Midnight Cowboy - banner image with laurels - 1920x815

Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy

Program Overview

documentary

1 x 101 min

PRODUCERS

Nancy Buirski, Simon Kilmurry, and Susan Margolin in association with Cineflix Productions and Foothill Productions.

Director

Nancy Buirski

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 film became the only X-rated film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture. 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. Featuring 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.

Midnight Cowboy - Jon Voight interview image - 960x800
Midnight Cowboy - Archival image 1 - 960x800

Awards

Official Selection
Venice International Film Festival
2022
Official Selection
Telluride Film Festival
2022
Official Selection
Hamptons International Film Festival
2022