Ritual Cinema

A New Yorker's guide to special screenings, filmmaker Q+As, retro cinema for those who need to see it on the big screen + places you didn't think you could see film in NYC.

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Throughout an ambitious filmmaking career, Director Aleksei German worked against Russia’s political censors and its underdeveloped commercial distribution system.  If unprolific, the Soviet director left a series of overlooked masterpieces.  Anthology Film Archives gives us the US theatrical release of German's final opus, Hard To Be A God.  

Source authors for Tarkovsky's Stalker and Sokurov's Days of the Eclipse, brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's original novel was first translated into cinema in 1989 by German film director Peter Fleischmann.  However, it was Aleksei German they wanted at the helm all along.  The brothers died in 1991 and 2012, respectively.

The 117 minute film was shot over six years and in post-production for another seven. His wife and son were the frequent collaborators who finally realized his black and white vision of dystopia shortly after his death.  I'm sure it will be worth the wait.

Sun Feb 08   5pm 8:30pm   32 Second Ave @ 2nd St  $10

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The Museum of Modern Art showcases its hard work on an under appreciated 1930s Pre-Code classic with Rowland V. Lee's undeniably odd and unique I Am Suzanne.

German film star Lilian Harvey transforms as a dancer in Paris seeking an ultimate truth on sexuality and control through bizarre musical numbers and complex puppetry.  One of several 20th Century Fox films restored by MoMA, this obscure masterpiece is not available on DVD.  Don't miss this one!

Sat Jan 31 1:30pm & Sun Feb 5pm  11 West 53rd Street, $12

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Anthology Film Archives presents the New York theatrical film run of Samuel Kishi Leopo's feature debut We Are Mari Pepa (Somos Mari Pepa, 2013).  His endearing portrait of four punk rock wannabes in Guadalajara, Mexico edging toward adulthood was selected for the Berlin International Film Festival in 2014.

In Spanish with English subtitles.

Aug 15-21, 32 Second Avenue at 2nd Street, $10

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Anthology Film Archives presents a bleak and beautiful debut feature-length film from Ukrainian documentary filmmaker Juri Rechinsky in SICKFUCKPEOPLE.  The film follows a group of youth through their struggle into adulthood as they deal with pasts of homelessness and addiction.

Rechinsky's uncompromising triptych is co-winner of the 2013 Viennale International Film Festival's MehrWERT-Filmpreis Award, Heart of Sarajevo's Best Documentary Feature, and Best Documentary Feature at Raindance Film Fest.

In Russian and Ukrainian with English subtitles.

Thurs Aug 7 7:30pm, 32 Second Avenue @ 2nd Street, $10

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The Museum of the Moving Image presents back-to-back screenings of found footage cinema master Gustav Deutsch's first two installments of his cinema-defining film cycle, Film Ist.  

Mining the neglected archives of film institutes and early scientific films, Deutsch answers the question "What is film?" with a canon of films many might consider Avant Garde 101.

Sat July 26 2:00pm + 4:00pm, 36-01 35th Avenue, Astoria Queens, $12

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Chelsea Cinema Classics presents William Henry Pratt, also known as actor Boris Karloff, reprising the role that made him famous in 1935's The Bride of Frankenstein.  Do not miss the unpredictable adult pre-show and prizes hosted by drag legend Hedda Lettuce.

Seeing Director James Whale's iconic gothic horror masterpiece on the big screen is one of those rare instances of a sequel eclipsing its source.

Thu Jul 24 7:00pm 260 West 23rd Street, $8

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The Bohemian National Hall's Summer On the Roof film series gives us a rare screening of Czech New Wave master Jaromil Jires's unforgettable Valerie and Her Week Of Wonders.  

Jires's beautifully filmed surrealist-dream-as-sexual-awakening is a blend of adult fairy-tale and horror story that continues to inform music and film today. 

In case of rain, the film will be screened at BNH's 60-seat indoor cinema.

In Czech with English subtitles.

Tues Jul 15 8:00pm, 321 East 73rd Street, $10

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The Coney Island Film Society takes us back to a dark night on the beach with early 60s summertime noir Night Tide, starring Dennis Hopper.  

A clear decade before he became the American Dreamer, Hopper stars in his first leading role as a navy seaman on leave who falls for a woman he believes to be a mermaid who kills during the full moon.

Free popcorn!

Sat Jul 12 8:30pm, 1208 Surf Avenue, Brooklyn $6

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Tonight the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem allows us to experience the medium's confrontational power when Director Joshua Oppenheimer leads an intimate Q+A following a screening his critically acclaimed film The Act of Killing.  Oppenheimer's bizarre yet profoundly transformative film has changed the course of dialog in a dark chapter of a global human story.

The film has won numerous awards and most recently nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 86th Academy Awards.

