Author: spectacletheater

SPACE MONSTER WANGMAGWI

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SPACE MONSTER WANGMAGWI
Dir. Kwon Hyeok-Jin, 1967.
South Korea. 80 min.

FRIDAY, MARCH 3 – 12:00 AM
SATURDAY, MARCH 11 – 10:00 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 19 – 5:00 PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 30 – 10:00 PM

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Teetering on the brink of Lost Media for over half a century and known as “Holy Grail of Lost Kaiju Films”. Spectacle Theater is proud to present the first-ever U.S. screenings of SPACE MONSTER WANGMAGWI, a must-see for all kaiju completionists.

Produced by the Century Company in 1967 to capitalize on the sweeping Godzilla craze, SPACE MONSTER WANGMAGWI tells the story of a giant space alien sent to conquer mankind, but can’t help stealing an ace fighter pilot’s bride-to-be amidst the chaos. It’s half 50% Godzilla, 50% King Kong, 100% Korean. It’s SPACE MONSTER WANGMAGWI.

Special Thanks to Ron Bonk. SRS Cinemas, and AGFA.

UR 2 HAPPY :( The Films of Rachel Maclean ):

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Scottish painter-at-heart and post-surreal feminist Rachel Maclean superpositions herself again and again and again and again into droning, sickly-sweet consumer hellholes. Juxtaposing horror tropes against a Saturday Morning backdrop, focusing on surveillance states, social media irrealities, the devouring of the soul and body, and childhood fantasies gone awry. It would all be so terrifying if it weren’t 110% cute. Spectacle is proud to present the films of Rachel Maclean, shown for the first time in New York City.

FEED ME + IT’S WHAT’S INSIDE THAT COUNTS
Dir. Rachel Maclean, 2015 & 2016
Scotland. 61 min. & 30 min.

SATURDAY, MARCH 4 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 6 – 10:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15 – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 27 – 7:30 PM

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FEED ME
Dir. Rachel Maclean, 2015.
Scotland. 61 min.

“Candy coated and colorfully confected, Rachel Maclean’s films skewer the habits and preoccupations of contemporary society. Produced by Film and Video Umbrella, ‘Feed Me’ is her most ambitious and audacious project to date – a checklist of human cravings and failings that doubles as a hypermodern status update on the Seven Deadly Sins, with its swipes at the commercialisation (and sexualisation) of childhood and an equivalent infantilization of adult behavior. Featuring a rogue’s gallery of memorable characters (all performed with extraordinary élan by Maclean herself), ‘Feed Me’ is a starburst shock to the taste buds that leaves you wanting more.” – Steven Bode


IT’S WHAT’S INSIDE THAT COUNTS
Dir. Rachel Maclean, 2016.
Scotland. 30 min.

In a dystopian metropolis fuelled by fevered connectivity, a race of rodents beneath the decaying streets hack the sales messages of a Kardashian-type Demigod, more cyborg than human, a successor to Fritz Lang’s Maria, a Maschinenmensch to rule over the digimash-fed masses. Part Baroque heaven, part post-apocalyptic nightmare, the grotesque, cartoonish figures are seen to share in and compete for attention within a forever connected, corrupt, caffeine marinaded environment where power dynamics are repeatedly inverted and reconfigured.

MAKE ME UP + OVER THE RAINBOW
Dir. Rachel Maclean, 2018 & 2013
Scotland. 45 min. & 42 min.

THURSDAY, MARCH 2 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 16 – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 20 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 25 – 10:00 PM

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MAKE ME UP
Dir. Rachel Maclean, 2018.
Scotland. 69 min.

Siri wakes to find herself trapped inside a brutalist candy-coloured dreamhouse. Despite the cutesy decor, the place is far from benign, and she and her inmates are encouraged to compete for survival while being watched over by surveillance cameras, 24/7.

Presiding over the group is an authoritarian diva who speaks entirely with the voice of Kenneth Clark from the 1960s BBC series Civilisation. As she forces the women to go head-to-head in a series of demeaning tasks, Siri, with the help of fellow inmate Alexa, starts subverting the rules and soon reveals the sinister truth that underpins their world.

