NY Film Series Tells Immigrant Stories – Including ‘Superman’ (Exclusive)
Making its way back onto New York City’s cinema scene, Quad Cinema will host a bold and diverse film series in May, centering around immigration and the unique narratives that define this experience.
The Quad, which originally opened in 1972 as New York City’s first multi-screen movie theater and survived for more than 40 years, reopens in April under new management, nearly two years after it closed its doors.
When Vietnamese immigrants arrive in Texas seeking work along the Gulf, tensions arise between alcoholic Vietnam veteran Ed Harris and a sympathetic local Amy Madigan, whose father rents fishing boats to the new arrivals.
Inspired by his uncle’s hardscrabble journey from Constantinople to Ellis Island in the 1890s, Kazan adapted his own novel for this epic, perhaps the ultimate filmic account of the self-preservation instincts required to reach the land of opportunity.
Under the guidance of coworker Harvey Keitel and supervisor Warren Oates he begins accepting bribes from human smugglers and finds himself on a slippery slope towards murder and kidnapping.
Mute alien Joe Morton, a slave on his home planet, escapes to Earth and the vibrant streets of ’80s Harlem, where the locals’ initial bewilderment and hostility give way to camaraderie.
A huge box-office hit, this romantic farce follows spoiled African prince Eddie Murphy to New York with loyal assistant Arsenio Hall seeking an independent woman worthy to call his wife.
Striving for authenticity, they move to a ratty Queens apartment and work undercover at a fast-food restaurant, where Murphy falls for the owner’s daughter Shari Headley.
The King and Queen of Swedish cinema, Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann, star as a farming couple who abandon their Scandinavian homestead in pursuit of more fertile soil in Minnesota.
A moving, stately portrayal of their arduous journey and its aftermath, The Emigrants garnered Academy Award nominations for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Picture in consecutive years.
While the main action continues into the 1950s, Coppola rewinds his crime saga to its modest beginnings at the turn of the century, with Sicilian emigré Robert De Niro as the young Vito Corleone, founding his criminal empire like any other entrepreneur.
In 1890s NYC (evocatively recreated on a shoestring budget), Jewish immigrant Steven Keats has assimilated seamlessly into the American community… until his wife from back home (Carol Kane) arrives on his doorstep.
Sumptuously shot in black and white, Silver’s loving, funny debut became an unexpected hit, and the rare indie to garner an Oscar nom (for Kane’s heartbreaking turn).In English and Yiddish with English subtitles
In search of water for his dying planet, he establishes a billion-dollar technology corporation, with the aid of lawyer Buck Henry and scientist Rip Torn, while attempting to master human mores and customs from his lover Candy Clark.
From a 1930s Chinatown opium den going back through the streets of early century ghetto life and forward again to an ominous 1968 Lower East Side, this Proustian epic is the operatic ideal of a Jewish gangster movie.
Oliver Stone’s screenplay updates and relocates Howard Hawks’ 1932 gangster film to Miami with Cuban criminal Al Pacino immigrating to the U.S. via the 1980 Mariel boatlift and then ruthlessly climbing his way to the top of the criminal food chain from foot-soldier to drug lord.
Wily war crimes investigator Edward G. Robinson arrives in a small Connecticut town to smoke out escaped Nazi Orson Welles, who he finds fully assimilated into the unsuspecting community and married to Loretta Young, daughter of a Supreme Court justice no less.
A Hungarian immigrant (Eszter Balint) makes a pit stop on the Lower East Side to stay with slacker cousin John Lurie, whose own émigré status and sense of rootlessness compels him to follow her on the road to Cleveland and Florida in this black-and-white indie milestone.