Part Kafka, part Agatha Christie and part Monty Python, director Karen Shakhnazarov's surreal satire of Communism follows an Everyman engineer named Varakin (Leonid Filatov) who arrives in a remote city where nothing quite makes sense, but everyone acts as if it does.  In Zerograd, we’re treated to a bizarre and wonderful sideshow of non sequiturs out of a Wes Anderson film, including an underground museum filled with a thousand years of real and imagined Russian history ("Here's the pistol with which Urusov shot the False Dimitry II.") Frozen in time, frozen far beneath the surface, the waxwork figures are strangely beautiful and forlorn, like Shakhnazarov's marvelous and enigmatic satire of Soviet bureaucracy. With music by the great Eduard Artemyev (Solaris, Stalker).

A new restoration from cult label partner Deaf Crocodile of the long-lost, independently financed Blaxploitation film Solomon King is streaming now! In the vein of Shaft and Dolomite, Solomon King stars Sal Watts (who also directs, wrote and produced) as an ex-CIA nightclub owner seeking violent revenge for the murder of his girlfriend by hitmen working for an oil-obsessed Middle Eastern ruler. Shot in Oakland, CA in 1973 with a cast of mostly non-professional actors, Solomon King features a stunning soul-funk soundtrack and incredible clothes from Watts's own Mr. Sal's Fashion stores.

Arguably the only anime ever made inspired by both Hello Kitty and Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, TAMALA 2010 is a futuristic techno fever dream that flows back and forth in time, following the adorable wide-eyed kitty Tamala. Escaping into space, she’s waylaid by the God of Death and crash-lands near Hate City on the Planet Q, where she meets a new boyfriend, goes bowling and shopping in a thrift store – and realizes she may be the latest reincarnation of an ancient Greek cat cult with ties to the omnipresent Catty & Co. A heady, conceptual work of psychedelic sci-fi, influenced by the style of classic manga and anime such as Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy and Takashi Murakami’s postmodern art movement Superflat, TAMALA 2010 is also a savage take on modern consumer culture.

Populated by singing (and barely dressed) Mermaids, a funky hepcat Octopus and whiskey-drinking Skeleton Pirates, the underwater kingdom is the grooviest scene this side of Yellow Submarine, with helpings of Dr. Seuss, Sid & Marty Krofft and Harry Nilsson's The Point thrown in. (Danish kids' entertainment in the early 1970s was truly outtasite!) In addition to the candy-colored, kaleidoscopic visuals, the film is famed for its incredibly addictive soundtrack featuring Jazz heavyweights of Copenhagen circa 1970, with vocals sung by the cream of Danish late 60s Pop and Rock on tracks like "Octopussong/ Blækspruttesangen" and "seahorsesong/ Søhestesangen".

The final film from Russian fantasy master Aleksandr Ptushko, Ruslan & Ludmila was a glorious and magical summation of his career. The 2-1/2 hour film based on an epic fairy tale written in 1820 by Alexander Pushkin is filled with the sweeping lyricism, bejeweled visual F/X and mythic storytelling that put him on par with Walt Disney, Ray Harryhausen and Mario Bava. The film opens with the seemingly-joyous marriage of bogatyr (warrior) Ruslan to Ludmila, the daughter of Prince Vladimir. On their wedding night, Ludmila is spirited away by the riotously long-bearded wizard Chernomor (Vladimir Fyodorov), and taken to his sinister palace where she’s held prisoner.

Finnish director Risto Jarva’s fascinating, futuristic sci-fi mystery is set in a dystopian, Pop Art-designed world of gleaming white towers, Sony video monitors and inflatable furniture, where the beautiful inhabitants all dress as Edie Sedgwick-like pixie sprites or medieval page boys out of LOGAN’S RUN. A historian of late 20th century culture - “before class boundaries were abolished” – named Raimo (Arto Tuominen) is researching the death many years earlier of a free-spirited erotic model named Saara (Ritva Vepsä) who died under mysterious circumstances. Raimo finds Saara’s identical double – an earthy, uninhibited engineer named Kisse (also played by Vepsä) -- and tries to convince her to re-enact Saara’s life and death for TV.

Director Charlotte Le Bon’s Falcon Lake is both a love story and a ghost story. During a lakeside vacation, a shy teenager experiences the joy and pain of first love when he forms a bond with an older girl. Falcon Lake was a selection of the 2022 Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, Visual Acoustics celebrates the life and career of Julius Shulman, the world's greatest architectural photographer, whose images brought modern architecture to the American mainstream. Shulman captured the work of nearly every major modern and progressive architect since the 1930s including Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, John Lautner, and Frank Gehry. His images epitomized the singular beauty of Southern California's modernist movement and brought its iconic structures to the attention of the general public.

