Mystic Independent Theater premieres ground-breaking documentary and feature films by independent filmmakers around the globe, and hosts thematic film events.
At Mystic Independent Theater, we welcome local film-makers and independents.
Please see Independent Film Screening for more.
Join us for a special independent film, one showing only!
Everyday Sunshine:
The Story of Fishbone
Sunday, November 13th
7 pm
Directed by Lev Anderson and Chris Metzler
Narrated by Laurence Fishburne
Featuring Fishbone, Flea, Ice-T, Gwen Stefani, Perry Farrell, Bob Forrest, Branford Marsalis and George Clinton
Running time is 107 minutes
EVERYDAY SUNSHINE is a documentary about the band Fishbone, musical pioneers who have been rocking on the margins of pop culture for the past 25 years. From the streets of South Central-Los Angeles and the competitive Hollywood music scene of the 1980’s, the band rose to prominence, only to fall apart when on the verge of “making it.”
Laurence Fishburne narrates EVERYDAY SUNSHINE, an entertaining cinematic journey into the personal lives of this unique Black rock band, an untold story of fiercely individual artists in their quest to reclaim their musical legacy while debunking the myths of young Black men from urban America. Highlighting the parallel journeys of a band and their city, EVERYDAY SUNSHINE explores the personal and cultural forces that gave rise to California’s legendary Black punk sons that continue to defy categories and expectations.
At the heart of Fishbone’s story is lead singer Angelo Moore and bassist Norwood Fisher who show how they keep the band rolling, out of pride, desperation and love for their art. To overcome money woes, family strife, and the strain of being aging Punk rockers on the road, Norwood and Angelo are challenged to re-invent themselves in the face of dysfunction and ghosts from a painful past.
CHRIS METZLER
(co-director, co-producer)
After graduating from USC with a degree in business and cinema, Chris’ film career has taken him from the depths of agency work, to coordinating post-production for awful American movies seen late at night in Belgium. His film directing and producing work has resulted in him criss crossing the country with the aid of caffeinated beverages. He eventually made his way in the Nashville country and Christian music video industries, before finally forsaking his soul to commercial LA rock n’ roll. These misadventures eventually culminated in him winning a Billboard Magazine Music Video Award.
His feature length directorial debut was the offbeat environmental documentary, PLAGUES & PLEASURES ON THE SALTON SEA, which was narrated by legendary counterculture filmmaker and “King of Trash” John Waters. A cult favorite, the film was released theatrically in the United States and broadcast nationally on the Sundance Channel.
Brought together by a common vision of peace, thirteen tribal elders, all grandmothers from across the globe, travel to eight different countries to share one powerful message of hope.
Five years in the making and shot on location from the remote villages of the Amazon to the steps of the Vatican, this award-winning film follows these amazing women as they face a world in crisis. Produced and directed by Emmy & Peabody Award-winning Carole Hart and Bruce Hart (Sesame Street, Free To Be...You and Me) and narrated by Ashley Judd, For the Next 7 Generations weaves a beautiful tapestry of tribal traditions and hope for the future. Watch and be inspired by their bravery, audacity, and wisdom.
For more information on For the Next 7 Generations, including the film trailer, screening dates, DVD sales & more, please visit www.forthenext7generations.com and to support the Grandmothers mission, please visit www.grandmotherscouncil.org.
John Halpern will lead a discussion about the influence Buddhism and Buddhist meditation may be having in the West, and in our lives. John is a Meditation Teacher at Yeshe Nyingpo, a Dudjom Tersar Center, Director, Producer, Artist & founder of MDS Films
Documentary Film: Talking with the Dalai Lama
Saturday June 11, 2011
Meet & Greet John Halpern at 5:30
Film & Discussion 6 – 8 pm
Talking with the Dalai Lama is a never-before-seen audience with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama that touches on topics we have never heard him discuss before. The Dalai Lama is a great storyteller and from his living room in-exile, in Dharamsala, India, it’s as if he’s speaking to everyone.
