toughs with the likes of a blood-drinking golem, a blind swordsman, and an insect-controlling dwarf in their ranks, all led by a psychotic immortal from Jubei’s past.
An imaginative and lurid sex-and-violence action flick, Ninja Scroll has had more success in the U.S. market than it ever had in Japan. The movie helped usher in a wave of interest in Japanese animation in the 1990s when it became a video store staple alongside titles like Akira and Ghost in the Shell.
Nitehawk Cinema’s LOCAL COLOR and Tribeca Film Festival series highlighting New York filmmakers launches with a special presentation of YOUNG BODIES HEAL QUICKLY. Q&A after the screening with director Andrew T. Betzer!
At the age twenty, Older (Gabriel Croft, Fake It So Real) escapes incarceration and seeks out his ten year old little brother, Younger. Clearly the bad influence, Older gets the boys mixed up in the “accidental” killing of a young girl and they are forced to go into hiding as they wait for their mother to rescue them. Thanks to their mother, the brothers now have a car and enough money to begin their bizarre road trip. Along the way, they encounter a host of people ranging from their unwelcoming sister (Kate Lyn Sheil, Sun Don’t Shine and House of Cards) to a troubled maid and her violent lover. Eventually, they wind up on the doorstep of their father’s compound, wherein the three of them are quickly reminded why they are estranged in the first place. Just as the walls are about to close in, their father packs up his brood and takes them on a road trip of his own. They join several militaria enthusiasts in a remote forest where they re-enact actual Vietnam War battles. Once in the “jungle,” the three of them revert to hostile tendencies building up to a final confrontation between father and sons, leaving the audience to decide what is real and what is make believe.
Part of Nitehawk’s LOCAL COLOR monthly series with the Tribeca Film Festival that features independent New York filmmakers.
Nitehawk Cinema & Tribeca Film Institute Summer Documentary Series begins with a presentation of LIVE FROM NEW YORK, the film that opened the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.
Q&A following the screening with Director Bao Nguyen and Producers JL Pomeroy and Tom Broecker, moderated by Alex Hannibal (Manager of Documentary Programming, Tribeca Film Institute). Introduction by Caryn Coleman, Senior Film Programmer, Nitehawk Cinema.
A New York institution and comedy powerhouse, “Saturday Night Live” has been reflecting and influencing life in the United States for 40 years. “Live From New York!” Saturday Night Live has been reflecting and influencing the American Story for 40 years. Live From New York! explores the show’s early years, an experiment from a young Lorne Michaels and his cast of unknowns, and follows its evolution into a comedy institution. The film looks at SNL as a living time capsule, encompassing decades of American politics, media, tragedy, and popular culture with an irreverent edge. goes deep inside this cultural phenomenon exploring the laughter that pulses through American politics, tragedy and popular culture. Archival footage is interwoven with stolen moments and exclusive commentary from SNL legends, journalists, hosts, musical guests, crew and others influenced by the comedy giant.
Live From New York! captures what has enabled SNL to continually refresh itself over nearly 800 episodes and keep America laughing for 40 years.
Part of the 2015 Nitehawk Cinema and Tribeca Film Institute Summer Documentary Series. Visit the film page for LIVE FROM NEW YORK.
Nitehawk Cinema & Tribeca Film Institute Summer Documentary Series presents VERY SEMI-SERIOUS, an offbeat meditation on humor, art and the genius of the single panel.
Q&A following the screening with Executive Producer Deborah Shaffer and graphic novelist Liana Finck, moderated by Jose Rodriguez (Director of Documentary Programming, Tribeca Film Institute). Introduction by Caryn Coleman, Senior Film Programmer, Nitehawk Cinema.
The New Yorker is the undisputed standard bearer of the single panel cartoon. Whether they leave us amused, inspired, or even a little baffled, the iconic cartoons have become an instantly recognizable cultural touchstone over the past 90 years.
With Very Semi-Serious, viewers get an unprecedented glimpse into the process behind the cartoons. Legends Roz Chast and Mort Gerberg submit their work alongside hopefuls like graphic novelist Liana Finck. While on the other side of the desk, Cartoon Editor Bob Mankoff sifts through hundreds of submissions every week to bring readers a carefully curated selection of insightful and humorous work, striving to nurture new talent and represent the magazine’s old guard, while also considering how his industry must evolve to stay relevant. Leah Wolchok’s light-hearted and sometimes poignant debut film offers a window into The New Yorker’s signature brand of subtle, contemplative humor, and perhaps also onto what it means to laugh at ourselves. – Cara Cusumano
Part of the 2015 Nitehawk Cinema and Tribeca Film Institute Summer Documentary Series. Visit the film page for VERY SEMI-SERIOUS.
Nitehawk Cinema & Tribeca Film Institute Summer Documentary Series presents (T)ERROR, a film that illuminates the fragile relationships between individual and surveillance state in modern America.
