2005 in Review: Programming Partners
Sunday, 18. December 2005, 20:17:11
Many Programming Partners bless the Pioneer with their presence every month (or every other month, or something like that). This year, the old guard continued to bring forth wonderful events and powerful films, while many new partners joined them.
The cherished old guard is familiar to any Pioneer regular. Cinewomen NY, IFP Buzzcuts, and Slamdance anchored our Tuesdays@7 programs month in and month out (with an occasional vacation), and to them we express our great and ongoing respect. Working on a Saturday every other month, early in the year Third I New York remained a wonderful force for South Asian independent cinema. Chicks with Flicks again swooped in for their powerful once-a-year screening in August. Similarly EI Cinema returned for their single screening of October schlock, while Larry Fessenden and the other ghouls from GlassEyePix crept into a number of our October horror screenings. Cinema Tropical, a group that started at the Pioneer around the time the Pioneer itself started, has continued to grow and expand with the Pioneer, now opening films for week-long runs rather than holding a single screening residency.
Those are the old guard residencies, but this year a number of newcomers joined in to debate and celebrate movies in their own unique ways. They came in across the week, from Sunday to Thursday (Friday and Saturday, meanwhile, remain more amorphous).
The Sunday Short Film Slam was put out to pasture, but its legacy remains in the many short films presented Sunday afternoons and early evenings. Resident companies have included the hilarious, top-notch showmen from First Sundays, and the tough-as-nails but sweet-as-pie feminists from the NYC Women in Media Coalition, who present Coming Up Short. We also dabbled with The Tank's Film Program.
A day later, the Pioneer’s Bizarro Mondays hosted much darker and more tangled growth. Shade Rupe’s Subversive Sinema presented a few programs early in the year, to be succeeded later by Fangoria’s Monster Mondays, FearsMAG’s One Dark and Stormy Night, and Clayton Patterson Presents. Blue Underground’s Blue Mondays, alas, did not continue from last year, but Blue Underground’s Bill Lustig still came through the Pioneer often, adding his wit and wisdom to the audience for horror and other films (though he did sometimes walk out in boredom or disgust).
On Tuesdays, the Woodstock Film Festival came to town in alternating months for Woodstock in the City, which has continued to grow and surprise the staff alongside Slamdance, IFP Buzzcuts, and Cinewomen NY.
On Wednesdays, NewFest established a twice a month residency, continuing the Pioneer’s commitment to LGBT cinema, a commitment that will certainly remain and continue to grow – one way or the other. Other one-off films or rep titles with LGBT themes or connections often surface on Wednesdays.*
Thursdays have been a mad scientist’s laboratory. We’ve had a patchwork of off the wall one-off programs, as well as the utterly unique “Mind Control Thursdays” series, featuring numerous presentations of WINNING GIRLS THROUGH PSYCHIC MIND CONTROL (starring Bronson Pinchot). Slowly, however, “Cultural Thursdays” has emerged, featuring such programs as the Lights! Camera! Jews! program presented every few months with the 14th Street Y, the Croatian Film Series presented with the Doors Art Foundation, and the currently-gestating “Charas presents” with Chino Garcia and the venerable Lower East Side cultural organization Charas. And in January 2006, after taking the last few months of 2005 off, Third I NY will bring their South Asian Independent films to select Thursdays.
So those are the Programming Partners with whom we have presented regular, ongoing programs. But we also presented a number of series and retrospectives, in association with other groups. In January, working with such groups as Deep Dish TV, we presented an unnamed series of films about the current occupant of the White House, and his policies. In February, the New Museum of Contemporary Art brought “East Village, U.S.A.,” a series of East Village movies from the 1980s, curated by Dan Cameron and Tessa Hughes-Freeland. In March and April, the New Israeli Foundation for Cinema and Television and the Consulate of Israel to New York City presented “Homeland Insecurity,” a series of documentaries produced by the Foundation. In April, Mary Engel graced us with the three films her beloved late father, Morris Engel, had directed. May saw a number of films directed by photographer Larry Clark, presented with the International Center of Photography, while August brought the Howl! Festival of East Village Arts. In the autumn we spiraled into the certifiably bizarre with “October: A Month of Horror, Terror, and General Mayhem,” presented with scores of filmmakers and special colleagues, and finally in December with Mormonsploitation! the world’s first ever Mormonsploitation retrospective, for which we received guidance from James D’Arc at Brigham Young University and also eccentric exhibitor Dennis Nyback.
To all our Programming Partners, both regular and once in a while: You anchor the Pioneer’s programming, presenting scores of wonderful films (and the occasional stinker). Without you, the Pioneer would be a much lesser cinema. Happy New Year to you all, and onward into 2006!
==
* Parenthetically, we should mention the “gay parenting movies,” a genre that spontaneously surfaced, often in programs presented with or somehow under the spiritual guidance of NewFest: PATERNAL INSTINCT (opened for a week in June), MAKING GRACE (opened for a week in July), LATINA, ROME, AND THEIR FAMILY (NewFest single screening in December), and also FAMILY MATTERS (single screening as part of “Homeland Security: Documentaries from the New Israeli Foundation for Cinema and Television,” in April).
