Our film screenings highlight underground, avant-garde and independent cinema. When we can, we host the filmmaker for an introduction and post screening Q&A. We have shown thousands of films ranging from structural classics like Tony Conrad's "The Flicker" on 16mm, to music films such as Bjork's "Biophilia Live" and Sigur Ros' "Heima". We strive to bring classic films to be screened on 16mm but also new films by emerging independent filmmakers.
"An Observance of Absence" by Jason Pappariella (director IN-PERSON), documents interior and exterior spaces left vacant and dilapidated by the abandonment of Central Pennsylvania's anthracite coal region, juxtaposing them against similarly neglected sites in industrial Eastern Europe.
Adam Parks (Lightning White Bison) will perform a live musical accompaniment on manipulated analogue four-track using sounds recorded and collected on-site in both locales. Lightning White Bison focuses on minimal, abstract and experimental sound compositions using field recordings, incidental improvisations and other collected source materials and sound-generating objects.
Jason Pappariella is a filmmaker from Pennsylvania. His work documents and explores the topics of decay, the discarded, and abandoned or scarcely used spaces. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYQ3nM4cj7U
Original Fuzztone DEB O'NAIR will be attending the screening and conducting a Post Film Q&A!
This film chronicles the highs and lows of an extraordinary band, The Fuzztones whose career spans over 40 years of Garage Rock. Formed in New York City in the early 80s, their redefining brand of Psychedelic Punk spawned an exciting new scene and its unstoppable and charismatic leader, Rudi Protrudi still carries on his unique vision passionately across the world today.
-A documentary (in the city symphony tradition begun by experimentalists in the 1920's) that captures the essence of Reading, PA in 1974 at the height of the urban renewal era, when the centers of many mid-sized American cities were gutten and redesigned to make way for the "the future." The film captures its subject at exactly the point when what seemed unique and special about this rather old-fashioned, Pennsylvania Dutch, urban center was rapidly disappearing. This 16mm portrait - the first film to receive a production grant from the PA Council of the Arts - was shown at film venues (eg., MoMA's "What's Happening" series) and festivals throughout the country. As the years have passed, the makers of the documentary have observed it evolve into both a fascinating 1970's time capsule and a poignant cinematic elegy. (According to the 2010 Census Bureau data on cities with a population of more than 65,000, Reading had the "largest share of its residents living in poverty, barely edging out Flint, Mich." - New York Times 10/26/11). Parts of this film were used on Broadway for the Tony Award winning play, "Sweat".
"So exotic and oozing with character, I forgot I was looking at my own culture. Unforgettable and beautifully bizarre." -Mike Kuchar
"Very impressive - one of the best of its kind that I've seen." - Bill Judson, Film Curator, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute
"One of the most original and most interesting American independent feature-length films of 1975." - Film Comment, May/June 1976
Starring Brian Eno, (and maybe U2, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, and more)
Rich with access to hundreds of hours of never-before-seen footage and unreleased music, Gary Hustwit’s forthcoming documentary Eno employs groundbreaking technology to accomplish something that’s never been done before: a feature film that’s never the same twice. Hustwit and creative technologist Brendan Dawes have developed bespoke generative software designed to sequence scenes and create transitions out of Hustwit’s original interviews with Eno, and Eno’s rich archive of hundreds of hours of never-before-seen footage, and unreleased music. Each screening of Eno is unique, presenting different scenes, order, music, and meant to be experienced live. The generative and infinitely iterative quality of Eno poetically resonates with the artist's own creative practice, his methods of using technology to compose music, and his endless deep dive into the mercurial essence of creativity.
COME SEE ONE OF THE 25 BILLION BILLION VERSIONS OF THIS AMAZING FILM!
Director Brewce Longo will be in attendance presenting the films and conducting a post film Q&A!
Blood Sick Productions presents a double feature screening of Pennsylvania made horror films shot on VHS. Coven of the Black Cube is a queer romance curse by black magic and the occult! Followed by Busted Babies, a hypnagogic horror comedy to feast on. A cinematic tale of breakable proportions, within extra immortal cheeze and girls! Hosted by Blood Sick Productions director Brewce Longo .
