Sunday, August 25, 2019

The Anniversary Show (Screening + Fundraiser)  

Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979) Directed by Allan Arkush

Doors 7:00 PM / Start 7:30 PM @ The Mini - 1329 Main St.

Tickets: $25 - https://rockroll40th.eventbrite.com

The Anniversary Show is The Mini’s new monthly fundraiser celebrating films that reach significant historical milestones in 2019. Support our mission by attending these  special ticketed events, which include themed drinks and snacks. Our August program presents Rock 'n' Roll High School, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2019. 

“Set in Vince Lombardi High, an institution with the lowest academic standing in California, Rock 'n' Roll High School pits cheerleader Riff Randell (P.J. Soles) and her fellow students against the new principal, the insufferable Miss Togar (Mary Woronov), and her evil henchmen. A showdown between the two factions, sparked by rock 'n' roll - specifically the music of the Ramones - leads to a widespread riot on the campus. This is probably the only American film in existence where an educational institution is completely trashed by the end and no one is punished.” - TCM (93 min)

ADAPTATION (Book Club/Movie Group)

Part One: Book Discussion 

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

6:00 PM - 7:00 PM @ The Mercantile Library - 414 Walnut St. #1100, Cincinnati, OH 45202

Part Two: Film Screening

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Doors 6:00 PM / Start 6:30 PM @ The Mini - 1329 Main St.

The Mercantile Library and The Mini Microcinema are teaming up to offer a new book club/movie discussion group exploring films and the books that inspired them. The two-part program will challenge the question, "was the book better than the movie?"  by looking at the relationship between the separate works, and examining the ways they conflict with and complement one another. The first meeting will take place at The Mercantile and focus on discussing the text, while the second meeting will be a screening of the film at The Mini followed by a discussion. 

This series will look at the crime thriller, In A Lonely Place, penned by mystery author Dorthy B. Hughes. Lauded as a groundbreaking crime novel with a feminist slant by contemporaries and modern-day critics alike, the story follows tortured veteran Dix Steele, as he traverses the seedy underside of 1940s post-war L.A. He's soon joined by LAPD officer Brub -- an old friend from the war who's been pursuing a serial strangler for months, with no solid leads. That is until Brub's wife, Sylvia, and the glamorous screen star Laurel Gray get involved, and begin to realize the killer is closer than they think. We will then screen the 1950 Nicholas Ray-directed Film Noir masterpiece. The film, starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Graham has earned a spot on many "Top 100" lists over years, and in some ways, has overshadowed the original work on which it was based. 

Discussions facilitated by Mini volunteers Lillian Currens and Michael Sweeny. 

Cost: $5 members / $10 non-members (May be purchased in advance at mercantilelibrary.com or at the door)

ADAPTATION (Book Club/Movie Group)

Part One: Book Discussion 

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

6:00 PM - 7:00 PM @ The Mercantile Library - 414 Walnut St. #1100, Cincinnati, OH 45202

Part Two: Film Screening

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Doors 6:00 PM / Start 6:30 PM @ The Mini - 1329 Main St.

The Mercantile Library and The Mini Microcinema are teaming up to offer a new book club/movie discussion group exploring films and the books that inspired them. The two-part program will challenge the question, "was the book better than the movie?"  by looking at the relationship between the separate works, and examining the ways they conflict with and complement one another. The first meeting will take place at The Mercantile and focus on discussing the text, while the second meeting will be a screening of the film at The Mini followed by a discussion. 

This series will look at the crime thriller, In A Lonely Place, penned by mystery author Dorthy B. Hughes. Lauded as a groundbreaking crime novel with a feminist slant by contemporaries and modern-day critics alike, the story follows tortured veteran Dix Steele, as he traverses the seedy underside of 1940s post-war L.A. He's soon joined by LAPD officer Brub -- an old friend from the war who's been pursuing a serial strangler for months, with no solid leads. That is until Brub's wife, Sylvia, and the glamorous screen star Laurel Gray get involved, and begin to realize the killer is closer than they think. We will then screen the 1950 Nicholas Ray-directed Film Noir masterpiece. The film, starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Graham has earned a spot on many "Top 100" lists over years, and in some ways, has overshadowed the original work on which it was based. 

