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Minerva Pictures has boarded Agostino, the next film from Venice competition regular Andrea Pallaoro, as well as Stefano Sardo’s erotic thriller Close To Me and Taavi Vartia’s Finnish survival thriller I

Minerva is pre-selling Agostino,about a13 year-old boy who idolises his widowed mother, until a young local man becomes her lover.

Pallaoro’s2022 film Monica and 2017 feature Hannah both played in competition at Venice.

The Italy-us co-production between Minerva and Melograno Films, it is based on the novel by Alberto Moravia.

Close To Me is the second film by Stefano Sardo and centres on acouple living together during the Covid lockdown,...

Sure, HBO series “The Deuce” may have piqued some interest in the history of classic porn cinema, but now the outrageous true story of Times Square staple Chelly Wilson is getting the spotlight.

Documentary “Queen of the Deuce” centers on Wilson’s personal history before building a porn theater in the notorious Times Square vicinity known as the Deuce. Wilson’s reign ranged from the late ’60s to the mid-’80s as she earned a reputation as one of the savviest and most enigmatic figures on the scene.

Greek-born Wilson escaped the Holocaust in WWII, emigrated to the U.S., and married a slew of men while being openly gay. Her legacy in the world of adult cinema is examined by filmmaker Valerie Kontakos (“Mana”), who has written, directed, and produced the documentary.

“Queen of the Deuce” is further produced by Ed Barreveld and Despina Pavlaki, who also co-wrote the...

There’s an immense amount of ground covered in “Carol Doda Topless at the Condor,” ironic for a documentary revolving largely around a pioneer who established a reputation in the 1960s as a frequently uncovered, immensely popular topless dancer at San Francisco’s legendary Condor Night Club. Directors Marlo McKenzie and Jonathan Parker unquestionably make efforts to ensure that the late Carol Doda receives a fair amount of the film’s spotlight, but aren’t shy about weaving in an assortment of additional subjects, both related and seemingly otherwise, mixed with a pile of vintage clips and footage of the era so as to create a portrait of a time as much as the woman after which the film carries its name. In doing so, does it succeed?

Continue reading ‘Carol Doda Topless At The Condor’ Review: A Trailblazing Dancer Gets Her Due at The Playlist.

Q&a’s are a staple of indie opening weekends since they tend to sell tickets but Bob and Jeanne Berney’s Picturehouse has raised that bar, offering audiences seven-minute live burlesque revues before selected screenings of documentary Carol Doda Topless At The Condor. The ode to the woman, and to 1960s San Francisco where she broke out topless, opens in limited release in New York, LA, San Francisco and San Rafael. Dancers in what Bob Berney called a “Doda-esqe burlesque” will not be topless,” he said — “but pretty close.”

Dancers start in the audience then move to the front of the theater against a specially designed backdrop of image and sound on screen. “It brings you into that world immediately. You are there before the film starts,” he said.

“Eventizing” a film is great if you can do it. The box office is much better but still a bit weird since Covid.

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to identify moments that precipitated significant social or cultural changes. But that doesn’t mean that the people involved in those moments knew, or were actively working to achieve them, as they were happening.

“Carol Doda Topless at The Condor,” which charts the explosion of topless (and eventually all-nude) clubs across the U.S. after the documentary’s namesake decided to go-go dance in a breast-exposing monokini in June 1964, occasionally makes the mistake of conflating intent with her decision’s revolutionary impact. Even so, co-directors Marlo McKenzie and Jonathan Parker offer an absolute treasure trove of vintage film footage shot in, around and about San Francisco’s North Beach as they chronicle the parallel lines of her career and the cultural sea change that it precipitated.

Against the backdrop of the tumultuous 1960s, Doda became a lightning rod for controversy when her...

