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.
Drawn from a cache of personal video recordings from the past 22 years, director Steve Loveridge’s Sundance award winning MATANGI / MAYA / M.I.A. is a startlingly personal profile of the critically acclaimed artist, chronicling her remarkable journey from refugee immigrant to pop star.
She began as Matangi. Daughter of the founder of Sri Lanka’s armed Tamil resistance, she hid from the government in the face of a vicious and bloody civil war. When her family fled to the UK, she became Maya, a precocious and creative immigrant teenager in London. Finally, the world met her as M.I.A. when she emerged on the global stage, having created a mashup, cut-and-paste identity that pulled from every corner of her journey along the way; a sonic sketchbook that blended Tamil politics, art school punk, hip-hop beats and the unwavering, ultra-confident voice of a burgeoning multicultural youth.
Never one to compromise on her vision, Maya kept her camera rolling throughout. MATANGI / MAYA / M.I.A. provides unparalleled, intimate access to the artist in her battles with the music industry and mainstream media as her success and fame explodes, becoming one of the most recognizable, outspoken and provocative voices in music today
THE HUNGAN (1991) Super 8mm Horror Feature Film Made in Harrisburg in 1991 and never shown locally in public!!!! With Filmmaker Keith Hanshaw In Person!!! Keith was the Assistant Director and the Special Effects Supervisor (among other titles) on the film and will be in attendance and doing a Q&A post screening! One night only!!!
SHOWING WITH - HALLOWEEN SAFETY ( a quirky little short shown on 16mm film)
THE HUNGAN Genetic experiments gone wrong unleash an ancient voodoo curse that produces a masticating monster with an appetite for terror. Narrated by Oscar-winning actor Jack Palance.
THE HUNGAN was written in 1988 by Harrisburg / Hershey native Randall Dininni who later went on to direct the film in 1991. The film was shot on Super 8mm in the Harrisburg / Hershey area and featured local actors and crew! Come out and see this lost classic and hear stories from Keith Hanshaw about what it was like to make a horror film locally back in the late 1980's / early 1990's. This is a very special Halloween treat!!!
A documentary on Queercore, the cultural and social movement that began as an offshoot of punk and was distinguished by its discontent with society's disapproval of the gay, bisexual, lesbian and transgender communities. Features Bruce LaBruce, John Waters, Genesis P-Orridge, Kim Gordon, Kathleen Hanna, Peaches, Dennis Cooper, and tons of great punk rock music!
SICKIES MAKING FILMS A Documentary Film by Joe Tropea
A LOVE LETTER TO THE MOVIES, Sickies Making Films looks at our urge to censor films and asks why? We find reasons both absurd and surprisingly understandable. Using the Maryland Board of Censors (1916-1981) as a lens, as well as archival materials, classic film segments, and interviews with filmmakers and exhibitors who were subjected to censorship, this documentary examines the recurring problem of censorship in America.
David Huggins lost his virginity to an alien woman - among 100 other E.T. encounters - and chronicled it all in surreal paintings, few of which have ever been seen. This documentary is his story.
One screening only of the new doc: "Don’t Break Down: A Film About Jawbreaker"
"When I REALLY FELT LIKE Punk was dead Then I REALIZED it was A GOOD time to BE A PART OF IT"
In 2007, 11 years after one of the most influential American punk bands, Jawbreaker, called it quits the three members, Blake Schwarzenbach, Chris Bauermeister, and Adam Pfahler reconnected in a San Francisco recording studio to listen back to their albums, reminisce and even perform together. Follow the band as they retell their “rags to riches to rags” story writhe with inner band turmoil, health issues, and the aftermath of signing to a major label. Featuring interviews with Billy Joe Armstrong, Steve Albini, Jessica Hopper, Graham Elliot, Chris Shifflet, Josh Caterer and more.
"Martha Colburn was born in 1971 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, formerly lived and worked in New York, and currently lives between Amsterdam and Lisbon.
Colburn began working with film in the ’90s when she acquired a used projector and began splicing found footage into her works. Now, she works for years on a single project, and her films result from intensive research and meticulously rendered stop-motion animations that include photography, collage, and painting.
The artist’s vibrant imagery can belie the seriousness of the themes she addresses, which include America’s history of war and violence, and crystal-meth addiction in rural areas. While her work is viewed in both film and art contexts, she has said that the individual films are secondary to the ideas and images behind her work." -Art21
In 1933, at age 33, Harry Alan Potamkin died of complications related to starvation, at a time when he was one of the world's most respected film critics. In his writings, he advocated for a cinema that would simultaneously embrace the fractures and polyphony of modern life and the equitable social vision of left radical politics. This film-biography is assembled out of distorted fragments of films on which he had written, an impression of erupting consciousness. At the Odessa steps, trampling gives breath to the child. The bullet miraculously reforms the face. The Cossacks march backwards, retreating unseen into their nothing, the unfired rounds of their rifles restored to their menacing potential. Feet tread backward up the steps as the steps themselves collapse in splintering emulsion. The carriage is set upright.
Bio: Stephen Broomer is a filmmaker and film preservationist. His work has screened at the Toronto Film Festival, the New York Festival, and the San Francisco Cinematheque. Since 2010, he has preserved many Canadian experimental films, including films by R. Bruce Elder, John Hofsess, Arthur Lipsett, and Keith Lock.
The Lanthanide Series is an experimental documentary about rare earth elements (the lanthanides), black mirrors (from obsidian to iPads), and how technology is reshaping the way we record the present and replay the past. From the portals of personal computing devices to ancient obsidian mirrors, optical tools control how people see, foresee, record, and remember their lives. The Lanthanide Series meditates on how we frame and understand the world through such material means and instruments, with a reliance on certain chemical elements and the people who we love.
