https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org An international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video with a particular focus on American independent and avant-garde cinema and its precursors found in classic European, Soviet and Japanese film. en-us Tue, 25 Mar 2025 15:18:08 -0400 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=03&year=2025#showing-58993 <p>This program of shorts organized by Kathy Brew – including works by several artists affiliated with the29.art, with support from Women Make Movies – examines issues of conformity among women, challenges gender stereotypes, and advocates for female agency. The works, presented chronologically, span from 1989 to 2024, and underscore the fact that a woman’s right to control her own body remains critical in these dangerous times.<br /><br />Kathy High I NEED YOUR FULL COOPERATION 1989, 5-min excerpt, digital<br />“An experimental documentary about the history of women’s treatment by the U.S. medical system, juxtaposing feminist examinations of medical practices, narratives of patient treatments, and archival footage.” –VIDEO DATA BANK<br /><br />Kathy Brew MIXED MESSAGES 1990, 20 min, digital<br />An experimental video collage that incorporates found footage, documentary, animation, and a dream narrative in a work that examines gender-stereotyping in popular culture, concluding with a post-modern version of the Pandora myth.<br /><br />Aline Mare S’ALINE’S SOLUTION 1991, 9 min, digital<br />A voice for the pain, an acknowledgment of the courage involved in choosing to have an abortion. An emblematic statement about an issue that remains central and vital in these dangerous times: a woman’s right to choose.<br /><br />Jacqueline Frank CHOICE THOUGHTS: REFLECTIONS ON THE BIRTH CONTROL WAR 1996, 10 min, digital<br />“A mix of rare archival footage and sound bites from religious and political leaders, this piece looks at 100 years of the fight for birth control and legalized abortion, illuminating how access to birth control became seen as a human right and how this dialogue continues around present-day issues of choice.” –WOMEN MAKE MOVIES<br /><br />Queen Elizabeth (aka Liz Canner) & Murphy Brown (aka Lara Pellegrinelli) WHY WE MARCH: SIGNS OF PROTEST AND HOPE, VOICES FROM THE WOMEN’S MARCH AFTER TRUMP WAS ELECTED IN 2016 2017, 9 min, digital<br />Six short pieces with women of varying ages, from young girls to older women, speaking about the right to make their own decisions about their bodies in a time when such rights are eroding.<br /><br />Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater, and Mike Attie ABORTION HELPLINE, THIS IS LISA 2019, 13 min, digital<br />“At the Philadelphia abortion helpline, counselors field nonstop calls from women and teens who are seeking to end a pregnancy but can’t afford to, illustrating how economic stigma and cruel laws determine who has access to abortion in America.” –WOMEN MAKE MOVIES<br /><br />Lynne Sachs CONTRACTIONS 2024, 12 min, digital<br />In the wake of the overturning of Roe v Wade, this film takes us to Memphis, Tennessee, where we contemplate the discontinuation of abortion services at a women’s health clinic.<br /><br />Total running time: ca. 85 min.<br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Tuesday, March 25 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=03&year=2025#showing-58962 <p>Pat O’Neill<br />SAUGUS SERIES (1974, 19 min, 16mm) <br />SAUGUS SERIES is actually seven short films, one-and-a-half to six minutes long, united by a common soundtrack. Each is an evolving “still life” made up of meticulously assembled but spatially contradictory elements.<br />“SAUGUS SERIES exhibits the possibilities of the optical printer with considerable self-confidence and élan. The colors are deeply saturated; radically incompatible spaces are meticulously pieced together; moving images are layered in front of each other or masked within ‘negative’ spaces outlined by the absence of an object; a multiplicity of textures and densities and the dynamics of particles in turmoil enliven the imagery. […] The displaced objects and the uncanny juxtapositions of Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger, and Curtis Harrington take on meaning from their relationship to the human figures that encounter them. As such, they become symbolic functions. O’Neill, a native of southern California, seems to be telling us that such a symbolic and psychologically personalized landscape loses its significance in a space like Los Angeles which is so overwhelmed by fragmented representations and gerrybuilt perspectives.” –P. Adams Sitney, MILLENNIUM FILM JOURNAL<br /><br />Hans Richter<br />RHYTHMUS 21 (1921, 3 min, 35mm, silent)<br />“Its content is essentially rhythm, the formal vocabulary is elemental geometry, and the structural principle is counterpoint of contrasting opposites.” –Standish Lawder<br /><br />TWO PENNY MAGIC / ZWEIGROSCHENZAUBER (1929, 2 min, 16mm)<br />Produced as a commercial for a German illustrated magazine, this film is an experiment with visual rhymes.<br /><br />EVERYTHING REVOLVES, EVERYTHING TURNS / ALLES DREHT SICH, ALLES BEWEGT SICH (1929, 9 min, 16mm)<br />“Richter’s unique and fascinating view of magic and cruelty in a carnival side-show.” –Cecile Starr<br /><br />Paul Sharits<br />N:O:T:H:I:N:G<br />(1968, 36 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.)<br />“Based in part on the Tibetan Mandala of the Five Dhyani Buddhas/a journey toward the center of pure consciousness (Dharma-Dhatu Wisdom)/space and motion generated rather than illustrated/time-color energy create virtual shape/in negative time, growth is inverse decay.” –Paul Sharits<br /><br />T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G (1969, 12 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.)<br />“Starring poet David Franks whose voice appears on the soundtrack/an uncutting and unscratching mandala.” –Paul Sharits<br /><br />Total running time: ca. 85 min.<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a> </p> Thursday, March 27 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=03&year=2025#showing-58963 <p>S:TREAM:S:S:ECTION:S:ECTION:S:S:ECTIONED<br />1968-70, 41 min, 16mm. <span id="docs-internal-guid-0970af6f-7fff-140d-adf1-f7cee986eb96">Restored by Anthology Film Archives.</span><br />“Yes, S:S:S:S:S:S is beautiful. The successive scratchings of the stream-image film is very powerful vandalism. The film is a very complete organism with all the possible levels really recognized.” –Michael Snow<br /><br />COLOR SOUND FRAMES<br />1974, 26 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.<br />“A film in which Sharits sums up his researches in the area of film strip (in opposition to the individual frames). The film strips move horizontally and vertically; two strips move simultaneously in opposite directions; variations in color; action of sprocket-holes. Very methodically and scientifically he covers the area. […] COLOR SOUND FRAMES advances one area of cinema or one area of researches in cinema (call it art if you wish) to a new climax, to a new peak: his exploration is so total, so perfect.” –Jonas Mekas, VILLAGE VOICE<br /><br />Total running time: ca. 70 min.<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a> </p> Thursday, March 27 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=03&year=2025#showing-59004 <p>Spring may be just around the corner, but don’t expect sunshine and flowers this month. For our March selection, we’re screening three classic short films that exemplify our favorite gay subgenre: dark, dirty, and depressing!<br /><br />P. David Ebersole<br />DEATH IN VENICE, CA<br />1994, 30 min, 16mm-to-DCP<br />Ebersole’s adaptation of Thomas Mann’s classic novel, “Death in Venice”, begins when stressed-out writer Mason Carver comes to stay with his wife’s relative (Academy Award-nominee Shirley Knight) near the Venice Canals in west LA. As in Mann’s novel, Carver finds himself tempted, here by a seductive young gay relative. DEATH screened on opening night of San Francisco’s Frameline festival in 1994, together with last year’s Narrow Rooms rediscovery, Hisayasu Sato’s MUSCLE.<br /><br />François Ozon<br />LITTLE DEATH / LA PETITE MORT<br />1995, 26 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In French with English subtitles.<br />Young gay photographer Paul is contacted by his sister after his father suffers a debilitating stroke. But Paul’s bitterness and resentment over their estrangement mean a tearful hospital reconciliation is highly unlikely. More grounded in reality than Ozon’s other early works, it still contains the mix of gay eroticism and audience provocation that would become staples of the French director’s most attention-grabbing films.