Inside of a simple wooden box, elevated about five feet off the ground, sits a 16mm Elmo film projector. The sound of its spinning reels is muffled by foam egg crates, and its lens is aimed at a far wall. This is the beating heart of Light Industry, an experimental, repertory cinema that’s celebrating five years in Greenpoint.
(Via Light Industry)
Projective LifeÂ
Tuesday November 22, 7:30 pm at Light Industry: $8 at the door
Light Industry is billing next week’s screening event as a reading (“broadly defined”), which sounds interesting but also begs the question: lol what?
As you may or may not know, Light Industry is more or less a cinema and film discussion forum, but with Projective Life they’re opening up the floor to some good old-fashion poetry and prose, setting the stage for an interesting dialogue between the oral/literary and their usual video and projection modes and getting rid of the “sad exigencies of plot” altogether: “Under these conditions, a film can act as a reading and reading may become a kind of film.”
Gimme Danger
Friday October 28 through Thursday November 3 at IFC Center: $14.50
I’m hoping at least a few of you out there, like me, are cursed/blessed by a bizarro Pavlovian response to the words “No Fun”– whenever they’re uttered, even in passing, you immediately drop whatever or whoever you’re doing, wherever you may be, and start thrashing around like a seahorse at the tail end of his week-long soak in a Benzedrine bath.
Spa Night
Thursday September 8, 7:45 pm at Metrograph: $15
This one’s been held over at the Metrograph again and it looks like this is finally, actually, literally the last time you can catch Spa Night within the stylish confines of the Lower East Side’s newest art house theater and perhaps the only ciné in the whole wide city with a concession stand that looks like it was designed by a serial killer. You’ll find that Spa Night is replete with that very same understated but stylish weirdness. It’s a quiet, crawling film fraught by teeth-gritting tension so overwhelming you get the feeling everything’s about to come crashing down if you breathe too loudly.
Still from Michel Auder film (via Light Industry / Facebook)
Michel Auder + Rebekah Rutkoff: Sunsets and Other Stars
Tuesday, Dec. 15, 7:30 pm at Light Industry: $8 at the door
French artist, photographer, and filmmaker Michel Auder left France in the ’70s for New York City, where he’s resided ever since. He’s maybe best known as Cindy Sherman’s ex-husband (JK, but for real — how do you compete with Cindy Sherman?). Much of his video work (though apparently Auder “did not consider it fine art”) consists of ethnographic snapshots and sceney vignettes, the stuff of Auder’s cool Downtown life amongst artists like Annie Sprinkle, Larry Rivers, Hannah Wilke, among others.
But another good chunk of his focus was deadly personal. Take My Last Bag of Heroin (For Real), a 1993 piece which shows the filmmaker, who battled with heroin addiction for many years, breaking apart a glassine baggie of heroin onto a piece of aluminum foil and smoking the stuff. The video demonstrates the banality of drug use, often depicted as an explosively orgasmic experience, particularly in film.
It’s as good a week as any to catch some films and with one of our besties going outta commission soon (temporarily, thankfully) we’re encouraging you to cinematically tie one on and mainline all the movies you can possibly handle now, and actually just forever. Do consider jumping, because we’ve got plenty of product for you below.
Don’t even think about having something better to do than checking out a movie this weekend and beyond. We’ve got some great stuff right here including a totally creepy documentary about notorious polygamist Warren Jeffs, a Coney Island-based film festival for the freaks, and this fascinating looking doc (see the trailer above) about train hoppers and their mysterious hieroglyphs.
Winter demons be gone, will you not?! How many of our yearly allotment of BBQs and rooftop hang outs have we lost already to this arctic blast that cares for no one and forgives nothing? How many more will we lose before we’re spared this suffering? Try not to think about it. Or rather, distract yourself with this friendly assortment of film things.
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All sorts of weird things are happening this weekend– Friday the 13th, Valentine’s Day, Fashion Week– which leads me to believe that something awful is going on with the planets. Like, considering that no one has yet promised to buy me dinner and shower me in useless gifts on V-day, something is really, really off. And only something as powerful as the stars could make such impossible circumstances a reality.
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Sup guys? Darkness reigns right now, so instead of pining away for the sun when it sets just two hours after freaking lunch, forget about it. Embrace the season of death by spending it far, far away from things that are a reminder you’re stuck on planet Earth till (real) death do y’all part. The best way to do that, in our opinion, is to get to a cinema theater.
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