ICON EYE

a new movie by Tony Lowe

2012, 58 min.

FRIDAY, APRIL 18TH – 8:00 & 10:30

ICON EYE is the story of the album “Icon Give Thank”: Cameron Stallones (Sun Araw) and musician/producer M. Geddes Gengras travel to Jamaica to work with legendary reggae outfit The Congos. Although from culturally and musically different worlds, the unlikely pairing produces an album rife with modern experimentation and rocksteady substance. But Icon Eye isn’t a typical making-of documentary; the minutiae that usually bog down films of its ilk are here replaced by a…more-vivid swatch of cultural observation. The film embraces its slow roll by bear-hugging the people of Jamaica, especially The Congos and the surrounding people, music, and landscape: a pipe full of ganja is inhaled, situations in the studio assessed, magic is made over the course of 10 days.Icon Eye isn’t about the resulting album; it’s about the attitude and lifestyle that inspired it. Picturesque scenes of Jamaican street life and well-trodden lessons from The Congos intermingle with melodic snippets, all edited into hallucinogenic magic. — Jspicer, Tiny Mix Tapes

One time screening only so get your advance tickets here:
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/249692

DJ Rupture's article on the film can be read here:
http://www.thefader.com/2012/03/13/happy-songs-cameron-stallones-m-geddes-gengras-and-the-congos/

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ROCK 'N' ROLL HOTEL
Dir: Richard Baskin & Pauk Justman, 1983. 85 min. USA.

With beer generously provided by our friends at Brooklyn Brewery!

The story follows a young trio of musicians, played by Rachel Sweet, Matthew Penn (son of Arthur) and Judd Nelson, called The Third Dimension. They enter a battle of the bands in an old hotel called the Rock N' Roll Hotel. Howver, rival band The Weevils are intent on stopping the young band from winning the contest and taking the title for themselves...

Essentially one of the first feature-length music videos, the film was produced in Richmond, VA, shot in 3D, filled with musical numbers, written by Russ Dvonch (Rock 'n' Roll High School), co-directed by Paul Justman (Standing In The Shadows of Motown) and featured 80s cable icon Colin Quinn as a local DJ... man, where has this film been for the last 30 years?

Author Dale Brumfield, who discovered the film in 2010 and has the only known copy in existence, will be in attendance for this event to answer your burning questions about this mysterious oddity. Also screening will be a short documentary on the re-discovery of the film.

Check out an interview with Brumfield in this L Magazine feature here and read more about the bizarre history behind the film in his original article here.

Trust us when we say that YOU WILL NOT SEE THIS FILM ANYWHERE ELSE - ever!

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Lior Shamriz is a Berlin based filmmaker. His debut full-length SATURN RETURNS (2009) premiered opening Torino Film Festival’s Onde, was nominated to the Max Ophüls Preis in Germany and co-won the New Berlin Award of the Achtung Berlin film festival. Churning out experimental shorts and two features, he channels the trickster spirit of the 60's auteurs in his cinema of humorous/political deconstruction, using cinema as the perfect space to discuss ideas - about being, truth, class, sexuality and the Other.

(Thank you to Lior Shamriz.)

WEDNESDAY, MAY 23RD
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 23RD – 7:30PM

An experimental absurd pathos film in which a father and a son strive to pave a path in a darkness set by dead people and dead cultures. Mirrors for Princes (Latin: specula principla) refers to a genre – in the loose sense of the word – of political writing, best known in the form of textbooks which diretly instruct kings or lesser rulers on certain aspects of rule and behavior. The film is based on ancient Sumerian literature and the biblical story of Joseph.

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WEDNESDAY, MAY 23RD – 9:30PM

Lucy, a privileged North American in contemporary Berlin, living a life of post Punk hedonism, roams the streets with her best friend, Darak. Together they use the city like a playground, a stage, and a never ending party, Ino their lives enters Galia, a young Israeli woman carrying the promise of a better, cleaner way of living.

A tribute to Punk underground films turns into a melo-drama in "Saturn Returns", mirroing Lucy and Galia's modulating states of mind. Their look into each other's life and culture, becomes an investigation of empty facade. The film was constructed by both improvised and pre-scripted scenes, as required by the nature of each scene.

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3 SHORTS:

THE MAGIC DESK
dir. Lior Shmariz
10 minutes, Germany 2008

A short film about mother and son with magical realism elements.

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BEFORE THE FLOWERS OF FRIENDSHIP FADED FRIENDSHIP FADED
dir. Lior Shmariz
7 minutes, Germany 2007

This short experimental work, led mainly by dialogues, tells the story of an encounter between three old friends. The film creates an unusual emotional effect by constructing a realistic picture after a much darker soundtrack which was prepared prior to shooting.

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HO! TERRIBLE EXTERIORS
dir. Lior Shmariz
28 minutes, Israel 2006

“Ho! Terrible Exteriors” is an attempt to make a hybrid between two totally different kinds of films. One is the poetic, orientalist and erotic archytype of an urban couple that tries to reconnect with nature. The other is a shallow urban comedy about a love triangle in Tel Aviv. The film is a story of young people who don’t know how to live, how try to revive values that lost their meaning, values like romance, nature and also cinema, as a meaning generator.

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Videos, dialogue and spasmodic rapture in front of projected e-froth. Some of my videos, including Viand a new, surreal epic (12 min), a new story, and more favorite videos of mine.

MONDAY, MAY 7TH – 8PM & 10PM

http://williamrahilly.com/spectacle-video-night-pt-2-%E2%80%A2-half-manput-al...
 

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TUESDAY, MAY 29TH – 8PM & 10PM

The XY Chromosome Project (Mark Street and Lynne Sachs) presents an evening of nine single image films of no more than five minutes to be premiered at the Spectacle Cinema along with the screening of two classics of the same ilk,  both avant-garde and political. Special guest filmmaker Larry Gottheim will join us for the screening of his 1970 avant- garde tour de force.

Artists presenting new work include: Gregg Biermann, Su Friedrich, Cary Kehayan, Kathrin McInnis, Meerkat Media, John Mhiripiri, Amos Poe, Uzi Sabah, Kelly Spivey

with

FOG LINE
dir. by Larry Gottheim
11 min. 1970 16mm (screened on film)
(Gottheim will be present for the screening)

"It is a small but perfect film." - Jonas Mekas

"The metaphor in FOG LINE is so delicately positioned that I find myself receding in many directions to discover its source: The Raw and the Cooked? Analytic vs. Synthetic? Town & Country? Ridiculous and Sublime? One line is scarcely adequate to the bounty which hangs from fog & line conjoined." - Tony Conrad

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SELECTIVE SERVICE SYSTEM
dir. by Warren Hack
13 min.1970

Since 1956, the United States had been involved in a ground war in Asia. The American commitment had led to an ever increasing involvement in that area of the world - despite growing
dissatisfaction here at home. To implement this country's mobilization, the draft system had been stepped up. This system made virtually no exemptions for those who felt this war was immoral and
unjust. These young men either had to serve in a war in which they did not believe, or face the bleak alternatives to service. Some chose prison. Some sought refuge in other countries. This film documents another alternative. There was no attempt to alter the proceedings that took place.

