Film Festival
Amazing sci-fi, the most terrifying horror, and the some of the best noir detective films in cinema history! The Pulp Fiction Film Festival will screen films that reflect the style, stories, and shock of the pulp magazines. The films will play March 15-18, 2007 at the Cable Car Cinema and RISD Auditorium in Providence.
View the full film festival schedule.
HORROR!
The Thing from Another World (Directed by Christian Nyby, 1951) is classic horror and sci-fi. The film was based on a pulp fiction story written by John Campbell called Who Goes There? from 1938. The film plays off social concerns growing in the United States at the cusp of the Cold War, paranoia and anti-Communism amongst them. Post-war questions on the limitations and fears of technology reflect the social frenzy of the day. Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (Werner Herzog, 1972) offers a foil. An icon of the classic horror story, this melancholic film speaks to personal estrangement and loneliness, embodied in Klaus Kinski's devastating turn as the Vampire. Come watch these amazing, rarely seen on 35mm print classics at the Cable Car Cinema on Sunday Evening!
SCI-FI!
Wong Kar-wai's beautifully spun film, 2046 (2004), shows a very recent and international twist on science fiction and film noir. It will play at the Cable Car Cinema late Saturday afternoon!
One of cinema's first science fiction movies, Fritz Lang's 1927 silent masterpiece, Metropolis, will be featured at RISD Auditorium on Saturday afternoon.
AND OF COURSE FILM NOIR!!
Film noir is the genre perhaps most influenced by the pulps, and the style became a staple of Classic Hollywood. The festival features some amazing Noir and Neo-Noir feature films....
Opening night showcases legendary French director Jean-Luc Godard's genre-bending masterpiece Alphaville at the Cable Car Cinema at 9:30pm on Thursday. This amazing French film blends noir and sci-fi to tell a wholly unique tale.
More than twenty years before Quentin Tarantino's film Pulp Fiction (1994) pulverized audiences with unflinching violence of the pulp magazine style, cult director Terrence Malick captured the essence of pulp aggression in his bold Badlands (1973). The film plays at the Cable Car Cinema on Saturday afternoon.
The Pulp Film Series also features some of the best classical noir created by film history's most acclaimed directors including The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953) on Saturday Night at RISD Auditorium and Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) Sunday Night at RISD Auditorium.
Perhaps one of the pulps' most enduring stamps is found in The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941), the Dashielle Hammett story he serialized in the pulp detective magazine Black Mask from September 1929 to January 1930. Don't miss this legendary film starring Humphrey Bogart at RISD Auditorium Saturday night!
All events at the RISD Auditorium have been made possible thanks to the generous sponsorship of Department of History, Philosophy, and Social Sciences, Rhode Island School of Design.