Zeitgeist CALENDAR
[BUY TICKETS]
The Following events will be in the Zeitgeist Theatre & lounge @ 6621 St. Claude Ave
or the St Claude Arts Park(next door at 6619 St Claude Ave (one block East of Orleans Parish in Arabi):
February 3 through 9, 2023
Opening February 3:
7:00 pm nightly
JAMES BALDWIN ABROAD: Istanbul - Paris - London
A program of three newly-restored documentary shorts about the legendary author featuring:
JAMES BALDWIN: FROM ANOTHER PLACE (Sedat Pakay, 1973, 12 min)
Set in Istanbul, the film opens with a surprisingly candid scene of Baldwin leisurely awakening in his bedroom. Sedat Pakay, a Turkish filmmaker who studied with Walker Evans, is known for his photographic portraits of famous artists and writers, Baldwin among them. Here in Istanbul, Baldwin seems relatively relaxed, walking among crowds in a public park or on the city’s streets. The film offers us a self-reflective James Baldwin, one who fearlessly examines his most private thoughts and feelings.
MEETING THE MAN: JAMES BALDWIN IN PARIS (Terence Dixon, 1971, 26 min)
Shot in Paris, a city in which Baldwin lived for nine years after leaving New York — a decision he has described “as a matter of life and death.” The early sequences find Baldwin uncooperative, even hostile to the British director and cameraman, clearly resenting their controlling role. He brings them to the Bastille, whose significance he explains: “They tore down this prison… I am trying to tear a prison down too."
BALDWIN'S N****R (Horace Ové, 1968, 46 min)
Called “the Godfather of Black British filmmaking,” documentarian Horace Ové films Baldwin at the top of his game, in good spirits, joining his friend, comedian/activist Dick Gregory, at the West Indian Student Centre in London. Baldwin speaks movingly of the historical antecedents of his life and that of other Black Americans.
COMING SOON:
Opening February 10:
7:00 pm nightly
TO LESLIE by Michael Morris
Leslie (Andrea Riseborough) is a troubled and manipulative alcoholic from West Texas who won $190,000 in a local lottery, only to squander the winnings on liquor and drugs. Six years later, Leslie is destitute, living a peripatetic life in motels and on the streets. After being kicked out of a residential motel, she reunites with her estranged twenty-year-old son, James, who allows her to live with him under the provision that she not drink. Leslie soon steals money from James's roommate, Darren, and James discovers liquor bottles under her bed, leading him to call his grandmother, Leslie's mother, Nancy (Allison Janney), for help. This star-studded indie getting major awards-buzz also features Marc Maron, Stephen Root, Matt Laurie, Owen Teague, James Landry Hebert, etc. Winner - Best Actress (Andrea Riseborough) & Best Actor (Marc Maron) - Gijon Int. Film Festival; Top 10 Independent Filmd - National Board Of Review; Best Film - Raindance Film Festival. Academy Award Nominee - Best Actress - Andrea Riseborough.
Friday, February 10 @ 8:00 pm
GOLD ROOM READING SERIES
presented by the U.N.O. Creative Writing Workshop
Saturday, February 11 from 6:00 to 9:00 pm
Olde Arabi Arts Market in the St Claude Arts Park
Opening February 17:
NO BEARS by Jafar Panahi
One of the world’s great cinematic artists, Jafar Panahi has been carefully crafting self-reflexive works about artistic, personal, and political freedom for the past three decades, despite his oppression at the hands of the Iranian government. Now, as the international film community vehemently denounces his summer 2022 arrest and continued imprisonment for his vocal support of a fellow artist’s independence, Panahi has gifted us all with a new virtuosic sleight-of-hand. In NO BEARS, as in many of his recent titles, Panahi plays a fictionalized version of himself, in this case relocated to a rural border town to remotely direct a new film in nearby Turkey - the story of which comes to sharply mirror disturbing events that begin to occur around him. As he struggles to complete his film, Panahi finds himself thrust in the middle of a local scandal, confronting the opposing pulls of tradition and progress, city and country, belief and evidence, and the universal desire to reject oppression. Starring: Jafar Panahi, Naser Hashemi, Vahid Mobaseri, Bakhtiar Panjei, Mina Kavani, Narjes Delaram, Reza Heydari, Javad Siyahi.