Coven of the Black Cube A mysterious coven helps unhappy wives murder their husbands. A deadbeat stoner turns a pizzeria into a video rental headshop, and a lost soul falls in love with a serial killer, in this queer romance cursed by black magic and the occult! Starring Morrigan Milam, Zoe Angeli, LunchmeatVHS's Josh Schafer, Annie Mitchel & Kasper Meltedhair. Featuring Tina Krause, Chris Seaver, Joe Swanberg & David "the Rock Nelson". Written by Brewce Longo, Zoe Angeli, & Josh Schafer. Produced & Directed by Brewce Longo.
Busted Babies A secret of turning flesh into glass breaks down a woman's reality when she trips in the BBQ Salon, busting rusting immortal goop onto the faces of herself, Movie Star, and Character Name. Blasts party murder of self inflicting wads of death are in the agenda after a green amulet confusion, forever, until the wood chipper reveals the dusty trick. But who are these men with Gartan Galtar and why do they dance so preciously? Starring Kasper Meltedhair, Erin Caywood, Cody Brant, Josh Christensen, Brent Grant, and Brewce Longo with a special appearance by Donald Farmer. Written & Directed by Kasper Meltedhair. Produced by Brewce Longo.
by Nicholas Roeg (Don't Look Now, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Performance)
Based on the book by Roald Dahl!
starring Anjelica Huston, Mai Zetterling, and Rowan Atkinson.
"Saving the world from witches is a tall order for a boy they’ve turned into a mouse!"
---A young boy named Luke and his grandmother go on vacation only to discover their hotel is hosting an international witch convention, where the Grand High Witch is unveiling her master plan to turn all children into mice. Will Luke fall victim to the witches’ plot before he can stop them? (letterboxd)
"In the future, the odds of survival are 1000 to 1. That’s just the way she likes it."
After a comet disrupts the rain cycle of Earth, the planet has become a desolate, barren desert by the year 2033. With resources scarce, Kesslee — head of the powerful and evil Water & Power Corporation, the de facto government — has taken control of the water supply. Unwilling to cower under Kesslee’s tyrannical rule, a pair of outlaws known as Tank Girl and Jet Girl rise up, joining the mysterious rebel Rippers to destroy the corrupt system.
This film in three parts explores traditions in rural Albania and the role of women in society. The project begins by describing the filmmaker’s relationship to the country and an unwanted personal sacrifice which solidifies this connection. The film moves into a poetic portrayal of village life and the roles of women in society and concludes with a video piece, revealing the villagers active participation in their own depiction.
95 min. | Mexico, Albania, 2023. English and Albanian with English Subtitles
AWARDS: • Best Film at "Reflecting Albania" Competition Tirana International Film Festival. Albania (2023)
ABOUT Naomi Uman: Naomi Uman (1962) New York. Visual artist, working in many media. She has lived in Ukraine and Mexico for several years. Her films are composed of intimate portraits, which reveal her participation and influence. Focusing on the roles of women, her homemade, analogical films poetically and intimately describe the lives of others. Naomi works alone, making herself vulnerable and learning from her subjects.
She has made twenty films which have shown in festivals and museums worldwide, including the New York Film Festival, IFFR International Film Festival Rotterdam, Sundance, The Museum of Modern Art, Viennale, BFI London International Film Festival and The Cinémathèque Française.
She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim, Fulbright and Rockefeller Foundations, among others. She currently resides in Mexico City as a Mexican citizen and her film "three sparks" (2023) is supported by a grant from the Mexican Secretary of Culture.
Due to the current heat index, the Rooftop at Millworks will be closed. This movie showing has been rescheduled for July 24th, 2024 @ 8PM. See the full listing below
starring BOB BALABAN, THORA BIRCH, STEVE BUSCEMI, ILLIANA DOUGLAS, SCARLETT JOHANSSON
Terry Zwigoff's first fiction film, adapted from a cult-classic comic by Daniel Clowes, is an idiosyncratic portrait of adolescent alienation that's at once bleakly comic and wholly endearing. Set during the malaise-filled months following high-school graduation, Ghost World follows the proud misfit Enid (Thora Birch), who confronts an uncertain future amid the cultural wasteland of consumerist suburbia. As her cynicism becomes too much to bear even for her best friend, Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson), Enid finds herself drawn to an unlikely kindred spirit: a sad-sack record collector many years her senior (Steve Buscemi). With its parade of oddball characters, quotable, Oscar-nominated script, and eclectic soundtrack of vintage obscurities, Ghost World is one of the twenty-first century's most fiercely beloved comedies. (criterion)
2002 Nominee Oscar: Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published
Join us April 21st at the Midtown Cinema as we revisit some of the best short films from Moviate’s 2023 Underground Film Festival!
