Last Updated: 6/28/10
The Secret Cinema is proud to announce we will be co-presenting three separate special event screenings for Philadelphia Q-Fest. Q-Fest, the largest gay film festival on the East Coast, began under the name the Philadelphia International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, and the Secret Cinema began collaborating with the festival its very first year (when we loaned a 1950s short subject about body builders for a late-night screening).
Since then we have created programs using both feature films and short subjects. The 2010 edition, however, will have by far the biggest Secret Cinema presence yet, and includes some very unusual programs. We are especially excited to have film historian Richard Barrios on board for two of the events.
It's our belief that these three programs would provide a good time for anyone in the Secret Cinema audience, regardless of sexual preference (indeed, all of the films being shown, which harken back to the golden age of Hollywood, were made for general audiences). All three programs are described in great detail, below...
Friday, July 9
10:00 pm
Admission: $10.00 ($9.00 for Philadelphia Cinema Alliance members)
RUBA Club
414 Green Street, Philadelphia
(behind Silk City Lounge)
215-627-9831
On Friday, July 9, The Secret Cinema and Philadelphia Q-Fest will present This Nude World, a rarely-seen 1933 documentary on the then-largely unknown phenomenon of nudism. The film offers a fast-moving travelogue of nudist colonies around the world, from upstate New York to more exotic locales in France and Germany. And while this may seem unexpected in a film from so long ago, This Nude World does show extensive nudity, with revealing scenes of naturalists of both genders and various ages. Before the feature, there will be a bonus short subject, Boy with a Knife.
The screening will take place at the historical RUBA (Russian United Beneficial Association) Club, the former ethnic social club located just behind the Silk City Lounge at 414 Green Street in Northern Liberties.
The RUBA Club is producing a special preliminary program of "nudist-themed" live skit comedy hosted by Christa D'Agostino, which starts at 8:30 pm in the downstairs cabaret. The Secret Cinema screening will follow at 10:00 pm in the rarely-opened upstairs ballroom.
Admission is $10.00 (or $9.00 for Philadelphia Cinema Alliance members). Advance tickets can be purchased online at www.qfest.com, or by phone at 267.765.9800, extension 4. Tickets can also be purchased at the screening.
A complete description of the feature appears below...
This Nude World (1933, Dir: Mike Mindlin)
Cult film buffs may be familiar with the cycle of "nudie cutie" exploitation films released in the wake of Russ Meyer's hugely successful The Immoral Mr. Teas, at the very end of the 1950s. These films offered many moviegoers their first filmed view of naked flesh, with many featuring unexpurgated views of nudist colonies. What is less known is that the same type of films were made over 25 years earlier. This Nude World is a prime example of this genre, and like the later films, was made chiefly to exploit scenes of naked bodies by very independent (and very low budget) filmmakers. It was probably distributed by just a few people who rented theaters and transported prints from town to town, staying one step ahead of the censors.
This Nude World was either directed or reedited from a German import by Mike Mindlin, (who the following year made an exploitation feature, Hitler's Reign of Terror, that was surely the first anti-Nazi film made in the U.S.A.). This Nude World features brisk editing, glib (and campy) narration, and a globe-trekking continuity as it travels from the Catskill Mountains through France and into Germany in search of sun worshippers. In each outpost of nudism, countless naked enthusiasts are shown in all their glory, both male and female (as well as children). Along the way, more traditional travel scenes are shown as well, setting a backdrop for the different cultures where the movement had taken root.
Including an American nudist camp in this film was significant, for while the naturalism movement began in Europe around the turn of the century, the first known permanent nudist camp in the U.S. opened just the year before this film was shot. The controversial periodical The Nudist (later renamed Sunshine & Health) appeared on newstands also in 1933, and the nudist lifestyle continued to spread and flourish. This Nude World, a quickie exploitation film made to cash in on headlines, likely provided inspiration for new recruits to the lifestyle, at least among those who managed to see it in its original limited release.
Wednesday, July 14,
7:15 pm
Admission: $10.00 ($9.00 for Philadelphia Cinema Alliance members)
The William Way Center
1315 Spruce Street, Philadelphia
(215) 732-2220
On Wednesday, July 14, The Secret Cinema and Philadelphia Q-Fest will present the unique talk and screening Screened Out: Gay Images On Film, featuring author and film historian Richard Barrios in person. This special event is based on Barrios' detailed, witty book Screened Out: Playing Gay in Hollywood From Edison to Stonewall, which looks at portrayals of sexuality throughout the classic era of Hollywood cinema.
There will be one complete program, starting at 7:15 pm.
Admission is $10.00 (or $9.00 for Philadelphia Cinema Alliance members). Advance tickets can be purchased online at www.qfest.com, or by phone at 267.765.9800, extension 4. Tickets can also be purchased at the screening.
Rapacious dykes, self-loathing closet cases, hustlers, ambiguous sophisticates, and sadomasochistic rich kids: most of what America thought it knew about gay people it learned at the movies. Using carefully selected, often-hilarious clips from a variety of film genres and categories (including cartoons and comedy shorts), Barrios will show how much gay and lesbian lives have shaped the big screen. Spanning popular American cinema from the 1900s until today, his presentation will provide a rich and entertaining analysis of how Hollywood has used and depicted gays and the mixed signals it has given us. Such iconoclastic images, Barrios argues, send powerful messages about tragedy and obsession, but also about freedom and compassion, even empowerment.
