Household Saints

OCOpen Caption screening
Additional program content
SFSensory Friendly. Details HERE

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Household Saints

Opening Night Reception and Q&A on May 13

Based on Francine Prose’s fifth novel, Nancy Savoca’s chronicle of a spirited Italian-American New York family perfectly balances humor, tragedy, and pathos. Vincent D’Onofrio’s Joseph Santangelo is a butcher with a wicked sense of humor who “wins” his wife Catherine (a stellar Tracey Ullman) in a pinochle game. Over the protests of his mother (Judith Malina) who talks to ghosts and makes deals with saints, Joseph marries Catherine. When his mother dies, her spirit is channeled into her granddaughter Teresa who overtakes the film with her yearning to serve God. Perfectly embodying a modern-day Bernadette, Lili Taylor imbues Teresa with a mix of dedicated innocence and naïveté. Executive produced by Jonathan Demme, with notable performances from Michael Imperioli, Michael Rispoli and Victor Argo, Household Saints represents a unique voice in 1990s independent filmmaking.

Household Saints was digitally restored and remastered by Lightbox Film Center at University of the Arts (Philadelphia) in collaboration with Milestone Films with support from Ron and Suzanne Naples.

5/13 Event Tickets: $20 (members), $25 (nonmembers)
5/21 Tickets:  $11 (members), $16 (nonmembers)

"Household Saints, a warmhearted fable spiced with magic realism and zesty performances, may be the most endearing of multigenerational Italian American family sagas and is likely the most mystical."
J. Hoberman, The New York Times

PAST EVENTS

Q&A with director Nancy Savoca, producer Rich Guay, and their daughter Martina Savoca-Guay along with Milestone Films’ Amy Heller and Dennis Doros, followed by a reception
Monday, May. 13 2024, 6:30
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Join us after the opening night screening of Household Saints for a conversation with director Nancy Savoca, producer Rich Guay, and their daughter Martina Savoca-Guay along with Milestone Films' Amy Heller and Dennis Doros.

  • Nancy Savoca's films True Love and Household Saints are listed in The NY Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made, and True Love was named one of the “50 Greatest Independent Films of All Time” by Entertainment Weekly. HBO’s If These Walls Could Talk won multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. Reno: Rebel Without a Pause (Unrestrained Reflections on September 11th) was awarded the Seal of Peace by the City of Florence, Italy. Dirt, a bilingual dramedy on immigration won Best Director at LALatinoFest and a Writer’s Guild nomination. Savoca’s archives are part of University of Michigan’s Film Mavericks Collection which holds the works of Orson Welles, Robert Altman, and her mentors John Sayles and Jonathan Demme.
  • Richard Guay is an independent producer and writer based in New York. He has worked for four decades as a producer, writer, studio executive, and production accountant. True Love, Guay’s first producing effort which he also co-wrote, won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. He has been nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards – two for Best Feature Film (True Love & Ghost Dog) and one for Best Screenplay (as co-writer of Household Saints). He was also nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Long Form Original Teleplay as co-writer of Dirt. Guay has worked with a range of directors from first timers to industry veterans Nancy Savoca, Jonathan Demme, Bill Condon and Jim Jarmusch.
  • Martina Savoca-Guay has worked in production for over 10 years spanning film, television, and commercials for companies such as Vice Media, VaynerMedia, Killer Films Media, Scripps Network and Synima. Most notably, she has Written and Directed two short films – Chloe and Half-Light, and Produced and Directed two web series for William Morris Endeavor based on the Together Live Tour, both sponsored by Proctor & Gamble. The Many Miracles of Household Saints is Savoca-Guay’s first feature film.
  • Dennis Doros co-founded Milestone Films in 1990 with his wife Amy Heller. Working with film archives and labs around the world, they have restored and distributed independent films, including works by Charles Burnett, Billy Woodberry, Kathleen Collins, Ayoka Chenzira, David Hockney, Kent Mackenzie, Eleanor Antin, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. For the last fourteen years, he has been a consultant to Turner Classic Movies. Dennis and Amy have won numerous awards for their ongoing restoration work. In 2022, Dennis and Amy helped co-found Missing Movies, an organization to help filmmakers clear their lost rights and find their original materials.
  • Amy Heller co-founded Milestone Films with her husband Dennis Doros. In 1990, Heller and Doros married and started Milestone in their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment. For the last 24 years they have run the company from their New Jersey home. Milestone is committed to rediscovering and restoring lost, overlooked, and under-appreciated films, with a focus on those made by and about women, African Americans, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. The company has received awards from the National Society of Film Critics, the International Film Seminars, the New York Film Critics Circle, the Fort Lee Film Commission, Anthology Film Archive, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Ashland Film Festival, the Denver Silent Film Festival, the Ambler Theater, and the Art House Convergence. Since 2021, Milestone has partnered with Kino Lorber for the distribution of its library.
Following the Q&A, ticket holders will be invited to a catered Opening Night reception upstairs.



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