Discussions facilitated by Mini volunteers Lillian Currens and Michael Sweeny. 

Cost: $5 members / $10 non-members (May be purchased in advance at mercantilelibrary.com or at the door)

Thursday, June 20, 2019 - PLEASE NOTE DATE CHANGE!!!!!!

The Anniversary Show (Screening + Fundraiser)  

All That Jazz (1979) Directed by Bob Fosse

Doors 7:00 PM / Start 7:30 PM @ The Mini - 1329 Main St.

Tickets: $25 - https://allthatjazz40th.eventbrite.com

Drinks/Snacks by Liz Wolf

Poster by Pull Club

The Anniversary Show is The Mini’s new monthly fundraiser celebrating films that reach significant historical milestones in 2019. Support our mission by attending these  special ticketed events, which include themed drinks and snacks. Our June program presents All That Jazz, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2019. 

“The preternaturally gifted director and choreographer Bob Fosse turned the camera on his own life for this madly imaginative, self-excoriating musical masterpiece. Roy Scheider gives the performance of his career as Joe Gideon, whose exhausting work schedule—mounting a Broadway production by day and editing his latest movie by night—and routine of amphetamines, booze, and sex are putting his health at serious risk. Fosse burrows into Gideon’s (and his own) mind, rendering his interior world as phantasmagoric spectacle. Assembled with visionary editing that makes dance come alive on-screen as never before, and overflowing with sublime footwork by the likes of Ann Reinking, Leland Palmer, and Ben Vereen, All That Jazz pushes the musical genre to personal depths and virtuosic aesthetic heights.” - Criterion (123 min)

Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Cinci Cinema Click

7:00 PM - 9:00 PM @ The Mini - 1329 Main St.

A simple gathering of local filmmakers looking to meet other cinematographers, producers, motion-artists, and anything in-between. Cinci Cinema Click invites filmmakers of all stages (from living room to full-scale production) to organically learn from one another, share resources, and just hang out. Potluck style and free drinks!

Thursday, May 23, 2019

Go Fish (1994) Directed by Rose Troche

Doors 7:00 PM / Start 7:30 PM @ The Mini - 1329 Main St.

A whip-smart, no-budget Sundance hit shot in black and white, Go Fish broke ground in telling a lesbian story from the lesbian point of view and marks a high point in the New Queer Cinema genre of the early 1990's. In their film debuts, director Rose Troche and star/co-writer Guinevere Turner vividly and lovingly render a hyper-specific subculture of twenty-something queer women in Chicago. Copious flannel, plaintive singer-songwriter music, and lived-in coffee shop interiors comprise the 90's milieu, while the frisky, loose plot follows the romantic struggles and social life of Max (Turner) and the object of her affection, Ely (V.S. Brodie). Twenty-five years later, Go Fish's unapologetic queerness, celebratory tone, and absence of the male gaze make it not only a vital cinematic artifact but unfortunately, to this day, still a striking outlier in positive queer female representation on film. (84 min)

Free with $5 suggested donation

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Bisbee ’17 (2018) Directed by Robert Greene

Doors 7:00 PM / Start 7:30 PM @ The Mini - 1329 Main St.

Radically combining collaborative documentary, western, and musical elements, the new film by Robert Greene (Kate Plays Christine) follows several members of a close-knit community as they attempt to reckon with their town’s darkest hour. In 1917, nearly two-thousand immigrant miners, on strike for better wages and safer working conditions, were violently rounded up by their armed neighbors, herded onto cattle cars, shipped to the middle of the New Mexican desert, and left there to die. This long-buried and largely forgotten event came to be known as the Bisbee Deportation. Bisbee ’17 documents locals as they play characters and stage dramatic scenes from the controversial story, culminating in a large scale recreation of the deportation itself on the exact day of its 100th anniversary. These dramatized scenes are based on subjective versions of the story and offer conflicting views of the event, underscoring the difficulty of collective memory, while confronting the current political predicaments of immigration, unionization, environmental damage, and corporate corruption with direct, haunting messages about solidarity and struggle.

