NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Roxy Cinema
Three by Spike Lee screen on 35mm this weekend, while Johnny Minotaur plays on 16mm this Sunday, as presented by the Museum of Sex.
Film Forum
The massive Toshiro Mifune continues with emphasis on action films (plus the underseen The Bad Sleep Well).
Museum of the Moving Image
The Woody Strode series closes with Once Upon a Time in the West and Black Jesus, while The Addiction screens on Saturday.
Metrograph
Four films by Jamaa Fanaka play this weekend, while films by Wenders, Chaplin, and Kubrick screen in “Staff Picks: Kim’s Video.”
IFC Center
As Solaris continues screening for its 50th anniversary, Eraserhead, House, and Brazil have showings.
Anthology Film Archives
Three by Dovzhenko play this weekend.
Paris Theater
All That Jazz screens on Friday, while My Fair Lady plays Sunday.
The post NYC Weekend Watch: Three By Spike Lee,...
Roxy Cinema
Three by Spike Lee screen on 35mm this weekend, while Johnny Minotaur plays on 16mm this Sunday, as presented by the Museum of Sex.
Film Forum
The massive Toshiro Mifune continues with emphasis on action films (plus the underseen The Bad Sleep Well).
Museum of the Moving Image
The Woody Strode series closes with Once Upon a Time in the West and Black Jesus, while The Addiction screens on Saturday.
Metrograph
Four films by Jamaa Fanaka play this weekend, while films by Wenders, Chaplin, and Kubrick screen in “Staff Picks: Kim’s Video.”
IFC Center
As Solaris continues screening for its 50th anniversary, Eraserhead, House, and Brazil have showings.
Anthology Film Archives
Three by Dovzhenko play this weekend.
Paris Theater
All That Jazz screens on Friday, while My Fair Lady plays Sunday.
The post NYC Weekend Watch: Three By Spike Lee,...
- 2/24/2022
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.Above: Hour Glass (1971)Film scholar Clyde Taylor coined the name "L.A. Rebellion” for a retrospective of the Black cinema made at UCLA between the 1960s and 80s that was held at the Whitney Museum in 1986. The name conflates the filmmakers’ radical aesthetics with the Watts Rebellion and Black Power and Civil Rights Movements. It does not account for the Asian, Latinx, Native American and white film students who also sought styles outside the Hollywood formula, and remains a point of contention for some of those Black filmmakers it gathers under one denomination. “Rebellion” suggests a collective response to the status quo, rather than a series of independent expressions with diverse influences and motivations. But the slogan stuck, and, for better or worse, remains the most common calling card for a...
- 2/3/2021
- MUBI
Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.
Quad Cinema
A retrospective dedicated to the late, great Harry Dean Stanton is now underway.
Museum of the Moving Image
The retrospective of Samuel Fuller’s war films continues.
Film Society of Lincoln Center
The great Czechoslovak New Wave is highlighted in a series of banned films.
Film Forum
An outstanding exhibition of Warner Bros.
Quad Cinema
A retrospective dedicated to the late, great Harry Dean Stanton is now underway.
Museum of the Moving Image
The retrospective of Samuel Fuller’s war films continues.
Film Society of Lincoln Center
The great Czechoslovak New Wave is highlighted in a series of banned films.
Film Forum
An outstanding exhibition of Warner Bros.
- 9/21/2017
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
It’s icky, drippy and grindingly gross — and will make your forehead itch — but Abel Ferrara’s Bowery-set dime store horror opus has withstood the test of time. It’s a decent enough psychodrama, if one can set aside all the psychological-philosophical booshwah that’s leaked into horror criticism. Oops, Savant’s guilty of that too.
