R | 121 min

As a former London constable, Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) finds if difficult to adapt to his new assignment in the sleepy British village of Sandford. Not only does he miss the excitement of the big city, but he also has a well-meaning oaf (Nick Frost) for a partner. However, when a series of grisly accidents rocks Sandford, Nick smells something rotten in the idyllic village.

90 min

Join us April 21st at the Midtown Cinema as we revisit some of the best short films from Moviate’s 2023 Underground Film Festival!

“An Example of Lee-Roth Fog Isolated Under Laboratory Conditions”
Ryan Betschart / San Diego, CA / 3min / Digital

Spiritual mists are a stand in for the nuts-and-bolts details surrounding the life of enigmatic Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth. A personality perfectly captured in eruptions of ecstatic sound.

“Stoned to the Bone”
Rudy Childs / Rockland, MA/Montgomery County, MD / 15min / VHS

A short that focuses on a 1985 weekend field party bacchanal that took place in Montgomery County, Maryland. A cast of colorful characters are recorded using a home video camera and a CBS microphone swiped from the Reagan Inauguration earlier that year. Music included is the doom metal icons Pentagram who are interviewed as they set up for the performance.

“Portage Place”
Tiff Bartel / Winnipeg, MB / 4min / Super 8

Follow Winnipeg's Portage Place shopping mall, from its opening day in 1987 to what may be its final days.

“Pump”
Charles Cadkin / Chicago, IL / 5min / 16mm

On the Northwest side of Chicago, large swaths of people have been gathering for decades to fill their containers with water from a magical water pump.

“Searching for Beauty in Student Loan Debt or at Least the Envelopes in Which It Comes”
Nicky Tavares / United States / 6min / 16mm

Open your mind, allow the denial of questionable financial decisions made by an aspiring young artist to dissolve on your tongue, and take a trip over 10 years to a delusory destination where the student loan debt crisis and one advanced art degree converge. Lean into the darkness of capitalized interest and dream in color of solvency that may never come.

“Drive with Persephone”
MiruFiyu / Unknown / 10min / Digital

. . . . . The ancient myth of the goddess of rebirth’s abduction told through ‘drive with me vlogs’ and sousveillance. Seemingly innocuous recordings are fraught with foreboding as the vloggers who yearn for freedom, love and self-expression find themselves unable to escape society’s haunting bondage.

“Forests”
Simon Plouffe / Montreal, QC / 16min / Digital

Eastern white pines submerged under the waters of a hydroelectric reservoir on unceded Innu territory transform into flames. This exploration between water and fire illustrates our current climate emergency through multiple stories about the relationship between a community and its land.

“Menagerie”
Jack Gray / Philadelphia, PA / 4min / Digital

Featuring hundreds of looping animated characters, the film explores how the repetitive actions of our day-to-day lives quickly spiral into an endless kaleidoscope of abstraction.

“Vision of Paradise”
Leonardo Pirondi / Brazil/USA/UK / 16min / 35mm/16mm

The film follows a voyage of the Brazilian Military in search of an imaginary island with the same name as their country. The myth from 1483 Brazil, or Hy-Brazil, is known to exist to the west of Ireland and above the Fortunate Islands. Amidst the fine threshold of the real, simulated, and imagined, the film analyzes the contemporary ideas of virtual reality and their ambition to expand the frontiers of the physical world into a "New World".