New Ideas CityHello Museum

The Urban Landscape in Cinematic Transformation

An avant-garde film series interweaves three threads pertinent to the East Village, Chinatown, and Lower East Side: the urban landscape, subcultures that inhabit it, and changes over time.

May 7, 7:00 p.m.
This program will include Ken Jacobs’ Jonas Mekas in Kodachrome (pictured) Days, using innovative digital techniques to transform Mekas into 3D motion; also screening are: Breathing Twice by Katy Martin, Memories of Soho by Oona Mekas, Darling International by MM Serra and Jenn Reeves, Coney Island by Peter Cramer, L.E.S. by Coleen Fitzgibbons, Georgic for a Forgotten Planet by Lynne Sachs and Alone, Apart: The Dream Reveals the Waking Day by Mark Street.

May 7, 9:00 p.m.
Filmgoers can view Rachel Amodeo’s What About Me, the story of a young homeless woman who is slowly deteriorating on the streets of the Lower East Side, including footage of the homeless shanty-town that existed in Tompkins Square Park from 1989 to 1990.

May 8, 2:00 p.m.
This program includes Shirley Clarke’s Bridges-Go-Round, a classic masterpiece of undulating man-made urban constructions; Henry Hills’ Money, a meditation on the economic problems facing New York avant-garde artists; and Donna Cameron’s Broken Bridge, a collage of deconstructed hand-drawn images of the iconic Brooklyn Bridge, using Cameron’s own patented invention, paper emulsion. Also screening: Moving Images – The Film-Makers’ Cooperative Relocates by Joel Schlemowitz, Go! Go! Go! by Marie Menken, Eastside Summer by Rudolph Burckhardt, and Susie’s Ghost by Bill Brand.

May 8, 5:00 p.m.
Phillip Hartman and Doris Kornish’s filmic love letter to the Lower East Side’s pre-gentrification days, No Picnic, features the diverse, off-beat, and often insane characters representing the various subcultures that once defined the neighborhood. Look for an early “performance” by Steve Buscemi as a dead pimp.