Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn presents Series MAKING RENT IN BED-STUY

The Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn announced today the series Making Rent in Bed-Stuy , programmed by critic, filmmaker, and programmer Brandon Harris and running from June 12th through 21st.

To mark the release of his forthcoming genre-bending debut book of the same title, "Making Rent in Bed-Stuy: A Memoir of Trying to Make it in New York City", Harris has curated a set of four iconic films that take place in or near the famous and rapidly changing central Brooklyn neighborhood. Capturing Bed-Stuy in every era, the series includes classic films by American auteurs Spike Lee and Hal Ashby in addition to the debut features of directors Ryan Fleck, Anna Boden, and Shaka King.

The series kicks off June 12th with a screening of THE LANDLORD, Hal Ashby's portrait of Brooklyn gentrification, and concludes on June 21st with Shaka King's melancholic comedy NEWLYWEEDS, chronicling a newly married couple lost in the marijuana cloud hanging over their relationship. Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden's debut HALF NELSON will screen on June 19th, starring Ryan Gosling in a star making turn as an elementary school teacher grappling with addiction. Perhaps the most iconic Bed-Stuy film of all time, Spike Lee's masterpiece DO THE RIGHT THING screens on June 13th, starring Lee himself and remaining just as essential today as it was in 1989.

Making Rent in Bed-Stuy starts Monday, June 12th and runs through June 21st. Tickets for all screenings are on sale May 22 and can be purchased via the Alamo Drafthouse website , and you can check out the trailer for the series here.

Here's the full line-up, with all descriptions by Brandon Harris -

June 12

THE LANDLORD (1970)

Having decamped from the opulence of his parents' leafy Connecticut mansion for a Park Slope walk-up in what his brother-in-law refers to as a "Colored Neighborhood", Beau Bridges's Elgar Enders is one of the New Hollywood's most enduring screen figures. Hal Ashby's remarkable debut feature, one of earliest filmic documents of Brooklyn gentrification, marks the beginning of a handful of monumental motion picture careers, including those of Gordon Willis, Lou Gossett Jr. and Bill Gunn.

June 13

DO THE RIGHT THING (1989)

Spike Lee's masterpiece, made twenty-nine summers ago on a Bedford-Stuyvesant block that was seen as a microcosm for a troubled New York as a whole, serves as a literal melting pot on the year's hottest day. Tackling the most salient themes of American Cinema-ambition and urban survival, economics and race relations, the relationship between violence and liberty-on a scale both intimate and grand, DO THE RIGHT THING has lost little of its power over the years. With its bold candor and Brechtian distancing devices, high melodrama and comedic farce, it remains the most enduring work in Lee's remarkable if at times perplexing oeuvre.

June 19

HALF NELSON (2006)

The movie that kinda sorta made Ryan Gosling a movie star and certainly made him an Oscar nominee, Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden's debut feature finds him as an elementary school teacher and girls' basketball coach who gets caught by one of his players (the remarkable Shareeka Epps) getting high in his team's locker room. What follows is a story about an unlikely friendship that examines guilt, addiction and instability powered as much by the startlingly effective lead performances as it is by the lovely verisimilitude of Andrij Parekh's shooting and a score by Broken Social Scene.

June 21

NEWLYWEEDS (2013)

In this winning, tonally nimble comedy, Lovers Lyle (Amari Cheatom), a repo man for a rent-to-own electronics and appliance store, and Nina (Trae Harris), a museum tour guide, are both frequently stoned as they fail to examine how their relationship is governed by gandja. Proceeding with their chemic romance until the law's dark hand descends on both of them for blunders that bespeak the consequence of pot on otherwise nimble minds, the film inhabits a colorful and humorous contemporary Bedford-Stuyvesant that contains more than its fair share of melancholy.

Tim and Karrie League founded Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in 1997 as a single-screen mom and pop repertory theater in Austin. Nineteen years later, the now 25-location chain has been named "the best theater in America" by Entertainment Weekly and "the best theater in the world" by Wired. The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema has built a reputation as a movie lover's oasis not only by combining food and drink service with the movie-going experience, but also introducing unique programming and high-profile, star studded special events. Alamo Drafthouse Founder & CEO, Tim League, created Fantastic Fest, a world renowned film festival dubbed "The Geek Telluride" by Variety. Fantastic Fest showcases eight days of genre cinema from independents, international filmmakers and major Hollywood studios. The Alamo Drafthouse's collectible art gallery, Mondo, offers breathtaking, original products featuring designs from world-famous artists based on licenses for popular TV and Movie properties including Star Wars, Star Trek & Universal Monsters. The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is expanding its brand in new and exciting ways, including Drafthouse Films, founded in 2010, which has already garnered three Academy Award nominations and Birth.Movies.Death., an entertainment content platform for movie lovers and the pop culture obsessed.

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