Schedule:
7 pm – Doors open, tunes by DJ Daniel DiMaggio (Home Blitz), refreshments
8 pm – Show begins, opening remarks, Spectacle trailers
8:10 pm – THE ETERNAL FRAME
8:35 pm – MORGAN’S CAKE
On the occasion of the post-Fourth of July comedown, Spectacle is pleased to present two classics of mondo Americana:
MORGAN’S CAKE
dir. Rick Schmidt, 1988
United States. 85 mins.
preceded by
THE ETERNAL FRAME
dirs. Ant Farm & T.R. Uthco, 1975
United States. 23 mins.
Can one have their cake and eat it too? Such is the guiding quandary in Bay Area filmmaker Rick Schmidt’s fourth feature, MORGAN’S CAKE, a largely improvised coming-of-age movie filmed on a shoestring budget of $15,000. Morgan (played by Schmidt’s real-life son, Morgan Schmidt-Feng) is down on his luck and turning 18. His girlfriend is pregnant and his bohemian parents don’t offer much stability. He’s conflicted about registering for the draft and spends his time meandering around the city, chatting with an assortment of local eccentrics. What elevates an otherwise straightforward premise is the realness of the performances, from the substanial—e.g. Morgan’s father, played by wily video artist Willie Boy Walker, regaling his son with his true-life story of loading up on LSD to deliberately tank his army psych exam—to the minor, like street-casted San Franciscan denizens sounding off on their feelings about the draft. A breezy pace and natural warmth make this a “slice” of life that is funny, outlandish, and gently elegiac.
It’ll be preceded by what’s maybe the magnum opus of both Ant Farm and T.R. Uthco, two stalwart art collectives from the heyday of heady West coast performance. Funded in part by National Lampoon and the Dilexi Gallery’s Jim Newman, THE ETERNAL FRAME documents the two groups’ efforts to re-enact the assassination of John F. Kennedy, meticulously costuming and choreographing a shot-for-shot remake of the Zapruder film (then not so easy to track down) in front of spectators in Dealey Plaza. Done not merely out of irreverence or post-Watergate bicentennial fatigue, the performance probes media and simulation’s disquieting roles in producing political mythology. Asked at the end of the video “Who killed Kennedy?” T.R. Uthco’s Doug Hall replies, “Who cares? We all did.”
INSPECTOR IKE
dir. Graham Mason, 2020
80 mins. United States.
ALL SCREENINGS FOLLOWED BY Q&A, $10/EACH!
FRIDAY, 2/18 – 7:30PM – Q&A MODERATED BY JOE PERA SATURDAY, 2/19 – 7:30PM – Q&A MODERATED BY COLE ESCOLA SUNDAY, 2/20 – 7:30PM – Q&A MODERATED BY JO FIRESTONE TUESDAY, 2/22 – 7:30PM – Q&A MODERATED BY C. SPENCER YEH (AND A SET OF LIVE MUSIC FROM TREDICI BACCI) WEDNESDAY, 2/23 – 7:30PM – Q&A MODERATED BY JEREMY LEVICK AND RAJAT SURESH THURSDAY, 2/24 – 7:30PM – Q&A MODERATED BY JANE SCHOENBRUN
After the conniving understudy of an avant-garde theater group knocks off the star actor, he finds himself in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse with Inspector Ike, New York City’s Greatest Police Detective.
A lost “TV movie” from the 1970’s, INSPECTOR IKE is a warm-hearted satire, a celebration of detective serials, mixing visual gags, slapstick, gross food, and heartfelt emotion, featuring a rogue’s gallery of NYC’s best comedians carried out with a deadpan absurdist sensibility inspired by COLUMBO and THE NAKED GUN.
••• Previously scheduled for March 2020, this program was cut short due to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. A year later we are delighted to celebrate Anna Karina and revive this series for online streaming. Full program notes below. •••
On December 14th, 2019, the film community mourned the loss of the iconic actress, director, writer, and quintessential joie de vivre of the French New Wave, Anna Karina. While fellow movie-houses paid countless tributes to the Nouvelle Vague starlet with screenings of some of her most recognizable roles, at Spectacle we decided to memorialize one of our favorite silver-screen icons with the lesser known masterworks, which together along with the Godard films, forged a career that is singular in its breadth and intercontinental impact. Anna Karina who had become the symbol for cinematic revolution in 1960’s France had an instinctual command of style, beauty, and mystique that is present in all of her performances.
This series, which selects films made from 1965-1974, is by no means absolute: but it serves to further illustrate Anna Karina’s worldwide reach and international stardom while highlighting some of her greatest works made outside the orbit of Jean-Luc Godard. Composed of four languages and produced with five countries, these films while uniquely different are unified by the dear Anna Karina, and it is to her charisma and ever-fascinating career that we dedicate this program of deep cuts and revivals.
Special thanks to: Greg Eggebeen, Cathérine Delvaux, Minerva Pictures, VITTO IT, Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique, and Universal Music.
RENDEZVOUS À BRAY
(aka APPOINTMENT IN BRAY)
dir. André Delvaux, 1971
France/Belgium/Weat Germany, 86 min.
In French with English Subtitles
MONDAY APRIL 19 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com TUESDAY, APRIL 27 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com
“As much as I revere some of the Belgian films of Chantal Akerman, if I had to choose only one Belgian film to take with me to a desert island, I’d have a pretty rough time forsaking this 1971 masterpiece by André Delvaux.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum
Paris 1917: a young pianist (Mathieu Carrière) receives a note from an old friend in the Air Force to join him at his lush country estate that happens to be close to the front lines of World War I. He arrives but his friend is nowhere to be found, with only the quiet, beautiful housekeeper (Anna Karina) present. While he spends days waiting for his friend’s arrival, his mind wanders to past events. At night, the mysterious woman appears again…
Based on a short story from surrealist Julien Gracq, Belgian auteur André Delvaux marries his trademark amalgam of fantasy and reality to Gracq’s shape-shifting text. Much like the film protagonist, Delvaux got his start by playing the piano to silent films in 1950s Brussels, and his musicality is on full display in the film’s sonata-like form, weaving variations of memories and moments into an ambiguous, intriguing mood piece. Cloaked in dense Gothic atmospheres and muted colors, RENDEZVOUS À BRAY gives off a melancholy, dream-like aura, subtle in approach but haunted by unspoken desires and half-imagined nostalgia.
Working with Delvaux’s daughter, we’re honored to re-introduce this classic of Belgium cinema.
LE TEMPS DE MOURIR
(aka THE TIME TO DIE)
dir. Andre Farwagi, 1970
France. 82 mins.
In French with English subtitles.
TUESDAY, APRIL 20 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com
A stylish, puzzling sci-fi mystery dealing with time travel and destiny, THE TIME TO DIE features loads of retro-cool technology futurisms and immaculate production design, but also manages to treat its subject matter with philosophical seriousness and respect. It supposes that the future is inevitable and the best we can do is hurl forwards towards our fated destiny.