REFUGE Film + John Halpern Q&A
Film & Discussion “Spiritual Ecology” with John Halpern – Meditation Teacher at Yeshe Nyingpo, a Dudjom Tersar Center, Director, Producer, Artist
& founder of MDS Films
Documentary film: REFUGE Westerners seek REFUGE in Buddhism/ Buddhist teachers seek REFUGE in the West
Saturday March 12, 2011
Film & Discussion
6 – 8 pm
Mystic Independent Theater
Since the beginning of the 20 th Century, Westerners have been traveling to the East in search of spiritual wisdom. By the 1950’s Eastern meditation masters were coming to the West and establishing meditation centers here. REFUGE is a film about the story of those journeys, East and West, towards refuge. Questions about What is contemporary Buddhism, now? answered in interviews by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and the greatest living meditation masters and foremost Hollywood film directors including: Venerable Tenzin Palmo (lived 12 years in a cave), The Sakyong Mipham (leader of Shambhala International), Khyenchen Palden Sherap (Tibetan abbot), Khyempo Tsewang Dongyal (Tibetan abbot), David Chadwick (Author, Zen priest), Melissa Mathison (Screenwriter Kundun), Bernardo Bertolucci (Little Buddha), Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone.
The film will be followed by a reception & delicious vegetarian food!
2010 Film & Music Festival Featured Film
Happy Holidays Followed by Q&A with
Producer/Director James C. Ferguson
Monday, December 13 7:00 pm
Starring Paul Hungerford,
John B. Crye and Tommy Rhoads
Written by James C. Ferguson
and Thomas J. Misuraca
Directed by James C. Ferguson
New England native James C. Ferguson’s independent feature film Happy Holidays is set to screen in various locations & venues throughout the Northeast and Southern California this winter, including Mystic Independent Theater!
Three childhood friends unexpectedly reunite in their New England hometown the week before Christmas. Now in their mid-thirties, it’s the first time Patrick, Alden and Kirby have been in the same zip code since their high school graduation. Each of them is at a different crossroads in his life & facing difficult hurdles. They pick up right where they left off, returning to a simpler time – before obligations, politics and agendas – but has life taken them too far to make that even possible?
“Heartfelt and sharply written” –Jen Johans, Film Intuition
Followed by Q&A with
Producer/Director Mitzi Adams
& Documentarian Benjamin Moss
Sunday, December 12
6:30 pm
This short documentary reveals the process of a NYC-based choreographer who assigns herself the challenging task of choreographing a 10-minute dance in 3 hours. Using 8 dancers, this film highlights the craft & process behind its creation. After the film, Producer Mitzi Adams will share her expertise as choreographer & founder of Adams Company Dance. She & Benjamin will be available for Q&A.
Short Films by Amelia Golden Followed by Q&A with
Producer/Director Amelia Golden
8:00 pm
Film shorts by local film-maker Amelia Golden. Amelia will be available for Q&A after the films. Amelia Golden is an artist of many different mediums, and this work has been her exploration of film thus far from 2007 to the present.
Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days October 23 - November 8, 2010
Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days is an independent documentary film that chronicles six Americans with diabetes who switch to a diet consisting entirely of vegan, organic, uncooked food in order to reverse disease without medication. The six are challenged to give up meat, dairy, sugar, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, soda, junk food, fast food, processed food, packaged food, and even cooked food for 30 days. The film follows each participant's remarkable journey and captures the medical, physical, and emotional transformations brought on by this radical diet and lifestyle change. Each participant speaks candidly about their struggle to manage their diabetes and how it has affected every aspect of their life, from work to home to their relationships.
"Simply Raw is one of the most uplifting stories I've ever seen." –Dr. T. Colin Campbell, Author of The China Study
Foundation For Advancement In Cancer Therapy (F.A.C.T.) established in 1971, is a federally approved 501(c)(3) non-profit educational organization that supports non-toxic, biologically sound approaches to cancer prevention and treatment, and is the sponsor of Rethinking Cancer.
Rethinking Cancer is a educational documentary featuring survivor stories that provides a rare look into the psychological and therapeutic journeys of five men and women who used alternative cancer therapies to overcome serious illness. Their stories represent successes that mainstream medicine and the public ought to know about.