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TUESDAY, MAY 22ND – 8PM (730 DOORS)

ONE NIGHT ONLY!

SPECIAL INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD BRODY

A wraith-like, bullet-pated graybeard runs a Lisbon ice-cream parlor with the epicurean whimsy and philosophical gravity of a born artist, which is exactly the point of João César Monteiro’s delicately decadent 1995 burlesque. The confectioner, João de Deus (John of God), played by Monteiro, is also an erotomaniac; with his Nosferatu-like manner and his exacting attention to hygiene and deportment, he uses the shop as his casting couch for a stable of young waitresses. De Deus—who keeps an album of women’s pubic hairs that he calls his “Book of Thoughts”—is the most graceful of dirty old men, pursuing his quietly sadistic seductions with a sacred sense of mission and infusing his day job with the same sensual passion. The round of immoralism unfolds in a series of serene, frontal tableaux; like Balthus, Monteiro conveys a powdery, matte world of straight lines and kinky desires. The stuff of de Deus’s fancies is also the stuff of art: references to Truffaut and Hölderlin complement the monastic splendor of his exquisitely appointed bachelor pad, and the ambrosial genius confronts familiar practical obstacles to the realization of his visions, both in the marketplace and in bed. In Portuguese.

by Richard Brody May 3, 2010

Richard Brody is the movies editor for Goings On About Town for The New Yorker, and the author of Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard."

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Aniki-Bóbó, a portrait of Oporto’s street children, was a commercial failure when it opened, and its merit only came to be recognised over time. This drawback forced Oliveira to abandon other film projects he was involved in, and to dedicate himself to running his family vineyard. He re-emerged onto the film scene in 1956 with The Artist and the City, a work that marked a turning point in Oliveira’s conception of the cinema.

TUESDAY, MAY 8TH, 8PM

Excerpt from YouTube:

After it came out, it was one of De Oliveira's best-known works for many years. Using the actual children of the area, the film follows the adventures of street urchins growing up in the slums of Oporto and on the banks of the river. Much simpler in style and more approachable than many of De Oliveira's later films, it has excellent location photography and natural performances from the kids. Coincidentally it was made in the same year as Vittorio de Sica made his first Italian neo-realist film, The Children Are Watching Us.

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Icarus Films presents:
METAL AND MELANCHOLY
dir. by Heddy Honigmann, 1983
80 min., USA

THURSDAY MAY 31ST – 8PM

This documentary is an offbeat "road movie" in which acclaimed documentarian Heddy Honigmann travels with, and thereby discovers the stories of, taxi drivers in Lima. In the early 1990s, in response to Peru's inflationary economy and a government destabilized by corruption and Shining Path terrorism, many middle-class professionals used their own cars to moonlight as taxi drivers in order to weather the financial crisis.

Through the filmmaker's distinctive approach—"I don't do interviews," Honigmann has explained, "I have conversations"—Metal and Melancholy learns how these part-time cabbies, including a teacher, a Ministry of Justice employee, a film actor, and a policeman, among others, manage to navigate through Lima's congested, pothole-filled streets in dilapidated cars whose survival techniques are as fascinating as those of their owners.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Metal and Melancholy also occasionally steps outside the taxis for a heartrending visit to a Lima cemetery, to visit the homes of their drivers and to meet their families, to contend with the swarms of street vendors, including young children, and to snap personal portraits of cars and drivers.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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"Revealing...compelling." —Stephen Holden, The New York Times

*** ½ Stars "A loving portrait... moving... this portrait of life for the city's cab drivers also becomes an insightful statement about Peruvian national identity." —TV Guide

"Offers a candid and kaleidoscopic view of the poverty-stricken metropolis through each driver-philosopher's tale of hardship. Some of the stories are disarmingly amusing, even comical; others are poignant and sobering." —The Chicago Reader

"A panorama of human spirit and ingenuity." —Museum of Modern Art Program Notes

*** ½ Stars "A wrenching, haunting film...[with] ferocious intelligence and shattering compassion." —Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Film Freak Central

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Heddy Honigmann, a child of Holocaust survivors, was born in 1951 in Lima, Peru, where she studied biology and literature at the University of Lima. She left Peru in 1973, traveled throughout Mexico, Israel, Spain and France, and later studied film at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. Since 1978 she has been a Dutch citizen and presently lives in Amsterdam, although her filmmaking career has taken her around the world.

As the child of exiles, it’s not surprising that the plight of exiles and outsiders is a recurrent theme in her documentaries, as is memory, music and love. Her subjects have included cab drivers in Peru, immigrant musicians on the Paris Metro, senior citizens in Brazil, and Cuban exiles in New Jersey.

In addition to the elegantly composed imagery of her films, Honigmann’s most often recognized talent as a documentary filmmaker is her ability to make an emotional connection with the people she films, an empathetic ability to listen and to elicit surprisingly intimate responses from them. As Honigmann has described her approach, “I don’t do interviews. I make conversation.”

This quality has also been noted by Jytte Jensen, Associate Curator in the Department of Film and Media at the Museum of Modern Art. “An endlessly curious offscreen presence, Honigmann teases out the complex, astonishingly resilient, and often funny aspects of people’s amazing lives. Her questions are direct and compassionate but persistent—like those of an old, dear friend.”

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SUNDAY, MAY 6th - 8PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Black Thorns in the Black Box is a touring screening of experimental film and video by eleven contemporary artists whose work resonates with the heavy, dark, and mystic obscurity of Black Metal music.

Based throughout Northern America and Europe, the participating artists include Annie Feldmeier Adams for Locrian (Chicago), Gast Bouschet & Nadine Hilbert (Brussels, Belgium), Una Hamilton Helle (London, England), Devin Horan (Brooklyn), Hunter Hunt-Hendrix (Brooklyn), Ruth Jarman & Joe Gerhardt of Semiconductor (Brighton, England), Chris Kennedy (Toronto, Canada), Marianna Milhorat (Chicago), Jimmy Joe Roche (Baltimore), Shazzula for Cultus Sabbati (Brussels, Belgium), and Michaël Sellam (Paris, France).

This screening of Black Thorns in the Black Box is organized into three parts—the underground, the earth, and the heavens—according to the three branches of Medieval concepts of music—musica mundana, musica humana, and musica instrumentalis—to explore how Black Metal has permeated all known spheres of creation.