The Driller Killer
Blu-ray + DVD
Arrow Video
1979 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 101, 96 min. / Street Date December 13, 2017 / 39.95
Starring Abel Ferrara, Carolyn Marz, Baybi Day, Harry Schultz, Alan Wynroth
Cinematography Ken Kelsch, Jimmy Spears
Film Editor Jimmy Laine, Orlando Gallini
Original Music Joe Delia
Written by N.G. St. John
Produced by Rochelle Weisberg
Directed by Abel Ferrara
As some may have noticed, I’ve mellowed on the output of low-budget and independent horror efforts from the 1970s. While I was in film school bending my own tastes toward high production values and artistic merit, some crazy young filmmakers,...
The Driller Killer
Blu-ray + DVD
Arrow Video
1979 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 101, 96 min. / Street Date December 13, 2017 / 39.95
Starring Abel Ferrara, Carolyn Marz, Baybi Day, Harry Schultz, Alan Wynroth
Cinematography Ken Kelsch, Jimmy Spears
Film Editor Jimmy Laine, Orlando Gallini
Original Music Joe Delia
Written by N.G. St. John
Produced by Rochelle Weisberg
Directed by Abel Ferrara
As some may have noticed, I’ve mellowed on the output of low-budget and independent horror efforts from the 1970s. While I was in film school bending my own tastes toward high production values and artistic merit, some crazy young filmmakers,...
- 1/3/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Hey, let's dig up a rotting corpse, just for fun! A group of crazy Florida theater students plays a group of crazy Florida theater students in Bob Clark's no-budget, spirited attempt to ride in the wake of Night of the Living Dead. An hour of bad jokes is capped by a satisfying zombie onslaught that got the film a major release and launched a career. That's how a score of good directors got started in the 1970s. Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things Blu-ray Vci Entertainment 1972 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 76 min. / Street Date February 23, 2016 / 24.99 Starring Alan Ormsby, Valerie Mamches, Jeffrey Gillen, Anya Ormsby, Paul Cronin. Cinematography Jack McGowan Film Editor Gary Goch Art Direction Forest Carpenter Original Music Carl Zittrer Special Makeup Creator Alan Ormsby Written by Bob Clark, Alan Ormsby Produced by Gary Goch Directed by Bob Clark credited as Benjamin Clark
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Hitting film school,...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Hitting film school,...
- 1/16/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
The Austin Film Society continues its "Rebel Rebel" series this weekend with a brand new 35mm print of Jamaa Fanaka's 1976 film Emma Mae. Tonight's screening at the Marchesa is free to Afs members, and the movie will play again on Sunday afternoon. Afs is also sponsoring a screening of The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada, starring Tommy Lee Jones, on Wednesday night at the Texas Spirit Theater (inside the Bullock Texas State History Museum). It's free for Afs members, as well as Aff, Cine Las Americas and Bullock Museum members. Julio Cedillo and producer Eric Williams will be there for a post-screening Q&A. Head back to the Marchesa on Thursday night for a 35mm print of Truffaut's Jules And Jim. The film is part of this month's Essential Cinema series on films Of World War I.
Alamo Drafthouse Ritz has programmed a weekend of classic biker flicks to...
- 6/13/2014
- by Matt Shiverdecker
- Slackerwood
Editor's Note: The La Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema film series tour continues its travels, making its final stop in Atlanta (Ga), running October 25 through November 24, 2013. The Atl installment of the series is sponsored by Emory University’s Department of Film and Media Studies, liquid blackness, for Georgia State University’s Department of Communication, and the Atlanta Film Festival, in association with UCLA Film & Television Archive. Jamaa Fanaka, who was alive when this traveling screening series began in late 2011, passed away on April 1, 2012. When I asked Jerri Hayes how it felt to...
- 10/29/2013
- by Brandon Wilson
- ShadowAndAct
The Chicago screenings of the touring L.A. Rebellion Film Series starts, in earnest, next week, until June 7, with Jamaa Fanaka’s 1976 film Emma Mae next Thursday April 25th. Made before Fanaka’s Penitentiary film trilogy, Emma Mae, which was shot in 1974, towards the tail end of the “Blaxploitation” era, is a true rarity which definitely does not fit the mold of the usual films of the era. Telling the story of a young, naïve country girl who comes to L.A. and who is lead astray by corrupting evil influences, the film doesn’t follow the usual conventional morality play with Emma being led on the path to ruin. It is, instead, a genuine feminist self-empowerment film about...