OVER THE RAINBOW
Dir. Rachel Maclean, 2013.
Scotland. 42 min.

Inspired by the Technicolor utopias of children’s television, ‘Over The Rainbow’ invites the viewer into a shape-shifting world inhabited by cuddly monsters, faceless clones and gruesome pop divas. Shot entirely using green-screen the film presents a synthetic environment, part toy model, part computer generated landscape, which explores a dark, comedic parody of the Faustian tale, video game and horror movie genres.

 

NOIRVEMBER AT SPECTACLE

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NOIRVEMBER AT SPECTACLE returns (for those who celebrate), beginning at 7pm and going all the way through the darkest hours of the evening, through shadow and fog, join us, as we bid the bleak month of november goodbye with dimmed lights and a foreboding crescent.

There will be a special 16mm screening at midnight, so mark your calendars and get lost in this year’s lineup of jam-packed paranoiac delirium.

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7pm – ?? ????????? ?????

Noirvember kicks off with a hidden gem penned by one of the top-10 best-selling fiction writers of all time

8:30pm – ????? ?? ??? ?????

a rare ensemble jazzy film noir

10:00pm – ????? ??? ?? ????

An offbeat and criminally unseen b-film directed by a certain public enemy number one, in his sole directorial effect

MIDNIGHT  in 16mm – ???? ??? ????? ??? ?? ????? 

A special 16mm film noir treat for all desperate delinquents in attendance

1:30am ???? ?????

Starring George Raft in this pulpy clandestine b-film treasure

OZUALDO CANDEIAS’ MEU NOME É TONHO

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MEU NOME É TONHO
Dir. Ozualdo Candeias, 1969
Brazil. 90 min
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 – 7:30 PM 
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 – 7:30 PM – Special Event – Remote Q&A with Sao Paolo Critic, ‎Filipe Furtado – $10 

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NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE of HD RESTORATION


Spectacle Theater and Cinelimite are proud to present Ozualdo Candeias second feature, the essential Cinema Marginal film, MEU NOME É TONHO.

Completed just two years after Candeias’ debut cornerstone, A MARGEM, MEU NOME É TONHO is Candeias’ first exploration into the Brazilian western. Photographed by master cinematographer, Peter Overbeck (THE RED LIGHT BANDIT) and scored by the virtuosic Brazilian composer, Paulinho Nogueira, Candeias follow-up feature is a raw and poetic western which compares to almost nothing in the western canon (a la the Italian Spaghetti westerns of Leone or Corbucci or any of the films of John Ford, Hawks, etc).

Filled with an unsettling sense of macabre humor, unremitting violence, and a demonic collective laughter that is louder and perhaps even more perverse than the sounds of the colt revolvers from the antagonistic Manelão gang, MEU NOME É TONHO unravels as a sardonic descent into Candeias’ madness which includes an anarchic sense of pacing and some of the most remarkable and bewildering moments of montage and hand-held cinematography in the history of cinema.

The story of Tonho’s revenge on the Manelão gang while straightforward in nature is told through sparse dialog, symbolic imagery, and Candeias’ unique sense of pace which is felt and controlled by the ambient sounds of the terrain juxtaposed by the echoing laughter of the depraved, land-grabbing gang. MEU NOME É TONHO is not just essential Brazilian cinema but is also some of the most inventive filmmaking that came out of the 1960’s.

Special thanks to Eugenio Puppo and Heço Produções.

ISABELLE HUPPERT RUINED MY LIFE – 2 X CLAUDE CHABROL

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This September, Spectacle Theater continues its exploration into the late films of Claude Chabrol’s sprawling filmography, highlighting two features with the inimitable Isabelle Huppert, who swindles & scams her way through the maestro’s singular classical mode embodying the art of deception in the strange and twisted RIEN NE VA PLUS & the late-career tour-de-force MERCI POUR LE CHOCOLAT.

Special thanks to Arrow Video and the American Genre Film Archive.

RIEN NE VA PLUS
(THE SWINDLE)
dir. Claude Chabrol, 1997
101 mins. France
In French with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 03 – 10:00 PM 
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 09 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13– 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – MIDNIGHT

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Isabelle Huppert and Michel Serrault star as Betty & Victor, an affable pair of con-artists who swindle their way through the deep-pocketed vacationers of the Côte d’Azur and the alps of Switzerland.

