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.
Nitehawk’s LIVE SOUND CINEMA celebrates the films of ALICE GUY BLACHÉ with our special “SHE MADE IT” presentation that features a live score by REEL ORCHESTRETTE.
There is nothing connected with the staging of a motion picture that a woman cannot do as easily as a man, and there is no reason why she cannot completely master every technicality of the art. – Alice Guy-Blaché, 1914
Alice Guy Blaché is cinema’s first female director who, between 1896 and 1920, wrote, produced or directed more than a thousand films in France and in the United States. A profound influence upon the evolution of cinema, she was a pioneer whose works stands alongside that of the Lumière Brothers, Georges Méliès, and Edwin S. Porter, in cinema’s rapid growth from an optical illusion to a storytelling medium to an art form. For this special Live Sound Cinema presentation, we will be screening Kino’s “Gaumont Treasures” which features her work for the French Major Film studio Gaumont (1897 – 1907) and will include hand-colored, comedies, social commentaries, early “trick” films and the 33-minute religious epic, The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ (1906).
Reel Orchestrette (Bradford Reed & Geoff Gersh) is dedicated to the art of live musical accompaniment to silent films. Reed & Gersh have been collaborating together for almost 20 years, they formed Reel Orchestrette in 2012.
Part of Nitehawk’s September SHE MADE IT brunch, midnite, and special event series.
A two-hour video variety show of rare footage and pop culture commentary.
A story is only as good as its villain, so comedian Kevin Maher takes an obsessive look at some of the best and worst super villains. This two-hour multi-media show includes a virtual parade of power-mad perverts, bald villains, cartoon criminals, Satanic weirdoes, wrestling heels and more.
Kevin is joined by co-host Tenebrous Kate (creator of My Dream Date with a Villain) and a diabolical line-up of special guests, including
- Illustrator Becky Munich (“Monster Activity Book”)
- Writer Nick Nadel (truTV, IFC.com)
- Doctor Maureen Mararese
- Filmmaker Paul Murphy (Red Obsession)
- Professor Geoff Klock (“The Future of Comics, The Future of Men”)
All this, plus trivia prizes, lame super-villains and even some V.I.L.F.s
Who can survive the vengeful blade of the Golden Swallow in COME DRINK WITH ME? A 35mm presentation!
When bandits make off with a governor’s son and hold him for ransom, the gov. retaliates with the big guns: the deadly Golden Swallow, his deadliest warrior and only daughter. Just as Golden Swallow begins ripping through the bandits holding her brother captive, she’s sidelined by a poison dart and re-habilitated by a local drunk who has his own share of secrets and hazy motives. Considered by many to be one of the best movies to ever come out of Hong Kong, Come Drink With Me elegantly blends elements of dance and martial arts, and was one of the first kung-fu films to feature a woman in the lead role.
Part of Nitehawk’s August KUNG FU THEATER midnite series.
You best protect ya neck, THE FLYING GUILLOTINE is coming for you! A 35mm presentation.
Desperate to cling to power, the Emperor enlists a deadly assassination squad to keep the populace in line and equips them with the deadliest weapon ever conceived of by man: The Flying Guillotine. It’s basically just a hat fitted with a rope, but you don’t want to try this guy on for size, it’ll slice your head clean off from a 100-yards away. When one of the Imperial Guard grows weary of collecting heads for the paranoid regent, he retreats to the country for a quiet life of a farming, but it’s not too long before his past catches up to him and he finds himself a mark of the Emperor’s assassins!
Part of Nitehawk’s August KUNG FU THEATER midnite series.
Shaolin shadowboxing and the Wu Tang sword style. If what you say is true, the SHAOLIN AND WU TANG could be dangerous. A 35mm presentation.
Besides being the namesake film of The Wu-Tang Clan, Shaolin and Wu Tang is a lit piece of dynamite from Hong Kong legend Gordon Liu. The film follows a tense rivalry between two competing schools of kung-fu: Shaolin shadowboxers and Wu Tang swordsmen. Threatened by the level of skill in both schools, a local warlord vows to master both styles of fighting and then force the two schools to destroy one another. It’s Machiavellian twists with a kung-fu grip, bring the ruckus!
Part of Nitehawk’s August KUNG FU THEATER midnite series.
Revenge of the Mekons charts the unlikely career of the genre-defying collective notorious for being “the band that took punk ideology most seriously.” Featuring a Q&A with director Joe Angio and other special guests to be announced.
Born out of the 1977 British punk scene, the Mekons progressed from a group of socialist art students with no musical skills to the prolific, raucous progeny of Hank Williams. Joe Angio’s exuberant documentary follows their improbable history – a surprising and influential embrace of folk and country music; forays into the art world (collaborations with Vito Acconci and Kathy Acker); and consistent bad luck with major record labels. Revenge of the Mekons reveals how, four decades into an ever-evolving career, punk’s reigning contrarians continue to make bold, unpredictable music while staying true to the punk ethos.
Part of Nitehawk Cinema’s MUSIC DRIVEN signature series. Presented with our media partner, Noisey.
ART SEEN presents special weekend screenings of the darkly personal documentary on surrealist artist H.R. Giger, DARK STAR: H.R. GIGER’S WORLD. Courtesy Icarus Films.
Surrealist artist H. R. Giger (1940–2014) terrified audiences with his Oscar-winning monsters in Ridley Scott’s ALIEN. Sci-fi, horror, music, album covers, tattoos and fetish art have been influenced by his dark, intricate paintings and sculptures depicting birth, death and sex. Both a mesmerizing introduction to Giger’s oeuvre and a must-see for Giger devotees, Belinda Sallin’s definitive documentary DARK STAR: H. R. GIGER’S WORLD shares the intimate last years of the artist’s life and reveals how deeply he resided within his own artistic visions.
Behind the shuttered windows and ivy-covered walls of his residence in Zurich, Switzerland, DARK STAR brings viewers into Giger’s mysterious realm: from the first skull he was given by his father at the age of six, to macabre dinner parties with his close-knit team, to the grisly souvenirs from his time spent on the ALIEN set and reminiscences about model Li Tobler, Giger’s one-time muse, whose suicide reverberates throughout his work.
The film also addresses Giger’s complex relationship to the art world, where he defied traditional categories and embraced commercial projects for musicians including Debbie Harry, Korn, Emerson, Lake and Palmer and the Dead Kennedys. Fittingly enshrined in a museum dedicated to his work, Giger’s output includes sculpture, painting, drawing, film and architecture, integrating meticulous technique with a instantly-recognizable sensibility that has inspired generations of nightmares.
ART SEEN is in partnership with frieze.