(118 min) 

Free with $5 suggested donation

ADAPTATION (Book Club/Movie Group)

Part One: Book Discussion 

Monday, May 13, 2019

6:00 PM - 7:00 PM @ The Mercantile Library - 414 Walnut St. #1100, Cincinnati, OH 45202

Part Two: Film Screening

Monday, May 20, 2019

Doors 6:00 PM / Start 6:30 PM @ The Mini - 1329 Main St.

The Mercantile Library and The Mini Microcinema are teaming up to offer a new book club/movie discussion group exploring films and the books that inspired them. The two-part program will challenge the question, "was the book better than the movie?"  by looking at the relationship between the separate works, and examining the ways they conflict with and complement one another. The first meeting will take place at The Mercantile and focus on discussing the text, while the second meeting will be a screening of the film at The Mini followed by a discussion. 

The series kicks off with a look at Daniel Clowes' iconic graphic novel, Ghost World. The story of the two protagonists, Enid and Rebecca, has served as a guidebook for adolescence since its original appearance in issue 11 of Clowes' serialized comic book, Eightball. Published in full in the late 90's, Ghost World is now widely seen as an essential part of the ever-growing graphic novel cannon. The following week, join us at The Mini Microcinema for a special screening of the 2001 Terry Zwigoff-directed film, starring Thora Birch and Steve Buscemi. Considered by many to be a classic in its own right, the film notably deviates from the original plot line, but still captures the cynicism, humor and heartbreak so essential to the story. Discussions facilitated by Mini volunteers Lillian Currens and Michael Sweeny.

Cost: $10 members / $15 non-members

(May be purchased in advance at mercantilelibrary.com or at the door)

Sunday, May 19, 2019

The Anniversary Show (Screening + Fundraiser)  

Alien (1979) Directed by Ridley Scott

Doors 7:00 PM / Start 7:30 PM @ The Mini - 1329 Main St.

Drinks/Snacks by Rom Wells

Poster by Joe Walsh

The Anniversary Show is The Mini’s new monthly fundraiser celebrating films that reach significant historical milestones in 2019. Support our mission by attending these special ticketed events, which include themed drinks and snacks. Our May program presents Alien, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2019. 

The time is the future. The crew aboard a massive commercial space vehicle is enroute to earth with a load of extraterrestrial ore when they are sidetracked by mysterious signals from a nearby planet. The signals seem to be calls for help and when the space ship arrives they find a ruined, moldering spacecraft and within it egg-like living organisms. (117 min)

Tickets: $25 - https://alien40th.eventbrite.com

Thursday, May 16, 2019

Frank (2014) Directed by Lenny Abrahamson

Doors 7:00 PM / Start 7:30 PM @ The Mini - 1329 Main St.

Transcending its quirky, twee exterior, Lenny Abramson's Frank is an often harrowing dramedy about creativity, indie rock, and mental illness in the internet age. Michael Fassbender gives a sad, sweet performance as the titular indie band frontman, a damaged soul who refuses to take off the giant head mask he wears both on and offstage. Domnhall Gleeson and Maggie Gyllenhaal play his respectively hapless and volatile band-mates, and the film charts their avant garde group's conflicting efforts to achieve artistic greatness and commercial success amid suicide, social media, and SXSW. Co-written by musician and journalist Jon Ronson, Frank is a wise and authentic portrayal of musicians on the margins. (95 min)

Free with $5 suggested donation

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Warrior Women (2018) Directed by Christina D. King and Elizabeth A. Castle

Doors 7:00 PM / Start 7:30 PM @ The Mini - 1329 Main St.

In the 1970s, with the swagger of unapologetic Indianness, organizers of the American Indian Movement (AIM) fought for Native liberation and survival as a community of extended families. 

Warrior Women is the story of Madonna Thunder Hawk, one such AIM leader who shaped a kindred group of activists' children - including her daughter Marcy - into the "We Will Remember" Survival School as a Native alternative to government-run education. Together, Madonna and Marcy fought for Native rights in an environment that made them more comrades than mother-daughter. Today, with Marcy now a mother herself, both are still at the forefront of Native issues, fighting against the environmental devastation of the Dakota Access Pipeline and for Indigenous cultural values. 

