FILM

Order online and pay no service fees at 92YTribeca.org or call 212.601.1000 All screenings are $12 unless otherwise noted. NEW! Text “Tribeca” to 86213 and be the first to learn about new events and special offerings! Standard message rates apply. Visit 92YTribeca.org for updates and additions.200 Hudson Street at Canal | An agency of UJA-Federation

oct 2011

The theme for this season of Flaherty NYC at 92YTribeca is Snapshots: Tourism in Cinema, exploring documentary as a form of tourism, of the filmmaker as an outsider looking at a place through the gaze of the outsider. Programmed by Miriam Bale.

wed, OCt 5, 7:30 pmGone to earthIn this, Michael Powell’s and Emeric Pressburger’s rarely screened, enchanted Technicolor masterpiece, Jennifer Jones is a half gypsy who runs barefoot through the rolling Welsh countryside with her pet fox (named Foxy) in arm. The gorgeous Jones as Hazel is pursued by both a kind pastor who wants to save her and a brutal Baron who wants to savage her. Hazel is torn between the two, but really belongs to the forest and hills where she feels most at home.Directors: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger. 110 min. 1950. 35mm.

Program also includes the short film Union, Paul Clipson’s unnerving Super 8 short inspired by Gone to Earth. (15 min. 2010. 16mm).

wed, OCt 12, 7:30 pmthe Life aquatic with Steve ZiSSouAnother tourist film of imaginary places, this film could be considered a documentary about Cinecittà, the Italian film studio where it was shot. “This is a documentary. It’s all really happening,” says a character in Wes Anderson’s maligned and misunderstood epic fantasy about a Jacques Cousteau-inspired filmmaker and his crew. The film, like a Disney live action adventure made by Godard, is a self-conscious examination of the overlap between fiction and documentary. Matt Zoller Seitz, author of the forthcoming book The Wes Anderson Collection, calls this his favorite Wes Anderson film and will be in attendance to discuss.Director: Wes Anderson. 119 min. 2004. 35mm.

wed, OCt 19, 7:30 pmLe mort du rat, chicken reaL AnD ukiah LE morT dU rAT The man Tarkovsky called “the great hope of French cinema” is virtually unknown now, both in the United States and in France. Aubier plays with the industrial film format in this experimental short.Director: Pascal Aubier. 5 min. 1975.

ChiCkEN rEAL This surprisingly gorgeous 16mm short about chicken factory farming has been described as “probably the most hilariously subversive industrial film ever made.” Commissioned by Holly Farms Poultry and one of the last industrial films Blank made, his unidentifiable tone of arch cynicism with an overriding sensuous pleasure was established with this film, yet it was notably absent in the last two Blank retrospectives in NY.Director: Les Blank. 23 min. 1970.

UkiAh This ambiguous utopian dreamworld was shot at an artists’ project in Northern California. The gorgeous images were shot using the movie setting on a still camera, so he was able to document the project almost unnoticed, from completely inside. Haunting and funny, the film has the logic of a child’s mind making sense of the unreal. Fleischner, the director of Wah Do Dem and Below the Brain, will be in attendance to discuss.Director: Sam Fleischner. 15 min. 2010.

wed, OCt 26, 7:30 pmSuPEr 8 SnAPShoTS The night will begin with filmmaker Brian Frye presenting a selection of found footage from his collection and discussing the influence of this type of work on his own filmmaking. Then Kevin Allen and Jen Heuson will present their own Super 8 films documenting places (including Peru, Bolivia, Vietnam) that plays with this same format. Then Heuson will present her latest film, Sweet Clover, which uses Super 8 travel footage from the Black Hills, SD to weave together an autobiographical tale of her family’s history, cowboys and Indians and tourism in the West.

The Flaherty NYC series continues into November. Check 92YTribeca.org/Flaherty for details.

Deserted streets! Blood-red skies! Total Social Breakdown!

Join us for a selection of rare-to-infamous apocalyptic films and several talks with a wide variety of Doomday experts—neuroscientists, authors, critics, roboticists, and even a chaplain. The festival also incorporates a gallery exhibit, bomb shelter lounge, and a DJ’d mix of PSAs, industrial noise, and nuclear meltdown sirens—in short, the End will be all kinds of Nigh.

fri, OCt 21, 8 pmmiracLe miLeFollowed by Q&A with Steve DeJarnatt.

Doomed romantic Anthony Edwards finally stumbles into a meet-cute with a dream girl, but on the eve of their second date, he picks up a stray ringing pay phone at 4 a.m, and gets some unfortunate news—WWIII has been launched, giving him 70 minutes before nukes descend upon the streets of L.A.