“An Example of Lee-Roth Fog Isolated Under Laboratory Conditions” Ryan Betschart / San Diego, CA / 3min / Digital
Spiritual mists are a stand in for the nuts-and-bolts details surrounding the life of enigmatic Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth. A personality perfectly captured in eruptions of ecstatic sound.
“Stoned to the Bone” Rudy Childs / Rockland, MA/Montgomery County, MD / 15min / VHS
A short that focuses on a 1985 weekend field party bacchanal that took place in Montgomery County, Maryland. A cast of colorful characters are recorded using a home video camera and a CBS microphone swiped from the Reagan Inauguration earlier that year. Music included is the doom metal icons Pentagram who are interviewed as they set up for the performance.
Follow Winnipeg's Portage Place shopping mall, from its opening day in 1987 to what may be its final days.
“Pump” Charles Cadkin / Chicago, IL / 5min / 16mm
On the Northwest side of Chicago, large swaths of people have been gathering for decades to fill their containers with water from a magical water pump.
“Searching for Beauty in Student Loan Debt or at Least the Envelopes in Which It Comes” Nicky Tavares / United States / 6min / 16mm
Don your 3D glasses, open your mind, allow the denial of questionable financial decisions made by an aspiring young artist to dissolve on your tongue, and take a trip over 10 years to a delusory destination where the student loan debt crisis and one advanced art degree converge. Lean into the darkness of capitalized interest or remove your glasses and dream in color of solvency that may never come.
“Drive with Persephone” MiruFiyu / Unknown / 10min / Digital
. . . . . The ancient myth of the goddess of rebirth’s abduction told through ‘drive with me vlogs’ and sousveillance. Seemingly innocuous recordings are fraught with foreboding as the vloggers who yearn for freedom, love and self-expression find themselves unable to escape society’s haunting bondage.
“Forests” Simon Plouffe / Montreal, QC / 16min / Digital
astern white pines submerged under the waters of a hydroelectric reservoir on unceded Innu territory transform into flames. This exploration between water and fire illustrates our current climate emergency through multiple stories about the relationship between a community and its land.
“Menagerie” Jack Gray / Philadelphia, PA / 4min / Digital
Featuring hundreds of looping animated characters, the film explores how the repetitive actions of our day-to-day lives quickly spiral into an endless kaleidoscope of abstraction.
The film follows a voyage of the Brazilian Military in search of an imaginary island with the same name as their country. The myth from 1483 Brazil, or Hy-Brazil, is known to exist to the west of Ireland and above the Fortunate Islands. Amidst the fine threshold of the real, simulated, and imagined, the film analyzes the contemporary ideas of virtual reality and their ambition to expand the frontiers of the physical world into a "New World".
Come join Moviate & The Midtown Cinema for a ONE NIGHT ONLY Theatrical Screening for the new horror film INVADER, directed by Mickey Keating (Offseason, Pyschopaths) - featuring producer Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies, LOL) in person conducting a post screening Q&A, hosted by local filmmaker Brewce Longo!
"Ana arrives in the Chicago suburbs and begins to suspect that something terrible has happened to her missing cousin, but soon realizes that her greatest fears don't even scratch the surface."
A collection of rare Animated short films all shown on 16mm film. Films by Norman McLaren Evelyn Lambart and others will show the fascinating illusion of movement. 7PM $12. Midtown Cinema.
"Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros" tells the story of the iconic composer, performer, teacher, philosopher, technological innovator and humanitarian, Pauline Oliveros. She was one of the world's original electronic musicians, one of the only females amongst notable post-war American composers, a master accordion player, a teacher and mentor to musicians, a gateway to music and sound for non-musicians and a technical innovator who helped develop everything from tools that allow musicians to play together while in different countries to software that enables those with severe disabilities to create beautiful music.
On the vanguard of contemporary American music for six decades, her story illuminates the pathway to how we got where we are and where the future will take us in the worlds of music, the philosophy of sound, and the art of listening.
Produced in collaboration with executive producer lone, Oliveros' partner in life and work, and the Ministry of Maat, Inc., the film combines rare archival footage, live performances, and unreleased music with appearances by Terry Riley, Anna Halprin, lone, Linda Montano, Laurie Anderson, Thurston Moore, Alvin Lucier, Claire Chase, Miya Masaoka, Morton Subotnick, Tony Martin, Ramon Sender and many more ground- breaking artists.
