Pioneer Theater

East Village, New York City
May 2005 schedule

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LITTLE FUGITIVE

(dir. Ray Ashley & Morris Engel, 80 mins, 1953)

Sun May 1 5pm - buy tickets
Sun May 8 3pm - buy tickets
Sun May 15 3pm - buy tickets
Sun May 22 3pm - buy tickets
Sun May 29 5pm - buy tickets

The Pioneer commemorates the recent passing of our great friend, Mr. Morris Engel, through a celebration of his filmmaking, with screenings throughout April and May.

Joey, a young boy, runs away to Coney Island after he is tricked into believing he has killed his older brother. Joey collects glass bottles and turns them into money, which he uses to ride the rides.

Chicago City Limits First Sundays Comedy Films

FIRST SUNDAYS
 Comedy Film Festival

Sun May 1 7pm - buy tickets

First Sundays is a monthly festival featuring the best in short comedy films from around the world. Each screening features new films, audience and judges awards, and an after party sponsored by Stella Artois.

Visit the First Sundays website

CASUISTRY:
The Art of Killing a Cat

(dir. Zev Asher, 91 mins, 2004)

Sun May 1 9pm - buy tickets
Mon May 2 9pm - buy tickets
Tues May 3 9pm - buy tickets
ca·su·ist·ry
noun. plural: ca·sui·ist·ries
  1. Specious or excessively subtle reasoning intended to rationalize or mislead.
  2. The determination of right and wrong in questions of conduct or conscience by analyzing cases that illustrate general ethical rules.

An infamous case of animal abuse is explored in this probing and difficult movie. The killing itself is not shown in this film. The film is not an apology for the killers. It is an investigation of the event, and the arguments used to rationalize that event.

Artist and former vegetarian Jesse Power attempted to shock his artworld audience with unsettling images intended to make them question his motives. One Friday night in May 2001, Power and friends Reyan Wennekers and Matthew Kaczorowski joined forces to torture and kill a living cat. The intention was to make a video protesting the unthinking killing and consumption of factory-bred animals, by performing similar actions upon a cherished domestic pet, the cat. High on hallucinogens, the trio made a torturous ordeal of the cat's murder while every moment was caught on videotape. Alerted by an outraged roommate, police found the skinned and decapitated cat in the upstairs beer fridge. Power and Wennekers were arrested, while the police seized dozens of videotapes and most of Power's artwork. Although no one had seized the tape, wild rumors quickly spread about an animal serial killer who had skinned a cat alive.

With perspectives conspicuously absent from the media and public outcry, CASUISTRY: THE ART OF KILLING A CAT tells the story of an ill-conceived art project gone dreadfully wrong. The participants discuss what led to the grisly crime, and the aftermath that rippled through their lives. Through a memorial campaign for the cat - posthumously named "Kensington" - animal rights activists doggedly pursue Power. Activists, lawyers, law enforcements officers, and the media present conflicting interpretations of the crime. Excerpts from Power's previous videos provide a further gruesome context to this unsettling documentary portrait of art, justice, and the Canadian way.

Monster Mondays program!

Fangoria presents

HIRUKO THE GOBLIN

(dir. Shinya Tsukamoto, 89 mins, 1991)

Mon May 2 7pm - buy tickets

This is a "Bizarro Monday" program. Every Monday at 7pm the Pioneer presents the finest (and trashiest) in horror, sci-fi, exploitation, martial arts, genre, b-movies, and z-movies.

"Before RINGU, before JU-ON, there was Shinya Tsukamoto's HIRUKO. A cross between FRIDAY THE 13TH, POLTERGEIST and John Carpenter's THE THING"
- Tony Timpone (Fangoria Magazine)

HIRUKO THE GOBLIN is Shinya Tsukamoto's first film after his immensely popular and sucessful movie TETSUO. The Japanese cult horror director takes another stab at the genre with HIRUKO. This film is full of quick cuts, super fast camera movements and heart stopping tension.

Strange things are happening at a school in Japan. Hieda, a recently widowed professor, and Masao, a haunted student, investigate some disturbing deaths and are shocked and appalled by what they find. The school was built on one of the Gates of Hell, behind which demons await the moment they will be released to reak havoc on Earth. The effects in this essentially low budget flim will have you squirming in your seat.

HIRUKO THE GOBLIN screens from a special preview copy of the new Fangoria DVD edition of the movie.

We will also be screening a short "THE FINE ART OF POISONING" by Bill Domonkos. Clive Barker calls this film "...seductive and terrifying..."

Slamdance Film Festival presents

THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN

(dir. Taggart Siegel, 82 mins, 2005)

Tues May 3 7pm - buy tickets

Followed by beer and pizza reception, sponsored by Brooklyn Brewery.