<br /><br />Carter Smith<br />BUGCRUSH<br />2006, 36 min, 35mm-to-DCP<br />Adapted from a short story featured in the pioneering queer horror story collection “Queer Fear”, BUGCRUSH tells the unnerving tale of a closeted teenage outcast named Ben who becomes obsessed with a new kid after they meet in detention. Offering to drive his crush home after school, Ben finds himself tempted into a disturbing situation hinted at by the film’s title. Since his film became the most talked-about title at queer film festivals in 2006, director Carter Smith has continued to make horror films with a queer edge, including SWALLOWED, MIDNIGHT KISS, and JAMIE MARKS IS DEAD.<br /><br />Total running time: ca. 95 min.<br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Friday, March 28 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=03&year=2025#showing-58964 <p>(LA RÈGLE DU JEU)<br /><br />“Detested when it first appeared (for satirizing the French ruling class on the brink of the Second World War), almost destroyed by brutal cutting, restored in 1959 to virtually its original form, THE RULES OF THE GAME is now universally acknowledged as a masterpiece and perhaps Renoir’s supreme achievement. Its extreme complexity (it seems, after more than 20 viewings, one of the cinema’s few truly inexhaustible films) makes it peculiarly difficult to write about briefly.” –Robin Wood<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Saturday, March 29 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=03&year=2025#showing-58967 <p>(FRANCESCO, GIULLARE DI DIO)<br /><br />“Roberto Rossellini’s buoyant 1950 masterpiece is a glorious hallucination of perfect harmony between man and nature. The Franciscans arrive at Assisi in the first reel and leave in the last. In between, as they say, nothing happens and everything happens. Rossellini is able to suggest the scope and rhythm of an entire lost way of life through a gradual accumulation of well-observed detail. The Franciscans are at once inspired and slightly foolish, but Rossellini maintains a profound respect for the grandeur of their delusions. A great film, all the more impressive for being apparently effortless.” –Dave Kehr<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Saturday, March 29 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=03&year=2025#showing-58968 <p>(FRANCESCO, GIULLARE DI DIO)<br /><br />“Roberto Rossellini’s buoyant 1950 masterpiece is a glorious hallucination of perfect harmony between man and nature. The Franciscans arrive at Assisi in the first reel and leave in the last. In between, as they say, nothing happens and everything happens. Rossellini is able to suggest the scope and rhythm of an entire lost way of life through a gradual accumulation of well-observed detail. The Franciscans are at once inspired and slightly foolish, but Rossellini maintains a profound respect for the grandeur of their delusions. A great film, all the more impressive for being apparently effortless.” –Dave Kehr<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Sunday, March 30 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=03&year=2025#showing-58965 <p>(LA RÈGLE DU JEU)<br /><br />“Detested when it first appeared (for satirizing the French ruling class on the brink of the Second World War), almost destroyed by brutal cutting, restored in 1959 to virtually its original form, THE RULES OF THE GAME is now universally acknowledged as a masterpiece and perhaps Renoir’s supreme achievement. Its extreme complexity (it seems, after more than 20 viewings, one of the cinema’s few truly inexhaustible films) makes it peculiarly difficult to write about briefly.” –Robin Wood<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Sunday, March 30 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=03&year=2025#showing-58966 <p>(LA RÈGLE DU JEU)<br /><br />“Detested when it first appeared (for satirizing the French ruling class on the brink of the Second World War), almost destroyed by brutal cutting, restored in 1959 to virtually its original form, THE RULES OF THE GAME is now universally acknowledged as a masterpiece and perhaps Renoir’s supreme achievement. Its extreme complexity (it seems, after more than 20 viewings, one of the cinema’s few truly inexhaustible films) makes it peculiarly difficult to write about briefly.” –Robin Wood<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Monday, March 31 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=03&year=2025#showing-58969 <p>(FRANCESCO, GIULLARE DI DIO)<br /><br />“Roberto Rossellini’s buoyant 1950 masterpiece is a glorious hallucination of perfect harmony between man and nature. The Franciscans arrive at Assisi in the first reel and leave in the last. In between, as they say, nothing happens and everything happens. Rossellini is able to suggest the scope and rhythm of an entire lost way of life through a gradual accumulation of well-observed detail. The Franciscans are at once inspired and slightly foolish, but Rossellini maintains a profound respect for the grandeur of their delusions. A great film, all the more impressive for being apparently effortless.” –Dave Kehr<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Monday, March 31 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59195 <p><strong>WORLD PREMIERE! ALYSTYRE JULIAN & ANNE WALDMAN IN PERSON!</strong></p> <p><strong></strong>[We have added a second screening on April 1 at 7:15 pm in the Maya Deren on the ground floor level for accessibility. All other screenings in the upstairs Courthouse Theater.]<br /><br />Poet/filmmaker Alystyre Julian’s OUTRIDER is an experimental portrait of “fast speaking” poet/performer, Grammy-nominated librettist, artistic director, and cultural activist Anne Waldman. OUTRIDER is a portal to her path of imagination, her vow to poetry and activism, and her vortex of artists/collaborators: Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, Thurston Moore, Meredith Monk, Allen Ginsberg, Laurie Anderson, Douglas Dunn, Eileen Myles, Amiri Baraka, James Brandon Lewis, Cecilia Vicuña, Pat Steir, Ha-Yang Kim, Daniel Carter, Eleni Sikelianos, Bob Holman, Janice Lowe, No Land, Akilah Oliver, Lee Ann Brown, Brenda Coultas, and many others.<br /><br />OUTRIDER immerses in the poetry communities constellating around Waldman’s life and legacy in New York – “city of my poems” – from her “hearthome” in Greenwich Village and The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and outwards to Big Sur, Morocco, and Mexico.<br /><br />OUTRIDER is a story of transmutation through making art. Waldman asks, “What is it to be a contemporary poet in one’s time? A seer, conjurer? How to keep the world safe for poetry?” Waldman’s exploratory, restless consciousness informs her startling, panoramic work; she is a person woven of poetry, study, and visionary commitment to planetary and social challenges. As the film demonstrates, she has addressed war and patriarchy in The Iovis Trilogy, a cri de coeur for endangered species in Manatee Humanity, the urgency of Archives in Gossamurmur, entheogens in Jaguar Harmonics, Blake’s Thel in Voice’s Daughter of a Heart Yet Unborn, and her radical life in Bard, Kinetic. OUTRIDER tracks her investigative mind, always “on,” her improvisations with original music by Waldman’s son Ambrose Bye and nephew Devin “Brahja” Waldman, and her wake-up calls, from demonstrating at Rocky Flats (1978) to contemporary social, cultural, and environmental justice movements. <br /><br />OUTRIDER celebrates Waldman’s role as a visionary word-worker, her transcendent presence as poet/performer, and her vocal fortitude as she sings out, in the ancient, bardic tradition, the thunderous power of poetry.<br /><br />“OUTRIDER is a flash of lightning in the dark night, aglow with the life force of Anne Waldman. If you want to sneak up on the secret trajectory of U.S. culture, if you want to know the true, deep possibilities for art in our times – this is your poet.” –Eleni Sikelianos, poet<br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO <span class="il">BUY</span> TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Tuesday, April 01 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59227 <p><strong>WORLD PREMIERE! ALYSTYRE JULIAN & ANNE WALDMAN IN PERSON!</strong></p> <p><strong></strong>[We have added a second screening on April 1 at 7:15 pm in the Maya Deren on the ground floor level for accessibility. All other screenings in the upstairs Courthouse Theater.]<br /><br />Poet/filmmaker Alystyre Julian’s OUTRIDER is an experimental portrait of “fast speaking” poet/performer, Grammy-nominated librettist, artistic director, and cultural activist Anne Waldman. OUTRIDER is a portal to her path of imagination, her vow to poetry and activism, and her vortex of artists/collaborators: Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, Thurston Moore, Meredith Monk, Allen Ginsberg, Laurie Anderson, Douglas Dunn, Eileen Myles, Amiri Baraka, James Brandon Lewis, Cecilia Vicuña, Pat Steir, Ha-Yang Kim, Daniel Carter, Eleni Sikelianos, Bob Holman, Janice Lowe, No Land, Akilah Oliver, Lee Ann Brown, Brenda Coultas, and many others.