About the curator:

Amelia Ishmael is an artist whose practice includes critiquing, historicising, teaching, and curating. Her recent projects include the traveling art exhibition "Black Thorns in the White Cube" and the academic journal Helvete. She studied studio art and art history at the Kansas City Art Institute and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has published articles on contemporary art with The WIRE, Art21.com, ArtSlant Chicago, and Art Papers.

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TUESDAY, MAY 1ST – 7:30PM

WE SUPPORT THE GENERAL STRIKE!

Most of us will be on the street, reclaiming what is ours. At the same time, we believe this is a good cause, a good show, relevant to where we are and what we belive, and it's free, so we agreed to let Sebastian put this show together. We were going to try to screen this outside, which is more in the spirit of May Day General Strike, but we don't have any money or tech expertise, so it's inside, as usual. If you do want to donate anything, all of it will go to O4O, who help the poor and occupations. Other than that, meet us on the streets!

No Work.
No School.
No Shopping.
No Banking.
Take Back What Is Ours
And Enjoy the Day

Here's the program for the night:

O4O is organizing a screening and discussion with filmmaker Peter Kinoy – Takeover – and our own Frank Morales, myself – Via Geanme – and additional Organize for Occupation supporters.
 
We will be discussing the past and the time to come of direct actions involving occupying, squatting or taking over abandoned spaces in order to shelter people with out a roof.

That same day a general strike has been called and demonstrations are expected; mainly people will gather and march and we are looking for someone that will be part of this.

Additionally we would like to find a volunteer that knows how to stream live video for us at Spectacle Theater. You don’t have to be a live streaming expert! If you have the equipment to do this and have tried this before and the streaming worked, we can use your support on MAY 1st.
 


Furthermore to broaden and enrich the evening we would love to be able to share what has been going on in other parts of the country. So we are asking if your group would be willing to share a short description of what is going on with housing in your area; the plight and the fight.

In solidarity,

Sebastian

*Found raising proceeds will go towards O4O for tools and materials to help build and occupy a home*

About the movies:

Takeover - 60 min.  
Twenty two years ago, on May 1st, 1990, homeless people in eight cities around the country seized empty (HUD) federal housing simultaneously. It was the first national coordinated homeless housing takeover ever. The filmmakers followed the takeovers with 12 crews in the eight cities, documenting the secret planning, the illegal occupations, and the hopeful aftermath of this bold endeavor.

Via Geanme - 16 min. Geanme reached New York not too long after having crossed the border through Mexico. She dealt with the hardship of living as a squatter, delivering her baby and falling out of love.But her tensity helped the winters cold, building her apartment all the way to the improvised delivery room. With the help of a midwife but no running water, Paula her daughter was born in Umbrella House.

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Plays with Forgotten Faces

SUNDAY, MAY 6 – 9:30PM
FRIDAY, MAY 11 – 9:30PM
SUNDAY, MAY 27 – 9:30PM

A frightening harbinger of the National Defense Authorization Act passed in January, Punishment Park presents a non-professional cast of draft dodgers, cultural militants and pacifist intellectuals find themselves detained without charge, sentenced without bail and their constitutional rights categorically denied. Thrust before a military tribunal, they are given an option: decades-to-life in a federal penitentiary, or three days participation in a training game for counterinsurgent police units. In his hallmark quasi-documentary style, Watkins follows protesters who have chosen for "Punishment Park" as they are released into the desert and savagely hunted by fully-strapped uniformed police thugs.

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THE TRAP (FÄLLEN)

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DIARY OF AN UNKNOWN SOLDIER
Dir: Peter Watkins, 1959. 17 min. UK.

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EDVARD MUNCH
Dir: Peter Watkins, 1974. 210 min. Sweden/Norway.
In Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, French, German and English with English subtitles.

 
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LA COMMUNE
Dir: Peter Watkins, 2000. 345 min. France.
In French with English subtitles.
Courtesy of Icarus Films

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FRIDAY, MAY 4TH – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, MAY 26TH – 9:45PM

Winner of the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival, this acclaimed first installment in Chahine’s groundbreaking Alexandria Trilogy takes place in 1942, as British and Arab forces fight together against German troops advancing toward Alexandria.

Yehia, here representing the young Youssef Chahine, is obsessed with Hollywood musicals and dreams of studying acting in the USA; a beautiful Jewish socialite must decide between fleeing the advancing Germans with her father or staying with her Egyptian lover, who is secretly working with the Germans; a wealthy Egyptian aristocrat murders occupying troops one by one until he meets a young British soldier with whom he develops a special bond. Chahine masterfully weaves these interrelated storylines together to create a magnificent historical and autobiographical tapestry.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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AN EGYPTIAN STORY

FRIDAY, MAY 4TH – 9:45PM
SATURDAY, MAY 26TH – 7:30PM

Acclaimed actor Nour El Cherif here plays Egyptian filmmaker Yehia Mourad some thirty years after we last see him in Alexandria, Why? Though successful in his work, yehia has grown distant from his wife and children and suffers a symbolic blockage of the heart while shooting the final scenes of his latest film. After being flown to England for evaluation, it's determined that yehia must undergo emergency surgery.

As doctors labor to save his heart, a trial ensues within the director's own body, where the juvenile Yehia is accused of attempting to assassinate the adult Yehia. Testimony is given by the director's mother, sister, wife, and other prominent figures in his life, as scenes of Yehia's past unfold before our eyes.

Fact and fiction blend seamlessly—with healthy doses of cleverly absurdist fantasy—as the film explores the various personalities and forces that have made Yehia (and Youssef Chahine) the man he has become.

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SATURDAY, MAY 12TH – 9:45PM
SUNDAY, MAY 20TH – 7:30PM

Set in 1987 against the backdrop of a hunger strike by the Egyptian film industry, Chahine himself steps in to play Yehia, the famed Egyptian director whose life is chronicled in Alexandria, Why? and An Egyptian Story. Obsessed with Amr, the handsome actor he discovered and cast as his alter-ego in parts one and two of The Alexandria Trilogy, Yehia pressures Amr to star in various film projects that change even as Yehia's perception of the young actor begins to change. He first casts Amr as Hamlet, which the actor deems too demanding for his talents, then as the lead in a musical biopic of demigod Alexander the Great, who founded the city of Alexandria in 332 B.C.

As these projects fall through, Yehia becomes fascinated by Nadia, an outspoken actress and leader of the hunger strike. As Yehia's affections shift toward Nadia, he envisions her as Cleopatra, the famous Egyptian queen.

Chahine expertly mixes biography with fantasy and fiction—along with whimsical dashes of fast-motion action, animation, and several dynamic musical numbers—to create a moving tribute to Egypt, to the art of cinema, and to his own enduring career.

