No Picnic - New 4K Restoration + Q&A

Philip Hartman’s priceless artifact of New York’s pre-gentrification East Village follows down-and-out jukebox operator Macabee Cohn, played with deadpan melancholy by David Brisbin, who wanders the cheap tenements, dive bars and derelict streets of the East Village in search of a mysterious woman in a striped dress.

NO PICNIC premiered at the 1986 Sundance Film Festival, where Peter Hutton won the Best Cinematography prize for his gorgeously evocative black-and-white imagery, working with producer Doris Kornish, Emmy Award–winning director Mike Spiller as assistant cameraman, animator Lewis Klahr as boom operator, Christine Vachon as assistant sound editor, with assistance from, among other notables, Jacob Burckhardt and Jeff Preiss. Scored by Ned Sublette, the soundtrack features The Raunch Hands, Fela Kuti, Charles Mingus and Student Teachers.  –Film Forum

Post-screening Q&A with Philip Hartman!

Free slice of Two Boots Pizza with ticket stub!

“A forgotten eighties NYC movie is back, scuzzier and better than ever. No Picnic captures New York’s boho hipster Lower East Side on the edge of Reagan-era gentrification — and a new restoration just saved it from obscurity.”
– David Fear, Rolling Stone

“… One movie about the East Village that gets it right… A swan song to a languishing New York tribe.”
– Manohla Dargis, Village Voice

“… For thirty years now, Peter Hutton has been building a radical and singular body of work. A sort of primitive documentary, silent, which celebrates the beauty of the world without forgetting to observe people, the conditions they live and work under…”
– Cahiers du Cinéma

“We do see a gritty, vibrant Lower East Side that seems just on the verge of being downgraded from a neighborhood to a disaster area. White-haired women stare out their windows, garbage cans overflow and children on tricycles race through a street fair while pimps and prostitutes wander the streets…the rich backdrop to his life is the film’s truest and best subject.”
– Caryn James, The New York Times

“A priceless artifact…gorgeously evocative…”
–  Museum of Modern Art