<br /><br />OUTRIDER immerses in the poetry communities constellating around Waldman’s life and legacy in New York – “city of my poems” – from her “hearthome” in Greenwich Village and The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and outwards to Big Sur, Morocco, and Mexico.<br /><br />OUTRIDER is a story of transmutation through making art. Waldman asks, “What is it to be a contemporary poet in one’s time? A seer, conjurer? How to keep the world safe for poetry?” Waldman’s exploratory, restless consciousness informs her startling, panoramic work; she is a person woven of poetry, study, and visionary commitment to planetary and social challenges. As the film demonstrates, she has addressed war and patriarchy in The Iovis Trilogy, a cri de coeur for endangered species in Manatee Humanity, the urgency of Archives in Gossamurmur, entheogens in Jaguar Harmonics, Blake’s Thel in Voice’s Daughter of a Heart Yet Unborn, and her radical life in Bard, Kinetic. OUTRIDER tracks her investigative mind, always “on,” her improvisations with original music by Waldman’s son Ambrose Bye and nephew Devin “Brahja” Waldman, and her wake-up calls, from demonstrating at Rocky Flats (1978) to contemporary social, cultural, and environmental justice movements. <br /><br />OUTRIDER celebrates Waldman’s role as a visionary word-worker, her transcendent presence as poet/performer, and her vocal fortitude as she sings out, in the ancient, bardic tradition, the thunderous power of poetry.<br /><br />“OUTRIDER is a flash of lightning in the dark night, aglow with the life force of Anne Waldman. If you want to sneak up on the secret trajectory of U.S. culture, if you want to know the true, deep possibilities for art in our times – this is your poet.” –Eleni Sikelianos, poet<br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO <span class="il">BUY</span> TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Tuesday, April 01 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59188 <p>FILM NOS. 1-5, 7, 10 (EARLY ABSTRACTIONS) (ca. 1946-57, 23 min, 16mm-to-35mm. Restored by Anthology Film Archives and The Film Foundation with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.)<br /><br />FILM NO. 11 (MIRROR ANIMATIONS) (ca. 1957, 4 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.)<br /><br />FILM NO. 14 (LATE SUPERIMPOSITIONS) (1964, 28 min, 16mm-to-35mm. Restored by Anthology Film Archives and The Film Foundation with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.)<br /><br />“My cinematic excreta is of four varieties: – batiked animations made directly on film between 1939 and 1946; optically printed non-objective studies composed around 1950; semi-realistic animated collages made as part of my alchemical labors of 1957 to 1962; and chronologically super-imposed photographs of actualities formed since the latter year. All these works have been organized in specific patterns derived from the interlocking beats of the respiration, the heart and the EEG Alpha component and should be observed together in order, or not at all, for they are valuable works, works that will forever abide – they made me gray.” –Harry Smith<br /><br />Total running time: ca. 60 min.<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW!</strong></a></p> Wednesday, April 02 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59196 <p><strong>WORLD PREMIERE! ALYSTYRE JULIAN & ANNE WALDMAN IN PERSON!</strong></p> <p><strong></strong>[We have added a second screening on April 1 at 7:15 pm in the Maya Deren on the ground floor level for accessibility. All other screenings in the upstairs Courthouse Theater.]<br /><br />Poet/filmmaker Alystyre Julian’s OUTRIDER is an experimental portrait of “fast speaking” poet/performer, Grammy-nominated librettist, artistic director, and cultural activist Anne Waldman. OUTRIDER is a portal to her path of imagination, her vow to poetry and activism, and her vortex of artists/collaborators: Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, Thurston Moore, Meredith Monk, Allen Ginsberg, Laurie Anderson, Douglas Dunn, Eileen Myles, Amiri Baraka, James Brandon Lewis, Cecilia Vicuña, Pat Steir, Ha-Yang Kim, Daniel Carter, Eleni Sikelianos, Bob Holman, Janice Lowe, No Land, Akilah Oliver, Lee Ann Brown, Brenda Coultas, and many others.<br /><br />OUTRIDER immerses in the poetry communities constellating around Waldman’s life and legacy in New York – “city of my poems” – from her “hearthome” in Greenwich Village and The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and outwards to Big Sur, Morocco, and Mexico.<br /><br />OUTRIDER is a story of transmutation through making art. Waldman asks, “What is it to be a contemporary poet in one’s time? A seer, conjurer? How to keep the world safe for poetry?” Waldman’s exploratory, restless consciousness informs her startling, panoramic work; she is a person woven of poetry, study, and visionary commitment to planetary and social challenges. As the film demonstrates, she has addressed war and patriarchy in The Iovis Trilogy, a cri de coeur for endangered species in Manatee Humanity, the urgency of Archives in Gossamurmur, entheogens in Jaguar Harmonics, Blake’s Thel in Voice’s Daughter of a Heart Yet Unborn, and her radical life in Bard, Kinetic. OUTRIDER tracks her investigative mind, always “on,” her improvisations with original music by Waldman’s son Ambrose Bye and nephew Devin “Brahja” Waldman, and her wake-up calls, from demonstrating at Rocky Flats (1978) to contemporary social, cultural, and environmental justice movements. <br /><br />OUTRIDER celebrates Waldman’s role as a visionary word-worker, her transcendent presence as poet/performer, and her vocal fortitude as she sings out, in the ancient, bardic tradition, the thunderous power of poetry.<br /><br />“OUTRIDER is a flash of lightning in the dark night, aglow with the life force of Anne Waldman. If you want to sneak up on the secret trajectory of U.S. culture, if you want to know the true, deep possibilities for art in our times – this is your poet.” –Eleni Sikelianos, poet<br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO <span class="il">BUY</span> TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Wednesday, April 02 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59189 <p>Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation and Cineric, Inc.<br /><br />“NO. 12 can be seen as one moment – certainly the most elaborately crafted moment – of the single alchemical film which is Harry Smith’s life work. In its seriousness, its austerity, it is one of the strangest and most fascinating landmarks in the history of cinema. Its elaborately constructed soundtrack in which the sounds of various figures are systematically displaced onto other images reflects Smith’s abiding concern with auditory effects.” –P. Adams Sitney<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr"><strong>CLICK HERE TO BOOK TICKETS NOW!</strong></a> </p> Wednesday, April 02 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59197 <p><strong>WORLD PREMIERE! ALYSTYRE JULIAN & ANNE WALDMAN IN PERSON!</strong></p> <p><strong></strong>[We have added a second screening on April 1 at 7:15 pm in the Maya Deren on the ground floor level for accessibility. All other screenings in the upstairs Courthouse Theater.]<br /><br />Poet/filmmaker Alystyre Julian’s OUTRIDER is an experimental portrait of “fast speaking” poet/performer, Grammy-nominated librettist, artistic director, and cultural activist Anne Waldman. OUTRIDER is a portal to her path of imagination, her vow to poetry and activism, and her vortex of artists/collaborators: Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, Thurston Moore, Meredith Monk, Allen Ginsberg, Laurie Anderson, Douglas Dunn, Eileen Myles, Amiri Baraka, James Brandon Lewis, Cecilia Vicuña, Pat Steir, Ha-Yang Kim, Daniel Carter, Eleni Sikelianos, Bob Holman, Janice Lowe, No Land, Akilah Oliver, Lee Ann Brown, Brenda Coultas, and many others.<br /><br />OUTRIDER immerses in the poetry communities constellating around Waldman’s life and legacy in New York – “city of my poems” – from her “hearthome” in Greenwich Village and The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and outwards to Big Sur, Morocco, and Mexico.