Through a circular Indigenous style of storytelling, this film explores what it means to navigate a movement and motherhood and how activist legacies are passed down and transformed from generation to generation in the context of colonizing government that meets Native resistance with violence. (64 min)

Free with $5 suggested donation

ADAPTATION (Book Club/Movie Group)

Part One: Book Discussion 

Monday, May 13, 2019

6:00 PM - 7:00 PM @ The Mercantile Library - 414 Walnut St. #1100, Cincinnati, OH 45202

Part Two: Film Screening

Monday, May 20, 2019

Doors 6:00 PM / Start 6:30 PM @ The Mini - 1329 Main St.

The Mercantile Library and The Mini Microcinema are teaming up to offer a new book club/movie discussion group exploring films and the books that inspired them. The two-part program will challenge the question, "was the book better than the movie?"  by looking at the relationship between the separate works, and examining the ways they conflict with and complement one another. The first meeting will take place at The Mercantile and focus on discussing the text, while the second meeting will be a screening of the film at The Mini followed by a discussion. 

The series kicks off with a look at Daniel Clowes' iconic graphic novel, Ghost World. The story of the two protagonists, Enid and Rebecca, has served as a guidebook for adolescence since its original appearance in issue 11 of Clowes' serialized comic book, Eightball. Published in full in the late 90's, Ghost World is now widely seen as an essential part of the ever-growing graphic novel cannon. The following week, join us at The Mini Microcinema for a special screening of the 2001 Terry Zwigoff-directed film, starring Thora Birch and Steve Buscemi. Considered by many to be a classic in its own right, the film notably deviates from the original plot line, but still captures the cynicism, humor and heartbreak so essential to the story. Discussions facilitated by Mini volunteers Lillian Currens and Michael Sweeny.

Cost: $10 members / $15 non-members

(May be purchased in advance at mercantilelibrary.com or at the door)

Saturday, May 11, 2019

Lil’s + Lils - Films for Kids

Doors 10:30 AM / Start 11:00 AM @ The Mini - 1329 Main St.

Enjoy a selection of short films for children. The screening includes animated films from all over the world that are either in English or without dialogue. Arrive early to enjoy free snacks and free coffee from Iris BookCafe. Fun for all ages! (30 min)

Free with $5 suggested donation

Thursday, May 9, 2019

The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo - Season One (2016) 

Created by Brian Jordan Alvarez

Doors 7:00 PM / Start 7:30 PM @ The Mini - 1329 Main St.

“The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo” [is] an electric comedy that plugs into the zeitgeist the way “Girls” did, banters like “Broad City,” and boasts the chutzpah necessary in order to get away with naming a character “Lenjamin McButtons.” Part of the genius of “Caleb Gallo” is that it defies conventional wisdom about making a short form series compelling to online audiences: The episodes are long, there is no discernible premise that can be squeezed into a snappy log line — even the title is a mouthful. Most potentially problematic is that if one were to summarize its plot, “Caleb Gallo” is basically a series about the love lives of five actor friends living in Los Angeles, one of the digital space’s most tired premises. The reason “Caleb Gallo” can tread such well-traveled ground is that Alvarez creates a world a few marbles short of reality. The characters speak at a breakneck pace, drawing the viewer in by forcing them to sit up and pay attention or risk missing the next offhanded quip or absurdly long laughing spell. With eyes slightly crazed and voices raised a hair above natural, the stakes feel absurdly high for each character from moment to moment, yet they recover from setbacks with a resilience only an actor could muster. The rules of this world are entirely fluid, with a logic of their own: Dates are walks, siblings are different races, gender is whatever, and sexual preference is something to be tried on like a fabulous hat. Alvarez achieves what all storytellers should attempt at least once — to bring fantasy to life. - IndieWire (90 min)

Shown with permission from Brian Jordan Alvarez!

Free with $5 suggested donation

Tuesday, May 7, 2019

The Miners' Hymns (2010) directed by Bill Morrison

Doors 7:00 PM / Start 7:30 PM @ The Mini - 1329 Main St.

