WIZARD’S CURSE
(妖怪都市)
dir. Cheung-Yan Yuen, 1992.
91 mins. Hong Kong.
In Cantonese with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 6 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, AUGUST 19 – MIDNIGHT
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31 – 10 PM

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Part groan-inducing sex comedy rife with castration anxiety, part Hong-Kong supernatural thriller in the Black Magic mold, WIZARD’S CURSE follows the postmortem adventures of two evil sorcerers who are inexplicably fused into a quasi-vampiric entity with a glowing eight-foot phallus. A Taoist priest (played by Ching-Ying Lam, partially reprising his role from 1985’s MR. VAMPIRE) pathologically obsessed with shielding his daughter from lecherous suitors must redirect his attention to the task of saving his family and a dimwitted cop from the undead dyad.

In the 1950s, the city of Salvador, Bahia, was in a state of cultural effervescence. For the first half of that decade, Alexandre Robatto Filho – virtually the only filmmaker in the state with a steady career – refined his filmmaking skills as he transitioned from commercial newsreels to more aesthetically ambitious documentary shorts. Meanwhile, film critic Walter da Silveira founded the Clube de Cinema da Bahia, where classic and avant-garde European films were shown and discussed, in a salon-like fashion, influencing a generation of future filmmakers.

Among those were Glauber Rocha, Roberto Pires and Luiz Paulino dos Santos. Inventive and eager to experiment, these filmmakers would shape the history of Brazilian cinema in the following decades, in congruence with other young filmmakers who were  shifting away from the studio-era style of production that was still prevalent in the southeastern states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

Throughout the decade, Salvador would witness the evolution of its filmmaking, from Robatto Filho’s documentary shorts to the first ever Bahian feature film, Roberto Pires’ REDENÇÃO.

Around 1957, when the production of REDENÇÃO began, a new wave of Bahian filmmakers and film enthusiasts would graffiti the walls around Salvador with the question “Você acredita em cinema na Bahia?” [Do you believe in cinema in Bahia?]. It served as a provocation as much as a call of action as Glauber Rocha’s and Roberto Pires’ films would go on to be consider landmarks of the incipient Cinema Novo movement which firmly cemented Bahia on the cinematographic map in Brazil.

Spectacle Theater, Cinelimite, and the Cinemateca da Bahia are proud to present, “Você Acredita em Cinema na Bahia? – The Cinema of Salvador (1953-1962)”. 

Featuring films directed by Roberto Pires, Glauber Rocha, Alexandre Robatto Filho, Jose Hipolito Trigueirinho Neto, and Luiz Paulino dos Santos.

Special thanks to: Petrus Pires, Sonia Robatto, Paloma Rocha, Inajara Diz Santos, Menderson Correia Bulcão, Talis Cícero Castro Miranda Menezes, Jamile Menezes de Almeida Santos, Fraternidade Federação Humanitária Internacional, Evandro O. Leite, Francisco Paulino dos Santos, Gustavo Menezes, Matheus Pestana, & William Plotnick.

3 X ROBERTO PIRES

REDENÇÃO
dir. Roberto Pires, 1959
65mins. Brazil.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE!

SATURDAY – MAY 7 – 7:30pm (+Introduction by Thotti Cardoso) 
THURSDAY MAY 12 – 10:00pm
SUNDAY MAY 22  – 7:30pm 
THURSDAY MAY 26 – 7:30pm – (Special Event Q&A With Theo Duarte)

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Roberto Pires’ debut feature film, REDENÇÃO (1959) is a desperate and moody film noir dealing with the psychological pressures of crime and punishment.

Often considered one of the first ever Brazilian scope films, REDENÇÃO makes use of the homemade “IGLUSCOPE”, which Pires designed himself while working out of his father’s glasses shop in Bahia. The film makes great use of its anamorphic format and plays out like a lazy fever dream, capturing the entire terrain of the Salvador coast while the grim news of a psychopathic murderer hums through the car radio.

