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How now, what news: the Criterion Channel’s July lineup is here. Eight pop renditions of Shakespeare are on the docket: from movies you forgot were inspired by the Bard (Abel Ferrara’s China Girl) to ones you’d wish to forget altogether (Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing), with maybe my single favorite interpretation (Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet) alongside Paul Mazursky, Gus Van Sant, Baz Luhrmann, Derek Jarman, and (of course) Kenneth Branagh. A neonoir collection arrives four months ahead of Noirvember: two Ellroy adaptations, two from De Palma that are not his neonoir Ellroy adaptation, two from the Coen brothers (i.e. the chance to see a DVD-stranded The Man Who Wasn’t There in HD), and––finally––a Michael Winner picture given Criterion’s seal of approval.

Columbia screwballs run between classics to lesser-seens while Nicolas Roeg and Heisei-era Godzilla face off. A Times Square collection brings The Gods of Times Square,...

The very impressive lineup for the 5th annual Final Girls Berlin Film Festival 2020 has been announced, and it starts off today's Horror Highlights. Our readers can check out the list after this brief introduction. Also in today's Horror Highlights: Kheireddine El-Helou's short film Twinkle (which premiered on Alter) and a look at the trailer for Vahagn Karapetyan's horror web series Wicca Book.

Final Girls Berlin Film Festival 2020 Lineup Announced: "The fifth edition of Final Girls Berlin Film Festival will take place between February 6 - 9, 2020 at City Kino Wedding continuing to raise the bar by showcasing horror written directed, and/or produced by women and non-binary filmmakers.

Festival co-director Eli Lewy calls this year's festival edition the "most expansive and international yet, presenting a wide array of films by visionary filmmakers that represent the diversity and originality that can be found in the current horror landscape." The exciting program...

The fifth annual Final Girls Berlin Film Festival is coming up a month from now. The festival's purpose is to put horror films written directed, and/or produced by women and non-binary filmmakers in the spotlight. They have assembled another terrific lineup of projects including Swallow, Hail Satan?, Rock Paper Scissors and a double bill of 80s slasher Slumber Party Massacre and Sarah Jacobson's I Was A Teenage Serial Killer.    The fifth edition of Final Girls Berlin Film Festival will take place between February 6 - 9, 2020 at City Kino Wedding continuing to raise the bar by showcasing horror written directed, and/or produced by women and non-binary filmmakers.    Festival co-director Eli Lewy calls this year's festival edition the "most expansive and international yet, presenting...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Bill Murray in Nothing Lost Forever Long-unavailable Bill Murray science-fiction comedy Nothing Lost Forever will be among the films screening when Matchbox Cineclub's Weird Weekend cult film festival returns to Glasgow from August 31 to September 1.

The three-day showcase at he Centre for Contemporary Arts will also feature Tilda Swinton taking on a quadruple role in Teknolust, plus a 30th anniversary screening for the workprint cut of Joe Dante's The 'Burbs, with Dante joining the audience via Skype for a post-screening Q&a.

Other films in the line-up include, 2K restorations of I Was A Teenage Serial Killer and Mary Jane’s Not A Virgin Anymore, directed by Sarah Jacobson, along with Mike Paseornek's Vibrations and Ulrike Ottinger's Freak Orlando.

The festival will also screen the UK premiere of Agfa and Bleeding Skull’s The Neon Slime Mixtape. Plus there will be a big-screen outing for Anti-Clock, which directed...

The 21st annual Boston Underground Film Festival will take place from March 20th–24th. Buff's lineup for this year aims to provide festival-goers with five days of extraordinary films, including Hail Satan?, The Unthinkable, Canary, and many more. Also in today's Horror Highlights: a trailer and poster for both Blood Craft and Division 19.

Boston Underground Film Festival Lineup Revealed: "New England cinephiles! Spring festival season kicks off in two weeks when the 21st annual Boston Underground Film Festival returns to Harvard Square, bringing with it a five-day film frenzy to the Brattle Theatre and Harvard Film Archive from March 20th through the 24th. This year’s program includes a fierce and fresh collection of transgressive, unholy, and unthinkable underground cinema, along with a few outsider-odyssic festival favorites from near and far (in space and time)!

Buff marks the occasion of its decadent and debaucherous 2-1 with the number...

If one wants to experience the best independent cinema the year has to offer this summer, one of your best bets is the well-curated line-up at Brooklyn’s BAMcinémaFest. They’ve now unveiled this year’s slate for the festival running from June 14-25, including some of of my favorite films of the year thus far (A Ghost Story, Golden Exits, Columbus, Marjorie Prime, and Landline) as well as highly-anticipated others (the SXSW hit Gemini and Stephen Cone‘s Princess Cyd come to mind).

