Wednesday, October 3

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Debt Begins at 20 at 92YTribeca

What’s Showing Today? Wednesday, October 3
Click venue names for ticket info & directions

Featured Screening: Stephanie Beroes presents Debt Begins at 20 and Dream Screen at 92YTribeca

Tonight is the kickoff of the sixth season of Flaherty NYC, a local offshoot of the annual Flaherty Seminar. Since 1954 The Flaherty Seminar has organized filmmakers, scholars, enthusiasts, programmers and others for a week of continuous screenings and critical discussions about the moving image in all its forms. Like the Seminar, each Flaherty NYC lineup is selected by a different programmer who defines a unique theme. I’m honored to have been selected as the programmer for this season, titled More Fun in the New World. Coinciding with election season, the series is intended to engage with the supposed issues through varying entry points, perspectives and interpretations.

And it’s a real treat to begin with Debt Begins at 20 and Dream Screen, a pair of experimental non-fiction works from the 1980s by Stephanie Beroes. Iconoclastic in both form and content, yet rather endearing, Debt Begins at 20 is a portrait of a group of working class Pittsburgh ‘no wave’ bands as they pursue creative endeavor against and implied forecast of limited options and terminal boredom. Besides being a thrilling document of amazing performances by the greatest punk bands that, for better or worse, never left Pittsburgh, it’s a singular work in how the musicians in front of and the filmmaker behind the camera are essentially part of the same ecosystem. Which is to say that it’s perhaps disingenuous to call it a “documentary about punk” so much as a consummate portrayal of a creative community reveling in lack of budget, outside support or representation and using this as an opportunity to bring everything up for discussion—whether it be the hallowed ethics of documentary filmmaking or the idea that a punk band should have a bass and guitar—and delivering it all with a dose of arch nihilistic humor. Among its protagonists is Bill Bored, drummer of The Cardboards, a quartet comprising drums, sax, keyboards and vocals (occasionally augmented by a second vocalist), who explains his role as to “make as much noise as possible all the time; keep the beat with one hand and toss in punctuation marks with the other hand.” In a staged fictional romance scene, he gives a lady friend a tour of his apartment, shorn of furniture and much else aside from empty Iron City cans, and points at a busted bass drum as the former entirety of his kit. The girl is the lead singer of The Dykes, part of a group of truly badass ladies who are perhaps real stars of the film, stealing scenes with performances of songs like “Hysterectomy” and (You’re Only) “Two Fingers Wide”, which are performed by a trio of voices and single drum kit. The film is interspersed with a series of staged Q&A sessions in which individuals respond to a string of pre-determined questions such as “Do you like sleep?” “How would you like to die?” “What do you detest the most?” and “What do you think about people who avoid political situations?” Throughout, language is foregrounded by comic-style captions isolating bits of dialog. As Jonathan Rosenbaum summarized, “Debt Begins at 20 provides as much honest fun as a day on the beach.”

Debt is preceded by 1986′s Dream Screen, which operates via a three-tiered structure comprising footage from Pabst’s Pandora’s Box, speculations on the biography of Louise Brooks, and an interview with a young, contemporary Louise Brooks analog. As Lucy Fischer writes, “Through this intertextual montage, Beroes not only re-writes the Pabst classic, but examines the mythification of woman, and its articulation in the cinema.” The work was previously featured in the 1987 Whitney Biennial.

I hope you’ll make it tonight, and please take a look at the upcoming screenings, including the New York premiere of Berlin-based artist Michal Kosakowski‘s debut feature Zero Killed, in which people share, reenact, and reflect upon their murder fantasies; “Dreams that Money Can Buy”, an evening of corporate-sponsored avant-garde film; and a special 35mm election-week screening of Mr. Freedom, William Klein‘s incendiary 1969 satire of the verbal and visual rhetoric of American patriotism told via the story of a right-wing superhero in Paris.

Today

Flaherty NYC: More Fun in the New World at 92YTribeca
Series Details

  • Debt Begins at 20 with Dream Screen (Stephanie Beroes). Details. Beroes in attendance for discussion. 16mm. 1980/1986. 81 min. 7:30 pm.

John Le Carré at BAMCinématek
Series Details

  • The Little Drummer Girl (George Roy Hill). Details. 35mm. 1984. 130 min. 6:50 and 9:30 pm.

The 50th New York Film Festival at Film Society of Lincoln Center
Series Details

  • Wednesday’s Schedule.
  • Main Slate: Hyde Park on Hudson, You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet and The Paperboy.
  • Masterworks: Jean Renoir The Boss, John Cassavetes, The Rolling Stones-Charlie is My Darling & Ireland ’65.
  • Special Events: Becoming Traviata, The War of the Volcanoes, Punk in Africa and WGA East

Ride, Boldly Ride at MoMA
Series Details

  • Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey). Details. 1935. 92 min. 1:30 pm.

Film After Film at Museum of the Moving Image
Series Details

  • An Evening with Phil Solomon. Details. Solomon in attendance. 16mm/video. 1983-2009. 7:00 pm.

Radical Feminists at Spectacle
Series Details

  • Empire Builder (Kris Swanberg). Details. 2012. 72 min. 8:00 pm.

Newfilmmakers Fall Fest 2012 at Anthology Film Archives. Details. 6:00 pm.
The Images Festival Presents: A Place in the World at Anthology Film Archives. Details. Work by Alexandre Larose, Antoine Bourges, Mike Gibisser and Lucy Parker. 16mm/video. 2011. 80 min. 7:30 pm.

Ongoing

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Elio Petri) at Film Forum. Details. DCP. 1970. 112 min. 1:00, 3:10, 5:20, 7:30 and 9:40 pm.
Bel Borba Aqui (Burt Sun & André Costantini) at Film Forum. Details. 2012. 95 min. 1:15, 3:15, 6:00, 8:00 and 10:00 pm.
Dial M for Murder in 3-D! (Alfred Hitchcock) at Film Forum. Details. DCP. 1954. 105 min. 1:10, 3:20, 5:30, 7:40 and 9:50 pm.
Los Pasos Dobles (Isaki Lacuesta) at MoMA. Details. 2011. 87 min. 4:00 pm.
Avé (Isaki Lacuesta) at MoMA. Details. 2011. 87 min. 4:00 pm.

Galleries

Museums

Below listed North-South

Chelsea

Downtown

Brooklyn