30 May Philadelphia Monthly Arts Round-Up: June 2023
BY ARTA BARZANJI
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If in the winter, movie theaters can offer us a shelter from the cold, the cool darkness of the movies can also serve as an escape from the hot and humid summer days. With several Philadelphia film festivals coming up and the return of cinéSPEAK’s Under the Stars programming series, it looks like Philadelphia film fans should expect a hot start to the 2023 summer.
Highlights of this month include the cinéSPEAK screenings of Hung Up On A Dream, Little Richard: I Am Everything, and Black Orpheus in Clark Park; a new restoration of Werckmeister Harmonies at Lightbox; and screenings of Heat and The Rules of the Game at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute. It’s also film festival season this month with the Philadelphia Latino Film Festival, Hot Bits Film Festival, and Big Picture Film Festival in full swing.
May 28 – July 9, 2023
Philadelphia Latino Film Festival
The Philadelphia Latino Film Festival is in its 12th season and has become the Greater Philadelphia region’s only festival showcasing the extraordinary and innovative work of emerging and established Latine/x/a/o filmmakers. Virtual screenings and venues located across the city–check their website for more details.
Cost: Individual screening tickets and festival passes priced from $0-$100
Friday, June 2, 2023 at 7 PM
cinéSPEAK Under the Stars: Hung Up On A Dream
The Philadelphia premiere of this music documentary about the British rock band The Zombies is sure to have Philly rock ‘n’ roll fans excited. Working through the complicated legacy of the band, the film also sheds light on the music and cultural scene of the 1960s at large.
Cost: Free
The Bowl at Clark Park — 4300 Chester Ave Philadelphia, PA 19104 United States
June 6-14, 2023
Hot Bits Film Festival
This queer film festival will include a unique lineup of short erotic films plus live performances, sex-positive vendors, a match-making cupid, elder honoring, trauma-informed chill space with support folks, networking happy hours, and afterparties for connecting on the dance floor.
Cost: Individual screening tickets and festival passes priced from $0-$40
Icebox Project Space — 1400 North American Street Philadelphia, PA 19122
Friday, June 9, 2023 at 7 PM
cinéSPEAK Under the Stars: Black Orpheus
The unlikely marriage of Greek mythology and Brazilian carnival music in Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus has produced a film brimming with formal and emotional exuberance, where the colors pop as much as the music rocks. But while the joyous nature of this Cannes Palme d’Or winner has captured the imagination of audiences for decades, questions over the film’s colonialist gaze (Black Orpheus is a French production, by a white director) over the black slums of Brazil continue to be the subject of debate.
Cost: Free
The Bowl at Clark Park — 4300 Chester Ave Philadelphia, PA 19104 United States
Saturday, June 10, 2023 at 7 PM
Werckmeister Harmonies
Another new restoration of a Béla Tarr film (after the screening of Satantango in March), Werckmeister Harmonies is a bleak mediation on humanity, through a glimpse at the mundane yet extraordinary small Hungarian village. Philly cinephiles should count themselves lucky to have the chance to watch the Hungarian maestro’s works on the big screen, as it wasn’t too long ago that such occasions would be very hard to come by. The patient pacing of Tarr’s films, plus the visual magnificence of his high contrast black and white makes them essential big-screen viewings, and testaments to the importance of experiencing films in the theater.
Cost: $10 General Admission, $8 Students/Seniors, Free for Members/UArts Students/UArts Faculty & Staff
Lightbox Film Center — 401 South Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147
Monday, June 12, 2023 at 7 PM
The Rules of the Game
Consistently selected as one of the greatest films of all time in polls by critics and filmmakers alike, one could argue that the sublimity of Jean Renoir’s independently produced masterpiece
has never been surpassed in the 80 years or so since it first premiered. A template for ensemble movies, The Rules of the Game follows a colorful cast of bourgeois characters as they spend a weekend at a marquis’ country house. Beneath their love games, hunting trips, and theater performances, Renoir subtly depicts the class relations and questions of morality that were haunting French society at the time.
Cost: $13.50 General Admission, $8 BMFI Members, $11 Seniors/Students, $9 Children
Bryn Mawr Film Institute — 824 W. Lancaster Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA
Thursday, June 15, 2023 at 7 PM
Producers’ Forum With Stanley Nelson: Attica
Join the award-winning director and producer Stanley Nelson for a screening of his documentary about the infamous Attica correctional facility. On the 50th anniversary of the Attica uprising, the biggest prison rebellion in American history, Nelson and co-director Traci A. Curry shed much-needed light on an often misrepresented part of contemporary American history.
