MONDAY APRIL 6 10PM (following the 7:30PM screening of SUMMER IN THE CITY)
WEDNESDAY APRIL 29 7:30PM

BROADWAY EXPRESS
Dir. Michael Blackwood, 1959.
United States. 19 min.

In 1957, the vérité documentarian D.A. Pennebaker released his first film: at just over five minutes, DAYBREAK EXPRESS borrows its name from the Duke Ellington song to which Pennebaker set his romantic, avant-garde view of New York’s elevated subway line. Just two years later, Michael Blackwood made his debut with an homage to Pennebaker’s. In BROADWAY EXPRESS, also shot on silent 16mm film and set to an original jazz score by Howard Gilbert, Blackwood takes his camera underground and in the evening hours for a more internal view of both the city’s subway system and the New Yorkers who ride it. Following BROADWAY EXPRESS, Blackwood began his career in the footsteps of Pennebaker and other experimental documentarians of the 60s before refining his own approach to portrait films with more substantial use of voiceover narration and interviews.

NEW YORKERS
Dirs. Michael Blackwood, Lana Jokel, Philip Miller, and Roger Murphy, 1971.
United States. 29 min.
In English.

NEW YORKERS is a vérité film in which the camera floats around the Upper West Side, inviting shop owners and workers, neighborhood idlers and scurriers, mothers and children toward it with an air of joyfulness. A collaboration among Michael Blackwood and three additional co-directors, this open-ended exploration of a neighborhood seems to follow the inspiration of several observers and stays with characters unique to the time and the place, including the owner of a novel type of storefront for bike repairs.