Screening times:
Friday, October 10, 6:30 PM - Desperately Seeking Susan
Friday, October 10, 9:00 PM - Smithereens
Including new pre-recorded interview with Susan Seidelman by Carbon Arc!
2025 marks 40 years since Desperately Seeking Susan became an instant feminist cult classic. In 2023 the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
We're celebrating the 40th Anniversary of this 80s New Wave screwball comedy with a Susan Seidelman Double Feature. We'll chase Desperately Seeking Susan with a screening of Seidelman's 1982 feature Smithereens, the precursor to Desperately Seeking Susan, sharing similar themes of female identity and self-reinvention.
Smithereens | Susan Seidelman | USA | 1982 | 93m
Desperately Seeking Susan | Susan Seidelman | USA | 1985 | 104m
Desperately Seeking Susan: New Jersey housewife Roberta Glass (Rosanna Arquette) spices up her boring life by reading personal ads, especially a series of them being placed by a mysterious denizen of New York City named Susan (Madonna). When one of Susan's ads proposes a rendezvous with her suitor (Robert Joy) at Battery Park, Roberta secretly tags along. But when her voyeuristic jape ends in permanent memory loss and a new jacket, Roberta begins to gather a lot of unwanted attention from some unsavory characters.
"It is a film about female fantasy, but the dream is not about finding the perfect man, it is about self-identity, having the confidence to be who you want to be, and taking control of your own destiny." - Anna Cale, The State Of The Arts (UK)
Smithereens: Susan Seidelman established her distinctive vision of New York City with this debut feature, the lo-fi original for her vibrant portraits of women reinventing themselves. After escaping New Jersey, the quintessentially punk Wren (Susan Berman) — a spark plug in fishnets — moves to the city with the mission of becoming famous. When not pasting up self-promotional flyers or hanging at the Peppermint Lounge, she’s getting involved with Paul (Brad Rinn), the nicest guy to ever live in a van next to the highway, and Eric (Richard Hell), an aloof rocker. Shot on 16 mm film that captures the grit and glam of downtown in the 1980s, with an alternately moody and frenetic soundtrack by the Feelies and others, Smithereens — the first American independent film to compete for the Palme d’Or — is an unfaded snapshot of a bygone era.
"It’s as unsparing a sketch of twentysomething life in New York City as American independent cinema has yet offered." - Steve McFarlane, Slant Magazine
Throughout her four-decade career as a writer and director, Susan Seidelman has told complex stories about unconventional women striving to express themselves and maintain their autonomy. Her genre-melding films fuse a passion for the pleasures of Hollywood spectacle with a playful punk ethos informed by the years she lived in downtown Manhattan in the mid-seventies.
Like many of the heroines she has created, Seidelman left suburban life for the allure of the bohemian city. After high school, she enrolled in the film department at New York University, where she directed two short films that prepared her for making her debut feature, Smithereens (1982). A lo-fi blueprint for her subsequent portraits of women reinventing themselves, this gritty and glamorous 16 mm snapshot of a bygone era of New York life became the first independent American film to compete for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Its success placed Seidelman in the Hollywood spotlight and set her up for her next film, Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), a madcap New York odyssey that revolves around mistaken identity, starring a pre–Like a Virgin Madonna alongside Rosanna Arquette in her first leading role.
We’re delighted to have been able to speak to Susan ahead of our Susan Seidelman Double Feature, and will include the recorded interview after each film!
$18 to the double feature ($17.25 cash at the door if available)
$12 to a single film ($11.40 cash at the door if available)
Punch Passes welcome, one punch per film. Please email movies@carbonarc.ca to reserve.