Art and Documentary Films
including Ledge Light with National Geographic Photographer-Producer
Todd Gipstein
Sunday, September 12
3 pm
Join Todd Gipstein for Kaleidoscope, a presentation of a half-dozen of his media pieces. It includes works he created for National Geographic, some artistic, storytelling works, and his most recent documentary, Ledge Light a show which chronicles the life of the Ledge Lighthouse that marks the entrance to the Thames River and New London Harbor.
The shows in Kaleidoscope traverse the world. They are powerful, evocative works featuring stunning photography, emotional music and fascinating stories. It’s an afternoon that will transport you to other worlds and open your eyes, engage your mind, and touch your heart.
Join us for a pre-screening discussion
with Naturopathic Physician,
Dr. Stephanie Bethune “Let food by thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.” Tuesday, August 31
6:30 pm
Dr. Bethune is an expert in natural health & healthy eating, and can assist you in targeting route causes of ailments & find natural options to pharmaceuticals.
Following Dr. Bethune’s discussion,
join us for an official screening of
FOODMATTERS
– a film that will change the way you think about food and health. Tuesday, August 31
7 pm
FOODMATTERS is a hard hitting, fast paced look at our current state of health. Despite the billions of dollars of funding and research into new so-called cures we continue to suffer from a raft of chronic ills and every day maladies. This groundbreaking documentary sets about uncovering the trillion dollar worldwide ‘Sickness Industry’ and exposes a growing body of scientific evidence proving that nutritional therapy can be more effective, more economical, less harmful and less invasive than most conventional medical treatments. FOODMATTERS features interviews with leading medical experts from around the world who discuss natural approaches to preventing and reversing Cancer, Obesity, Heart Disease, Depression, Mental Illness and many other chronic conditions.
After the film, Dr. Bethune will answer questions about using food to attain the best health the most natural way possible.
~For cinema lovers!
An amazing film from Québec~ Un Capitalisme Sentimantal
Friday July 23
and Saturday July 24, 2010
7pm
Directed by Olivier Asselin
Produced by Sylvie Gagné and Daniel Plante
Starring
Lucille Fluet, Alex Bisping,
Paul Ahmarani, Sylvie Moreau
Harry Standjofski, Frank Fontaine,
Anne Létourneau
Mystic Independent Theater is pleased to present a wonderful filmUn capitalisme sentimental, brought to us by Marc-Antoine Bédard, of the Cultural Affairs and Cultural Development in New England for the Government of Québec. It is here for a limited time, and is a must see!
Ironic, metaphorical, musical, funny, political, visually stunning, Un Capitalisme Sentimental is all that, as well as an homage to classic movies from a true cinema fanatic.
Lucille Fluet stars as a woman caught between art and commerce: One moment, she's scratching out a living in her atelier in Paris, the next she's the toast of the New York Stock Exchange circa October, 1929.
May I Be Frank July 15, 2010
6:30 pm
With Frank Ferrante, Ryland Engelhart, Conor Gaffney, Cary Mosier, Matthew Engelhart, ‘Izzy’ Angelo Ferrante
The Filmmakers - Cary Mosier, Ryland Engelhart, Conor Gaffney
Directors/Producers/Camera
Gregg Marks - Director/ Editor/Camera
Produced by Be Love Productions In Association with Here Now Productions
May I Be Frank documents the transformation of Frank Ferrante’s life. Frank is 54 years old, obese, depressed and addicted. He stumbles into a local raw, organic and vegan restaurant in San Francisco, Café Gratitude. When Ryland, a server at Café Gratitude asks Frank “What is one thing you want to do before you die?” Frank replies, “I want to fall in love one more time, but no one will love me looking the way I do”.
Ryland, his brother Cary, and Conor, his best friend, are inspired by the possibility of helping Frank. For the next 42 days, Frank will eat only raw food, practice gratitude, visit local holistic practitioners, and get a weekly colonic. Ryland, Conor, and Cary get to support Frank’s miraculous transformation. Frank gets a new body, a clearer mind, and most importantly, a soaring spirit. May I Be Frank documents the essence of the human condition and what it truly means to fall in love again.