Director: Steve De Jarnatt. 87 min. 1988. 35mm.

fri, OCt 21, 10:30 pmLaSt niGhtSpecial guest curated by Edgar Wright (in person, schedule permitting)

Leave it to the Canadians to best capture the aw-shucks benign resignation of late ‘90s angst—with six hours left until some unidentified cataclysm, the radio counts down the best songs of all time, a gas-utility exec (David Cronenberg) makes thank-you calls, and a family politely goes through the motions of their last meal. Instead of cowering or rising up against their doomsday, Don McKellar’s touching myriad of hapless citizens just sort of carry on. With a doozy of a finale, rivaling “Giulietta Massina smiling into the camera in Nights of Cabiria, or the seaside sunset in Eric Rohmer’s The Green Ray.” – Amy Taubin

Director: Don McKellar. 98 min. 1999. 35mm.

Sat, OCt 22, 6 pmcoLoSSuS: the forbin ProjectFollowed by “The Singularity is Nigh” panel discussion.

Bizarrely forgotten, Colossus was actually produced before 2001 but delayed because its studio was so upset by the grim flippant tone. Nowhere as grave and bloodless as your standard Luddite paranoid fantasy, the film is actually closer in spirit to Strangelove, with its wry literate script, crisp pacing, mordant take on human folly and increasingly odd twists—notably when Colossus puts its scientist-creator’s every move (including sexy time) under surveillance.

Director: Joseph Sargent. 100 min. 1970. 35mm.

Followed by a panel discussion featuring author Maggie Jackson, critic Joshua Rothkopf, writer Jason Zinoman, roboticist Chris Bregler and president of the Singularity Institute Michael Vassar. Moderated by Motherboard editor-in-chief Michael Byrne.

In olden times, back when people gave a hoot, video stores would set aside certain movies on an altar to refined, idiosyncratic expertise called “Employee Picks.” In that spirit, critics Nick Pinkerton and Nicolas Rapold present their very own secret history of cinema.

Sat, OCt 22, 9:30 pmLifeforceIntroduced by Mike Sampson of JoBlo Pre-Screening Complimentary Sexy Alien Zombie Makeup.

Essentially an apocalyptic film festival unto itself, Lifeforce conjures no less than every conceivable doomsday scenario, with an emphasis on perverse sexual imagery so often ignored by the apocalyptic canon. Unfairly derided at the time as incoherent junk, this is far from phoned -in hackwork, with director Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and writer Dan O’Bannon (Alien), at their most demented, dialing up their pet obsessions to 11. Your new favorite cult classic, this is a film made for drinking games, and not to be missed on the big screen.

Director: Tobe hooper. 116 min. 1985. 35 mm.

Sun, OCt 23, 2 pmdr. StranGeLoveFollowed by “Doomsday on the Brain” panel discussion.

Fearful the Russkies are fluoridating America’s drinking water to pollute “our precious bodily fluids,” General Jack D. Ripper fires up the “Doomsday Machine,” sending the world’s power players scrambling. Released when the End was awfully close to nigh, Strangelove was intended to be gravely serious, but as Kubrick began to contemplate “mutally assured destruction” (aka MAD), he couldn’t help but zero in on the lunacy. “One of the great adolescent pranks perpetrated in movies.” – J. Hoberman

Director: Stanley Kubrick. 91 min. 1964. 35mm.

Following the film, we’ll be joined by a panel of experts in an attempt to diagnose our collective doomsday complex and wrap our heads around the lunacy of it all. Featuring neuroscientist Joseph Le Doux, Dr. Mark Siegel, author Lee Quinby and critic Keith Uhlich.

Sun, OCt 23, 4:30 pmdoomSday ShortSAn international array of brand-new apocalypse films including: crazed prophet street art, psychedelic animation starring a single lemon, docs tracking the daily lives of Harold Camping’s devoted followers, Slamdance award winners, experimental collage art featuring haunted meteorologists, and steampunk ninjas courtesy of the FX wizard behind Star Wars and Starship Troopers.