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SATURDAY, MAY 12TH – 9:45PM
SUNDAY, MAY 20TH – 7:30PM

In this Andre Gide adaptation, an activist is released after many years in prison and returns home, shaking up established relationships among his family members at the farm governed by his strict father. Demonstrating Chahine’s eclecticism, this is an elegant melodrama, exuberant musical, layered allegory, and profound portrait of personal and political disillusionment.

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THURSDAY, MAY 3RD – 8PM

Come hear the Oscar winning master documentarian talk about his muckraking, history-making movie about the role of the military-industrial complex in the Vietnam War.
 
The aim of this film was to examine the increasing utilization and cost to the taxpayers of public relations activities by the military-industrial complex in order to shape public opinion in favor of the military.

While the controversial nature of the subject-matter was clearly understood by the producers, and a strong reaction was anticipated, the virulence and the direction of this reaction could not have been foreseen. In the end, the furor surrounding The Selling of the Pentagon would serve as a significant benchmark in evaluating the First Amendment Rights of the broadcast media.

The Selling of the Pentagon was a milestone in the development of the television documentary, not so much for what it contained, but because it represented a clear statement that the networks could not be made to bend to government control in the technological era.

It's a sort of "first run" at Peter Davis' later masterpiece, Hearts and Minds.

Mr. Davis will also be presenting another film, but we have no idea what it is or what it will be. Come and find out!

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FEMINIZING FILM PRAXIS
RADICAL FEMINIST FILM

Caught in a double bind between manifest patriarchy in the late 60’s revolutionary movements and its latent counterpart in the facile reformism of ‘women’s rights’, a diffuse wave of filmmakers throughout the 70s and 80s took to formulating a militant and positively feminist cinema. Categorically experimental, sometimes coincidental with the controversial Second Wave separatist tendency, as well as following (and including) watershed theoretical works by Laura Mulvey and others, these works problematize, without essentializing, the predominant complexes of phallocentrism, the gaze, and narrative logic, while critiquing the social, sexual, and psychic roles of women under late capitalism, in order to produce new relations to representation, sexuality, and the feminine subject.

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THURSDAY, MAY 24TH – 7:30PM
WEDNESDAY, MAY 30TH – 9:30PM

“Emancipation or not, you want to sell a story.”

Helke Sander writes, directs, and stars in this meditation on the proletarianization of the body, the misogyny of the Soviet New Man myth, and the other side of the Wall. Threatened by the increasing cost of living (not to mention of producing images), a women’s photography collective attempts to subvert a commission given to them by the politically and sexually repressive West German government. Drifting from private moments to Godardian accounting, urban survey to bureaucratic detentes, Redupers probes the possibility of reintegrating art into social space as a means of ending grey-on-grey capitalism and socialism, two sides of the same valueless coin.

Preceded by 'Subjektitude', Sander's student short at the Berlin Filmakademie.

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SATURDAY, MAY 5TH – 7:30PM
THURSDAY, MAY 24TH – 9:30PM

“They say I’m castrating just by looking at me. Do you feel castrated?”

This anti-illusive exercise in cinematic herstory compiles the recollections and analyses of Jane Fonda, Juliet Berto, Maria Schneider and other international starlets about the victories and prospects of Women’s Liberation on the severe patriarchy of popular film production and the society that bolsters it.
 
Directed by long-time actress-activist Delphine Seyrig, previously compelled to ‘be pretty and shut up’ by such arch-auteurs as Alain Resnais, Luis Bunuel, and Francois Truffaut. Preceded by Seyrig’s 1976 recitation of Valerie Solanas’ infamous second-wave call to arms, ‘The S.C.U.M. Manifesto’.

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WEDNESDAY, MAY 9TH – 9:30PM
WEDNESDAY, MAY 30TH – 7:30PM

Breaking free of conventional unities of body, space and time, this early feature by one of Europe's leading feminist filmmakers is a haunting excursion into psychic disintegration and crumbling identity. It loosely covers one year in the life of Anna, a young Viennese photographer increasingly convinced that the Hyksos, a hostile alien force, are invading people's bodies and responsible for the decay and rising violence around her.

Valie Export skillfully exploits montage and integrates video, performance and installation art with elements from Cubism, Surrealism, Dada and avant-garde cinema.

"The film feels a little as if Godard were reincarned as a woman and decided to make a feminist version of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Amy Taubin, Soho Weekly News

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WEDNESDAY, MAY 9TH – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, MAY 19TH – 9:30PM

“Do you think there’s an analogy between colonized people and women?”

In a dissonant crescendo of anti-psychiatric, anti-narrative cinema, a group of female schizophrenics reject their group analyst’s attempts to cure, culpabilize and castrate them. Proceeding by mental collapse and Deleuzian deconstruction, the committed finally form an agrarian commune as experimental and celebratory as their psyches. In the vein of emancipatory analytic experiments occurring in England, France and Italy at the time, director Jane Arden clutches at psychic consistency and sadly presages her own suicide in this perhaps therapeutic, mostly devastating adaptation of her play Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven, produced by the radical British feminist theatre collective Holocaust.

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SATURDAY, MAY 5TH – 9:30PM
SATURDAY, MAY 19TH – 7:30PM

“All women are too strong for me... I might as well hang myself.”

 
A sociological document on the working woman and abortion, an anti-matrimonial and anti-utopian communist manifesto, Unter dem Pflaster is an intimate chronicle of post-68 malaise and the growing schism between sexual and political revolutions. An illicit and ludic affair between two actors with a shared past in the student rebellions opens up onto the history of German revolution and fascism, the constraints of domestic monogamy and claustrophobia of private property, as they watch themselves become the very parents they mutinied against. Caught at a crux of early postmodernity, Sanders-Brahms pinpoints the exigency of a women’s movement in the stale husk of ’68 macho militancy and growing recuperation in post-Fordist women’s reformism.

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Throughout the month of May, Spectacle is proud to spotlight the visionary cinematography of Zbigniew Rybczyński.

Born in 1949, Rybczyński began his career as a member of the legendary Lodz avant-cinema collective the Workshop of the Film Form (Warsztat Formy Filmowej). His early films reflect a growing disgust with the failed promises of Polish communism—he ultimately sought asylum in Austria following heavy involvement with the Polish Solidarity Movement (Solidarnosc).

The winner of many film awards (including a 1983 Academy Award for Best Animated Short), Rybczyński has straddled the United States and Germany over the past thirty years, conducting innovative special effects research and producing classic music videos for John Lennon, Lou Reed, and the Pet Shop Boys, among others. This special program highlights Rybczyński’s forgotten career as a cinematographer through two rarely screened masterpieces that capture a radical talent behind the camera.

