A look at the history of the American comedy publication and production company, National Lampoon, from its beginning in the 1970s to 2010, featuring rare and never before seen footage, this is the mind boggling story of The National Lampoon from its subversive and electrifying beginnings, to rebirth as an unlikely Hollywood heavyweight, and beyond. A humour empire like no other, the impact of the magazines irreverent, often shocking, sensibility was nothing short of seismic: this is an institution whose (drunk stoned brilliant) alumni left their fingerprints all over popular culture. Both insanely great and breathtakingly innovative, The National Lampoon created the foundation of modern comic sensibility by setting the bar in comedy impossibly high.

In the midst of a nasty public breakup of married movie stars, a studio publicist scrambles to put a cap on the escalating situation as the couple’s latest film has found it’s only print kidnapped by the director.

The life and work of Robert Frank—as a photographer and a filmmaker—are so intertwined that they’re one in the same, and the vast amount of territory he’s covered, from The Americans in 1958 up to the present, is intimately registered in his now-formidable body of artistic gestures. From the early ’90s on, Frank has been making his films and videos with the brilliant editor Laura Israel, who has helped him to keep things homemade and preserve the illuminating spark of first contact between camera and people/places. Don’t Blink is Israel’s like-minded portrait of her friend and collaborator, a lively rummage sale of images and sounds and recollected passages and unfathomable losses and friendships that leaves us a fast and fleeting imprint of the life of the Swiss-born man who reinvented himself the American way, and is still standing on ground of his own making at the age of 90.

Thunderbean is proud to present this collection of rare, ‘modern design’ cartoons from the 40’s, 50’s and early 60’s. These theatrical shorts, commercials, industrial films and drive-in commercials were produced by studios stepping away from the established cartoon design styles that had become standards in the industry, instead finding inspiration in modern graphic design and the work of contemporary fine artists. These new ideas in animation design became staples of the Television age, largely because of the influences and pioneering work of United Productions of America (UPA) as well as the many newly established commercial studios. This new collection is mastered from original 16mm and 35mm prints.

Bikers, Nazis, Mafiosi, and the FBI all clash in this wild and wooly exploitation picture from director Al Adamson. Mark Adams (John Gabriel) is an FBI agent who has been assigned to infiltrate an organized crime ring that has obtained a set of printing plates that will allow them to produce nearly perfect counterfeit 20-dollar bills. The plates were made in Germany during World War II, and were discovered by a radical right-wing group hoping to restore the Nazi Party to power. The American gangsters are in cahoots with a group of wealthy American neo-Nazis sympathetic to the new German cause, led by fugitive war criminal Count von Delberg (Kent Taylor); the count has in turn recruited a vicious motorcycle gang, the Bloody Devils, to do his dirty work.

The most important event in the evangelization of the New World occurred in December, 1531. Over the course of four days, the Virgin Mary, under the title of Our Lady of Guadalupe, appeared to an indigenous convert named Juan Diego. As a result of this encounter, and the image miraculously imprinted on Juan Diego’s tilma (cloak), nine million Native Americans embraced the Catholic faith, and the Americas began its transformation into “the Catholic hemisphere.” Our Lady of Guadalupe’s message of love had replaced the institutionalized violence of the Aztec culture and built a bridge between two worlds.

From somewhere along the east coast of South America, an osprey has just flown 4000 miles to a small saltmarsh at the delta of the Connecticut River, the place that is imprinted on his memory since birth and where he will rejoin his mate. Over the course of one summer, the reunited osprey pair fends off enemies, hunts hundreds of fish, and raises their chicks into the next generation of sea hawks.

Cindy, an American FBI agent, travels to Hong Kong to investigate a newspaper editor, Ronny Dak, who is suspected of printing counterfeit money using the newspaper’s presses. The American teams up with a rival reporter and her friend Yu, an undercover law enforcer. Cindy’s investigation takes a sharp turn, however, when Yu’s father, the prosecuting lawyer in the counterfeiting case, is kidnapped.

It’s the closing night at the last drive-in theater in America and Cecil B. Kaufman has planned the ultimate marathon of lost film prints to unleash upon his faithful cinephile patrons. Four films so rare that they have never been exhibited publicly on American soil until this very night! With titles like Wadzilla, Deathecation, The Diary of Anne Frankenstein, and Zom-B-Movie, Chillerama not only celebrates the golden age of drive-in B horror shlock but also spans over four decades of cinema with something for every bad taste.