BY KAREN BOSSICK
Chef, adventurer and provocateur Anthony Bourdain….the Summer of Soul…and Alvin Ailey—the trailblazing pioneer who found salvation through dance—these are among the subjects destined to enchant moviegoers at the Magic Lantern’s 32nd Fall Film Festival.
The festival, curated by cinema owner Rick Kessler and his staff, starts Friday, Sept. 17 and runs for three weeks.
Sept. 17-23:
“Road Runner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain offers an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at how an anonymous chef became a world-renowned cultural icon.
“Summer of Soul” offers never-before-seen footage of a music festival that took place a hundred miles away from Woodstock. More than 300,000 people attended the Harlem Cultural Festival the summer of 1969, but the footage of that concert series sat in a basement for 50 years.
“Zola” is based on a viral twitter thread and the Rolling Stone article “Zola Tells All: The Real Story Behind the Greatest Stripper Saga Ever Tweeted.” The dark crime comedy starts as a weekend of partying that rapidly transforms into a wild, see-it-to-believe-it tale.
“Wolfwalkers,” the Oscar Nominee for Best Animated Feature, has been widely praised as the best animated feature of the year. Kessler promises that kids will be enchanted and adults, enraptured.
“Ailey” traces the contours of the brilliant and enigmatic Alvin Ailey whose search for the truth in movement resulted in enduring choreography that centers on the Black American experience with unparalleled beauty.
Sept. 24-30:
“The Loneliest Whale: The Search of 52” embarks on a cinematic quest to find the ’52 Hertz Whale, which scientists believe has spent its entire life in solitude calling out at a frequency that is different from any other whale. The film explores what the whale’s lonely plight can teach us—not just about our changing relationship to the oceans, but to each other.
“The Sparks Brothers” takes viewers on a musical odyssey through five weird, wonderful decades with a rock band that has been successful, underrated, hugely influential and criminally overlooked all at the same time.
“Pig” is the story of a truffle hunter played by Oscar winning Best Actor Nicholas Cage who lives alone in the Oregonian wilderness and must return to his past in Portland in search of his beloved foraging pig after she is kidnapped. It piggybacks on “The Truffle Hunters,” which was one of the Magic Lantern Cinemas’ most popular films.
Oct. 1-7:
“On Broadway” is hands-down the best documentary about Broadway and the commercial aspect of that industry, according to Kessler. The footage of the gritty and crime infested 42nd Street and Times Square area during the late 60s-70s before the cleanup of the 1990s is insane, he adds. Covering the late 60s to the present, you see how NYC and Broadway both changed together and continue to do so.”
Godspeed, Los Polacos!“ tells the story of five university students on the cusp of adulthood who pull the strings of the Soviet system and find themselves on a two-year kayaking expedition in the Americas with a six-wheeled military truck and little to no whitewater skills. The journey culminates in the record-breaking first descent of the world’s deepest canyon—and finds the kayakers in Soviet crosshairs fter they leverage their new-found fame to fight for democracy in the Eastern bloc.
For times, visit https://mlcinemas.com/