Banned
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When a smooth jazz guitarist is demonically possessed by the ghost of Teddy Homicide, a notorious, violent punk rocker, all hell and guitar strings are sure to break loose! This is grindhouse grand-diva Roberta Findlay's, one of the lone femme auteurs of the exploitation film industry, last feature film. The mostly unseen cult film that has steadily gained in reputation since it was completed and unceremoniously shelved in 1989. A punk era time capsule waiting to detonate!
Shortbus
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PLEASE NOTE: This film contains graphic nudity and explicit sexual acts. John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus explores the lives of several emotionally challenged characters as they navigate the comic and tragic intersections between love and sex in and around a modern-day underground salon. A sex therapist who has never had an orgasm, a dominatrix who is unable to connect, a gay couple who are deciding whether to open up their relationship, and the people who weave in and out of their lives, all converge on a weekly gathering called Shortbus: a mad nexus of art, music, politics, and polysexual carnality. Set in a post-9/11, Bush-exhausted New York City, SHORTBUS tells its story with sexual frankness, suggesting new ways to reconcile questions of the mind, pleasures of the flesh, and imperatives of the heart.
The Hours And Times
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Christopher Munch’s boldly original debut, THE HOURS AND TIMES (1992), is a fictional account of what might have happened in April 1963, when John Lennon and Beatles manager Brian Epstein traveled to Barcelona for an extended weekend getaway. In the four days they spend together, the suave Epstein (played by David Angus) and the provocative Lennon (Ian Hart in his first starring role) reflect on their lives, both private and professional, as they explore the unique bond they share. Munch’s sparse and intimate narrative, captured with exquisite black-and-white cinematography, is a thoughtful meditation on friendship and sexuality, crafted around a brief moment in the lives of two extremely well-known pop figures.
The Twentieth Century
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Toronto, 1899. Aspiring young politician Mackenzie King (Dan Beirne) dreams of becoming the Prime Minister of Canada. But his romantic vacillation between a British soldier and a French nurse, exacerbated by a fetishistic obsession, may well bring about his downfall. In his quest for power, King must gratify the expectations of his imperious Mother, the hawkish fantasies of a war-mongering Governor-General, and the utopian idealism of a Québécois mystic before facing one, final test of leadership. Culminating in an epic battle between good and evil, King learns that disappointment may be the defining characteristic of the twentieth century!
The Thorn in the Heart
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The Thorn in the Heart (L'Epine dans le Coeur) is a personal look at the life of the Gondry family matriarch, Michel's aunt Suzette Gondry, and her relationship with her son, Jean-Yves. Michel examines Suzette's years as a school teacher and her life in rural France. During the course of filming the documentary, Michel unearths new family stories and uses his camera to explore them in a subtle and sensitive way.
Brimstone & Glory
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The National Pyrotechnic Festival in Tultepec, Mexico is a site of festivity unlike any other in the world. In celebration of San Juan de Dios, patron saint of firework makers, conflagrant revelry engulfs the town for ten days. Artisans show off their technical virtuosity, upand-comers create their own rowdy, lofi combustibles, and dozens of teams build larger-than-life papier-mâché bulls to parade into the town square, adorned with fireworks that blow up in all directions. More than three quarters of Tultepec’s residents work in pyrotechnics, making the festival more than revelry for revelry’s sake. It is a celebration that anchors a way of life built around a generations-old, homegrown business of making fireworks by hand. For the people of Tultepec, the National Pyrotechnic Festival is explosive celebration, unrestrained delight and real peril. Plunging headlong into the fire, BRIMSTONE & GLORY honors the spirit of Tultepec’s community and celebrates celebration itself.
Animals
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ANIMALS tells the story of a young couple that exist somewhere between homelessness and the fantasy life they imagine for themselves. Though they masterfully con and steal in an attempt to stay one step ahead of their addiction, they are ultimately forced to face the reality of their situation.
No Ordinary Man
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American jazz musician Billy Tipton developed a reputable touring and recording career in the mid-twentieth century, along with his band The Billy Tipton Trio. After his death in the late 80s, it was revealed that Tipton was assigned female at birth, and his life was swiftly reframed as the story of an ambitious woman passing as a man in pursuit of a music career. The genre-defying documentary NO ORDINARY MAN seeks to correct that misrepresentation by collaborating with trans artists. As they collectively celebrate Tipton’s story as a musician living his life according to his own terms, they paint a portrait of a trans culture icon.
Who Took the Bomp? Le Tigre on Tour
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Who Took the Bomp? Le Tigre on Tour follows iconic feminist electronic band Le Tigre on their 2004-2005 international tour. Le Tigre confronts sexism and homophobia in the music industry while tearing up the stage with their no-holds-barred lyrics, punk rock ethos, and whip-smart wit.
VHYes
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A bizarre retro comedy shot entirely on VHS, VHYes takes us back to a simpler time, when twelve year-old Ralph mistakenly records home videos and his favorite late night shows over his parents’ wedding tape. The result is a nostalgic wave of home shopping clips, censored pornography, and nefarious true-crime tales that threaten to unkindly rewind Ralph’s reality.
Body
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A darkly funny and twisted journey taking place entirely on one unforgettable Christmas Eve, Body revolves around a trio of college co-eds whose dalliance with breaking-and-entering goes horribly awry. Following a freak accident, the girls find themselves entangled in a Hitchcockian nightmare steeped in tension and deceit, where no one is to be trusted and a new twist lies around every corner.