<br /><br />OUTRIDER is a story of transmutation through making art. Waldman asks, “What is it to be a contemporary poet in one’s time? A seer, conjurer? How to keep the world safe for poetry?” Waldman’s exploratory, restless consciousness informs her startling, panoramic work; she is a person woven of poetry, study, and visionary commitment to planetary and social challenges. As the film demonstrates, she has addressed war and patriarchy in The Iovis Trilogy, a cri de coeur for endangered species in Manatee Humanity, the urgency of Archives in Gossamurmur, entheogens in Jaguar Harmonics, Blake’s Thel in Voice’s Daughter of a Heart Yet Unborn, and her radical life in Bard, Kinetic. OUTRIDER tracks her investigative mind, always “on,” her improvisations with original music by Waldman’s son Ambrose Bye and nephew Devin “Brahja” Waldman, and her wake-up calls, from demonstrating at Rocky Flats (1978) to contemporary social, cultural, and environmental justice movements. <br /><br />OUTRIDER celebrates Waldman’s role as a visionary word-worker, her transcendent presence as poet/performer, and her vocal fortitude as she sings out, in the ancient, bardic tradition, the thunderous power of poetry.<br /><br />“OUTRIDER is a flash of lightning in the dark night, aglow with the life force of Anne Waldman. If you want to sneak up on the secret trajectory of U.S. culture, if you want to know the true, deep possibilities for art in our times – this is your poet.” –Eleni Sikelianos, poet<br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO <span class="il">BUY</span> TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Thursday, April 03 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59117 <p>U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FILMMAKER IN PERSON!<br />Distributed by The Film Desk.<br /><br />The feature film debut by Austrian film scholar, historian, and curator Alexander Horwath – the former Director of the Viennale and the Austrian Film Museum – HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT represents, as its title suggests, a filmic portrait of the actor Henry Fonda, but it is anything but a conventional Hollywood portrait. While it is structured chronologically according to the progression of Fonda’s life and career, the film transcends individual portraiture by using Fonda as a prism through which it explores and meditates upon the changing (and intimately intertwined) politics, society, and culture of the United States in Fonda’s time. Equally adept at cultural criticism, historical accounting, and political analysis, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT also incorporates elements of found-footage filmmaking and landscape cinema, as it combines a wide array of revelatory archival material (including film and television clips, Fonda’s final 1981 interview, news reports, and more) with Horwath’s own footage of sites throughout the U.S. Extending the tradition of seminal reflections on America by commentators from abroad, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT achieves the near-impossible, articulating a genuinely new and profoundly insightful take on 1900s-80s American culture, and on the legacy of this era both on the wider world and on the present day.<br /><br />“An actor and a country, Henry Fonda and the United States, as seen through the prism of cinema by a passionate observer from another place and time. In this personal and expansive essay film, Alexander Horwath shows that a politique des acteurs can yield much more than mere star worship. HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT may be his directorial debut but he is no novice when it comes to cinema. With the sensitivity and intelligence for which his work as a curator and writer is renowned, Horwath roams across an imagined realm he calls ‘The United States of Fonda,’ finding within it dreams and devastations that begin with the era of European settlement and continue to echo into the present. […] Through it all, he also makes an argument about the power of classical Hollywood cinema – as a mass art of personality, a distorted window through which one encounters the world and an ideological tangle considerably more complex than some today would allow.” –Erika Balsom, VIENNALE<br /><br />“A movie star who emerged in the mid-1930s, Fonda starred as Abe Lincoln, Tom Joad, Wyatt Earp, and the honest naval officer Mister Roberts. He played a ‘forgotten man’ in the original ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ film, YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE (1937). He was the protagonist of THE WRONG MAN (1956) and THE BEST MAN (1964), and of 12 ANGRY MEN (1957), which he also produced. He fought for democracy in the Spanish Civil War on-screen and in World War II in actuality. He personified New Deal democracy, Cold War liberalism, and – thanks to his rebellious children – the 1960s generation gap. Was he also, as more than one person puts it in Alexander Horwath’s erudite, entertaining three-hour meta-biopic, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT, the ‘quintessential American’? Embraced by cinephiles at festivals from Berlin to Buenos Aires and beyond, HFFP more than makes the case for Fonda’s centrality in the American imaginary – what Norman Mailer called the nation’s dream life. […] A masterpiece of applied cinephilia, HFFP is a melancholy reminder that the mass Hollywood-driven illusions that produced Fonda and Reagan et al. are no more. The spell has been broken. Not that we’re awake: We live the Total Cinema Bardo created by talk radio, cable news, reality TV, iPhones, and social media.” –J. Hoberman, ARTFORUM<br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO <span class="il">BUY</span> TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Thursday, April 03 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59118 <p>U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FILMMAKER IN PERSON!<br />Distributed by The Film Desk.<br /><br />The feature film debut by Austrian film scholar, historian, and curator Alexander Horwath – the former Director of the Viennale and the Austrian Film Museum – HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT represents, as its title suggests, a filmic portrait of the actor Henry Fonda, but it is anything but a conventional Hollywood portrait. While it is structured chronologically according to the progression of Fonda’s life and career, the film transcends individual portraiture by using Fonda as a prism through which it explores and meditates upon the changing (and intimately intertwined) politics, society, and culture of the United States in Fonda’s time. Equally adept at cultural criticism, historical accounting, and political analysis, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT also incorporates elements of found-footage filmmaking and landscape cinema, as it combines a wide array of revelatory archival material (including film and television clips, Fonda’s final 1981 interview, news reports, and more) with Horwath’s own footage of sites throughout the U.S. Extending the tradition of seminal reflections on America by commentators from abroad, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT achieves the near-impossible, articulating a genuinely new and profoundly insightful take on 1900s-80s American culture, and on the legacy of this era both on the wider world and on the present day.<br /><br />“An actor and a country, Henry Fonda and the United States, as seen through the prism of cinema by a passionate observer from another place and time. In this personal and expansive essay film, Alexander Horwath shows that a politique des acteurs can yield much more than mere star worship. HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT may be his directorial debut but he is no novice when it comes to cinema. With the sensitivity and intelligence for which his work as a curator and writer is renowned, Horwath roams across an imagined realm he calls ‘The United States of Fonda,’ finding within it dreams and devastations that begin with the era of European settlement and continue to echo into the present. […] Through it all, he also makes an argument about the power of classical Hollywood cinema – as a mass art of personality, a distorted window through which one encounters the world and an ideological tangle considerably more complex than some today would allow.” –Erika Balsom, VIENNALE<br /><br />“A movie star who emerged in the mid-1930s, Fonda starred as Abe Lincoln, Tom Joad, Wyatt Earp, and the honest naval officer Mister Roberts. He played a ‘forgotten man’ in the original ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ film, YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE (1937). He was the protagonist of THE WRONG MAN (1956) and THE BEST MAN (1964), and of 12 ANGRY MEN (1957), which he also produced. He fought for democracy in the Spanish Civil War on-screen and in World War II in actuality. He personified New Deal democracy, Cold War liberalism, and – thanks to his rebellious children – the 1960s generation gap. Was he also, as more than one person puts it in Alexander