“Genuinely beautiful, and genuinely beautifully shot – a cause for hope.”
- Albert Maysles, legendary documentary filmmaker

“Farmer John is John Peterson, a eccentric farmer in northern Illinois who’s devoted his life to preserving both his family farm near the Wisconsin border and his 60s ideals. After his father’s death, Peterson ran the business while commuting to Beloit College and falling in with a clique of hippies who adopted the farm as their retreat. During the Reagan years, as family farms collapsed across the country, Peterson lost most of his land, but eventually the business was reborn as a subscriber-supported organic farm that drew Chicagoans to work the fields and divide the crops. Directed by Taggart Siegel and narrated by Peterson, this video memoir is a beguiling combination of agrarian ode and the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, deepened by Peterson’s square sincerity as he struggles to find himself in relation to his family’s land."
- J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader

"can melt a die-hard hippie-haters heart.”
- Cliff Doerksen, Time Out

A highlight from the 2005 Slamdance Film Festival, as well as the 2005 Wisconsin Film Festival, and the 2005 Chicago International Documentary Festival.

Visit the movie's website

The Possible Films Collection Presents

THE GIRL FROM MONDAY

directed by Hal Hartley

NYC Theatrical Premiere!

(dir. Hal Hartley, 84 mins, 2005)

Wed May 4 at 7pm - buy tickets
(Hal Hartley and Leo Fitzpatrick in person!)

Wed May 4 at 9pm - buy tickets
Thurs May 5 at 5:15pm - buy tickets
Thurs May 5 at 9pm - buy tickets
(producer / editor Steve Hamilton in person!)

Fri May 6 at 9pm - buy tickets
Fri May 6 at 10:30pm - buy tickets
Sat May 7 at 7:00pm - buy tickets
Sat May 7 at 8:45pm - buy tickets
Sat May 7 at 10:30pm - buy tickets
Sun May 8 at 7:00pm - buy tickets
Sun May 8 at 8:45pm - buy tickets
Mon May 9 at 5:15pm - buy tickets
Mon May 9 at 9pm - buy tickets
Tues May 10 at 5:15pm - buy tickets
Tues May 10 at 9pm - buy tickets
Wed May 11 at 9pm - buy tickets
Thurs May 12 at 9pm - buy tickets
(producer / editor Steve Hamilton in person!)

Fri May 13 at 9pm - buy tickets
(actor Leo Fitzpatrick in person! Leo will also introduce KIDS, which shows at 7pm)

Sat May 14 at 9pm - buy tickets
Sat May 14 at 10:30pm - buy tickets
Sun May 15 at 9pm - buy tickets
Mon May 16 at 9pm - buy tickets
Tues May 17 at 9pm - buy tickets

A Possible Films Collection Release

from Hal Hartley
writer and director of TRUST, SIMPLE MEN, and HENRY FOOL

Hal Hartley dives head first into the world of science fiction filmmaking with this audacious movie set in a very near and very familiar Manhattan nightmare world, the logic of which is just a hop, a skip, and a jump from the logic of today. A creature from from a planet orbiting Star 147X in the constellation "Monday" comes to Earth, seeking another creature from the same place who followed the same path long ago. She meets up with Jack Bell, an ad executive who secretly moonlights as the leader of a revolutionary cell. In the advertising world, the connection between value, youth, and sexuality are now explicitly interwoven: citizens are proud to be stock options whose market value goes up or down depending on their sexual activity, and having sex just because it feels good rather than because it increases your credit rating is against the law.

Jack Bell is a classic conflicted revolutionary, working against himself and lost in a mess of desire and duty. He seeks what is right and good for himself and his society, and yet he seeks a way to belong in a world where he feels very much an alien himself.

A witty and disturbing farce told in the rhythms of a sci-fi thriller, THE GIRL FROM MONDAY stars Sabrina Lloyd from the new hit CBS show "Numb3rs," Bill Sage, Leo Fitzpatrick, and Tatiana Abracos.

View the trailer (Quicktime required)

WINNING GIRLS THROUGH PSYCHIC MIND CONTROL

(dir. Barry Alexander Brown, 93 mins, 2001)

Join us for "Mind Control Thursdays!"

Thurs May 5 7pm - buy tickets
Thurs May 12 7pm - buy tickets
WINNING GIRLS THROUGH PSYCHIC MIND CONTROL is a stylish, laugh-filled drama about two road-weary lounge musicians who get the opportunity to revive their act when one of them begins to display psychic abilities.

Stuck together in Holiday Inn hell, womanizing drummer Samuel Menendez and uptight loner/keyboard player Devon Sharpe are opposites that do not attract. But when Sam sends away for an audiotape that's supposed to teach him how to control women and instead begins to channel an enigmatic entity known as the Conductor, Devon sees an opportunity to advance their cause by working up a mentalist act. Unfortunately his attempts to pull the new act together are constantly disrupted by Sam and the Conductor, who have agendas of their own.

