Films this week 3/15 to 3/17/2024
by Gary Palmucci | 14th March 2024 | Gary's Corner
This will be an abbreviated New Plaza Cinema weekend due to some student events at Macaulay Honors College. Two of this weekend’s programs are already sold out, though some standby tickets may turn up just before showtime.
One of them is our bimonthly NYC Short Film Showcase. The other is a recent rockumentary snared by my enterprising colleagues, Shawn Moore and Abbe Harris. It’s titled Heaven Stood Still: The Incarnations of Willy DeVille, chronicling the life of an eclectic singer-songwriter whose band Mink DeVille was a mid-70s fixture at CBGB. He also left his mark on New Orleans R&B, among other musical genres, producing a series of critically revered LPs as well as hit singles like the immortal “Spanish Stroll.”
Both this Saturday’s screening and a March 24th follow up were immediate sellouts. A third show on April 20 is heading in that direction, so we recommend swift action! Director Larry Locke will join us for the first two shows, and we hope for many more to come.
Venerable filmmaker Aviva Kempner will be back on Sunday night for a Q&A after the 7 pm screening of her new doc, A Pocketful of Miracles: A Tale of Two Siblings, which played to four capacity houses last month.
During the just-wrapped awards season, many patrons had asked us about presenting Anatomy of a Fall (Best Original Screenplay at last Sunday’s Oscars) and the tough-but-indispensable documentary from the early weeks of the Ukrainian invasion, 20 Days at Mariupol (Best Documentary Feature). Both will be screened this weekend, along with a final showing of our very popular Best International Feature nominee, The Teachers’ Lounge.
And, direct from the recent NY Jewish Film Festival, Remembering Gene Wilder is a salute to the beloved actor-writer-director. We hope to have director Ron Frank as our guest at one of next weekend’s screenings.
Finally, a date change from my previous announcement. Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ has been moved from March 29 to Sunday, March 24 time TBA. I will be joined by Scorsese biographer and consultant on the movie, Mary Pat Kelly for another after-talk that I’m sure will match our passionate discussion here back in December, on Mean Streets…
Gary Palmucci. Film Curator
New Plaza Cinema