Cinema Nolita, one of the only independent videostores left in New York City, was supposed to close down at the beginning of this month, but they’ve managed to stay open and continue to rent movies. According to their Facebook page, after this New York Times blurb was published, the store’s landlord agreed to give the organization a couple of weeks to raise money to pay their back rent, and they’re throwing two fundraisers over the next few days to that end. Tomorrow night, Abel Ferrara will appear for a Q & A after a screening of Bad Lieutenant at Anthology Film Archives. This should be a must-attend event for those who have been gleefully following Ferrara’s rage towards Werner Herzog’s remake. Then, on Monday, The Virgins (who appeared in Ry Russo-Young’s You Wont Miss Me) will perform at a benefit show at Santos Party House, also featuring a DJ set by Animal Collective. There’s more info about both events and the general effort to save Cinema Nolita on their website.

UPDATE: At /Hammer to Nail, Lena Dunham talks to Cinema Nolita employee/The Pleasure of Being Robbed star Eleonore Hendricks about the benefits. Apparently, Ferrara will also be screening his still-undistributed Go Go Tales at Anthology on Sunday, with proceeds again going to the Cinema Nolita cause.

Zack Godshall’s Low and Behold, which has been somewhat missing in action since premiering at Sundance 2007, screens tonight at Anthology Film Archives in New York before coming to DVD via Carnivalesque in November. Starring eventual Alexander the Last dreamboat Barlow Jacobs, who also co-wrote and produced, it’s a drama/documentary hybrid feature set in just-post-Katrina New Orleans that doesn’t always hold up in terms of narrative, but is always interesting in the frission between fact and embellishment. As I wrote when I saw it at Sundance:

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Where Jesus Camp played the conflict between contemporary evangelical Christianity and the secular community for liberal-baiting horror, Michael Jacobs takes the route of real-life mockumentary with Audience of One, which debuted at SXSW in 2007 and concludes a long festival run with a run in Chicago last week and its New York premiere this weekend. It’s a lighter approach applied to a culture war battle with somewhat less urgency, but its own less-than-optimistic implications.

Jacobs finds an unwitting star in Richard Gazowsky, second-generation pastor of the Voice of Pentecost church in San Francisco, and the would-be director of Gravity: The Shadow of Joseph, an epic evangelical sci-flick to which he and his churchgoers have devoted their lives and sunk their savings. Gazowsky calls his “studio” WYSIWYG –– that is, “What you see is what you get”; though Richard explains that the name has something to do with battling the “cliques” of both Hollywood and other religious sects, this is one of many instances in which Gazowsky offers a ramble that seems to insufficiently explicate his case. Regardless, under the auspices of WYSIWYG, Gazowsy has assembled a crew that’s an uneasy blending of enthusiastic Craig’s List-sourced amateurs, devout family members/parishioners — none of whom have any experience with filmmaking — and non-believing professional technicians drawn in by the scope of Richard’s vision. Jacobs follows, patiently and without apparent intervention, as Gazowsky leads his clan from pre-production in San Francisco to a disastrous five-day shoot in Italy, then back home, where WYSIWYG sets up shop in a film studio on Treasure Island and ultimately refuse to leave, even after the city has shut off their power for non payment of rent. So basically, it’s just like any indie film production, except that any problem large or small is ameliorated with the faith that “God will save us all.”

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To win a pass to all five days worth of Migrating Forms screenings, see instructions at the bottom of the post, after the jump.

Around this time last year, I wrote a preview of the final installment of the New York Underground Film Festival, in which I quoted a memorial to the 15 year downtown institution published in the Village Voice by former festival organizer Ed Halter. Halter had painted a picture of an event that inspired protests and counterprotests, that hosted a raw meat fashion show, that was locally known as a peddler of “fucked-up shit” … and which eventually evolved into a showcase for the work of artsy-cool artists like Bill Brown, Miranda July and Deborah Stratman, who rarely had “fucked-up shit” on the agenda. Based on the portion of the program of the last NYUFF that I screened, I was disappointed that it seemed like the pendulum had swung too far away from the festival’s subversive roots. I wrote:

Times change, and whatever local transgressive spirit that might have fueled a downtown Manhattan arts event in the mid-90s has now been apparently fully squashed by the area’s total, generally dispiriting gentrification. I’ve seen several films on this year’s program, and I wouldn’t call any of them “fucked up”…And there’s a disappointing art school austerity to the fest’s closing night film, The Juche Idea, a textual coldness that belies the satire…

A year later, times have changed once again. Within a New York playing field leveled just a little by economic unrest, where underground screening series are popping up left and right to fill the gaps left by the demise of sometime institutions like the Pioneer Theater, the remains of the NYUFF have been refashioned into Migrating Forms, a 5 day festival beginning at Anthology Film Archives tomorrow night, devoted to showcasing “new experimental film and video.”

