Starring: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover

Part nerdy and a little bit cool, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is a regular teenager living in the mid-1980s. His Dad is wimpy, mother disaffected, siblings lazy and he dreams of being a rock star. But as complicated as his young life is, when his mad scientist friend Dr. Emmett Brown (the zany Christopher Lloyd) accidentally sends Marty back to the 1950s, things get really weird. While lingering in the past he teaches his father to stick up for himself, fights off his mother’s advances, and learns there’s no place like home. The most important task, however, is to ensure his teenage parents fall in love so he can get… Back to the Future!

Starring: Richard Pryor, Franklyn Ajaye, Sully Boyar, Richard Brestoff, George Carlin, Irwin Corey, Otis Day, Ivan Dixon, Bill Duke, Michael Fennell, Garrett Morris

Scandalous humor abounds in Car Wash (George Carlin and Richard Pryor star after all) as these eccentric car wash employees have the strangest day ever. This episodic comedy takes place in one day at a Los Angeles full-service car wash detailing one bizarre encounter after the next including fare-dodging prostitutes, transvestites, full body casts, evangelists and the Pointer Sisters. But lest you think it’s all laughs, Car Wash is a cult film way ahead of its time in its forthright depiction of the African American working class and openly gay characters.

For Halloween, ART SEEN screens a film classic where art and horror meet. A portrait painting becomes the site of horror in this stunning cinematic adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Artist Film Club presents Marnie Weber’s The Night of Forevermore and Frieze Video: Richard Mosse’s The Impossible Image.

Dorian Gray is a young man so distraught after realizing that his portrait (painted by his friend Basil Hallward) would always stay beautiful while he would age that he manages to magically transmit the wear-and-tear of his deviances onto this work of art. As such, the painting bears the brunt of his indecent actions (murder, drug use, sex), turning ugly and old while Dorian remains exactly the same. And while his decades-long reign of the 19th century’s version of ‘sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll’ leads him down many regretful paths, he delights in each of the painting’s new evil transformations knowing that he’s cheating death. But when a young woman believes in his goodness, his guilt starts to weigh heavy on him and the inevitable downfall comes.

The infamous evil painting in The Picture of Dorian Gray was painted by Ivan Albright, an artist who dove into representing the dirty and discarded aspects of humanity in his captivating images. The painting currently hangs in the permanent collection at the Art Institute of Chicago.

ARTIST FILM CLUB
Marnie Weber’s The Night of Forevermore is a static space housing monsters, demons, witches, human-animal hybrids; all of which come alive with slow, repetitive gestures and sound. It’s a Hieronymous Bosch painting brought to life, a haunting world with creatures familiar and strange, each with their own woe, purpose, and revenge.

FRIEZE VIDEO: Richard Mosse: The Impossible Image (produced in association with Pundersons Gardens). Artist and photographer Richard Mosse reveals the stories behind the making of his latest film, ‘The Enclave’ (2013), in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which will be shown in the Irish Pavilion at this year’s 55th Venice Biennale.

Part of Nitehawk’s Art Seen signature series. In partnership with frieze.

THE JERK was a poor black sharecropper’s son who never dreamed he was adopted.

Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke. – Steve Martin

Naive bordering on idiocy, Navin’s charm and perseverance take him far away from his poor Mississippi farmhouse and into the glitz of Hollywood. Not only does he discover his “special purpose” bumbling through the country but he gets the dog and the girl and, quite by accident, creates an invention that makes him a millionaire. But as we all know, money doesn’t buy you anything but grief and poor loveable Navin finds out the hard way. Plus, this is Steve Martin at his best – doofy, funny, a little bit dirty and totally adorable.

In Sleeper (a futuristic science fiction comedy), Woody Allen plays a health food store owner and jazz musician who, after being involuntarily cryogenically frozen, is woken up 200 years later in 2173.