Butting heads at every turn, Devon and Sam reach for a piece of the pie and, along the way, are coerced into facing their true feelings about women, love and life. Alternately comic and tragic, Winning Girls Through Psychic Mind Control is the story of two people who, in reaching for success, stumble upon what it really means.

HELEN'S WAR

(dir. Anna Broinowski, 52 mins, 2003)

Fri May 6 at 7pm - buy tickets

Helen Caldicott in person!

"These are very serious times and this is a very serious administration. It doesn’t want to hear any protest - it’s not interested in any protest. Anyone speaking out now has chosen the most dangerous time of all." - Martin Sheen

Alarmed at the USA’s revitalisation of its missile defence and nuclear weapons design programs, famous anti-nuclear campaigner Dr. Helen Caldicott sets out to ‘end the nuclear age in five years’, armed only with a new book and the furious conviction that she can inspire the American public to rise up against its own Military Industrial complex.

Tagging along is her jaded but curious niece, a reluctant fatalist who believes that all that anti-nuke banner-waving in the 80s didn’t change a thing. She wonders whether a straight shooting dissident like Helen Caldicott really can make a difference in today’s sophisticated new world of neo-conservative spin, where celebrities are news and war is entertainment, where defence is offence and the fire is friendly; that place known as George W Bush’s Land of The Free.

Taking place over the volatile 12 months in which America invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq, HELEN’S WAR is the portrait of a blatant optimist by a Gen X cynic in desperate need of conversion.

It’s an explosive ride.

Pioneer Late Nights

STEAMBOY

(dir. Katsuhiro Otomo, 126 mins, 2004)

Fri May 6 at midnight - buy tickets
Fri May 13 at midnight - buy tickets
Fri May 20 at midnight - buy tickets
Fri May 27 at midnight- buy tickets

English-language version

A retro science-fiction epic set in Victorian England, Steamboy features an inventor prodigy named Ray Steam who receives a mysterious metal ball containing a new form of energy capable of powering an entire nation. This young boy must use it to fight evil, redeem his family, and save London from destruction. The lush Victorian interiors and the elegance of the era's mechanical design allows Otomo to create dazzling visual backgrounds and machines for this film. With more than 180,000 drawing and 400 CG cuts, STEAMBOY is sure to be one of the most elaborate animated features of the year.

View clips and trailers

Pioneer Late Nights

ONG-BAK

The Thai Warrior

(dir. Prachya Pinkaew, 105 mins, 2003)

Sat May 7 at midnight - buy tickets
Sat May 14 at midnight - buy tickets
Sat May 21 at midnight - buy tickets
Sat May 28 at midnight - buy tickets

Bruce Lee. Jackie Chan. Jet Li. And now, Tony Jaa.

"[A] symphony of flying limbs, breaking bones and elaborately staged chases and confrontations."
- A.O. Scott, NY TIMES

"It's not often that you witness the creation of a star, so grab the chance now."
- Elizabeth Weitzman, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

"The name is Tony Jaa, but don't worry about remembering it. You'll be hearing it a lot from now on."
- Kenneth Turan, LOS ANGELES TIMES

"A jaw-dropper!"
- Lisa Schwarzbaum, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

Tony Jaa follows in the powerful martial arts footsteps of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li in ONG-BAK: THE THAI WARRIOR, one of the first films to center on the ancient fighting system of Muay Thai, which utilizes the body's limbs to potentially devastating effect. Jaa stars as Ting, a quiet young man who lives in the peaceful village of Nong Pradu. As the village's special celebration approaches, a Bangkok villain named Don (Wannakit Siriput) steals the head of the Buddha statue Ong-Bak, which is said to protect the village from bad luck. Ting volunteers to go to the big city to bring back the head of Ong-Bak, but remembers what he was taught by sage monk Pra Cru (Woranard Tantipidok): he must not use his Muay Thai skills to harm people. However soon after arriving in Bangkok, Ting, a peaceful fish out of water, finds that the only way to recapture the village's sacred treasure is by using his arms, his legs--and his head.

Influenced by the films of Thai action star Phanna Rithikrai, director Prachya Pinkaew hired the Muay Thai expert to serve as martial arts and stunt choreographer for ONG-BAK, resulting in highly effective and believable scenes between Ting and a multitude of criminals and evil boxers out to get him. Pinkaew adds a fun sense of humor to the serious story, not only in some of the crazy stunts but also in the character of George, played by Thai comic Petchthai Wongkamlao. Jaa is charmingly fearless in the lead role, performing all his own stunts without any special effects, computer enhancement, or ropes.

