A VISIT TO RERUN, BROOKLYN’S LATEST MOVIE VENUE

By Eric Kohn

The history of moviegoing in New York City is quintessential to the survival of the medium. Manhattan alone provided a healthy nexus of theatrical activity at the beginning of the 20th century, and in that regard, little has changed. The city continues to host dozens of theaters, including more arthouse venues than almost anywhere else in the world. From the usual specialty releases regularly showcased at the Sunshine and the Angelika to the storied repertory programming at prestigious fixtures like Film Forum and Lincoln Center, New Yorkers have innumerable eclectic opportunities to expand their cinematic horizons.

But movies without distribution have a hard time finding a certified route to these popular establishments. That’s a gap that the new reRun Gastropub Theater, which opened in the back room of reBar in Brooklyn’s hip Dumbo neighborhood on Friday, will help fill: The venue, a 60-seat screening room that includes a full bar and elaborate snack options, aims to focus on undistributed or overlooked indies from the festival circuit. Although the bar is owned and operated by Jason Stevens, freelance critic and Greencine Daily blogger Aaron Hillis has been hired to manage the program. A good friend and colleague of yours truly, Hillis resides at the heart of Indiewood as an occasional filmmaker (his documentary “Fish Kill Flea” made the festival rounds in 2007), programmer, and journalist, and he also serves as VP of the DVD label Benten Films — a quadruple-threat that allows him to keep up with plenty of the noteworthy low budget achievements struggling to get noticed.

On Friday, I made it out to the 11:30pm screening of reRun’s opening night feature, Frank Ross’s chatty lo-fi character study “Audrey the Trainwreck.” Ross, a Chicago-based filmmaker whose movies are distinguishable by an attentiveness to overlapping dialogue and the positioning of extreme frustration as comedy, premiered “Audrey” at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March. By bringing his movie to reRun, he managed to get publicity from The New York Times, The New Yorker and several other outlets (including, well, this one). With “Audrey” playing at … Read the rest

“THE IMPERIALISTS ARE STILL ALIVE!” SCREENS IN BROOKLYN

By Scott Macaulay

Filmmaker Zeina Durra’s Sundance Competition film The Imperialists are Still Alive! has its East Coast premiere tonight, June 24, in an Indiewire-hosted screening at the 2nd Northside Festival of Film and Music in Brooklyn. The film, a graduate of the IFP Narrative Lab, is an upscale Manhattan comedy of manners with an internationalist flavor and a post-9/11 paranoid bent. It also has the most arresting first shot of the year. Writing for Filmmaker, Eric Kohn said of the film:

Consider the revelatory drama The Imperialists Are Still Alive! Like a 1990s-era Amerindie upgraded to post-9/11 concerns, this insightful low key account of a young Islamic photographer living in Manhattan addresses global concerns with an engagingly human touch. Directed by Zeina Durra, whose emphasis on playfully philosophical dialogue recalls Whit Stillman, the narrative patiently navigates a credible series of conflicts while simultaneously developing an intimate portrait of the characters’ lives. Our creative heroine, Asya (Elodie Bouchez), learns that her good friend has been abducted by the CIA, leading to an increased sense of paranoia. But her fears are allayed by the blossoming of a relationship with her new lover, a gentle Mexican with the wits to deflate her fears. As a result, Imperialists develops into a plea for cross-cultural lovemaking that evades sentimentalism in favor of something far more compelling: Reality.

Over at Indiewire, Eric Kohn has written a fuller review, in which he traces the movie’s conceptual forebears as not only Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan but also Godard’s La Chinoise. Two I’d add: Daisy Von Scherler Mayer’s Party Girl and Fassbinder’s Third Generation.)

The film stars Elodie Bouchez, Jose Maria de Tavira, and Karim Saleh, was produced by Vanessa Hope, shot by Magela Crosignani, edited by Michael Taylor, and production designed by Jade Healy. It plays at 8PM at the new theater indieScreen, 285 Kent Ave at S 2nd St, and Durra will attend for a post-screening Q and A.… Read the rest