LE SOLDATESSE
(aka The Camp Followers)
dir. Valerio Zurlini, 1965
Italy. 120 min.
In Italian and Greek with English subtitles.
THURSDAY, APRIL 22 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com FRIDAY, APRIL 30 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com
An intimate anti-war ensemble film about a group of prostitutes (led by Anna Karina & Marie Laforêt) who are being escorted through the treacherous mountains of Albania in order to service the Italian soldiers of World War II.
LE SOLDATESSE (aka, THE CAMP FOLLOWERS) is a Neo-Realist tour-de-force which demonstrates the futility of war and the magnitude of suffering through its black and white photography and its tragic inevitable conclusion. Filmed in a compositional mode evoking the lyricism of Antonioni, the film is also a delicate study on women camaraderie told through shared adversity and collective resistance.
ANNA
dir. Pierre Koralnik, 1967
France. 85 mins.
In French with English subtitles.
FRIDAY, APRIL 23 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com MONDAY, APRIL 26th – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com
A kaleidoscopic, energetic burst of bright colors, infectious musical numbers, and absurdly charming performances, ANNA, which played Spectacle in 2014, is a pop-art musical masterpiece that has been locked away for far too long.
Originally made as the first color film for French TV, Anna Karina stars as a shy artist who is unknowingly photographed one day and soon becomes the obsession of an advertising executive (played by French New Wave stalwart Jean-Claude Brialy).The Yé-Yé music, scored and soundtracked by French pop icon Serge Gainsbourg (who also makes several on-screen appearances), is some of the most infectious and catchy work of his career, with Karina’s vocals shining throughout,.Anna Karina also reunited with key Godard personnel, including editor Françoise Collin (BAND OF OUTSIDERS, PIERROT LE FOU, 2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER) and DP Wally Kurant (MASCULINE FEMININE).
Impossible to resist, the film feels like a pitch-perfect melding of Godard’s A WOMAN IS A WOMAN and Demy’s THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, with Karina’s adorable beauty and effervescent charm as the center of attention. And be on the lookout for a Marianne Faithfull cameo.The film was a hit on French television in the late 60s and received a brief Japanese theatrical run in the 90s, but has since vanished and, to the best of our knowledge, has never screened before in the US. Working with Universal Music, Spectacle is enthralled to once again revive this lost gem of 60s French cinema.
LAUGHTER IN THE DARK
dir. Tony Richardson, 1969
United Kingdom & France. 104 mins.
In English.
SUNDAY, APRIL 25 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com
Adapted from Vladimir Nabokov’s novel of the same name, LAUGHTER IN THE DARK deals with the obsession of a middle-aged man (Nicol Williamson) and his younger cunning mistress Margot (Anna Karina)– think Scarlet Street meets the British new wave. Tony Richardson trades Nabokov’s 1930’s Berlin for the Swinging 60’s of London in this lustful thriller of deceit which was never released on home video and has rarely-screened since its 1969 release. Anna Karina shines in her all-English role as the charming irresistible seductress who cultivates something mysterious behind her delicate, wide eyes.
L’INVENZIONE DI MOREL (aka MOREL’S INVENTION)
dir. Emidio Greco, 1974
Italy. 110 mins.
In Italian with English subtitles.
THURSDAY, APRIL 29 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com Please note this stream will only appear to viewers based in the United States.
Adapted from the novella which inspired LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, Emidio Greco’s MOREL’S INVENTION is a chilling slow-burning metaphysical oddity serving as a meditation on time, mortality, and the cinema itself. Starring Anna Karina as Faustine, a sort-of Fellini-esque femme-enigma who is forever lost in the island’s haunting secrets of art-deco, socialite costume, and jazz.
THE YEAR OF THE PLAGUE
(EL ANO DE LA PESTE)
dir. Felipe Cazals, 1979
109 mins. Mexico.
In Spanish with English subtitles.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – 10 PM EST in-theater and at stream.spectacletheater.com
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 – 10 PM EST in-theater and at stream.spectacletheater.com
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 – 7:30 PM EST in-theater and at stream.spectacletheater.com
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 – 7:30 PM EST in-theater and at stream.spectacletheater.com ONLINE TICKETS
Ten years after we showed his anti-anti-communism horror masterpiece CANOA, Spectacle is thrilled to reprise living master Felipe Cazals’ THE YEAR OF THE PLAGUE: a little-seen adaptation of Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year transposed to 1970s Mexico. Working from an original idea proposed by his friend Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cazals uses the outbreak of a pandemic to diagnose the ills of Mexican society as he saw it: political corruption, snake-oil pundits on television, municipal apathy to the basic needs of lower-income citizens. The result is a bracing, terrifying vision of life out of junct 40 years ahead of coronavirus.
“Gabo (Marquez) is known as the creator of magical realism, but there is no magic to this film. We inserted a plague to create a different reality, in order to reveal problems within society. What can change is the way authorities will react to a crisis of this nature. To hide the truth is a power move, essentially linking all forms of power together. The president must say whatever is convenient for private interests. The whole reason he is in power is to create a distorted reality. The president, the private interests—their form of reality becomes the official truth. To take the pandemic seriously would necessitate destroying preexisting forms of power.” – Felipe Cazals, Filmmaker Magazine
Special thanks to Felipe Cazals, Herandy Goytia and IMCINE.
The word “collective” brings to mind infinite potentials — an unlimited number of practices towards horizontality within an artistic ecosystem. Some of these practices are more tenable than others, but throughout history activist-minded artists have collectivized in an effort to change what the economic, social and political model of making arts looks like. From West Berlin to DC, the Second Wave to riot grrrl, we present a cross-section of female artists coming together in times of political need.
Organized in collaboration with Mary Billyou. Special thanks to Women Make Movies, Filmmaker’s Co-op, Facets, K8 Hardy and Wynne Greenwood.
UNDER THE PAVEMENT LIES THE STRAND
(aka UNTER DEM PFLASTER IST DER STRAND)
dir. Helma Sanders-Brahms, 1975
Germany. 99 mins.
In German with English subtitles.
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.
WOMEN’S PUNK ART MAKING PARTY
dir. Mary Billyou, 1996.
US. 33 min.
TUESDAY, MARCH 16 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com
A documentary in which a group of young women meet for an art-making party. Located at The Beehive Collective in Washington, DC, six individual episodes are loosely interspersed, allowing each participant a chance to represent themselves. Included: a feminist stripper preparing for work, a puppet show, and a music video.
playing with
SHE HAD HER GUN ALL READY
dir. Vivienne Dick, 1978.
US. 28 min.
Vivienne Dick takes aim at reverence and power dynamics among women in one of her best known shorts, an 8mm Lower East Side-set psychodrama starring Lydia Lunch.
NEW REPORT ARTIST UNKNOWN
dirs. K8 Hardy and Wynne Greenwood, 2006
United States. 16 mins.