Horwath’s erudite, entertaining three-hour meta-biopic, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT, the ‘quintessential American’? Embraced by cinephiles at festivals from Berlin to Buenos Aires and beyond, HFFP more than makes the case for Fonda’s centrality in the American imaginary – what Norman Mailer called the nation’s dream life. […] A masterpiece of applied cinephilia, HFFP is a melancholy reminder that the mass Hollywood-driven illusions that produced Fonda and Reagan et al. are no more. The spell has been broken. Not that we’re awake: We live the Total Cinema Bardo created by talk radio, cable news, reality TV, iPhones, and social media.” –J. Hoberman, ARTFORUM<br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO <span class="il">BUY</span> TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Friday, April 04 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59158 <p>An aspiring New York-based actress struggling with the misogynoir in the industry turns to phone sex in hopes of financing her move to Hollywood to make it big. Though Judy enters with the intention of raising the money and leaving, the fantasy roles that she creates for her clients become portals for her to unearth her desires and exercise her storytelling abilities. Through phone sex, Judy becomes her own director. With an incredibly ridiculous appearance by Madonna and a soundtrack composed of Prince’s B-sides, GIRL 6 is Spike Lee’s most elusive film. This is partly because it was the first of Lee’s films that he did not pen himself. The scriptwriter, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, drew inspiration for the film from her own brief experience as a phone sex operator. Though the film toes the line with the presumed morality of sex work, the agency and ambition of its lead character (Lee described it as an intentional “star role” for Theresa Randle) allows it to rise above its shortcomings. One of Lee’s most formally and narratively ambitious films, GIRL 6 demands a reappraisal from critics who lambasted it at the time for its ambiguous take on sex work.<br /><br />Preceded by:<br />Ayanna Dozier NIGHTWALKER 2022, 7 min, 16mm<br />NIGHTWALKER, an experimental short, examines how the surveillance eye overlaps with the gaze of a potential predator. The film is ambivalent as to whether the character is a sex worker, and is more interested in the act of surveillance “sight-based” discourse that names individuals through visual signifiers presented on the body of a woman of color.<br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO <span class="il">BUY</span> TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Friday, April 04 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59119 <p>U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FILMMAKER IN PERSON!<br />Distributed by The Film Desk.<br /><br />The feature film debut by Austrian film scholar, historian, and curator Alexander Horwath – the former Director of the Viennale and the Austrian Film Museum – HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT represents, as its title suggests, a filmic portrait of the actor Henry Fonda, but it is anything but a conventional Hollywood portrait. While it is structured chronologically according to the progression of Fonda’s life and career, the film transcends individual portraiture by using Fonda as a prism through which it explores and meditates upon the changing (and intimately intertwined) politics, society, and culture of the United States in Fonda’s time. Equally adept at cultural criticism, historical accounting, and political analysis, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT also incorporates elements of found-footage filmmaking and landscape cinema, as it combines a wide array of revelatory archival material (including film and television clips, Fonda’s final 1981 interview, news reports, and more) with Horwath’s own footage of sites throughout the U.S. Extending the tradition of seminal reflections on America by commentators from abroad, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT achieves the near-impossible, articulating a genuinely new and profoundly insightful take on 1900s-80s American culture, and on the legacy of this era both on the wider world and on the present day.<br /><br />“An actor and a country, Henry Fonda and the United States, as seen through the prism of cinema by a passionate observer from another place and time. In this personal and expansive essay film, Alexander Horwath shows that a politique des acteurs can yield much more than mere star worship. HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT may be his directorial debut but he is no novice when it comes to cinema. With the sensitivity and intelligence for which his work as a curator and writer is renowned, Horwath roams across an imagined realm he calls ‘The United States of Fonda,’ finding within it dreams and devastations that begin with the era of European settlement and continue to echo into the present. […] Through it all, he also makes an argument about the power of classical Hollywood cinema – as a mass art of personality, a distorted window through which one encounters the world and an ideological tangle considerably more complex than some today would allow.” –Erika Balsom, VIENNALE<br /><br />“A movie star who emerged in the mid-1930s, Fonda starred as Abe Lincoln, Tom Joad, Wyatt Earp, and the honest naval officer Mister Roberts. He played a ‘forgotten man’ in the original ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ film, YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE (1937). He was the protagonist of THE WRONG MAN (1956) and THE BEST MAN (1964), and of 12 ANGRY MEN (1957), which he also produced. He fought for democracy in the Spanish Civil War on-screen and in World War II in actuality. He personified New Deal democracy, Cold War liberalism, and – thanks to his rebellious children – the 1960s generation gap. Was he also, as more than one person puts it in Alexander Horwath’s erudite, entertaining three-hour meta-biopic, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT, the ‘quintessential American’? Embraced by cinephiles at festivals from Berlin to Buenos Aires and beyond, HFFP more than makes the case for Fonda’s centrality in the American imaginary – what Norman Mailer called the nation’s dream life. […] A masterpiece of applied cinephilia, HFFP is a melancholy reminder that the mass Hollywood-driven illusions that produced Fonda and Reagan et al. are no more. The spell has been broken. Not that we’re awake: We live the Total Cinema Bardo created by talk radio, cable news, reality TV, iPhones, and social media.” –J. Hoberman, ARTFORUM<br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO <span class="il">BUY</span> TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Saturday, April 05 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59162 <p>In what may be the best depiction of harming, berating, and “fucking with” men ever to be depicted onscreen, A NEW LOVE IN TOKYO subverts the audience’s expectations by centering the protagonist’s commitment to her local theater troupe amidst her chaotic night job as a dominatrix. Featuring photography and photo direction by acclaimed kink and taboo visual artist Nobuyoshi Araki (who also receives a story credit), A NEW LOVE IN TOKYO, like WORKING GIRLS, outlines the day-to-day procedural dynamics of the industry, an approach that amplifies both the drama and the humor of these scenarios. Though laced with plenty of sex, the film is anchored by the blossoming friendship between two working girls (an escort and dominatrix), which unfolds over karaoke, theater, drinks, and joyrides.<br /><br />Preceded by:<br />Lena Chen CHINESE TOUCH (2023, 3 min, digital)<br />CHINESE TOUCH renders the classic “money shot” image disturbing by taking images of Asian porn actresses’ faces before a “facial” and intersplicing them with footage of the cooking entrepreneur Joyce Chen – seen here as a model of Asian feminine respectability – all set to an audio loop of “Me So Horny”.<br /><br />Total running time: ca. 125 min.<br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO <span class="il">BUY</span> TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Saturday, April 05 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59166 <p>This short film program is organized around the excess narratives, forms, and genres around sex work in film. The program opens with Beth and Scott B’s bold hybrid narrative essay film, G-MAN, which depicts the power dynamics between political activists, the police, and the head of the NYC bomb squad and his dominatrix. Lucas Kane and David Gonzalez’s documentary CACHERO//TAXIBOY examines male sex workers in Quito, Ecuador, and their fight for decriminalization. The experimental essay film NIGHTWALKER uses the ambiguity of the body of a woman of color alone at night to play with the visual signifiers of “clocking” a whore that is informed by police law. Tourmaline’s SALACIA collapses time, aesthetics, and space to merge the histories of trans sex workers in NYC, including Mary Jones and Sylvia Rivera. Ariane Labed’s debut narrative short, OLLA, chronicles an Eastern European “mail-order” bride’s experience against the backdrop of a Greek chorus. Closing out the program is WHORE WRITERS by Tall Milk, who uses her luscious, pink-themed home studio as a stage for writers to narrate to the camera their relationship with their body and sex.