Mohammed's Radio

We Luv Video is bringing back Mohammed's Radio on Saturday, August 29, from 7 PM to 9:30 PM. It's a screening of the 1996 film, presented by Pulsing Cinema, and it comes with a Q&A with the director, Marcos E. González, afterward.

Mohammed's Radio is a wild, grimy slice-of-life drama about petty thieves in Austin. It's a movie that basically disappeared after its 1996 festival run, and this screening is billed as the definitive cut of what González calls lost media. He'll be there to walk through the 30-year path the film took to get back to a screen, so you'll get the story behind why it vanished and how it finally returned.

González has talked about the two most important independent films to come out of Austin in the 1990s—Slacker and El Mariachi—and he learned from both of them while making this. If you're into that era of Austin indie filmmaking, this is a direct link back to it. The movie itself is a gritty look at the city from the inside, and seeing it with the director there to talk about it adds a layer you won't get from just watching it on your own.

We Luv Video is a volunteer-run, membership-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit and an old-school video store with a microcinema in the back. They're dedicated to preserving and sharing essential, weird, and rare physical media, and they keep rental culture alive as a cultural center for cinema and television lovers. The store notes that many movies and TV shows remain unstreamable because of licensing issues and a lack of profitability, which is exactly why they do things like this. They call themselves "the best little microcinema in Texas," a big-screen venue for small crowds that can also be rented for private events. You'll find them at 100 E. North Loop Blvd. in Austin, and the screening runs from 7 PM to 9:30 PM.