A collaborative project envisioning a news service in a post-feminist world, this comedic short features K8 Hardy (founder of the queer feminist art collective LTTR) and Wynne Greenwood (of Tracy and the Plastics) playing Henry Irigaray and Henry Stein-Acker-Hill, an anchor and roving correspondent for WKRH, a feminist TV news station whose tagline is “pregnant with information.”
THE ALL-ROUND REDUCED PERSONALITY
(aka DIE ALLSEITIG REDUZIERTE PERSÖNLICHKEIT)
dir. Helke Sander, 1979
Germany. 98 mins.
In German with English subtitles.
MONDAY MARCH 22 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com
WEDNESDAY MARCH 31 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com
“Emancipation or not, you want to sell a story.”
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, Sanders 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.
THE HERETICS
dir. Joan Braderman, 2009
United States. 95 mins.
FRIDAY, MARCH 19 – 8PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com
Tracing the influence of the Women’s Movement’s Second Wave on art and life, THE HERETICS is the exhilarating inside story of the New York feminist art collective that produced “Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics” (1977-92). On the road with her camera crew from New Mexico to Italy, Braderman reconnects with 28 other group members, including writer/critic Lucy Lippard, architect Susanna Torre, filmmaker Su Friedrich, and artists Ida Applebroog, Mary Miss, Miriam Schapiro, and Cecilia Vicuña. — Women Make Movies
Presented in partnership with Women Make Movies.
“Upbeat and affirmative…The stories these women tell envision a radically different moment in art-world history, one in which questions of career and market are barely mentioned, and philosophical arguments are firmly grounded in street-level politics.” — Ed Halter, Artforum
WOMANHOUSE
dir. Johanna Demetrakas, 1974
United States. 47 mins.
THURSDAY, MARCH 18 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com
WOMANHOUSE is an historic documentary about one of the most important feminist cultural events of the 1970s. Judy Chicago (best-known as the creator of THE DINNER PARTY) and Miriam Shapiro rented an old Hollywood mansion and altered its interior through decor and set-pieces to “search out and reveal the female experience…the dreams and fantasies of women as they sewed, cooked, washed and ironed away their lives.”
Presented in partnership with Women Make Movies.
playing with
EXCERPTS FROM THE A.I.R. GALLERY OPENING, 1972
dir. Hermine Freed, 1972
United States. 11 mins.
Re-edited by filmmaker Mary Billyou, this film presents footage shot at A.I.R. Gallery’s first opening, shot by Hermine Freed. A.I.R. Gallery (Artists in Residence) is the first all-female artist-owned cooperative gallery in the United States. It was founded in 1972 with the objective of providing a professional and permanent exhibition space for women artists during a time in which the works shown at commercial galleries in New York City were almost exclusively by male artists.
TAKING RESIDENCE: A SHORT HISTORY OF A.I.R. GALLERY
dir. Meredith Drum, 2012
United States. 16 mins.
This documentary was made on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of A.I.R. Gallery at Fales Library and the Tracey/Barry Gallery at New York University.
Triple Canopy and Spectacle present And Besides, It’s True, an evening of screenings and discussion devoted to disinformation and rumor.
In the past year, we’ve desperately sought connection and copresence, whether through endless Zoom meetings or a riot at the capitol. Of course, these events are sorted into affiliations that are life-affirming or malign, the constant question in the time of social distancing and conspiracy theories being, “Why are you together?” Everyone is now both detective and skeptic: perhaps you didn’t see everything on the ground, and perhaps you’re being too credulous of someone’s online account. At the same time, this epistemology of paranoia and doubt is met with a frantic will to believe, which often devolves into casting for allegiances—the no-true-Scotsman fallacy writ large. (No true populist would ever sell Gamestock, no true constitutional patriot would actually storm the Senate chamber, no true revolutionary would cast aspersion on Xi Jinping Thought.) This contradiction of skepticism and belief is often presented as a deeply American, incredibly recent phenomenon—a framing that is both ahistorical and geographically myopic.
Considering the antecedents and global breadth of the present moment, the event will begin with a screening of Nathalie Magnan’s 1996 short film IL N’Y A PAS DE FUMEE SANS FEU, ET EN PLUS C’EST VRAI! (There’s No Smoke without Fire, and Besides, It’s True!). Magnan, a French media theoretician, translator, and filmmaker, was best known for her participation in early listservs and queer feminist mediajammer activism. Il n’y a pas de fumée sans feu, et en plus c’est vrai! is a dense refraction of the information landscape of the time that leapfrogs from French radio broadcasts to man-on-the-street prank interviews to clips from The Twilight Zone and Dr. Seuss’s World War II-era Private Snafu cartoons. Taxonomizing the symbols and stories of viral hearsay throughout human history, Magnan gives a portrait of le rumeur as both irresistible force and pre-internet manifestation of media literacy run amok.
Following Magnan’s film, artists Paige K. B. and Tiffany Sia will each give presentations of found footage and media clips, tracing the distribution of psy-ops, censored messages, and subversive appeals through such varied networks as Twitter Live and The David Letterman Show. K. B. will consider the comedic angle of American manifestations of LARPing as reality, from Andy Kaufman to QAnon; Sia will examine the Rashomoning of Hong Kong protest footage and its legal implications.
The screening will be followed by a discussion with K. B. and Sia, alongside Triple Canopy senior editor Matthew Shen Goodman and Spectacle volunteer Steve Macfarlane.
PAIGE K.B. is an artist, writer, and erstwhile editor from Los Angeles. She has been an editor at Artforum and Garage, and her writing has been published in numerous magazines and books since 2013. Her recent exhibitions include an illegal installation at 13 East 31st Street and a legal one at the Canal Street Research Association, a space run by the group Shanzhai Lyric. She is currently assembling a body of work for Documenta 13.
TIFFANY SIA is an artist, filmmaker, writer, and founder of Speculative Place, a project space in Hong Kong. She is the author of Salty Wet 咸濕 (Inpatient Press, 2019) the book-length sequel, Too Salty Too Wet 更咸更濕 (Speculative Place, 2021), which serves as the basis for her exhibition “Slippery When Wet” at Artists Space. Sia is the director of the short, experimental film NEVER REST/UNREST (2020), which has screened at Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival and will have its North American premiere at MoMA Documentary Fortnight. She is also part of Home Cooking, an artist collective founded by Asad Raza, and contributes to the group’s performance and reading series Hell Is a Timeline.
This event would not be possible without the support of De la Mule au Web and Antre-Peaux for permission to screen IL N’Y A PAS DE FUMEE SANS FEU, ET EN PLUS C’EST VRAI!. In lieu of a ticket charge, attendees are encouraged to make a donation in Magnan’s honor to SOS Mediterranee.
Well, hell, if it isn’t Halloween already. This year has been absolute dogshit by pretty much every measurable standard, but we’re not letting that stop THE SHRIEK SHOW!
Spectacle’s 10th annual SHRIEK SHOW will be presented on our Twitch channel from noon through midnight. All mystery meat, all day long. All showtimes EST.
