June is our BIGGEST MONTH EVER!

Hey there movie fans! I’m still recovering from our extremely fun Member Night at Tubby’s last weekend. We ate and drank to our heart’s content, played a challenging movie trivia game, and watched our super secret members only movie. If you want to get in on the fun next time, you’ve gotta join the Popcorn Club. Memberships go a long way towards helping us continue to present these films.

We have quite a June lineup for you; by my count, we have eight different screenings at six different Hudson Valley venues, and those numbers may go up to nine and seven by the time I finish writing this email. It’s a whirlwind, so hang on tight, and let’s take a look at the calendar:

LOVE & BASKETBALL
Sunday, June 1 @ Midtown Linear Park

FREE SCREENING! Kicking off our big June, and also Summer Movies In The Park, our new outdoor, free movie series in Kingston’s Midtown Linear Park, at Cornell Street behind Red Owl Collective. Gina Prince-Bythewood’s sports-centric coming-of-age story, Love & Basketball, follows the lives of Monica (Sanaa Lathan) and Quincy (Omar Epps). Prince-Bythewood called it her attempt to make a “black When Harry Met Sally”. This event will feature local food vendors Masa Midtown and Little Rye Bakehouse, as well as beer from local nanobrewery Kingston Standard. Vendors open at 7, we’ll have movie trivia starting at 7:45, and the film starts at sunset (approximately 8:45.)

MAURICE
Monday, June 9 @ Rough Draft

FREE SCREENING! Our series at Rough Draft continues this month with the Merchant Ivory adaptation of E.M. Forster’s novel. A gay love story set in repressed and restrictive Edwardian England, Maurice was Hugh Grant’s breakout role. The New Yorker called the film: “revelatory: a first glimpse, onscreen or anywhere, of what love between men could look like.” Doors at 7, film at 8.

QWEIRD CINEMA: KNIFE + HEART
Wednesday, June 11 @ Rosendale Theatre

Tickets Available Here. Kingston Film Foundation is proud to partner with Rosendale Theatre for their Qweird Cinema series this June! Up first is Yann Gonzalez’s 2018 film Knife + Heart. Not for the faint of heart, Gonzalez’s film is like if a Dario Argento giallo met a Kenneth Anger film at an 80s sexploitation slasher conference. When pornography director Anne (Vanessa Paradis) realizes her stars are getting murdered the production for her new film starts to take on an eerier (and bloodier) tone. Slick, sexy, and uneasy, this film will give you the best that camp and horror have to offer, with a healthy dose of sexuality to boot. Gonzalez captures the pornography industry with a stylized lens, lush color, and an electric soundtrack composed by M83. Doors at 9:30, film at 10.

PAVEMENTS
with director ALEX ROSS PERRY
Thursday, June 12 @ Hi-Way Drive-In

Tickets Available Here. Kingston Film Foundation is proud to co-present Pavements, featuring a Q&A with director Alex Ross Perry. Pavements is not your typical music documentary. Part documentary, part scripted biopic, part musical, Pavements oscillates between form and style to present an in-depth examination of the legendary 90s band. Perry wrangles the films disparate segments into an experimental piece that defeats the music biopic pitfalls and presents and experimental film that dares to ask what the genre can should and could be doing. Director Q&A starts at 8pm in the Beer Garden, movie starts at sunset (approx. 8:45.)

BUT I’M A CHEERLEADER
Friday, June 13 @ UPAC

FREE SCREENING! A queer camp classic coming to the big screen in Kingston! Megan (Natasha Lyonne) is your typical, popular high school student. She’s got a football player boyfriend, she does well in school, she’s a cheerleader. So when her parents decide she’s gay and send her to a gay conversion camp, you can understand her confusion. Featuring Clea Duvall, Melanie Lynskey, and Rupall, But I’m a Cheerleader is a hilarious and subversive cult classic. Film at 7:30.

I SAW THE TV GLOW
Friday, June 13 @ Bardavon

FREE SCREENING! Jane Schoenbrun’s 2024 film asks us what queer cinema can be in a new era. Owen (Justice Smith) is a typical suburban teenager, but when his childhood friend Maddy (Jack Haven) reappears with wild claims about their favorite childhood TV show, his world starts to crumble. Surreal, dark, and beautiful, I Saw the TV Glow uses horror and its fantastic premise to open up questions of identity, perspective, and isolation for queer and trans teens. Film at 7:30.

QWEIRD CINEMA: NOWHERE
Wednesday, June 18 @ Rosendale Theatre

Tickets Available Here. Kingston Film Foundation is proud to announce the second film in the Qweird Cinema series at Rosendale Theatre. Gregg Araki’s Nowhere is the second film in his “Teen Apocalypse Trilogy”, films now recognized as lynchpins of the New Queer Cinema. Surreal, violent, and steeped in pop-art visuals, Araki described Nowhere as “Beverly Hills 90210 on acid.” The film features an ensemble cast of familiar faces including Christina Applegate, James Duval, and Ryan Phillippe. Doors at 6:45, Film at 7:30.

QWEIRD CINEMA: THE PEOPLE’S JOKER on VHS
Wednesday, June 25 @ Rosendale Theatre

Tickets Available Here. Our third film in Rosendale Theatre’s Qweird Cinema series, featuring a Q&A with director Vera Drew! Drew takes the familiar structure of the superhero film and the ubiquitous mythology of Batman to tell a heartfelt, funny, satirical coming out story. The People’s Joker is a scathing breakdown of the superhero cultural-industrial complex and an earnest, personal story about identity, gender, and creativity. It highlights the opportunity that superhero films’ formulaic narratives offer when you are willing to subvert, skew, and utilize them to your own means. Drew’s film was stuck in a rights battle for two years after its initial premiere at Toronto International Film Festival, and we’re proud to present it on VHS, in glorious pan-and-scan(!) part of this series. Doors at 6:45, Film at 7:30.

QWEIRD CINEMA: POLYESTER presented in ODORAMA
Wednesday, July 2 @ Rosendale Theatre

Tickets Available Here. Technically this is in July, yes, but morally, this is a June screening. Qweird Cinema comes to a close with John Waters’ Polyester. Proudly presented (as intended) in Odorama, scratch-and-sniff cards will be available at the door for your sensory pleasure. Polyester stars Waters’ muse Divine as the housewife Francine Fishpaw. An exploitative, outrageous parody of Douglas Sirk-ian “woman’s pictures”, here we get an adulterous husband, hellion children, a cocaine-addict mother and the utter collapse of a white-picket fence family. Raucous, rambunctious, and rancid, the Pope of Trash brings our series to a bombastic close. Doors at 6:45, Film at 7:30.

We hope to see you out at one (or all!) of these fine screenings this month. Stay tuned for more news in the next couple weeks- we have something big we can’t wait to tell you about, but we must. In the meantime, thanks for all your support, and we’ll see you at the concession stand!

-KFF