Saturday, February 25 @ 7:00 pm
DOWN CLAIBORNE presented by viceting director MOIRA TIERNEY (Dublin, Ireland) and BIG CHIEF KEVIN GOODMAN (Flaming Arrows Tribe of the Mardi Gras Indians)
One of the most striking aspects of New Orleans' topography is a highway that cuts right through the city, slicing through, among others, the historic 7th ward. Built in 1968, it dismantled one of the most active Black neighborhoods, which still operates under the shadows of the "freeway". The local community reclaims their neighborhood using a variety of tactics: mural painting, represented by the frescoes painted onto the concrete pillars supporting the highway overpass; collective masking traditions, as evidenced by the Mardi Gras Indians, in the neighborhoods surrounding the highway. These two elements of local culture share an insistence on the importance of history, highlighting its role in the perpetuation of the culture and in the ongoing resistance to its displacement. Their content often overlaps (the highway frescoes reference the Mardi Gras Indians as well as the Maroon tradition of runaway slaves and Native Americans forming independent communities) and both operate within the post-colonial "profession of hybridization", as defined by Haitian poet René Depestre. The film zooms in on the Mississippi and down into the Treme, slides under the highway overpass and moves down Claiborne Avenue from pillar to pillar, building to a celebratory and cathartic climax with the Comanche Hunter and Hard Head Hunter tribes of the Mardi Gras Indians meeting in ceremonial battle on Mardi Gras Day. With a reception sponsored by the Irish Consulate Houston.
Sunday, February 26 @ 7:00 pm in the St Claude Arts Park
BIG CHIEF KEVIN GOODMAN AND THE FLAMING ARROWS
Thursday, March 9 @ 6:00 pm
GODZILLA
Friday, March 10 @ 8:00 pm
GOLD ROOM READING SERIES
presented by the U.N.O. Creative Writing Workshop
Friday, April 14 @ 8:00 pm
GOLD ROOM READING SERIES
presented by the U.N.O. Creative Writing Workshop
Thursday, March 9 @ 6:00 pm
GODZILLA (1954 by Ishiro Honda)
presented by the JAPAN SOCIETY OF NEW ORLEANS
Godzilla (a.k.a. Gojira) is the roaring granddaddy of all monster movies. It’s also a remarkably humane and melancholy drama, made in Japan at a time when the country was reeling from nuclear attack and H-bomb testing in the Pacific. Its rampaging radioactive beast, the poignant embodiment of an entire population’s fears, became a beloved international icon of destruction, spawning almost thirty sequels.
Friday, May 12 @ 8:00 pm
GOLD ROOM READING SERIES
presented by the U.N.O. Creative Writing Workshop
__________________________________________________________________________________________
6621 St. Claude Ave. Arabi, LA 70032 www.zeitgeistnola.org (504) 352-1150
Schedule is subject to change as films are held over – please check the website for updates nightly.
Zeitgeist is a non-profit, artist run media arts center that celebrated its 31st anniversary this November.
Come join us!
The Following events will be in the Zeitgeist Theatre & lounge @ 6621 St. Claude Ave
or the St Claude Arts Park(next door at 6619 St Claude Ave (one block East of Orleans Parish in Arabi):
February 3 through 9, 2023
Opening February 3:
7:00 pm nightly
JAMES BALDWIN ABROAD: Istanbul - Paris - London
A program of three newly-restored documentary shorts about the legendary author featuring:
JAMES BALDWIN: FROM ANOTHER PLACE (Sedat Pakay, 1973, 12 min)
Set in Istanbul, the film opens with a surprisingly candid scene of Baldwin leisurely awakening in his bedroom. Sedat Pakay, a Turkish filmmaker who studied with Walker Evans, is known for his photographic portraits of famous artists and writers, Baldwin among them. Here in Istanbul, Baldwin seems relatively relaxed, walking among crowds in a public park or on the city’s streets. The film offers us a self-reflective James Baldwin, one who fearlessly examines his most private thoughts and feelings.
MEETING THE MAN: JAMES BALDWIN IN PARIS (Terence Dixon, 1971, 26 min)
Shot in Paris, a city in which Baldwin lived for nine years after leaving New York — a decision he has described “as a matter of life and death.” The early sequences find Baldwin uncooperative, even hostile to the British director and cameraman, clearly resenting their controlling role. He brings them to the Bastille, whose significance he explains: “They tore down this prison… I am trying to tear a prison down too."
BALDWIN'S N****R (Horace Ové, 1968, 46 min)
Called “the Godfather of Black British filmmaking,” documentarian Horace Ové films Baldwin at the top of his game, in good spirits, joining his friend, comedian/activist Dick Gregory, at the West Indian Student Centre in London. Baldwin speaks movingly of the historical antecedents of his life and that of other Black Americans.
COMING SOON:
Opening February 10:
7:00 pm nightly
TO LESLIE by Michael Morris
Leslie (Andrea Riseborough) is a troubled and manipulative alcoholic from West Texas who won $190,000 in a local lottery, only to squander the winnings on liquor and drugs. Six years later, Leslie is destitute, living a peripatetic life in motels and on the streets. After being kicked out of a residential motel, she reunites with her estranged twenty-year-old son, James, who allows her to live with him under the provision that she not drink. Leslie soon steals money from James's roommate, Darren, and James discovers liquor bottles under her bed, leading him to call his grandmother, Leslie's mother, Nancy (Allison Janney), for help. This star-studded indie getting major awards-buzz also features Marc Maron, Stephen Root, Matt Laurie, Owen Teague, James Landry Hebert, etc. Winner - Best Actress (Andrea Riseborough) & Best Actor (Marc Maron) - Gijon Int. Film Festival; Top 10 Independent Filmd - National Board Of Review; Best Film - Raindance Film Festival. Academy Award Nominee - Best Actress - Andrea Riseborough.