Cane River
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Written, produced, and directed by Emmy Award-winning documentarian, Horace B. Jenkins, and crafted by an entirely African American cast and crew, CANE RIVER is a racially-charged love story in Natchitoches Parish, a “free community of color” in Louisiana. A budding, forbidden romance lays bare the tensions between two black communities, both descended from slaves but of disparate opportunity—the light-skinned, property-owning Creoles and the darker-skinned, more disenfranchised families of the area. This lyrical, visionary film disappeared for decades after Jenkins died suddenly following the film’s completion, robbing generations of a talented, vibrant new voice in American cinema. Available now for the first time in nearly forty years as a brand-new, state-of-the-art restoration.
Banned
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When a smooth jazz guitarist is demonically possessed by the ghost of Teddy Homicide, a notorious, violent punk rocker, all hell and guitar strings are sure to break loose! This is grindhouse grand-diva Roberta Findlay's, one of the lone femme auteurs of the exploitation film industry, last feature film. The mostly unseen cult film that has steadily gained in reputation since it was completed and unceremoniously shelved in 1989. A punk era time capsule waiting to detonate!
The Electric Urn
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Jim and Johnny, two starving rock musicians, are on the run from the Mexican mafia. They hitchhike across the United States, just escaping their assailants, and travel to New York City’s East Village art community where they find other outsiders of society: a prostitute with a heart of gold, a mysterious beautiful woman who wants to stop them, and an ex girlfriend from hell who wants to destroy them. They encounter a magical goddess who helps them escape to a world of musical freedom and imagination. Their fantasy of being rock stars comes to life, but they wake up to find themselves on a highway to hell, with heavy karma coming back to them. Featuring cultural icons Quentin Crisp, Lilly of the Valley, singer-songwriter/visual artist Caron Bernstein, and the all-girl heavy metal rock band The Cycle Sluts from Hell.
Always Shine
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Two friends, both actresses (Halt and Catch Fire’s Mackenzie Davis and Masters of Sex’s Caitlin FitzGerald), leave Los Angeles for Big Sur embarking on a weekend getaway to reconnect. Once alone, however, the two women's suppressed jealousies and deep-seated resentments bubble to the surface, causing them to lose grasp not just of the true nature of their relationship, but also of their own identities.
Night Flight - Short Cuts: "Rick Rubin"
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In this uncut interview originally shot for Stuart S. Shapiro’s MetalHead Video Magazine in 1989, Rick Rubin talks Def American, Slayer, LL Cool J, Danzig, and more. From his NYU punk days with Hose to assembling artists with a unique identity, Rubin lays out an early version of his signature philosophy. He also reveals his favorite pro wrestler.
Always Shine
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Two friends, both actresses (Halt and Catch Fire’s Mackenzie Davis and Masters of Sex’s Caitlin FitzGerald), leave Los Angeles for Big Sur embarking on a weekend getaway to reconnect. Once alone, however, the two women's suppressed jealousies and deep-seated resentments bubble to the surface, causing them to lose grasp not just of the true nature of their relationship, but also of their own identities.
The Tale of King Crab
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Luciano is a wandering outcast in a remote, late 19th-century Italian village. His life becomes undone by alcohol, forbidden love, and a bitter conflict with the prince of the region over the right of passage through an ancient gateway. When the quarrel escalates, Luciano is exiled to the distant Argentine province of Tierra del Fuego where, with the help of ruthless gold-diggers, he searches for a mythical treasure, paving his way toward redemption. However, in these barren lands, only greed and insanity can prevail.
What Happened Was
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Winner of the Grand Jury Prize and the Screenwriting Award at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival, WHAT HAPPENED WAS... is Tom Noonan's directorial debut; a darkly humorous take on dating dread. Featuring powerhouse performances by Noonan and Karen Sillas as two lonely hearts spending one claustrophobic Friday night together in an imposing apartment, the film exposes with startling clarity the ways in which people struggle to connect. As relevant now as ever, Oscilloscope Films undertook a brand new restoration from the film's original 35mm negative and is making this pristine version widely available for the first time since the '90s.
River of Grass
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Kelly Reichardt’s darkly funny debut feature, brought the writer/director back to the setting of her adolescence, the suburban landscape of southern Florida, where she grew up with her detective father and narcotics agent mother. Shot on 16mm, the story follows the misadventures of disaffected house-wife "Cozy", played by Lisa Bowman, and the aimless layabout "Lee", played by up and comer Larry Fessenden, who also acted as a producer and the film's editor. Described by Reichardt as "a road movie without the road, a love story without the love, and a crime story without the crime," River of Grass introduces viewers to a director already in command of her craft and defining her signature style.
Coherence
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On the night of an astronomical anomaly, eight friends at a dinner party experience a troubling chain of reality bending events. Part cerebral sci-fi and part relationship drama, Coherence is a tightly focused, intimately shot film that quickly ratchets up with tension and mystery.
Anonymous Club
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Shot on vivid 16mm film over a three-year period, Anonymous Club chronicles notoriously shy, Melbourne-based musician Courtney Barnett’s ups and downs on the world tour for her album Tell Me How You Really Feel. Featuring Barnett’s unguarded narration from her audio diary, recorded on a dictaphone provided by filmmaker Danny Cohen, the film delivers frank and unprecedented insight into Barnett’s creative process, the sacrifices and inner conflicts set in motion by fame, and the sometimes dark backdrop to her whimsical, relatabley poetic compositions.
NFTV 3
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