Author: allison

SLOPPY JANE PRESENTS: ‘MADISON’ THE COMPLETE VISUAL ALBUM

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SLOPPY JANE PRESENTS: ‘MADISON’ THE COMPLETE VISUAL ALBUM
dir. Mika Lungulov-Klotz, 2023
United States. 45 mins.
In English.

ONE NIGHT ONLY!

FRIDAY, MAY 19 – 7:30 PM

Q&A to follow with Mika Lungulov-Klotz + Haley Dahl!

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Spectacle is thrilled to premiere Sloppy Jane’s ‘Madison’ The Complete Visual Album.

In 2021, Brooklyn-based band Sloppy Jane released their album, “Madison” via Saddest Factory Records. The album is a testament to unrequited love, and was recorded entirely in a natural cave with 21 musicians.

From the project’s conception, director Mika Lungulov-Klotz and bandleader Haley Dahl dreamed of collaborating on a visual component to carry the listener through the album in its entirety. This visual narrative been shot, edited, and archived over years— some videos were even made at the same time as the album was being recorded in 2019.

This series of interconnected music videos is a surreal kaleidoscope of the Sloppy Jane cinematic universe, set in a world where everything that has ever happened is happening forever, and everyone gets to play every part. Pay attention to the outfits, the fingernails, and the color blue.

(Recommended prior viewing: the music videos for Sloppy Jane’s previous album, Willow, in track list order)

STOOP SALE 2023

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Our annual Stoop Sale is back – please join us on Saturday, May 13 and peruse our many wares. All proceeds go towards keeping the theater operational and ensuring we can continue to bring you the best film programming our goth bodega has to offer!

VIDEOPHOBIA

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VIDEOPHOBIA
dir. Daisuke Miyazaki, 2019
Japan. 88 min.
In Japanese w/English subs.

MONDAY, MARCH 6 – 7:30 PM w/ Q&A (This event is $10)
FRIDAY, MARCH 17 – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 27 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 31 – 7:30 PM

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Ai (Tomona Hirota) is a young twentysomething adrift in Osaka, an aspiring actress barely making ends meet between shifts dressing as a mascot at her local shopping district and gigs as an erotic webcam performer. Following a one-night stand with an unremarkable cosmetics salesman, her life is thrown into chaos when she discovers that a video of their encounter, recorded without her knowledge or consent, has been posted online. The deeper she investigates, the more she unravels, growing increasingly paranoid in the presence of technology and other people.

Like VIDEODROME for the iPhone era, Daisuke Miyazaki’s stark techno-thriller takes our obsession with and dependency on modern technology and spins it into all our worst fears come to life. How do we maintain a sense of self when so much of our memory has already been ceded to our devices? What metrics are there to determine what on the internet is truly real and what is not, especially in this era of deep-fakes and A.I.-generated imagery? What lengths will Ai go to to correct the injustice of this video living on into digital perpetuity? Or is her only option to see the woman as somebody else.

CARNIVAL IN THE NIGHT

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CARNIVAL IN THE NIGHT
dir. Masashi Yamamoto, 1981
Japan. 108 min.
In Japanese w/English subs.

FRIDAY, MARCH 3 – 10:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8 – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 13 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 31 – 10:00 PM

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This Rockuary, Spectacle Theater and Rain Trail Pictures invite you to take a walk on the wild side with Masashi Yamamoto’s micro-budget no wave masterpiece, CARNIVAL IN THE NIGHT.

Made at the tail end of the 1970s as Japan’s major studio system was in disarray, the film is one of the crown jewels of the country’s jishu movement: A creative storm of independent, anti-institutional, borderline anarchist filmmakers operating outside of commercial cinema structures, and who would help shape Japanese cinema for decades to come.

The film follows Kumi (Kumiko Ota playing a lightly fictionalized version of herself, similar to her later character in Yamamoto’s ROBINSON’S GARDEN), a newly divorced single mother and aspiring punk rocker, as she embarks on an unusual odyssey along the fringes of Tokyo’s night life. Her journey takes her through the seedier side of the city’s DIY punk scene; each stranger, each sexual encounter, each random act of violence more unsettling than the last.

Much like the “no wave” film movement that was simultaneously taking shape in New York, Yamamoto’s film blurs the line between documentary and fiction in a way that underscores the prickly creative energy of its corresponding musical scene. The gritty 16mm photography and verité shooting style help capture the transgressive ethos of Tokyo’s underground in its most unbridled form, contrasting images of a country in the midst of an economic boom against the lives of its squatters, hustlers, criminals, and low-lifes.