MOVIE #1 – 12PM
A black and white late Sixties ghost thriller to kick things off. Originally conceived as the pilot of a show that didn’t get picked up, this moody shocker follows a paranormal investigator and a woman who’s convinced she’s going to be buried alive.
MOVIE #2 – 1:30 PM
An Italian vampire-adjacent chiller from the early 70’s… creepy dolls, pale Europeans and gothic horror abound!
MOVIE #3 – 3:15 PM
A Shaw-flavored early 80’s folk horror tale of betrayal and revenge featuring maggots, exploding boils, snakes, decapitations, flying heads, and much more!
MOVIE #4 – 5PM
A long-short film from the early Nineties about a fraternity’s hazing ritual gone awry on the night of their campus Halloween celebration.
MOVIE #5 – 6PM
A telenovela on crack, this Mexican feature was filmed and initially shelved in the late Sixties, only to be unearthed and fleshed out with freshly shot horror scenes in the early Eighties before being released on TV and video. A hazy mindfuck of a film featuring every trope in the book (plus a heavy dose of melodrama.)
MOVIE #6 – 7:30 PM
Regional horror at its finest: we’re screening the special director’s cut of a late Eighties Texas horror gem about two people caught in the Lovecraftian curse of a strange house.
MOVIE #7 – 9:45 PM
Another long-short (40 minutes) – this one from Japan, a shot-on-video gross-out fest from the mid-80’s. Expect blood, guts, tentacles, and some really terrible rubber-slithering-sounds. Not for the faint of heart!
MOVIE #8 – 10:35 PM
Shriek Show X closes out with an early Nineties low budget “vampire flick”. Shot on 8mm for about $5k over the course of 2-3 years, this independent gorefest claims “the most exploding heads in a horror film ever” – and they’re not wrong. Also featuring a kickass heavy metal soundtrack and some of the best home-brewed FX ever committed to celluloid!
It’s true: we just turned ten. And the party is just getting started. EVERY MOVIE IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD (PART ONE) is a stab at consolidating 3,600+ nights of lost and forgotten radical repertory and contemporary cinema into a digestible (but not-too-digestible) streaming program while the world burns: hand-picked selections of Spectacle yore, dusted off by the original programmers and grown all the more magnificent in the rear-view. Keep checking this page for updates as we roll into October and beyond!
THE KILLING OF AMERICA
(aka VIOLENCE U.S.A.)
dirs. Sheldon Renan & Leonard Schrader, 1982
United States. 90 min.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 – 7PM w/REMOTE Q&A featuring filmmaker Sheldon Renan only on Twitch
ALL OF THE FILM YOU ARE ABOUT TO SEE IS REAL. NOTHING HAS BEEN STAGED.
So begins the 1982 shockumentary THE KILLING OF AMERICA, a film that, even among its mondo movie contemporaries, stands out as one of the grimmest and most infamous films ever produced.
If violence is the disease, then THE KILLING OF AMERICA is the microscope. Compiled almost entirely from news broadcasts, security camera footage, etc, THE KILLING OF AMERICA chronicles nearly every major violent incident of the era, from the JFK assassination onward. The America presented here is land characterized by widespread burnout and disillusionment. Add to that the increasing pervasiveness of the mass media, as well as an obscene overabundance of firearms, and you are left with a sobering portrait of a sick society, in which insanity and paranoia breed easily. Meanwhile, decades later…
Directed by Sheldon Renan & Leonard Schrader (brother of Paul Schrader), and featuring a noteworthy narration by voiceover master Chuck Riley.
Originally screened July 2014 / September 2017. Special thanks to Preston Spurlock, Sheldon Renan, Lee Percy and the American Genre Film Archive.
YOU CAN’T KEEP ME QUIET! FILMS BY SARAH JACOBSON
dir. Sarah Jacobson, 1991-1998
United States. 135 mins.
“I consider myself a feminist filmmaker, definitely. The whole reason I got into film was because I never saw cool girls in films that I liked. I have no fear of the word ‘feminist.’ I know that that has certain negative connotations to some people, but then why should I let other people’s stupidity bully what I want to do, right? To me, feminism means that I should have an equal opportunity to do what I want to do as a woman. I don’t want to be better than men, I don’t want to shut men up. It’s like, look, you’ve got your little thing over here, you’ve got your B-movie aesthetic, and I’ve got my interpretation of it that girls can enjoy, too, so you don’t always have to watch the bimbo get raped or slashed or stalked or whatever.” – Sarah Jacobson
Sarah Jacobson (1971-2004) was an independent filmmaker who led a DIY filmmaking movement in the 90s. She wrote and directed several short films, documentaries, music videos and a feature film. She formed Station Wagon Productions with her mother and producer Ruth Jacobson, and with Ruth’s help self-promoted and distributed her films all over the country. Originally from New Jersey and Minneapolis, Jacobson studied briefly at Bard College and then at the San Francisco Art Institute with George Kuchar.
She directed I WAS A TEENAGE SERIAL KILLER in 1993 which she described as the story of “a 19-year-old girl who has a series of run-ins with various condescending men.” Jacobson’s slap-in-the-face feminist interpretation of “sexy”/violent B movies found a cult following. Jacobson went on to make her feature Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore a few years later. Too in your face to be an after-school special, Mary Jane is a movie about sex from a girl’s point of view. After a gross and unceremonious “first time” Jane learns about the joys of pleasing herself and asking for what she wants from her punky co-workers at a Midwestern movie theater (with Jello Biafra and Davey Havok cameos). Mary Jane debuted at the Chicago Underground Film Festival in 1997, and sold out at Sundance and SXSW; Jacobson promoted the film the year previous at the Independent Film Market with homemade “Not a Virgin” stickers her and her mom made at Kinko’s. Spectacle’s program will also include an early autobiographical short called Road Movie (or What I Learned in a Buick Station Wagon) (1991) which is the story of a college filmmaker who leaves Minneapolis for NYC after her professors and classmates make fun of her film (with an Adolfas Mekas cameo).
Originally screened June 2013. Special thanks to Katie Bradshaw, the Free History Project and the American Genre Film Archive. You can purchase the restored blu-rays of Jacobson’s work here.
ALONE IN THE T-SHIRT ZONE
Dir. Mikel B. Anderson, 1986
United States. In English.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 – 7PM w/REMOTE Q&A featuring filmmaker Mike B. Anderson only on Twitch
1986 offers up this surreal (so real) comedy/drama/dramady/fever dream. Mike (Michael Barrack) has had enough. After seeing a moderate amount of success with his “Foxy Lady” design, his career as an up and coming t-shirt artist as plateaued and is now moving along at a sludgy crawl. To make matters worse, his ex-girlfriend Jennifer (Jennifer McCasky Anderson) has moved on to greener pastures in the form of Mike’s slimy, creep of a boss who pumps motivational tapes over the PA of the t-shirt factory all day. Mike has to get out, but quickly discovers that escaping the t-shirt zone is easier said than done.
