Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One
Citizenfour
Videodrome
Sugarcoated Arsenic & other recent films by Kevin Jerome Everson

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: JUNE

Thursday, June 4, 8 PM
SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE ONE, William Greaves, 1968, 75 min
part of the season-long series, Tell It Like It Is: Black Independents in New York, 1968-1986
programmed by Jake Perlin and Michelle Materre for Film Society of Lincoln Center

Thursday, June 11, 8 PM
CITIZENFOUR, Laura Poitras, 2014, 114 min
First 10 guests get a free TV dinner!

Thursday, June 18, 8 PM
VIDEODROME, David Cronenberg, 1983, 87 min

Thursday, June 25, 8 PM
SUGARCOATED ARSENIC AND OTHER RECENT FILMS BY KEVIN JEROME EVERSON, 68 min
An evening with Kevin Jerome Everson, with an introduction and Q&A with the filmmaker
Food before the screening by Alimentary Kitchen/Nicole LoBue at 7 PM

THURSDAY, JUNE 4, 8 PM
SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE ONE, William Greaves, 1968, 75 min
part of the season-long series, Tell It Like It Is: Black Independents in New York, 1968-1986
programmed by Jake Perlin and Michelle Materre for Film Society of Lincoln Center
TRAILER

A docufiction, a narrative experiment, a film about making a film, a crew without a director, a time capsule of New York, a barometer of the culture: process, form, and personality collide in Greaves’s classic, about which no superlatives can be overused and whose influence cannot be overstated. – Jake Perlin

Basilica will present selections all season long from Tell It Like It Is: Black Independents in New York, 1968 – 1986. Programmed by Jake Perlin and Michelle Materre, Tell It Like It Is is a series that screened at the Film Society of Lincoln Center this past February. It was comprised of key films produced between 1968 and 1986, when Spike Lee’s first feature, the independently produced She’s Gotta Have It, was released theatrically—and followed by a new era of studio filmmaking by black directors. Representing highlights of New York–based independents, activists all—producing these films in a time when minority film production was not supported and frequently suppressed—this program is full of major works by some of the great filmmakers of this (or any) era in American film history.

THURSDAY, JUNE 11, 8 PM
CITIZENFOUR, Laura Poitras, 2014, 114 min
TRAILER

In January 2013, filmmaker Laura Poitras was in the process of constructing a film about abuses of national security in post-9/11 America when she started receiving encrypted e-mails from someone identifying himself as “citizen four,” who was ready to blow the whistle on the massive covert surveillance programs run by the NSA and other intelligence agencies. In June 2013, she and reporter Glenn Greenwald flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with the man who turned out to be Edward Snowden. She brought her camera with her. The film that resulted from this series of tense encounters is absolutely sui generis in the history of cinema:  a 100% real-life thriller unfolding minute by minute before our eyes. Poitras is a great and brave filmmaker, but she is also a masterful storyteller: she compresses the many days of questioning, waiting, confirming, watching the world’s reaction and agonizing over the next move, into both a great character study of Snowden and a narrative that will leave you on the edge of your seat as it inexorably moves toward its conclusion. Winner of the 2014 Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature.

THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 8 PM
VIDEODROME, David Cronenberg, 1983, 87 min
TRAILER

First 10 guests get a free TV dinner!

Sleazy lowlife cable TV operator Max Renn discovers a snuff broadcast called “Videodrome.” But it is more than a TV show–it’s an experiment that uses regular TV transmissions to permanently alter the viewer’s perceptions by giving them brain damage. Max is caught in the middle of the forces that created “Videodrome” and the forces that want to control it, his body itself turning into the ultimate weapon to fight this global conspiracy.   Starring James Woods and Deborah Harry in one of her first film roles, Videodrome is one of writer/director David Cronenberg’s most original and provocative works, fusing social commentary with shocking elements of sex and violence. With groundbreaking special effects makeup by Academy Award-winner Rick Baker, Videodrome has come to be regarded as one of the most influential and mind-bending science fiction films of the 1980s.

THURSDAY, JUNE 25, 8 PM
SUGARCOATED ARSENIC AND OTHER RECENT FILMS BY KEVIN JEROME EVERSON, 68 min
NY TIMES REVIEW

An evening with Kevin Jerome Everson, with an introduction and Q&A with the filmmaker

Food before the screening by Alimentary Kitchen/Nicole LoBue at 7 PM

Works include: Three Quarters (2015), FE 26 (2014), Sound That (2014), Sugarcoated Arsenic (2013), Workers Leaving the Job-Site (2013), Century (2012), Rita Larson’s Boy (2012).

The profound films of Kevin Jerome Everson depict the lives of working class African-Americans. From factory workers, Cleveland Water Department technicians, magicians, student activists, and actors, Everson explores these stories through an acute sensibility, challenging distinctions of reality and fiction by engaging artifice and reenactments of histories. His playful yet incisive observations into race and the socio-economic conditions of his subjects portrays an American experience not represented often enough on the big screen.

A prolific artist who also works in a variety of mediums, Kevin Jerome Everson has made seven feature films and over 120 short form works that have been exhibited widely at film festivals and museums internationally including a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, a retrospective at Centre Pompidou, Paris, and premieres include Sundance, Berlinale, and Toronto Film Festivals, to name a few. Awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, Alpert Award, and the Rome Prize.

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.