FRIDAY, MARCH 9 – 7:30 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

Longtime Spectacle comrade Frances Bodomo will join us for a presentation of her work, her way: student films, unfinished exercises, completed shorts (including BONESHAKER and EVERYBODY DIES!) alongside excerpts from commissioned works, bits and bobs of inspirational filmic DNA, and audiovisual supplements to the feature-length version of her short AFRONAUTS, about the Zambian mission to conquer the moon.

In the hopes of revealing the wrong turns, false starts and experimentation that go into the launching of an ostensibly successful short film, Bodomo will also describe the compromises and glories of a burgeoning career in independent film – before turning the mic over to the audience for a (per-usual) no-bullshit Q&A.

This September, Spectacle is thrilled to collaborate with Antennae Collection to present four nonfiction works from Argentine film and video-maker Hernán Khourian.

Hernán Khourian was born in 1972 in La Plata, Argentina. He graduated from the Department of Fine Arts at Universidad Nacional de La Plata with a degree in Visual Communication, and continued his studies in Spain, where he received his Master of Arts in Documental de Creación at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). His work has received support from the Fundación Antorchas (Argentina) and the Jan Vrijman Fund (The Netherlands). Over the years he has received various prizes and grants on an international level. among his work, the following films have been exhibited internationally: ÁREAS (2000), LAS SABANAS DE NORBERTO (2003), PUNA (2006), ESPLIN O ERRAR O SIN EMBARGO (2007), MEMORIA (2010) and LOS SILENCIOS Y LAS MANOS (2014). He teaches at the Masters Degree in Documentary Filmmaking (Universidad de Cine Buenos Aires, FUC), in the National University of La Plata (UNLP) and the Masters in Journalism Documentary at the National University Tres de Febrero (UNTREF) in Buenos Aires.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 – 10 PM

ÁREAS dir. Hernán Khourian, 2000
Argentina. 86 mins.
In Spanish with English subtitles.

ÁREAS could be described on the surface as a documentary video about “work” in Argentina. It is an open piece that must be completed by the viewer, constantly recast in his mind, nourished by his own experience and subjectivity. (Enrico Kahn)

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LAS SABANAS DE NORBERTO dir. Hernán Khourian, 2003
Argentina. 45 mins.
In Spanish with English subtitles.

LAS SABANAS DE NORBERTO is a documentary that centers the philosophical universe of Norberto Butler, marked by a life of physical immobility. Khourián constructs prostration as a state of a superlative dream power: mental flashes that trigger a hypnotic and stylistically vivacious transfer. (Diego Trerotola/FIDBA)

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 – 10 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 – 7:30 PM

PUNA dir. Hernán Khourian, 2006
44 mins. Argentina.
In Spanish with English subtitles.

PUNA is a personal essay on the Puna (the plateau that covers part of Bolivia and Peru, and the extreme north of Chile and Argentina). Khourián invokes the hallucinated soul of a culture torn apart by the sun, transfigured by a spiritual experience shifted to the viewer. (Instituto Cervantes, Berlín)

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LOS SILENCIOS Y LAS MANOS
dir. Hernán Khourian, 2014
58 mins. Argentina.
In Spanish with English subtitles.

LOS SILENCIOS Y LAS MANOS is a singular portrait of Telma Palavecino, an elderly mystic woman. Khourián attempts to meet Telma without ever exhausting her secrets and always respecting her mystery. (Diego Maté/Bafici)

SATURDAY, AUGUST 19TH- 7:30PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

COMP USA Live is an experiment in digital performance. The COMP USA Live team tells stories that take place on the desktop computer itself and explores relationships between actor, audience, environment, and computer user. Utilizing a desktop armed with custom software, talented actors, the Internet, and a well hung green screen, COMP USA Live creates a stage unlike any other that came before.

THURSDAY, JULY 13th – ONE NIGHT ONLY – FILMMAKERS IN PERSON!

GET YOUR TICKETS!

This July, Indie Beat presents… short films! These small fries run the gamut – non-fiction/fiction, surreal/real, cats/horses. Come for The Cinema™, stay for the Director Q&As!

CLOUDY ALL DAY
dir. Dylan Pasture, 2016
10 mins.

Two struggling performers have a life-changing experience after they accept help from a stranger.

Dylan Pasture once nearly burned his leg off in a swamp. He works as a film projectionist in Brooklyn.

DON’T HANG UP THE FUCKING PHONE CURTIS
dir. John W. Yost, 2017
13 mins.

In the world of altered perception, the cat is king!

John W. Yost has worked in tandem as an educator and commercial producer; creating and directing broadcasts, commercials, music videos, short films, and features. He is the founder of commercial production company, Fifth Column Features and the co-founder of a film collective known as The APB.

TENANTS
dir. Brian Oh, 2014
27 mins.

A pianist pays a lone visit to the empty house where he and his wife had planned to move in together. While playing a song on the piano that stirs up his haunting memories, he encounters a squatter, a teenage girl. Before he takes the girl back home, however, she asks him to teach her how to play the song.

Brian Oh was born in Illinois, USA, raised in South Korea and spent time living in Germany as a teenager. Dropping out of college in South Korea, he moved to Chicago to pursue his film studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Soon after graduating from the school, he moved to New York City and has worked on several short films, documentary, music videos and multi-media projects and shown his works to several screenings and exhibitions.

THE BODY HEALS
dir. Annelise Ogaard, 2017
7 mins.

A dreamy nonfiction dispatch from a plastic surgery vacation in Miami, reflecting on beauty in the moment of metamorphosis after the knife goes in, but before the bandages come off.

Annelise Ogaard is a writer and filmmaker based in Brooklyn. Her independent short films have screened at venues like the Borscht Film Festival, the Chicago Underground Film Festival, New York’s Rooftop Film Series, and the Yale Film Club. She currently works as a producer at Vice Media.

BUMMING IN BEIJING
( 流浪北京)
dir. Wu Wenguang, 1990
70 minutes.
In Mandarin with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 24 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 28 – 7:30 PM

“In 1990, Chinese documentaries were almost exclusively stodgy, didactic talking head affairs broadcast on state-run media. Then Wu Wenguang’s BUMMING IN BEIJING came out, kicking off an entire independent documentary scene in the country. Shot directly before and after the Tiananmen Square Massacre on cameras taken from a government TV station, BUMMING IN BEIJING follows five broke bohemians (including future art stars like Zhang Dali, long before they found fame) in grimy late 80s Beijing. Shot in a vérité style that would soon be adopted by a new generation of filmmakers, the movie includes an onscreen mental breakdown, a time-capsule view of the emergence of the country’s avant-garde, and proof that the hippest place in China used to be KFC.” – Aaron-Fox Lerner, Time Out Beijing Film Editor

“The prolonged moments of near silence in BUMMING IN BEIJING produce the aesthetic effect of outlasting the remembered roar of government tanks.” – Ernest Larsen, Art In America

Aaron Fox-Lerner is the Film editor for Time Out Beijing and Shanghai. His writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Puritan, Bound Off, Indie Wire, and other publications.