Mikel B. Anderson (KAMILLIONS, The Simpsons) has crafted a film that’s weird enough for midnights and human enough to stick with you the rest of the day. Stark, honest, desperate, scary, hilarious, and real.
Originally screened June 2011. Special thanks to Mark Freado, Jr., Junk Food Dinner and Mikel B. Anderson.
ELAINE AND OTHER SHORT FILMS BY ANDREW HORN
dirs. Andrew Horn, Robyn Brentano and John Meaney
100 mins. United States.
Originally screened back in February 2020, this program of newly rediscovered short films by our friend Andrew Horn (1952-2019) and a staggering list of downtown-era collaborators makes a perfect complement to longtime Spectacle favorite DOOMED LOVE (1984), screening at 9P. Individual descriptions below:
CHROMA
dir. Andrew Horn, 1974
8 mins. United States.
Shot at New York University, Horn’s wordless, mindblowing student film CHROMA might be the missing link between the avant-garde cinema of the 1970s and Horn’s later dance films to follow. The silhouettes of three dancers (red, green and blue) are played off one another while the grids and ladders of the modern metropolis – another feature that’s recognizable across almost every film made by Horn – crossfade and overtake the screen. CHROMA received a special award of merit from the Academy of Motion Picture arts and Sciences; on his CV, Horn described the film like this: “real images are manipulated through special effects and printing to create an artificial dreamscape.”
ROPE DANCE TRANSLATIONS
dir. John Meaney, 1974
20 mins. United States.
Andrew Horn was technical director on this black-and-white document of Andrew deGroat’s hypnotic, swirling “Rope Dance Translations”, originally performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music by Robyn Brentano, Frank Converso, Charles Dennis, Ritty Ann Burchfield and deGroat himself. It was shot in a single day and lit by Carol Mullins (wife of Jim Neu, who would write DOOMED LOVE and THE BIG BLUE). The introductory text describes the dance as “relying on each individual dancer’s energies and response to the ropes. The ‘choreograph’ for this dance is the geometry of the ropes, the centrifugal force of the spinning from and the strict revolving patterns of solo and chorus.” The music for ROPE DANCE TRANSLATIONS was composed by Michael Galasso, who would go on to provide unforgettable string compositions for Wong Kar-Wai’s IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE.
ELAINE: A STORY OF LOST LOVE
dirs. Andrew Horn & John Meaney, 1976
30 mins. United States.
In English.
A joint thesis project of Horn (at NYU) and his longtime collaborator John Meaney (at Montclair), the crushing and tragic ELAINE: A STORY OF LOST LOVE is adapted from an obscure Guy de Maupassant novella, lifted from a paperback bought by Meaney as an undergrad for 99 cents. What’s evident is Horn’s fascination for squared-off blocking and choreography, including a glimpse at a performance of Orpheus and Eurydice in miniature. Star Adam Macadam brought on other members of Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theater Company, many of whom would return to work on DOOMED LOVE.
Featuring ancient costumes on loan from the Metropolitan Opera (repurposed from early twentieth century productions of Tosca and La Traviata), ELAINE aspires to high gothic on a shoestring budget. Horn and Meaney shot at locations including the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Washington Heights, the Frick, and the Carnegie Hall Cinema, then operated by Sid Geffen and Jackie Raynal – the programmers responsible for hosting the first-ever New York City screenings of films by Marguerite Duras, an influence on the filmmakers (alongside Daniel Schmid, Douglas Sirk and Alain Resnais.) ELAINE was originally screened on a quadruple-bill alongside films by Bary Shiils, Robert Mapplethorpe, Rudy Burkhardt and Neil Welliver; J. Hoberman called ELAINE “a well-crafted, if precious, vehicle for Black-Eyed Susan and other members of the Ridiculous Theater Company.”
CLOUD DANCE
dirs. Robyn Brentano & Andrew Horn, 1979
14 mins. United States.
In English.
Collaborating again with deGroat, Horn and Brentano filmed his improvised dance in “The Four-Armed Cloud,” a large cube-shaped sculpture of thousands of linen threads by the artist Lenore Tawney at the NJ State Museum in Trenton. At a time when dance film convention was to show full bodies in continuous movement, Horn and Brentano worked with de Groat to develop movement sequences for the camera. They then developed a kind of relational editing by matching incongruous movements and using blackouts to create a visual logic that resulted in a surprisingly intimate and hypnotic cine-dance. Later, they added a poem by Christopher Knowles, read by Arby Ovanessian and a violin score improvised by Michael Galasso.
SPACE CITY
dirs. Robyn Brentano & Andrew Horn, 1981
28 mins. United States.
In English.
Collaborating this time with dancer Kenneth King, Horn and Brentano’s most ambitious dance film anticipated the production value of Horn’s later dramatic features. The action begins in an 18th century attic before slowly moving through the passages of a modern metropolis’ early development, with King dancing to guide the action as the world expands – including a ghoulish and haunting superimposition of King dancing atop the Manhattan skyline.
In an interview with Millennium Film Journal, Horn pointed out that SPACE CITY put onscreen a number of personas adopted by King in his previous dance performances: “the old man, the little man that dances, the figure of the dreamer, the dancer.” Brentano described it like this: “From the moment that the artist Rick Brintzenhofe suggested that he paint the city on these folding screens and modules we knew that we wanted to do a variety of set-ups and to edit those setups together using various orders so that it was like taking a deck of cards and shuffling them all together.”
SPACE CITY takes the viewer through the thresholds of dreaming, waking, and transcendental awareness, using real and painted images of the city, a 19th century attic and outer space. King’s voice recounts a dream of space without walls, a time of childhood and ecstasy.
DOOMED LOVE dir. Andrew Horn, 1984
72 mins. United States.
In English.
Made in piecemeal payments while Andrew Horn worked as a graphic artist in Koch-era Manhattan, DOOMED LOVE is a delectable hunk of sunken downtown treasure. Painter Bill Rice (SUBWAY RIDERS) stars as Andre, an aging professor of romantic literature who decides, in the film’s doleful introductory passage, to commit suicide after losing the love of his life. Andre is tragicomically unsuccessful, but the attempt leads to a new acquaintance with a psychiatric nurse named Lois (Rosemary Moore), with whom he uncorks a kind of under-acknowledged romance of the soul. Whatever margins that once separated Andre’s work as an academic and his reasons for going on (or not) have completely dissolved; Rice’s monologues – scripted by the great playwright and longtime Horn collaborator Jim Neu – set a tone of deadpan monotony and piercing repetition.
“Life goes on, so to speak:” Horn’s vignettes from Andre and Lois’ – trapped in a state of paralyzing reverie, and newly married to Bob (Allen Frame), respectively – play against jawdropping 2-D backdrops mounted in the Lower East Side’s Millennium Film Workshop where DOOMED LOVE was filmed. Amy Sillman and Pamela Wilson’s muslin and cardboard “sets” make Horn’s film a dour-yet-sweet exercise in epic theatre buttressed by an sparkling minimalist score from Evan Lurie (of The Lounge Lizards), with original songs by Lenny Pickett. At every opportunity – but especially this month, commemorating our annual ANTI-VALENTINE’S program as well as celebrating Andy’s rich body of work – Spectacle is pleased to resuscitate this no-wave classic.
