Films this week 6/27/2025 to 7/3/2025
by Gary Palmucci | 27th June 2025 | Gary's Corner, Uncategorized
Holdovers and reprise screenings constitute most of this weekend’s New Plaza Cinema lineup, along with one new documentary, whose director will appear with guests at all three of its screenings.
A Photographic Memory is an intimate, genre bending portrait of the late journalist/photographer Sheila Turner Seed, constructed by her daughter Rachel, and hailed in her Critic’s Pick review by the NY Times’ Alissa Wilkinson as “Reaching far beyond personal narrative, blooming into a moving meditation on memory, interpretation and the nature of photography itself. “
Director Rachel Elizabeth Seed will host daily Q&As this weekend, with special guests and presenters as follows:
Friday June 27, 6pm Q+A with the director, and producer Danielle Varga. Co-presented by Chicken & Egg Films, a champion of women and gender-expansive documentary-makers.
Saturday June 28, 8pm Q+A with the director, co-writer/film editor Christopher Stoudt, and Chicken & Egg Films’ co-founder and PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY consulting producer, Judith Helfand.
Sunday June 29, 2:30pm Q+A with the director, along with Film Fatales (a mentorship program for gender-diverse filmmakers) principals Dami Akinnusi and Jill Campbell, moderated by Liz Nord.
Distributor Zeitgeist Films is a regular New Plaza Cinema supplier, including in just this past year, the outstanding docs Taking Venice, How to Come Alive with Norman Mailer and Oliver Sacks: His Own Life.
Also this weekend:
Rebel With a Clause– director Brandt Johnson, his leading lady Ellen Jovin and the grammar table will all be back ‘in person’ on Sunday June 29 at 5 pm, the first of several ‘live’ appearances planned for this summer.
The Encampments– the release last week of Mahmoud Khalil, after over 100 days of detention in Louisiana seemed like a good occasion for another screening of this compelling documentary, which we only had the opportunity to screen once, earlier this spring. Khalil is a key figure in this chronicle of Columbia University students’ 2024 efforts to influence the school’s position on the war in Gaza, which mushroomed into a national movement, even if it all now seems – as with so much recent history – like a very long time ago.
This weekend’s holdovers include two shows of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life; Citizen Weiner, a post-election screening with Q&A by its subject , candidate and upper west sider Zack Weiner, who’ll also join us as the co-screenwriter of Bad Shabbos, continuing its frequently sold-out run (plan accordingly, and check our website for Q&A times).
At press time we were considering several newcomers for next holiday weekend’s lineup. By coincidence we will be screening two 1990s films, being shown here for the first time in their original directors’ cuts:
Shall We Dance – the wistfully romantic, mid-90s Japanese crowd-pleaser is finally getting a U.S. release in its original director’s cut, replacing the Miramax re-scissoring. “A well-crafted character study that , like a Hollywood movie with a skillful script, manipulates us but makes us like it.”- Roger Ebert.
Little Buddha – the Dalai Lama’s recent appearance on the NY Times’ front page seemed like a good reason to reprise Bernardo Bertolucci’s spiritual epic, his final collaboration with master cinematographer (and New Plaza booster) Vittorio Storaro, also shorn of 20 minutes in its original US release.