- 4/19/2013
- by Sergio
- ShadowAndAct
Jamaa Fanaka, the eclectic and kind-hearted film director, the most commercially minded of the Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers and perhaps the most prolific student filmmaker of all time (all three of the features he made as a grad student found distribution), died one year ago today. Although word leaked out about his death a short time after he passed away, likely from complications of diabetes, I am ashamed to admit that I didn’t hear of it until several weeks later, when his obituary finally appeared in the New York Times. Ashamed because in the intervening year since I …...
- 4/1/2013
- by Brandon Harris
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
Editor's Note: The retro is being rebooted for runs in Philly, Toronto and New York through February. Over the next few weeks, we'll be revisiting our reviews/write-ups/interviews on the series (from Brandon Wilson and Nijla Mumin) when it begun in Los Angeles over a year ago... here's another. The overview and complete lineup speak for themselves, so click Here to head over to the home site for the series. When I asked Jerri Hayes how it felt to revisit her star turn in Jamaa Fanaka’s second feature Emma Mae (1976) after a recent screening, she answered without hesitation. “You know, it’s so different; I was sitting there relating to Emma...
- 1/18/2013
- by Brandon Wilson
- ShadowAndAct
Well, this is caps off a pretty sucky Monday:
Jamaa Fanaka, director of 1979 indie hit Penitentiary, has died. He was 69 years old.
Penitentiary was something of a forefather to the indie black cinema movement, completed in fact when Fanaka was in film school at UCLA. The director’s death is said to be diabetes-related.
Penitentiary is the story of Martel “Too Sweet” Gordone, played by Leon Issac Kennedy, who is somewhat unjustly imprisoned for murdering a biker. Gordone joins the prison boxing team and fights in a tournament in a bid to obtain an early release. In his way are a litany of awesomely named foes and the usual prison flick departmental corruption.
The film is cheap and nasty, but seriously, check these character names, arguably the finest of any Blaxploitation film ever:
Sweetpea
Seldom Seen
Half-Dead
Poindexter
Cheese
Magilla Gorilla
That’s some good stuff right there.
I picked...
Jamaa Fanaka, director of 1979 indie hit Penitentiary, has died. He was 69 years old.
Penitentiary was something of a forefather to the indie black cinema movement, completed in fact when Fanaka was in film school at UCLA. The director’s death is said to be diabetes-related.
Penitentiary is the story of Martel “Too Sweet” Gordone, played by Leon Issac Kennedy, who is somewhat unjustly imprisoned for murdering a biker. Gordone joins the prison boxing team and fights in a tournament in a bid to obtain an early release. In his way are a litany of awesomely named foes and the usual prison flick departmental corruption.
The film is cheap and nasty, but seriously, check these character names, arguably the finest of any Blaxploitation film ever:
Sweetpea
Seldom Seen
Half-Dead
Poindexter
Cheese
Magilla Gorilla
That’s some good stuff right there.
I picked...
- 4/16/2012
- by Cameron Ashley
- Boomtron
As a tribute to the passing of the late Jamaa Fanaka, I've decided to put this pending review of Penitentiary from Arrowdrome on the fast track. Fanaka was a rebel who made his films his way, and perhaps no film better exemplifies that adventurous spirit and search for truth quite like the first Penitentiary film. Made while Fanaka was still a film student, Penitentiary may be his most personal film, the one with the most to say about the state of African American men in the late '70s, and as such, it has a ring of truth and a power that evades most run of the mill blaxploitation films from the '70s.While Penitentiary often gets lumped into the blaxploitation genre, there is enough to differentiate...