“DOOMED LOVE was my first feature film. It was made in the midst of what was then New Wave Cinema, but instead of the East Village I was taking my cues from Daniel Schmid and Werner Schroeder. I wanted to make an opera – without much knowledge of what opera was – and it became a musical. I wanted to make something mythic and only later discovered just how personal it was. I wanted it to be on a grand scale, which could only play out in a confined and artificial space. In those days we perversely wanted to alienate the audience and dare them to leave. In that I (thankfully) failed miserably.” – Andrew Horn
Originally screened July 2016 and beyond. Special thanks to Hisami Kuroiwa, Kai Horn, Chris Horn, John Meaney, Robyn Brentano and Christopher Knowles.
AMERICAN HUNTER
(aka LETHAL HUNTER)
dir. Arizal, 1988.
92 mins. Indonesia.
Indonesian dubbed into English with Japanese subtitles.
“With the information in this study, the wrong people could start a panic on Wall Street that would bring the Western World to its knees…”
In mononymous Indonesian action maestro Arizal’s star-spangled shoot-’em-up, Christopher Mitchum, former 2012 Republican candidate for California Congressional District 24’s United States House of Representatives seat, stars as Jake Carver, an “agent” whose self-described occupation is to “fight bad guys.” As the AMERICAN HUNTER, Carver battles a multifariously evil organization over a piece of microfilm to unspecified ends. Highlights include a jeep driving off the side of one skyscraper into the window of another, a three-way motorcycle/pick-up truck/train chase, a baby being run over by a car crashing through the side of a supermarket yet miraculously surviving, an eight minute helicopter chase, an awkwardly clothed shower sex scene, one house explosion, one castle explosion, dozens of car explosions, male bondage and electrocution, and a fist fight inside a dungeon full of what appears to be cardboard boxes overflowing with shredded paper. Bill “Super Foot” Wallace stars as the bad guy whose nefariousness is conveyed through his variously keeping pet falcons and monkeys on his shoulder, and RAMBU’s Peter O’Brien drops in for an unlikely turn as a hench villain who gets the shit kicked out of him then has his legs run over then crashes through a brick wall on the hood of a car. Approximately ten of the 92 action-packed minutes have been described.
This pre-election weekend, blow off some steam with AMERICAN HUNTER, the most EXPLOSIVE and AWE-INSPIRING action extravaganza EVER MADE! Jeeps driving off the sides of skyscrapers into the sides of other skyscrapers! Babies getting run over in epic car chases yet miraculously surviving! Anglo heros arcing over flaming piles shrapnel like star-spangled ropes of jism! FISTFIGHTS IN WAREHOUSES FULL OF SHREDDED PAPER!
The American Hunter has his own vision for the future of the United States of America: PAIN!
Originally screened Election Season 2012…. and beyond. Special thanks to Jon Dieringer, C. Spencer Yeh and Chris Mitchum.
SEVEN WOMEN, SEVEN SINS dirs. Chantal Akerman, Ulrike Ottinger, Bette Gordon, Maxi Cohen, VALIE-EXPORT, Laurence Gavron and Helke Sander. 1987.
101 mins. Various countries and languages with English subtitles.
As wide-ranging an omnibus film as there has ever been, a group of some of the most important international filmmakers of the last few decades – all of them female – take on each of the biblical vices. Bette Gordon, Chantal Akerman, VALIE EXPORT, Maxi Cohen, Laurence Gavron and more contribute a contemporary celluloid sin. The result is a thoroughly unpredictable introduction to each filmmaker’s work; encapsulating devious narratives and experimental collages, film and video.
What constitutes a deadly sin today? Seven of the world’s best-known women directors produce their own version of celluloid sin in this omnibus film. Helke Sander (THE GERMANS AND THEIR MEN) reverses GLUTTONY with her vision of Eve forcing her apples into the hands of a reluctant Adam. Bette Gordon (VARIETY, EMPTY SUITCASES) finds GREED during a fight in the ladies’ room of a luxury hotel over a lottery ticket. Strangers reply to director Maxi Cohen’s ad in a newspaper to share their litanies in ANGER. Award-winning director, Chantal Akerman, battles to overcome her SLOTH in order to complete her film, while Valie Export (INVISIBLE ADVERSARIES) strips bare notions of the skin trade in LUST. ENVY turns into murder in Laurence Gavron’s take on vice, and Ulrike Ottinger, whose work includes JOHANNA D’ARC OF MONGOLIA, illustrates PRIDE with a fantastical collage of allegory and images. SEVEN WOMEN – SEVEN SINS is the perfect introduction for those new to the world of women’s filmmaking and an interesting study in styles for those already familiar with the work of these seven innovative directors.
Originally screened in October 2012 / June 2016. Special thanks to Women Make Movies.
LES SAIGNANTES
(THE BLOOD-LETTES)
dir. Jean-Pierre Bekolo, 2005
Cameroon. 97 mins.
In French with English subtitles.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1 – 7PM EST only on Twitch
“We shouldn’t just be making movies, we should be changing reality.”
Director Jean-Pierre Bekolo has been making spirited, avant-garde films in and about his native Cameroon for the past twenty years. His imaginative work criticizes both his country’s dictatorship, as well as Western cinematic conventions, offering a fresh perspective of Africa, of cinema, and especially of African cinema.
LES SAIGNANTES is the best African sci-fi vampire political satire with homoerotic overtones you’ve ever seen. Best friends Majolie and Chouchou are two beautiful young women trying to get ahead in a near-future Cameroon. After accidentally killing a powerful politician during sex, the two come up with a plot to dispose of the body, and get into the glamorous wakes that have taken over the local nightlife.
As the girls tear their way through the corrupt ruling class, using their their feminine wiles and magical powers, Bekolo drops inter-titles into the film, commenting on the difficulties of filmmaking in an oppressive political climate. With a feminist subtext and cinematography like a blacklight rave, LES SAIGNANTES is a beautiful, disorienting, and truly original work.
Originally screened July 2013. Special thanks to Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Annelise Ogaard, Derica Shields and Megan Eardley.
EL DEPENDIENTE
Dir. Leonardo Favio, 1969.
78 min. Argentina.
