Author: Walter Tseng

NEW CINEMA CLUB PRESENTS: IN FOCUS

Posted on by Walter Tseng

SATURDAY, MARCH 28 = 7:30 PM w/ filmmaker for Q&A
ONE NIGHT ONLY!
(This screening is $10)

Like a kind of early career retrospective, In Focus presents an evening of work by a single filmmaker, an opportunity to explore the genesis and evolution of a new and unique voice in contemporary cinema. The filmmakers featured are always local and will be in attendance for a Q&A after the screening, led by New Cinema Club’s director of programming Tymon Brown.

The March edition of InFocus will focus on the work of Swetha Regunathan.

Swetha’s Bio
Swetha Regunathan is a writer and filmmaker based in NYC. Born in Pondicherry, India, she was brought to Montreal as a baby and grew up in Queens, New Jersey, and Mississippi. She holds a B.A. from Columbia University and a PhD in English Literature from Brown University. She has written for n+1, Guernica, and other publications. In 2009 she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for Best American Essay. Swetha is currently an MFA candidate in the Graduate Film program at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Swetha was the recipient of the Antonio Cirino Memorial Art Education Fellowship from the Rhode Island Foundation in 2015 and 2017. Her series THE ACADEMY was a finalist for the 2016 Sundance New Voices Lab, and her short HASIM OCTOBER was shortlisted for a 2017 Lexus Short Films award. The film also screened at the Indie Street Film Festival, Chicago South Asian Film Festival, New Cinema Club, and premiered on NoBudge in June 2019. Swetha produced IF THERE IS LIGHT, a short documentary about a family living in a shelter in NYC. The film was supported by Queen Latifah’s inaugural Queen Collective grant, in association with Tribeca Studios, and premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival. Her short script FOREVER TONIGHT won the 2019 BlueCat Screenplay Competition and was also a finalist for the  Showtime® Tony Cox Screenplay Competition. It is currently in post-production. Her next short, WIRE & CLOTH was awarded a 2019 Alfred P. Sloan production award and is currently in preproduction.

MILLENNIUM FILM WORKSHOP presents MEANS OF PRODUCTION: NEW ARTISTS’ CINEMA

Posted on by Walter Tseng

SATORI
dir. Erica Schreiner, 2015.
USA. 93 min.
Silent w/ English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25 – 7:30 PM w/ Q&A
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

ONLINE TICKETS            FACEBOOK EVENT 

Two years in the making, SATORI is a feature length art film created by New York-based video and performance artist Erica Schreiner. Shot on VHS, Schreiner performs before the camera while simultaneously operating it. She made the picture entirely by herself: writing, editing and acting.

Nightly, Satori gives birth to eggs and sells them in order to make enough money to survive so she can continue to make art. Satori becomes worn out and conflicted with the act of selling part of herself and discusses this and the many aspects of being an artist with her friends: an encouraging unicorn, the all-knowing goddess Isis and a very disagreeable Beta fish. Together they help Satori find a way into the Universe where she goes in search of meaning and answers about her existence as an artist.

SATORI was independently created and financed and is a visionary piece with an important message. Satori struggles to divide her time between cultivating her personal passion and working to make money for survival, within the system. Satori and the other magical characters contemplate the meaning of life, Satori’s experience, lack of privilege and opportunities, and the affect it has on her ability to create. She challenges the money system, at one point burning up all of her money because she was “starting to believe in the value of the stuff.” Satori ultimately finds her personal freedom outside the hierarchy of control, illustrated with anarchist themes and philosophical dialog.

SATORI is the first entry in MEANS OF PRODUCTION: NEW ARTISTS’ CINEMA presented by MILLENNIUM FILM WORKSHOP.

This series will be devoted to showcasing works from overlooked and unknown American and International contemporary artists working in film and video, and pushing bounds beyond the limitations implied in those forms. Whether presenting intimate-scale epic by heretical artists re-interpreting the world as they see it on a no-string budget, or artists expanding vision via new tools of expression in the present and future age, Means of Production is about looking forward to a 21st century where economic and technological barriers are broken down, ushering in a new era of highly original cinematic handiwork.

