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Film Screening:"No Picnic"
(Philip Hartman, 1987, 88 min, USA, English, B&W, DCP)
Featuring very early parts for Steve Buscemi and Luis Guzmán (not to mention a prominent turn from Richard Hell), Philip Hartman's NO PICNIC is an invaluable artifact of New York's pre-gentrification East Village. This shaggy picaresque follows down-and-out jukebox operator Macabee Cohn (played with deadpan melancholy by David Brisbin) who wanders the borough's cheap tenements, dive bars, and derelict streets in search of a mysterious woman in a striped dress.
Hartman co-owned the NoHo landmark the Great Jones Cafe, often credited with introducing Cajun cooking to downtown NYC, and a magnet for indie film and music communities for decades. He rolled his gumbo money into the production of NO PICNIC and subsequently started the beloved Two Boots Pizzeria on Avenue A to scare up enough money for post-production expenses.
"NO PICNIC premiered at the 1986 Sundance Film Festival, where Peter Hutton won the Best Cinematography prize for his gorgeously evocative black-and-white imagery, working with producer Doris Kornish, Emmy Award-winning director Mike Spiller as assistant cameraman, animator Lewis Klahr as boom operator, Christine Vachon as assistant sound editor, with assistance from, among other notables, Jacob Burckhardt and Jeff Preiss. Scored by Ned Sublette, the soundtrack features The Raunch Hands, Fela Kuti, Charles Mingus and Student Teachers." - Film Forum
"Philip Hartman's NO PICNIC doubles as a chronicle not just of a lost paradise but a forgotten era - of downtown NYC, of genuinely independent moviemaking, of an alternate version of the 'greed is good' go-go Eighties. Watching this gorgeously grainy black and white hang-out movie from 1987, fresh off an amazing restoration...is to step back into a moment before gentrification terraformed Alphabet City and priced out the bohemians." - Rolling Stone
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Sponsored by Duke Cinematic Arts.
Event URL: https://cinematicarts.duke.edu/screensociety/screenings/no-picnic-philip-hartman-1987-new-4k-restoration
View trailer:
Screen/Society screenings are free and open to the public.
Parking Info: https://artscenter.duke.edu/parking
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Event venue
Rubenstein Arts Center at Duke University, 2022 Campus Dr, Durham, NC 27708-9940, United States
Tickets
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