News

After a hiatus as theaters in New York City and beyond closed their doors during the pandemic, we’re delighted to announce the return of NYC Weekend Watch, our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. While many theaters are still focused on a selection of new releases, there’s a handful of worthwhile repertory screenings taking place.

Metrograph

A Kurt Russell retrospective—featuring Escape from New York, The Thing, Used Cars and more—is underway, while Tsai Ming-liang’s masterpiece Goodbye, Dragon Inn has been restored, which paves way for a wuxia series featuring films by King Hu, Ang Lee and more.

IFC Center

A Clockwork Orange and Princess Mononoke are available for a double feature, if you’re fucking insane, while a double feature of Scorsese’s Italianamerican and American Boy is underway.

Roxy Cinema

On Friday our friends at Screen Slate are presenting a print of the Japanese nunsploitation...

From Ken Russell’s erotic classic The Devils to Guillaume Nicloux’s The Nun, Norifumi Suzuki’s animé take School Of The Holy Beast and Elizabeth E Shuch’s genre-subverting The Book Of Birdie, nuns and lesbianism go together like blockbusters and merchandising in the cinematic imagination. It seems only natural that the subgenre would appeal to Paul Verhoeven, and still more so that he would choose a Renaisance era story, bringing several of his interests together. Benedetta is much more than just an exploitation movie, though – and not just because of the beauty and technical finesse that the Dutch director brings to it. Gerard Soeteman, who contributed to the script, may have left the film (and had his name taken off it) because he felt it was too sexual in its focus, but it is ultimately far more interested in power, society and the sacred.

As Benedetta (Virginie Efira) explains,...

The 16th annual Boston Underground Film Festival will once again terrorize all of New England with a wide selection of international atrocities that span the globe from Japan to Belgium to the fest’s own backyard. The fest will run March 26-30 at the Brattle Theater.

The fest will open with the supernatural teen comedy All Cheerleaders Die by the dynamic directing team of Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson, which will then be followed by the cult 1974 Japanese nunsploitation flick School of the Holy Beast by Norifumi Suzuki.

Other feature films screening at the fest include: The American warrior documentary My Name Is Jonah by Phil Healy and Jb Sapienza; the pre-apocolyptic party of Doomsdays by Eddie Mullins; The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears by Belgian extreme filmmakers Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani; the collegiate conspiracy of Jerzy Rose’s Crimes Against Humanity; Jeremy Saulnier’s twist on the revenge thriller,...

My familiarity with the nunsploitation genre has mainly been with the Italian and Spanish films. This makes sense to me because of the influence Catholicism has had on the population. However, upon viewing Norifumi Suzuki’s School of the Holy Beast, it seems that I have some uncharted territory to explore in Japan. Nunsploitation had its peak in the 70’s and explored the conflicted lives of sexy nuns, who were either tormented by their vows of celibacy or happy to rebel against it–naked. While directors like Joe D’Amato and Jess Franco were taking their audiences inside the repressive exploits of young women [...]

Post from: Screamstress...