Two-for-One Admission Price

Last Movie watched by Rainer Werner Fassbinder (d. 1982)
20,000 Years in Sing Sing (Michael Curtiz, 1932) 78m
Archival 35mm print courtesy of the Library of Congress

Last Movie watched by Bette Davis (d. 1989)
Waterloo Bridge (James Whale, 1931) 81m
35mm print courtesy of Park Circus

Light Industry, Nitehawk Cinema and Spectacle Theater are co-hosting a day-long suite of screenings, films bound together by a single, shared characteristic: they are Last Movies. The phrase is evocative, rhyming with those familiar designations so often pinned to auteurs and their work (first films, late style), but here we refer to something else entirely. From morning to midnite, we will be presenting the last movies of Franz Kafka, John Dillinger, Charlie Parker, Boris Vian, Lee Harvey Oswald, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Sergio Leone, Bette Davis, and Stanley Kubrick—that is, the last film they saw before they died.

This organizing principle came to us via the artist and curator Stanley Schtinter, who previously oversaw London’s Liberated Film Club. His research into the subject has brought to light many other Last Movies, resulting in our screening series and, now, a book, newly published by Tenement Press, which will be available at all three venues. Schtinter is joining us in New York for the latest iteration of his project, providing introductions to every show.

Full day’s schedule