"Part poetry, part chemistry lesson, part landscape film, part cinematic exploration, part history and geography lesson, part environmental revelation ,part magic. The Lanthanide Series is something new under the sun." – Scott MacDonald
"The Lanthanide Series fuses poetry and science to create a thrillingly uncategorizable work." – Anthology Film Archives
The screening is free and open to the public. Sponsored by the Film & Media Studies program at Franklin & Marshall College and Moviate.
About the filmmaker:
Erin Espelie '01 has a degree in molecular and cell biology from Cornell University and an MFA in experimental and documentary arts from Duke University. Her films have shown at the New York Film Festival, the British Film Institute, the Natural History Museum of London, and the Rotterdam and Edinburgh International Film Festivals among others. She holds a joint appointment at the University of Colorado Boulder in the Film Studies Program & the Department of Critical Media Practices.
Erin Espelie will be at the screening to present and discuss the film.
Filmmaker Kathleen Rugh, in-person, comes to Moviate to present a collection of her lyrical 16mm films created over the last nine years. Her films find awe with views of the everyday through enchanting light, unexpected portrayals of dimension, and lens distortions that show how the camera can alter the reality of a space. There emerges a sense of wonderment with how we see the world and the imagery becomes an experience of a space rather than a straight representation.
Here’s a clip from Rugh’s latest film “East, West, and East Again”, which compares the beaches of New York City and those outside of Los Angeles. At moments the two opposing coasts are sliced together through in-camera edits and double exposures.
Kathleen Rugh is a filmmaker and photographer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her films have screened throughout the US and internationally, including the Edinburgh International Film Festival, the Images Festival, the Chicago Underground Film Festival, Antimatter [Media Art], EXiS Experimental Film Festival, and the Athens International Film and Video Festival. She has received funding for her films through the New York State Council on the Arts and teaches filmmaking at The New School in New York City.
NEWS . Thanks to a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts' and the ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes my latest film "East, West, and East Again" is ...
MIKE KUCHAR - IN PERSON SCREENING IN HARRISBURG Wednesday September 13, 2017 The Midtown Cinema (Harrisburg, PA) Admission = $5 Starts at 7pm Short Film Program of all new works with Introduction and Q&A with Mike Kuchar. Mike will be coming all the way from San Francisco to share his new work with Pennsylvania audiences.
"George and Mike Kuchar's films were my first inspiration - these were the pivotal films of my youth, bigger influences than Warhol, Kenneth Anger, even The Wizard of Oz."
- John Waters
Moviate has had the priviledge and honor to host in-person shows with the legendary filmmaker for over 10 years now. It's a rare appearance, as Mike usually only does a few shows on the east coast per year, traveling from California to share his newest works.
If you haven't seen his films, check out this doc about he and his brothers' influence on underground and independent filmmaking.
Twisted Cinema In The Tradition of Dali and Bunuel
Come join us for a very special screening of the films of Ted Knighton at The Midtown Cinema. Introduction and Q&A with Ted Knighton. Lots of fun and a rare opportunity to see Ted present his work in our community.
The most acclaimed and shocking films ever to emerge from the Philadelphia underground! Award-winning creative artist and filmmaker Ted Knighton has produced a series of extremely disturbing short films that transform the commonplace into indelible images of horror. Knighton's productions have shaken up underground filmmaking in Philadelphia for over 30 years.
"I think it's good to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. We get used to the world around us and it's easy to stop seeing how amazing, strange and fascinating it all is. Through art and film, I like to move the furniture of life around a little bit so that we see the room again."
MOVIATE PRESENTS......... THE MOON AND THE SLEDGEHAMMER (1971) One Night Only Documentary Film Screening
Come and join us for this rare opportunity to see this astonishing 1971 documentary on the big screen! We are very happy and lucky to be able to host this film in Harrisburg!
About the film:
Directed by Philip Trevelyan
The Pages live in a ramshackle house situated in six acres of woodland, which they own themselves, in the heart of the commuter-belt, 20 miles south of London. The trees cut the Pages off completely from the outside world, and isolated in their island-clearing, they let the 20th Century slowly pass them by. It is a simple life without running water, electricity or gas. Peter and Jim earn what little money the family needs by doing casual repairs to tractors and farm-machinery in the neighbourhood. Machinery is the permanent obsession of Mr Page and his sons. The wood is littered with rusty iron carcasses: parts of old engines, disembowelled car-bodies: a pile of gigantic spanners. Most spectacular are the archaic steam traction-engines which the men tinker with and drive thunderously about the woodland to no apparent purpose. The girls, too, have their special preoccupations: Nancy sits at her embroidery; Kathy tends her garden and plays comforting tunes on the harmonium in the house, or on the piano rotting away outside. As the film unfolds each member of the family spells out their personal fantasies and philosophies to the camera. For all their prodigious skills, they seem at first eccentric, quaint; their ideas tangential to our own. But in the end it emerges that they are in control of their world in a way that we can never be in control of ours.
Moviate will be showing 4 short films from the vault plus a short reel of vintage 16mm commercials! Films include an adaptation of Ray Bradbury's Science Fiction story ZERO HOUR, plus a vintage LSD scare film, and two short documentaries - one about an amusement park and another about living in NYC in the 1980's! Come out and have fun with us projecting some great entertainment on actual film!!!!
"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."
25th Annual Underground Film Festival - May 17th - 19th, 2024
DATE: Sunday October 28th 2018 @ 7pm
Drawn from a cache of personal video recordings from the past 22 years, director Steve Loveridge’s Sundance award winning MATANGI / MAYA / M.I.A. is a startlingly personal profile of the critically acclaimed artist, chronicling her remarkable journey from refugee immigrant to pop star.
