
Dean Otto currently serves as the Curator of Film. To learn more about Dean and the Speed Cinema, read the full press release here. Photo by Rafael Gamo.
Tori and Lokita (Tori et Lokita)
June 2, 3, & 4
From two-time Palme d’Or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Two Days, One Night) comes the story of seventeen-year-old Lokita and twelve-year-old Tori (in remarkable debut performances from Pablo Schils and Joely Mbundu), two immigrants—from Benin and Cameroon, respectively—struggling for survival on the margins of society.
Save Our Stories: Appalshop’s Archival Emergency
June 4
On July 28, 2022, Letcher County, Kentucky, and surrounding areas experienced an unprecedented 1,000-year flood that wreaked havoc on the region. This included extensive damage to the Appalshop Archive, where flood waters reached nearly 7 feet.
Since its founding in 1969, Appalshop has been documenting and preserving Appalachian stories on all manner of media, from celluloid film to digital tape. The flood waters of July 2022 affected nearly 80% of the 24,000 items held in Appalshop Archive’s vault, either through direct contact with water or exposure to heat and humidity. But with the help of a team of volunteer archivists from across the state, materials were quickly moved out of the building and relocated.
The Melt Goes on Forever: The Art & Times of David Hammons
June 9, 10, & 11
The Melt Goes on Forever is a striking portrait of a celebrated African American art star David Hammons whose rule-breaking practice offers an essential commentary on race in America.
White Balls on Walls
June 10, 11, & 14
In one of the most transparent institutional acts, the Stedelijk, Amsterdam’s Museum of Modern Art, allows a film crew to cover an ambitious reassessment of their collection, staff, history of colonization, and its connection to art history.
Werckmister Harmonies (Werckmeister harmóniák)
June 16 & 17
Adapted from a novel by the celebrated writer and frequent Tarr collaborator László Krasznahorkai, Werckmeister Harmonies unfolds in an unknown era in an unnamed village, where, one day, a mysterious circus–complete with an enormous stuffed whale and a shadowy, demagogue-like figure known as the Prince–arrives and appears to awaken a kind of madness in the citizens, which builds inexorably toward violence and destruction.
Drylongso
June 17 & 18
A lost treasure of 1990s DIY filmmaking, Cauleen Smith’s Drylongso embeds an incisive look at racial injustice within a lovingly handmade buddy movie/murder mystery/romance. This is its first theatrical release, and it has not been released on home video or available for streaming.
Funeral Parade of Roses (Bara no sôretsu)
June 18
Long unavailable in the U.S., Japanese director Toshio Matsumoto’s shattering, kaleidoscopic masterpiece is one of the most subversive and intoxicating films of the late 1960s: a headlong dive into a dazzling, unseen Tokyo night-world of drag queen bars and fabulous divas, fueled by booze, drugs, fuzz guitars, performance art, and black mascara. No less than Stanley Kubrick cited the film as a direct influence on his own dystopian classic A Clockwork Orange.
Squaring the Circle: The Story of Hipgnosis
June 23, 24, & 25
Celebrated photographer, creative director, and filmmaker Anton Corbijn’s first feature documentary Squaring the Circle: The Story of Hipgnosis tells the story of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey “Po” Powell, the creative geniuses behind the iconic album art design studio, Hipgnosis, responsible for some of the most recognizable album covers of all time.
Lynch/Oz
June 24 & 25
The themes, images, and cultural vernacular of Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz continue to haunt David Lynch’s art and filmography—from his very first short, The Alphabet, to his latest series, Twin Peaks: The Return. Arguably, no filmmaker has so consistently drawn inspiration—consciously or unconsciously—from a single work. Is David Lynch trapped in the land of Oz? If so, can we derive a new appreciation for Lynch’s body of work from taking a closer look at how it intersects and communicates with The Wizard of Oz? In turn, do Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway, or The Elephant Man have something to say about the enduring resonance of one of America’s most beloved classic movies?
Desperate Souls: Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy
June 30, July 1 & 2
A half-century after its release, Midnight Cowboy remains one of the most original and groundbreaking movies of the modern era. This is not a documentary about the making of Midnight Cowboy: it is about the deeply gifted and flawed people behind a dark and difficult masterpiece; New York City in a troubled time of cultural ferment; and the era that made a movie and the movie that made an era.
Midnight Cowboy
June 30, July 1 & 2
Convinced of his irresistible appeal to women, Texas dishwasher Joe Buck (Jon Voight) quits his job and heads for New York City, thinking he’ll latch on to some rich dowager. New York, however, is not as hospitable as he imagined, and Joe soon finds himself living in an abandoned building with a Dickensian layabout named Enrico “Ratso” Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman). The two form a rough alliance, and together they kick-start Joe’s hustling career just as Ratso’s health begins to deteriorate.