Sun, OCt 23, 7 pmGod toLd me toFollowed by Skype Q&A with director Larry Cohen Co-presented by Alt Screen.Perhaps the most radical of Cohen’s populist genre works, God Told Me To is the paranoid skuzzy downtown flipside to Rosemary’s Baby’s uptown neurosis. Tautly paced, with an uneasy blend of fever dream deaths, sly social commentary, sacrilegious black comedy, edgy verite lensing, Catholic guilt played straight, and scene after scene of rich pulpy dialogue delivered by a cast of old pro character actors. Released during a time where both the cult craze and the Christian Right had just made their ascension, the film’s guerilla derangement of the Gospel leaves absolutely no spiritual anxiety unprodded.Director: Larry Cohen. 87 min. 1976. 16mm.

tHu, OCt 6, 7:30 pm

SquirmCity slicker Don Scardino crosses the Mason-Dixon for the love of Southern girl Patricia Pearcy (Cockfighter), but everything goes to hell as soon as he tries to find a good egg cream. A toppled power line does something to the local bait industry, a heretofore disorganized earthworm population who suddenly transform into a slippery, wriggling, flesh-hungry legion, burrowing under exposed skin and making the world unsafe for showerheads and spaghetti dinners. The enormous assembled cast of heaped nightcrawlers make this deeply, deeply gross movie the Ben-Hur of worm-attack films.Director: Jeff Lieberman. 92 min. 1976. 35mm.

tHu, OCt 6, 9:30 pm, $10

SLitherDebut director James Gunn (Super) continues Squirm’s grand tradition of films about gross things threatening attractive women in bathrooms, while exploring the new avenues for perverse violation allowed by modern CGI. A meteor crash lands near small-town Woodville, bringing a cargo of alien parasites that resemble animate beef tongues, which have the ability to zombify their hosts when ingested. Sheriff Bill Pardy (Nathan Fillion) is the only man standing in the way of colonization, with Elizabeth Banks as his backup. Fillion gives a standout performance of bemused incredulity, working from a profane and funny script.Director: James Gunn. 95 min. 2006. 35mm.

iSLand of LoSt SouLS

FILMoct 2011Order online and pay no service fees at 92YTribeca.org or call 212.601.1000 All screenings are $12 unless otherwise noted. NEW! Text “Tribeca” to 86213 and be the first to learn about new events and special offerings! Standard message rates apply. Visit 92YTribeca.org for updates and additions. 200 hudson Street at Canal

Movies that get better after you’ve had a few. This month’s theme: Funny/Gory!

fri, OCt 14, 8 pm

dead aLiveLionel Cosgrove is a devoted mama’s boy—so devoted that when she is bit by a strange monkey and starts behaving outrageously, he lovingly comes to her aid, whether gluing her skin back on or apologizing when she eats a dog. His budding romance with Paquita starts to suffer, and when he suddenly becomes responsible for more gooey walking-dead types, he tries to spare her by breaking it off. But his gaggle of horny, oozing monsters starts to increase, (including the most terrible baby ever) and he realizes he will have to eliminate them rather than protect them. A lawnmower comes in handy with doing the job quick, but does he have the, um, guts to do in his own mum? One of Peter Jackson’s early movies and arguably one of the most bloody disgusting comedy-horrors of all time, Dead Alive will be a cringe-inducing joy on the big screen!

Director: Peter Jackson. 104 min. 1992. 35mm.

fri, OCt 14, 10:15 pm, $10

re-animatorWhen genius medical student Herbert West creates a serum that brings the dead back to life, he naturally did not foresee the trouble it would cause. One test-case revived corpse goes on a rampage, with bloody results. West struggles to seize control when things continue to go awry, but moving cadavers and dismembered body parts get in the way. Based on an H.P. Lovecraft story, this adaptation found a cult following as well as unlikely critical praise, with Janet Maslin remarking that it “has as much originality as it has gore, and that’s really saying something.” Director: Stuart Gordon. 86 min. 1985. 35mm.

Sat, OCt 1, 8 pm, $10

ThE Iron MuLE ShorT CoMEDY FILM FESTIvALThe Iron Mule Short Comedy Screening Series was founded in April 2002 under the name First Sundays at the Chicago City Limits Theater in NYC, and has been screening monthly ever since. We are a collective of filmmakers and film lovers who meet monthly to celebrate funny and inventive short cinema among friends. Join us if you dare!

This month, we’re featuring comedies about vampires, domestic violence, distant families and product recalls. Plus the Wanna Be a Star movie “Garbage Dump,” starring audience member Ally Cunningham!

tue, OCt 4, 7:30 pm

iSLand of LoSt SouLSPart of the series Closely Watched Films.

Edward Parker (Richard Arlen) is shipwrecked at sea, punched off a freighter, and things only get worse from there. Now the guest of the mysterious Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton), Parker’s trapped among ape-men, panther-girls and the grisly secrets of the House of Pain as he tries desperately to escape the island of a mad scientist determined to transform animals into men. The first and still best adaptation of H.G.Wells’s “Island of Dr. Moreau”, Lost Souls is one of the least-seen great ‘30s horror movies. More lurid and shocking than the genteel Universal monster movies, it was banned in England for 25 years. Featuring bizarre make-up effects, Charles Laughton’s most maniacal performance and film’s first man/animal sexual tension, Lost Souls is an off-putting nightmare.