“These are Yamamoto’s politics: to squat, to squander, and to soil reality. Whether anyone takes notice is beyond him; his unceasing state of resistance exists beyond society and blooms by virtue of its separation from its norms. ‘I only plan to make the kinds of films I want to make,’ he has said, ‘and aim at nothing more than a small circle of spectators.'”
– Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer, SCREEN SLATE

ROCKUARY

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This February, Spectacle Theater is thrilled to bring you ROCKUARY once again:

THE HORRIBLE HEARTS EXTRAVAGANZA

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To honor Valentine’s Day, we’ve come up with a marathon sampling the worst examples of love to grace on the silver screen. This HORRIBLE HEARTS EXTRAVAGANZA, an outgrowth from our deviously delightful ANTI-VALENTINE’s series, collects the seediest and sexiest sights of romance — demon love, samisen BDSM, and glob sex among other exciting expressions of intimacy.

Mystery madness will reign throughout the day, starting at NOON and stretching into the wee hours of the night with a demented MIDNIGHT flick. Hints for the films can be found below, swing by and get heartbroken.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11 – 12:00 PM

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12 PM

XXXX XXXXX: XXX XXXXXX
dir. XXXXX XXXXXXX, 1994
Romania, USA, 81 mins
In English

We start the day with a deeply sincere fantasy horror-flick – and probably the only positive relationship of the day. A demon vs the LAPD, a kick ass German shepard, too-long sex scenes – this movie’s got it all.

2 PM

XXXXX XXXX
dir. XXXXXXXX XXXXX XXXXXXXXX, 1977
Italy, 104 mins
In Italian and English

A couple on the rocks sets out on a road trip, death awaits at their destiny.

4 PM

XXXX XXXXXXXX
dir. XXXXXXX XXX, 1981
Hong Kong, 91 mins
In Cantonese with English subtitles

A rare treat – an art house semi-slasher, deeply moody and vivid. Previously only available via a terrible VHS rip, we’ll be showing an updated LaserDisc rip with fresh (legible!) subtitles.

6 PM

XXXX XXXX
dir. XXXXXX XXXXXXX, 1995
United Kingdom, USA, 111 mins
In English

Shake off the downer of our 4pm with this absolutely wild mid-90s slice of neo-noir, originally released in a bastardized cut that was frequently on cable in the late 90’s. We’re excited to be screening the director’s cut, assembled by the editor posthumously. Probably the biggest name cast in a bizarre movie you’ve ever seen in a movie that is simultaneously hilarious, uncomfortable, sexy, problematic – and genuinely great.

8 PM

XXXXX
dir. XXXXXX XXXXXX, 1972
Japan, 112 mins
In Japanese with English subtitles

A melody of misery inspired by the foregone memories of a mute affair. Blind love at its most torturous and sincere.

10 PM

XXXXXXXX XXX
dir. XXXXXXXX XXXXXX, 1997
Japan, 120 mins
In Japanese with English subtitles

A ravaged scientist decides to bring his beloved back to life. Little does he know doing so will unleash an egomaniacal evil on Earth.

MIDNIGHT

XXX XXX XXX
dir. XXXX XXXXXXXXX, 1983
Netherlands, 102 mins
In Dutch with English subtitles

Our last film of the night is an underseen classic from a famously horny director we all know and love. Hint: The title nods to a classic film that this is definitely not a sequel to.

THE NEW COSMOS: TAKASHI MAKINO SHORT FILM WORKS

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THE NEW COSMOS: TAKASHI MAKINO SHORT FILM WORKS
dir. Takashi Makino, 2002-2022.
Japan. 98 min. No spoken language.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17 – 7:30 PM w/ Q&A
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23 – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27 – 7:30 PM

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Spectacle Theater is thrilled to present THE NEW COSMOS: A collection of six short film works by Takashi Makino, one of Japan’s most prolific and adventurous experimental filmmakers. Operating in a similar structuralist mode as Ernie Gehr and Paul Sharits, Makino’s films incorporate layers upon layers upon layers of sound, image, and light to create densely-textured, hypnotic works that can only be described as— to draw from the title of a 2015 work of his— “space noise”.