<br /><br />Beth & Scott B G-MAN 1978, 28 min, Super-8mm-to-DCP<br />Lucas Kane CACHERO//TAXIBOY 2018, 11 min, DCP<br />Ayanna Dozier NIGHTWALKER 2022, 7 min, 16mm-to-DCP<br />Tourmaline SALACIA 2019, 6 min, 16mm-to-DCP<br />Ariane Labed OLLA 2019, 28 min, 16mm-to-DCP<br />Tall Milk WHORE WRITERS 2024, 5 min, DCP<br /><br />Total running time: ca. 90 min.<br /><br /><em><strong>The screening will be followed by a discussion between series programmer Ayanna Dozier and visual artist Natasha Gornik.</strong></em><br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO <span class="il">BUY</span> TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Saturday, April 05 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59120 <p>U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FILMMAKER IN PERSON!<br />Distributed by The Film Desk.<br /><br />The feature film debut by Austrian film scholar, historian, and curator Alexander Horwath – the former Director of the Viennale and the Austrian Film Museum – HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT represents, as its title suggests, a filmic portrait of the actor Henry Fonda, but it is anything but a conventional Hollywood portrait. While it is structured chronologically according to the progression of Fonda’s life and career, the film transcends individual portraiture by using Fonda as a prism through which it explores and meditates upon the changing (and intimately intertwined) politics, society, and culture of the United States in Fonda’s time. Equally adept at cultural criticism, historical accounting, and political analysis, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT also incorporates elements of found-footage filmmaking and landscape cinema, as it combines a wide array of revelatory archival material (including film and television clips, Fonda’s final 1981 interview, news reports, and more) with Horwath’s own footage of sites throughout the U.S. Extending the tradition of seminal reflections on America by commentators from abroad, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT achieves the near-impossible, articulating a genuinely new and profoundly insightful take on 1900s-80s American culture, and on the legacy of this era both on the wider world and on the present day.<br /><br />“An actor and a country, Henry Fonda and the United States, as seen through the prism of cinema by a passionate observer from another place and time. In this personal and expansive essay film, Alexander Horwath shows that a politique des acteurs can yield much more than mere star worship. HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT may be his directorial debut but he is no novice when it comes to cinema. With the sensitivity and intelligence for which his work as a curator and writer is renowned, Horwath roams across an imagined realm he calls ‘The United States of Fonda,’ finding within it dreams and devastations that begin with the era of European settlement and continue to echo into the present. […] Through it all, he also makes an argument about the power of classical Hollywood cinema – as a mass art of personality, a distorted window through which one encounters the world and an ideological tangle considerably more complex than some today would allow.” –Erika Balsom, VIENNALE<br /><br />“A movie star who emerged in the mid-1930s, Fonda starred as Abe Lincoln, Tom Joad, Wyatt Earp, and the honest naval officer Mister Roberts. He played a ‘forgotten man’ in the original ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ film, YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE (1937). He was the protagonist of THE WRONG MAN (1956) and THE BEST MAN (1964), and of 12 ANGRY MEN (1957), which he also produced. He fought for democracy in the Spanish Civil War on-screen and in World War II in actuality. He personified New Deal democracy, Cold War liberalism, and – thanks to his rebellious children – the 1960s generation gap. Was he also, as more than one person puts it in Alexander Horwath’s erudite, entertaining three-hour meta-biopic, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT, the ‘quintessential American’? Embraced by cinephiles at festivals from Berlin to Buenos Aires and beyond, HFFP more than makes the case for Fonda’s centrality in the American imaginary – what Norman Mailer called the nation’s dream life. […] A masterpiece of applied cinephilia, HFFP is a melancholy reminder that the mass Hollywood-driven illusions that produced Fonda and Reagan et al. are no more. The spell has been broken. Not that we’re awake: We live the Total Cinema Bardo created by talk radio, cable news, reality TV, iPhones, and social media.” –J. Hoberman, ARTFORUM<br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO <span class="il">BUY</span> TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Saturday, April 05 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59191 <p>Often wrongly described as a documentary on the lives of working girls in an escort house, WORKING GIRLS is a narrative film that has set the standard for fictional movies on sex work. One of the first films to center the workers’ experience with clients, each other, themselves, their partners, and their head madams, WORKING GIRLS is superlative for how much it gets right about the labor politics of sex work. This is largely because the characters in the film are a dramatization of director Lizzie Borden and her film crew’s experiences in the industry. The film outlines the procedural elements of sexual labor in a parlor, including day-to-day tasks like answering the front door, making bodega runs, washing up in between clients, overtime, training new hires, dressing up, breakups, gossip, unfair managing madams who swear they are better than pimps but act no different, threatening to quit, and the cyclical nature of doing it all over again. If there were room for only one narrative film about the industry, WORKING GIRLS would have to be it.<br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO <span class="il">BUY</span> TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Saturday, April 05 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59121 <p>U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FILMMAKER IN PERSON!<br />Distributed by The Film Desk.<br /><br />The feature film debut by Austrian film scholar, historian, and curator Alexander Horwath – the former Director of the Viennale and the Austrian Film Museum – HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT represents, as its title suggests, a filmic portrait of the actor Henry Fonda, but it is anything but a conventional Hollywood portrait. While it is structured chronologically according to the progression of Fonda’s life and career, the film transcends individual portraiture by using Fonda as a prism through which it explores and meditates upon the changing (and intimately intertwined) politics, society, and culture of the United States in Fonda’s time. Equally adept at cultural criticism, historical accounting, and political analysis, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT also incorporates elements of found-footage filmmaking and landscape cinema, as it combines a wide array of revelatory archival material (including film and television clips, Fonda’s final 1981 interview, news reports, and more) with Horwath’s own footage of sites throughout the U.S. Extending the tradition of seminal reflections on America by commentators from abroad, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT achieves the near-impossible, articulating a genuinely new and profoundly insightful take on 1900s-80s American culture, and on the legacy of this era both on the wider world and on the present day.