This September, Spectacle is proud to present a retrospective of the luminary American experimental filmmaker SCOTT BARTLETT in collaboration with The Film-Makers’ Cooperative. Thank you to the generosity of the Co-Op and joint programmer Robert Schneider, the films in this program will be projected on 16mm.

Scott Barlett (1943 – 1990) was a traveling man with a fancy for strobing lights and fast motion. His films are pure psychedelia. Patching together philosophical ramblings on mystic traditions, hit songs from the ‘60s and ‘70s, and wobbly light patterns, Bartlett creates pithy works of genius. To this day, he remains best known for 1968’s OFFON, a gleaming vision of the cosmos that tested the limits of early video technology and set Bartlett down a path of stalwart experimentation within the cinematic tradition.

After OFFON’s success, Bartlett relocated to San Francisco where he became a light-show pioneer, creating flicker films for concerts and art shows all over the city. His films caught the attention of Stanley Kubrick (who took inspiration from OFFON for 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY), Ken Russell, and Movie Brats George Lucas and Francis Coppola who tried but failed to get his science fiction epic INTERFACE off the ground. Nonetheless, his keen graphic sensibilities are sprinkled throughout many Hollywood films, including ALTERED STATES and MORE AMERICAN GRAFFITI. But his true talent is best displayed throughout his unbridled directorial ventures which combine his fascinations with psychedelics, mysticism, and outer space into visual portals that open gateways into unseen dimensions of cinematic splendor.

PROGRAM ONE: To the Moon and Beyond

MAKING OFFON. 1981. 10 mins.
METANOMEN. 1966. 8 mins.
SERPENT. 1971. 14 mins.
MOON 1969. 1969. 10 mins.
OFFON. 1968. 9 mins.

Total runtime approx 50 mins.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 – 3:00 PM, this event is $10
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Scott Bartlett was haunted by outer space throughout his life. In a lecture at the Carnegie Museum of Art, he said he wanted to express “the meaning of the universe” by depicting visions of the cosmos that surpassed the limits of human consciousness. His crowning achievement, OFFON, might represent the zenith of these ambitions, but Bartlett’s intense curiosity in space is shared across many of his short films.

Made in 1981, while Bartlett was teaching in Los Angeles, MAKING OFFON dives back into his origins as a filmmaker and sets the scene for his artistic mission. His first film, METANOMEN, still sees him stuck on Earth. Collaging images of skyscrapers into a rollicking city tour, the film foretells Bartlett’s consuming interest with worlds beyond our own. SERPENT — a magic mushroom-inspired retelling of the Eden myth — finds Bartlett playing with recycled imagery in an attempt to link various historical narratives into a short parable about humanity’s destructive tendencies. MOON 1969 and OFFON take Bartlett elsewhere and are best described by film critic Gene Youngblood as “the cosmos in continual transformation” and explorations of the “fundamental realities below the surface of normal perception” respectively.

PROGRAM TWO: It was the ‘70s

1970. 1972. 30 min.
A TRIP TO THE MOON. 1968. 32 min.

Total runtime approx. 62 mins.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – 3:00 PM, this event is $10
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Bartlett’s longest works are also the most emblematic of his era. The tragicomic 1970 is a city symphony unlike any other. Moving between personal documentary and city portrait, 1970 displays Bartlett’s incredible ability to shift between the world’s micro and macro elements in his artistic practice. In A TRIP TO THE MOON, he films a conversation between seven artists discussing astrology and I Ching. Bartlett’s effortless control of the edit complements the artists’ metaphysical conversation, as he superimposes talking heads and cuts away to abstract images that illustrate their heady ideas.

PROGRAM THREE: Cultural Studies

LOVEMAKING. 1970. 13 min. (Not on 16mm; New Restoration from BAMPFA)
GREENFIELD. 1977. 13 min.
HEAVY METAL. 1979. 13 min.
MEDINA. 1976. 15 min.
SOUND OF ONE. 1976. 11 min.