“I’m incredibly proud of the program our team has put together,” says Gina Duncan, Associate Vice President, Cinema. “From the endearing comedy The Big Sick to the micro-budget Princess Cyd and Lemon, the audacious first feature from Janicza Bravo, the line-up truly reflects the breadth of American independent cinema today. Other highlights include the world premiere of Jim McKay’s, En el Séptimo Día an...

The late Sarah Jacobson (she died of cancer in 2004 at age 32 and was, in the interest of full disclosure, a friend of mine), an underground filmmaker who championed a Diy ethic -- writing, directing, producing and self-distributing her work -- was best known for her 1997 Sundance Film Festival debut, Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore. It was a profane teen sex comedy about a high school girl determined to understand the mechanics of female sexual pleasure by way of trial and error. It was funny and daring, as rough and cheaply made as a film could be and, most importantly, didn't back down from its subject. But that was then. Maggie Carey's The To Do List, arriving more than 15 allegedly progressive years later, does nothing but back down. Brandy (Aubrey Plaza) is a...

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The mighty and all-powerful Chicago Underground Film Festival has done the absolute unthinkable: Reached their 20th year of operation! How many underground festivals have accomplished that feat? None, until now! Well, “now” being March 6-10 at the fest’s new location: The Logan Theatre.

Obviously, there are a lot of people who have worked with the fest over the years to help make it last for exactly two fantastic decades, but, truly, there is one special person who has to be specially lauded for his tireless dedication to the advancement of underground film and its makers. Especially because Cuff hasn’t just been around for 20 years: It’s been fucking awesome for 20 years.

That person, of course, is Artistic Director Bryan Wendorf, who has been with the fest for the very first edition to it’s most recent, mind-blowing one. Year after year, Wendorf has guided Cuff into defining, challenging,...

Heading into its 18th year in 2011, the Chicago Underground Film Festival is the longest-running underground film festival in the world. It used to be tied with the New York Underground Film Festival — both were started in 1994 — until Nyuff closed up shop in 2008.

In 1994, the Internet wasn’t the big promotional tool it is today so neither Nyuff nor Cuff that year had a website; or, if they did, those pages have since vanished off the web. So, details about what these fests screened in their first years have been sketchy. Well, until now for Cuff.

I’m not sure how I stumbled upon it, but I recently discovered that the alternative newsweekly the Chicago Reader had posted up the entire, full lineup of the first annual Chicago Underground Film Festival.

So, I copied that info and reformatted it into the style of Bad Lit’s traditional film festival lineups, which...

In the ’90s, Sarah Jacobson was a rising indie filmmaker. Beginning with her half-hour short film I Was A Teenage Serial Killer in 1993, she garnered enough underground critical success to make her feature debut, Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore, a coming-of-age tale about a teenage girl’s loss of virginity and her friends’ experiences with their first times. Jacobson was set to move on to bigger films, but she sadly passed away from endometrial cancer at age 32 in 2004. To carry on her life’s work and support for fellow filmmakers, Jacobson’s mother and film producer Ruth Jacobson and filmmaker Sam Green (The Weather Underground) established the Sarah Jacobson Film Grant in 2004, supporting young female filmmakers whose voices reflect Jacobson’s D.I.Y. tenacity, outsider creativity, and awareness of social issues regarding women today.

This year the organization plans to give out two grants supporting film projects in any…...

Before there was Donna Deitch (Desert Hearts) and Cheryl Dunye (Watermelon Woman) there was Barbara Hammer. In 1974, while attending school in UCLA, the young Barbara met a group of women and realized she was both a lesbian and a feminist, something that would influence not only Barbara herself, but generations of women — whether they realize it or not.

1974 is when Barbara put the first lesbian sex scene on film. It was a short, called Dyketatics, and shot close-up in all black and white. It was real sex between two women (Hammer and a friend) and it was controversial, of course. But it helped Barbara realized that capturing lesbian life on screen was part of her ideal life, and she wouldn't stop using her camera and her sexuality to infiltrate the worlds of art and film. Now, she's giving herself to the world of publishing with her new book, Hammer! Making...

Feb. 15

8:00 p.m.

Glasslands Gallery

289 Kent Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11211

Hosted by: Sarah Jacobson Film Grant

This special event honoring the late, great Sarah Jacobson is both a celebration of her pioneering work as a Diy filmmaker and a fundraiser for the Sarah Jacobson Film Grant, which awards money to independent women filmmakers.

There will be screenings of some of Sarah’s early short films, plus samples from winning filmmakers who were awarded the grant in previous years. There will also be short video tributes from Sarah’s fans and friends, such as Kathleen Hanna, Allison Anders, Tamra Davis, Michelle Handelman, George Kuchar, Sam Green, and Craig Baldwin. Lastly, Barbara Hammer and Sarah’s mother Ruth will introduce a screening of Sarah’s punk classic Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore.

Sarah Jacobson was a tireless advocate of Diy filmmaking, having produced, directed and self-distributed two feature films, I...