<br /><br />“An actor and a country, Henry Fonda and the United States, as seen through the prism of cinema by a passionate observer from another place and time. In this personal and expansive essay film, Alexander Horwath shows that a politique des acteurs can yield much more than mere star worship. HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT may be his directorial debut but he is no novice when it comes to cinema. With the sensitivity and intelligence for which his work as a curator and writer is renowned, Horwath roams across an imagined realm he calls ‘The United States of Fonda,’ finding within it dreams and devastations that begin with the era of European settlement and continue to echo into the present. […] Through it all, he also makes an argument about the power of classical Hollywood cinema – as a mass art of personality, a distorted window through which one encounters the world and an ideological tangle considerably more complex than some today would allow.” –Erika Balsom, VIENNALE<br /><br />“A movie star who emerged in the mid-1930s, Fonda starred as Abe Lincoln, Tom Joad, Wyatt Earp, and the honest naval officer Mister Roberts. He played a ‘forgotten man’ in the original ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ film, YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE (1937). He was the protagonist of THE WRONG MAN (1956) and THE BEST MAN (1964), and of 12 ANGRY MEN (1957), which he also produced. He fought for democracy in the Spanish Civil War on-screen and in World War II in actuality. He personified New Deal democracy, Cold War liberalism, and – thanks to his rebellious children – the 1960s generation gap. Was he also, as more than one person puts it in Alexander Horwath’s erudite, entertaining three-hour meta-biopic, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT, the ‘quintessential American’? Embraced by cinephiles at festivals from Berlin to Buenos Aires and beyond, HFFP more than makes the case for Fonda’s centrality in the American imaginary – what Norman Mailer called the nation’s dream life. […] A masterpiece of applied cinephilia, HFFP is a melancholy reminder that the mass Hollywood-driven illusions that produced Fonda and Reagan et al. are no more. The spell has been broken. Not that we’re awake: We live the Total Cinema Bardo created by talk radio, cable news, reality TV, iPhones, and social media.” –J. Hoberman, ARTFORUM<br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO <span class="il">BUY</span> TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Sunday, April 06 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59168 <p>Cleo Uebelmann<br />MANO DESTRA<br />1986, 56 min, 16mm-to-DCP<br />In one of her short stories, Clarice Lispector contends that the only thing more painful than death is waiting. MANO DESTRA filmically takes that sentiment to task, through an experimental sadomasochism film that blurs the line between still photography and the moving image. The director Cleo Übelmann stars as a dominatrix who arranges and ties up a variety of femme subs to her liking, often leaving them in contorted positions or cabinets for extended periods of time. MANO DESTRA was briefly resurrected in 2014 by director Peter Strickland who cited it as one of the inspirations behind his film THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY, but it has since largely disappeared back into the archives. It’s a daring film for its same-gender dynamic that also centers women – too often films on BDSM examine queer men’s relationship to the field or use it to unpack the power imbalances between heterosexual couples. In this film’s reality, BDSM can be felt for its effect on the body in time, rather than its perceived socio-cultural baggage.<br /><br />Alison Murray<br />KISSY SUZUKI SUCK<br />1992, 18.5 min, video<br />KISSY SUZUKI SUCK is a madhouse of an experimental short that follows two street-based sex workers as they wait in their car for a trick. Allison Murray’s short was decried by critics upon its release as terroristic and pornographic. In a 1992 interview with Sight & Sound magazine, Murray declared of the uproar, “If men are saying I’m a fag, get used to it…women are asserting I’m a macho, slut, so what?” KISSY SUZUKI SUCK crosses and dismisses the psychoanalytic model of reading cinema through gender division by troubling not just the straights and women but everyone in the damn theater. An ambitious post-punk film KISSY SUZUKI SUCK features heavy dancing, an incredible house song (Coco Steel & Lovebomb’s “Feel It”), spit, women making out with each other, and voiceovers from other working girls on class politics. All these elements ultimately collide with each other, leaving the film to dissolve upon itself via its own excess. It’s perfect.<br /><br />Total running time: ca. 80 min.<br /><br /><em><strong>The screening will be followed by a discussion between series programmer Ayanna Dozier and cultural anthropologist, artist, and community educator Kassandra Sparks.</strong></em><br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO <span class="il">BUY</span> TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Sunday, April 06 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59122 <p>U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FILMMAKER IN PERSON!<br />Distributed by The Film Desk.<br /><br />The feature film debut by Austrian film scholar, historian, and curator Alexander Horwath – the former Director of the Viennale and the Austrian Film Museum – HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT represents, as its title suggests, a filmic portrait of the actor Henry Fonda, but it is anything but a conventional Hollywood portrait. While it is structured chronologically according to the progression of Fonda’s life and career, the film transcends individual portraiture by using Fonda as a prism through which it explores and meditates upon the changing (and intimately intertwined) politics, society, and culture of the United States in Fonda’s time. Equally adept at cultural criticism, historical accounting, and political analysis, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT also incorporates elements of found-footage filmmaking and landscape cinema, as it combines a wide array of revelatory archival material (including film and television clips, Fonda’s final 1981 interview, news reports, and more) with Horwath’s own footage of sites throughout the U.S. Extending the tradition of seminal reflections on America by commentators from abroad, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT achieves the near-impossible, articulating a genuinely new and profoundly insightful take on 1900s-80s American culture, and on the legacy of this era both on the wider world and on the present day.<br /><br />“An actor and a country, Henry Fonda and the United States, as seen through the prism of cinema by a passionate observer from another place and time. In this personal and expansive essay film, Alexander Horwath shows that a politique des acteurs can yield much more than mere star worship. HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT may be his directorial debut but he is no novice when it comes to cinema. With the sensitivity and intelligence for which his work as a curator and writer is renowned, Horwath roams across an imagined realm he calls ‘The United States of Fonda,’ finding within it dreams and devastations that begin with the era of European settlement and continue to echo into the present. […] Through it all, he also makes an argument about the power of classical Hollywood cinema – as a mass art of personality, a distorted window through which one encounters the world and an ideological tangle considerably more complex than some today would allow.” –Erika Balsom, VIENNALE<br /><br />“A movie star who emerged in the mid-1930s, Fonda starred as Abe Lincoln, Tom Joad, Wyatt Earp, and the honest naval officer Mister Roberts. He played a ‘forgotten man’ in the original ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ film, YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE (1937). He was the protagonist of THE WRONG MAN (1956) and THE BEST MAN (1964), and of 12 ANGRY MEN (1957), which he also produced. He fought for democracy in the Spanish Civil War on-screen and in World War II in actuality. He personified New Deal democracy, Cold War liberalism, and – thanks to his rebellious children – the 1960s generation gap. Was he also, as more than one person puts it in Alexander Horwath’s erudite, entertaining three-hour meta-biopic, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT, the ‘quintessential American’? Embraced by cinephiles at festivals from Berlin to Buenos Aires and beyond, HFFP more than makes the case for Fonda’s centrality in the American imaginary – what Norman Mailer called the nation’s dream life. […] A masterpiece of applied cinephilia, HFFP is a melancholy reminder that the mass Hollywood-driven illusions that produced Fonda and Reagan et al. are no more. The spell has been broken. Not that we’re awake: We live the Total Cinema Bardo created by talk radio, cable news, reality TV, iPhones, and social media.” –J. Hoberman, ARTFORUM<br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO <span class="il">BUY</span> TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Sunday, April 06 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59170 <p>HOUSE OF TOLERANCE is a terrifyingly beautiful ode to the red-light district of Paris during the Belle Époque era. Rather than navigating the 21st-century socio-cultural and economic realities of sex workers, Bonello turns his gaze back in time to find the ambition, struggles, and desires of women who are both the center of society and yet distinctively cut off from it. Though the production and costume design are impeccably lush, Bonello does not glamorize nor chastise the industry. Instead, he examines the communal kinship and struggles of these working women amidst a socio-cultural landscape that limits their artistic input and renders it almost impossible to evade marriage or manual wage labor to make a living. HOUSE OF TOLERANCE is unique in the film archive of sex work thanks to Bonello’s disinterest in the clients themselves. In this suspended reality he positions the workers above the clients – it’s their lives, dreams, fears, and pleasures we experience.