Structured like a comedy of gestures and glances, RIEN NE VA PLUS is a crime film exploring seduction, monogamy, and the games we play for and against one another, but the third act is as unhinged and surreal as Chabrol’s most twisted, with the scene-stealing Isabelle Huppert as the younger more ambitious swindler, who is as unpredictable as she is charming.

MERCI POUR LE CHOCOLAT
(NIGHTCAP)
dir. Claude Chabrol, 2000
101 mins. France
In French with English subtitles.

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MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19* – 7:30 PM – Special Event – Introduction by film critic KYK – $10 
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 – 10:00 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24– 5:00 PM 
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 – 10:00 PM

A slow-burning familial-suspense thriller starring Isabelle Huppert as Mika, an heiress to a chocolate factory, who has just re-married her first husband, piano virtuoso, André Polonski. MERCI POUR LE CHOCOLAT (AKA, “NIGHTCAP”) is an atmospheric, dense, dark comedy of veneer and temperament, embedded with Chabrol’s usual themes of traumas, secrets, and lies, leveled with a formalist rigor and a delicate balance of mood.

Louis Feuillade’s LES VAMPIRES

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LES VAMPIRES
(THE VAMPIRES)
dir. Louis Feuillade, 1915-1916
417 mins. France.
Silent with English inter-titles.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 20- 11AM to 7PM (This event is $15)

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A secret organization of ruthless criminals known as The Vampires haunts the streets and ballrooms of Paris. Journalist Philippe Guérande seeks to unravel their nefarious plot. At the center of it all stands the mysterious and elusive muse to the criminals, Irma Vep, brought to life with a dangerously seductive glamour by the legendary Musidora.

Released in its day as 10 “episodes” over the course of 7 months, Les Vampires is now typically shown in marathon format—a drawn-out affair clocking in at 7 hours, by turns tedious and exhilarating. Its plotting is byzantine, consisting of reversals of identity and double- and triple-crosses, straining logic in deference to the theatricality of a given scenario.

Olivier Assayas has once again renewed interest in this classic of serialized cinema with the enormously entertaining mini-series revamp of his 1996 film Irma Vep. If cinema is truly in crisis, as Assayas enthusiastically proclaims (he promises this is good news), then perhaps a means of diagnosing its illness can be found in searching the images and modes of its past that still haunt us today. Though Irma Vep’s series run is now complete, those uninitiated to Feuillade’s vision are likely eager to spend more time within this fantastical world. With this in mind, Spectacle is pleased to present a marathon screening of Les Vampires, with a soundtrack composed of original works from local artists and friends of the theater.

CALVING: A PROGRAM OF 3 SHORT FILMS

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COWS AND FLIES
dir. Jack Hogan, 2021
Ireland, Germany, USA. 25 mins

THE ISLAND
dir. Sam Keogh, 2022
Ireland, Germany. 29 mins.

WATERSHED
dir. Linda Stupart, 2020
UK. 11 mins.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 7:30 PM – ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Please join us for “Calving”, a program of three videos by Jack Hogan, Sam Keogh and Linda Stupart where archipelagos are inundated, maps redrawn and the borders between bodies and their environment disintegrate.

Each video seeks to gain critical purchase on some of the effects and contradictions of climate collapse as they reach toward their respective themes of mapping, ecology and survival. Calving refers to the birth of a calf by a cow, or the process of the creation of an iceberg when a large chunk of ice splits off from an ice shelf or glacier.

Jack Hogan’s Cows and Flies traces lines between imposed individuation and mapmaking, in the broadest sense of flattening and establishing or contesting boundaries: how rich social lives and shared places are fragmented and stripped of information, context and complexity, in order to be instrumentalized, branded and easily consumed.

Sam Keogh’s The Island draws connections between the competitive premise of Fortnite and ecofascist fantasies of an individualist fight to the death in the context of resource scarcity and climate collapse.

And Watershed by Linda Stupart combines fictionalized, scientific and historical narratives of water, pollution and contagion towards a utopian proposal of bodies’ capacity for survival when viscerally reconnected with our immediate environments.

