See both films and save with a double feature package!

Join us and acclaimed New York filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie as they present and discuss their third and latest feature, Heaven Knows What, an unflinching and affecting portrait of New York City heroin junkies that premiered at last year’s New York Film Festival. On the occasion of the film’s DVD release, the Safdies will also present one of its key forebears, Jerry Schatzberg’s The Panic in Needle Park, in what is sure to be an a moving evening full of addicted dreamers spiraling toward oblivion.

Josh Safdie on The Panic in Needle Park: “Before we set out to make Heaven Knows What—a film that’s only inspired by its lead and her story—I asked Jerry Schatzberg to lunch at our usual spot on the Upper West Side. I told him that we were about to make a film that tracked dope users and lovers on the same pavement (sometimes literally) as the ones in his film The Panic in Needle Park, nearly 50 years later! It felt right to ask for his blessing. He gave it to us, and a piece of advice: ‘Don’t cast any real junkies.’ He went on to tell us that the only user in Panic was one he discovered years after production, it was the Sinatra-looking brother character (a scene-stealer in the film). We also joked to Jerry that we had found our own Pacino in Buddy Duress, who [Heaven Knows What cinematographer] Sean Price Williams sometimes dubbed ‘Al Panico’ in jest. Heaven Knows What next to The Panic in Needle Park will prove one thing true of the Upper West Side, ‘You can take the ho out of the street, but you can’t take the street out of the ho.’”