The Millennium Film Workshop was founded in 1967 by a group of filmmakers with a vision to expand accessibility to the tools, ideas, and networks of filmmaking beyond the confines of institutions and corporate studios. Millennium has put on countless educational workshops and artist-hosted screenings, printed our renowned publication The Millennium Film Journal and served as a production hub kickstarting the careers of filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage, Todd Haynes, Yvonne Rainer, Carolee Schneeman, Michael Snow, Bruce Connor, Nick Zedd, Andy Warhol and Bruce Connor. It has played a large role in dismantling the monetary and educational barriers separating the art and craft of filmmaking from the general public.

https://www.millenniumfilm.org
http://www.mfj-online.org/

MUBI PRESENTS: THE TOXIC AVENGER

Posted on by Walter Tseng


THE TOXIC AVENGER
dir. Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz, 1984
United States, 82 min.
In English.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4 – 7:30 PM w/ Lloyd Kaufman in person!
(This screening is $10)
FRIDAY MARCH 6 – MIDNIGHT

ONLINE TICKETS          FACEBOOK EVENT 

MUBI is excited to present these exclusive screenings to launch their new series dedicated to the infamous American independent production company Troma. Directed by the company’s founders, THE TOXIC AVENGER is an endlessly inspired oddity of a superhero movie—made long before the genre became rife with convention and impersonality.

THE TOXIC AVENGER is the first film in MUBI‘s series The Vulgar Disruptor: Troma Restored

Founded in 1974 by filmmakers Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz, the production-distribution company Troma has long been dedicated to realizing and releasing only the most transgressive of genre films. Troma is indisputably a landmark company in the American filmmaking landscape, upending all comfortable notions of both good and bad taste and high and low art.

MUBI celebrates their commitment to all things vulgar with this 6-film series which encompasses films across the company’s lifetime, starting with their initial runaway success of The Toxic Avenger through to what is surely the most gruesome adaptation of Romeo and Juliet ever realized, the aptly titled Tromeo & Juliet. From gross-out Shakespeare adaptations to a Nazi-hunting exploitation revenge flick, there’s something here for everyone.

THE TOXIC AVENGER will be available to stream on MUBI starting March 3. More info here.

MUBI is a curated streaming service. An ever-changing collection of hand-picked films. From new directors to award-winners. From everywhere on earth. Beautiful, interesting, incredible movies — a new one, every single day. Always thoughtfully selected. MUBI is available to watch in 190 countries. On any screen or device, anywhere.

FREE AT LAST: The Marriage Circle

Posted on by Walter Tseng

New works are finally entering the public domain after a 20 year hiatus; come and celebrate the newly liberated films of 1924 with Spectacle!

THE MARRIAGE CIRCLE
dir. Ernst Lubitsch, 1924.
France. 85 min.
Silent with English intertitles

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 28 – 10 PM

ONLINE TICKETS           FACEBOOK EVENT 

In this marital sex comedy, Lubitsch finds humor in the small conflicts and misunderstandings that arise in relationships. Lubitsch thought of The Marriage Circle as depicting “everyday people” who were “just a little bit bad and not too good.”

In Vienna, two married couples intersect; the newly-married and in-love Brauns and the mismatched Stocks. The flapperish Mizzi Stock, unsatisfied with her husband’s subdued and formal manner and lack of attention, throws herself at the first man she runs into, who happens to be the new husband of her best friend Charlotte Braun. As Mizzi pursues Doctor Braun, who does his best to evade her, Charlotte begins to suspect that he’s interested in another woman. Doctor Braun’s partner sees his chance and takes the opportunity to woo the unreceptive Charlotte. Hoping to procure a divorce from his restless wife, Professor Stock hires a detective who uncovers Mizzi’s connection to Doctor Braun, threatening his otherwise happy marriage.

