Popcorn & Candy: Charm City Trash
DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
It's often said that we've become so desensitized as a culture that the things that once shocked us have now become routine. John Waters' first movie must have been decades ahead of its time, because even in an age when any number of perversions are only a mouse click away, Pink Flamingos still feels dirty, subversive, and boundary-pushing. Anyone who can watch the film's notorious coprophagic final scene — knowing that no props, camera tricks, or clever substitutions were used — and avoid gagging has a stronger stomach than I do.
John Waters filmed the project on a minuscule budget on weekends in the little Baltimore suburb of Phoenix, because that's where his star, the trash-queen drag performer Divine lived in a where the art department had used half of their $200 budget to purchase a trailer that served as the set for large portions of the film. Waters' story, about a contest of one-upsmanship meant to earn a tabloid-awarded title of "filthiest person alive", was remarkably prescient in predicting the rise of white trash culture as both a spectator and a competitive sport. Jerry Springer Show antics and a number of currently aired reality shows are really little more than pale and innocuous imitators of the bad taste that Waters perfected in 1972. The film was a midnight movie hit, and is really best seen in large groups so as to amplify the screams of disgust; Washington Psychotronic's shabby chic screenings at the Warehouse are really an ideal environment for this sort of thing.
View the trailer.
Presented by WPFS at The Warehouse at 8 p.m on Tuesday. Free, $2 donation suggested.
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AFI Latin American Film Festival
Every year at this time, the long-running Latin American Film Festival takes over most of the programming at the AFI for three weeks. This year's festival has over thirty features from all over Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. This weekend alone there are over a dozen films to see, with highlight's including a second screening of yesterday's festival opener, Mexico's I'm Going to Explode, described as a cross between Harold and Maude and Pierrot Le Fou, the Argentinean The Lion's Den, about a mother raising her child in a prison mother's ward, and The Passion of Gabriel, a Colombian film about a young priest dealing with civil war and carnal temptations in his post in a mountain village.
Now playing at the AFI, through October 12. See their website for a full listing of films and screening schedule.
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Writer and blogger Colin Beavan set out to live for a year without leaving the slightest trace of a carbon footprint. His wife and daughter were along for the ride as well, and the New York City family forced themselves to go without creating non-compostable waste, buying only locally grown, unprocessed, unpackaged foods, and not using carbon-based transportation or paper. His blog on the experience was an award-winner, he just released a book (commence your jokes about killing trees to describe the experience of saving them now), and if that's not enough media saturation for you, filmmakers Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein also documented Beavan and his family, and the difficulties and benefits that came out of their experiment.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street.
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Arab-American filmmaker Cherien Dabis' first feature film is an intensely personal project, the story of a Palestinian woman who comes to America with her teenage son to live with her sister, whose family has been living here for years. The marketing for the film appears to be casting it as a mostly lighthearted fish-out-of-water comedy with some serious undertones. That's slightly misleading, as the film is really a drama cut through with the usual comedy of real life. Audiences probably respond better to the light touch in trailers, but there's really no need for the soft sell: Amreeka is as much of a joy to watch in its heartbreak as it is in its happier moments, and the skillful overlap of the two is what really marks Dabis as a filmmaker to watch.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street, Bethesda Row, and Shirlington.
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The Alexandria Film Festival presents its third annual program this weekend, with a slate of a dozen features and quite a few short films, all screening at the George Washington Masonic Memorial tomorrow evening, all day Saturday, and Sunday during the day. Some festival highlights include one of the latest features from animator Bill Plympton, Polish director Andrzej Wajda's 2007 Katyn, and Joe Berlinger's latest documentary, Crude, about a $27 billion lawsuit against Chevron by the people of Ecuador due to damage done by the oil company in the South American nation. The festival also includes some films by local filmmakers, including Aviva Kempner's Yoo-Hoo Ms. Goldberg, which just completed a run at the Avalon, and Andrew Perreault's Beaurocracy a recent best picture winner at the 10th Annual Bare Bones International Film Festival.
Opens tonight with an event at the Torpedo Factory, and continues through the weekend with screenings at the George Washington Masonic Memorial. See the website for the full schedule.
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Chocolate City Films: Reflections on the Diaspora
Every summer, Miami plays host to the American Black Film Festival. Tonight and tomorrow, a few highlights from the festival screen in D.C. at the Lincoln Theatre. There's a double feature each night; tonight's program features Why We Laugh, Robert Townshend's documentary about black comedians, and 4 Minutes, a romantic comedy by Dwayne Boyd and Bodie Norton. Tomorrow's program has two of the festival's prizewinners: Ryan Miningham's boxing flick Blue, winner of the festival's audience award, and the best documentary winner, Kirk Frasier's Len Bias, about the tragic story of University of Maryland basketball superstar Len Bias, who died of a drug overdose just before he was to begin a highly anticipated NBA career.
View the trailers for Why We Laugh, Blue, and Without Bias.
Tonight and tomorrow at the Lincoln Theater, two movies each night. $13 advance, $15 at the door.