Special thanks to Filmoteka Narodow, Gerald Kargl, Marc Lammers at Epix Media, and Natalia Babinski at the Polish Cultural Institute of New York City.

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ANGST
aka FEAR
dir by Gerald Kargl
1983. 75 min. Austria.
In German with English subtitles.

THURSDAY, MAY 10th - 9:30PM
SUNDAY, MAY 13th - 7:30PM
FRIDAY, MAY 25th - 9:30PM

Not for the faint of heart, Gerald Kargl’s gorgeously stylized, shockingly violent horror film Angst (“Fear”) remains criminally under-screened - a forgotten classic on the fringes of the slasher cycle and a major influence on both Gaspar Noe and Darren Aronofsky.

Based on real-life Austrian serial murderer Werner Kniesek, Austrian actor Erwin Leder (Das Boot, Underworld, Schindler’s List) plays a maniacal killer recently released from jail. With a progressive electronic soundtrack by Klaus Schulze of Tangerine Dream, the film struggles to keep up with Leder as he stalks through the bland Viennese countryside.

Written and shot by Rybczyński while he was a political exile in Austria, the film conveys a stark nihilism bred from frustration with the absurdities of life behind the Iron Curtain.

The minimal plot works as a platform for innovative cinematic expression—Rybczyński developed intricate systems of ropes and mirrors to track the murderer’s frenzied movement, and anticipated Aronofsky’s Pi with innovative SnorriCam technology; the camera is repeatedly mounted to a freely moving ring surrounding Leder’s body, trapping him in an almost pitiable, self-absorbed world.

Grab a free copy of Klaus Schulze's original score for Angst here.

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THE DANCING HAWK
aka TAŃCZĄCY JASTRZĄB
dir by Grzegorz Królikiewicz
1977. 98 min. Poland.
In Polish with English subtitles.

THURSDAY, MAY 10th - 7:30PM
SUNDAY, MAY 13th - 9:30PM
FRIDAY, MAY 25th - 7:30PM

Impossibly produced under Poland’s heavily censored Cold War film industry, Grzegorz Królikiewicz’s career-defining post-expressionistic masterpiece Tańczący Jastrząb (“The Dancing Hawk”) trails the life story of runty opportunist Michal Toporny as he rises from the dirt floor of a rural farm to the top of the communist industrial complex. As his career develops and mindless ambition devours his entire being, Toporny quietly sells out the family and community that produced him, simultaneously a chilling allegory and hilarious satire of Polish society on the brink of collapse.

The film is defined by its unhinged cinematography, specifically the first thirty minutes, a delirious collage of avant-garde techniques that find Rybczyński’s camera strapped to tree branches, corpses, charging bulls, and the shoulders of cyclists as they hurtle towards each other and collide head-on.

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QUIET CITY SCORES QUIET CITY
Quiet City (Luke Schwartz and Steven Cohen: guitar/electronics, Meaghan Burke: cello, Bernd Klug: double bass, Sarah Mullins: percussion)

WEDNESDAY MAY 2ND – 8PM

Quiet City is an experimental music quintet consisting of two guitars, cello, double bass and percussion. The ensemble focuses on intermedia works that combine traditional and extemporaneous performance practice. Quiet City’s current project involves performing live scores to silent films, and additionally, using the films themselves as scores. The “live scores” are performed in the traditional sense, while the object of using a “film itself as a score” is to read movement from the footage as sheet music, articulating the formal structures and patterns of manmade or natural actions.

http://www.quietcitymusic.com/listen.html

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OUR FRIENDSHIPS ARE CONSTRUCTED ON THE BASIS OF CONFLICT
Collectively made films and videos from around the world!

APRIL 27TH – 29TH; FRIDAY, SATURDAY, & SUNDAY : 7:30PM & 9:30PM EVERY DAY!

$15 for a festival pass!

This series features films and videos by media makers around the globe who operate as collectives, using group identities rather than assuming individual authorship. Whether a political statement or an artistic choice, working collectively means combining many individual visions into a cohesive whole—egos will be crushed. You will see television sets thrown at riot cops and artistic musings on the collaborative process among other things.

Featuring work by Chto Delat, CineManifest, Cinetracts, Groupe Medvedkine, Grupo Ukamau, Newsreel, Pacific Street Films, Paper Tiger Television, Raindance, TVTV, the Workers Film and Photo League, and more.

[Thank you to Red Channels for putting this program together, and thank you to Pacific Street Films, Paper Tiger Television, and Third World Newsreel for the use of their films. This is for the most part the same program that was originally shown in April of 2011 at Spectacle and was (primarilly) programmed by Maria Byck, Molly Fair, Matt Peterson, and Martyna Starosta, all from Red Channels, 2011.]

FRIDAY APRIL 27TH

7:30PM

—Garbage – Newsreel, 1968, 10 minutes
—GIs Take Manhattan: Operation First Casualty – Meerket Media Collective, 2007, 5 minutes
—Cop Humiliation in His Own Domain – Voina, 2008, 12 minutes
—Anarchists Liberate the Deflating World – Glassbead, 2009, 9 minutes
—People’s Firehouse #1 – Newsreel, 1979, 25 minutes
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 71 minutes | Digital Projection

9:30PM

—Griffith Park Relief Workers Demonstration 1933 – Workers Film and Photo League, 1933, 2 minutes
—Everything has been done – Azorro, 2003, 6 minutes
—Four More Years – TVTV, 1972, 61 minutes
—Lincoln Hospital – Newsreel, 1970. 12 minutes
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 81 minutes | Digital Projection

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7:30PM

—Detroit Workers News Special 1932: Ford Massacre – Workers Film and Photo League, 1932, 7 minutes
—Dick Captured by KGB! – Voina, 2010, 3 minutes
—And the War Has Only Just Begun – Imaginary Party, 2001, 18 minutes
—Get Rid of Yourself – Bernadette Corporation, 2003, 61 minutes
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 89 minutes | Digital Projection

9:30PM

—Builders – Chto Delat, 2005, 8 minutes
—Ipimpi – Pacific Street Films, 1971, 12 minutes
—Inciting to Riot – Pacific Street Films, 1970, 35 minutes
—Taiwan: The Generation After Martial Law – Green Team, 1986, 27 minutes
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 82 minutes | Digital Projection

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7:30PM

—National Hunger March - Workers Film and Photo League of the W.I.R., 1931, 11 minutes
—Mill-in – Newsreel, 1968, 12 minutes
—Processed World Reads Processed World – Paper Tiger Television, 1985, 28 minutes
—Street Sheet – Paper Tiger Television, 1993, 28 minutes
—Help the Child, Help Your Country! – Voina, 2010, 2 minutes
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 81 minutes | Digital Projection

