Coming up in repertory film: camp, classics, and early home entertainment

For nearly 20 years, Exhumed Films has celebrated schlock by screening B-grade horror movies at venues across the Philly region. On April 30, the group will come to International House for eX-Fest, its annual day-long showcase of grindhouse fare from decades past. Think you have what it takes to consume 12 straight hours of the “craziest, nastiest, bloodiest exploitation movies every made”? Starting at 11am, eX-Fest will offer up seven films representing different genres, from kung-fu to spaghetti westerns to blaxploitation. The exact titles, however, will be kept secret until the show. Tickets cost $32 for the general public and $22 for I-House members.

If you need an oddball cinema fix before then, don’t worry: The fourth annual Cinedelphia Film Festival will continue to pack PhilaMOCA until April 23. Among the films still to show are a saga set in Berlin’s queer underground, a documentary about the 1990s public-access show 30 Minutes to Madness, and a Nigerian remake of Prince’s Purple Rain. Also included in the lineup is another installment of the Vivisections International Horror Shorts program, which introduces Philadelphians to short, often experimental horror films from around the world.

Classics

We’re entering that time of year where there always seems to be a film festival going on in town. But don’t overlook the venues that will bring classic cinema to the masses for one day or week. Personally, I’m excited for April 22, when Cinema Ray will show 1984’s Repo Man, a sci-fi comedy directed by Alex Cox and starring a pre-Breakfast Club Emilio Estevez. Tickets cost $8.

Over at the Roxy, get cerebral with masterpieces from Mike Nichols and Jean-Luc Godard. Starting on April 22 and continuing throughout the following week, the Philadelphia Film Society will show Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, featuring an essential performance from Elizabeth Taylor, and Pierrot le Fou, starring the magnetic Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina.

Shorts

On April 15, Secret Cinema — which regularly peddles all kinds of cinematic artifacts from its home base in the Maas Building — will show a selection of short films made by the production companies Castle Films and Official Films. Dating from the 1930s to the 1960s and ranging from cartoons to newsreels to travelogues, these were some of the first film prints ever sold for private consumption. Admission costs $9.

Keeping true to its mission of propping up local talent, Scribe Video Center will show three shorts from Philadelphia-based filmmaker Paul Hinson on April 22. If These Were Silent and Yellow and Blue are experimental tone pieces, while Laurel Run Road follows the relationship between a father and daughter as they visit a rural college town. The suggested donation is $5.