- 4/5/2012
- Screen Anarchy
Nice cover for the new issue of Cahiers du Cinéma, which features a collection of articles (all of them offline) on Francis Ford Coppola's Twixt. There's a new Brooklyn Rail out as well, and we've already noted Monica Westin's interview with Geoff Dyer in today's roundup on Andrei Tarkovsky and Paul Felten's review of Damsels in Distress in another roundup on Whit Stillman. In terms of strictly film-related pieces (and let's hope you don't confine yourself to those!), that leaves Troy Swain's graphic celebration of the upcoming series at Anthology Film Archives, The Films of Carmelo Bene, running April 26 through 29, and Donal Foreman's interview with Nicole Brenez.
The occasion for the interview was the series Brenez curated for Anthology last month, Internationalist Cinema for Today (there was a roundup at the time) and Foreman writes a terrific introduction:
In an essay on Adorno's relationship with cinema, Nicole Brenez...
The occasion for the interview was the series Brenez curated for Anthology last month, Internationalist Cinema for Today (there was a roundup at the time) and Foreman writes a terrific introduction:
In an essay on Adorno's relationship with cinema, Nicole Brenez...
- 4/4/2012
- MUBI
March 11
7:30 p.m.
Egyptian Theater
6712 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028
Hosted by: L.A. Filmforum
As part of the Alternative Projections historical project, the L.A. Filmforum presents a selection of short movies from the 1970s directed by African-American filmmakers based in Los Angeles. Filmmakers included in the lineup include Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, Ben Caldwell, Jamaa Fanaka and more. Caldwell, who will be in attendance, and Adam Hyman have curated this screening.
Through the Ethno-Communications Program begun in 1968, the film school at UCLA began building up a strong minority presence within its student body. In a few years, there was a significant number of African-American filmmakers that was dubbed the “La. Rebellion” by essayist Ntongela Masilela.
This group made politically and socially aware films that sought to provide an authentic reflection of the communities they came from that were not being represented anywhere else on screen. However, while...
7:30 p.m.
Egyptian Theater
6712 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028
Hosted by: L.A. Filmforum
As part of the Alternative Projections historical project, the L.A. Filmforum presents a selection of short movies from the 1970s directed by African-American filmmakers based in Los Angeles. Filmmakers included in the lineup include Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, Ben Caldwell, Jamaa Fanaka and more. Caldwell, who will be in attendance, and Adam Hyman have curated this screening.
Through the Ethno-Communications Program begun in 1968, the film school at UCLA began building up a strong minority presence within its student body. In a few years, there was a significant number of African-American filmmakers that was dubbed the “La. Rebellion” by essayist Ntongela Masilela.
This group made politically and socially aware films that sought to provide an authentic reflection of the communities they came from that were not being represented anywhere else on screen. However, while...
- 3/6/2012
- by screenings
- Underground Film Journal
Back at the end of October, our friends at Arrow Video sent over a special preview of their upcoming 2012 DVD and Blu-ray releases, and now they’ve sent us more details on two of those titles – the Arrow Video Blu-ray release of Red Scorpion and the Arrowdrome DVD release of Penitentiary and Cat O’Nine Tails.
Red Scorpion (Arrow Video) Blu-ray
Taught To Stalk. Trained To Kill. Programmed To Destroy.
Dolph Lundgren is Nikolai – a killing machine – a deadly, highly skilled agent for the Russian army whose brutal efficiency and single minded determination to serve the motherland leaves behind a trail of battered bodies and bloodied enemies. Now Nikolai must infiltrate an African rebel army who seek to defy their new communist rulers and take out their leader, but as he gets to know his enemies and the dignified Bushmen he encounters, he begins to slowly realize that all he...
Red Scorpion (Arrow Video) Blu-ray
Taught To Stalk. Trained To Kill. Programmed To Destroy.
Dolph Lundgren is Nikolai – a killing machine – a deadly, highly skilled agent for the Russian army whose brutal efficiency and single minded determination to serve the motherland leaves behind a trail of battered bodies and bloodied enemies. Now Nikolai must infiltrate an African rebel army who seek to defy their new communist rulers and take out their leader, but as he gets to know his enemies and the dignified Bushmen he encounters, he begins to slowly realize that all he...