<br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO <span class="il">BUY</span> TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Sunday, April 06 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59159 <p>An aspiring New York-based actress struggling with the misogynoir in the industry turns to phone sex in hopes of financing her move to Hollywood to make it big. Though Judy enters with the intention of raising the money and leaving, the fantasy roles that she creates for her clients become portals for her to unearth her desires and exercise her storytelling abilities. Through phone sex, Judy becomes her own director. With an incredibly ridiculous appearance by Madonna and a soundtrack composed of Prince’s B-sides, GIRL 6 is Spike Lee’s most elusive film. This is partly because it was the first of Lee’s films that he did not pen himself. The scriptwriter, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, drew inspiration for the film from her own brief experience as a phone sex operator. Though the film toes the line with the presumed morality of sex work, the agency and ambition of its lead character (Lee described it as an intentional “star role” for Theresa Randle) allows it to rise above its shortcomings. One of Lee’s most formally and narratively ambitious films, GIRL 6 demands a reappraisal from critics who lambasted it at the time for its ambiguous take on sex work.<br /><br />Preceded by:<br />Ayanna Dozier NIGHTWALKER 2022, 7 min, 16mm<br />NIGHTWALKER, an experimental short, examines how the surveillance eye overlaps with the gaze of a potential predator. The film is ambivalent as to whether the character is a sex worker, and is more interested in the act of surveillance “sight-based” discourse that names individuals through visual signifiers presented on the body of a woman of color.<br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO <span class="il">BUY</span> TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Monday, April 07 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59123 <p>U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FILMMAKER IN PERSON!<br />Distributed by The Film Desk.<br /><br />The feature film debut by Austrian film scholar, historian, and curator Alexander Horwath – the former Director of the Viennale and the Austrian Film Museum – HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT represents, as its title suggests, a filmic portrait of the actor Henry Fonda, but it is anything but a conventional Hollywood portrait. While it is structured chronologically according to the progression of Fonda’s life and career, the film transcends individual portraiture by using Fonda as a prism through which it explores and meditates upon the changing (and intimately intertwined) politics, society, and culture of the United States in Fonda’s time. Equally adept at cultural criticism, historical accounting, and political analysis, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT also incorporates elements of found-footage filmmaking and landscape cinema, as it combines a wide array of revelatory archival material (including film and television clips, Fonda’s final 1981 interview, news reports, and more) with Horwath’s own footage of sites throughout the U.S. Extending the tradition of seminal reflections on America by commentators from abroad, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT achieves the near-impossible, articulating a genuinely new and profoundly insightful take on 1900s-80s American culture, and on the legacy of this era both on the wider world and on the present day.<br /><br />“An actor and a country, Henry Fonda and the United States, as seen through the prism of cinema by a passionate observer from another place and time. In this personal and expansive essay film, Alexander Horwath shows that a politique des acteurs can yield much more than mere star worship. HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT may be his directorial debut but he is no novice when it comes to cinema. With the sensitivity and intelligence for which his work as a curator and writer is renowned, Horwath roams across an imagined realm he calls ‘The United States of Fonda,’ finding within it dreams and devastations that begin with the era of European settlement and continue to echo into the present. […] Through it all, he also makes an argument about the power of classical Hollywood cinema – as a mass art of personality, a distorted window through which one encounters the world and an ideological tangle considerably more complex than some today would allow.” –Erika Balsom, VIENNALE<br /><br />“A movie star who emerged in the mid-1930s, Fonda starred as Abe Lincoln, Tom Joad, Wyatt Earp, and the honest naval officer Mister Roberts. He played a ‘forgotten man’ in the original ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ film, YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE (1937). He was the protagonist of THE WRONG MAN (1956) and THE BEST MAN (1964), and of 12 ANGRY MEN (1957), which he also produced. He fought for democracy in the Spanish Civil War on-screen and in World War II in actuality. He personified New Deal democracy, Cold War liberalism, and – thanks to his rebellious children – the 1960s generation gap. Was he also, as more than one person puts it in Alexander Horwath’s erudite, entertaining three-hour meta-biopic, HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT, the ‘quintessential American’? Embraced by cinephiles at festivals from Berlin to Buenos Aires and beyond, HFFP more than makes the case for Fonda’s centrality in the American imaginary – what Norman Mailer called the nation’s dream life. […] A masterpiece of applied cinephilia, HFFP is a melancholy reminder that the mass Hollywood-driven illusions that produced Fonda and Reagan et al. are no more. The spell has been broken. Not that we’re awake: We live the Total Cinema Bardo created by talk radio, cable news, reality TV, iPhones, and social media.” –J. Hoberman, ARTFORUM<br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO <span class="il">BUY</span> TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Monday, April 07 https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=04&year=2025#showing-59163 <p>In what may be the best depiction of harming, berating, and “fucking with” men ever to be depicted onscreen, A NEW LOVE IN TOKYO subverts the audience’s expectations by centering the protagonist’s commitment to her local theater troupe amidst her chaotic night job as a dominatrix. Featuring photography and photo direction by acclaimed kink and taboo visual artist Nobuyoshi Araki (who also receives a story credit), A NEW LOVE IN TOKYO, like WORKING GIRLS, outlines the day-to-day procedural dynamics of the industry, an approach that amplifies both the drama and the humor of these scenarios. Though laced with plenty of sex, the film is anchored by the blossoming friendship between two working girls (an escort and dominatrix), which unfolds over karaoke, theater, drinks, and joyrides.<br /><br />Preceded by:<br />Lena Chen CHINESE TOUCH (2023, 3 min, digital)<br />CHINESE TOUCH renders the classic “money shot” image disturbing by taking images of Asian porn actresses’ faces before a “facial” and intersplicing them with footage of the cooking entrepreneur Joyce Chen – seen here as a model of Asian feminine respectability – all set to an audio loop of “Me So Horny”.<br /><br />Total running time: ca. 125 min.<br /><br /><strong><a href="https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=bsrxtagjxmgh2qy0b6p646xdcr" target="_blank"><span class="il">CLICK</span> <span class="il">HERE</span> TO <span class="il">BUY</span> TICKETS NOW!</a></strong></p> Monday, April 07