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When I was in my early 20s I worked at a video store called Limelight - the kind of place that had every Takashi Miike movie ever (including his children’s movies) but kept their lights on by stocking 5 copies of Pride and Prejudice. After that, I was lucky enough to get a K********a invite which allowed me to torrent deep cuts by Olivier Assayas, and prized .mp4s of Cameron Jamie’s movies. Maybe I just didn’t like leaving the house but I don’t think that 2005 - 2015 were great years to be going to the theater anyway. When I moved back to Vancouver I didn’t know many people so my sister suggested I volunteer at The Cinematheque, and it’s become one of my favorite places in the city. It’s basically got a lot of the same programming as The Metrograph minus a lot of the annoying pretensions of arthouse theaters that are… annoying. The Cinematheque even went through a redesign and it looks even better than it did before which never happens. Volunteers get to see whatever for free so sometimes I find myself there 4 times a week. Some of the most memorable screenings include Maborosi, The White Sheik, Even Dwarves Started Small, Caught By Night, Gun Crazy, and Out Of The Blue.
Dec 21, 2021
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Is this currently my favorite movie theater in NYC because they premiered my new film and hosted a complete retrospective of my work? Duh! But it’s deeper than that. Two years ago I was convinced the arthouse theatrical experience was doomed and that the future was ramshackle cine-clubs for a handful of scorched psychos. Turns out I was wrong. Things are back to normal and on any given night now there’s a surplus of amazing programming all across the city again. The biggest plot twist, though, was the rise of this posh, art deco, single screen theater beneath a fancy hotel in the heart of Tribeca as the new epicenter for contemporary indie cinema. While other venues floundered at first, the Roxy reopened with a bang, finally giving a theatrical run to Eugene Kotlyarenko’s Spree (which never got a proper theatrical release due to covid). Next thing I knew they gave Project Space 13 a run there too, despite not having played any festivals or any of that shit… and it was selling out! They’re doing the same for Betsey Brown’s Actors right now, which keeps getting extended. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a theater tap in this hard. Recent events with Abel Ferrara, the Ion Pack, Alex Ross Perry, and more have been unforgettable. Seeing ASAP Rocky hop on stage to freestyle with Abel after the Siberia premiere is one of my all time fondest memories there. It’s tight being able to see new films like The Scary of Sixty-First, Zola, or El Planeta balanced perfectly with rep fare like Screen Slate’s Bad Habits nun series and Sean Price Williams and Nick Pinkerton’s monthly ‘City Dudes.’ Head programmer Illyse Singer and her cohort Mitchell are heroes. Bonus points for being walking distance to the best new record store in town, Paradise of Replica.
Apr 7, 2022
It reminds me of how mubi used to be, they select one rare movie (documentaries, shorts, features new and old) per week with an essay about it. It's great if you want to build a habit of watching more movies, especially those that aren't widely known. And the best part: it's free!
Jan 13, 2025
at a local DIY cinema. An elderly man who volunteers there always gives the audience a quick intro to the film with the DVD case in his hand
The tickets are pay-what-you-can and the screen, sound, and programming are all great
I went with my friend with whom I usually hate-watch really bad 2010s dramas so it was nice to see a film that we actually love together
Dec 10, 2024
Top Recs from @asher-penn
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RIP to this absolute GOAT of a sobriety meme account. I think I stopped drinking around the time that sobriety memes were in their second wave - 12-step inside jokes that were ideally harrowing, embarrassing, and hopeful in their shared hopelessness - and while Brutal Recovery, Fucking Sober, and Dumbsoberbitch are great, no account could perform these lacerations with the expertise of a surgeon as @facebooksober. Like an elephant balancing itself on a dime, facebook sober managed to capture the divine paradox’s inherent to recovery with such aesthetic grace and poetry I was 100% convinced that the person behind the account was a hot girl (it was a dude, lol). Whatever. Hot Newcomers Are Forever.
Dec 21, 2021
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From what I can tell, artist Jeffrey Scudder is the only post-internet artist to figure out Tik-Tok, with his Whistelgraph project recently hitting 2 Million followers. Whistlegraphs are tiny songs that are performed through drawing, where the sonic and visual gestures synch up poetically - kind of like a haiku that you animate in real-time - that for the past two years have been performed in videos by Scudder alongside artists Camille Klein and Alex Freundlich. Pioneers in their own experimental artform, Whistlegraph seems to be channeling a lot of things at the same time - If I were to free-associate I’d say it feels spiritually connected to Brendan Fowler and Odwalla88 and Tori Kudo, but also Josh Smith and David O’Reilly and Susan Cianciolo - not that any of their devoted fans would know or care about that stuff. Their audience is predominantly between the ages of 8-17, and the most comprehensive interview with Whistlegraph to date was done by a 13-year-old superfan named Perry. Watching Perry perform “Butterfly Cosplayer” with glee makes me wonder if the current iteration of Whistlegraph is just the beginning and that the most exciting manifestations of this art form will be found in generations to come.
Dec 21, 2021
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When I was in art school I studied photo and found it really frustrating that the most successful photographers had all chosen a camera for themselves that they worked with almost all the time: for Ryan McGinley & Terry Richardson it was the Yashika T4, for Juergen Teller it was the Contax G2, Wolfgang Tillmans used a Leica with a 35mm lens. Something about this felt disingenuous and try as I might I could never find my version of that thing. It hasn’t been since I abandoned and rediscovered photography that I found that my first point-and-shoot digital camera - the 2005 Canon Powershot G7 - is mine. I adore this freaking thing and shoot all my portraits with it. You can get them usually for $50 on eBay, the flash is powerful, and it has a fantastic zoom. There’s also a really nice video feature that can handle low light and somehow translates colors in a way that feels “straight from the tube” - I’ve already shot a short film on it and want to make more videos with it soon.
Dec 21, 2021