In Spanish with English subtitles.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4 – 7PM EST only on Twitch
EL DEPENDIENTE is the third feature directed by Leonardo Favio, Argentina’s own Gainsbourgian renaissance man with the dual distinction of being a ’60s and ’70s pop icon and accomplished filmmaker. Whereas his first two features bear out of the influence of his mentor, Leopoldo Torre Nilsson, and Robert Bresson (and CHRONICLE OF A BOY AONE strongly suggesting Vigo’s ZERO DE CONDUITE), EL DEPENDIENTE is another beast entirely that can perhaps only be compared to the startlingly similar ERASERHEAD in its suffocating portrayal of abject dread brutally punctuated with disturbing, absurdist humor. Walter Vidarte plays the title clerk, who works in a hardware store in a desolate provincial town. He ashamedly finds himself indulging in fantasies of the accidental death of his kind employer so that he one day might inherit the store. Each night on his way home he becomes transfixed by a gorgeous young woman lurking under the street light. His approaching her eventually leads to a string of muted nocturne encounters in the girl’s dilapidated courtyard that grow increasingly anxious under the auspices of her doting, manically overbearing mother. Filmed in a stark chiaroscuro rife with vast, empty spaces, eerie ellipses and an almost palpable sense of the forlorn curdling into a brooding menace, EL DEPENDIENTE is, despite its considerable humor and charm, an ever-tightening knot in the stomach and one of the most abstruse, perplexing anti-date movies ever made.
Originally screened Spectober 2012. Special thanks to Jon Dieringer.
FANGS
(انياب)
Dir. Mohammed Shebl, 1981.
Egypt. 100 mins.
In Arabic with English subs.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6 – 7PM EST only on Twitch
The Arab Spring and aftermath has yielded an accompanying wave of essential social realist film documents. But where, you ask, are all the Middle Eastern disco vampires now? Those occupied a special part of the early 80s — namely the exhilarating Egyptian ultra-camp triumph that is FANGS.
The premise — a young couple attempt to shelter from a storm at a creepy castle only to have their lives changed forever — may have been lifted straight from THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (along with the dance numbers, professorial framing device, and disembodied lips intro sequence). But however much director Mohammed Shebl may have worn his love of that cult icon on his sleeve, his ambitious and wildly imaginative attempt to transcribe it into contemporary 1981 Egypt makes for something wholly his own. Black magic, singing vampires in spangles, Egyptian pop cameos, awkward climbing Dracula sequence, implausible fog machine deployment, a shockingly banging original electrofunk soundtrack by the film’s co-writer (fleshed out with bizarre soundtrack cues lifted directly from American movies of the time), kinetic on-screen animation effects — it’s all here.
In a memorable postmodern tangent the film even turns aside into social commentary to prove the existence of the ordinary “vampires of Egyptian society”, wherein Dracula pops up in various mundane roles (price-gouging plumber, opportunistic cab driver, etc) to continue haunting the leads decades into the future. If there’s any doubt about what sort of film world we’re in, it’ll be settled in the first minutes, when our protagonists’ relationship is established via an outside-the-window-serenade, with a bunch of random joggers in knee socks and shorts leaping in as back-up dancers. All of which serves, as well, as a strange reminder of the much relaxed social climate that prevailed in Egypt 30 years ago. (In his next film, Shebl would even work in cuts from a Divine video to establish the appropriate vibe at a club scene.)
Mohammed Shebl, an iconoclastic radio personality and filmmaker who died young 20 years ago, was a bit of a glorious outlier in the Egyptian film world. Over the course of four features he fought a one-man war to jump-start the Egyptian horror film industry, which sadly never quite caught on with audiences and critics. But besides his own subsequent films, brimful of love for the likes of EVIL DEAD and NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, he did manage to inspire a brief generation of surreal ghost stories and tales of the Egyptian Weird, most sadly untranslated and unseen in the west. His debut FANGS, however, has been translated and provides an ecstatic, essential window into a rarely seen side of Arabic cinema.
Originally screened June 2016. Special thanks to Nate Dorr.
THE PYX
dir. Harvey Hart, 1973
Canada. 108 mins.
In English.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8 – 7PM EST only on Twitch
“You know my name.”
Somewhere between ROSEMARY’S BABY and KLUTE, this Canadian supernatural mystery offers plenty to satisfy police procedural fans as Dr. Sgt. Jim Henderson (played by Christopher Plummer) investigates the murder of Elizabeth Lucy (Karen Black), and as the film moves back and forth between Henderson’s investigation and Lucy’s last days we learn of her connection to a cult of devil worshipers. While other films would try to drive up the tension, there’s a quiet, sullen feel to this film, from the grubby rain-soaked streets of Montreal to Lucy’s manipulative madam to the minimal orchestral score, supplemented by Karen Black’s songs, all of which build a slower sense of inescapable dread. Lucy’s conflagration of sex, heroin and Catholicism drifts through the entire film, a counterpoint to the increasing paranoia and futility of the detectives seeking to understand what remains beyond them as both storylines mirror the downward spiral of the other. Concluding with a backwards-chanting black mass and Henderson’s showdown with cult leader Keerson (Jean-Louis Roux), it’s a film that perfectly showcases the late Karen Black’s singular presence.
Originally screened May 2015. Special thanks to Darren Bauler.
YOU CALL THIS PROGRESS?! ALYCE WITTENSTEIN’S MULTIPLE FUTURES TRILOGY
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11 – 7PM EST w/Alyce Wittenstein for Remote Q&A on Twitch
Alyce Wittenstein has been called the “Queen of the New York Underground” and this May, Spectacle is pleased to play host to her and the films making up her MULTIPLE FUTURES trilogy. These films are filled to the brim with familiar faces, exquisite set pieces, snappy dialogue, and dazzling costumes. Hard to believe it’s been almost 3 years since we first showed these incredible works but here we are. Join us all month for these remarkable films in a celebration of science fiction, hilarity, character actors, and ghastly view of a not-too-distant world.
BETAVILLE
1986, 20 min.
The first in what would come to be known as the MULTIPLE FUTURES trilogy, BETAVILLE – a post-modern nightmare – finds a down and out detective Coman Gettme (played by Wittenstein mainstay Steve Ostringer) returning to his hometown after a chance meeting with The Girl (Holly Adams). Once the two arrive in Gettme’s Cadillac things immediately go from bad to worse for this gumshoe when he learns, over a slice at Stromboli’s, that High Fashion is the new law in town. Gettme becomes obsessed with The Girl and is determined to meet back up with her and “save” her from the these fashionable fascists.
BETAVILLE kicks off the trilogy in a pitch perfect send up of the French New Wave and science fiction, and turns noir on it’s ear while (literally) running through some familiar parts of NYC. Holly Adams is nothing short of dynamite and Ostringer’s distinctive production design would lay the groundwork for the look of the films to come. Years before becoming Brewmaster at the Brooklyn Brewery, Garrett Oliver was co-producer on the film. The short would go on to be nominated for a number of awards at festivals and play all over the world – often (unsurprisingly) alongside Godard’s ALPHAVILLE.
“Most of the detective narrator dialogue is clever, the cinematography is excellent, and I liked the (sort of) industrial music and the song by the Singing Squirrels.” – Michael J. Weldon, Psychotronic Magazine #2, 1989.