JANE: AN ABORTION SERVICE

Posted on by Walter Tseng


JANE: AN ABORTION SERVICE
dir. Kate Kirtz and Nell Lundy, 1996
United States, 58 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, MARCH 27 – 7:30 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!
(This event is $10)

ONLINE TICKETS        FACEBOOK EVENT

100% of ticket sales will go to Access Reproductive Care – Southeast, an Atlanta-based service providing financial and logistical support for those in need of abortions in six southeastern states.

This fascinating political look at a little-known chapter in women’s history tells the story of “Jane”, the Chicago-based women’s health group who performed nearly 12,000 safe illegal abortions between 1969 and 1973 with no formal medical training.

Special thanks to Women Make Movies.

DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR GIRLS ARE?

Posted on by Walter Tseng

Burning rubber? Taking names? Climbing the social ladders of the Brooklyn organized crime scene? These women (gasp) do it all. Alternating between the schlock and the subversive, the films included in this series are best enjoyed with your own clique of delinquents, punks and biker toughs.

Special thanks to byNWR, G.B. Jones, Vtape, and AGFA.



CHAINED GIRLS
dir. Joseph P. Marwa, 1965
United States, 65 min.
In English.

SATURDAY, MARCH 7 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 15 – 7:30 PM

ONLINE TICKETS        FACEBOOK EVENT

Presented by byNWR

In contemporary times, sleaze documentarian Marwa’s expose of the secret lives of New York lesbians plays best wryly and tongue-and-cheek (and occasionally laugh out loud). This anthropological oddity is shot verité-style on the Greenwich Village streets, drastically underexposed, an amateurish eventide tour of mid-60s New York with the mysterious Sapphics as our guide. byNWR’s recent incredible restoration preserves an unforgettable pre-Stonewall curio.

screening with

THE YO-YO GANG
dir. G.B. Jones, 1992
Canada, 30 min.
In English.

Flash forward thirty years, to queercore Toronto, where Fifth Column’s G.B. Jones unleashed the furiously gritty punk opus Yo-Yo Gang, following a turf war between the titular girl clique and their nemeses, The Skateboard Bitches.



TEENAGE GANG DEBS
dir. Sande N. Johnson, 1966
United States, 72 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, MARCH 6 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11 – 7:30 PM

ONLINE TICKETS        FACEBOOK EVENT

“No one’s gonna cut me up, pigface!” growls no-goodnik Terry (Diane Conti), fresh in Brooklyn from Manhattan and vying to wrest control of the Brooklyn-based Rebels. An operatic teen movie full of brawls on the open Brooklyn streets, Teenage Gang Debs has a rightful rep as one of the most fun films in its genre.



GIRL GANG
dir. Robert C. Derteno, 1954
United States, 64 min.
In  English.

MONDAY, MARCH 16 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 23 – 10 PM

ONLINE TICKETS        FACEBOOK EVENT

A prime cut of 1950s cautionary schlock, Girl Gang chronicles the downfall of a group of teens who fall under the drug-addled sway of gangster kingpin. Funded by roadshow maestro George Weiss, who also funded Ed Wood’s films as well as Chained Girls, this z-grade relic was rescued from obscurity by Something Weird.



SHE-DEVILS ON WHEELS
dir. Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1968
United States, 88 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, MARCH 6 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 15 – 5 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18 -10 PM

ONLINE TICKETS        FACEBOOK EVENT

Presented by the America Genre Film Archive.

Gore god Gordon Lewis gives girl gangs a go in this mean and nasty 1968 exploitation flick following the exploits of The Man-Eaters; biker chicks reigning over a Florida town. They race their bikes weekly on an airport tarmac, endowing the winner with “first pick from the stud line”. Shot in Miami (and reportedly starring actual motorcycle toughs), She-Devils is as colorful as exploitation films get.

