SHIFT Film: "Night of the Living Dead"
The groundbreaking zombie horror film that spawned legions of imitators—digitally restored last year and just as powerful. Guest Curator, choreographer Mark Morris.
Directed by horror master George A. Romero, Living Dead is a great story of independent cinema. Shot outside Pittsburgh on a shoestring budget by a band of filmmakers determined to make their mark, this midnight hit turned box-office smash became one of the most influential films of all time. In this deceptively simple tale, a group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse find themselves fending off a horde of recently dead, flesh-eating ghouls (cinema’s first zombies). Romero’s claustrophobic vision of a late-1960s America literally tearing itself apart rewrote the rules of the horror genre by combining gruesome gore with acute social commentary, and quietly broke ground by casting a black actor (Duane Jones) in its lead role. Stark, haunting and the most downloaded film of 2017, Night of the Living Dead must be seen on the big screen.
Part of SHIFT: an array of live arts that kick off summer at the Hop, harkening back to the creative disruption of the 1960s and shifting how we think about music, drama, and identity.