NIGHT FLIGHT PLUS EXCLUSIVE: A mysterious egg contains an impish creature who can grant great power, for good or evil. Brendan Bean, a kindly family man, finds himself face to face with the bizarre creature, and before long a friendship for the ages develops. Meanwhile, the depraved Benny Piazza leads his deranged militia on a violent quest to reclaim the magical homunculus. "I knew that whatever home our DIY mutant of a film Hoagie found for its streaming premiere would need to be unique. Its members would have to be eclectic, genre-literate, adventurous and hopefully a little demented. And so here we are, and what better place to be than the hallowed halls of Night Flight? Thanks so much for having us, I hope you have a blast with our disgusting, ridiculous, squishy creation." —Matt Hewitt, co-writer & director of Hoagie

In this new Short Cut arrival, Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell and Layne Staley trade jokes about Hollywood and growing up as KISS heads. They reminisce about the first time hearing Metallica and touring with Iggy Pop. An essential snapshot of the Seattle band.

Shozin Fukui’s live-action, underground cyberpunk masterpiece depicts the nightmarish journey of a discarded cybernetic sex android that is expelled from a brothel and left to fend for himself. Aimlessly wandering around the city, Pinocchio meets Kyoto, an amnesiac homeless girl with a horrible secret of her own. Together, they try to piece together their past lives and survive in a cruel, brutal hellscape. At the same time, Pinocchio’s fiendish creators search desperately to find their lost prototype android before the public and authorities discover him! As agents pursue Pinocchio, his frantic escape morphs into a mind-warping hallucinogenic thrill ride! Be prepared! Shozin Fukui’s masterful direction provides the viewer with a totally unique experience along the lines of Tetsuo: The Iron Man.

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.

"Why search the sand for answers? It has told us everything," whispers Roseline, the 173-year old desert nomad narrator of French director Jean-François Laguionie's hauntingly poetic animated feature of life after the apocalypse. Into this desolate science-fiction landscape (part-Dune, part-Fury Road) emerges the story's teenage heroine, Gwen, who refuses to hide in the shadows. A sublime and breathtaking masterpiece of world animation, Gwen... evokes Night Flight-favorite René Laloux's Fantastic Planet as a visually stunning and truly otherworldly experience.

Blood and guts are the ultimate weapon! In the near future, the Tokyo Police Corporation is locked in a bloody war with the engineers. These genetically modified super-criminals can bio-fuse their open wounds with weapons, turning self-mutilation into a combat form. Ruka, the daughter of a murdered police officer, is now the top engineer hunter. With cold-blooded efficiency, she cuts and slashes her way the crime world and tracks down their lair, a bizarre fetish club. But nothing can sway Ruka from fulfilling her sworn duty and avenging her father’s death!

"Ghosts of the Chelsea Hotel (and Other Rock & Roll Stories)" explores the rich history, cultural significance and otherworldly occurrences of the famous Hotel Chelsea in New York City. The hotel gets its due in this smart and creative film as a place where anything could happen, where creativity thrived and where people from all walks of life came together in a chaotic and vibrant community. Thanks to its dedicated owners, the late Stanley Bard and his son David, the creative spirit of the Chelsea was fostered making it the unique creative haven that it became. The film features interviews with past and present residents, including artists, musicians, writers, and other creative individuals. Some famous faces tell tales of their time in the hotel along with the riveting stories from the eclectic folks who still reside in this legendary and haunted building.

The dinos are back with Nonsense: Volume 3, and this time we pulled out all the stops! It’s got everything you could possibly want from a Dinosaur Dinner Theatre compilation: clips about washing machines, bicycles, bowling… SHOES, even! Sometimes there is talking, and there is nearly always something on the screen to look at! If you’ve got a short attention span and are generous about what you consider to be comedy, this is the collection for you.

After his seminal novel Trainspotting was published in 1993, the debut work of Irvine Welsh quickly became a cultural phenomenon, spawning theatre productions, the iconic film by Danny Boyle, sequels, and soon a stage musical. In Beyond Trainspotting, Welsh himself looks back on his beginnings - and glances off some personal tragedies he experienced along the way from his birth in a tenement building in Leith in 1958 to global success as an author. Guest appearances include producer Andrew Macdonald, Creation Records' Alan McGee and Iggy Pop alongside Ewan McGregor (Trainspotting, Moulin Rouge, Star Wars' Obi-Wan Kenobi) and Brit-pop names such as Lisa Moorish, Kirsty Allison and members of the band Primal Scream.

Night Flight Supercut Feature #1 (2025) an epic supercut of vintage chaos and cable-era insanity which premiered last month at Nitehawk as part of the Third Annual Music Video Festival. From Night Flight creator and CEO Stuart S. Shapiro: "Mash-ups and quick-cut juxtapositions have always been part of Night Flight’s DNA, it's something Stuart Samuels and I leaned into from the very beginning! With Night Flight Supercut #1, our editor John Mark Lapham takes that tradition to a new level. It’s a form we’ll continue to revisit and evolve, and we’re really proud to be creating something this special."

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.