Visit the movie's website

IN COLD BLOOD

(dir. Richard Brooks, 134 mins, 1967)

Sun May 8 4:30pm - buy tickets

Starring Robert Blake

"Sends shivers down the spine. . ."
- NY TIMES

Two young men are ineffectual individually, but when together become violent criminals. They break into a wealthy farmer's home only to find that there is nearly no money at the home and murder the entire family to avoid identification. The first part of the film details the search for them, the second, their trial and execution. Taken from the actual events chronicled by Truman Capote in his book.

SCARLET DIVA

(dir. Asia Argento, 2000, 90 mins)

screening with
SOLEADO

(dir. Gregg Guinta, 13 mins)

Mon May 9 7pm - buy tickets

This is a "Bizarro Monday" program. Every Monday at 7pm the Pioneer presents the finest (and trashiest) in horror, sci-fi, exploitation, martial arts, genre, b-movies, and z-movies.

SCARLET DIVA:

Anna Battista is a young, popular, 24-year-old Italian-born International film actress who engages herself on a hectic and self-destructive spree which takes her across Europe and to America to shed her "boy-toy" image to become an "artist" in order to write and direct herself in a semi-biography movie of herself titled "Scarlet Diva." After working in Rome, and winning a presigious film award in Milan, Anna travels to Paris to save her best friend from an abusive relationship, then avoids sleazy film producers in Los Angeles, meets and falls in love with a rock star who abandons her, finds out later that she's pregnant, and begins using drugs to numb her pain at this predictament she's gotten herself into.

SOLEADO:

Under the omnipresent sun of Los Angeles, an old Cadillac finds itself the improbable matchmaker of two lonely souls. Hector, a music composer, has just moved from New York to Los Angeles to pursue his dream of scoring movies. Rejection and the troubles of motorized living seem like his biggest concerns, but a progressively obsessive exchange of messages with a mysterious neighbor points to yet one more problem: loneliness. Away from friends and the unavoidable crowd of the Big Apple, Hector finds himself desperate for any kind of human interaction, even if in the form of letters left on the windshields of his car to complain about parking etiquette. Somewhere between discouragement, hostility, isolation, and a bad engine, Hector manages to strike a connection and get his life - literally - back in gear.

IFP
BUZZCUTS

Tues May 10 7pm - buy tickets

Followed by beer and pizza reception, sponsored by Brooklyn Brewery.

 A series of short films from filmmakers working with the Independent Feature Project.

NewFest presents
BEAR CUB

director's cut! not released in theaters!

(dir. Miguel Albaladejo, 100 mins, 2004)

Weds May 11 7pm - buy tickets

Pedro is an attractive gay bear who lives a sexually active lifestyle. When his sister takes a vacation, Pedro takes care of his 9 year-old nephew Bernardo. But when Pedro unexpectedly must keep Bernardo indefinitely, the boy's estranged grandmother, Dona Teresa, arrives to try to take him away.

Courtesy of TLA Releasing.

LARRY CLARK

In association with the International Center of Photography, the Pioneer presents three feature films directed by famous and notorious filmmaker Larry Clark. These films are all presented in their original, intended format of 35mm, rather than in video projection.

KIDS

Fri May 13 7pm - buy tickets
(actor Leo Fitzpatrick in person! Leo will also introduce THE GIRL FROM MONDAY, which shows at 9pm)

Mon May 16 7pm - buy tickets
(Bizarro Monday program)
Disturbing, dark, low-budget independent film about teen-agers growing up in poverty in New York City. The story focuses on Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick), a teen who has a goal to de-flower as many virgins as he can. When one of his old encounters discovers that she is H.I.V.-positive, after only one encounter with a guy, Telly remains undaunted.

ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE

Sat May 14 6:30pm - buy tickets
Bobbie is an addict and small-time thief. When one of his jobs goes bad, Mel is called in to patch him up. Mel offers him a chance at a bigger score. Over time, Mel and his girlfriend Sid become almost like parents to Bobbie and his girlfriend Rosie, but this can't last.

BULLY

Sun May 15 6:30pm - buy tickets
After finding himself at the constant abuse of his best friend Bobby, Marty has become fed up with his friend's twisted ways. His girlfriend, a victim of Bobby's often cruel ways, couldn't agree more and they strategize murdering Bobby, with a group of willing and unwilling participants in a small Florida town. In the midst of their plotting, they find themselves contemplating with the possible aftermath of what could happen.

