Brian De Palma’s radical political satire HI, MOM! (1970) w/ intro by Adrian Anderson

Before he became New Hollywood’s self-conscious heir to Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma got his start making a series of freewheeling political comedies satirizing the counterculture. De Palma’s Greetings became the first American film to earn an “X” rating, and while its quasi-sequel Hi, Mom! was able to avoid the dreaded “X” with a few trims of genitalia, it is an even more radical work. A fresh-faced Robert De Niro stars as Vietnam vet Jon Rubin, who moves to NYC after being discharged from the Army to become a porn director. While he starts out getting his Hitch on by voyeuristically filming the residents of the apartment across the street, he soon falls in with a group of militant black activists who rope him into a bizarre guerrilla theater exercise called “Be Black, Baby” which aims to simulate the African-American experience for guilty white liberals. Filmed verité-style with handheld cameras, the “Be Black, Baby” sequence, one of the most discomfiting and shockingly funny pieces of racial satire in American cinema, is worth the price of admission on its own. But the rest of the film is no less packed with biting satire, bawdy erotica, and ballsy politics. De Palma may have made more expertly crafted movies in his career, but he never made one as pure and liberated as Hi, Mom! This screening will be introduced by Pomp & Circumstance co-director Adrian Anderson, who will talk about the influence of De Palma’s early comedies on his own work. Pomp & Circumstance plays immediately before Hi, Mom! for just $5! This film is screening as part of Arkadin’s September-long series ENVELOPE PUSHERS, spotlighting extreme cinema, convention-flouting surrealism and radical comedies that push the boundaries of content, narrative and sometimes good taste.

Event Links

Tickets: https://go.evvnt.com/2624153-0

Website: https://go.evvnt.com/2624153-2

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