by | Sep 3, 2024 9:39 am | Comments (1)
“I tend to see skateboarding as almost a kind of dance, a conversation with the terrain around you,” says J. Joseph in the documentary Fly, a silent film about skateboarding in New Haven that has inspired a new local album.
Continue reading ‘Skating Film, Album Put Right Foot Forward’
by | Sep 3, 2024 9:15 am | Comments (3)
A still from Picnic at Hanging Rock.
The 50th anniversary of a Francis Ford Coppola classic, a historic documentary set in 1970s New Haven, and The Bride of Frankenstein screened on Halloween night: these are just a sampling of what Yale Film Archive is offering movie fans this fall, revealed along with a host of other anniversary screenings and premiere prints at the first screening of the semester this past Friday at the Yale Humanities Quadrangle.
First, however, a capacity crowd was treated to a new 35-mm print of Peter Weir’s mesmerizing 1975 classic Picnic at Hanging Rock.
Continue reading ‘Yale Film Archive Goes On Surreal "Picnic"’
by | Aug 30, 2024 9:26 am | Comments (0)
A still from Beauty and the Beast.
The Institute Library became le cinema Thursday night as its French film series — “Bonsoir, Mes Ami(e)s!” — began with Beauty and The Beast (also known as La Belle et la Bête), the renowned 1946 film by Jean Cocteau based on the fairy tale originally published in the 1700s. The three-film series is being presented in conjunction with Best Video and is being hosted and curated by John Hatch, who recently organized a successful Italian movie series at the Chapel Street institution.
Continue reading ‘French Film Series Turns Institute Library Into Le Cinema’
by | Aug 13, 2024 9:16 am | Comments (1)
A still from Wanda.
What’s an arthouse film? Not unlike the cult film, it can draw in a certain type of cinephile that searches for an experience unlike the one you get from a blockbuster crowd pleaser. The arthouse film is typically independently made and is often experimental: sometimes cerebral, sometimes gut wrenching, sometimes both at once. Best Video — home to many of these films on VHS and DVD — is looking to share such experiences with others on Arthouse Sundays, a new monthly series that debuted this past weekend with the 1970 film Wanda.
by | Aug 7, 2024 9:04 am | Comments (0)
A still from Shadow of a Doubt.
You don’t have to be a film fanatic to know who Alfred Hitchcock is — a director so unique in his vision that his last name has become a descriptor for a certain type of perspective. On the occasion of what would have been his 125th birthday, Best Video has dedicated its August screening series to a celebration of his films. On Tuesday night the feting began with Shadow of a Doubt, the 1943 psychological thriller that held the sizable crowd captive with its snappy dialogue — cowritten by Hamden’s own Thornton Wilder — and the director’s signature directorial style.
Continue reading ‘Film Series Celebrates Hitchcock's 125th Birthday’
by | Jul 29, 2024 9:37 am | Comments (2)
Eleanor Polak photos
48 Hour Film Project team director Zach Fox: “Ketchup is harder to clean up than I thought it would be.”
The scene of the crime.
In the middle of the floor of director Zach Fox’s parents’ kitchen lay some fake blood, a real knife, and an avocado.
This was a crime scene, and the crime wasn’t only the murder of a helpless victim. It was also a crime against fashion.
Luckily, the fashion detectives were on the case. And soon, everybody would be watching them — as part of an annual competition to make a short movie in just two days.
by | Jul 12, 2024 9:34 am | Comments (1)
Anna Magnani in Mamma Roma.
New Haven is a pretty easy place to find Italian food and fairs, but what about films? The Institute Library is satisfying that craving this summer with their new film series, “Ciao, Bella!” On Thursday night the second film of the three in the series — 1962’s Mamma Roma, directed by Pier Polo Pasolini — was screened among the stacks of their biography room. Library member John Hatch had the idea for the series and according to operations manager Eva Geertz, it was one she was happy to help come to fruition.
Continue reading ‘Italian Film Series Sizzles At Institute Library’
by | Jul 11, 2024 9:08 am | Comments (1)
Mamma Mia!
The crowd in Pitkin Plaza.
Several dozen people gathered in Pitkin Plaza on Wednesday night for Movies in the Plaza, a weekly summer movie night organized by the Town Green District.
The night’s screening was the beloved and absurd ABBA-based jukebox musical, Mamma Mia!
A strong wind kept the audience cool and provided the perfect backdrop for dramatic hair-flips and other musical staples as the crowd gathered on fold-up chairs and picnic blankets to answer the age-old question: who’s the father?
Continue reading ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme Mamma Mia! In Pitkin Plaza’
by | Jul 10, 2024 9:19 am | Comments (2)
A still from Spike Lee's Crooklyn.
Hopscotch, stick ball, dominoes, and double-dutch: the 1994 film Crooklyn opens with all of this and more playing out on the stoops and sidewalks of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, where people of all ages live, work, play, and play out their daily lives.
