LIMITED SERIES
IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR: A HISTORY OF LATE-NIGHT MOVIES APR 5–MAY 25, 2024
Donnie Darko in 4K Fri, May 10 | 7:30pm | DGT
In New York City, at the beginning of the 1970s, one man revolutionized the way underground cinema was brought to an audience. Credited with launching midnight screenings of wild and weird films, Ben Barenholtz (1935–2019) would program his transgressive cinematic discoveries at Chelsea’s Elgin Theater into the late hours of the night, sometimes for months-long runs and typically to packed houses. His first success was with Alejandro Jodorowsky’s acid Western El Topo , at the peak of what J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum called “the counterculture cash-in” of 1970 in their 1983 book, Midnight Movies . On the occasion of the Academy Museum’s exhibition John Waters: Pope of Trash , and in honor of Waters’s third feature Pink Flamingos ’s success at the Elgin Theater as a raucous late-night mainstay in 1972, this series presents an overview of cult favorites that first found their fans in the midnight hour. Programmed by K.J. Relth-Miller. Notes by Patrick Lowry and K.J. Relth-Miller.
Pink Flamingos presented by John Waters Sat, Apr 6 | 7:30pm | DGT After it premiered at a rented hall at the University of Baltimore in March 1972, John Waters’s third feature established his reputation as a cinematic provocateur. To hype the film’s outrageous imagery—most infamously a scene involving Divine and dog excrement—and extreme themes including incest, coprophilia, and exhibitionism, barf bags were distributed during screenings during the film’s original run. Waters also knew that word of mouth—spurred by shock, sensationalism, and catchy dialogue—would fill theater seats, which led to Pink Flamingos ’s success as a midnight movie at New York’s famed Elgin Theater, where it ran for over a year. DIRECTED/WRITTEN BY: John Waters. WITH: Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole. 1972. 93 min. USA. Color. English. Rated NC-17. DCP.
El Topo Fri, Apr 5 | 11:59pm | DGT
Alejandro Jodorowsky’s notorious cult film is credited with starting the theatrical midnight movie trend. Knowing the psychedelic Western laced with sex, violence, and religious iconography would appeal to a counterculture audience, the Elgin Theater in New York City booked midnight screenings of El Topo seven nights a week, where it ran continuously from December 1970 through June 1971 with no paid advertising. The film did not receive a major distribution deal in the United States, but the word-of-mouth success garnered from the Elgin Theater screenings led to cinemas across the country booking the film in the same midnight timeslot, which remained the only way to see the film for many years. DIRECTED/WRITTEN BY: Alejandro Jodorowsky. WITH: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Brontis Jodorowsky, Mara Lorenzio, David Silva. 1970. 125 min. Mexico. Color. English. DCP.
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