9:30PM

—San Francisco Longshore Strike - Pt 1 - Workers Film and Photo League, 1934, 7 minutes
—Rhodia 4×8 – Groupe Medvedkine, 1969, 3 minutes
—Shut the Fuck Up – General Idea, 1984, 7 minutes
—Handsworth Songs – John Akomfrah, Black Audio Film Collective, 1986, 58 minutes
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 75 minutes | Digital Projection

www.redchannels.org
www.spectacletheater.com

Here is the original poster for the same program in 2011:

Bernadette Corporation
Since 1994, the anonymous, international group of artists known as Bernadette Corporation has explored strategies of cultural resistance and détournement, appropriating contemporary entertainment modes for their own experimental purposes. From the New York-based BC fashion label, which garnered a cult following in the 1990s, and the magazine Made In USA, launched in 1999, to the collectively-authored novel Reena Spaulings (Semiotexte, 2005) and videos starring the likes of Sylvère Lotringer and Chloe Sevigny, Bernadette Corporation’s interventionist projects amount to a precisely-calibrated critique of a global culture that constructs identity through consumption and branding.

Black Audio Film Collective
The Black Audio Film Collective was formed at Portsmouth Polytechnic in 1982 by sociology, fine art and psychology John Akomfrah, Reece Auguiste, Edward George, Lina Gopaul, Avril Johnson, David Lawson and Trevor Mathison. It was one among many such collectives founded in Britain during the early- to mid- 1980s which produced works for Channel 4. Although dealing with contemporary events such as oppressive policing, riots, and unrest, inner city ghettoization and the clearing and destruction of working class enclaves, they were also responding to a more fundamental condition of the victims of colonization and slavery. Instead of making propagandistic films in response to these issues, they instead produced meditative works, experimenting with form and presentation their slide films, and exploring issues of memory, history, and identity through the use of archival footage and examination of radical icons such as Malcolm X. The group disbanded in 1998.

General Idea
The artist collective General Idea — AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal — forged a unique conceptual practice that deployed parody and irony to critique the artworld and popular media culture. In performances, installations, video, photography, prints, and editions, they explored social phenomena ranging from the production, distribution and consumption of mass media images to gay identity and the AIDS crisis. General Idea worked together from 1969 until the deaths of Partz and Zontal in 1994.

Green Team
The video movement in Taiwan made successful use of home cassette distribution, via both mail and street vendors. The Green Team collective pioneered in this effort with over 100 titles in distribution, documenting the struggles of farmers, students, workers and environmentalists. In a show of force against the repressive state television system, they took to the airwaves with a low power pirate TV transmission which included scenes of a massive demonstration where dozens of TV sets were thrown at the gates of the Taiwan TV station.

Meerkat Media Collective is a self-organized community of makers committed to creating innovative and thought-provoking film and new media. Inspired by the communal nature of meerkats, they value shared authorship and consensus process in their day-to-day operations as well as in their artistic endeavors. Under a cooperative model, members give creative and administrative time to the collective in exchange for material and non-material support. They share skills, equipment and ideas with a firm belief that a healthy, inclusive process is as important as crafting quality work.

Newsreel
Established in December 1967 as Newsreel, an activist filmmaker collective, this NY group grew to become a network with chapters across the US. Its different chapters produced and distributed short 16mm films covering the anti-war and women’s movements, Civil and human rights movements, getting unique access to such groups as the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords Party. The New York Newsreel became Third World Newsreel (TWN) in the mid-70s and strengthened its commitment to developing filmmakers and audiences of color. Today, TWN carries on the progressive vision of its founders, and remains the oldest media arts organization in the U.S. devoted to cultural workers of color and their global constituencies.

Paper Tiger
Paper Tiger Television, through the collaborative efforts of artists, activists and scholars, has pioneered experimental, innovative and truly alternative community media since 1981. An early innovator in video art and public access television of the early 80’s, PTTV developed a unique, handmade, irreverent aesthetic that experimented with the television medium by combining art, academics, politics, performance and live television.

Raindance
Founded in 1969 by Frank Gillette, Paul Ryan, Michael Shamberg and Ira Schneider, Raindance was an influential media collective that proposed radical theories and philosophies of video as an alternative form of cultural communication. The name “Raindance” alluded to what members termed “cultural R & D” (research and development). Influenced by the communications theories of Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller, the collective produced tapes and writings, including the journal Radical Software, that explored the relation of cybernetics, media and ecology.

TVTV
Originally organized to provide alternative news coverage of the 1972 Republican and Democratic Presidential Conventions in Miami, Top Value Television, known as TVTV was an ad hoc collective of videomakers that defined the radical video documentary movement of the 1970s, known as “guerrilla television.” TVTV subverted conventions of television news and documentary reportage with its alternative journalistic techniques, countercultural principles and pioneering use of portable, low-tech video equipment.

Workers Film and Photo League
The Workers Film and Photo League in the United States (known as the Film and Photo League after 1933) was part of an extensive cultural movement sponsored by the Communist International and its affiliated national parties in the interwar period. Specifically, it was a section of the Comintern-control led Internationale Arbeiterhilfe or Workers International Relief (WIR), founded at Lenin’s Instigation in Berlin in 1921. But the WIR’s activities extended also into the mass media and many cultural fields. The WIR’s next move was clearly to stimulate indigenous production in the other countries in which it operated. Since capital was not available for studio production, emphasis inevitably came to be placed on low cost documentary and especially newsreel forms.

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—La Commune – Armand Guerra (Le Cinéma du Peuple), 1914, 19 minutes
The first film depicting the story of the 1871 Paris Commune produced by Le Cinéma du Peuple, a libertarian film cooperative. This historical reenactment depicts the rise and fall of the Commune, which grew from growing unrest among workers and the lower classes, and fear of a royalist majority in the government, and anger over the defeat in Franco-Prussian War.

—Builders – Chto Delat?, 2005, 8 minutes
In this video, members of Chto Delat? debate the potency and purpose of collectivism. The Soviet Socialist Realist painting by Viktor Popkov, from which the work takes its title, is the starting point for this conversation, which questions merits and inspirational qualities of the workers depicted in The Builders of Bratsk (1961). The potency of this image is compared to the revolutionary potential of artistic communities propelled by conversation and conflict.

—Media Primer (Schneider) – Raindance, 1970, 23 minutes
Raindance’s Media Primers reflect the group’s iconoclastic theories of television and video, and their engagement with alternative and mass media, pop culture and the counter-culture. The themes addressed – media manipulation, the camera’s role in modifying individual behavior – illustrate their experiments with the technological and conceptual underpinnings of 1/2-inch portable video.
Merging alternative video and mass media, Ira Schneider’s Media Primer juxtaposes cultural indicators, including television commercials, news footage, and Portapak documentation of countercultural events such as the Altamount rock concert.