Under the direction of Spike Lee, the viewer soon comes to know and care deeply about one of the families living on this street, The Carmichaels, as well as their neighbors, friends, and extended family members at their best, their worst, and everything in between.
Tuesday night saw the film as the first in Best Video’s July screening series focusing on Lee and his storied career. Other films to be shown in the series include 1998’s He Got Game on July 16, 1989’s Do The Right Thing on July 23, and 2018’s BlacKkKlansman on July 30.
Continue reading ‘Crooklyn Opens Spike Lee Retrospective At Best Video’
by | Jul 9, 2024 2:26 pm | Comments (1)
Lisa Reisman photo
Marcus Harvin at Saturday's doc premiere, with Bill and Kathy Carbone.
In the trunk of his car, Marcus Harvin has a rock from the parking lot of a vacant building on Bassett Street. So does his friend Babatunde Akinjobi. The two met when they were incarcerated at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield.
“Each of us carries it around, believing that one day soon we will cut a ribbon for that property,” Harvin told a spirited audience of 60 family, friends, and supporters at Peterson Auditorium at the University of New Haven (UNH) on Saturday night.
The occasion was the premiere of “Fresh Start: A Marcus Harvin Story.” The short documentary, which was produced and directed by UNH film students Elisa Broche, Jay Sanders, and Gabe Nelson, chronicles Harvin’s journey from incarceration to Yale Prison Education Initiative (YPEI) graduate to UNH presidential fellow to founder and president of the nonprofit Newhallville Fresh Starts, Inc., an enterprise to feed people’s dreams.
Continue reading ‘Documentary Spotlights Newhallville Community Activist’
by | Jul 5, 2024 9:34 am | Comments (2)
Contributed photo
UNH film student Elisa Broche (second from right) with her family in Honduras.
Elisa Broche won’t be at Saturday’s premiere of her new documentary about Newhallville community activist Marcus Harvin at the University of New Haven.
That’s because the 19-year-old student filmmaker is back in her home city of Tegucigalpa, Honduras — doing everything she can to raise enough money to return to West Haven to complete her studies.
Continue reading ‘Movie To Premiere In Student Filmmaker's Absence’
by | Jul 1, 2024 9:27 am | Comments (1)
Karen Ponzio Photos.
A still from Oxide.
A woman on the run shares a cigarette with a chicken. A family portrait elicits a daughter’s memories of familial tensions. Three friends navigate the challenges of working to pay the rent when they would rather party. All of these stories and more were told in various animated styles, including stop motion, painting, and Procreate at the 2024 Womanimation event, presented this past Saturday by MergingArts Productions at Best Video in Hamden.
by | Jun 20, 2024 9:15 am | Comments (0)
A still from "Black Moon".
Cult Night! With Anthony, the newest monthly series at Best Video, offered its third showing Wednesday night and cultivated not only a discussion of what the film was about, but also multiple discussions of what constitutes a “cult” film in the first place.
by | Jun 5, 2024 9:24 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photos.
The June screening series lineup at Best Video.
“School’s out for summer” is not just an Alice Cooper lyric; it is also the theme for Best Video’s June screening series. Four films are set to take fans back to high school each Tuesday of the month at 7 p.m. to experience the awkwardness and the uncertainty of that time with a heavy dose of laughter and relatability. According to Best’s own Teo Hernandez, it was a fitting choice for the lazy, hazy, and hot days to come.
by | May 17, 2024 9:37 am | Comments (0)
A still from But I'm a Cheerleader.
Best Video welcomed the return of a popular film screening series Thursday night as Queer Film Club, a collaboration between the film and cultural center and East Rock House, screened the first of four queer comedies to be shown each month from May to August.
The 1999 cult comedy classic But I’m A Cheerleader led the way, as an exuberant audience filled every chair in the space and then some for the story of Megan, played by Natasha Lyonne, who gets sent to a “sexual redirection” school when her parents suspect her of being a lesbian.
by | May 8, 2024 8:04 am | Comments (0)
A still from The Truman Show.
What would it feel like to suspect that your whole life was a lie? Actor Jim Carrey famously plays out that scenario in a comedic-dramatic-dystopian-existential tour de force as Truman Burbank, the star of The Truman Show — both the film and the TV show within the film that follows his character’s life on a 24/7 live feed, unbeknownst to him until, well, it isn’t. The 1998 film, screened Tuesday evening, was the first in Best Video Film and Cultural Center’s May screening series, which this month will feature a retrospective of Carrey’s career.
Continue reading ‘Jim Carrey Steals The Show At Best Video Film Series’
by | May 1, 2024 11:47 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photo
Brian Meacham and student archivists.
Yale Film Archive turned one of its screening events over to students Tuesday night as members of the Spring 2024 Film and Media Studies 604 class shared their archivist projects — which included everything from a not-so-silent Dutch short that focused on the rain to a Looney Tunes cartoon that focused on a not-so-cool cat — with a room full of appreciative movie fans.
Continue reading ‘Yale Film Archive Showcases Student Archivists’
by | Apr 22, 2024 11:00 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photos
The Creature descends on Best Video.
The Giant Behemoth and a creature from beneath the sea stood side by side with Betty Boop, Jimmy Stewart, and a New Jersey couple celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary as Best Video Film and Cultural Center hosted a screening of 8‑millimeter films projected and presented by Quinnipiac University’s Women in Films president Julia Schnarr.
Sunday evening saw an intimate gathering of enthusiastic film professors, students, and fans at the Whitney Avenue movie lover’s mecca taking in seven short films, six from Schnarr’s own collection and one belonging to Best Video.
by | Apr 10, 2024 1:20 pm | Comments (5)
A still from Seven Days in May.
“The astounding story of an astounding military plot to take over the United States! The time is 1970 or 1980 or, possibly, tomorrow!”
Thus reads the tagline to the political thriller Seven Days in May, the first entry in April’s Tuesday night film screening series at Best Video. Last night an engrossed crowd took in the John Frankenheimer-directed and Rod Sterling-penned 1964 classic, based on the novel written by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Barley II and published in 1962.
Continue reading ‘"Seven Days in May" Leads April Film Series At Best Video’
by | Apr 9, 2024 9:02 am | Comments (0)
A still from La Practica.
On Monday night Yale Film Archive’s Cinemix series offered a selection that exemplified its description of itself as “stand alone screenings of standout films.” La Práctica (The Practice) — the latest from Argentinian writer/director Martín Rejtman — is the story of a yoga instructor’s interactions with students old and new as he maneuvers his way through his ever-changing world. Presented in conjunction with the Latino and Iberian Film festival at Yale (LIFFY), the event included a post-film Q&A with Rejtman, moderated by LIFFY’s founder and executive director Margherita Tortora.
Continue reading ‘"La Práctica" Balances Humor And Humanity’
by | Apr 5, 2024 11:25 am | Comments (1)
Still from Within Our Gates.
As Yale Film Archive launches into the last quarter of its 2024 spring semester programming, it offered something a little different on Thursday evening: silent films that each had a special distinction.
The first, presented in conjunction with the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, was a selection of Solomon Sir Jones Films from 1924 to 1928 that are currently a part of the library’s holdings. The second was a showing of Within Our Gates, a 1920 film written, produced, and directed by Oscar Micheaux; it’s the oldest known surviving film with a Black director. One more bonus: both films on this evening were accompanied by live music, played by pianist Donald Sosin.
by | Mar 19, 2024 10:18 am | Comments (4)
John McDonald Photo
Ball & Socket Arts front view.
When asked to name the cultural hubs of the Northeast, most people would not consider Cheshire, Connecticut a part of that list. A group of enthusiastic artists and supporters of the arts are hoping to change that over the next few years, as Ball & Socket Arts, a complex located on West Main Street right along the Farmington Canal Linear Path, continues its efforts to create a central location aimed at encouraging ongoing creativity and attracting New Haven County residents and beyond to its galleries, performance venue, art education center, and more.
Continue reading ‘Ball & Socket Arts Turns Factory Into Gallery’
by | Mar 11, 2024 10:23 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Love N' Co performing at Best Video as part of Spoken film.
On Saturday night Best Video presented an event that married two of its main enterprises: film and music. Local favorites Love N’ Co were there to premiere their movie Spoken: The Story of Unspoken and share a few tunes beforehand. The film, produced by Free Artist Productions, documents the making of their EP Unspoken, produced by Cliff Robbins-Sennewald, which they plan to release in May. The film documents their hopes, dreams, and desires as well as the struggles they went through both personally and professionally to get it just right, proving that the band accepts a challenge and rides it through with joy and grace.
by | Mar 8, 2024 9:50 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Alexis Krasilovsky.
Thursday night the Yale Film Archive added two new jewels to their Treasures series: a new 35 mm print of Daisies, the 1966 Czech New Wave film directed by Vera Chytilova, and a new 16 mm print of End of the Art World, the 1971 documentary made by Alexis Krasilovsky while she was a senior at Yale. Celebrated with a free screening at the Humanities Quadrangle, the event was made even more special by the presence of filmmaker and writer Krasilovsky, who introduced the films and participated in a Q&A afterward.
Continue reading ‘Film Archive Celebrates End Of The Art World’
by | Mar 6, 2024 9:17 am | Comments (0)
The Thing.
With a new month comes a new Best Video movie series, and the March madness at the film and cultural center in Hamden has everything to do with horror and nothing to do with sports.
Monster Madness, the brainchild of Best Video’s own Anthony Capasso, debuted to a crowd hungry for a good scare Tuesday night. The first film of the series was The Thing, the now classic 1982 version directed by John Carpenter and starring Kurt Russell, which tells the story of a group of researchers in Antarctica dealing with an alien being that takes on the form of whatever it inhabits and wreaks havoc on the bodies and psyches of those who encounter it.