An unsung talent in her lifetime, director, professor and Fulbright scholar Nietzchka Keene’s stark, stunning debut feature The Juniper Tree is loosely based on a Brothers Grimm fairy tale of the same name. Set in medieval Iceland, The Juniper Tree follows Margit (Björk in her first on-screen performance) and her older sister Katla (Bryndis Petra Bragadottir) as they flee for safety after their mother is burned to death for witchcraft. Photographed entirely on location in the stunning landscapes of Iceland in spectacular black-and-white by Randy Sellars, The Juniper Tree is a deeply atmospheric film filled with indelible waking dream sequences (courtesy of legendary experimental filmmaker Pat O’Neill). A potent allegory for misogyny and its attendant tragedies, The Juniper Tree is a major rediscovery for art house audiences.

David Diamond and his screenwriting partner David Weissman have decades of experience writing for film and television, including films The Family Man, When In Rome, Evolution, and Old Dogs. In this new screenwriting instructional, Bulletproof: Writing Scripts That Don’t Get Shot Down, they take the aspiring screenwriter by the hand and lead them through the entire writing process, viewing each stage from the additional perspective of all the creative and financial stakeholders who have to sign on in order for a script to sell and get made–managers and agents, producers, directors, actors, studio executives and financiers. Mixed with anecdotes from their own career and filled with examples from classic films, Bulletproof has been called “A must read for every screenwriter, from the novice to the professional.” Author David Diamond will be discussing Bulletproof, answering questions, and signing copies at this Shakespeare & Co. author event.

Lindy CineMondays 2019 ends the season with TEL AVIV ON FIRE, Sameh Zoabi’s hilarious new film from Israel. Salam (Kais Nashif), a middle-aged slacker with not much to show for his life, scores a gig as a production assistant on the hit Palestinian soap, Tel Aviv on Fire. On his way home from the studio in Ramallah, he is stopped at a check point by border control where he claims to hold a seat in the writer’s room for Tel Aviv on Fire. When the security officer, Assi (Yaniv Biton), learns that Salam writes for his wife’s favorite TV show, he uses his power and influence to trap him and impose his own vision for how the show’s Israeli characters should be written. Assi, after spending months convinced his wife has lost all interest in him, concocts a plan that is sure to win back her heart, as well as position Israelis in a more flattering light.

Join us after the film for the Closing Night reception!

ABOUT THE FESTIVAL Welcome to our 12th year. We discover and curate a unique collection of local and global Independent Drama, Documentary, Thriller, Sci-Fi, Political, Horror, Comedy, Music Video, Animation, Web Series and other thought provoking films in Philadelphia, PA, using surrounding traditional and non-traditional theaters and venues. We are committed too discovering and presenting a unique cinematic experience unrestrained by conventional boundaries.We invite you to take part in our #uff held around the city including recently at the Mt Airy Nexus, Robert Morris House, citycoho.com Cafes, Pen&Pencil Club, and UArts, often times streamed. We are discussing the tokenization of film, distribution, breaking technology, media and propaganda, via the cross roads of digital story telling, media, film, education, and culture using #uff #piff #piffFilms #mediabureau #gearstuff #PTW19 #AI among other tags.

Never-before released in North America, Franco Rosso’s incendiary Babylon had its world premiere at Cannes in 1980 but was banned from the New York Film Festival that same year for “being too controversial, and likely to incite racial tension” (Vivien Goldman, Time Out). Raw and smoldering, it follows a young dancehall DJ (Brinsley Forde, frontman of landmark British reggae group Aswad) in South London as he pursues his musical ambitions, battling fiercely against the racism and xenophobia of employers, neighbors, police, and the National Front. Pre-screening Block Party with DJ set by House of Roots Soundsystem and food by Obsidian Eats from 5-7pm outside Lightbox!

Everybody loves Dr. von Niemann (Lionel Atwill), clueless that he is using a cover story of medieval vampirism to murder the proletariat of Kleines Schloss and gleefully feed their blood to the artificial being he has created (it looks suspiciously like a loofa sponge oxygenating in an aquarium). With this travelling circus of horrors traipsing through cast-off sets from The Old Dark House and Frankenstein, plus a day trip to Bronson Canyon, Frank Strayer’s The Vampire Bat plays like a midnight matinee from the old Shock Theater TV package. UCLA’s restoration recreates the sensational Gustav Brock color sequence, unacknowledged and unseen since its first run. This screening is part of Lightbox Film Center’s new series, Down & Dirty in Gower Gulch, a retrospective of low-budget “Poverty Row” films from the ‘30s and ‘40s restored by UCLA Film & Television Archives.

Phil Goldstone’s The Sin of Nora Moran is neither classic nor camp, but a unique mélange of both. Its standard pre-Code plot (victimized woman descends into a life of degradation) and extremely low budget were common to B-pictures of the period. But it’s the telling of the story that elevates Nora Moran into a class all its own. This it accomplishes through a series of flashbacks, flash-forwards and flashbacks-within-flashbacks so complex that the entire narrative structure quickly ceases to make sense, assuming a free-form, dream-like quality that enhances rather than detracts from it. Haunting, hallucinatory, artistic, exploitative—this may be the best B-film of the 1930s. This screening is part of Lightbox Film Center’s new series, Down & Dirty in Gower Gulch, a retrospective of low-budget “Poverty Row” films from the ‘30s and ‘40s restored by UCLA Film & Television Archives.

Join Termite TV as they tackle the theme of “Home” using virtual reality and augmented reality techniques. Learn the process of creating an immersive media project and create your own work which will be included in the final production. The workshop will consist of one day of production and one day of editing and authoring. The final project will be presented as a part of a Termite TV exhibit at Scribe Video Center. Termite TV has created video installations and facilitated digital media workshops for communities in Philadelphia and beyond.

Instructor: Termite TV Anula Shetty, Michael Kuetemeyer & Alan Powell

Cost: $100, $75 Scribe members

A second Saturday session will run on June 1 from 1 PM – 5 PM