Total runtime approx 65 mins.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 – 3:00 PM, this event is $10
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Always absorbed by his surroundings, Bartlett made exceptional ethnographic works and personal portraits throughout his life. In LOVEMAKING, he tackled his eponymous subject matter head on, creating an anti-sexploitation film that luxuriates in its romantic imaging of sex. GREENFIELD sees him venture to a commune in Northern California where he becomes absorbed in the free rhythms of its residents’ work and leisure. For HEAVY METAL, Bartlett used elaborate optical techniques to explore early gangster films. MEDINA and SOUND OF ONE both center Bartlett’s interests in non-Western traditions. Here, Bartlett surrenders himself to his environs, letting their patterns and actions guide his camera’s movement.

>Special thanks to Robert Schneider at The Film-Makers’ Co-Op.

LE ORME
(aka FOOTPRINTS)
(aka FOOTPRINTS ON THE MOON)
(aka PRIMAL IMPULSE)
dir. Luigi Bazzoni, 1975
96 mins. Italy.
In dubbed English with a few minutes of Italian.

SUNDAY, JULY 23 – DUSK at ARVERNE CINEMA
ONE NIGHT ONLY! (LE ORME will return to Spectacle in August 2023.)

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Spectacle is thrilled to partner with Rockaway Film Festival for a special outdoor presentation of Luigi Bazzoni’s surreal psychological thriller LE ORME (1975). Newly scanned in 4K from the original camera negatives by Severin Films, LE ORME will be preceded by cosmic short films by avant-garde filmmaker Jeanne Liotta who will join us in attendance.

In Luigi Bazzoni’s uniquely hallucinatory LE ORME, memories of a science fiction film seen in childhood return to haunt Alice (Florinda Bolkan, of LIZARD IN A WOMAN’S SKIN). The fragments of the film lodged in her memory concern an astronaut left behind on the moon; as Alice becomes more and more preoccupied with this vision, her life begins to spin out of control.

Shown at Spectacle in its first “Spectober” programme, LE ORME (originally reedited and rereleased in the States and Europe as PRIMAL IMPULSE) is an unsung masterpiece of 70s genre cinema, marrying the sustained ambient dread of gialli with god-tier cinematography by Vittorio Storaro (just after lensing Elizabeth Taylor in the similarly mental IDENTITK and before Bertolucci’s epic folly NOVOCENTO.) Klaus Kinski features in an extended cameo as the head of Mission Control.

“This hallucinatory Italian film resists easy classification, attempting to subjectively portray the fractured, paranoid psyche of a woman suddenly haunted by memories of a bizarre science fiction film seen in childhood. Florinda Balkan drifts through cinematographer Vittorio Storaro‘s strange, beautiful tableaux much like Monica Vitti in RED DESERT. Often mischaracterized as a giallo—I suppose simply because it’s Italian and stars Balkan—this is more of a haunting puzzle film grinding inexorably toward abject hysterics.” – Screen Slate

“Psychedelically haunting… An existentialist adventure that combines the narrative mystery of SOLARIS with the vivid visions of Argento.” – Electric Sheep Magazine

“Seek it out and unravel its mystery…One of the most unique and overlooked Italian films of the ‘70s.” – Moon In The Gutter

JEANNE LIOTTA makes films, video, moving image installations, projector performances and other media operating at a lively intersection of art, science,& natural philosophy. Her signature 16mm film of the night skies, OBSERVANDO EL CIELO (2007), has won many prizes including the prestigious Tiger Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, and was voted among the top ten films of the decade by The Film Society of Lincoln Center. Her films and videos have been screened around the world, including The Whitney Biennial, The New York Film Festival, SFMOMA, The Cinematheque Francais, Museo Nitsch in Naples Italy, The Wexner Center for the Arts, The Menil Collection Houston, The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver . Her works are included in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Vienna Film Museum, The European Media Arts Collection, Harvard and Duke Universities. Liotta is a Professor of Moving Image Arts at CU Boulder and is also on the faculty at The Bard MFA program in the Hudson Valley. She is represented by Microscope Gallery, NYC where she has had two solo exhibitions, “Break the Sky”(2018) and “The World is a Picture of The World” (2021). Her films and video works are distributed by Lightcone in Paris, France.