It’s funny to think that the birth of our country’s strip clubs traces back to a total drip like Barry Goldwater, but that conservative also-ran was in San Francisco to accept the Republican Party’s nomination for president when — on the night of June 19, 1964 — a lounge singer by the name of Carol Doda decided to show the city what she thought about his “traditional American values.”

Okay, technically it was PR maven Davey Rosenberg who had the idea for Doda to descend from the ceiling of the Condor Club in a monokini with her nipples on full display, and the fact that Goldwater was in town for the RNC was more of a coincidence than anything else, but those pesky facts didn’t stop Doda from stealing the Republicans’ thunder and becoming a political icon all her own. Goldwater’s sons even came to see Doda’s show...

Exclusive: Picturehouse is spicing up the opening weekend of their documentary Carol Doda Topless at the Condor on March 22-24 with a live revue of top burlesque dancers before the movie screens.

Carol Doda Topless at the Condor documents the life, history and impact of the legendary topless dancer who ignited the 1960s sexual revolution.

The “Doda-esque Burlesque” will launch on Friday, March 22, at the NuArt in Los Angeles with performers Ashleeta Beauchamp, Vita DeVoid and Lux Lacroix, and at The Roxie in San Francisco with Frankie Fictitious, Sweetpea and Sgt. Die Wies. The tributes to Doda’s legacy will continue as the film rolls out on March 29 in additional markets, including New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Washington DC, New Orleans, Detroit and more. The revue will be available at select showtimes.

In addition, the pic’s Marlo McKenzie and Jonathan Parker will be participating in several Q&a’s across the country,...

Carol Doda’s XXX-rated legacy is captured in the documentary “Topless at the Condor.”

Doda made history in 1964 as the first topless dancer in America. Doda’s residency at the Condor in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco propelled her to international sex symbol status. As Doda coos in the IndieWire-exclusive Red Band trailer, “I want to be in show business, and I don’t know any other way than by showing my business.”

“Carol Doda Topless at the Condor” is co-directed and produced by Marlo McKenzie and Jonathan Parker, with Metallica co-founder and drummer Lars Ulrich and Vincent Palomino additionally producing. The film premiered at Telluride before screening at the Mill Valley Film Festival. Picturehouse is distributing.

The official synopsis reads: “Against the backdrop of the 1964 Republican Convention, a San Francisco cocktail waitress became one of the city’s most popular entertainers after making her debut as America’s first topless dancer.

Exclusive: Picturehouse will release the documentary, Carol Doda Topless at the Condor, exclusively in theaters on March 22 in New York and San Francisco, followed by a March 29 debut in LA, with a further breakout to 40-plus markets.

The doc, from San Francisco filmmakers Marlo McKenzie and Jonathan Parker, premiered at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival and the Mill Valley Film Festival. The nonfiction feature follows a daring young woman who fired one of the first shots in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and became an international sex symbol and a San Francisco tourist attraction second only to the Golden Gate Bridge. Doda went from cocktail waitress to international icon and defender of sexual freedom. Pic was produced by Metallica co-founder and drummer Lars Ulrich.

The docu is based in part on Three Nights at the Condor, a memoir by Benita Mattioli, the wife of Condor co-owner Pete Mattioli. Carol Doda...

With the festival kicking off tomorrow, Telluride Film Festival has now unveiled its lineup, featuring new films from Jeff Nichols (the first image from which can be seen above), Emerald Fennell, Annie Baker, Andrew Haigh, Yorgos Lanthimos, Justine Triet, Wim Wenders, Kitty Green, Ethan Hawke, and many more.

“Fifty years is a long time to do anything. And while we might be a little biased, we feel the work that Tff does is pretty important,” comments Telluride Film Festival director Julie Huntsinger. “We take the charge of preserving the theatrical experience and promoting film seriously, but with necessary winks here and there. We’re ecstatic to share a program we feel reflects so much of the past fifty years, naturally and organically, films old and new, which stand as a testament to our beloved co-founders Tom Luddy and Bill Pence who are no longer with us.”

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