The next few days

We’ve got some big plans for this weekend.

Continued we have an open dinner every night at 6.30pm, so bring some food and come meet us in our “executive suite” and help us plan some further events.

Friday night we’re having a Jungle Book dance and jam-a-long movie party. We’ve got someone on the ukulele already, but bring along any instruments you have and learn some of the chords or the songs and come jam with us. If you don’t play any instruments then come along for the dance. We’re going to start around 8 after our open dinner, and after the movie we’ll keep dancing.

Saturday we’re having a BBQ on our roof, so bring some food and come hang out with us. Afterwards at midnight we’ll be screening the Grindhouse double bill in the basement.

This weekend until Monday there is also the DIY cinema festival, where we’ll be watching first movies of directors, or movies that were made with little funding, movies that broke the mold, and then discussing them afterwards. Friday has Mean Streets at 12am, Martin Scorsese’s first film, and then Burden of Dreams at 4pm, a documentary about Werner Herzog’s struggle to make Fitzcarraldo, a film about a man pulling a boat across a mountain.

Saturday has Julien Donkey Boy at 12am, Harmony Korine’s Dogme ’95 film, (“Writer-director Harmony Korine attempts to show the world through Julien’s eyes: a schizophrenic kaleidoscope of images — some hauntingly beautiful, some disturbing and violent.”) it’s funny and strange and beautiful, and at 4pm we’re playing Pi, Darren Aranofsky’s first film, a gritty dark film about a number theorist who gradually goes insane looking for the answer. It’s beautifully shot and was made for dirt cheap, and it drags you along just as strongly as Requiem for a Dream, his second film, did.

Tied in with this, on Sunday we’re having a frame by frame movie workshop. We’ll be watching a film and whenever anyone wants to stop it they just say stop and we discuss it from there. This film will be chosen from one of the other four we watched on either Friday or Saturday We’ll gradually work our way through the movie and see what we can discover. Roger Ebert calls it Cinema Interruptus, and he talks about it here - http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/08/how_to_read_a_movie.html

On Monday at 2pm we’ll be watching The Brown Bunny, Vincent Gallo’s second film which Roger Ebert notoriously called the worst film to show at Cannes ever, but after it was recut he ended up loving it. It’s about a motorcycle racer who drives cross country haunted by memories of his former lover. After the movie we’ll be running a workshop to see if we can build our own steadicam, so if you want to sit in on that and help us brainstorm and work it out, that’ll be at 4pm.

Rohan, our resident stunt man, is also running a physical theatre workshop on Saturday at 2pm and Sunday at 12am. If you want to do some things with your body, learn how to fall down stairs, breakdance a bit and learn about physical theatre itself, come along.

Monday night we’re having a 16mm film party, and also using the projector to make some shadow puppets. Osita is also coming around to read some poetry, and there will be readings and music to accompany the silent films. At midnight we’re showing They Shoot Horses Don’t They?, a movie about an endless dance marathon.

Tuesday night is our big Open Projector Night, so if you’ve made a film bring it along on a DVD or 16mm reel and we’ll show it. Right after you’re screening it would be great if you’re up for a Q&A so we can learn how you got the film made. We’ll be showing some other short films in between as well to mix it all up.

There’s a chance that there will be another workshop in the Gallery on Sunday, but more about that to follow.