Mayor Tomas Regalado backs Miami art venues

The city's top politician visits new Wynwood galleries.

Comments (0) By Carlos Suarez De Jesus Thursday, Sep 2 2010

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Says Scalia: "I want this to become a place where people come to relax, listen to great music, and see great art and end up staying for drinks and long talks."

Another new Wynwood venue that Mayor Regalado has expressed interest in supporting is O Cinema (90 NW 29th St., Miami; 305-807-7304; o-cinema.org), located across the asphalt from the Rubell Family Collection.

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The 5,000-square-foot alt-film house will feature cult and first-run flicks, an art gallery spooling bleeding-edge contemporary art vids, and an outdoor sculpture garden and lounge area.

Operated by partners Vivian Marthell and Kareem Tabsch, the big O, which seats 150, is planning "Music Movie Monday" in cahoots with Sweat Records and is working with the Borscht Film Festival to cocurate and present a midnight movie series, something that's been lacking for a long time.

"You can expect a lot of American independents, a lot of indies from Canada and the UK too," Tabsch says. In addition, classics by Godard, Truffaut, Kurosawa, and Hitchcock will be screened, as well as lesser-known features. "We want to dust off stuff that has been overlooked but amazing, like [Italian director Pier Paolo] Pasolini's Salò, or the 120 days of Sodom," he adds.

Marthell and Tabsch say Pasolini's incendiary opus, often called "the most controversial film ever made," deserves a big-screen viewing, as does Tod Browning's cult classic, Freaks.

"Lots of fucked-up S&M stuff happens in the first one, but it's still beautiful to look at," Tabsch says. "The other one deals with the life of carnies and human oddities. That movie pretty much ruined Browning's career, but it's unforgettable."

You can also expect a skull-staving dose of video art by the likes of Paul McCarthy, Bill Viola, Pipilotti Rist, Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger, Jonas Mekas, Barbara Hammer, Andy Warhol, and a cast of others in the O's "Monitoring Art" project.