2018 PROXY FILM FEST

SORRY TO BOTHER YOU

Directed by Boots Riley, 2018 [R]

If you’re not bothered — also tickled, irked, mystified and provoked — by Sorry to Bother You, then you’ve fallen asleep on the job.

-A.O. Scott, The New York Times

In an alternate present-day version of Oakland, black telemarketer Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) discovers a magical key to professional success, which propels him into a macabre universe of "powercalling" that leads to material glory. But the upswing in Cassius' career raises serious red flags with his girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson), a performance artist and minimum-wage striver who's secretly part of a Banksy-style activist collective. As his friends and co-workers organize in protest of corporate oppression, Cassius falls under the spell of his company's cocaine-snorting CEO Steve Lift (Armie Hammer), who offers him a salary beyond his wildest dreams.

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2018 PROXY FILM FEST

DARK LIGHT: Sundance Short Films From The Midnight Program

Presented by Sundance, [R or NR]

The art of the midnight/cult film has been around as long as movies and has flourished at the Sundance Film Festival. Join us after dark to see weird visions and underworlds from Sundance's recent years of delving into the mysterious. Less about shock and more about strange characters, unseen worlds and tripping out. You may learn bad habits, or maybe it'll just be funny, you weirdo.

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2018 PROXY FILM FEST

SKATE KITCHEN

Directed by Crystal Moselle, 2018 [R]

Moselle’s movie is an empowering portrait of young women on wheels, but it proves no less surefooted when the wheels come off.  -Justin Chang, The L.A. Times

In the first narrative feature from The Wolfpack director Crystal Moselle, Camille, an introverted teenage skateboarder (newcomer Rachelle Vinberg) from Long Island, meets and befriends an all-girl, New York City-based skateboarding crew called Skate Kitchen. She falls in with the in-crowd, has a falling-out with her mother, and falls for a mysterious skateboarder guy (Jaden Smith), but a relationship with him proves to be trickier to navigate than a kickflip.

Writer/director Crystal Moselle immersed herself in the lives of the skater girls and worked closely with them, resulting in the film's authenticity, which combines poetic, atmospheric filmmaking and hypnotic skating sequences. SKATE KITCHEN precisely captures the experience of women in male-dominated spaces and tells a story of a girl who learns the importance of camaraderie and self-discovery.

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2018 PROXY FALL FILM FEST

THE KING

Directed by Eugene Jarecki, 2018 [R]

There aren't many documentaries that see Elvis Presley as the bruised soul of America through fun times and bum times.   - Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

Forty years after the death of Elvis Presley, two-time Sundance Grand Jury winner Eugene Jarecki’s new film takes the King’s 1963 Rolls-Royce on a musical road trip across America. From Memphis to New York, Las Vegas, and beyond, the journey traces the rise and fall of Elvis as a metaphor for the country he left behind. In this groundbreaking film, Jarecki paints a visionary portrait of the state of the American Dream and a penetrating look at how the hell we got here. A diverse cast of Americans, both famous and non, join the journey.

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2018 PROXY FALL FILM FEST

Blindspotting

Directed by Carlos Lopez Estrada, 2018 [R]

Racism, gentrification, police brutality, start-up culture, corporate branding, social media, the justice system … Blindspotting is eager to take them all on with style and wit, and it succeeds more often than not. – Barry Hertz, Globe and Mail

Collin (Daveed Diggs) must make it through his final three days of probation for a chance at a new beginning. He and his troublemaking childhood best friend, Miles (Rafael Casal), work as movers, and when Collin witnesses a police shooting, the two men’s friendship is tested as they grapple with identity and their changed realities in the rapidly-gentrifying neighborhood they grew up in.

Longtime friends and collaborators, Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal co-wrote and star in this timely and wildly entertaining story about friendship and the intersection of race and class set against the backdrop of Oakland. Bursting with energy, style, and humor, and infused with the spirit of rap, hip-hop, and spoken word, Blindspotting, boldly directed by Carlos López Estrada in his feature film debut, is a provocative hometown love letter that glistens with humanity.

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2018 PROXY FILM FEST

WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?