Q&A following the screening with Co-Director David Felix Sutcliffe along with Ramzi Kassem and Diala Shamas, attorneys with Project C.L.E.A.R. (Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility). Moderated by Cara Cusumano (Senior Film Programmer, Tribeca Film Festival). Introduction by Caryn Coleman, Senior Film Programmer, Nitehawk Cinema.
(T)ERROR is the first documentary to place filmmakers on the ground during an active FBI counterterrorism sting operation. Through the perspective of Saeed “Shariff” Torres, a 63-year-old Black revolutionary turned informant, viewers get an unfettered glimpse of the government’s counterterrorism tactics and the murky justifications behind them.
Winner of a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, (T)ERROR follows a 63-year-old FBI informant from Brooklyn to Pittsburgh on an assignment to befriend a suspected Taliban sympathizer. Yet first-time filmmaking team Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe soon conducts an investigation of its own. Without notifying their subject or the FBI, they interview the suspect and set the statements of the watched against the opinions of the watchers, until that inevitable moment when the Feds decide how to act on their information. A rare inside look at FBI undercover tactics in progress, (T)ERROR offers a thought-provoking analysis of the FBI as crime stoppers rather than investigators in post-9/11 America. Cabral and Sutcliffe create an impressive and courageous documentary that underlines the troubling results of an all-anti-terror mandate: a reliance on past offenders for access and new agents, a growing tendency to equate suspicion with guilt, a scandal-driven press, and methods that stretch the definition of entrapment. Intense and intricately crafted, (T)ERROR explores just how far we are going to prevent terror and exactly what liberties we are sacrificing to get there. —Arthur Ryel-Lindsey
Part of the 2015 Nitehawk Cinema and Tribeca Film Institute Summer Documentary Series. Visit the film page for (T)ERROR.
ART SEEN presents PIERCING BRIGHTNESS, the British science-fiction film by internationally acclaimed artist Shezad Dawood. Q&A with Dawood following the screening.
Two youths land in a spaceship outside Preston. Their mission: to re-establish contact and affect the retrieval of the ‘Glorious 100’ sent to earth millennia ago in human form to study and observe the development of another race. After making contact with one of the 100, now a Pakistani shopkeeper (Bhasker Patel), they discover that many of their kind have become corrupted, forgetting their original purpose and slowly becoming influenced by and in turn influencing their adopted home.
Inspired by Lancashire having the highest rate of UFO sightings in the UK, as well as hosting one of the earliest splinter Mormon communities in the world, Piercing Brightness uses Preston and its inhabitants as a springboard to investigate religious, racial and class-based social hierarchies. Eerily beautiful, the film employs different formats and archival footage of UFO sightings to create a film that is as experimental as it is entertaining.
Piercing Brightness utilizes science fiction as a backdrop from which to contest fixed notions of race, migration and identity. It addresses issues of time, memory and belonging through a careful interplay of mainstream science fiction and its ongoing relationship to more experimental modes of film making. It is the debut feature film directed by acclaimed visual artist Shezad Dawood, scripted by cult novelist Kirk Lake with an original score by Makoto Kawabata of Acid Mothers Temple (Japan) and featuring music by Alexander Tucker.
ART SEEN is in partnership with frieze.
Nitehawk’s LIVE SOUND CINEMA presents DADA BRUNCH: DREAMS THAT MONEY CAN BUY and short films featuring a live score by PARLOR WALLS!
Artist Hans Richter, a pioneer in cinematic exploration, was an important Dadaist figure in the early 20th Century. His feature film, Dreams that Money Can Buy, involves contributions by a “who’s who” of important artists of this time period: Man Ray, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Fernand Léger, and Alexander Calder.
Made shortly after the end of the Second World War, at a time when the compulsive madness of the Dadaist and surrealist movements had been overtaken by even more darkly irrational events, the film reflects an unease amongst contemporary artists about their role in the world and their relation to the dominant art form of the time, popular cinema. Richter’s main narrative concerns a down-on-his-luck artist named Joe who discovers that he has the ability to show individuals their innermost dreams, and sets about trying to turn his talent into a profitable business (somewhere between entertainment and therapy) so that he can win back his ‘dream girl’. The rhyming voice-over and film noir stylings become rather twee (even if they are designed to parody as much as exploit the conventions of mainstream cinema), but all this is merely the framing device for the film’s real raison d’être: seven surreal sequences conceived and directed by prominent members of the avant garde as an aesthetic alternative to Hollywood’s dream machine. – Anton Bitel, Film 4 Review
Screening before Dreams that Money Can Buy will be the short films Ghosts Before Breakfast (Hans Richter, 1927) and Symphonie Diagonale (Viking Eggleing, 1924).
Providing the live score to Dada Brunch: Dreams that Money Can Buy is Parlor Walls, an experimental duo formed by singer/guitarist Alyse Lamb (EULA) and drummer/keyboardist Chris Mulligan.