Following the success of last year’s program of activist documentaries by legendary gay German filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim, queer film historian and programmer Elizabeth Purchell (of AGFA and Ask Any Buddy) returns to Spectacle with a survey of Praunheim’s work from the 80s and early 90s. From the bleakly acidic AIDS satire A VIRUS KNOWS NO MORALS to the surprisingly heartwarming trans biopic/doc hybrid I AM MY OWN WOMAN, these six features show the filmmaker at his peak, using both the trappings of genre and his own unique handmade visual aesthetic to interrogate queerness, gender, and German society throughout history in a way that clearly presaged the much more well-known New Queer Cinema of the 90s. All worldwide festival favorites, these films also feature collaborations with a number of beloved cult figures, including trans icons Jayne County and Angie Stardust, and Praunheim’s greatest muse, the septuagenarian dancer and concentration camp survivor Lotti Huber.

RED LOVE
(ROTE LIEBE)
dir. Rosa von Praunheim, 1982
80 minutes. Germany.
In German with English subtitles.

TICKETS HERE
FRIDAY, JUNE 2 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 23 – MIDNIGHT

In this self-proclaimed attack on good taste, Rosa von Praunheim smashes a lavishly produced adaptation of Soviet diplomat Alexandra Kollontai’s A Great Love together with a crudely shot-on-video interview with radical sex activist Helga Goetz, the ex-housewife mother of seven who’d claimed to have had sex with over 200 partners after discovering the free love movement in the 60s. Borne out of Praunheim’s disappointment with the original, more traditional cut of his adaptation of Kollontai’s novella, RED LOVE becomes something more than the sum of its two parts: a singular, punk tribute to two revolutionary women.

CITY OF LOST SOULS
(STADT DER VERLORENEN SEELEN)
dir. Rosa von Praunheim, 1982
91 minutes. Germany.
In German and English with English subtitles.

TICKETS HERE
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7 – 10 PM
MONDAY, JUNE 12 – 7:30 PM

Onetime 82 Club performer and trans pioneer Angie Stardust becomes den mother to a group of weirdo queer American émigrés at her Berlin burger restaurant slash boarding house in this absurdist glam musical. Largely drawn from the real-life backgrounds of its stars—including punk icon Jayne County, performance artist Juaquin la Habana, and porn star Tron von Hollywood—and with a number of new wave earworms taken from County and Hollywood’s live U-Bahn to Memory Lane revue, CITY OF LOST SOULS is inclusive, incisive, and one of the greatest trans films ever made.

HORROR VACUI: THE FEAR OF EMPTINESS
(HORROR VACUI: DIE ANGST VOR DER LEERE)
dir. Rosa von Praunheim, 1984
85 minutes. Germany.
In German with English subtitles.

TICKETS HERE
FRIDAY, JUNE 9 – MIDNIGHT
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 28 – 10 PM

A young gay couple is torn apart when one of the lovers is drawn into the mysterious Madame C’s cult of ‘Optimal Optimism’ in this takedown of religion and the self-help industry. With a gorgeously handmade aesthetic that could easily be described as ‘Red Grooms meets THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI,’ appearances from Praunheim regulars Joaquin la Habana and Günter Thews, and an especially committed performance by the great Lotti Huber, HORROR VACUI: THE FEAR OF EMPTINESS is a biting satire that’s as unsettling as it is funny.

A VIRUS KNOWS NO MORALS
(EIN VIRUS KENNT KEINE MORAL)
dir. Rosa von Praunheim, 1986
84 minutes. Germany.
In German with English subtitles.