Tue Feb 11 7PM + Thu Feb 13 7:30PM 343 Lenox Avenue (btw 127/128), Harlem $10

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In 1993, NYPD police officer and caving enthusiast Chris Nicola traveled to the Ukraine to explore one of the world's longest cave systems.  There he found the unthinkable in the most uninhabitable place- artifacts of human life.  

Janet Tobias's debut documentary No Place On Earth details Nicola's decade-long quest to discover who these cave dwellers were, and the stories of the Jewish survivors who sought refuge deep in the earth during the most turbulent period of the Holocaust.      

Pelham New York's Picture House offers a week-long run of this inspiring documentary for those who may have missed its New York City theatrical release.  The historic Pelham Picture House has been operating as a movie theater since 1921, and is easily reachable by the New Haven Line at Grand Central Terminal.

If you think you've seen every story about the Holocaust, think again.  

Through May 30th  175 Wolfs Lane, Pelham, New York, $8

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The Film Society at Lincoln Center presents a critically acclaimed debut from Britain's Sally El Hosaini with her award-winning Sundance 2012 selection, My Brother the Devil.  

El Hosaini's visually poetic film follows two brothers with Arab roots in the rough London borough of Hackney- one on his way in and the other on his way out of a gang lifestyle that causes them to confront one another and their prejudices.

Q+A w/Director Sally El Hosaini + star James Floyd @ 6:30pm shows Fri + Sat

Opens Fri Mar 22 Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center 144 W65th Street, $13

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In honor of the film's recent digital remastering and forthcoming Broadway adaptation, the IFC Center presents S.R. Bindler's ode to human endurance with 1997's Hands On A Hardbody.

Winner of Best Documentary at the 1997 Los Angeles Film Festival, this modestly shot film chronicles the human drama that unfolds in a Nissan truck dealership parking lot during a 77-hour competition for a pickup truck.  A personal favorite!

And yes, it's true... Now coming to Broadway as a musical.

Director S.R. Bindler in-person for post-screening Q+A.

Wed Mar 20 8:00pm 323 6th Ave @ West 3rd Street, $16

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Director Michel Gondry spent years in workshops with real New York teens at an after-school center in the Bronx called The Point. Without casting, and with real life stories, his point was to "to look into how kids or people change in the context of others."  

Shot entirely on a moving bus with untrained actors, the result is an original film that brilliantly captures the lives of a group of students on the last day of high school.

I had the great pleasure of shooting behind-the-scenes video (for dvd extras) and the European poster (below) for this film, and am very proud of all of the actors in it. Please check it out!

Michel Gondry in person for post-screening Q+A @ 7:30pm + intro @ 9:45pm

Fri Mar 8th IFC Center 323 6th Avenue $13

Opens today @ IFC + Mist Harlem 46 West 116th Street

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Larry L. King, author of the 1974 Playboy article that brought to light the closing of a 100-year old Texas brothel known as the "Chicken Ranch" died this past December.

Clearview’s Chelsea Cinema presents the film version of his Broadway hit based upon those true events with The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas.

Texas rock ‘n’ roll legends ZZ Top paid a famous tribute to the notorious chicken ranch with their blues jam ‘La Grange.’  

Hilarious pre-show by Hedda Lettuce @ 7pm.  Don’t miss out.

Thu Mar 7, 7:00 + 9:30pm, 260 West 23rd Street, $7.50

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New York's French Institute celebrates the magic of fashion pioneer Pierre Cardin with a series dedicated to his costume design in French film, The Man Makes the Clothes: Pierre Cardin In Film.

Tonight Jean Cocteau's elegant adaptation of a classic fairytale features a young Cardin's bold designs in 1946's Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête).  An impressed Cocteau would later introduce the Italian-born Cardin to French designer Christian Dior, further changing the face and history of fashion.

Don't miss this masterpiece of surrealist fantasy film on the big screen!

Tue Mar 5 7:30pm Florence Gould Hall 55 East 59th Street, $10 

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Telecommunications innovator Walter L. Shaw invented the speaker phone, touch-tone-dialing, call-forwarding, and even the White House "red phone" system.  A man with 39 patents to his name for inventions that would shape our lives for years to come, would die unknown and penniless.

According to his son, Shaw was robbed and restricted by the same corporate America that would profit immensely from his ideas.  Embittered, both father and son would turn to organized crime. This is the story of a son setting his father's record straight.

Narrated by Frank Langella.

  Now Showing @ Landmark Sunshine Cinema 143 East Houston Street, $13

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Instituto Cervantes offers a true original in Spanish horror with REC, the 2007 film that inspired the inferior American shot-by-shot remake, Quarantine (2008).  

Hailed by critics as one of the best found footage films to date, this cinema verite horror experience by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza sparked the franchise that Fox Searchlight purchased in 2011.  

Wed Feb 27 6:00pm 211-215 East 49th Street, Free