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Movies
Old Man Gloom Forever
Sure, we’ve already burned Zozobra to the ground, thereby banishing our gloom to the land of wind and ghosts for yet another year, but what if you’re not ready to stop thinking about one of Santa Fe’s weirdest traditions? Lucky for you, Violet Crown Cinema has two more screenings of the McCall Sides-directed documentary Zozobra: 100 Years of Fire & Redemption. Said screenings go down at noon on Wednesday, Sept. 4 and Thursday, Sept. 5, and tickets will only set you back $9 (which includes a $2 service fee). The VCC has a bunch of other cool screenings in the coming weeks, too, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Bullitt, that Steve McQueen car chase movie that pretty much every capital-D DUDE ever born is legally obligated to see.
Penguins March Back
There is just something so cute about the prospect of a Jean Reno-led family film about a sad fisherman who has a penguin best friend, and that’s exactly the premise of My Penguin Friend, which is screening now at the Center for Contemporary Arts. That just so happens to be the theater where many of us saw the mega-popular 2005 documentary March of the Penguins, and while we’ll concede that two movies with penguins in 20 years does not a pattern make, it’s still great to see how penguin movies continue to exist.
E-Gad!
Though it would be entirely possible that the event will sell out before you get a chance to snag tickets, please be aware that the inimitable performer, writer and jokemaker Josh Gad is slated to pop by George RR Martin’s Beastly Books (that’s the one connected to his Jean Cocteau Cinema) for the Authors on Authors series—an event that is precisely what it sounds like. The convo kicks off at 6 pm on Wednesday, Sept. 18, and tickets will set you back $45 (the higher tiers had sold out by the time of this writing). If you’re sitting there wondering who Josh Gad is, learn a book—or at least know he was one of the original Book of Mormon cast members; a recurring character on the television program New Girl and a lead on the HBO series Avenue 5.
No Use for a Name
Clearly No Name Cinema co-founder Justin Clifford Rhody has been pretty slammed running the cinematheque over at the Center for Contemporary Arts in recent months, but that doesn’t mean his own progressive movie house isn’t still hosting events and such. The next big events happen later in September, but we wanted to remind the cinephiles to steer their computers to nonamecinema.org, bookmark the page and then get going to events like the Sept. 27 screening of Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly, the Oct. 12 Guy Maddin program and, likely some time this fall, the return of chess and jazz gatherings.
Pass it Along
Can you believe we’re already into September? 2024 is flying by, so we wanted to drop a couple reminders for upcoming film events so folks don’t do that thing where they write us mean letters about how we didn’t warn them. First up, the 7th Annual Madrid Film Festival hosts its programs on Sept. 13 and 14, and tickets are on sale now via the website. Then, from Oct. 16-20, the Santa Fe International Film Festival (née Independent Film Festival) does its thing. No word on a Lifetime Achievement Award recipient yet, but we hope it’s someone cool. We nominate Alex Winter of Bill & Ted fame. This is not a joke.