CONTROL FREAKS

Posted on by Walter Tseng

A trio of horror films about controlling, overbearing, downright awful children.



THE PIT
dir. Lew Lehman, 1981
Canada, 96 min
In English.

FRIDAY, MARCH 13 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 21 – MIDNIGHT

ONLINE TICKETS        FACEBOOK EVENT

Left with a baby sitter, a bad boy with a teddy bear finds a pit with four hungry monsters.

The most cartoonish of the trilogy is also somehow, occasionally, the most unsettling. Jamie, as played by Sammy Snyders in his second-to-last credit (right behind ‘The Littlest Hobo’), is an obnoxious, cringey, and entirely too horny pre-teen with parents who coddle him and his ‘unique’ behavior as he burns through babysitters who can’t handle him. Oh, did we mention he also has a teddy bear who talks to him, and has also found a pit full of ‘friends’ in the woods?

Tonal shifts abound as Jamie’s increasing(ly uncomfortable) attraction to his new babysitter Sandy curdles into rage at her and everyone who’s ever bullied him. The less you know the better, but The Pit is certainly a ride worth taking.



THE CHILD
dir. Robert Voskanian, 1977
US, 82 min
In English.

SATURDAY, MARCH 7 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, MARCH 13 – MIDNIGHT
MONDAY, MARCH 30 – 7:30 PM

ONLINE TICKETS        FACEBOOK EVENT

A 1930’s widower hires a governess for his daughter, who can summon zombies.

Almost the polar opposite of The Pit despite very similar synopses, The Child is a distinctly moodier and more serious affair. Alicianne is en route to her new job as the governess to a recently widowed man and his 11 year old daughter, Rosalie, when her car breaks down, leaving her to walk the rest of the way through the woods. On the way, she meets an old woman who warns her of strange happenings since the girl’s mother died, and it just gets weirder from there.

Manages to strike a tone somewhere between Bava and the dreamy weirdness of ‘Tombs of the Blind Dead’ – if woods, fog, and synth are your thing, look no further.



PATRICK
dir. Richard Franklin, 1978
Australia, 112 min
In English.

TUESDAY, MARCH 3 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 21 – 10 PM

ONLINE TICKETS        FACEBOOK EVENT

A comatose hospital patient harasses and kills through his powers of telekinesis to claim his private nurse as his own.

Patrick follows the life of Patrick’s new nurse, who discovers he can communicate telepathically, as she moves through relationships in a script that’s aged surprisingly well. As his obsession grows, his possessiveness becomes more manic – not to mention his powers.

The classiest (and longest) entry in the series, Patrick was a crossover Ozploitation hit at the time of its release. Don’t let the length scare you – it’s a worthy Hitchockian slow-burn, plus telekinetic powers.

Directed by Richard Franklin (Road Games, Cloak & Dagger) and heavily referenced (read: ripped off) by Tarantino in a few Kill Bill sequences.

OM-DAR-B-DAR

Posted on by Walter Tseng


OM-DAR-B-DAR
dir. Kamal Swaroop, 1988.
India. 101 min.
In Hindi with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, MARCH 20 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 24 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 30 – 7:30 PM

ONLINE TICKETS        FACEBOOK EVENT

Absurdist epic OM DAR-B-DAR is a pure outsider invention in Indian cinema, a shot at romance, religion, and commerce from the rocky hills of the northern province Rajasthan. The film showed at the Berlin film festival in 1988, but was instantly condemned to obscurity back at home where censors slapped it with an “adult” rating, assuring that it would never reach theaters. Were they befuddled by its barrage of nonsense, non-sequitur, and dream? Or did they find something overwhelmingly subversive in a film with such broad, if jumbled, satiric targets, complete dismissal of Indian filmmaking norms, and hero who, perhaps inspired by tadpoles refusing to metamorphose into frogs, inadvertently starts a religion and leads a mass revolt of suspended breath.