NO SUCH THING AS GRAVITY
1989, 40 min.In the not too distant future the LaFont corporation has all but taken over Earth. The company has revolutionized all elements of style, beauty, education, and housing but in the process (progress?!) has shipped many of Earth’s more “useless” inhabitants to the mysterious man made planet – and the largest scale experiment in human history – known as Nova Terra. Two scientists – Kay Zorn (Holly Adams) and Albert Leenhardt (Steve Robinson) are about to receive a prestigious award for their work on the LaFont Facelifter when they learn that Nova Terra is disrupting the Earth’s gravitational pull and will soon collide if it’s not destroyed. A headstrong lawyer and Kay’s boyfriend – Adam Malkonian (a scenery chewing Nick Zedd) – mouths off to a judge (the incomparable Taylor Mead – RIP) while defending a human teacher and is ordered to be relocated to the doomed planet. After meeting with the ambassador of Nova Terra (Emmanuelle Chaulet of Eric Rohmer’s BOYFRIENDS AND GIRLFRIENDS), Malkonian learns that perhaps the LaFont Corporation hasn’t been entirely truthful about what really happens on Nova Terra and vows to stop the destruction.Wittenstein’s first sync sound film is overflowing with amazing set pieces and incredible performances. Some scenes were shot at the New York Hall of Science – including an Ames room and a number of other dazzling optical illusions. Look out for cameos from Michael J. Anderson (TWIN PEAKS), Wittenstein’s father as the insidious Andreas LaFont, and the director herself on Nova Terra.
THE DEFLOWERING
1994, 40 min. “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old are dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” – Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks
>The quote above opens Wittenstein’s third and final film, THE DEFLOWERING. Again featuring some of Wittenstein’s tried and true players – Holly Adams, Emmanuelle Chaulet, Taylor Mead, and more – the film concerns yet another evil corporation this time HUXLEY BIO-TECH and their means to sanitize/beautify this world of ours. This time Wittenstein (with Ostringer back on production design) takes the costuming helm as well.
The TIB (Total Immune Breakdown) virus has left the planet reeling and lethal allergic reaction are at an all time high. Huxley’s efforts to produce perfect, designer children that are immune to viruses have had the side effect of hyper-allergic reactions. Why isn’t anything being done about allergies? No one wants to fund it! With the mortality rate skyrocketing, can mankind bounce back and feel the soft caress of skin against skin ever again or will the line at the Holo-Memorial Funeral Home grow ever longer?
Originally screened September 2015. Special thanks to Alyce Wittenstein, Steve Ostringer and Mark Freado, Jr.
THREE SHORT DOCUMENTARIES
Dir: Blaine Dunlap and Sol Korine, 1978-1983.
100 mins. United States.
In English.
During the late 70s/early 80s, filmmakers Blaine Dunlap and Sol Korine (father of Harmony) 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 mins.
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 mins.
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 mins.
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.
Originally screened in April 2012. Special thanks to Troy Swain, Jay Buim, Blaine Dunlap and Ruta Abolins (University of Georgia.)
BLACK PAST
Dir. Olaf Ittenbach, 1989.
85 mins. Germany.
In German with English subtitles.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15 – 7P EST only on Twitch
Tommy is a troubled teen trying to make friends in a new town without too much luck. He is bullied by his new school mates, and even his family pokes fun at him. As if this isn’t enough, the discovery of an ancient relic seems to release an evil that threatens to destroy him, and everyone he knows. As his demonic visions grow stronger, dreams begin to confuse reality, and Tommy spirals downward. But is it all in his head, or are the nightmares real?
They are real. Everyone is slaughtered. Xtreme violence and gore.
Originally screened March 2013. Special thanks to Wilt “Legz” Stewart.
WAX, OR THE DISCOVERY OF TELEVISION AMONG THE BEES
Dir. David Blair, 1991
USA, 85 min
WAX, OR THE DISCOVERY OF TELEVISION AMONG THE BEES tells the surreal tale of Jacob Maker, a weapons guidance technician and part-time beekeeper whose life is overturned when his ancestral, Mesopotamian-bred bees begin taking control of his mind. A confounding, psychedelic visual collage of computer animation, video feedback textures, lo-fi home video, archival photographs, image plane manipulation, found footage and classic documentary all jumble together to form this pioneering new media experiment in narrative, all of which is delivered via insistent, unnerving voice-over in the manner of an alien essay film.
This singular film is the work of a singular man, David Blair, who completed WAX only after many years of support from a litany of arts organizations. Accordingly, it is a feat of many firsts, including: the first independent feature film ever edited on a non-linear editing system, the first film to be wholly translated into an interactive, hyper-textual online experience, and the first film in history to be streamed live over a computer network (in 1993!).
Special thanks to David Blair for all of his generous cooperation. Originally screened November 2012.
CALLING ALL LEFTISTS! The past few years have been a whirlwind: exhausting, invigorating, and ripe with potential. It’s tremendously difficult, when in the thick of it, to pause, reflect, or even find a moment to catch a breath. Especially when “it” refers to the rise of fascism on a global scale, with any number of future cataclysms hovering just over the horizon. But we digress.
Join us, then, for a series that asks: if not now, when? Come for great works of radical political filmmaking, stay for the generative discussions, or even just to gossip and gripe. The hope is that this forum for authentic representations of successes, defeats, and the messy work of political action, will be thrilling, edifying, and maybe even inspire your next organizing project. To butcher the title of a great film for the sake of a moderately applicable pun: “Throw away your dogma, rally in the cinema.”
WHEN YOU PLAY ME LOUD VOL. 1: POP AGAINST COPS
dirs. Various, 1967-2020
80 mins.
SUNDAY, MARCH 22 – 7:30 PM TUESDAY, MARCH 31 – 7:30 PM
“Someone afraid of dancing is somehow afraid of many other things, you know?” – Claire Denis
Your friendly neighborhood anarchists humbly offer a tour of the music video and its discontents. If you love to hop, wiggle and boogie then come on by for a showcase of sound colliding with image, iconographic subversions and praxis lived to the hilt. But still you ask, why this? We’ll give Emma the final word: “I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to became a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. ‘I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.’ Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything.”
DIE KINDER DER TOTEN
dirs. Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska, 2019
90 mins. Austria/United States.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8 – 7:30 PM + 10 PM w/filmmaker Kelly Copper in person for Q&A!
(These screenings are $10.) MONDAY, FEBRUARY 10 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19 – 7:30 PM w/filmmaker Kelly Copper in person for Q&A!
(This screening is $10.)
The Nature Theater of Oklahoma’s first foray into feature filmmaking is a silent movie-style zombie feature based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning Austrian horror novel by author Elfriede Jelinek (The Piano Teacher), using classic silent film tropes (and corpses) to critique the country’s not-so-distant Nazi past. Producer Ulrich Seidl (director of IMPORT/EXPORT and the PARADISE TRILOGY) and the New York-based experimental theatrical troupe reenvision Jelinek’s 666-page epic as a Super-8 backyard slasher from the Hinterlands, “imbued with a midnight movie spirit reminiscent of John Waters and Guy Maddin” (AFI).