The Mystic Irish Parade Film Festival
March 20-28, 2010
The Yellow Bittern,
The Life and Times of Liam Clancy
Crossing The Line Films
Running time: 107 minutes
Director: Alan Gilsenan
Producers: Anna Rodgers & John Murray
Line Producer: Siobhan Ward
Through the kind efforts of producers Anna Rodgers & John Murray we bring you a new feature documentary from director Alan Gilsenan: The Yellow Bittern, The Life and Times of Liam Clancy. The Yellow Bittern is a revealing and surprising portrait of Liam Clancy of The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, & the man that Bob Dylan called “just the best ballad singer I’d ever heard in my whole life.”
This intimate, confessional & highly cinematic film charts the remarkable rise to fame of these devil-may-care Irish singers, from their small-town beginnings in County Tipperary Ireland to the folk hey-day of Greenwich Village in the 60s where they absorbed black musical influences, played for JFK & out-sold the Beatles.
The Mystic Irish Parade Film Festival
March 20-28, 2010
Liam Clancy & Friends:
Live at the Bitter End
is the second film we are screening,
for it’s USA Premiere!
Crossing The Line Films
Director: Alan Gilsenan
Producers: John Murray & Anna Rodgers
Over fifty years after the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem made their first recordings during the heady days of the New York folk revival, iconic folk singer Liam Clancy returns to Greenwich Village for a unique music event.
Specially staged and filmed before an invited audience at the legendary Bitter End club (where Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie, Bob Dylan and countless other folk legends made their mark), the concert is a rare and intimate portrait of one of the greatest ballad singers of our time.
Directed by Andy Abrahams Wilson
A Production of Open Eye Pictures, Inc.
Running time: 103 minutes
A gripping tale of microbes, medicine & money UNDER OUR SKIN exposes the hidden story of Lyme disease, one of the most controversial and fastest growing epidemics of our time, following the stories of patients and physicians fighting for their lives and livelihoods.
(from Open Eye Pictures)
In the early 1970's, a mysterious ailment was discovered among children living around the town of Lyme, CT. What was first diagnosed as isolated cases of juvenile arthritis, eventually became known as Lyme disease, an illness triggered by spiral-shaped bacteria, similar to the microorganisms that cause syphilis. Today, many of those untreated will suffer chronic debilitating illness. Some unknowingly will pass the disease on to their unborn children. Many will lose their livelihoods, and still others, their lives. Yet Lyme disease is one of the most misunderstood controversial illnesses of our time. Difficult to test accurately, tens of thousands of people go undiagnosed—or misdiagnosed with such conditions as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, autism, MS and ALS. The Centers for Disease Control admits that more than 300,000 people may acquire Lyme disease each year, a number greater than AIDS, West Nile virus, and swine and avian flu combined. And yet, the medical establishment—with profound influence from the insurance industry—has stated that the disease is easily detectable and treatable, and that “chronic Lyme” is some other unrecognized syndrome or a completely psychosomatic disorder.
UNDER OUR SKIN is a powerful and often terrifying look not only at the science and politics of the disease, but also the personal stories of those whose lives have been affected and nearly destroyed. From a few brave doctors who risk their medical licenses, to patients who once led active lives but now can barely walk, the film uncovers a hidden world that will astound viewers. While exposing a broken health care and medical research system, the film also gives voice to those who believe that instead of a crisis, Lyme is simply a "disease du jour," over diagnosed and contributing to another crisis: the looming resistance of microbes and ineffectuality of antibiotics. As suspenseful and hair-raising as a Hollywood thriller, UNDER OUR SKIN is sure to get under yours.
Under Our Skin was selected as one of
15 finalists competing for
Best Documentary Feature in the 2010
82nd Academy Awards Click here for link.
Pere Portabella Doubleheader featuring: The Silence Before Bach (Die Stille vor Bach)
and Warsaw Bridge (Pont de Varsovia)
Mystic Independent Theater presents two films by Catalan filmmaker Pere Portabella, dubbed “the legendary Spanish Surrealist and 78-year-old enfant terrible” by Film Forum. Portabella and his production company Films 59 have fostered some of the most emblematic films in the history of Spanish cinema for the last 50 years.