Cost: $7.50 General Admission, $5 Students/Seniors, $4 Scribe Members
Scribe Video Center — 3908 Lancaster Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19104
Friday, June 16, 2023 at 7 PM
cinéSPEAK Under the Stars: Little Richard: I Am Everything
Another music documentary, Little Richard: I Am Everything looks at the oft-forgotten black and queer origins of the genre. Through archival footage and new interviews, the documentary attempts to analyze the complex and important legacy of the legendary Richard Penniman.
Cost: Free
The Bowl at Clark Park — 4300 Chester Ave Philadelphia, PA 19104 United States
Saturday, June 17, 2023 at 1:15 PM
Heat
A coming together of a number of creative geniuses, 1995’s Heat was the collaboration of director Micheal Mann, composer Brian Eno, cinematographer Dante Spinotti, and screen legends Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, all at or near their creative peaks. The film has often been praised for its careful attention to detail in how it depicts the meticulous processes of its characters. But it also contains Mann’s specific brand of romanticism, which is one of the most touching and genuine of its kind in all American genre cinema.
Cost: $13.50 General Admission, $8 BMFI Members, $11 Seniors/Students, $9 Children
Bryn Mawr Film Institute — 824 W. Lancaster Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA
Thursday, June 22, 2023 at 6 PM
Big Picture Film Festival
Big Picture Film Festival features short films by young aspiring filmmakers (ages 12-24) from across Philadelphia. Produced by the Big Picture Alliance, this annual screening event is created by and for Philly youth as a platform to uplift & amplify marginalized voices and build creative communities.
Cost: Free
One Art Community Center — 1431-39 North 52nd Street Philadelphia, PA 19131
Thursday, June 22, 2023 at 7 PM
Archival Shorts from the ReelBlack Collection
ReelBlack, an organization dedicated to educating, enlightening, entertaining, and empowering people through Black film, joins forces with Scribe Video Center to bring a selection of rarely seen historical shorts and excerpts. The titles include Movies of Local People (excerpt) (1941) , The Secret of Selling the Negro (1954), and The Budweiser Malt Liquor Unlimited (1972).
Cost: $7.50 General Admission, $5 Students/Seniors, $4 Scribe Members
Scribe Video Center — 3908 Lancaster Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19104
MORE EVENTS:
Friday, June 9, 2023 at 7 PM
Cost: $10 General Admission, $8 Students/Seniors, Free for Members/UArts Students/UArts Faculty & Staff
Lightbox Film Center — 401 South Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147
Friday, June 9, 2023 at 8 PM
Cost: $0-$20
The Rotunda — 4014 Walnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19104 United States
Saturday, June 10, 2023 at 1:15 PM
Cost: $13.50 General Admission, $8 BMFI Members, $11 Seniors/Students, $9 Children
Bryn Mawr Film Institute — 824 W. Lancaster Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA
Thursday, June 15, 2023 at 6 PM
PAAFF Film Club – Lucky Grandma
Cost: Free
Virtual
Thursday, June 15, 2023 at 7:15 PM
Cost: $13.50 General Admission, $8 BMFI Members, $11 Seniors/Students, $9 Children
Bryn Mawr Film Institute — 824 W. Lancaster Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA
June 15 & 29, 2023 at 6:30 PM
Decentralized Archivist Communities
Cost: Free
Virtual
Friday, June 16, 2023 at 8 PM
Cost: 0-$20
The Rotunda — 4014 Walnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19104 United States
*Featured Image: Image from 2019 Hot Bits Film Festival. Image credit: Kaltoum Alibrahimi.
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Arta Barzanji is an Iranian cinephile, writer, filmmaker, and a current MFA candidate in Film and Media Arts at Temple University. His work, encompassing experimental, narrative, and documentary modes, deals directly with the cinema itself, exploring the relationship between the viewer and the screen while engaging with the works of filmmakers as diverse as Stan Brakhage, Orson Welles, Kamran Shirdel, and Malcolm Le Grice. Arta was a 2022 participant of the Young Critics Workshop, and his critical writings and translations have appeared both in Farsi and English.
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