THURSDAY AUGUST 1 DOUBLE FEATURE ($14/$11)
AMAZING GRACE 7:00
In January 1972, Aretha Franklin gave two days of gospel performances at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts, Los Angeles, recording what would become her bestselling album, Amazing Grace. The sessions were captured by a film crew led by Sydney Pollack, but the footage wound up shelved in a vault and has remained one of the lost cinematic treasures of twentieth-century music. Before Pollack’s death in 2008, he expressed a wish for the film to be completed, and producer Alan Elliott took it up with a team of supporters as a passion project…Leading the musicians is Reverend James Cleveland, backed by the legendary Atlantic Records rhythm section and the Southern California Community Choir. Watching their interactions is revelatory for both gospel aficionados and outsiders. –DOC NYC (2018, 87 min, DCP)
+ GIMME SHELTER 8:45
Called the greatest rock film ever made, this landmark documentary follows the Rolling Stones on their notorious 1969 U.S. tour. When three hundred thousand members of the Love Generation collided with a few dozen Hells Angels at San Francisco’s Altamont Speedway, Direct Cinema pioneers David and Albert Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin were there to immortalize on film the bloody slash that transformed a decade's dreams into disillusionment. (1970, 91 min, DCP)