The Silence Before Bach and Warsaw Bridge both premiered at a retrospective of Portabella’s life’s work at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. These films have rarely been shown in the USA, due to the filmmaker’s resistance to releasing his work on DVD. Shadow Distribution is America’s first to release Warsaw Bridge with the assistance of Jonathan Demme.
The Silence Before Bach (Die Stille vor Bach)
January 1 – 24, 2010
Directed by Pere Portabella
Unrated (as R: nudity)
In German, Italian, and Spanish, English subtitles
The long-awaited new film from former Bunuel producer and visionary director Pere Portabella, one of the world’s most distinctive and original film voices, The Silence Before Bach is a true wonder. “Bach’s music is the only thing that reminds us the world is not a failure,” says a character in the film. Portabella, taking Bach’s music as a theme and a starting place, but taking it on the road, both literally (two Spanish truck drivers discuss its fine points; a group of several dozen young cellists play rapturous Bach on a subway car they appear to have taken over) and otherwise (as Portabella recreates the composer’s life—sort of; the film opens with a player piano moving of seemingly its own accord through a bare art gallery, really dancing a pas de deux with Portabella’s camera.) The music is as glorious as the cinematic art; the film’s meanings open and perhaps even profound.
The Silence Before Bach premiered at MoMA in New York, as part of a retrospective
exhibit of Portabella’s work as a whole. Also previously at Film Forum NY and The Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
2007 Barcelona Film Award Winner.
“THE SILENCE BEFORE BACH is a mélange of genres including narrative vignettes and documentary sequences on the theme of the transformational power of great music. At one moment his camera records a subway car packed with passionate cello-playing musicians; at another he is following a guide who gives tours of Leipzig dressed in full Bach regalia; and in a third he stages Felix Mendelssohn’s discovery of sheet music for the “St. Matthew Passion” used by a butcher to wrap meat. By turns funny and serious, poignant, sexy and refreshing, The Silence Before Bach is very nearly unclassifiable, like so much of Portabella’s oeuvre.”–Film Forum
The Silence Before Bach “brings Bach’s music to life with a mysterious, magnificent blend of drama, documentary, and quasi-surrealist whimsy. Beginning with a scene of a player piano rattling off the Goldberg Variations while rolling through a bright, bare loft, Portabella tickles the senses with a series of skits... From puckish humor and borderline kitsch, a great and serious notion emerges: the construction of modern Europe on the basis of classical music.” – Richard Brody, The New Yorker
“Haunting, elegiac and dazzling!”– New York Magazine
"Every moment alive with intelligence. The title derives from a comment by E. M. Cioran asserting that before Bach there was only stillness, and that his music justifies existence." – Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic
“One of the year’s major film events. The Catalan master hasn’t lost his cutting-edge instincts or the enigmatic meter that underlies his work… his writing like calligraphy, his treatment of space architectonic, and his narrative free-floating.”– Film Comment
“DELECTABLE! Gorgeous lensing and art direction and some of the world’s most beautiful music!” – V.A. Musetto, New York Post
“A meditation on the power of music to transcend geography and time and unite humanity in a kind of universal ecstasy. Evokes the spirit and legacy of this artist, shedding light on the lasting beauty of his work.”– S. James Snyder, The New York Sun
Warsaw Bridge (Pont de Varsovia) January 29-February 13, 2010
Directed by Pere Portabella
Unrated (as R: nudity)
In Spanish and Catalan with English subtitles
Presented by Jonathan Demme and Shadow Distribution:
Synopsis Warsaw Bridge is dated 1989, the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Beneath a sparkling surface of spectacular socio-cultural events and the frivolous life in a happy Europe, lies the tension of broken memories and personal and historical cataclysms. Warsaw Bridge shatters the plot into a thousand fragments in a European landscape broken by the return of History.