Pioneer Late Nights

PRIMER

(dir. Shane Carruth, 78 mins, 2004)

Fri May 13 at 10:35pm - buy tickets
Fri May 20 at 10:35pm - buy tickets
Fri May 27 at 10:35pm - buy tickets

"PRIMER is the headiest, most singular science-fiction movie since Kubrick made 2001."
(ESQUIRE)

"An ingenious movie about the perils of ingenuity. . .Invigorating. . .Like PI or MEMENTO, PRIMER is the kind of movie likely to inspire both imitators and cultists. . .Carruth has invented something fascinating."
(A.O. Scott, NY TIMES)

* Grand Jury Prize - Sundance Film Festival *

PRIMER is set in the industrial park/suburban tract-home fringes of an unnamed contemporary city where two young engineers, Abe and Aaron, are members of a small group of men who work by day for a large corporation while conducting extracurricular experiments on their own time in a garage. While tweaking their current project, a device that reduces the apparent mass of any object placed inside it by blocking gravitational pull, they accidentally discover that it has some highly unexpected capabilities--ones that could enable them to do and to have seemingly anything they want. Taking advantage of this unique opportunity is the first challenge they face. Dealing with the consequences is the next.

A ThinkFilm release.

DOCUCLUB presents

THE EDUCATION OF SHELBY KNOX

(dir. Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt, 2005)

Tues May 17 7pm - buy tickets

What's it like to be a Christian teenage girl today? THE EDUCATION OF SHELBY KNOX profiles a young native of Lubbock, Texas, on the rocky road through high school. At 15, Shelby pledges celibacy until marriage, but because Lubbock has one of the highest teen pregnancy and STD rates in the state, she also spearheads a campaign for comprehensive sex education in the high schools, opposing the established "abstinence-only" curriculum. When the campaign broadens with a fight for a gay-straight alliance club in the high school, Shelby confronts her parents and her faith as she begins to understand how deeply personal beliefs can inform political action.

In addition to screening the film, members are invited to have one-on-one networking meetings with PBS’s P.O.V./American Documentary’s Coordinating Producer, Yance Ford. Members can sign up for 5 minute meeting slots with Yance when RSVP’ing for this event. The meetings, which will take place after the screening, will be assigned in the order that we receive RSVPs. Those that RSVP and get a meeting will receive confirmation on Monday, and those that do not receive a confirmation will go on a waiting list for meetings. This is a great opportunity for members to speak first-hand to an executive about their projects.

a film presented by Docuclub, New York. visit their website

IN A LONELY PLACE

(dir. Nicholas Ray, 94 mins, 1950)

Weds May 18 7pm - buy tickets

Nicholas Ray directs Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame

Screenwriter Dixon Steele, faced with the odious task of scripting a trashy bestseller, has hat-check girl Mildred Atkinson tell him the story in her own words. Later that night, Mildred is murdered and Steele is a prime suspect; his record of belligerence when angry and his macabre sense of humor tell against him. Fortunately, lovely neighbor Laurel Gray gives him an alibi. Laurel proves to be just what Steele needed, and their friendship ripens into love. Will suspicion, doubt, and Steele's inner demons come between them? (synopsis from imdb.com)

MOJADOS:

Through the night

(dir. Tommy Davis, 2004)

Weds May 18 9pm - buy tickets
Thurs May 19 9pm - buy tickets
Fri May 20 9pm - buy tickets
Sat May 21 9pm - buy tickets
Sun May 22 9pm - buy tickets
Mon May 23 9pm - buy tickets
Tues May 24 9pm - buy tickets
Sun June 12 5:30pm - buy tickets

MOJADOS: THROUGH THE NIGHT is an eye-opening documentary filmed over the course of ten days that follows four men into the desperate world of illegal immigration. Alongside Bear, Tiger, Handsome, and Old Man, director Tommy Davis takes a 120 mile cross-desert journey that has been traveled innumerable times by nameless immigrants who – like these four young migrants from Michoacan, Mexico – all had the simple, American dream for a better future. Davis brings to life the often unheard hopes and stories of these migrants as their dehydrated days evading the U.S. Border Patrol turn into sub-zero nights filled with barbed wire, brutal storms and the ever-present confrontation with death that is reality for the tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who make a similar journey into the United States every year.