—Detroit Workers News Special 1932: Ford Massacre – Workers Film and Photo League, 1932, 7 minutes
The only newsreel coverage of the historic mass march in downtown Detroit on February 4, 1932, against the starvation program of Hoover/Murphy, and the armed, unprovoked attack by Dearborn police and Ford “guards” on unemployed auto workers at the gates of the River Rouge plant.

—Workers Newsreel Unemployment Special– Workers Film and Photo League, 1930-1931, 10 minutes
A record of the historic mass demonstration of the unemployed on March 6, 1930, in Union Square for government action on immediate relief and jobs.

—The National Hunger March – Workers Film and Photo League, 1931, 10 minutes
The surviving film record of the first massive protest against the federal government’s and big business’ failure to adopt programs to alleviate the starvation and deprivation of 12,000,000 unemployed men, women and youth.

—Lincoln Hospital – Newsreel, 1970. 12 minutes
When a city-run health clinic in the South Bronx fails to meet the needs of the city, local residents and health workers force a strike and then run the clinic themselves.

—Taiwan: The Generation After Martial Law – Green Team, 1986, 27 minutes
In 1949 the ruling Nationalist Party (KMT) imposed a strict martial law on Taiwan, which lasted 38 years. Since this law was lifted in 1987, alternative media makers have joined farmers, workers and students to press for social and political change. In a show of force against the repressive state television system, the Green Team Video Collective took to the airwaves with a low power pirate TV transmission, which included scenes of a massive demonstration where dozens of TV sets were thrown at the gates of the Taiwan TV station.

—Mill-in – Newsreel, 1968, 12 minutes
In order to raise the consciousness of New Yorkers, anti-war demonstrators took to the streets on fashionable Fifth Avenue on Christmas eve. To the dismay of the shoppers, their action snarled traffic and stunted holiday consumption.

—Rhodia 4×8 – Groupe Medvedkine, 1969, 3 minutes
Groupe Medvedkine, started by Chris Marker, united workers with filmmakers in the spirit of the Mai ’68 in an attempt to document the condition of workers at factories like Rhodia in Besançon, the Peugeot facility in Sochaux, and Kelton-Timex watch factory. In Rhodia 4/8 images of workers in the factories are accompanied by a haunting melody sung by Colette Magny, legendary French avant-garde protest singer.

—Shut the Fuck Up – General Idea, 1984, 14 minutes
“I don’t want to be a media whore!” Using ironic and iconic excerpts from television and film from the 1960s, such as The Joker character from Batman and part of the historic footage of artist Yves Klein’s painting and performance from Mondo Cane, General Idea examine the relationship between the mass media and the artist.

—Handsworth Songs – Black Audio Film Collective, 1986, 58 minutes
“There are no stories in the riots, only the ghosts of other stories”. An experimental film essay on race and disorder in Britain, filmed in Handsworth and London during the riots of 1985 that erupted in reaction to repressive policing of black communities. It explores the history and circumstances leading to the riots through newsreel and archival material accompanied by an ethereal score.

—Garbage – Newsreel, 1968, 10 minutes
During a prolonged garbage collector’s strike in New York City, a group of youths from the Lower East Side of Manhattan decide to use the situation to make a political statement. They collect garbage from the streets of their community and deposit piles of it on the grounds of Lincoln Center, “The Establishment’s” cultural showcase.

—GIs Take Manhattan: Operation First Casualty – Meerket Media Collective, 2007, 5 minutes.
The adage “in war, truth is the first casualty” is generally attributed to the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus, and the words still ring true a few millenia later. Over Memorial Day weekend 2007, members of Iraq Veterans Against the War revived Aeschylus’ saying with Operation First Casualty. Simulating sniper fire and mass detentions on the streets of Manhattan, these antiwar veterans brought home a small piece of the Iraq War.

—Anarchists Liberate the Deflating World – Glassbead, 2009, 9 minutes
A film created for a three screen immersive installation. The No Borders protest in Copenhagen during COP15 United Nations Climate conference results in demonstrators liberating a huge advertising globe set up in front of the house of parliament by the Danish energy company.

—People’s Firehouse #1 – Newsreel, 1979, 25 minutes
“We’re making our point to the whole United States: you can fight the system; and win!” The Polish Americans of Northside, Brooklyn realized their community was under attack by the city bureaucracy: schools, hospitals, and other services has been closed or cut back and the neighborhood had began to decay. The closing of the local firehouse was the last straw. They occupied the firehouse and began a campaign to win back fire protection and revitalize their neighborhood.

—Everything has been done – Azorro, 2003, 6 minutes
Members of the Azorro super-group meet to come up with an idea for a new art project. As the conversation progresses, however, it turns out that – just as it happens in art – all ideas have already been realized.

—Media Primer – Raindance, 1970, 16 minutes
Raindance’s Media Primers reflect the group’s iconoclastic theories of television and video, and their engagement with alternative and mass media, pop culture and the counter-culture. The themes addressed — media manipulation, the camera’s role in modifying individual behavior — illustrate their experimentation with the technological and conceptual underpinnings of 1/2-inch portable video. Paul Ryan’s Proto Media Primer includes scenes of Abbie Hoffman awaiting the verdict from the Chicago 7 trial and ironic man-on-the-street interviews.

—Four More Years – TVTV, 1972, 61 minutes
The landmark documentary Four More Years is an iconoclastic view of the American electoral process, captured through TVTV’s irreverent, candid coverage of Richard Nixon’s 1972 presidential campaign and the Republican Convention in Miami. Using lightweight 1/2-inch portable video equipment, the TVTV crew was able to plunge onto the Convention floor for a close-up, subjective view of the proceedings. Whether soliciting off-the-cuff analyses from Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite, or making behind-the-scenes forays into the Nixon camp (with glimpses of the Young Republicans’ maneuverings, the Nixonettes, and a fundraiser with Tricia and Julie Nixon), the spontaneity and wit of TVTV’s coverage results in fascinating, unorthodox broadcast journalism.

—And the War Has Only Just Begun – Imaginary Party, 2001, 18 minutes
Love it or hate it, this Debord-esque tract from the Imaginary Party (or the Invisible Committee, or Tiqqun. or the alleged Tarnac 9) circulated on the internet in 2001 features images of the burning Twin Towers and the black bloc-ers with a voice over addressing all the lost children, " We need fiction to believe in the reality we’re living. The Party is the central fiction, the one that tells the war of our time."

—Get Rid of Yourself – Bernadette Corporation, 2003, 61 minutes
Called an “anti-documentary” by its authors, combines footage of rioting at the 2001 G-8 summit in Genoa with performances by Chloe Sevigny, Werner von Delmont and members of the Black Bloc anarchist group. These elements yield a disorienting and critical video that ultimately questions its own status and role as much as that of its subjects.