A Statement from Jonathan Demme
I was lucky enough to first see Warsaw Bridge at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Barcelona in the summer of 2000 as part of a “hometown boy makes good” retrospective the museum was presenting of Portabella’s work. I was literally freaked and said, “Who? Pere Portabella? Used to produce Bunuel films? Why haven’t I ever even heard of this guy? How could a rich and dazzling and sumptuous film such as this remain so utterly unknown in my country? The exquisite images, the superbly rendered music, the bravura style, this bold narrative, the great performances, the perfection of the totality of this unique and vibrant wonderland of a film --- How to get it seen in America?” The answer now, these few years later, is the intrepid and visionary tricksters at Shadow Distribution, to whom I am so deeply indebted for the work that they have put into making this American distribution a reality. The release here of Warsaw Bridge is a movie dream come true for me. And somehow appropriate, too. I’ve been taking inspiration and plundering ideas from Portabella’s great film ever since I saw it back there in Barcelona. Portabella comes to America! A lovely gift for outside-the-mall film-seekers.
“Visually, Warsaw Bridge is incredibly elegant, full of wonderfully sinuous camera movements and exquisite cinematography by Tomas Pladevall. And you have to love a film in which the credits suddenly pop up 20 minutes after it has begun, another sign of Portabella's devious, meta-cinematic humor. I'd be lying if I said I understood Warsaw Bridge; I suspect that will take several more viewings. But I certainly haven't enjoyed any other film as much so far this year.” – George Robinson, CINE-JOURNAL.
“The New York premiere of Warsaw Bridge was a highlight of MoMA's September 2007 retrospective of the Catalan filmmaker Pere Portabella. Portabella began the film after reading a curious newspaper item: “The body of a scuba diver was found in a burnt forest.” Taking this wonderfully strange headline as a point of departure, the director crafted a wondrous feature full of romance, music, theater, dramatic settings, fluid camera movements, and gorgeous nonsense. Somehow, quite magically, it all comes together, and a story of betrayal—sort of—emerges.”– MoMA (http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/605)
“Whatever it all means, the whole thing is gorgeous."
– Jonathan Rosenbaum, The Chicago Reader
“Supremely confident, audaciously experimental, intermittently comprehensible and never less than engrossing, WARSAW BRIDGE is
a collage of images and sounds, loosely held together by a handful of characters—a writer, a conductor and a marine biologist.
They hint at a plot but really function more as abstracts for introducing larger ideas about fate, chance and will before the backdrop of history, literature, art and music.
Arrestingly visceral set pieces abound, whether it be a reverie of Barcelonan architecture, an outdoor urban symphony performed by scattered musicians, an opera set inside a fish market or a water plane extinguishing a forest fire.
The effect is overwhelming and exhausting but
always transfixing.”
– Stephen Garrett,
Time Out New York
“You’re stifled by rather precarious aesthetics,” one character says to another in Pere Portabella’s Warsaw Bridge. Aren’t we all? For his part Mr. Portabella seems pretty comfortable with his aesthetic of narrative enigma, elegant camerawork and attractive people who speak in literary and intellectual riddles. A Catalan filmmaker whose recent work includes The Silence Before Bach, Mr. Portabella was for many years associated with Luis Buñuel. Warsaw Bridge, which takes place mostly in Barcelona (with a few scenes in Berlin), is not shy about declaring a debt to Buñuelian surrealism. This is especially true in several exquisite musical interludes, including one in which the members of an orchestra, housed in separate apartments, follow their conductor’s gestures on video monitors, and another set in a seragliolike bathhouse. Connecting these images is an elusive story, or rather a series of events and conversations organized around a central anecdote.”
— A. O. Scott, The New York Times
In Search of Memory
A Film by Petra Seeger.
Icarus Films NY November 28 – December 18, 2009
The life and work of one of the most important neuroscientists of the 20th century, Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel.
IN SEARCH OF MEMORY is a compelling blend of autobiography and history that recounts the life of one of the most important neuroscientists of the 20th century and illuminates scientific developments in our understanding of the brain's role in recording and preserving memory. In addition to archival footage and dramatic re-creations of Kandel's childhood experiences in Nazi-occupied Vienna and his formative years as an emigrant in New York, the film features discussions with Kandel, friends and family, as well as his public lectures in Vienna and New York which explore both his professional and personal life, especially his emotional ties to Judaism