Born in Tokyo in 1978, Makino began making his own experimental films in 1997. After graduating from the Cinema Department at Nihon University College of Art in 2001, Makino moved to London to where he continued his studies manipulating images, music, exposures, and animation under the Brothers Quay. Shortly after returning to Japan in 2004, Makino began collaborating with American experimental music titan, Jim O’Rouke (Sonic Youth, Gastr Del Sol), in turn accelerating his filmmaking pace. Today, Makino has released over 40 films, from his earliest 2002 short film EVE to his most-recent 2022 work ANTI-COSMOS, making its New York debut as part of this program.

Makino’s work is renowned for its collaborative nature, not only in the sense that his films are often soundtracked by a murderer’s row of avant garde composers that includes Jim O’Rourke, Tara Jane O’Neil, Chris Corsano, Mats Gustafsson (Fire!), Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek), and Liz Harris (Grouper), but also in the sense that his work aims to create an ever-changing “third image” between his own projected images and those created within each viewer’s imagination. The artist has described his own work as a “creative collaboration with filmmaker and audience,” the sheer experience of it “giving birth to a new cosmos… an act of true creativity.”

This program will include the following works:

EVE
dir. Takashi Makino, 2002.
Japan. 3 min.
Music by Takashi Makino.

STILL IN COSMOS
dir. Takashi Makino, 2009.
Japan. 17 min.
Sound/music by Jim O’Rourke, Darin Gray, & Chris Corsano.

INTER VIEW
dir. Takashi Makino, 2010.
Japan. 23 min.
Music by Tara Jane O’Neil & Brian Mumford.

EMAKI/LIGHT
dir. Takashi Makino, 2011.
Japan. 15 min.
Music by Takashi Makino & Takashi Ishida.

ON GENERATION AND CORRUPTION
dir. Takashi Makino, 2017.
Japan. 26 min.
Music by Jim O’Rourke.

ANTI-COSMOS
dir. Takashi Makino, 2022.
Japan. 14 min.
Sound by Lawrence English & Lasse Marhaug.

TOUCH ME NOT

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CONTENT WARNING: This film contains flashing lights which may not be suitable for photosensitive epilepsy.

TOUCH ME NOT
dir. Adina Pintilie, 2018
125 min, Bulgaria, Czechia, France, Germany and Romania
In Romanian and English with English subtitles

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28 – 10:00 PM

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“The film is proposing a dialogue: a mind-opening experience about being different, different kinds of beauties, different kinds of bodies, and experiences of intimacy” – Adina Pintilie

TOUCH ME NOT marks the first entry in artist Adina Pintilie’s years-long investigation of bodies and intimacy. True to the director’s evolving understanding of these, the film embraces fluidity. Not quite fiction and not quite documentary, TOUCH ME NOT positions itself as a reality-bending project that incorporates self-reflexive strategies, actors, and a diverse cast of non-actors whose non-normative bodies and experience with sex work, informs Pintilie’s interrogation of the meanings we attach to gender, sex, sexuality, bodies and intimacy. Winner of both the Golden Bear and the Best First Feature Award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2018, TOUCH ME NOT is a landmark film apropos of body politics.

“Propelled by intuition, emotion and philosophical inquiry rather than by plot, Pintilie’s debut feature is a semidocumentary essay exploring what it means — how it feels, why it matters — to dwell inside a body. You could say that what the film is about lies just beyond the reach of images or words. It’s a necessarily cerebral meditation on the nature of physicality.

The director’s initial verbal reticence contrasts with both the eloquence of some of her characters and subjects and the explicitness of the images she captures. Nakedness and intimacy — the first almost too easy to achieve, the second almost impossibly difficult — are the basic themes of “Touch Me Not.” A handful of people from different countries, some professional actors, some sex workers, talk about their desires, anxieties and inhibitions in ways that are sometimes painfully open and often highly abstract.” — A.O. Scott, New York Times

I DON’T BELIEVE IN ANARCHY

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I DON’T BELIEVE IN ANARCHY
Dir. Natalia Chumakova & Anna Tsyrlina, 2014
Russia, 71 min.
In Russian with English subtitles.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22 – 10:00 PM
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26 – 7:30 PM

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In the 1980s, Siberian punk band GrOb (Grazhdanskaya Oborona = Civil Defense) and its charismatic frontman Yegor Letov gathered a cult following for their radical lyrics, abrasive sound and their non-conformist attitude. By using rough archival footage and interviews with Letov’s contemporaries, I Don’t Believe in Anarchy captures the energy of the apocalyptic end days of the Soviet empire. The film contains elements of both biographical fact and cinematic fiction, and sets out on a mythical journey between the concrete and the imaginary. A filmic portrait of a transgressive band and its elusive leader that goes beyond the mere attribute of ”punk”.