Directed by Morgan Neville, 2018 [PG-13]

In these troubled times, it’s a good feeling to see a funny, touching and vital doc that is both timely and timeless.  –Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

For over thirty years, Fred Rogers, an unassuming minister, puppeteer, writer and producer was beamed daily into homes across America. In his beloved television program, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Fred and his cast of puppets and friends spoke directly to young children about some of life’s weightiest issues, in a simple, direct fashion. There hadn’t been anything like Mr. Rogers on television before and there hasn’t been since.

In Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville (Twenty Feet from Stardom) looks back on the legacy of Fred Rogers, focusing on his radically kind ideas. While the nation changed around him, Fred Rogers stood firm in his beliefs about the importance of protecting childhood.

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2018 PROXY SPRING SERIES

BRIMSTONE & GLORY

Directed by Viktor Jakovleski, 2017 [NR]

Brimstone and Glory is community as catharsis and you can’t stop staring in stupefied astonishment.”
-Tim Grierson, Paste Magazine

The National Pyrotechnic Festival in Tultepec, Mexico is a site of festivity unlike any other in the world. In celebration of San Juan de Dios, patron saint of firework makers, conflagrant revelry engulfs the town for ten days. Artisans show off their technical virtuosity, up-and-comers create their own rowdy, lo-fi combustibles, and dozens of teams build larger-than-life paper-mâché bulls to parade into the town square, adorned with fireworks that blow up in all directions. More than three-quarters of Tultepec’s residents work in pyrotechnics, making the festival more than revelry for revelry’s sake. It is a celebration that anchors a way of life built around a generations-old, homegrown business of making fireworks by hand. For the people of Tultepec, the National Pyrotechnic Festival is an explosive celebration, unrestrained delight and real peril. Plunging headlong into the fire, Brimestone and Glory honors the spirit of Tultepec’s community and celebrates celebration itself.

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2018 PROXY SPRING SERIES

LADY BIRD

Directed by Greta Gerwig, 2017 [R]

A heartfelt coming-of-age story that perfectly captures the bittersweet transition from adolescence to dawning adulthood… – Village Voice

In Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig reveals herself to be a bold new cinematic voice with her directorial debut, excavating both the humor and pathos in the turbulent bond between a mother and her teenage daughter. Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) fights against but is exactly like her wildly loving, deeply opinionated and strong-willed mom (Laurie Metcalf), a nurse working tirelessly to keep her family afloat after Lady Bird’s father (Tracy Letts) loses his job. Set in Sacramento, California in 2002, amidst a rapidly shifting American economic landscape, Lady Bird is an affecting look at the relationships that shape us, the beliefs that define us, and the unmatched beauty of a place called home.

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2018 PROXY SPRING SERIES

THE ROAD MOVIE

Directed by Dmitrii Kalashnikov, 2018 [NR]

A “That’s Entertainment!” of vehicular horrors…a landscape of cruel fate and calamity from which it’s impossible to avert your gaze — though sometimes you may wish you had.
-Dennis Harvey, Variety

A mosaic of asphalt adventures, landscape photography, and some of the craziest stuff you’ve ever seen. Dmitrii Kalashnikov’s THE ROAD MOVIE is a stunning compilation of video footage shot exclusively via the deluge of dashboard cameras that populate Russian roads. The epitome of a you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it documentary captures a wide range of spectacles through the windshield-including a comet crashing down to Earth, an epic forest fire, and no shortage of angry motorists taking road rage to wholly new and unexpected levels-all accompanied by bemused commentary from unseen and often stoic drivers and passengers..

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2018 PROXY SPRING SERIES

THE FLORIDA PROJECT

Directed by Sean Baker, 2017 [R]

One of the most effective, honest portraits of childhood you’ll ever see, and a touching, poignant snapshot of American life in 2017. —Detroit News

The Florida Project tells the story of a precocious six-year-old and her ragtag group of friends whose summer break is filled with childhood wonder, possibility and a sense of adventure while the adults around them struggle with hard times. Set on a stretch of highway just outside the imagined utopia of Disney World, The Florida Project follows six-year-old Moonee (the outstanding Brooklynn Prince) and her rebellious mother Halley (Bria Vinaite) over the course of a single summer. The two live week to week at “The Magic Castle,” a budget motel managed by Bobby (Willem Dafoe), whose stern exterior hides a deep reservoir of kindness and compassion. Warm, winning, and gloriously alive, Sean Baker’s The Florida Project is a deeply moving and unforgettably poignant look at childhood.

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