Musically Speaking – Calle 54

Please join us for Musically Speaking with DJ Soul Sister – A series of music-themed movies and documentaries, curated and hosted by DJ Soul Sister, and co-presented by Press Street, WWOZ and Charitable Film Network.  Free Admission – SEATING IS LIMITED.  For more information, contact soulsister@post.com.

CALLE 54 by Fernando Trueba
Acclaimed as one of the best motion pictures ever made about music, the vibrant Calle 54 offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the lives of some of the greatest Latin Jazz artists of our time. From the director of Academy Award-winning Belle Epoch (Best Foreign Language Film, 1993) comes this documentary featuring barefoot Brazilian pianist Eliane Elias, Argentinean tenor sax great Gato Barbieri, Paquito D’Rivera, Chucho Valdés, Cachao, and many more – not to mention the last on-screen appearances by the late composer-arranger Chico O’Farrill and the legendary timbales master and “godfather of Latin music” Tito Puente.  (2000, 105 minutes)  www.calle54film.com

UPCOMING FILMS:
Tuesday, May 28
Thank God It’s Friday (1978, 89 min.)
As Bret Fetzer of Amazon.com describes about this motion picture produced by Motown Records and Casablanca Filmworks, “An unusual collision of the innocent and the decadent, Thank God It’s Friday captures the disco era in all of its naive glory. Multiple storylines twine through an enormous nightclub: Two underage girls (one of them Terri Nunn, future lead singer of new wave rock group Berlin) desperately want in so they can enter a dance contest, (featuring live musical accompaniment by special guests Lionel Richie and The Commodores); the club’s owner (Jeff Goldblum, Jurassic Park, The Fly) makes a bet with his dj that he can woo a beautiful married woman–whose uptight husband ends up taking drugs and loosening up more than he ever expected; a klutzy girl (Debra Winger, Terms of Endearment, in one of her first film roles) gets ditched by her best friend and flounders around the club looking for love; and an aspiring singer (Donna Summer, whose “Last Dance” won the Academy Award for Best Song) pleads with the dj to let her sing. Though not as richly written as American Graffiti or Dazed and Confused, Thank God It’s Friday aspires to a similar meandering mix of melancholy and hope. It ends up being a pretty honest snapshot of the disco era: Sweet, shallow, and not as campy as you’d expect. For all the sex and drugs, in the end it’s all about getting your groove on. As one character puts it, ‘Dancing–Everything else is bulls**t!’”