The ill-fated coal mining communities in North East England are the subject of this inspired documentary by multi-media artist Bill Morrison. Their story is told entirely without words, yet the film is far from silent: it features a remarkable original score by the Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson. Using rarely-seen footage from the British Film Institute, the BBC, and other archives, The Miners’ Hymns celebrates social, cultural, and political aspects of the extinct industry. Focusing on the Durham coalfield located in northeastern England, it depicts the hardship of pit work, the role of Trade Unions in organizing and fighting for workers' rights, the years of increased mechanization and the annual Miners' Gala in Durham. The film also shows the pitched battles between miners and police that took place during massive strikes in 1984 and sounded the death knell for the British mining industry. It also includes two contemporary aerial sequences, shot in color from a helicopter flying over the sites of former collieries, that have since become sites of modern consumerism. (52 min) 

Free with $5 suggested donation

ALSO SCREENING:

Road (1987) – Directed by Alan Clarke

Also set in Northern England, Road (1987) follows an ensemble of downtrodden working class people residing in Lancashire during the Thatcher era, which was characterized by diminished union power and increased unemployment. Alan Clarke’s brisk drama, adapted from a play by Jim Cartwright and shot entirely on steadicam, presents an unsparing—and at times grimly funny—street-level account of the lives and communities decimated by neoliberal capitalism. (63 min)

Sunday, May 5, 2019

Ovarian Psycos (2016)

Directed by Joanna Sokolowski and Kate Trumbull-Lavalle

Co-presented with RedBike

Doors 7:00 PM / Start 7:30 PM @ The Mini - 1329 Main St.

Ovarian Psycos is about a new generation of fierce, unapologetic and feminist women of color from the Eastside of Los Angeles who confront injustice, build community, and redefine identity through a raucous, irreverently named bicycle crew: The Ovarian Psycos Cycle Brigade.

Through the personal stories of the crew’s rabble-rousing founder, Xela de la X, activist, poet M.C., and single mother; street artist and original Ovarian Psyco, Andi Xoch, and a bright-eyed young woman from the neighborhood, Evelyn (Evie), the film traces how the “Ovas” emerged from the diverse, youthful, Latino, working class, immigrant neighborhoods of Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles, a community situated within the historic legacy of the Chicano/a Civil Rights Movement that emerged from L.A. in the late 1960s. Through all the obstacles they invariably face, the group as a whole becomes a rising force, as these young women continue to call out to new riders to join them on their journey: “Whose streets? Our streets!” (72 min)

Free with $5 suggested donation

Thursday, May 2, 2019

Cinema at the Center – Artist and Animal (1/2)

Co-presented with the Contemporary Arts Center in conjunction with the exhibition “Creatures”

Doors 6:15 PM / Start 6:45 PM @ CAC (44 E 6th St, Cincinnati, OH 45202)

This short film program is devoted to animals and artists in collaboration, allowing viewers to reflect on notions of agency in art. The series brings Steven Matijcio, former CAC Curator, back to town for a presentation of short films including Miguel Angel Rios’s Crudo, which, despite its short duration, opens the door to broad questions: the possible taming of animality and the self, alienation and cultured behaviors, the spectacle of violence, and the rawness of our being. (60 min)

Presented by Steven Matijcio, Director, Blaffer Art Museum, Houston and Curator of CAC exhibition Creatures

Free!

* The second screening in this two-part series, which will be a tribute to Carolee Schneemann, occurs on June 27th, 2019. More info here: https://www.contemporaryartscenter.org/programs/public-programs/cinema-at-the-center

Movies: A selection of short films including Miguel Angel Rios’s Crudo, 2008, 3’41”, fiction

Raw meat swirling in the air. This is the perspective Crudo offers to its viewers. A tap dancer’s feet, echoed with a series of barks break the silence while a white suit contradicts the darkness. Miguel Angel Rios’s short video piece opens the door to broad questions: taming animality/taming the self, alienation/cultured behaviors, the spectacle of violence/a metaphysical reflection on the rawness of our being.

List of shorts also screened:

• Rachel Mayeri, Primate Cinema: Apes as Family, 2012, 11’ (16/9)

• Carla Bengtson, Mimetic Excess, 2014, 1’38”

• Allora & Calzadilla, The Great Silence, 2016, 16’53”

• Luca Trevisani, Sudan, 2016, 15’02”