Host Elliott Kalan and special guest John Hodgman (Areas of My Expertise, The Daily Show, This American Life) will discuss mad scientists, old-time horror and just how bewildered a pre-comic book world had to have been by marauding animal-men.

Director: Erle Kenton. 70 min. 1932. 35mm.

tremorSmoSeS and aaron

Labyrinth SinG-aLonG and coStume Partythe exterminator

tHu, OCt 13, 7 pm

Samba’S eveninG (noitada de Samba foco de reSiStencia)Part of the series Janeiro in New York. Co-presented with Cinema Tropical. In 1971, under Brazil’s military dictatorship, Jorge Coutinho and Leonides Bayer began holding weekly “Samba Evenings” at Teatro Opinião in Rio de Janeiro, importing popular musicians from the suburbs to entertain Rio’s elite. Radical in both concept and execution, the series transformed the theater into a symbol of political and cultural resistance over its 617 performances in 13 years. Samba’s Evening recounts this history through music, rare footage and interviews with Alcione, Beth Carvalho, D. Yvone Lara, Eliana Pittman, Elton Medeiros, Gilberto Braga, Martinho da Vila, Maurício Sherman and others whose stories powerfully evoke the period. - MoMA Premiere Brazil!

Director: Cély Leal. 75 min. 2010. portuguese with english subtitles.

Sat, OCt 15, 7 pm

moSeS and aaronProgrammed by Miriam Bale. Richard Roud wrote of this little-seen atonal biblical masterpiece, “a faithful version of Schoenberg’s opera and an original film in its own right.” In it, Straub and Huillet succeed in rendering visible not only the philosophical content of the work—the struggle between word (Moses) and image (Aaron)—but also its dramatic potential.” Moses is the idea and Aaron is the expression of the idea. As explored by Straub and Huillet, through sound and space, this profoundly dialectical film is about what cinema is, apart from its conflicting elements. Also, in the filmmakers’ reliably anti-bourgeois way, it’s about the inevitable fall of the powerful from the height of success. This is why, they supposed, the film never caught on in America.

Directors: Danièle huillet & Jean-Marie Straub. 107 min. 1975. 35mm.

Sun, OCt 16, 6 pm

JAMES GLICKEnhAuS DouBLE FEATurE: the exterminator AnD Shakedown

6 pmThE ExTErmiNATor

This film shows us what it might look like if someone applied superhero methods in real life. After his army buddy is paralyzed by a ruthless gang, John Eastland (Robert Ginty) blows away those involved. He doesn’t stop there, setting out on a spree to off as many depraved individuals as one man can track down in late 1970s New York City. The movie found an enthusiastic audience and launched director James Glickenhaus’s career. Expect blood, guts (machine-processed) and scorched bodies and witness NYC when it was at its dingiest.Director: James Glickenhaus. 101 min. 1980. 35mm.

8:30 pmShAkEdoWN8 years after leveling the scum of the city by any means necessary in The Exterminator, Times Square auteur James Glickenhaus goes big budget and leaves a wake of destruction through some of the most iconic locations of pre-Giuliani New York. An overworked lawyer (Peter Weller) teams with an undercover cop (a never more grizzled Sam Elliott) to take on drug kingpins and high-level police corruption. The actual level of corruption within the NYPD is debatable, but one fact remains clear: action movies are rarely this exciting, intelligent and unpretentious. Features an astonishing shootout/car chase on super sleazy 42nd street and the untouchable tagline, “Whatever you do… don’t call the cops.”

Director: James Glickenhaus. 112 min. 1988. 35mm.

mOn, OCt 17, 8 pm

MEET ThE LADY: BETh GrAnTPart of our Meet The Lady series.

Meet The Lady begins its second season with an in-person tribute to great American character actress Beth Grant, known for her memorable performances in films such as Donnie Darko, Sordid Lives, Little Miss Sunshine, To Wong Foo ... and many more. For one night only, Grant will appear in person to screen and discuss selections from her prolific career—which spans 150 film and television credits—and to accept presentations in her honor delivered by a cavalcade of New York artists.

Hosted by Tom Blunt, with special guests Frank DeCaro, Roslyn Hart, Kevin Maher and Nellie McKay. Music by Brooklyn Instrument Museum. Reception to follow in the 92YTribeca café.

tHu, OCt 20, 7:30 pm

PunCh: PuPPET SLAM

PUNCH puppet slam: short films is back at 92YTribeca with award-win-ning cinema, rocking music videos, comedic shorts, probing political com-mentary and more; with rod puppets, hand puppets, Muppet-style puppets, shadows and other. Brought to you by the fine people at Drama of Works.

tHu, OCt 27, 7 pm

SemPer fi: aLwayS faithfuLPart of the series Story Leads to Action, co-presented with Chicken and Egg Pictures and Working Films.