As one would expect in Sleeper, Miles Monroe (Woody Allen) is a nerd who brings all of his 20th century neurosis and insightful quips into the ridiculousness of the totalitarian state in which he now finds himself living. Monroe comedicly bumbles through his new role on being the representative of what was made obsolete…the past! And so he fights the oppressive government while falling in love with the woman he hates, poet Luna Schlosser (Diane Keaton). The film is full of mockery of science fiction classics, full of physical comedy, and the banter between Allen and Keaton is on point. If ever there were a futuristic loser/hero, it’s Sleeper!

 Part of Nitehawk’s WE CAN BE HEROES August brunch series.

Our September ART SEEN program visits the realm of science fiction and post-apocalyptic representations with Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962) and Ben Rivers’ Slow Action (2011). Artist Film Club presents: Slater Bradley’s she was my la jetée and FRIEZE VIDEO: Remembering Chris Marker.

The first in our post-apocalyptic double-feature is the landmark featurette by Chris Marker, La Jetée, in which a tale of time travel is told through still images. Established in the context of a post-nuclear Third World War, where the survivors live underground in the Palais de Chaillot galleries in post-apocalyptic Paris, La Jetée unfolds into a scientific quest to revisit the past and to ‘rescue the future’. It’s an exploration of memory, time and space, and the advancement of life on our planet in a compelling and succinct manifestation of imagery.

Following La Jetée, is the recent work Slow Action by British filmmaker and artist Ben Rivers. Slow Action is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film which exists somewhere between documentary, ethnographic study and fiction. Earth in the distant future, when the sea level has risen to absurd heights forming new isolated islands and archipelagos. Two narrators read accounts from a great library of Utopias, describing the four islands seen in the film.

Ben Rivers is the recipient of FIPRESCI International Critics Prize, 68th Venice Film Festival for his first feature film Two Years At Sea; the Baloise Art Prize, Art Basel 42, 2011; shortlisted for the Jarman Award 2010/2012; Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists, 2010. 

Artist Film Club:
Slater Bradley‘s she was my la jetée. Shooting on super 8 and HD film and integrating subtly moving stills, in “she was my la jetée” Bradley fixates on the face of an alluring woman, whose hair blows in the wind as she speeds down a river atop a boat. The resulting meditation on the changing nature of film in the modern world is mirrored in the narrative, in which the artist looks back at an unattainable past love, as though recalling a dream.

FRIEZE VIDEO: Remembering Chris Marker (produced in association with Pundersons Gardens). Curator Stuart Comer, artist Beatrice Gibson and artist/writer Jeremy Millar pay tribute to the late Chris Marker.

Part of Nitehawk’s Art Seen signature series. In partnership with frieze.

Nitehawk’s August Country Brunchin’ pays homage to Loretta Lynn with Coal Miner’s Daughter and live pre-show serenade by Lil’ Mo and the Monicats.

She was married at 13. She had four kids by the time she was 20. She’s been hungry and poor. She’s been loved and cheated on. She became a singer because it was the only thing she could do. She became a star because it was the only way she could do it.

We love Loretta! Coal Miner’s Daughter is a biographical film about the life of Loretta Lynn, the legendary country singer whose talented far surpassed her poor upbringing. In an Academy Award Winning performance by Sissy Spacek (as Loretta), the film also stars Tommy Lee Jones as Loretta’s husband (Mooney Lynn) aka the man who believed in her talent. With strife, songs, and tears, the film tracks her rise and her inevitable struggle between family life and a professional career.

Lil’ Mo and the Monicats: There may be bands like Monica Passin’s long-thriving rockabilly outfit in a lot of cities, but hers, popular in NYC in various configurations for about two decades, has the benefit of her fetching, time-warp creating vocals—good for lilting jive, Buddy Holly-like original ‘billy ballads, and blues, too—This latest [album, Whole Lotta Lovin’] features that typical Li’l Mo mix, and reminds us that when there was still a lot of straight country boogie in rock ‘n’ roll, the vocal demands and results were often considerable.  And they still are, here.  – Barry Mazor, Engine 145

