Pioneering

Whew.

The two longest nights of the Pioneer year are over.

Whew.

More coverage of the Vampire All-Nighter. Joshua Rothkopf has something in TIME OUT NY, and Jim Knipfel has a nice piece in the NY PRESS.

TIME OUT NY singled out DRACULA: PAGES FROM A VIRGIN'S DIARY as the Vampire All-Nighter title most worth seeing. That's the one in retro silent style black and white, directed by Guy Maddin, featuring the Winnipeg Ballet.

Meanwhile, THE NY PRESS suggested that one is the most boring and uninteresting.

This says tons about the two publications' differences.

Jim Knipfel article, "Bloodsucking Summit"

(no link for TIME OUT NY. they don't seem to do much online content, at least timely online content)

Why do horror movies get no respect?

Film critics and intellectuals in this country love to tell the by now very old story of the great re-evaluation (revaluation?) of westerns and gangster movies. Put briefly, because it has been put at such length so many other times: In the 40s and 50s a bunch of young French guys fell in love with a lot of westerns and gangster films, then wrote about those movies and used them as partial inspiration for movies they themselves directed. After some Americans encountered those French guys, the articles they wrote, and the movies they made, suddenly the Americans felt authorized to take westerns and gangster movies seriously (particularly the movies those Americans had loved as little boys). As a critical concept, genre was recast from being a pile of clichés, to a framework within which serious and great works could be made. Those Americans grew up into an influential generation of film critics, one that still has a lot of power today although they are now surpassing middle age and starting to retire. (This book collects information about / documents by an influential part of that generation.)

But while westerns and gangster films got all this praise, horror didn't seem to make the cut. There are of course some exceptions; such cinephilic intellectuals as Carlos Clarens, Robin Wood, and Noël Carroll, among others, have written books that made an impact, and college courses on horror seem to be becoming even more widespread. But horror has by no means achieved the repute of westerns and gangster movies. It's interesting to speculate why. Was François Truffaut afraid of monsters? Did all those American film critics' mommies not let them see horror movies while they were growing up, and so they didn't love horror movies the way they loved westerns?


But here's an idle thought:
If, in the 1960s or 70s, those guys had skipped that 20th screening of THE SEARCHERS to see the movie we're showing Wednesday at 7pm, a movie called THE GHOST, that might have changed the way horror is appreciated in the U.S. This is, quite simply, one of the strongest, most powerful movies we've shown at the Pioneer in the last few years. We've actually shown it twice before, and I'm really glad we're showing it again.

Check out the listing and buy tickets here. (Admittedly, the listing is a little dry.)

"In Church only one drama is performed and always one and the same, year in, year out, while in the cinema next door you will be shown the Easters of heathen, Jew and Christian, in their historic sequence, with their similarity of ritual. The cinema amuses, educates, strikes the imagination by images, and liberates you from the need of crossing the church door. The cinema is a great competitor not only of the public-house, but of the Church."
- Lev Trotsky, "Vodka, the Church, and the Cinema." The Film Factory.

On a relatively quiet street, Third Street, between two relatively noisy avenues, Avenue A and Avenue B, in New York City's Lower East Side, within the part also known as the East Village, lies a little movie theater. It has an unassuming storefront, with a little neon sign over the doorway. Sometimes a sandwich board sign stands before the theater, telling what will be showing this evening. Many have walked by the theater for years without knowing it is a theater. But then they discover the riches within: documentaries, schlock, dramatic films, world cinema, neighborhood movies, some great films, some decent films, some poor films, and scores of personal appearances.

This is not one of those big alienated multiplexes. This is a small, beautiful theater, with an atmosphere that is, ideally, on a more human level, as well as seriously fun.

This is the Pioneer Theater.

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