Underworld Beauty
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Retrieving the diamonds he stashed before his arrest, thief Miyamoto hopes to help his old partner Mihara, crippled during the heist. Their former boss, crime lord Oyane, offers to mediate with a foreign buyer, but secretly wants the stones for himself. The deal goes awry when gunmen appear on the scene. Mihara swallows the diamonds but dies in the chase, leaving a valuable corpse in the police morgue. Miyamoto forms an uneasy alliance with Mihara's wildcat sister Akiko to keep the gems away from gangsters, cops and even Akiko's greedy boyfriend. This wildly inventive early noir sees Seijun Suzuki infectiously playing with genre rules and gender stereotypes.
Goodbye & Amen
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Director Damiano Damiani (A Bullet for the General) wields expert tension in this gripping espionage thriller, twisting and turning its tight plot to its sensational finale. Featuring a supporting cast including Claudia Cardinale (Fitzcarraldo) and John Steiner (Tenebrae), Goodbye & Amen is one of the great 1970s Italian action thrill rides set to a haunting score by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis. John Dannahay, a CIA agent stationed in Rome, is planning to overthrow an African government. But his plan goes wrong when a corrupt colleague starts shooting people from the roof of a hotel, taking an innocent couple hostage.
Lump
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Ralph, a mourning detective, discovers an unwelcome lump and an equally unwelcome partner, Xavier. The investigator contends with Xavier's exuberance as they navigate a partnership between unlikely cases, themselves and a lump.
Skateboard: The Movie
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Skateboard was the first feature film to depict the height of the 70s skateboard craze. Many refer to it as the Bad News Bears of the sport. It’s star studded cast includes Alan Garfield, 70s teen idol Leif Garrett, skateboarding legend Tony Alva, and iconic female freestyler and member of the Skateboarding Hall of Fame Ellen O’Neal.
I Am Secretly An Important Man
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I Am Secretly an Important Man is a portrait of writer and poet Steven J. Bernstein (aka Jesse Bernstein), one of Seattle's most celebrated and troubled voices. His angry, surprisingly fresh and lyrical writings are about sensitive souls, drifters and drug addicts; the people alienated by a society that refuses to understand them. Bernstein peels back the ugliness and the darkness of life on the fringe to expose tender and not so tender human feelings. His unique rhythms, filled with humor and pain, were especially exciting when read in his own gravelly voice. Bernstein was an integral part of the legendary Seattle rock scene of the late 80's and early 90s, and in 1991 was dubbed the "Godfather of Grunge '' by the British magazine The Independent.
Jobriath A.D.
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Seventies glam rock musician Jobriath was known as “The American Bowie,” “The True Fairy of Rock & Roll,” and “Hype of the Year.” The first openly gay rock star, Jobriath’s reign was brief, lasting less than two years and two albums. Done in by a over‐hyped publicity machine, shunned by the gay community, and dismissed by critics as all flash and no substance, Jobriath was excommunicated from the music business. He retreated to the Chelsea Hotel where he died, forgotten, in 1983 at the age of 37, as one of the earliest casualties of AIDS.
In the years since his death, new generations of fans have discovered his music through acts as diverse as Morrissey, Def Leppard, The Pet Shop Boys, and Gary Numan, all of whom have cited Jobriath as an influence. Through interviews, archival material, and animation, audiences can experience the heartbreaking and unbelievable story of the one, the only, Jobriath.
The Lost Arcade
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Chinatown Fair opened as a penny arcade in Manhattan’s Chinatown in 1944. Over the decades, it became an institution, surviving turf wars, changing tastes and the growth of home gaming. As the neighborhood gentrified this haven for a diverse, unlikely community faced its strongest challenge yet.
The critically acclaimed documentary about the last hold out of old school arcade culture in New York City, The Lost Arcade, is an intimate portrait of the passionate and exceptionally diverse community at the beloved Chinatown Fair. The Lost Arcade chronicles the evolution of arcades, while celebrating the camaraderie and history of a pop culture phenomenon.
The Oregonian
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There is a place. A place where the skies are wide and the forests are thick—and strange. You can lose yourself forever in these woods. You’ll meet truckers with problems and old women with strange powers. You may even make a furry friend. Just be sure to stay quiet. Spend some time with a woman from Oregon who is lost on the road and running away from her past. Now she has a chance to experience everything the grotesque Northwest has to offer, whether she likes it or not.
Out of Time: The Material Issue Story
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Out of Time: The Material Issue Story examines the tragic story of a rock band on the cusp of superstardom cut short by front man Jim Ellison’s suicide. The film tells the story of Material Issue, a power pop trio from Chicago that was literally out of time, sandwiched between the post-punk era of the 80's and the alternative rock movement of the 90's searching for its identity in the gritty world of rock and roll. The film features original band members Mike Zelenko and Ted Ansani with the first interviews of the family of Jim Ellison since his passing along with others that helped shape the world of the band including Jeff Murphy, Joe Shanahan, Jay O'Rourke, Jeff Kwatinetz, Matt Pinfield, Steve Albini and more.