The cherished old guard is familiar to any Pioneer regular. Cinewomen NY, IFP Buzzcuts, and Slamdance anchored our Tuesdays@7 programs month in and month out (with an occasional vacation), and to them we express our great and ongoing respect. Working on a Saturday every other month, early in the year Third I New York remained a wonderful force for South Asian independent cinema. Chicks with Flicks again swooped in for their powerful once-a-year screening in August. Similarly EI Cinema returned for their single screening of October schlock, while Larry Fessenden and the other ghouls from GlassEyePix crept into a number of our October horror screenings. Cinema Tropical, a group that started at the Pioneer around the time the Pioneer itself started, has continued to grow and expand with the Pioneer, now opening films for week-long runs rather than holding a single screening residency.
Those are the old guard residencies, but this year a number of newcomers joined in to debate and celebrate movies in their own unique ways. They came in across the week, from Sunday to Thursday (Friday and Saturday, meanwhile, remain more amorphous).
The Sunday Short Film Slam was put out to pasture, but its legacy remains in the many short films presented Sunday afternoons and early evenings. Resident companies have included the hilarious, top-notch showmen from First Sundays, and the tough-as-nails but sweet-as-pie feminists from the NYC Women in Media Coalition, who present Coming Up Short. We also dabbled with The Tank's Film Program.
A day later, the Pioneer’s Bizarro Mondays hosted much darker and more tangled growth. Shade Rupe’s Subversive Sinema presented a few programs early in the year, to be succeeded later by Fangoria’s Monster Mondays, FearsMAG’s One Dark and Stormy Night, and Clayton Patterson Presents. Blue Underground’s Blue Mondays, alas, did not continue from last year, but Blue Underground’s Bill Lustig still came through the Pioneer often, adding his wit and wisdom to the audience for horror and other films (though he did sometimes walk out in boredom or disgust).
On Tuesdays, the Woodstock Film Festival came to town in alternating months for Woodstock in the City, which has continued to grow and surprise the staff alongside Slamdance, IFP Buzzcuts, and Cinewomen NY.
On Wednesdays, NewFest established a twice a month residency, continuing the Pioneer’s commitment to LGBT cinema, a commitment that will certainly remain and continue to grow – one way or the other. Other one-off films or rep titles with LGBT themes or connections often surface on Wednesdays.*
Thursdays have been a mad scientist’s laboratory. We’ve had a patchwork of off the wall one-off programs, as well as the utterly unique “Mind Control Thursdays” series, featuring numerous presentations of WINNING GIRLS THROUGH PSYCHIC MIND CONTROL (starring Bronson Pinchot). Slowly, however, “Cultural Thursdays” has emerged, featuring such programs as the Lights! Camera! Jews! program presented every few months with the 14th Street Y, the Croatian Film Series presented with the Doors Art Foundation, and the currently-gestating “Charas presents” with Chino Garcia and the venerable Lower East Side cultural organization Charas. And in January 2006, after taking the last few months of 2005 off, Third I NY will bring their South Asian Independent films to select Thursdays.
So those are the Programming Partners with whom we have presented regular, ongoing programs. But we also presented a number of series and retrospectives, in association with other groups. In January, working with such groups as Deep Dish TV, we presented an unnamed series of films about the current occupant of the White House, and his policies. In February, the New Museum of Contemporary Art brought “East Village, U.S.A.,” a series of East Village movies from the 1980s, curated by Dan Cameron and Tessa Hughes-Freeland. In March and April, the New Israeli Foundation for Cinema and Television and the Consulate of Israel to New York City presented “Homeland Insecurity,” a series of documentaries produced by the Foundation. In April, Mary Engel graced us with the three films her beloved late father, Morris Engel, had directed. May saw a number of films directed by photographer Larry Clark, presented with the International Center of Photography, while August brought the Howl! Festival of East Village Arts. In the autumn we spiraled into the certifiably bizarre with “October: A Month of Horror, Terror, and General Mayhem,” presented with scores of filmmakers and special colleagues, and finally in December with Mormonsploitation! the world’s first ever Mormonsploitation retrospective, for which we received guidance from James D’Arc at Brigham Young University and also eccentric exhibitor Dennis Nyback.
To all our Programming Partners, both regular and once in a while: You anchor the Pioneer’s programming, presenting scores of wonderful films (and the occasional stinker). Without you, the Pioneer would be a much lesser cinema. Happy New Year to you all, and onward into 2006!
==
* Parenthetically, we should mention the “gay parenting movies,” a genre that spontaneously surfaced, often in programs presented with or somehow under the spiritual guidance of NewFest: PATERNAL INSTINCT (opened for a week in June), MAKING GRACE (opened for a week in July), LATINA, ROME, AND THEIR FAMILY (NewFest single screening in December), and also FAMILY MATTERS (single screening as part of “Homeland Security: Documentaries from the New Israeli Foundation for Cinema and Television,” in April).
WIDGETIZE