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Fri. 4 - SPECTACLE MIDNIGHTS presents: DEEP RED 
Sat. 5 - HORROR BOOBS presents: MICROWAVE MASSACRE
Fri. 11 - SPEXXTACLE MIDNIGHTS presents: SEX RITUALS OF THE OCCULT
Sat. 12 - CAMP MOTION PICTURES presents: WOODCHIPPER MASSACRE
Fri. 18 - TROMA ENTERTAINMENT presents: DEAD DUDES IN THE HOUSE 
Sat. 19 - VHShitfest presents: THE HACKERS
Sat. 26 - JUNK FOOD DINNER presents: THE FOREST

Friday, May 4th / Midnight
SPECTACLE MIDNIGHTS presents: DEEP RED (a/k/a: Profondo rosso / The Deep Red Hatchet Murders)
dir. Dario Argento, 1975
126 mins, Italy
In Italian with English subtitles

After a famous psychic reads the mind of murderer in her midst, she quickly becomes the next victim. A pianist witnesses the murder and together with a sassy photojournalist attempts to solve the crime. A series of clues (with a healthy does of red herrings) and a high public profile make the task much more difficult. Not to mention the murderer has a knack for heading them off as one contact after the next is laid waste before the amateur sleuths can get more information. Who will be next? Is anyone safe?

Curiously billed in Japan as SUSPIRIA II, Argento's fifth feature is filled with spooky atmosphere, a genuine air of mystery and is rounded out by a jazzy soundtrack with plenty of gore.

Donald & May are a working class couple in Los Angeles. When May decides she want to try up their social status by getting gourmet in the kitchen, she purchases a humongous new microwave. Donald, content with bologna and not impressed by his wife's poor attempts as haute cuisine, spends a lot of time complaining to his co-workers. One night in a drunken rage, he kills May. He stashes parts of her in the fridge and some in the microwave. A few days later, while looking for a midnight snack, Donald accidentally eats some of May's hand. From there it's a downward spiral of hooker murder and serving human flesh to his friends and co-workers. How long can Donald keep this up? Can his heart, and more importantly his stomach, take it?

Horror Boobs brings you the best in breasts from genre cinema. Less information is available athorrorboobs.com

I'm so hungry, I could eat a whore:  

Friday, May 11th / Midnight
SPEXXXTACLE MIDNIGHTS presents: SEX RITUALS OF THE OCCULT
dir. Robert Caramico, 1970
82 mins, USA
Presented in collaboration with DistribPix

The bizarre, ritualistic encounters of a group of people who worship sex and relish in its infinite pleasures. This "documentary" presents "terrifying" and "horrific" events of a groovy sex cult. Skin, sin, and Satan cum together for a night of hedonistic ecstasy the world has never known! Black robe required, virgin blood optional. 

Franny's on vacation, but SpeXXXtacle won't leave you hanging. Don't miss another night of scintillating vintage smut! 

Saturday, May 12th / Midnight
 CAMP MOTION PICTURES presents: WOODCHIPPER MASSACRE
dir. Jon McBride, 1989
90 mins, USA

It’s The Brady Kids meets the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in this heartwarming, stomach-churning tale of a not so typical American family that unexpectedly finds itself caught up in a web of death, deceit and dismemberment. And what better way for this trio of demented siblings to discard of fresh human remains than turn it into garden variety mulch…by way of the biggest woodchipper ever to chop’n’grind a grown man into ground meat. In this family, blood really is thicker than water.

Alternative Cinema/Camp Motion Pictures website: alternativecinema.com
 

Saturday, May 19th / Midnight
VHShitfest presents: THE HACKERS
dir. John Duncan, 1988
80 mins, USA

The first 20 minutes or so is honestly a gift from God. It opens with a hitchhiker (Dave Duncan) sticking his thumb out for a ride and it getting sliced off by a knife from an oncoming track… The Hackers repair truck to be exact! The rockin’ theme song, “The Hackers,” kicks right in as you’re introduced to The Hackers Family. You get “Pa” Hacker, the leader of the clan, who is a ridiculous, borderline narcoleptic, 80-year-old man who’s always disgruntled, there’s also Arnie, who “never did grow right” (whatever that means), and finally, the Leatherface of the family, Junior, who bit his tongue off and got chewed up by a chainsaw when he was younger, so now he wears fake, 25 cent novelty teeth and half a tin foil mask.
The movie sticks out above many late 80s slashers because you can feel the sense of community and you honestly feel like everyone, from the housewives to the local drunkards, helped out. It’s great to know that everyone in the town of Croswell, Michigan thought this low budget horror movie was worth working on. Not to mention, none of the people even feel like they’re acting (whether that’s a good thing or not I can’t decide), especially “Pa,” played by Howard Coburn. He really makes the movie, with his constant crotchety attitude and violent behavior. It’s a pleasure to watch the man go from chopping a dude’s shoulder with a machete to reminiscing about his love of boats to taking five naps an hour. I’m sure you’re napping in Heaven, Howie. Thank you.

Reviews, interviews, and more available vhshitfest.com 

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During the late 70's/early 80's filmmakers Blaine Dunlap and Sol Korine (Harmony's dad) documented the culture and people of the American south making documentaries for PBS. These are some of the first documentaries ever shot on portable analog video.

Hamper McBee - Raw Mash
1978, 48 min, in English

A candid portrait of the Tennesse ballad singer, story-teller, and part-time moonshiner Hamper McBee. Hamper learned much lf his music from his father and friends around Monteagle Mountain and had established a reputation at folk festivals in the 1970s as an accomplished and expressive ballad singer. The film follows Hamper as he works, socializes, and talks about his music. He sings "Black Jack Davy," "Nine Hundred Miles," Wayfaring Stranger," "Rye Whiskey," and a song he wrote himself "Bill Malone," about the local constable who routinely arrested Hamper when he had too much to drink. Hamper McBee is also a moonshiner, and Raw Mash shows him plying his trade at this nearly lost art.

Mouth Music
1981, 25 min, in English

Mouth Music demonstrates the distinctive modes of the human voice, the most influential of all musical instruments, takes on in southern folk music and folk culture. These modes can span traditional a cappella performance styles as well as unique expressive vocal forms that have evolved as part of daily life, work, and play: hollerin’, jump-rope rhymes, “eephing,” nonsense songs, auctioneering, drill sergeant’s patter and others.

Sometimes It's Gonna Hurt
1983, 27 min, in English

Oklahoma is rodeo country. Sometimes Its Gonna Hurt is a film about the toughest of all rodeo events-- bullriding, and how young riders grow up to become bullriders. The was commissioned by the PBS series, "Matters of Life and Death," and aired in the summer of 1983.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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