Apocalypse: A Bill Callahan Tour Film
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This strikingly shot concert documentary follows enigmatic Drag City singer-songwriter Bill Callahan on a two-week tour from California to New York. For the past 25 years, under both the Smog moniker and under his own name, Callahan has cultivated a legacy as both a pioneer in the lo-fi movement and one of the country’s finest troubadours. The film is built on impressionistic scenes of Callahan’s life on the road combined with his cryptic musings ("I started playing music when I was 20, and time stopped for me then in a good way”), creating a voyeuristic glimpse into his meticulously constructed universe of disaffection and disorder. It is an austere and beautiful portrait of both the musician and the multifarious American landscape.
Other Music
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Other Music was an influential and uncompromising New York City record store that was vital to the city’s early 2000s indie music scene. But when the store is forced to close its doors due to rent increases, the homogenization of urban culture, and the shift from CDs to downloadable and streaming music, a cultural landmark is lost. Through vibrant storytelling, the documentary captures the record store’s vital role in the musical and cultural life of the city, and highlights the artists whose careers it helped launch including Vampire Weekend, Animal Collective, Interpol, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, William Basinski, Neutral Milk Hotel, Sharon Van Etten, Yo La Tengo and TV On The Radio.
Empty Metal
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Empty Metal follows five groups of characters, each emblematic of a different extreme political ideology, as they attempt insurrection against the status quo: a queer noise band is coerced into a dangerous assassination plot by a family of militant Native Americans who are aided by a Rastafarian computer hacker who is old friends with a Buddhist hermit whose son is a local militia leader.
This tangled web of marginalized voices is as diverse and contradictory as the nation that spun it, but there is a common thread: all the characters teeter on the dull knife blade that is contemporary American politics, but they refuse to fall right or left. Instead, they lash out from the soul, and under the radar, in an attempt to achieve what their mainstream predecessors have yet to accomplish.
Inspector Ike
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Inspector Ike, New York City’s greatest police detective, finds himself in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse after the conniving understudy of an avant-garde theater group knocks off the star actor. A “lost TV movie” from the 1970’s, INSPECTOR IKE mixes visual gags, slapstick, gross food, and heartfelt emotion. Think COLUMBO meets THE NAKED GUN, featuring a rogue's gallery of NYC's best comedians.
Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story
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Frank Sidebottom was a performer who happened to wear a huge paper mâché head. Or he was a real person. It rather depended whom you asked. Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story tells the twisted tale of a split personality, exploring the extraordinary secret life of a songwriter, artist, comedian and wayward genius. Sievey’s life was a fantastical, subversive piece of performance art. His greatest creation, the mysterious Frank Sidebottom, became a star – a manic, insane, mercurial star who obscured his own creator. Chris, who grew to resent Sidebottom, descended into alcoholism and bankruptcy, but his genius could not survive without ‘Being Frank’. "
Funny Ha Ha
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Marnie is 23, and drifts through "Funny Ha Ha," Andrew Bujalski's critically acclaimed debut feature, in search of romance and employment. The film's conversations sound improvised and the narrative rhythms appear loose and ambling as it paints a deft group portrait of recent college graduates-Marnie’s friends, co-workers and would-be lovers. But this scruffiness is a bit deceptive, as the film has both a subtle, delicate shape and a point. By the end of the film, Bujalski proves to be one of America’s most acute and intelligent young dramatists, utilizing 16mm film to probe and reveal the curious facts and stubborn puzzles of contemporary life.
The Family Jams
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An evocative portrait of youthful possibility, The Family Jams follows Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and Vetiver as they tour the USA in 2004 playing their unique music for a newly growing audience. The film is an intimate portrait of life on the road for these young musicians early in their careers, playing tiny, obscure clubs and art galleries, but on the verge of larger success before their small, intimate vans are replaced by large, impersonal tour busses. Also featuring appearances and performances by Antony and the Johnsons, Espers, Meg Baird, The Pleased and Linda Perhacs.
Until The Light Takes Us
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Until The Light Takes Us tells the story of black metal. Part music scene and part cultural uprising, black metal rose to worldwide notoriety in the mid-nineties when a rash of suicides, murders, and church burnings accompanied the explosive artistic growth and output of a music scene that would forever redefine what heavy metal is and what it stands for to other musicians, artists and music fans world-wide. Until The Light Takes Us goes behind the highly sensationalized media reports of "Satanists running amok in Europe" to examine the complex and largely misunderstood principles and beliefs that led to this rebellion against both Christianity and modern culture. To capture this on film, directors Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell moved to Norway and lived with the musicians for several years, building relationships that allowed them to create a surprisingly intimate portrait of this violent, but ultimately misunderstood, movement. The result is a poignant, moving story that's as much about the idea that reality is composed of whatever the most people believe, regardless of what's actually true, as it is about a music scene that blazed a path of murder and arson across the northern sky.
Vacation!
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Vacation! is an existential beach party movie about life, death, sex and drugs. When four college friends reunite for a girls’ week at the beach, it’s all bikinis, piña coladas and dance parties at first. But the fun soon fades away… After procuring a psychotropic drug from a sketchy surfer dude, the girls take a very strange trip into the abyss.
NFTV 3
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