View trailer (Quicktime required)

Animators Attack!

some of the best recent NY Independent Animation

Thurs May 19 7pm - buy tickets

 John Dilworth "Urchin" 5 min, 35 mm
Carolyn London "Subway Salvation", 5 min, 35 mm
Fran Krause "Moonraker" 5 min, Beta
Signe Baumane "Dentist" 10 min, 35 mm
Pat Smith "Handshake", 5 min, 35 mm
Bill Plympton "Fan and the Flower" 5 min, Beta
Candy Kugel "Commend Z", 5 min 35 mm
Rao Ro "Coffee" 1 min, Beta
Chris Cinforti "Frog" 5 min, Beta
PES "Pee-nut" 1 min, Beta
Alex Budovskiy "Return I will to Old Brazil" 4 min, Beta
John Schmall "Binding of Isaac" 6 min, 35 mm
Alina Bliumis "When it Rains" 3 min

A LETTER FROM GREENPOINT

(dir. Jonas Mekas, 80 mins, 2004)

Sat May 21 3pm - buy tickets

directed by East Village visionary

Jonas Mekas

acclaimed filmmaker and critic, and director of Anthology Film Archives

Statement by Jonas Mekas:

"In February 2004, after 30 years of my life in Soho, I made a decision to leave Soho and move to Greenpoint, Brooklyn. This video is about what it feels like to leave a place in which I've spent more time than any other place, and which was also a place of my Family Life. I am somewhere else now. It's also about beginning of letting roots in a new place, new home, with new friends, new thoughts, experiences.

"But this video is also about video. I will let Dominique Dubosc, my good Paris friend, talk for me, in a recent letter:

"'I think you finally mastered this bloody video camera that was for so long (still is for most people) no more than a tape recorder. Now it is the eye-camera the kinoks had been dreaming of. Of course, it is not only a question of mastering the camera. What is more important is the energy behind. The movement of life embracing death itself. It gave me such a push that I feel on the move again. Thank you.'

"What Dominique meant, and what I mean, is this: When in 1949 I began filming with my Bolex, it took me fifteen years to really master it, so that my Bolex could do for me anything I wanted. When in 1987 I got my frist Sony I thought it would be different. But no. Only today, after working with the video cameras for fifteen years, I feel like it had become an extension of my eye, my body, my mind and I can do anything I want with it. So this is my first real video work."

- Jonas

3rd I NY presents

AE FOND KISS

Directed by Ken Loach!

Sat May 21 5pm - buy tickets
Sat May 21 7pm - buy tickets

When handsome Pakistani Scottish accountant-turned-deejay Casim breaks up a school brawl involving his belligerent younger sister Tahara, he encounters Roisin, her beautiful‹and white‹music teacher. He falls headlong in love with this strong-willed woman, before remembering that he's already committed to another young girl, one due to arrive any moment from Pakistan.

MIRACLE IN MILAN

(dir. Vittorio de Sica, 100 mins, 1951)

Sat May 21 10:15pm - buy tickets
Sun May 29 7pm - buy tickets

a classic social resistance / fantasy film from the director of BICYCLE THIEVES

Once upon a time, an old woman discovered a young child in her cabbage patch. She cared for him until her death, at which time the boy was placed into an orphanage. When the child is released from the orphanage he inspires shantytown squatters to improve their huts and enjoy the world. But as they begin to rebuild, the squatters strike oil. The landowner evicts them, wanting the oil to himself. But the old woman drops down from heaven to give Toto a magical dove - which repels the police, and grants them whatever wish they want. A glorious social realist fantasy from the director of BICYCLE THIEVES.

MAMA'S PUSHCART

Ellen Stewart and 25 Years of La MaMa E.T.C.

(dir. Demetria Royals, 50 mins, 1988)

Sun May 22 5:30pm - buy tickets

featuring East Village visionary

Ellen Stewart

founder of La Mama Experimental Theater Club

With virtually no financial resources, Ellen Stewart created in New York in 1961 the La Mama theater, where writers and actors such as Sam Shepard, Elizabeth Swados, and Harvey Fierstein found both encouragement and a home for their work. Includes footage from the early days, interviews and brief excerpts from some of the theater works. Stewart also talks about her experiences as a "colored" working at Saks Fifth Avenue between 1950 and 1957.

Bizarro Mondays Program

THE TINGLER

(dir. William Castle, 82 mins, 1959)

Mon May 23 7pm - buy tickets
Mon May 30 7pm - buy tickets

Scream for your life!

Starring Vincent Price!

Vincent Price stars as Dr. Chapin, a scientist who discovers a caterpillarlike parasite that grows in the human spine when someone is afraid and that, unless they scream, can grow large enough to kill them. He solemnly dubs this creature the tingler. Philip Coolidge plays the owner of a nearby cinema who befriends the doctor and whose deaf-mute wife suddenly receives all sorts of shocks, like the sight of a bathtub full of blood with a hand reaching out from it. Since she can't scream, she dies, and Chapin gets his hands on her oversize tingler. When it eventually escapes inside the movie theater, the film within the film, and then the film itself, stops for an announcement from Price, out of character, urging the audience to scream their heads off.

CINEWOMEN NY

Tues May 24 7pm - buy tickets

a program of short films from filmmakers working with Cinewomen, New York.

