NEW YORK, NY.- Philip Hartman’s NO PICNIC (1986), a priceless artifact of New York’s pre-gentrification East Village, starring David Brisbin, Myoshin, Anne D'Agnillo and Luis Guzmán, with appearances by Steve Buscemi, Richard Hell, and other fixtures of the Downtown music and art scenes (Rafik, Bleecker Bob), will run in a new 4K restoration at Film Forum from Friday, April 17 through Thursday, April 23.

Hartman’s neo-noir comedy follows down-and-out jukebox operator Macabee Cohn, played with deadpan melancholy by Brisbin, who wanders the cheap tenements, dive bars, and derelict streets of the East Village in search of a mysterious woman in a striped dress.

NO PICNIC premiered at the 1986 Sundance Film Festival, where Peter Hutton won the Best Cinematography prize for his gorgeously evocative black-and-white imagery, working with Emmy Award–winning director Mike Spiller as assistant cameraman, animator Lewis Klahr as boom operator, Christine Vachon as assistant sound editor, with assistance from, among other notables, Jacob Burckhardt and Jeff Preiss. Scored by Ned Sublette, the soundtrack features The Raunch Hands, Fela Kuti, Richard Hell, and Raw Youth.

Hartman owned The Great Jones Cafe, which introduced Cajun cooking to downtown NYC, became a magnet for the indie film and music communities, and flourished for 35 years until its closure in 2018. Using his gumbo money, and drawing on the rich talent of the Jones community, Hartman wrote and directed NO PICNIC in the summer of ‘85. Wim Wenders' company, Grey City, came aboard as executive producer and the film was accepted to Sundance, but with $25k still needed for post-production, Hartman and his former partner, producer Doris Kornish, opened Two Boots Pizzeria on Avenue, now a beloved New York institution.

The film had a successful theatrical run at Anthology Film Archives, but went relatively unseen until the premiere of the new restoration at this year’s To Save and Project, the 22nd MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation.

“...A gritty, vibrant Lower East Side that seems just on the verge of being downgraded from a neighborhood to a disaster area. Mac's obsession with finding a young prostitute whom he knows only through a photograph provides a slight narrative. But the rich backdrop to his life is the film's truest and best subject… NO PICNIC does not look or sound quite like any other film, and that's more than you can say about most movies of any size.” – Caryn James, The New York Times

“Bittersweet and wistful, it's all here: lifestyles of the broke and obscure, the low-rent hip and the terminal bathos. A decaying tenement still life with claw-foot kitchen bathtub, the sound of 24-hour merengue seeping up from the street. NO PICNIC unfolds leisurely... Photographed all over the Lower East Side by avant-garde filmmaker Peter Hutton, its shimmering black-and-white images work poetic counterpoint to Mac’s post-noir rap, with lush texture that outguns films with 10 times the budget…. There’s a clear sense director/writer Hartman tried to squeeze in everything he loves about the neighborhood before it was swallowed up by the real estate market; at times NO PICNIC feels like a tour of lost shrines…” – Manohla Dargis, Village Voice

"...For thirty years now, Peter Hutton has been building a radical and singular body of work. A sort of primitive documentary, silent, which celebrates the beauty of the world without forgetting to observe people, the conditions they live and work under..." – Cahiers du Cinéma