Film
Beyond the Canon: Girlfriends + Husbands
- 5PM
Dir. Claudia Weill
With Melanie Mayron, Anita Skinner, Eli Wallach
1978, 86min, 35mm
Melding the influence of the women’s movement with a scrappy indie ethos, Claudia Weill’s debut feature is a wonderfully frank and funny study of female friendship. A struggling Upper West Side photographer (Mayron) finds herself learning to live on her own when her best friend and roommate abruptly moves. An essential but long overlooked slice of 1970s New Yorkiana, Girlfriends set the template for a host of films and television shows about young women taking on the big city.
Dir. John Cassavetes
With Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk, John Cassavetes
1970, 142min, DCP
John Cassavetes’ freewheeling, gonzo-comic epic of male misbehavior is one of cinema’s most unflinching depictions of boys behaving badly. A trio of Long Island family men undergoing a collective midlife crisis go on a debauched, four-day bender in which they drink, carouse, gamble, womanize, and jet off to London. But what happens when the fun is over?
Though Weill would only go on to direct one more theatrically released feature and her name is invoked far less frequently these days than Cassavetes, Girlfriends inspired a crucial cinematic lineage of New York women.
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