TICKETS HERE
FRIDAY, JUNE 16 – 10 PM

TICKETS HERE
SATURDAY, JUNE 24 – 7:30 PM on 16mm!
(This event is $10.)

Meet some of the faces of AIDS in Germany: a capitalist bathhouse owner (played by Rosa von Praunheim himself) who refuses to shut down his business even as he succumbs to disease, a virologist whose research is centered around extracting as much money from the dying as possible, and a straight woman who wants to make it with a gay man ‘before they go extinct.’ Both a precursor to Praunheim’s AIDS Trilogy (screened last year) and the first German film to directly address the epidemic, A VIRUS KNOWS NO MORALS is a caustic, take-no-prisoners satire on the AIDS Industrial Complex and those who sought to both profit from the virus and downplay its threat, and one of the most radical AIDS films of the 80s.

ANITA: DANCES OF VICE
(ANITA: TÄNZE DES LASTERS)
dir. Rosa von Praunheim, 1987
89 minutes. Germany.
In German with English subtitles.

TICKETS HERE
SATURDAY, JUNE 10 – MIDNIGHT
MONDAY, JUNE 26 – 7:30 PM

The true story of Anita Berber, the notorious bisexual who scandalized Weimar Germany with her own particular brand of nude cabaret before dying of tuberculosis at 29, is brought to life in the visions of an eccentric old woman living in present-day Berlin in this shimmering tribute to silent-era German cinema. Written specifically as a starring vehicle for Praunheim’s muse Lotti Huber, ANITA: DANCES OF VICE is the ultimate expression of the filmmaker’s 80s aesthetic and a clear precursor to New Queer Cinema classics like SWOON and POISON.

I AM MY OWN WOMAN + CHARLOTTE IN SWEDEN
(ICH BIN MEINE EIGENE FRAU + CHARLOTTE IN SCHWEDEN)
dir. Rosa von Praunheim, 1992 + 2003
105 minutes (combined). Germany.
In German with English subtitles.

TICKETS HERE
SATURDAY, JUNE 17 – 3 PM

TICKETS HERE
SATURDAY, JUNE 24 – 5 PM ON 16mm!
(This event is $10.)

East German trans icon Charlotte von Mahlsdorf guides Rosa von Praunheim through the retelling of her incredible life story in this biopic that blurs the lines between traditional narrative and documentary. As much about the joys of collecting antique furniture as it is Mahlsdorf’s role in fostering and protecting queer community in East Berlin, I AM MY OWN WOMAN is one of the few trans biopics to truly feel as radical and as original as its subject. Paired with von Praunheim’s short 2003 follow-up, CHARLOTTE IN SWEDEN.

In 1973, movie maniac and future leader of North Korea Kim Jong-il penned On the Art of the Cinema, the complete guide for all things film in the DPRK. Decades later, the big green book is still used by filmmakers intra- and inter-nationally to create effective and stirring pieces of Juche art, the socialist ideological core of North Korea society.

In the beginning years of the Third Kim Dynasty – amidst a sea of cultural change – a few select Western filmmakers would get a chance to make 21st Century Juche Art of their own. Spectacle is proud to present COMRADE KIM GOES FLYING and AIM HIGH IN CREATION!, two movies that display the full fruits of international cooperation, cultural brotherhood, and the joyous, revolutionary power of Cinema.

COMRADE KIM GOES FLYING
dirs. Gwang Hun Kim, Anja Daelemans, Nicholas Bonner, 2012.
North Korea/Belgium/UK. 77 min.
In Korean with English subtitles.

TICKETS HERE
SATURDAY, JUNE 3 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, JUNE 23 – 10 PM

SPECIAL EVENT TICKETS
SUNDAY, JUNE 11 – 5 PM with remote filmmaker Q+A!
(This event is $10.)

Endlessly sunny and hard-working, countryside coal miner Kim Yong Mi daydreams of becoming a high-flying trapeze star. A beneficial work transfer to Pyongyang and a fortuitous encounter with her idol Ri Su Yon lead her to the chance of a lifetime: an audition with the national circus.

