FURSTWURLD CINEMA 

What is Furstwurld Cinema?

It’s an ongoing series bringing filmmakers and those passionate about the medium together in an unique, intimate setting. Series hosts Bobby Furst and Paul Cullum curate film projects that share a connection to the surrounding desert region of Joshua Tree. Each screening is followed by a robust Q&A session with Paul and audience feedback.

All Furstwurld Cinema screenings have been suspended at this time. Stay home. Watch a movie. (Directors, contact us for information on scheduling a screening in the future.)

SOME PAST SESSIONs…

Furstwurld Cinema Nov. 7th, 2019 MAPPLETHORPE (Director's Cut) (d. Ondi Timoner)

Furstwurld Cinema is proud to host the regional premiere of the Director’s Cut of Ondi Timoner’s MAPPLETHORPE, a narrative biopic of the transgressive ’70s photographer and cultural icon who died of complications from HIV/AIDS in 1989 at the age of 42. Starring Matt Smith as Robert Mapplethorpe and Marianne Rendón as partner and muse Patti Smith, the film remains largely unseen in its original form.

Furstwurld Cinema Oct. 28th, 2018 - Three Short Films About Veterans

Join Mil-Tree for three short films on what it's like to experience and survive war. Figs for ltalo A Film by Bob Celli. Based on a true story about an event that alters the lives of a brother and sister in Italy during World War II. I Did Not Forget You A Film by John Farmanesh-Bocca. An important and timely story about a returning U.S. veteran and a drug-addicted young woman looking to find redemption. Generation of War A Film by Louise Salter. An exploration of PTSD through the words of one veteran as illustrated by a graphic artist in real time.

Furstwurld Cinema Sept. 28th, 2018 - Dreaming of a Vetter World

Furstwurld Cinema presents the Joshua Tree Premiere of DREAMING OF A VETTER WORLD, homegrown filmmaker Bonnie Hawthorne's documentary about David Vetter, one of the pioneers of organic farming. David Vetter himself will be on hand all the way from Nebraska, and will participate in a Q&A with the filmmaker and Tim DeLorey of Transition Joshua Tree following the film.

Furstwurld Cinema Sept. 7th, 2018 - Calling All Earthlings

Furstwurld Cinema is proud to present CALLING ALL EARTHLINGS, Jonathan Berman’s definitive documentary on the Integratron, George Van Tassel’s “electrostatic generator,” cosmic gas pump and putative time machine up in Landers – not to mention a turbulent cauldron of prophecy, presided over by three sisters, like the opening scene of Macbeth.

Furstwurld Cinema July 29th, 2018 - Andrew Douglas/Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus (2003)

Working for the BBC, British documentarian Andrew Douglas traveled to rural Louisiana in 2003 to track down sideways country singer Jim White, whose off-kilter debut, THE MYSTERIOUS TALE OF HOW I SHOUTED WRONG-EYED JESUS (1997), was released on David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label. In short order, they manage to circumscribe the Deep South, rooting out fellow travelers like the Handsome Family, 16 Horsepower and Johnny Dowd, with drive-by exegeses by David Johansen (on the Harry Smith folk anthology) and novelist Harry Crews.

Furstwurld Cinema June 8th, 2018 - Christian Camargo/Days and Nights (2014)

Our first event featured actor Christian Camargo (Wormwood, Dexter), a resident of Joshua Tree, who will screen and discuss his directorial debut. Days and Nights, made in 2014 and distributed by IFC, is a modern adaptation of The Seagull, the first of Anton Chekhov’s four major plays. Described by its director as “a film-theater hybrid,” it is as much a study of ensemble acting and the symbiotic art of inhabiting a shared space, where silence is often as powerful as the words around it. Drawing liberally on relationships forged on the screen and especially the stage, Camargo employs literally an all-star cast: Allison Janney, Katie Holmes, wife Juliet Rylance, father-in-law Mark Rylance, Katie Holmes, William Hurt, Ben Whishaw, Cherry Jones, Jean Reno and himself, among others. Camargo also wrote the script.

Furstwurld Cinema August 27th, 2017 - Allison Anderson, Terry Graham/Strutter (2012)

An aspiring L.A. rocker loses both his band and his girl, but gains the friendship of his own local rock hero.

Furstwurld Cinema Penny Slinger: Out Of The Shadows (2017), with Penny Slinger in attendance.

PENNY SLINGER: OUT OF THE SHADOWS, by British director Richard Kovitch, is a documentary portrait of one of the missing links of 20th Century art.  Penny Slinger is a proto-feminist mixed-media artist, performance artist and filmmaker who came of age in the London art scene of the late ’60s and ’70s.  Armed with It-girl looks, a punk-precursor fashion sense and steeped in the Surrealists (Max Ernst was the subject of herthesis), she settled on the moribund art form of collage to critique Surrealism itself from a radical feminist purview, “this feeling of being stripped bare and judged by a phallocentric society.”  The results today seem borderline transgressive, wildly influential and far ahead of their time on subjects like female empowerment and gender fluidity, even as she has largely gone missing from the official history.