Eccentric Cinema: Overlooked Oddities and Ecstasies,
1963–82

July 8, 2009 - August 27, 2009

Chafed Elbows, July 30

Eccentric cinema thrives on pictorial surplus, the indulgent storyline, and a contempt for the customary, all resting upon the sagging shoulders of extravagant skill. This is no trash cinema, with its cheesy topics, uninvited camp, and joyful ineptitude. Instead, eccentricity might show itself as a dizzy disregard for the stuff of genre and style, or in the pursuit of ungainly ideas that consign a filmmaker to the status of outsider. Often the eccentric surfaces early in a career, before the artist has lost the exuberance of youth or succumbed to the timidity of the marketplace.

Eccentric Cinema recoups a dozen delirious films, including curios of creation by notable directors like Brian De Palma, John Boorman, George Romero, and Nicolas Roeg, and by others whose careers were more defined by difference, such as Curtis Harrington, Bill Gunn, and Robert Downey. Like a Noah’s Ark of oddities, our series has two of each: a pair of Westerns in which heroism has gone south; two postapocalyptic tales where virility prevails; dual vampiric accounts that suck, differently; a brace of psychological breakdowns involving mawkish men with issues; a duet of rock musicals that strike discord with their delivery; and a twosome of fantasies about that elusive thing called love, one with a mermaid, the other with a monomaniac. Genre meltdowns, faulty parables, self-detonating critiques: these films may not be trash cinema, but they are definitely worth recycling.

Steve Seid
Video Curator

Wednesday, July 8, 2009
7:00 p.m. Coming Apart
Milton Moses Ginsberg (U.S., 1969)

Friday, July 10, 2009
6:30 p.m. Eureka
Nicolas Roeg (U.K., 1982)

Friday, July 10, 2009
9:00 p.m. Phantom of the Paradise
Brian De Palma (U.S., 1974)

Thursday, July 16, 2009
8:45 p.m. A Boy and His Dog
L.Q. Jones (U.S., 1975)

Thursday, July 23, 2009
8:45 p.m. Night Tide
Curtis Harrington (U.S., 1963)

Saturday, July 25, 2009
8:45 p.m. The Last Movie
Dennis Hopper (U.S., 1971)

Thursday, July 30, 2009
6:30 p.m. Chafed Elbows
Robert Downey Sr. (U.S., 1967). With short Oh Dem Watermelons (Robert Nelson, U.S., 1965).

Saturday, August 1, 2009
9:00 p.m. Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels
Frank Zappa (U.S., 1971)

Thursday, August 6, 2009
6:30 p.m. Ganja & Hess
Bill Gunn (U.S., 1973)

Thursday, August 13, 2009
6:30 p.m. Zardoz
John Boorman (U.K., 1974)

Thursday, August 20, 2009
8:15 p.m. Dirty Little Billy
Stan Dragoti (U.S., 1972)

Thursday, August 27, 2009
6:30 p.m. Martin
George A. Romero (U.S., 1977)

Program notes by Steve Seid. We are grateful to the following individuals and organizations for making this series possible: Andrew Lampert, Anthology Film Archive; May Haduong and Mark Toscano, Academy Film Archive; Mary Keene and Anne Morra, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Joe Dante, Jon Davison, Robert Downey, Milton Moses Ginsberg, Dennis Hopper, David Kalat, Richard Rubinstein, and Chiz Schultz.