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ANARCHY BURGER: SWEATIN’ TO THE OLDIES + CAKE BOY

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SATURDAY, AUGUST 13 – 7:30 PM
A double screening of both films followed by a Q&A with Joe Escalante of The Vandals (This event is $10)

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This film series presents works from Kung Fu Films and Records, the record label and production company of Joe Escalante, lead member of the seminal punk band: The Vandals.

Since the early 1980s, the Vandals have cultivated a legacy through their melodic/skate punk albums such as Peace Thru Vandalism and When in Rome Do As The Vandals. Hailing from Southern California, The Vandals emerged alongside other influential acts such as T.S.O.L, the Adolescents, and Black Flag.

ANARCHY BURGER is a selection of movies related to the Vandals. The programming features a chaotic and hilarious remastered 2002 version of “Sweatin’ to the Oldies,” a live punk show with behind-the-scenes footage, never before seen clips, and interviews of the band members from the early 90s that proves their music needs to be seen and heard; and “Cake Boy,” a full-length comedy about a depressed cake maker who falls in love, joins a band on tour, and goes on to fulfill his dream of winning a cake making competition against a very formidable opponent in the bakery world.

CAKE BOY
dir. Joe Escalante, 2005
90 min. United States.
In English.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 4 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 28 – 7:30 PM

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SWEATIN’ TO THE OLDIES
dir. Jeff Stein, 2002
66 min. United States.
In English.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 16 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 26 – MIDNIGHT

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We will have a special screening of both films back-to-back on 8/13 followed by a Q&A with Joe Escalante from the Vandals, where you can ask him about anything and everything related to the films, music, or what it is like to be a 59-year-old man in a punk band.

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DOOMED

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DOOMED
dir. Allen Riley, 2021
58 mins. United States.
In English.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 6 – 7 PM followed by a Q+A with director Allen Riley!
(This event is $10.)
TUESDAY, AUGUST 9 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 13 – 5 PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 22 – 10 PM

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A grunge band falls under the spell of an enchanted tree while struggling with their incomplete music in a remote cabin.

DOOMED is a grunge fantasy narrative made with point-and-shoot cameras. The film was made by a group of friends in the hills and swamps surrounding Stroudsburg, PA during the course of three years. With a backpack, a couple of small cameras, a digital audio recorder and a thrift store tripod that had missing feet, the cast created a lo-fi parable about the creative process told through 90’s alternative rock iconography.

According to director Allen Riley, the production crept into a realm of immersive fiction with the cast/crew living collectively for weeks and even sleeping overnight in the abandoned chicken coop where the interior scenes were filmed.

The centerpiece of DOOMED is a fantastical tree creature named Glofin constructed using burlap, latex, alpaca wool, and glass taxidermy eyes. At one point, production was halted when Glofin was destroyed by wild animals which marked the end of the film’s production, but years later, a complete narrative within the footage was about to be salvaged and constructed. As a grunge opera, the musical score was physically processed using analog cassette tapes recorded by Riley, who practiced guitar as a teenager in the 90s. The resulting film is charged with spontaneous energy and moments of heavy reverb.

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WORSE THAN JAIL PRESENTS: WORSE THAN TINDER

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Worse Than Jail is the internet alias of Kentucky-based artist Matt Minter. Minter is most notable for his horror-centric B&W illustrations, as well video work and association with the noise-rock group Wretched Worst. Worse Than Jail Video is a two part series amassing the celluloid inspirations for Minter’s work. Expanding on Minter’s curatorial contributions to Los Angeles’ Cathode Cinema, the series will check off a list of exceptionally psychotronic obscurities that have never been seen before and are unavailable anywhere else. Czech music videos, homemade puppet theater, and public access Star Trek parodies will all get prominent airtime for this special midnight block.

Spectacle will present the first part of this program with the film “Worse than Tinder” which is about ill-fated hookups and damned dates! Be sure to check back later this Fall, during our Halloween programming, for more of Minter’s insanity.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 05 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, AUGUST 20 – MIDNIGHT
THURSDAY, AUGUST 25 – 10:00 PM

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