Starring: Fairuza Balk, Nicol Williamson, Jean Marsh, Piper Laurie

Made over 40 years after the beloved The Wizard of Oz, the sole directing credit of picture & sound editor Walter Murch (The Godfather Trilogy) was nightmare fuel for a generation that grew up watching it on cable and/or VHS. The story of Dorothy picks up six months after the tornado that whisked her away, finding her sleepless and useless on the farm. Auntie Em sees electrotherapy as the only solution for what she thinks are hallucinations, but the sanitarium proves to be the gateway back to Oz for Dorothy, where she collects a new assemblage of Island of Misfit Toy friends and finds new foes in the Nome King and the head-swapping Princess Mombi.

Whether or not the asylum screams and the frenzied laughter of the Wheelers have haunted you for decades, we invite you to quiver like a child for this most dark fairy tale full of imaginative practical effects and puppetry.

Night Owl Video is proud to present the next in our Video Store Gems series: Walter Murch’s 1985 fever dream Return to Oz. A flop upon first release, the film has gained a dedicated cult following for its production design, talking chicken and unending weirdness. Fairuza Balk (in her debut performance) stars as a damaged Dorothy Gale, who escapes the harsh realities of Kansan shock treatment to the land of Oz, now a twisted and deformed version of what she once knew. With the help of her friends Jack Pumpkinhead, Tik-Tok, Belinda and The Gump, she embarks on a quest to restore Oz to the wonderful land she once knew. Presented on glorious 35mm film and featuring a pre-show giveaway of Return to Oz merchandise! Death to Streamers, Physical Media Forever!!!

Starring: Michael Keaton, Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin, Winona Ryder, Annie McEnroe

After being killed in a car crash, Adam and Barbara continue on their ‘normal’ lives in their former home. That is until an annoying family from New York called the Deetzes moves in! Try as they might, Adam and Barbara simply can’t frighten this new family away so they call upon a freelance ghost, the shape-shifting and unpredictable ‘bio-exorcist’ Beetlejuice; a decision they immediately regret. A wild ride through the afterlife begins and even includes a young goth Winona Ryder (just how we like her). Beetlejuice is Tim Burton’s perfect mix of weird and wonderful (just how we like him).

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!

Nitehawk Cinema Presents Beer, Dinner and a Movie: The Goonies with our partner Captain Lawrence Brewing Company.

The discovery of a treasure map takes a group of young friends called “The Goonies” on wild adventure.

For Nitehawk’s June Beer, Dinner and a Movie, we’ve teamed up with Captain Lawrence Brewing Company to present The Goonies (and that includes a special Nitehawk collaboration beer brewed just for the event). This screening will include select delicious Captain Lawrence drafts paired with a food menu inspired by the film. The best part? You’ll be served each course during the specific moments that inspired the film so you can experience edible sensations while watching the action unfold on-screen!

With golf course developers threatening to displace an entire neighborhood, “The Goonies” set out to find hidden treasure in the hopes that they can buy off the construction. They find the map to “One-Eyed” Willy’s hidden pirate fortune but, unfortunately, it’s housed in a cavern underneath the evil thief Mama Fratelli and her sons. Traps, pirate ships, and danger awaits! Fortunately “Sloth” (one of the Fratelli brothers) befriends the group and helps them to vast treasures! Goonies never say die!

MENU with Beer Pairings by Captain Lawrence Brewing Company

First Course: Truffle Shuffle
Hen of the Woods and Truffle Arancini, lemon aioli
Beer Pairing: Sunblock

Second Course: Mama Fratelli’s Veal Scallopini
Veal Tongue, Pepsi braised Apples, Marion Berry Demi Glace
Beer Pairing: Golden Delicious American Triple

Third Course: “Baby Ruth” Tamale
Pork, peanut, masa, chocolate mole, savory caramel
Beer Pairing: Sloth*

Fourth Course: Captain Chunk
Fresh Baked Chocolate Chunk Cookies, Peanut butter ice cream
Beer Pairing: St. Vincents Dubbel

*Pilot Beer, brewed by Nitehawk staff especially for this film

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