Come out and join us for a very special One Night Only Film Event with Cult filmmaker J.R. Bookwalter (The Dead Next Door, Ozone). This is J.R.'s first feature film in over twenty years and it is not to be missed during its theatrical run! Come meet J.R. and participate in a post film Q&A! Also appearing at the screening will be writer/actor James L. Edwards!
“With the world gripped by a deadly pandemic, science denier Glenn Rollins turns to an experimental vaccine as treatment for a lingering sickness. Much to the surprise of his doctor, wife, and friends, the remedy immediately fixes what ails him. But Glenn will soon discover the only thing more fatal than the virus… is the cure.”
Starring JAMES L. EDWARDS ("Bloodletting"), TINA KRAUSE ("Witchouse 3: Demon Fire"), FLOYD EWING JR. ("Skinned Alive"), DREW FORTIER ("Her Name Was Christa"), SASHA GRAHAM ("Brimstone Incorporated"), TOM HOOVER ("Polymorph"), and a special appearance by the legendary BRINKE STEVENS ("The Slumber Party Massacre")!
Since 1989, the slowest metal band on the planet has conjured some of music’s most striking tectonic changes.
Not only did the band Earth create a glacially paced sub-genre of metal and play a pivotal role in the popularization of grunge, but visionary leader Dylan Carlson also did it while battling small-town boredom, heroin addiction, and the tragic death of his roommate and best friend, Kurt Cobain.
Despite the high volume of its beloved and beautiful drone metal, Earth has rarely had much to say for itself.
For the first time, in a moving saga that respects the music as much as the ragtag cast of eccentrics and surreal Pacific Northwest majesty that shaped it, Clyde Petersen gets to the core of the could-have-been-tragic triumph of Earth, the slow band that changed everything it touched.
Join us in Harrisburg for some Halloween fun at this rare opportunity to see a program of spooky short movies presented live and in person by David "The Rock" Nelson! Followed by a Q&A!
David will be showing his short films Pumpkinman 1-4 and filmmaker Brewce Longo will be showing his recently completed Pumpkinman origin film PUMPKINMAN LIVES (shot in Pennsylvania!!)
The Pumpkinman Saga - by David Rock Nelson A pumpkin headed monster appears outside of an ordinary suburban home terrorizing it’s inhabitants. David and his brother must battle the Pumpkinman using their experience as a seasoned marine and wrestler to defeat him. The monster keeps coming back in sequels and we see more of The Rock’s battles. We also see him take a nap with the fighting wears him out. We see him eating food. We see him dedicate his fight to a long list of his friends and favorite filmmakers.
Pumpkinman Lives - by Brewce Longo She died but Pumpkinman Lives! The terrible take of how Pumpkinman came to be, the little girl who believed in him, and the 65 year old boxer next door who saved the day.
David “The Rock” Nelson is one of the most eccentric creatives alive dubbed as “The Ed Wood of the 21st Century” by Mike Flores, the president of the Psychotronic Film Society, and “The World’s Most Hyperactive Horror Director” by Vice & Bleedingskull’s Zach Carlson. Nelson’s unique style of directing is a mind melting mix of cheap monster costumes, hiring his neighbors and family members to act (willingly or otherwise) unsuspecting celebrities at horror conventions, The Rock eating food, and talking to himself as he sometimes plays up to 5 different characters per movie.
Brewce Longo is a writer/director of shot-on-video horror films and music videos, and a claymation animator. His movies are vintage stylized emulating the 1990s direct to VHS era movies, often featuring underground heavy metal and punk music, DIY special effects, and bizarre stories partially based on true crime. Pumpkinman Lives is his first attempt at a PG rated movie.
"THE DEAD DON'T DIE" by Jim Jarmusch, STARRING: BILL MURRAY, TILDA SWINTON, TOM WAITS, ADAM DRIVER, STEVE BUSCEMI, IGGY POP, DANNY GLOVER, ESZTER BALINT, CHLOE SEVIGNY, and many more!
019 Palme d'Or Nominee (Cannes Film Festival) 2019, 105 minutes.
"Moviate is a volunteer operated, not for profit organization, dedicated to bringing independent, underground, and avant-garde Cinema and Sound events to the Harrisburg, PA area."
DATE: Thursday, February 13th, 2025 @ 7:00pm