Cinewomen website

PIGGIE

(dir. Alison Bagnall, 98 mins, 2003)

Weds May 25 7pm - buy tickets

Eric Campos writes in FILM THREAT:

"If you love BUFFALO '66, and I know there are a lot of you out there that do, you’d be wise to check out Alison Bagnall’s PIGGIE. Alison co-wrote BUFFALO '66 with Vincent Gallo and with PIGGIE she presents us with another interesting love story that’s just as funny as it is uncomfortable. The film has us join the daily adventures of Fannie, a teenage girl who spends her time playing with road kill, sleeping in the pig pen with her pig, taking care of an elderly woman down the street and making up her own country western songs. Yeah, Fannie’s a bit of a strange one, and you might want to blame it on the lack of a mother in her life, as well as lackluster parenting from her father whom she live with. But when a stranger rolls into town, on the run from big city drug dealers, Fannie finds focus in her life that she never had before. She sets out in pursuing this stranger and making him her new boyfriend, whether he approves or not. Alison Bagnall wrote the script with lead actress Savannah Haske and in the end created a film that’s extremely natural and lifelike. PIGGIE is a major accomplishment."

THE FEARLESS FREAKS
FEATURING THE FLAMING LIPS

(dir. Bradley Beesley, 99 mins, 2005)

Weds May 25 9pm - buy tickets
Thurs May 26 9pm - buy tickets
Fri May 27 9pm - buy tickets
Sat May 28 9pm - buy tickets
Sun May 29 9pm - buy tickets
Mon May 30 9pm - buy tickets
Tues May 31 9pm - buy tickets

heldover for more shows!
Thurs Jun 2 10:45pm - buy tickets
Fri Jun 3 5pm - buy tickets
Sat Jun 4 1:30pm - buy tickets
Sun Jun 5 3pm - buy tickets
Sat Jun 11 5pm - buy tickets

View the trailer (Quicktime required)

Visit the Flaming Lips website

Visit the movie's website

"Wonderful! . . . FEARLESS FREAKS does full justice to its subject, and when dealing with a band as weird and wonderful as The Flaming Lips, that's the highest praise"
- Nathan Rabin, THE ONION

"An all-access fan's valentine as artfully scrappy and likably wide-eyed as its subjects."
- Dennis Lim, VILLAGE VOICE

"The Fearless Freaks" is so darn watchable that it could turn someone who never heard of the Flaming Lips into a devoted fan."
- V.A. Musetto, NY POST

"[Director Bradley Beesley] achieves a level of intimacy with the band members that most rock documentary directors can only dream of."
- Dana Stevens, NY TIMES

"THE FEARLESS FREAKS is the most intimate portrait of a band you'll likely see. As heart-warming and -breaking as the band's music itself."
- Bill Crandell, ROLLING STONE

Get to know one of the world's leading bands, up close and glaringly intimate. This is much more than a "behind the music" documentary; it is a personal voyage with the band through both pain and glory.

Oklahoma City's Flaming Lips have been producing thoughtful art-rock records for two decades, continually challenging themselves and their critics. Led by charismatic, workaholic frontman Wayne Coyne, The Flaming Lips continually push the boundaries of modern music.

If the Flaming Lips have had an accidental career, then this documentary is one of its loveliest accidents. In 1991, Bradley Beesley was bandleader Wayne Coyne's art school neighbor in Norman, Oklahoma. The Lips, in need of a willing and competent cinematographer, and Beesley, constantly on the hunt for action-packed stories and oddball characters, developed a relationship built of geographic convenience and a mutual desire to create themselves. Now, fifteen years later, thanks to a film camera and his tenacity, Beesley has made his filmmaking career by working with the Flaming Lips.

With never-before-seen footage, new interviews and performances, Beesley reveals the band's deep-set Oklahoma roots; early punk/noise phase; the experimental parking lot/boom box "Zaireeka" era; endless touring days; their live shows full of bizarre projections/animal suits/hand puppets/confetti and simulated head wounds, as well as the critical acclaim they received for the albums "The Soft Bulletin" and the Grammy-winning, "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots." If the film sounds jam-packed, it is; and throughout the band's history, Beesley is there.

THE RAMONES

End of the Century

(dir. Jim Fields & Michael Gramaglia, 110 mins, 2003)

Thurs May 26 7pm - buy tickets

Hey! Ho! Let's go!

In 1974, the New York City music scene was shocked into consciousness by the violently new and raw sound of a band of misfits from Queens, called The Ramones. Playing in a seedy Bowery bar to a small group of fellow struggling musicians, the band struck a chord of disharmony that rocked the foundation of the mid-'70s music scene. This quartet of unlikely rock stars traveled across the country and around the world connecting with the disenfranchised everywhere, while sparking a movement that would resonate with two generations of outcasts across the globe. Although the band never reached the top of the Billboard charts, it managed to endure by maintaining a rigorous touring schedule for 22 years.