Marine Corps. SGT Jerry Ensminger was a devoted marine for nearly 25 years. As a drill instructor he lived and breathed the “Corps” and was responsible for indoctrinating thousands of new recruits with its motto Semper Fidelis or “Always Faithful.” When Jerry’s nine-year old daughter Janey died of a rare type of leukemia, his world collapsed. As a grief-stricken father, he struggled for years to make sense of what happened. His search for answers led to the shocking discovery of a Marine Corps cover-up of one of the largest water contamination incidents in U.S. history. Semper Fi: Always Faithful follows Jerry’s mission to expose the Marine Corps and force them to live up to their motto to the thousands of soldiers and their families exposed to toxic chemicals. His fight reveals a grave injustice at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune and a looming environmental crisis at military sites across the country.

Directors: rachel Libert and Tony hardmon. 76 min. 2011.

fri, OCt 28, 8 pm

tremorSPart of the series Basic Cable Classics.

In this affectionate send-up of schlocky ‘50s creature features, podunk cowpokes Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward finally wise up and try to ditch their nowhere desert town, but it just so happens to be the very day giant prehistoric man-eating sandworms begin sucking the townspeople under-ground. Scary-fun and retro drive-in, Tremors was released during a time when the “animals attack” subgenre had all but become extinct, but Ron Underwood’s horror-comedy served as a reminder of why it was such a staple in the first place. While decidedly cheeky in tone (the monsters are called “graboids”), the film’s shocks are nonetheless genuine, with tension ramped to seismic levels. Like Jaws before it, Tremors distinguishes itself from bargain-bin monster-movie fare with inspired casting choices for the affably rag-tag townsfolk—notably Michael “Family Ties” Gross and country singer Reba McEntire as a pair of endearingly nutjob survivalists, overjoyed that the day has finally come to mobilize their arsenal of elephant guns.

Director: ron underwood. 96min. 1990. 35mm.

fri, OCt 28, 10:15 pm, $13 tiCket inCludeS One beer

Labyrinth SInG-ALonG AnD CoSTuME PArTYPart of our Sing-Along series. Hosted by Chris Kelly.

Put on your spandex and practice your crystal ball juggling – it is time once again for the Labyrinth sing-along! David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly star along with some homely Muppets, taking us through a maze of upside down staircases and talking door-knockers. Beer will help you to admit that you know the words to the songs.

The night will include a costume competition and other surprises!

Director: Jim henson. 101 min. 1986. 35mm.

Sat, OCt 29, 8 pm $13 tiCket inCludeS One beer

DouBLE FEATurE: fiend AnD Society NotComing.com is hosting a double feature of 1980s frights, beginning with a foray into homemade horror (screened on VHS!) and culminating in a quintessential gross-out, screening on 35mm film. Featuring trailers from other horror favorites.

8 pmFiENd

A one-time underground comic-book magnate and publisher of the DIY horror effects zine Cinemagic, low-budget horror master Don Dohler is a veritable repository of frugal grotesquerie. Dohler crafted a distinctive subgenre of beige suburban Maryland cul-de-sac horror, of which Fiend is the zenith, featuring a dazzling compendium of turn-of-the-eighties hairstyles, home furnishings, and all-around fiendishness. Alternately taking the form of a glowing-red spermatozoon and a paunchy, mustachioed violin teacher and Satanist named Mr. Longfellow, this titular demonic entity sates its nefarious insatiable hunger for the lifeforce of average suburban folks and innocent little girls.Directed by Don Dohler. 90 min. 1980. VHS.

10 pmSoCiETY

For its first two-thirds, Society is not dissimilar to other 1980s horror/thriller films that craft suburban settings of high school strife or Reagan-era, socioeco-nomic anxiety. This portion of the film is in itself a fine example of whodunit tension, centering on a lettered high school senior, Bill, and his relationship with his increasingly and peculiarly libidinous family and friends. But unlike its peers (it is akin to everything from Scooby Doo to Blue Velvet, Salò, and even Eyes Wide Shut), Society builds to a climax so profane and outlandish that its shock holds firm over twenty years after the film’s original release. Genre maven Brian Yuzna’s first, Society remains not only his best film, but an underappreciated satire and one of horror’s quintessential special effects extravaganzas.

Directed by Brian Yuzna. 99 min. 1989. 35mm.