The film follows a family of iconoclasts. Father Babuji, after losing his job in a government office for issuing counterfeit Brahmin caste certificates to beggars, takes up astrology and calls his son Om to evade name-based astrological time-of-death predictions. Gayatri, the elder child is an independent unmarried 30-year-old who sits in the men’s section at the cinema and wonders if women will soon be climbing Everest without need of men. She eventually accepts the romantic overtures of layabout Jagadish because they request the same pop song on the radio and he attempts a love spell with a lock of her hair, but exercises her sexual agency in a hilariously Freudian anti-love scene. Om, for his part, runs away from home and leads the plot into a mass of convolutions involving a curse, a shoe filled with diamonds, and a few inadvertent miracles. Soon his ability to seemingly manifest wealth and hold his breath underwater, like the tadpoles of his biology classes, attracts religious followers, documentary filmmakers, and marketing personnel from PROMISE toothpaste.

It’s in the nature of this wild, often rigorously inexplicable film that sowing confusion takes on a renegade significance, and no two synopses written for it ever seem to describe the same story. Which you can take to mean that I’m able to provide only a smattering of its anarchic charms and mysteries in my own. For the rest, you’ll have to see it.

After 25 years in the wilderness, the film was at last restored and released to theaters in 2014. Director Kamal Swaroop, after a series of documentaries, has plans for a new feature. While this is all great news, in light of present events, it is worth noting that dissenting and minority voices are most important in their time, not buried for a quarter of a century to be safely lauded only much later.

CW: Contains some unnecessary frog violence.

MUBI PRESENTS: THE CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THE GUILLOTINE

Posted on by Walter Tseng


THE CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THE GUILLOTINE
dir. Takahisa Zeze, 2018
Japan, 189 m
In Japanese with English subtitles

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15 – 7:30 PM

MUBI presents this explosive film from master genre director Takahisa Zeze. In wake of the social unrest caused by the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, two female sumo athletes, Kiku and Tokachi, and an anarchist group called the Guillotine Society, spark an unlikely connection.

Japan’s Takahisa Zeze began his career as a soft-core pinku ega director before moving into the mainstream. But he has lost neither the verve nor the edge of his early films, and only gained in ambition, as can be seen in this combo anarcho-terrorist meets female sumo wrestler historical drama!

THE CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THE GUILLOTINE is available to stream exclusively on MUBI as part of their ongoing Luminaries series. Watch here.

MUBI is a curated online cinema, streaming hand-picked award-winning, classic, and cult films from around the globe. Every day, MUBI’s film experts present a new film and you have 30 days to watch it. Whether it’s an acclaimed masterpiece, a gem fresh from the world’s greatest film festivals, or a beloved classic, there are always 30 beautiful hand-picked films to discover.

MATCH CUTS PRESENTS Y2K STALKERS: THE CRUSH

Posted on by Walter Tseng


The Crush
dir. Alan Shapiro, 1993.
USA, 89 min.
English.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 18 – 7:30 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY

ONLINE TICKETS         FACEBOOK EVENT

MATCH CUTS PRESENTS closes out the year (and their three-year [!] Spectacle run) with the last title in their Y2K STALKERS series, THE CRUSH. Presented in reverse chronological order, the series looked at, well, stalker movies before and after the year 2000 (aka Y2K). October was 2002’s SWIMFAN, followed by FEAR in November. Come also to say goodbye and congratulations to Kachine and Nick from MATCH CUTS PRESENTS!

“A journalist (Cary Elwes) becomes the unwanted center of attention for a 14-year-old girl (Alicia Silverstone), who proceeds to sabotage his life after he refuses her sexual advances.” – IMDB

MATCH CUTS PRESENTS is dedicated to presenting de-colonialized cinema, LGBTQI films, Marxist diatribes, video art, dance films, sex films, and activist documentaries with a rotating cast of presenters from all spectrums of the performing and plastic arts and surrounding humanities. Match Cuts is hosted by Nick Faust and Kachine Moore.