Parc series a good reason to stay up late
Parc at Midnight offers a wide range of cult films, classics and contemporary genre fare on weekends
Underground film fans have reason to celebrate, and an appropriate time and place to do so. Cinéma du Parc has revived one of the most revered traditions of the repertory cinemas of yore — the midnight movie screening.
Launched in March, Parc at Midnight offers a range of cult films, classics and contemporary genre fare every Friday and Saturday at 11:30 p.m., followed by a more civilized Sunday matinée.
The series opened in style with a “Black & Chrome” version of George Miller’s acclaimed franchise reboot Mad Max: Fury Road, and included David Lynch’s early-career head-trip Eraserhead.
Parc at Midnight’s May-June schedule presents a range of cinematic treasures, including Stanley Kubrick’s time-expanding 2001: A Space Odyssey (June 2-4); Terry Gilliam’s wild, drugfuelled Hunter S. Thompson adaptation Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (June 16-18); as well as a few left-field contemporary offerings.
Up this weekend is graphic novelist Dash Shaw’s edgy new animated film My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea, featuring the voices of Jason Schwartzman and Reggie Watts as a pair of teens who end up in over their heads when disaster strikes, with cameos by Maya Rudolph, Lena Dunham and Susan Sarandon.
The film is an example of Parc at Midnight’s interest in the next wave of underground talent, as is Ana Lily Amirpour’s The Bad Batch (June 23-25), a dystopian desert thriller starring Suki Waterhouse, Keanu Reeves, Jim Carrey and Diego Luna. IranianAmerican director Amirpour made a splash with her 2014 debut feature A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, a stylish blackand-white tale of a female hipster vampire.
“We try to follow what’s happening,” said Cinéma du Parc’s programming director JeanFrançois Lamarche. “It’s important to be up on the buzz of the moment.”
In that spirit, David Lynch’s 1992 film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (May 19-21) serves as a perfect setup for the director’s long-awaited followup to his influential 1990 TV series, which premières May 21 on Showtime.
The week after comes Andrew Dominik’s intimate Nick Cave documentary One More Time With Feeling (May 26-28), which serves as a timely teaser for the
morbid rocker’s sold-out show at Metropolis, May 29.
Kubrick’s 2½-hour existential sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey (June 2-4) was once a staple of rep house midnight screenings. It’s a must-see, or see-again, for all self-respecting cinephiles, according to Cinéma du Parc publicist Raphaël Dostie.
“I tell people, ‘If you’ve never seen it in the theatre, you’ve never seen it,’” he said. “You have to see it on the big screen to experience it as people did when it came out (in 1968).”
Charles Laughton’s 1955 film noir Night of the Hunter (June 9-11) stars Robert Mitchum as a travelling preacher who has less than pure motives for marrying a vulnerable widow (Shelley Winters).
And Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (June 16-18) posits Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro as a deranged duo on a road/drug trip to the other side of sanity.
Though anything goes in terms of what he’s prepared to show in the series, Lamarche is limited to films that have been restored and are available in DCP (Digital Cinema Package) format or, as was the case for Eraserhead, in vintage 35 mm. (While Cinéma du Parc has switched to digital, it still has its old 35 mm projectors available for special occasions.)
Always on the hunt for new programming ideas for Parc at Midnight, Lamarche doesn’t rule out the possibility of revisiting proven favourites on occasion.
“Films like Mad Max, we could bring back once per season like we used to do with Eraserhead and (Kubrick’s) A Clockwork Orange, which played once a month and had people coming back every time,” he said, referring to the venue’s earlier incarnation as a repertory as well as first-run art-house theatre.
With Cinéma du Parc’s regular schedule focused on contemporary independent movies, Parc at Midnight opens up the playing field.
“It gives us the opportunity to show films that are harder to fit into our everyday programming,” Lamarche said, “and make an event out of it.”