H.C.E.

special "work in progress" screening, with Richard Sylvarnes in person!

(dir. Richard Sylvarnes, 90 mins, 2005)

Fri May 27 7pm - buy tickets

a dream of the nightmare of western history

with Annie Sprinkle, DJ Mendel, and the performance debut of Sonje Sylvarnes

"The best film I've seen in three years." - Miho Nikaido
"The fastest hour and a half I've ever spent." - Thomas Jay Ryan

It is night. It is dark. HCE is a dream of the nightmare of western history. A six year old girl is our guide as we bounce around the tumultuous centuries from Napoleon to Jesus, Socrates to Superman. The film has the appearance of being conceived in the nineteenth century and born in the twenty first - like some sort of modern digital zoetrope. HCE is a tragicomedy where mythology, history, literature, and comic books all collapse into dream logic as a testament to our human endeavor.

HUSBANDS

(dir. John Cassavetes, 154 mins, 1970)

Sat May 28 6pm - buy tickets

starring and directed by John Cassavetes

John Cassavetes continues to delve the depths of the human condition with this story of three men who embark on a journey to cope with the death of their best friend. Harry (Ben Gazzara), Archie (Peter Falk of COLUMBO), and Gus (Cassavetes) gather together to pay their respects and decide, on a whim, to travel to London to get away from the pressures of work and family. Upon arriving, they gamble and bring three call girls back to their hotel room; these actions unwittingly present them with individual life issues with which to contend. As usual with Cassavetes’s films, there is no traditional narrative; rather, there is a series of seemingly insignificant exchanges that need to be processed moment to moment for the film to deliver its greatest impact. Superficially a comedy, HUSBANDS contains enough serious questions to keep it dramatic, making for a hysterical, challenging, and enlightening work. Collaborators Cassavetes, Gazzara, and Falk interact with an honesty enhanced by their being friends in real life, which allows their characters to emerge with truths inherent to these relationships. (synopsis from Rotten Tomatoes)

Pioneer Late Nights

COWARDS BEND THE KNEE

(dir. Guy Maddin, 60 mins, 2003)

Sat May 28 10:45pm - buy tickets

"Maddin’s masterpiece!" (J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE)

“Might be Maddin’s masterwork!” (NY PRESS)

"There is something rather splendid about this extended-play peep show, as if Mr. Maddin had stumbled across a hitherto lost archive of cinema's less-than-innocent past.” (NEW YORK TIMES)

“One of the ten best films of the year! A feverish, hilarious exercise in self-flagellating mythomania.”
(Dennis Lim, THE VILLAGE VOICE)

A masterstroke from goofy Canadian cineaste Guy Maddin, director of THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD and DRACULA: PAGES FROM A VIRGIN’S DIARY.

Adapted from a ten-part peephole installation, COWARDS BEND THE KNEE is, in the words of Mark Peranson, “jam-packed with enough kinetically photographed action to seem like a never-ending cliffhanger. . .In this twisted and poisoned wish-fulfillment, the mythomaniacal Maddin casts ‘himself’ (actually, Darcy Fehr) as a hockey sniper made lily-livered by mother and daughter femme fatales, and resurrects his father as the team’s radio broadcaster and his own romantic antagonist. Set in a shadow-suffused hockey arena and a Mabuse-like beauty salon-slash-abortion clinic, the plot drips with Grecian formula, as sordid family secrets spawn unintentional murder most foul.”

A Zeitgeist Films Release.

INVITATION TO A SUICIDE

(dir. Loren Marsh, 85 mins, 2004)

Tues May 31 7pm - buy tickets

starring Pablo Schreiber of The Wire * Katherin Moennig of The L Word * David Margulies

In the tradition of absurdist black comedies like the classic HAROLD AND MAUDE, INVITATION TO A SUICIDE is about a man selling tickets to his own suicide to save his father's life.

Raised in an insular Polish immigrant neighborhood in Brooklyn where his only future would be as a poor baker like his father, Kaz Malek attempts to steal from a Russian mobster and run away. Not cut out for a life of crime, he ends up owing $10,000 to the mobster instead, who threatens to kill his father if he doesn't pay.

Unable to pay or face his father's death, Kaz comes up with a novel plan: he'll hang himself and sell tickets to the show. He'd rather be a dead hero than a living loser with the guilt of his father's death hanging over his head. Kaz is surprised to find both the mobster and the neighborhood extremely supportive of this idea, not to mention his father.

But even if he can sell the tickets will he really go through with it? By the time this dark comedy reaches its surprising conclusion, Kaz learns that sometimes embracing death is the only way to a better life.

 

  

Pioneer Theater

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