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Anthology Film Archives regretfully announces that it will not be able to open the new feature CHELSEA ON THE ROCKS for its premiere engagement, which had been scheduled to screen daily from March 20 to 26. Anthology has been informed that the distributor with whom it booked the film, Empire Film Group / Hannover House, has decided not to, or is unable to, follow through on its plans to represent the film. The producers have thus canceled the engagement despite the prior commitment for the NY Theatrical Premiere which was announced by Anthology. Citing contractual reasons, the producers have declined to honor this commitment.

An (all-too-rare) Reeler post informs us that Abel Ferrara’s Chelsea Hotel documentary Chelsea on the Rocks, which we covered at Cannes, has been pulled from its planned one week run at Anthology Film Archives later this month.

What could they mean by “contractual obligations”? A “misplaced” (or more likely, never obtained) release? Complaints from the people behind the hotel itself, which was in the middle of a management change while Ferrara was filming in 2007? Considering Chelsea’s relative lack of freshness, we’ll assume it’s not the same kind of contractual obligation that AFI Dallas’ John Wildman blogged about today, the kind that causes a film to drop out of one festival so it an play another … although it is interesting that the Ferrara news comes within 24 hours of Wildman going public about a film dropping out of his festival so it can play Tribeca. In any case, we’ll keep our ears open…

Watching Graphic Sexual Horror, Anna Lorentzon and Barbara Bell’s nonfiction look behind the rise and fall of heavy BDSM porn site Insex.com, the first thought that came to my mind was from my film critic’s perspective: “How’s this gonna play in Peoria?” And the second thought was inevitably from my submissive’s perspective: “Is this gonna give my lifestyle a bad name?”

There is no pat answer to either question, which is why I was so thrilled that co-director Lorentzon found time to let me pick her brain prior to the film’s East Coast premiere at this year’s CineKink Film Festival, on Friday, February 27th at 11:10 pm at Anthology Film Archives. (Full disclosure: Un Piede di Roman Polanski, an homage to Roman Polanski’s foot fetish by myself and Roxanne Kapitsa, will screen the following evening as part of the festival’s “Twisted Knickers” shorts program at 6:45 pm. Stop on by!)

But as I finally sat down to discuss the doc with director Lorentzon, who worked as a producer at Insex.com from 1999 until the site was strong-armed by Homeland Security into closing, I found I didn’t have any questions for her – merely some very strong reactions that I hoped she could shed some light on. So it actually took me by surprise to discover that the issues I was struggling with as an audience member were the same issues that prompted the filmmakers to make the film, and ones that they still struggle with to this day. Frustratingly, there are no answers to the ethical questions “torture porn” raises – only a Pandora’s Box of more questions. So I guess the best one can do is approximate that struggle in image and word.

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Herewith, our semi-regular round-up of notable film events coming up in New York City:

MONDAY

It’s time for another installment of Flaherty NYC at Anthology Film Archives. This time out they’re showing work by Lee Wang and Laura Waddington, with a conversation moderated by Ariella Ben-Dov. 7:30 PM, Anthology FIlm Archives.

Also: Rooftop Films is showing a program of Wholphin shorts at Chelsea Market. The program is free, and includes free beer. 7pm.

TUESDAY

Legendary documentarian Richard Leacock will be at a special Stranger Than Fiction, to “present and discuss film clips that accompany the autobiography that he’s been writing for several years.” 8pm, IFC Center.

WEDNESDAY

Kelly Reichardt and Michelle Williams will be on hand for a Q & A after the premiere of Wendy and Lucy at Film Forum. 8pm.

THURSDAY

Nothing seems to be happening on Thursday. If you know otherwise, correct us in the comments.

FRIDAY

Back to Anthology, for a new episode of Catching up with the Kuchars, their recurring showcase of new and old work from brothers George and Mike. 7:30 pm.

Also: the Che roadshow begins at the Zeigfeld. With pretty printed programs!

Hell hath no fury like Abel Ferrara underpaid for his intellectual property. In an lengthy interview with Nick Dawson for the FILMMAKER Blog (pegged to the long-awaited US first run of Ferrara’s 2005 film Mary, which starts at Anthology Film Archives on Friday), the filmmaker has more complaints about the Nicolas Cage-starring, Werner Herzog-directed remake of Bad Lieutenant. The big problem seems to be that rather than offer Ferrara and his crew a big (or, biggish), Ed Pressman and the producers of the remake simply paid Ferrara “twenty grand” and shut him out. My favorite quotes from the interview, taken out of context:

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A sampling of the many special film events happening around the city this week:

• Tonight Anthology Film Archives will host the premiere of Flaherty NYC, a new monthly series of works taken from the lineup of the Flaherty Film Seminar held earlier this summer. Tonight’s program focuses on a number of shorts by Oliver Husain, including Q, which is described as “a fantasy of globalization set in a multicultural consumer space that fulfills its shoppers’ and viewers’ every desire and need.” More info here.
• Jody Lambert’s Of All the Things, a documentary about his songwriter/performer father Dennis Lambert and his unlikely “comeback” concert in the Philippines, screens at Stranger Than Fiction at the IFC Center tomorrow night. Father and son will be at the screening for a Q & A; the following night, Dennis Lambert will perform a showcase at Joe’s Pub. More info at the Stranger Than Fiction Facebook page.
• The Hamptons Film Festival begins on Wednesday, and it’s opening and closing with two gems that I first saw in Toronto. The opening night film is Valentino: The Last Emperor, Matt Tynauer’sseverely underrated doc on the the designer, his long-time business partner/boyfriend, and The End of Couture As We Know It. The closing night film is Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, which I’ve now seen twice and still can’t quite figure out how to write about. I might try for round three this weekend. It’s depressing as hell, but I think it might be my favorite American film of the year. See the trailer above.

Yes, there’s a new Eric Rohmer movie, and yes, it’s premiering in New York tonight. How come you didn’t know about it? I don’t know, but I barely knew about it (or at least, about its scheduled premiere), so don’t feel too bad. The Romance of Astree and Celadon screened last year at the Toronto and New York Film Festivals, and then sat on the shelf for awhile until Koch Lorber picked it up; its one-week run at Anthology Film Archives is probably a run up to an impending release on DVD. But as all signs point to this being the 88 year-old French master’s final film, you’ll probably want to take your final chance to see a new Rohmer film on a big screen.

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Serge Bozon’s La France is a generic clusterfuck, but in the best way––a stunningly confident, category-defying, broken-down dream piece about loss and being lost. It’s a film about war in which soldiers are not only never seen actually fighting for their land, but in fact seem to have lost their way in vague and vain pursuit of a lost land to reclaim as their own. It’s a musical with just one song, performed by non-performers in a handful of mutations throughout the film. And it’s a love story, soaked in romantic delusion but ultimately fatalist in regards to the actual odds that love can overcome existential crisis. After a 14 month festival run (including stops at Cannes, New Directors/New Films and LAFF), it opens for a week in New York at Anthology Film Archives on Friday.

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Last week, I posted about Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness, Laurin Federlein’s highly-improvised, Hi8-sourced, sorta-doc/sorta-musical, which wraps up its one week run at the Anthology Film Archive here in New York tonight. That afternoon, I got a Facebook message from someone associated with the film, urging me *not* to go see it. I don’t know whether or not he was being facetious, but in any event, I didn’t listen. I went last night, saw it in an empty theater, and I think it was the most satisfying movie experience I’ve had in 2008 thus far.

This is the kind of balls-out, so independent it’s essentially handmade work of art that’s notable missing from festivals like Sundance. It’s an amazingly beautiful (the totally unstable, borderline psychedelic look of the blown-up video isn’t going to work for everyone, but it works for me like crazy) story about the extremes we go to in the name of combating loneliness. And, just as a hidden-camera comedy, it’s way funnier than Borat.

I don’t know if I can be rational about Build a Ship right now––it was that mind-blowing of an experience, and I may go see it again tonight and then write something more in-depth––but I wanted to post something this morning to encourage anyone who has the means to try to catch the film’s final screening at Anthology tonight. I can’t bear the thought that something like this is playing to a virtually empty house.

For screening information, go here.

A low budget musical, highly improvised, shot on consumer video and blown up to film? I’m there. I’ve been wanting to see Laurin Federlein’s Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness since reading write-ups of its premiere at Rotterdam a year ago, followed by a number of conflicted but non necessarily dismissive reviews from LAFF. I’m so excited that it’s finally coming to New York tomorrow. Here’s an excerpt of the synopsis from Anthology Film Archives’ calendar:

An absurdist musical travelogue, BUILD A SHIP follows young solitary Vincent as he rides on his moped through a deserted Scottish mountain region. His mission: to “heal the loneliness” of the few scattered inhabitants by introducing a mobile disco to the area. Driven by messianic determination and an addiction to petrol fumes, he struggles to keep his disintegrating vision afloat amidst the hostile landscape and stubborn indifference of the locals.
Conceived around the idiosyncratically witty and eloquent persona of lead-actor and collaborator Magnus Aronson, whose heartbreakingly poignant pop songs punctuate the low-key proceedings, BUILD A SHIP is based on many hours of conversations between Aronson’s Vincent and the real-life residents of the area and was filmed using two consumer Hi8 video camcorders, resulting in an intentionally low-fi, grungy look that corresponds to Vincent’s defiant struggle: to erect a vision of perfection, glamour, and aesthetic refinement within the imperfections and dullness of everyday reality.