Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy

Registration for this film will be closed on December 3. Tickets will be available for purchase onsite at Sag Harbor Cinema.

DIRECTOR: Nancy Buirski

PRODUCERS: Nancy Buirski, Simon Kilmurry, Susan Margolin

EDITOR: Anthony Ripoli

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Rex Miller

This is not a documentary about the making of Midnight Cowboy. It is about New York in a troubled era of cultural upheaval. The 1969 movie tells the story of two homeless loners brilliantly played by Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, who join forces out of desperation and struggle to survive. Midnight Cowboy is set in a New York besieged by economic collapse in the midst of black, gay and women’s liberation movements. This documentary looks at why this unique movie resonates so powerfully more than fifty years later. Midnight Comedy is the first X-rated film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

In 1998 Nancy Buirski founded the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and directed it for 10 years before embarking on her own filmmaking career. Buirski often tackles difficult subjects and has directed and produced six feature length documentaries in just over 10 years, all of which have been critically acclaimed. Her first documentary, The Loving Story in 2011, told the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple that married in Virginia, not knowing that interracial marriage was illegal in the state. The film won an Emmy and Peabody and was nominated for an Oscar. In 2017 she made The Rape of Recy Taylor. The film was awarded the Human Rights Nights prize at the 74th Venice International Film Festival.

Co-Presented with NYWIFT (New York Women in Film & Television)