BASILICA SCREENINGS: AUGUST 2015
Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads by Spike Lee
Dune versus Dune
Heaven Knows What by Josh + Benny Safdie
The Wolfpack by Crystal Moselle
Basilica Screenings is a film series that presents an array of works from new and repertory narrative features, documentaries, experimental films, to video and media art, as well as guest curated programs, often with filmmakers and special guests in attendance for a discussion following the screenings. Programmed by Basilica Hudson’s film curator Aily Nash, and creative directors Melissa Auf der Maur and Tony Stone.
All films begin at 8 pm and are $5-15 sliding scale, unless otherwise noted.
BASILICA SCREENINGS: AUGUST
Thursday, August 6, 8 PM
JOE’S BED-STUY BARBERSHOP: WE CUT HEADS, Spike Lee, 1983, 60 min.
Part of the season-long series, Tell It Like It Is: Black Independents in New York, 1968-1986
Projected on 16 mm. film!
Saturday, August 15, 8 PM
DUNE VERSUS DUNE
back to back: JODOROWSKY’S DUNE, Frank Pavich, 2013, 88 min. and DUNE, David Lynch, 1984, 137 min.
Part of the Sci-Fi Summer Nights Series with SPICE inspired food available for purchase (while supplies last!) by Nicole LoBue/Alimentary Kitchen served before the screening at 7 PM
Saturday, August 22, 8 PM
HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT, Josh and Benny Safdie, 2014, 94 min.
with filmmaker Josh Safdie in attendance!
Thursday, August 27, 8 PM
THE WOLFPACK, Crystal Moselle, 2015, 89 min.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 6, 8 PM
JOE’S BED-STUY BARBERSHOP: WE CUT HEADS, Spike Lee, 1983, 60 min. Part of the season-long series, Tell It Like It Is: Black Independents in New York, 1968-1986
Projected on 16 mm. film!
Set in a Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn barbershop, customers come to hang out, discuss various issues, and get a haircut. Zack takes over as manager after Joe is killed by a gangster who used the shop as a front. Zack wants to keep the shop legitimate, but the gangster wants to continue the deal he had with Joe.
“Spike Lee’s NYU Masters program thesis (and the first student feature film ever selected for New Directors/New Films) is a precocious work from a major artist, irrefutable evidence that its maker would go on to become one of the greats.” – Jake Perlin
SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 8 PM
DUNE VERSUS DUNE
8 PM: JODOROWSKY’S DUNE, Frank Pavich, 2013, 88 min.
TRAILER
10 PM: DUNE, David Lynch, 1984, 137 min.
TRAILER
Part of the Sci-Fi Summer Nights Series with SPICE inspired food available for purchase (while supplies last!) by Nicole LoBue/Alimentary Kitchen served before the screening at 7 PM.
JODOROWSKY’S DUNE: In 1974, Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky, whose films EL TOPO and THE HOLY MOUNTAIN launched and ultimately defined the midnight movie phenomenon, began work on his most ambitious project yet. Starring his own 12 year old son Brontis alongside Orson Welles, Mick Jagger, David Carradine and Salvador Dali, featuring music by Pink Floyd and art by some of the most provocative talents of the era, including H.R. Giger and Jean ‘Mœbius’ Giraud, Jodorowsky’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel DUNE was poised to change cinema forever. Pavich’s documentary explores the DUNE that was never made.
DUNE by David Lynch: In the year 10191, a spice called melange is the most valuable substance known in the universe, and its only source is the desert planet Arrakis. A royal decree awards Arrakis to Duke Leto Atreides and ousts his bitter enemies, the Harkonnens. However, when the Harkonnens violently seize back their fiefdom, it is up to Paul (Kyle MacLachlan), Leto’s son, to lead the Fremen, the natives of Arrakis, in a battle for control of the planet and its spice. Based on Frank Herbert’s epic novel.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 8 PM
HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT, Josh and Benny Safdie, 2014, 94 min.
with filmmaker Josh Safdie for Q&A via Skype!
TRAILER
Harley loves Ilya. He gives her life purpose and sets her passion ablaze. So, when he asks her to prove her love by slitting her wrists, she obliges with only mild hesitation, perhaps because of her other all-consuming love: heroin. Directed by celebrated filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie (LENNY COOKE, DADDY LONGLEGS), HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT blends fiction, formalism and raw vérité as it follows a young heroin addict (Arielle Holmes) who plays a version of herself in this fast, forward moving narrative set on the streets of New York. The film—which world premiered at Venice (where it won the CICAE award) and subsequently played NYFF, Toronto and SXSW among other prestigious festivals—is based on Holmes’ soon-to-be-published memoir Mad Love in New York City. Co-starring Caleb Landry-Jones (X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, BYZANTIUM), HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT also features street legend Buddy Duress and gore rap phenom Necro.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 8 PM
THE WOLFPACK, Crystal Moselle, 2015, 89 mi
TRAILER
In this riveting true story, The six Angulo brothers have spent their entire lives locked away from society in an apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Nicknamed “The Wolfpack,” they’re all exceedingly bright, are homeschooled, have no acquaintances outside their family and have practically never left their home. All they know of the outside world is gleaned from the films they watch obsessively and recreate meticulously, using elaborate homemade props and costumes. For years this has served as a productive creative outlet and a way to stave off loneliness – but after one of the brothers escapes the apartment (wearing a Michael Meyers mask for protection), the power dynamics in the house are transformed, and all the boys begin to dream of venturing out. Armed with unprecedented access into the subjects’ world and vast archive of home movies, first-time director Crystal Moselle crafts a fascinating portrait of an extraordinary family, capturing the thrill of the Wolfpack’s discoveries without skirting the darker questions of abuse and confinement that weigh upon all of them. THE WOLFPACK charts a fascinating coming of age story and becomes a true example of the power of movies to transform and save lives. Awarded the Grand Jury Prize: Best Documentary at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.
Prior iterations of Basilica Screenings have brought filmmakers including Albert Maysles, who showed and discussed many of his rarely seen works from the 50s and 70s, essential cinematic works such as Susan Sontag’s Promised Lands, Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil, internationally renown contemporary directors including Jem Cohen, Deborah Stratman, and Denis Côté, and rare radical documentary forms such as Yumen produced by Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab.