Regional Film Artists:
STEPHEN WARDELL
Kinship Formation Devices
June 25 (Thursday) 7pm
Stephen Wardell (Haydenville, MA) is a filmmaker and teaching artist who makes experimental narratives, documentary portraits, and handmade films. His films are queer, anti-capitalist, kinship formation devices. His documentary work chronicles family histories through the construction of collaborative utopian fantasies, and his handmade 16mm films use material interventions essayistically to express personal experiences of systems of power. From the Midwest, currently he lives in Massachusetts where he works as a visiting assistant professor at Amherst College.
Regional Film Artists:
JOSH WEISSBACH
The Addresses and Other Destinations
July 9 (Thursday) 7pm
Josh Weissbach (East Haddam, CT) is an experimental filmmaker. His cinematic practice focuses on the relationship between the intimate and the uncanny within domestic spaces. Central to this process is an investigation of the visual agency of the (un)built form and the manner in which it implicates a history of familial trauma. His practice also considers natural spaces that are defined by the vitality of matter and its transfer of force.
All films will be projected on 16mm.
Sebastiane
In Latin with English sub-titles
Derek Jarman 1976 | July 15 and 18
Derek Jarman’s first feature, entirely in Latin, reimagines the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian as a study in desire and discipline under Roman military authority. Unfazed by narrative or heteronormative convention, Jarman’s debut was a watershed moment in British cinema.
Red River
Howard Hawks 1948 | July 22 and 25
Howard Hawks sends John Wayne and Montgomery Clift on a cattle drive from Texas to Kansas and discovers that American masculinity contains at least two irreconcilable codes. Wayne commands through volume and threat. Clift resists through stillness. The herd moves north regardless in this genre masterpiece.
American Flyers
John Badham 1985 | July 29 and August 1
It’s no Breaking Away, but John Badham’s 1983 cycling film has aged into a fascinating cultural artifact. Might be a family drama, a buddy comedy, a road movie, or a McDonald’s commercial. What it definitely is is an immaculate scope print from the director’s personal collection starring a ridiculously handsome Kevin Costner.
The Pyx
Harvey Hart 1973 | Thursday July 30
Visiting from Montreal is the founder and artistic director of Cinéclub Film Society. Accompanying him on his trip to Portland is an uncut 16mm scope print of a film he will introduce from a Montreal perspective. THE PYX (1973) starring Christopher Plummer and Karen Black tells the story of a Montreal police detective unraveling the mystery behind the death of a heroin-addicted prostitute who joins a satanic cult then dies under bizarre circumstances after falling from a building. Made during the height of tax shelter-funded ‘Canuxploitation’ cinema, this crime investigation procedural contains enough horror elements to make it ideal for summer viewing. Three songs beautifully sung by Karen Black for this film make it worth the price of admission alone!
WarGames
John Badham 1983 | August 5 and 8
Another pristine print from John Badham’s collection. Matthew Broderick in boy-genius mode hacks his way into an absurd can of worms that famously scared the hell out Ronald Reagan and inspired him to introduce the first Presidential directive on computer security. The fun side of Fail-Safe and certainly one of the most influential films of the 1980s.
The Ox-Bow Incident
William Wellman 1943 | August 12 and 15
Wellman’s taut anti-Western packs more moral devastation into 75 minutes than most films manage in twice the runtime. Fonda, Dana Andrews, and Anthony Quinn anchor a story about a posse riding into the Nevada mountains to hang three men for a murder that may not have happened. Released in the midst of WWII, the parallels to wartime mob psychology were unmistakable then and have lost none of their edge since.
Ladyhawke
Richard Donner 1985 | August 19 and 22
A medieval romance in which two lovers can never occupy the same form at the same time — one a hawk by day, the other a wolf by night. Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer smolder in every scene. Matthew Broderick is also there, inexplicably doing bits for the camera. Shot by the legendary Vitorrio Storarro, this flawless 16mm scope print is the best I’ve ever seen this film look.
Out of the Past
Jacques Tourneur 1947 | August 26 and 29
Five years after inventing a new breed of supernatural horror with Cat People, Jacques Tourneur would give us one of the best films noir of all time. Mitchum, Douglas and Greer broke the mold with this one. It’s no wonder David Lynch loved this movie because smoking cigarettes never looked so good.
Miami Blues
George Armitage 1990 | September 2 and 5
In his first leading role an unhinged Alec Baldwin brings the juice to what’s been called by some “the American Breathless” (never mind the actual remake). Jennifer Jason Leigh, Fred Ward, and writer/director George Armitage somehow keep this thing on the rails when it desperately wants to leap off.
Hud
Martin Ritt 1963 | September 9 and 12
Martin Ritt was firing on all cylinders when directing this elegantly managed four-hander. In one of his best turns as an antihero, Paul Newman plays a Texas rancher’s amoral, alcoholic son hellbent on winning capitalism. Texas scrubland has never looked so magnificent as it does here photographed by James Wong Howe.
Atlantic City
Louis Malle 1980 | September 23 and 26
Opposite a stellar Susan Sarandon, latter-day Burt Lancaster plays a small-time numbers runner narrating himself into a mythology that the city has already demolished around him. Nominated for five Academy Awards, Louis Malle’s understated critque of prosperity perfectly captures the mood of the outgoing 1970s.
Notorious
Alfred Hitchcock 1946 | September 30 and October 3
Hitchcock. Grant. Bergman. Need I say more? I can’t believe we haven’t screened this one yet.
Blue Collar
Paul Schrader 1978 | September 16 and 19
In Paul Schrader’s first attempt at direction Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, and Yaphet Kotto are Detroit autoworkers who rob their own union and discover that the system’s real product is their mutual destruction.
Blue Collar
Paul Schrader 1978 | September 16 and 19
The Booth
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Our Mission
Kinonik is a nonprofit microcinema dedicated to the communal experience of watching films projected on analog formats. We preserve and present essential 16mm and 35mm film with the aim of fostering dialogue, education, and resistance against cultural homogenization. Kinonik serves as a space for collective meaning-making where cinema is not a commodity but a shared encounter with history, aesthetics, and radical imagination, in the spirit and tradition of cinema clubs of the past.