Friday, February 10 @ 8:00 pm
GOLD ROOM READING SERIES
presented by the U.N.O. Creative Writing Workshop
Saturday, February 11 from 6:00 to 9:00 pm
Olde Arabi Arts Market in the St Claude Arts Park
Opening February 17:
NO BEARS by Jafar Panahi
One of the world’s great cinematic artists, Jafar Panahi has been carefully crafting self-reflexive works about artistic, personal, and political freedom for the past three decades, despite his oppression at the hands of the Iranian government. Now, as the international film community vehemently denounces his summer 2022 arrest and continued imprisonment for his vocal support of a fellow artist’s independence, Panahi has gifted us all with a new virtuosic sleight-of-hand. In NO BEARS, as in many of his recent titles, Panahi plays a fictionalized version of himself, in this case relocated to a rural border town to remotely direct a new film in nearby Turkey - the story of which comes to sharply mirror disturbing events that begin to occur around him. As he struggles to complete his film, Panahi finds himself thrust in the middle of a local scandal, confronting the opposing pulls of tradition and progress, city and country, belief and evidence, and the universal desire to reject oppression. Starring: Jafar Panahi, Naser Hashemi, Vahid Mobaseri, Bakhtiar Panjei, Mina Kavani, Narjes Delaram, Reza Heydari, Javad Siyahi.
Saturday, February 25 @ 7:00 pm
DOWN CLAIBORNE presented by viceting director MOIRA TIERNEY (Dublin, Ireland) and BIG CHIEF KEVIN GOODMAN (Flaming Arrows Tribe of the Mardi Gras Indians)
One of the most striking aspects of New Orleans' topography is a highway that cuts right through the city, slicing through, among others, the historic 7th ward. Built in 1968, it dismantled one of the most active Black neighborhoods, which still operates under the shadows of the "freeway". The local community reclaims their neighborhood using a variety of tactics: mural painting, represented by the frescoes painted onto the concrete pillars supporting the highway overpass; collective masking traditions, as evidenced by the Mardi Gras Indians, in the neighborhoods surrounding the highway. These two elements of local culture share an insistence on the importance of history, highlighting its role in the perpetuation of the culture and in the ongoing resistance to its displacement. Their content often overlaps (the highway frescoes reference the Mardi Gras Indians as well as the Maroon tradition of runaway slaves and Native Americans forming independent communities) and both operate within the post-colonial "profession of hybridization", as defined by Haitian poet René Depestre. The film zooms in on the Mississippi and down into the Treme, slides under the highway overpass and moves down Claiborne Avenue from pillar to pillar, building to a celebratory and cathartic climax with the Comanche Hunter and Hard Head Hunter tribes of the Mardi Gras Indians meeting in ceremonial battle on Mardi Gras Day. With a reception sponsored by the Irish Consulate Houston.
Sunday, February 26 @ 7:00 pm in the St Claude Arts Park
BIG CHIEF KEVIN GOODMAN AND THE FLAMING ARROWS
Thursday, March 9 @ 6:00 pm
GODZILLA
Friday, March 10 @ 8:00 pm
GOLD ROOM READING SERIES
presented by the U.N.O. Creative Writing Workshop
Friday, April 14 @ 8:00 pm
GOLD ROOM READING SERIES
presented by the U.N.O. Creative Writing Workshop
Thursday, March 9 @ 6:00 pm
GODZILLA (1954 by Ishiro Honda)
presented by the JAPAN SOCIETY OF NEW ORLEANS
Godzilla (a.k.a. Gojira) is the roaring granddaddy of all monster movies. It’s also a remarkably humane and melancholy drama, made in Japan at a time when the country was reeling from nuclear attack and H-bomb testing in the Pacific. Its rampaging radioactive beast, the poignant embodiment of an entire population’s fears, became a beloved international icon of destruction, spawning almost thirty sequels.
Friday, May 12 @ 8:00 pm
GOLD ROOM READING SERIES
presented by the U.N.O. Creative Writing Workshop
__________________________________________________________________________________________
6621 St. Claude Ave. Arabi, LA 70032 www.zeitgeistnola.org (504) 352-1150
Schedule is subject to change as films are held over – please check the website for updates nightly.
Zeitgeist is a non-profit, artist run media arts center that celebrated its 31st anniversary this November.
Come join us!