- 11/25/2011
- by Phil
- Nerdly
Following up on the excellent news about the box office results of I Will Follow, I thought that maybe it’s time to revisit a piece I wrote last spring since it involves the one man who perhaps, more than any other person (and I’m not forgetting important pioneers such as Charles Burnett, Jamaa Fanaka and Julie Dash), started the popular success of the current independent black filmmaker movement some 25 years ago.
But of late hasn’t been doing too well – career-wise that is. And almost a year later things haven’t changed for him. Of course I talking about the one and only Spike Lee.
As a wrote back then, I had a conversation with a writer friend of mine who wrote a highly praised biography a few years ago, and she has now decided to see if a movie of her book could be made. She made...
But of late hasn’t been doing too well – career-wise that is. And almost a year later things haven’t changed for him. Of course I talking about the one and only Spike Lee.
As a wrote back then, I had a conversation with a writer friend of mine who wrote a highly praised biography a few years ago, and she has now decided to see if a movie of her book could be made. She made...
- 3/15/2011
- by Sergio
- ShadowAndAct
Teshome Gabriel, a longtime professor at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and an internationally recognized authority on Third World and post-colonial cinema, died June 15 of a heart attack at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Panorama City, Calif. He was 70.
A pioneering scholar and activist, Gabriel had taught cinema and media studies at TFT since 1974 and was closely associated with UCLA's African Studies Center.
"He was a brilliant, gracious, elegant and generous man," said Teri Schwartz, dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. "Teshome was a consummate professional and a truly beloved faculty member at TFT. He will be greatly missed by all of us."
Born in 1939 in Ethiopia, Gabriel came to the U.S. in 1962, earning degrees in political science and educational media from the University of Utah before being hired as a lecturer at Tft in 1974. He went on to receive his master's in 1976 and Ph.D. in 1979 from UCLA and became a full tenured professor in 1995.
A pioneering scholar and activist, Gabriel had taught cinema and media studies at TFT since 1974 and was closely associated with UCLA's African Studies Center.
"He was a brilliant, gracious, elegant and generous man," said Teri Schwartz, dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. "Teshome was a consummate professional and a truly beloved faculty member at TFT. He will be greatly missed by all of us."
Born in 1939 in Ethiopia, Gabriel came to the U.S. in 1962, earning degrees in political science and educational media from the University of Utah before being hired as a lecturer at Tft in 1974. He went on to receive his master's in 1976 and Ph.D. in 1979 from UCLA and became a full tenured professor in 1995.
- 6/21/2010
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Jamaa Fanaka’s raw and violent indictment of prison life is a masterpiece of Urban Cinema and was the most successful independent film of 1980. A potent combination of "blaxploitation", prison film and social commentary, Penitentiary busted genres and galvanised audiences from the art houses to the inner city, becoming the cornerstone of urban independent film for generations to come.
Martel Gordone ( Leon Isaac Kennedy) is a Hitchhiker who gets into a fight with a pair of bikers over a prostitute. One of the biker dies and Martel finds himself in prison with the moniker ‘ too sweet’ because of his love of candy bars. Soon, he is a hardened but pragmatic inmate who joins the prison boxing team in an effort to secure an early parole. Standing in his path however is ‘Half Dead Johnson’, a member of the prison’s most violent gang.
www.arrowfilms.co.uk
Read More
tags: blaxploitation,...
Martel Gordone ( Leon Isaac Kennedy) is a Hitchhiker who gets into a fight with a pair of bikers over a prostitute. One of the biker dies and Martel finds himself in prison with the moniker ‘ too sweet’ because of his love of candy bars. Soon, he is a hardened but pragmatic inmate who joins the prison boxing team in an effort to secure an early parole. Standing in his path however is ‘Half Dead Johnson’, a member of the prison’s most violent gang.
www.arrowfilms.co.uk
Read More
tags: blaxploitation,...
- 2/11/2009
- by Leigh
- Latemag.com/film
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