Filmmakers! Nitehawk needs your shorts by June 25th! And the prizes are pretty big: the Festival Jury Winner receives post-production sound services from Heard City (worth $16k) and post-production coloring from Nice Shoes (worth $20k). Your short must run under 20 minutes long, and should have been completed in 2015-2017.
Full submission details here. Send in your films now!
Thomas Middleditch in Entanglement, Dir. Jason James, showing at the Brooklyn Film Festival 2017
This Friday, June 2nd kicks off the 20th annual Brooklyn Film Festival, which will screen over 122 narrative features, documentaries, narrative and documentary shorts, animated and experimental films from 32 countries spread over six continents. Two of the festival’s venues are in Greenpoint: Windmill Studios NYC (300 Kingsland Ave) and the Kickstarter headquarters(58 Kent St)—also the site for the BFF Exchange—a day of free panels, and a happy hour sponsored by Stella Artois on Saturday June 10th.Continue reading →
Dobbin St’s gorgeous rooftop at sunset, via Dobbin St
Ok, so we’ve been stuck in the weather purgatory that is Spring (it’s hot/it’s cold/it’s rainy/it sucks), but it’s already time to start planning out our summer outdoor activities—because before we know it we’ll be stuck in blizzard land. In North Brooklyn we’re lucky to have three awesome options for watching movies outdoors this summer! Because who doesn’t love a good excuse to sit amongst the fireflies and watch the sun set on a blanket next to their honey (or doggie) with a pre-hot-mess Lindsey Lohan snarling on the big screen? (See Mean Girls at SummerScreen in McCarren, Wednesday July 5th).
THE SUNSET SCREENINGS — ROOFTOP MOVIES AT DOBBIN STREET
A new free monthly rooftop film series, The Sunset Screenings, kicks off May 24th and runs through September. The free movies will screen at local event space Dobbin St (64 Dobbin Street) on their 3,000 sq ft rooftop terrace. Just as the sun sets over the Manhattan skyline, the films will begin. To complement the view, the series is“city” themed, representing the world’s most iconic cities from New York to Tokyo with a carefully curated list of films. Here’s the schedule:
The 5th annual Bad Film Fest, happening at art space Cloud City (85 N 1st St) on May 19-21, celebrates the dark horses of cinema and gives aspiring filmmakers of all ages and skill levels a chance to share their most absurd and experimental films, whether in the form of a “Cops”-inspired mockumentary, absurdist sci-fi or a heartfelt drama. Films to be screened include “My Ass Is Bleeding 2,” “Scumbags From Outer Space,” “Meatloaf Zombies,” and “Still Shaving After All These Beers.”
Tickets are $8, and a full schedule, with different films screening each night, can be seen here. Continue reading →
Greenpoint is a hub for filmmaking, boasting countless production companies and film facilities, in addition to the oft-maligned and very frequent film shoots that tend to clog our slender sidewalks and historical streets. We would argue that Greenpoint’s been culturally interesting and relevant for many years, but some have said that Girls being filmed here helped put Greenpoint on the map. Our neighborhood’s own Greenpoint Film Festival returns for its sixth year, from this Thursday May 4th through Sunday May 7th, presenting a diverse range of shorts and feature-length films, many with a local slant. A panel of six judges curated the fest after receiving hundreds of submissions in set categories: Narrative, Documentary, Experimental and Animation. The GFF’s ongoing mission is to show the imperative ties between art and the public. All the screenings will be held at the Wythe Hotel Screening Room (80 Wythe Ave). Continue reading →
Picture this: you and bae decide to spice things up so you get down and dirty with a sex toy—a totally magical night. But, your night was actually so magic that you wake up the next day and discover you’ve switched bodies, which is simultaneously terrifying and awesome. We’ve seen body-switching in movies before (Freaky Friday, Vice Versa and The Change Up, among others), but the new film Inside You goes deeper and explores gender, sexuality and marriage while still remaining hilarious. After three years of challenging production, badass lady director Heather Fink is ready to put her latest film out into the world. Using shows and films like Louis, Girls, Obvious Child and Bridesmaids as the script’s true-to-life comedic inspiration, she shot the film right here in Greenpoint and other parts of North Brooklyn (you can see Bushwick’s Catland in the trailer, masquerading as the sex shop). Heather (a Greenpointer) not only directed the film, but she also wrote it and stars in it. We chatted with her about her filmmaking process and her love of Greenpoint.
GP: How long did the film take to make (from writing the script through production)?
Heather: I finished the script in March 2014, ran the Kickstarter in June 2014, tried to shoot in October 2014 but had the lead actress drop out the day before the shoot. We re-tooled the project, I decided to act in it myself, and we finally shot in June 2015. We locked the picture edit by January 2016, and finished sound, color, VFX, music and titles by June 2016. I applied to festivals with this cut—and waited several months to hear back, taking me into 2017. I ran out of money so I needed to work several months to afford the final pieces—the end credits sequence, and we just finished the trailer. Every step of the way I had to work till I had enough money to pay for each thing. Now, it’s paid for.
In a time when almost every other video rental store has closed its doors, it feels like a miracle that Greenpoint’s beloved Film Noir (formerly at 10 Bedford Avenue, and previously profiled by Greenpointers in 2014) has not only survived, it’s expanding.
On March 31st, owner Will Malitek moved shop and opened a gorgeous, 54-seat art house cinema at 122 Meserole Avenue. You can still stop in to browse and rent hard-to-find titles. But now, even better, you can also catch carefully curated screenings of cult classics and underground films in an intimate neighborhood movie theater. Check out what’s playing on their site.
We stopped by to talk with Will about how he got started, his new location, and what Film Noir Cinema has in store for the future.
This Saturday (4/8), Videology (308 Bedford Ave.) will be screening the film BUGS, along with a Q&A session with the film’s protagonist and the film’s director. The event starts at 11am, with the film beginning promptly at 11:15am and running for 75 minutes. Your ticket includes a welcome drink, a packet of edible crickets from Aketta, and a pipette tasting of grasshopper and bee larvae garums.
Tomorrow night (Friday, 4/7) local instafamous Instagram Taste of Streep is hosting THREE screenings of The Devil Wears Prada at Syndicated Bar & Theater in Bushwick (40 Bogart Street), at 6pm, 8:45pm and 11:30pm. Tickets ($25) include a cocktail and a genuine Taste of Streep goodie bag, plus trivia before the show. But how to choose which screening? It’s a tough call. They’re so different.Continue reading →
Tomorrow night (March 30th) The Polish Cultural Institute is screening a documentary about Thaddeus Kosciuszko at 7 pm at Nitehawk Cinema (136 Metropolitan Avenue). There’ll be a Q&A session with the director, and free snacks and drinks. Tickets are free, but only a few seats are still available. RSVP t0 –[email protected]
