We are hosting more exciting documentary screenings with the Northside Film Festival on 6/19, 6/20 and 6/21. In addition to our screenings, our neighbors at Nitehawk Cinema and indieScreen are presenting films with the festival as well. See the complete festival line-up here.
6:30pm Girl Model by David Redmon & Ashley Sabin, USA 2011, 78 minutes.
Presented by POV
Buy tickets for Northside Film Festival: Girl Model
Andrew Catauro (POV) will be in attendance to introduce Girl Model. Model and featured subject Rachel Blais in attendance for discussion following the screening.
Despite a lack of obvious similarities between Siberia and Tokyo, a thriving model industry connects these distant regions. Girl Model follows two protagonists involved in this industry: Ashley, a deeply ambivalent model scout who scours the Siberian countryside looking for fresh faces to send to the Japanese market, and one of her discoveries, Nadya, a thirteen year-old plucked from the Siberian countryside and dropped into the center of Tokyo with promises of a profitable career. After Ashley’s initial discovery of Nadya, the two rarely meet again, but their stories are inextricably bound. As Nadya’s optimism about rescuing her family from their financial difficulties grows, her dreams contrast against Ashley’s more jaded outlook about the industry’s corrosive influence.
Girl Model is a lyrical exploration of a world defined by glass surfaces and camera lenses, reflecting back differing versions of reality to the young women caught in their scope. As we enter further into this world, it more and more resembles a hall of mirrors, where appearances can’t be trusted, perception become distorted, and there is no clear way out. Will Nadya, and the other girls like her, be able to find anyone to help them navigate this maze, or will they follow a path like Ashley’s, having learned the tricks of the labyrinth but unable to escape its lure?
“A fascinating look at the stark, staring mad world of modeling.” — The Times
“David Redmon and Ashley Sabin’s engrossing documentary provides access to a pitiless niche of the fashion industry, but it’s arguably more fascinating in its depiction of the recruiters that their discoveries.”– Hollywood Reporter
Click here to watch the trailer. Stay tuned for the theatrical release courtesy of First Run Features closeding on September 5, IFC Center, New York.
8:30pm Minka and Unfinished Spaces
Buy tickets for Northside Film Festival: Minka and Unfinished Spaces
8:30pm Minka by Davina Pardo, 16 minutes
Presented by Film Sprout
Minka is a short documentary about a remarkable Japanese farmhouse and the memories it contains. In 1967, an American journalist and a Japanese student rescued the ancient house from the snow country of Japan, and their lives were forever changed.
Unfinished Spaces by Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray, 86 minutes
Filmmakers Alysa Nahmias and Ben Murray in attendance for discussion following the screening.
Cuba’s ambitious National Art Schools project, designed by three young artists in the wake of Castro’s Revolution, is neglected, nearly forgotten, then ultimately rediscovered as a visionary architectural masterpiece.
In 1961, three young, visionary architects were commissioned by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara to create Cuba’s National Art Schools on the grounds of a former golf course in Havana, Cuba. Construction of their radical designs began immediately and the school’s first classes soon followed. Dancers, musicians and artists from all over the country reveled in the beauty of the schools, but as the dream of the Revolution quickly became a reality, construction was abruptly halted and the architects and their designs were deemed irrelevant in the prevailing political climate. Forty years later the schools are in use, but remain unfinished and decaying. Castro has invited the exiled architects back to finish their unrealized dream.
“Lucidly filmed… a stirring study… an absorbing film” — Hollywood Reporter
“A witty survey (and dismantling) of Cuban politics…” — Village Voice
Click here to watch the trailer. Stay tuned for the PBS Broadcast in October 2012.