A joint venture between North Korea, Belgium, and the UK. COMRADE KIM GOES FLYING is the first of its kind to be shot entirely with Korean locations and cast.

AIM HIGH IN CREATION!
dir. Anna Broinowski, 2013.
North Korea/Australia. 96 min.
In Korean and English with English subtitles.

TICKETS HERE
THURSDAY, JUNE 8 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 14 – 10 PM

SPECIAL EVENT TICKETS
FRIDAY, JUNE 30 – 7:30 PM with filmmaker Anna Broinowski in person for Q+A!
(This event is $10.)

After initially being given a copy of On the Art of the Cinema as a joke, Australian director Anna Broinowski determines Kim Jong-il’s six principles of film are the exact tools she needs in her battle against the noxious mine being built near her home in Sydney. A first for a Western woman director, Anna is granted a 3 week apprenticeship in North Korea, where she will learn to wield the true tools of effective Juche Propaganda and end up making a quirky Australian docu-comedy in the process.

SUNDAY, APRIL 30 – 7:30 PM

ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Suggested donation $10

The year was not quite 1968, and Chris Marker went to record the strike that had occupied a French textile factory in Besançon. His eventual documentary BE SEEING YOU dissatisfied some of the unionists involved, so Marker organized workshops in filmmaking basics, loaning out equipment to workers. The response-movie CLASS OF STRUGGLE shows them collectively making itself, editing footage beneath this banner: Cinema is not magic; it is a technique and a science, a technique born from science and put in service of a will: the will of workers to liberate themselves.

Few films get assembled by hand any longer. The spectacle of Hollywood is mostly the drudgery of visual-effects shops, and thousands of the unionized projectionists who once screened such movies have been replaced by encrypted DCP files. The Freelance Solidarity Project was founded in 2018 by digital media workers, another industry that lives off exploiting precarious labor. Now a division of the National Writers Union, it campaigns alongside editorial staff and street vendors alike to raise wages for all.

In Michèle Rosier’s 1976 film MON COEUR EST ROUGE, a Parisian marketer starts interviewing other women about makeup, but “drop the skincare routine” eventually segues to feminist sociology, the way solidarity can emerge through a meaningful glance. Following this screening of MON COEUR EST ROUGE, writer Chris Randle, a member of FSP’s steering committee, will discuss the cinematic labor movement with projectionists Benji and Lily Sarosi. You can’t eat prestige, yet some venerable arthouse theaters in New York City pay their staff as little as $15 per hour. If there is a future for that public cinema experience, how can we make it a truly collective one? “What is beautiful is not what is written in the tabloids,” one of the Besançon strikers said. “It’s what the working class does. Isn’t that culture?”

MON CŒUR EST ROUGE
(MY HEART IS RED)
dir. Michèle Rosier, 1976
110 mins. France.
In French with English subtitles.

MON CŒUR EST ROUGE stars Françoise Lebrun as Clara, a market research analyst hired by a big cosmetics company to interview women from different walks of life about their makeup-purchasing habits. (Rosier’s original treatment for the film put it like this: “What began as research for better ways to lie to women becomes a quest for truths only women can reveal.”) The process sees her probing questions of femininity in a Paris that’s modernizing at a rapid rate; while Clara strikes up a spur-of-the-moment romance along the way, much of the film concerns people’s embrace of (and resistance to) the new freedoms of the Sixties and Seventies. MON CŒUR EST ROUGE is a bruisingly funny cross-examination of second wave feminism and its discontents – ending in an extraordinary finale at a “Women’s Fair”, with a murderer’s row of Rosier’s collaborators playing luminaries such as Freud, Sartre, Aristotle, Marx and Shakespeare in drag – provoking dreams of an alternative history away from masculine supremacy. Screening with brand-new English subtitles translated by Claudia Eve Beauchesne.