Penny Arcade

Andy Warhol described Jackie Curtis as “A pioneer without a frontier.” In this biographical documentary, Curtis’s co-workers and friends speak of her work and her influence, along with clips from Curtis’s Warhol films as well as never-before-seen footage from her stage shows.

A24 and A MOST VIOLENT YEAR present NYC, 1981. An original short documentary featuring stories from one of the most dangerous years on record for New York City. Featuring Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, performance artist and former Warhol Factory fixture Penny Arcade, actress Johnnie Mae, Harlem street-style legend Dapper Dan, auto body shop owner Nick Rosello, and trucking union rep Wayne Walsh.

For over 70 years, Jonas Mekas, internationally known as the "godfather" of avant-garde cinema, documented his life in what came to be known as his diary films. From his arrival in New York City as a displaced person in 1949 to his death in 2019, he chronicled the trauma and loss of exile while pioneering institutions to support the growth of independent film in the United States. Fragments of Paradise is an intimate look at his life and work constructed from thousands of hours of his own video and film diaries-including never-before-seen tapes and unpublished audio recordings. It is a story about finding beauty amidst profound loss, and a man who tried to make sense of it all... with a camera.

James Rasin's documentary “Beautiful Darling” honors American Transgender actress and best-known Warhol Superstar, Candy Darling, and her all-too-brief life and career, with a combination of current and vintage interview material, rarely seen archival photos and footage, and extracts from Darling's movies.

Silva fulfills herself a dream: from Poland she flies to USA. With only a few hundred dollars she arrives in New York, incapable of the language. Not long until the charming swindler Avi steals all her money - but she doesn't give up: She hunts him down, follows him around, demanding her money back.

A portrait of musician David Johansen from Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi featuring a live performance at Café Carlyle in New York City, where he performs as Buster Poindexter singing the Johansen songbook, along with new and archival interviews.

Candy is an aloof heiress caught in an unhappy relationship with her brother. Jackie is a virginal intellectual who believes women are oppressed in contemporary American society. And Holly is a nymphomaniac who has come to loathe men, despite her attraction to them. Together, they join a militant feminist group, P.I.G. (Politically Involved Girls), but their newfound liberation doesn't make them any happier.

The film icon/Andy Warhol darling is interviewed is his legendary cluttered apartment.

About the poet C.A.Conrad, an eccentric Elvis worshiping poet and tarot card reader, who confronts his violent past and the suspicious death of his boyfriend, Earth. The film attempts to unravel the mystery of Earth's death, while Conrad wrestles with his inner demons through a series of unconventional rituals and a tour of the deep South.

About the poet C.A.Conrad, an eccentric Elvis worshiping poet and tarot card reader, who confronts his violent past and the suspicious death of his boyfriend, Earth. The film attempts to unravel the mystery of Earth's death, while Conrad wrestles with his inner demons through a series of unconventional rituals and a tour of the deep South.

A pioneering artist and cultural icon. His work is a history of 20th-century America. A country reinventing itself - as seen through the legendary artist's eyes.

A young hipster wannabe-superstar dj, Phil, takes on a day job at a telemarketing company, working with crazy people, ex-prisoners, drug addicts and murderers. The time on his life begins to tick as he battles addiction, fights the law and tries to maintain the only sane thing left in his life, his girlfriend, Christine.

V, an older trans woman, is desperately trying to hold on to her rent stabilized apartment in New York City.

At age 73, writer and melancholy master of the bon mot, Quentin Crisp (1908-1999), became an Englishman in New York. Nossiter's camera follows Crisp about the streets of Manhattan, where Crisp seems very much at home, wearing eye shadow, appearing on a makeshift stage, making and repeating wry observations, talking to John Hurt (who played Crisp in the autobiographical TV movie, "The Naked Civil Servant"), and dining with friends. Others who know Crisp comment on him, on his life as an openly gay man with an effeminate manner, and on his place in the history of gays' social struggle. The portrait that emerges is of one wit and of suffering.

Documentary about the legendary nightclub Max's Kansas City and the New York Rock Scene of the 70s.

A dead youth is trapped in purgatory. She wants to come back to life, absorbing the lives of those visiting the cemetery.

September, a young runaway, is caught up in a dark world of prostitution and murder. She befriends a stranger who is the number one suspect of a series of murders. His dark past holds to the key to September's future.

Dean Johnson, drag queen, rock star, LGBTQI activist, junkie, genius, escort then John Doe. How does someone so famous in New York die as an unknown in DC? This documentary explores the incredible highs and the crushing lows of Dean Johnson’s life and untimely death. Was it murder? Was it an accident? We may never know, but what is certain is that Dean and “the Big Johnson” changed New York City and all who knew him forever.

Following the erection of the Berlin wall, special agent Carl Halman is assigned by East German intelligence to move to New York where he’ll “sleep” as a writer until he is called. Using the code-name “April 23,” Carl successfully infiltrates the uptown-downtown literary world in 1950s New York. He edits a magazine, follows the Knicks, and marries Melinda, the socialite wife of best-selling jock novelist Hubert Cleaver, Ayden’s hilarious Norman Mailer pastiche. Through Carl’s eyes, we see New York City change from an outpost of Europe to the new capital of an anarchistic, post-ideological world. But then, when Carl least expects it, he’s called.

The film explores the memory and the legacy of the 60s counterculture through interviews with NY political activists, artists and people on the street. The mosaic of voices heard in the documentary creates a public site for memories, reflections and hopes for the future to be shared beyond the confines of one's community. An inter-generational exploration on what is left of the 60s in people's memory and consciousness.

Quentin Crisp was a writer, raconteur, social rebel, and "professional being". He was nearly 91 when he died of heart failure in 1999, and his death powerfully affected those who loved him. In this portrait, Tim Fountain (Crisp's biographer, and author of the play RESIDENT ALIEN) interviews friends and family of Crisp, to learn something of the significance of his death, and the "enigma of his life".

Film of Jack Smith's apartment starring Penny Arcade before it was reposed by the "evil landlords."

Former Warhol Superstar and creator of the seminal sexual politics performance spectacular Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore!, Penny Arcade, washed up on the shores of the Lower East Side of New York as a teenager in 1967. After decades in the Downtown art world, Penny’s personal relationships with dozens of outrageous characters, from the world famous to the fascinatingly obscure, led to the creation of the Lower East Side Biography Project, an oral history of New York’s Bohemian culture from the 1950s to the present. These half-hour biographies have broadcast weekly on Time Warner Manhattan Cable Television for 20 years. Beyond Queer is a feature documentary compiled from these television interviews.