The Cobbler
Max Simkin repairs shoes in the same New York shop that has been in his family for generations. Disenchanted with the grind of daily life, Max stumbles upon a magical heirloom that allows him to step into the lives of his customers and see the world in a new way. Sometimes walking in another man's shoes is the only way one can discover who they really are.
The Wolfpack
Locked away from society in an apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the Angulo brothers learn about the outside world through the films that they watch. Nicknamed ‘The Wolfpack’, the brothers spend their childhood reenacting their favorite films using elaborate home-made props and costumes. Their world is shaken up when one of the brothers escapes and everything changes.
Please Baby Please
After witnessing a murder in the gritty streets of 1950s Manhattan, newlyweds Suze and Arthur become the dangerous obsession of a greaser gang that awakens a sleeping quandary into the couple's sexual identity.
The Zanctuary
The Zanctuary is a decadent bar in Lower Manhattan owned by a former prostitute, Dora Ramona del Pilar. An undercover police detective follows an investigation on human trafficking discovering what's hidden under the bar: rooms filled with Dora's terrible sins and her attempts at redemption.
Changing Fashions
Anthony Kiedis and Sofia Coppola try to escape the fashion influence of Debbie Harry.
Moments Like This Never Last
Dash Snow rejected a life of privilege to make his own way as an artist on the streets of downtown New York City in the late 1990s. Developing from a notorious graffiti tagger into an international art star, he documented his drug- and alcohol-fueled nights with the surrogate family he formed with friends and fellow artists Ryan McGinley and Dan Colen before his death by heroin overdose in 2009. Drawing from Snow’s unforgettable body of work and involving archival footage, Cheryl Dunn’s exceptional portrait captures his all-too-brief life of reckless excess and creativity.
No Picnic
Down-and-out jukebox operator Macabee Cohn wanders the cheap tenements, dive bars, and derelict streets of the East Village in search of a mysterious woman in a striped dress.
Big City
A young orphan in New York's Lower East Side is collectively adopted by three neighborhood men--a minister, a cantor, and a cop.
Right On!
Filmed on the rooftops of lower Manhattan, this performance film features the original Last Poets performing 28 numbers adapted from their legendary Concept-East Poetry appearance at New York's Paperback Theater in 1969. Described as “a conspiracy of ritual, street theater, soul music and cinema."
Our Latin Thing (Nuestra Cosa)
Leon Gast's musical documentary reveals New York City's Latin culture and features live performances of salsa greats The Fania All Stars and The Spanish Speaking People of New York. A document of urban American Hispanic culture, Gast's film captures the rhythms of New York's Spanish Harlem, from illegal cockfights and Santeria rituals to the rooftops and backstreets of El Barrio and the legendary musicians performing at the Cheetah club.
The Deadly Art of Survival
Real-life kung fu master Nathan Ingram stars in this gritty, low-budget martial arts epic as a local karate school owner who clashes with a gang of drug traffickers posing as the owners of a rival dojo. Director Charlie Ahearn (who helmed the landmark hip-hop film Wild Style) used the housing projects next to his New York Lower East Side apartment as his central location in this 1979 classic, shot on a vintage Super 8 camera.
Rhythm Thief
Simon is a street retailer, his shop a corner on the lower east side in New York, his stock bootleg cassette tapes, the ambience provided via boombox. He scrounges food from restaurants, exists on vodka and peanut butter, sleeps on the floor, and cares for an unloved cat. Marty, who may be an old girlfriend, visits. Down and out in New York.
Looking for Johnny
Johnny Thunders was the legendary hard-living rock'n'roll guitarist who inspired glam-metal, punk and the music scene in general. 'Looking For Johnny' is a 90-minute film that documents Thunders' career from his beginnings to his tragic death in 1991. The film examines Johnny Thunders' career from the early 70's as a founding member of the influential New York Dolls; the birth of the punk scene with The Heartbreakers in New York City and London; Gang War and The Oddballs. It also explores Johnny's unique musical style, his personal battle with drugs and theories on his death in a New Orleans hotel in 1991 at age 38. The film includes forty songs with historic film of Johnny, including unseen New York Dolls and Heartbreakers footage and photos. Cult filmmakers Bob Gruen, Don Letts, Patrick Grandperret, Rachael Amadeo and others contribute classic archive footage.
Story of a Junkie
Filmed in documentary-style, the film follows the character of Gringo, a young man looking for fortune in New York, only to fall into heroin addiction.
Man Under Wire
An interaction between two downtown legends and a pigeon.
Trashman: The Art of Spain Rodriguez
Legendary underground cartoonist Spain Rodriguez and his friends -- cartoonists Robert Crumb and Jay Kinney and cultural critic Susie Bright -- discuss Spain's art and his life as an outlaw biker, '60s figure and social satirist.
A Catastrophe in Hester Street
Two workers leave boxes of explosives with a push cart street vendor while they visit a bar. They return drunk and accidentally drop a box of nitro powder, causing an explosion that wrecks the block and blows off the vendor’s arm. A policeman shows up to the carnage and tries to replace the vendor’s arm with a severed leg.
Go to Hell
A junkie wakes up on the streets and walks around, seeing a woman dressed in all white and a heroin addict shooting up.
Methadonia
Shot over the course of 18 months in New York City's Lower East Side, METHADONIA sheds light on the inherent flaws of legal methadone treatments for heroin addiction by profiling eight addicts, in various stages of recovery and relapse, who attend the New York Center for Addiction Treatment Services (NYCATS).
How to Squash a Squat
1989, New York City's Alphabet City and East Village. A year after the Tompkins Square Park Riot, squatters and their community allies try to stop the demolition of their building after an arson. Police forces occupy the neighborhood while the demolition continues. A portrait of an East Village that is no more. An homage to the voices and sounds of a neighborhood before its gentrification.