Wednesday, September 24 at 7:00 pm
$10 general admission, $6 students/seniors, $5 members
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dir. Brian Vincent
93 minutes
Make Me Famous is a vibrant, fast-paced portrait of New York City’s explosive 1980s Downtown art scene—where punk met paint, and the lines between art, music, and nightlife blurred. This was the world that launched Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Madonna, and Blondie—a cultural moment defined by its grit, glamour, and DIY ethos.
Amid the chaos was painter Edward Brezinski, a figure both present and peripheral, whose story offers a unique window into the era’s creative frenzy. More than a portrait of an artist, Make Me Famous captures a time and place where the dream of making it felt just within reach—and heartbreakingly out of grasp.
Rated 100% on Rotten Tomatoes
"everyone SEE this movie" — ARTFORUM
"a trove of THRILLING Interviews" — THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
"compelling, haunting, look at lost bohemia" —James Wolcott, AIRMAIL
"remarkably loving and deeply empathetic conjuring for which Vincent should be commended, the conceit of this picture, what has indeed sold it so successfully to audiences, is how its protagonist is ultimately a surrogate, a blank upon which we can project the full spectrum of desire and dread that circulates through creative ambition like the lifeblood of culture" —Carlo McCormick, ARTFORUM
"FASCINATING art-world documentary" —VILLAGE VOICE
Tuesday, October 14 at 7:00 pm
$10 general, $6 students/seniors, $5 members
To learn more about the benefits of becoming a member, please click here.
Meredith Monk — composer, performer, and interdisciplinary artist — is one of the great artistic pioneers of our time, yet her profound cultural influence is largely unrecognized. With Monk's music at its center, and featuring interviews with Björk and David Byrne, Monk in Pieces is a mosaic that mirrors the structure of Monk\'s own work, and illuminates her wildly original vocabulary of sound and imagery.
As a female artist in the male-dominated downtown arts scene of the 1960s and '70s, Monk had to fight for recognition and resources. Early reviews in The New York Times were vicious and sexist: "A disgrace to the name of dancing," wrote one critic, and "so earnestly strange in a talented little-girl way," wrote another. Yet as her celebrated contemporary, Philip Glass, says, "she, among all of us, was – and still is — the uniquely gifted one."
In the film's final chapters, Monk faces mortality. We see her warily entrust her masterpiece, ATLAS, to director Yuval Sharon and singer Joanna Lynn-Jacobs for a new production at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. For 60 years, Monk has directed and performed in all of her music theater works; now she must learn to let go. What will happen to such singular work after she is gone?