The rare film clips to be shown will include Edward Everett Horton seducing Douglas Fairbanks in Reaching for the Moon, Marlene Dietrich in sailor's suit drag in Seven Sinners, Hans Conreid as the prissy piano instructor of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, plus scenes from Caged, Screaming Mimi, The Boys in the Band, and many more. There will even be appearances by Bugs Bunny, Flip the Frog, and the Three Stooges!
As with all Secret Cinema screenings, the films will be shown using 16mm film (not video) projected onto a giant screen.
About Richard Barrios: After writing Screened Out, Barrios served as programmer and co-host of a month-long film series inspired by his book for the Turner Classic Movies cable network. His acclaimed earlier study, A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film, was recently re-published in a much-updated second edition. Barrios has written on film for the New York Times, provided commentary tracks for the DVDs of State Fair, The King and I, South Pacific and Words And Music, appeared in the PBS film Busby Berkeley: Going Through The Roof as well as numerous DVD documentaries, and lectured for the Library of Congress and American Film Institute. He was interviewed for the upcoming documentary feature Activist: The Times of Vito Russo, to be released in 2011. A native of Louisiana, Barrios lives just outside of Philadelphia.
Friday, July 16
Food and drink at 6:00 pm. The film begins at 7:30.
$20 minimum donation
Digitas Health
The John Wanamaker Building, 100 Penn Square East
(use Juniper Street entrance), Philadelphia
Telephone info: AIDS Law Project, (215) 587-9377
On Friday, July 16, the Secret Cinema will team up once again with the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania to present their Annual Summer Movie Party, featuring food, film and fun. The centerpiece will be a screening of the 1966 movie Madame X, a Technicolor tearjerker starring Lana Turner as a wronged woman wrongly accused of murder, then unknowingly defended by her own son.
The feature will be introduced by film historian Richard Barrios (author of A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film and Screened Out: Playing Gay in Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall).
This special event is one of three film screenings produced by the Secret Cinema for the 2010 edition of Philadelphia Q-Fest (formerly The Philadelphia International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival)
The party and screening will happen at the large, strikingly designed offices of ad agency Digitas Health, in the John Wanamaker Building, across from the southeastern corner of City Hall.
Food and drink start at 6. The film begins at 7:30. As with all Secret Cinema screenings, the movie will be shown using 16mm film (not video) projected on a giant screen.
Admission is a minimum tax-deductible donation of $20. Prepaid reservations are recommended. All funds raised will go to the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania, a non-profit, public interest law firm that provides free legal services to people with HIV/AIDS and others affected by the epidemic.
For tickets, call the AIDS Law Project at 215-587-9377 or visit www.aidslawpa.org.
The timetable of events is as follows:
6 to 7:15 pm: Light food and drink (Secret Cinema tip: Once again this is advertised as "light" to play it safe, but the last several years' supplies of high-quality food and drink were amazingly ample! In short, your donation is actually a real bargain if you come hungry!)
7:30 pm: screening of Madame X, introduced by Richard Barrios.
A complete description of the film follows:
Madame X (1966, Dir: David Lowell Rich)
"I'm eating my words, and there's a damn bitter taste in my mouth!" Hollywood icon Lana Turner plays the title role in this, the seventh screen version of what began as a French language play. The improbable but emotion-filled story concerns Holly Parker (Turner), the wealthy but neglected wife of a busy diplomat (the late John Forsythe). who has an affair with an egocentric playboy (Ricardo Montalban). When her illicit lover accidentally dies after a late-night tryst, Holly is persuaded to leave the country -- and thus save her husband and young child from scandal -- by her cruel mother-in-law (played by another screen veteran, Constance Bennett, in her final role). Years later, Holly finds herself on trial for murder...and her court-appointed defender turns out to be her own son (Keir Dullea)!
Producer Ross Hunter was determined to make his version of this much-filmed story the most lavish and modern version yet. He filled it with eye-popping Technicolor, sumptuous gowns and extravagant settings, but the coincidence-filled melodrama might have still seemed old-fashioned to 1960s audiences. Lana Turner nonetheless contributed a brave performance, not without its touching moments, in one of her final films (in her next role, in The Big Cube, she plays a woman driven mad by LSD!). "With almost every line a howler, this is a camp special" - Pauline Kael. Note: Madame X was officially condemned by the Catholic Church...and was the first such film to be seen by Q-Fest founder Ray Murray, as a young boy at the Logan Theater! The film is also a childhood favorite of AIDS Law Project Executive Director Ronda Goldfein.
We last reported being "cautiously optimistic" about Live Nation's announced plans to restore and reuse the Sameric/Boyd Theater. Our caution proved well-founded as Live Nation have now revealed that they are halting all work on the theater's restoration. Anything could happen now, in a city where demolition permits are rather easy to obtain.
The important job of bringing back Philadelphia's last (nearly) intact movie palace still needs to not only be done, but be done right, and joining with this ever-vigilant watchdog organization is the best chance we have to ensure that the right thing gets done.
Official site of the Friends of the Boyd - www.SaveTheSameric.org
Secret Cinema 1999 Annual Report
Secret Cinema 1998 Annual Report
Secret Cinema 1997 Annual Report
Information about the 1998 Secret Cinema "Class Trip" to the Syracuse Cinefest