941 Theater Blog

The Screen Savers – Sept 23 2009

When you hear about Philly’s movie scene, you rarely hear much beyond the Hollywood productions that deign to use our city as a poor man’s stand-in for pricier locales. But the boys behind 941 Theater — Nick Esposito, Doug Sakmann and Zafer Ulkücü — are doing more for local film, simply by giving movie-makers a screen for their work.

Esposito, Sakmann, Ulkücü, filmmakers themselves, got into the screening business through their now-eight-year-old Backseat Film Fest, which led them to their current NoLibs home (941 N. Front St, 941theater.com). The theater operates under the nonprofit Philadelphia Friends of the Projected Arts, which stresses seeing films on the big screen — rather than a computer or iPod — and the communal aspect of going to the movies.

It’s what 941 is capable of that makes them exciting. There’s no agenda. In addition to having the cheapest rental rates in the city, 941’s setup is tantalizing: A night can start in the venue’s considerably roomy lobby and move to the 100-seat screening room, which can also be converted into a 200-capacity concert venue.

Looking ahead, 941 wants to strengthen ties with indie distributors and host more revival nights. “It’s getting easier to show your films as a young filmmaker, but it’s getting harder to make money off it. A perfect situation would be some filmmakers, they raise some money, they make a good film, they do theatrical screenings, they make their money back and make more movies,” says Esposito. “Every project people do is theoretically better than the last one.”

Philly City Paper - Sept 23rd 2009

Check out the write up on Thrillist!

Raspberry Brothers Bad Movie Night
Fri, Aug 14, 9pm (The Karate Kid) & 11:30pm (Footloose) at 941 Theater: 941 N Front St, between Girard & Poplar; Northern Liberties; 215.235.1385

Further live MST3K-age comes from the Raspberry Brothers (pedigree: The Onion & SNL writers, Upright Citizens Brigade), who’ll plop down in the front row at 941 Theater this Friday to provide snarky commentary and inject ad-libbed overdubs into a double-feature screening of 1984’s The Karate Kid & Footloose. Best of all, the whole thing’s BYOB, so go ahead and sweep the keg, Johnny.

$10 per film or $15 for the double feature — check out a sneak peek of the Brothers’ expert lampoonery at YouTube.com

Raspberry Brothers Official Website
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About the 941 Show:
On Friday, August 14th, the 941 Theater presents a very special tribute to the year 1984, featuring NYC’s #1 movie commentary comedy group, the Raspberry Brothers. Like a live take on Mystery Science Theater 3000, this team of top NYC comics sit front row center at the movies, mocking films as they play. The Raspberry Brothers, who perform weekly at Chelsea Cinemas, one of Manhattan’s premiere art-house film theaters, includes a cast of comedy writers and performers who contribute to SNL and the Onion. They have received numerous awards, garnering critic’s picks from the New York Times, Time Out, and the Decider.

1984 was to be an infamous year, due to writer George Orwell, who envisioned a dark time for civilization. He imagined a 1984 populace dominated by an omnipotent and ubiquitous government, one that closely monitored and interfered with people’s lives.

In America, President Ronald Reagan was encouraging such fears with the nuclear arms race, strict anti-obscenity laws, and domestic policies that seemed to invade personal freedoms. So what was the response of our American motion picture artists? Footloose and Karate Kid!

These two films, released in 1984, were a reaction to the oppression that Americans were experiencing. They feature protagonists who fight the powers that be…with their feet. Let the foot set you free! Kick off your Sunday shoes and beat back those bullies with a roundhouse kick…or get those feet dancing and enlighten the narrow-minded members of the town council by throwing a prom!

On August 14th the Raspberry Brothers will be lampooning Karate Kid and Footloose in a double feature sure to enlighten viewers into the social psychology of the year 1984. Karate Kid begins at 9:00 and Footloose at 11:30.

KARATE KID: You’ll recognize the setup: the new kid in town is having trouble fitting in. Does he turn the town upside-down with dancing? No. Does he befriend an outer space alien? No. But he does learn the ancient art of Karate by performing a series of household chores for an aging Asian janitor. This movie birthed the Karate craze that swept the nation in the mid 1980s. It also put Ralph Macchio on the map…and left him there. Put on your robe, tie on that black belt, and come join the Raspberry boys as they journey back to a simpler decade when teenage angst could be mellowed by learning to “Wax On, Wax Off.”

FOOTLOOSE: Jack, get back, ’cause it’s Footloose, the sweet 80’s story about a big-city, thin-tie wearing rebel trapped in a rural Midwestern town, who dances his way into the hearts of the local hicks, and into the pants of the local chicks. See Kevin Bacon compete in a deadly slow game of “chicken” using tractors…see Sarah Jessica Parker talk about diaphrams…see Sean Penn’s little brother breakdance…and see a whole lot of Coca-Cola product placement. So let’s hear it for the boys, Jerm Pollet, Johnny McNulty, and Scott Rogowsky, as they promise to fry a lot of Bacon with this one!

Footloose and the Karate Kid

Independents Day
941 Theater gives three local filmmakers a shot on the silver screen.
by Molly Eichel

When filmmaker Isaac Williams inquired about how to go about screening his horror film, The Mind, the response he received was that it takes careful planning and a lot of money.

“I have a lot of time to plan,” says Williams, “and not a lot of money.”

But by tag teaming with 941 Theater, Williams and two other local filmmakers will get the chance to screen their movies on a large scale. “None of us delude ourselves that thousands of people are going to see these movies,” says Williams. “But it lends a certain legitimacy.”

The informal night of premières begins with Joe Kramer’s 20th Century Boy, about a man who claims to be a soldier from WWI who mysteriously shows up in the present. Kramer made it through two weeks at UArts before defecting for a job at TLA Video, which he calls a mini-film school boot camp. He initially submitted his film to 941’s Backseat Film Festival, but missed the deadline. The 941ers liked it enough to ask Kramer to return.

The Scrapper, a half-hour documentary directed by artist Jonathan Olshefski, is about Joe, a man who glides around Philly on a pair of roller skates with his shopping cart searching for metal to sell to scrap yards. Olshefski was performing a screenwriting exercise at the Steak and Beer under the Somerset El stop when the gregarious Joe struck up a conversation with him. “He approached me and we just sat around and talked about hockey for a couple hours,” says Olshefski. Days later, Olshefski saw Joe again, this time with roller skates and shopping cart in tow, and asked if he could document his life.

Williams’ film, The Mind, rounds out the program. In this horror movie told in vignettes, six average people are mysteriously driven to exhume parts of one skeleton and slowly descend into murderous madness. Williams, who also did time with Kramer at TLA (they worked on each other’s projects), first met 941 co-owner and lead film programmer Zafer lkücü when the two were undergrads at Temple.

Each filmmaker reiterates the importance of having a theater to show off their films.

“For a venue like this, it’s a showcase for your work as it is, how you envision it,” says Olshefski. The big screen treatment is one rarely afforded to independent filmmakers.

“It’s incredibly difficult, time consuming, expensive and painstaking to make a bad movie, let alone a good movie,” says Ulkücü, who plans on making local screenings a recurring event. “I know these guys — they put their hearts and souls and personal relationships on the line to get these movies made. Once this happens, I think they just deserve to be seen and hopefully enjoyed.”

TIME WARP: The glamorous past is juxtaposed with modern-day monotony in area director Joe Kramer's 20th Century Boy.

Check out the article on Citypaper.net