‘Desperate Souls, Dark City’ Doc Film Trailer About ‘Midnight Cowboy’

‘Desperate Souls, Dark City’ Doc Film Trailer About ‘Midnight Cowboy’

by Alex Billington
April 24, 2023
Source: YouTube

“If I’m going to America to make a movie, this is the movie I’d like to make.” Zeitgeist Films + Kino Lorber have unveiled the official trailer for a documentary film titled in full: Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy. This already premiered at the prestigious 2022 Venice and Telluride Film Festivals last fall, with a limited US release set for June this summer. The cinema history doc follows the behind-the-scenes odyssey to get Midnight Cowboy (1969) produced, as well as the tumultuous era in which the movie was released and embraced. The original film won three Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, and starred Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight. It’s about a hustler who travels from Texas to the grit & grime of New York City, finding a new friend in the process. This doc looks like a heartfelt tribute to the film, digging into why it’s such a unique work of art, made by the British filmmaker John Schlesinger. There seem to be more & more of these films recently about the making of cinema classics – I’m all for them.

Official trailer for Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy, on YouTube:

A half century after its release, Midnight Cowboy remains one of the most original and groundbreaking movies of the modern era. With beguiling performances from Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman as two loners who join forces out of desperation, black list survivor Waldo Salt’s brilliant screenplay, and John Schlesinger’s fearless direction, the 1969 release became the only X-rated film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture (in 1970). Its vivid and compassionate depiction of a more realistic, unsanitized New York City and its inhabitants paved the way for a generation’s worth of gritty movies with complex characters and adult themes. But this is not a documentary about the making of Midnight Cowboy: it is about the deeply gifted and flawed people behind a dark and difficult masterpiece; New York City in a troubled time of cultural ferment; and the era that made a movie and the movie that made an era. With extensive archival material and compelling new interviews, director Nancy Buirski illuminates how one film captured the essence of a time and a place, reflecting a rapidly changing society with striking clarity.

Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy is directed by the American producer / doc filmmaker Nancy Buirski, director of the doc films The Loving Story, Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq, By Sidney Lumet, The Rape of Recy Taylor, A Crime on the Bayou previously. Produced by Simon Kilmurry and Susan Margolin. This initially premiered at the 2022 Venice and Telluride Film Festivals last year. Zeitgeist Films + Kino Lorber will release Buirski’s The Legend of Midnight Cowboy doc in select US theaters (NY & LA) starting June 23rd, 2023 this summer season. For more details, visit their official site.

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