Screening with:

PÁTIO
dir. Glauber Rocha, 1959
11 mins. Brazil.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

Glauber Rocha’s debut short film, Pátio, shot in 1959 with leftover film stock from Roberto Pires’s Redenção, is a Buñuelian experiment about a man and a woman who move slowly across a chess-shaped terrace, rolling on the ground, moving both closer and further apart.

A GRANDE FEIRA
dir. Roberto Pires, 1961
91 mins. Brazil.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE!

SUNDAY, MAY 8 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, MAY 12 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, MAY 14 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, MAY 22 – 5 PM

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Produced in the Água de Meninos market of Salvador and made with the assistance of Glauber Rocha, A Grande Feira is a neo-realist ensemble film featuring some of the biggest stars of Cinema Novo which include Spectacle goddess, Helena Ignez, Luiza Maranhão (also stars in BARRAVENTO), Antônio Pitanga, & Geraldo del Rey, who appears in all of Roberto Pires’ films from this era.

A GRANDE FEIRA is a political film of manners exploring the historical dialectic between capital and work in a stunning formalist verite.

Screening with:

VADIAÇÃO
Dir. Alexandre Robatto Filho, 1954
8 mins. Brazil.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

Focusing on capoeira, VADIAÇÃO was previously storyboarded by artist Carybé. Its soundtrack preserves the typical chants and berimbau music which are part of that practice, as the film illustrates the evolution of capoeira, simultaneously a martial art and a dance.

TOCAIA NO ASFALTO
dir. Roberto Pires, 1962
101 mins. Brazil.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE!

TUESDAY MAY 10 – 7:30pm (Special Event Q&A with Richard Peña)
SUNDAY MAY 15 – 7:30pm
SATURDAY MAY 21 – 10:00pm
SUNDAY MAY 29 – 5:00pm

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Arguably Roberto Pires’ masterpiece, the 1962 film TOCAIA NO ASFALTO, is a suspenseful sociological film noir about the political corruption in Salvador, Bahia and the underground crime scene that is embedded through the fabric of the city.

Told through the narratives of a young idealist organizer, a countryside hitman, and a greedy propagandistic politician, Roberto Pires’ 1962 film is a stylistic wonder, with framing, chiaroscuro, & montage that rival the greatest of western arthouse directors, set against the beautiful coastal backdrop of Salvador, the heated downtown streets, and the haunted gothic architecture of the Saint Francis church.

GLAUBER ROCHA’S BARRAVENTO

BARRAVENTO
dir. Glauber Rocha, 1962
78 mins. Brazil.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

THURSDAY, MAY 5 – 7:30
SATURDAY MAY 28 – 7:30

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“The Tricontinental cinema must infiltrate the conventional cinema and blow it up.” – Glauber Rocha

Shot on location in a highly stylized high-contrast black & white, Glauber Rocha’s debut film, BARRAVENTO (1962) tells the tragic tale of a man who tries to liberate his people from the mystical Candomblé religion, which he recognizes an oppressive tool of social and political control.

Screening in a new restoration. Special thanks to Kino Lorber.

Screening with: 

ENTRE O MAR E O TENDAL
dir. Alexandre Robatto Filho, 1953
21 mins. Brazil.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

Dental surgeon Alexandre Robatto Filho had been filming documentary shorts in Salvador since the 1930s, but it was with ENTRE O MAR E O TENDAL that he refined and developed his authentic style. Shot in the Chega Nego and Carimbamba beaches, this short portrays the daily work of a fishing community as they catch xaréu fish (Caranx hippos).

TRIGUEIRINHO NETO’S BAHIA DE TODOS OS SANTOS

BAHIA DE TODOS OS SANTOS
dir. Trigueirinho Neto, 1961
100 mins. Brazil.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

SATURDAY MAY 14 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY MAY 20 – 10 PM – (Special Event Q&A with Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer)
SUNDAY MAY 29 – 7:30 PM

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One of the classical precursors of the Cinema Novo movement, Trigueirinho Neto’s BAHIA DE TODOS OS SANTOS tells the story of a young man, Tônio, who runs away from home to live with petty criminals on the beach. When his gang kills a policeman during a workers strike, they are forced into hiding and begin contemplating ways to escape Bahia and avoid imprisonment.

Screening with:

UM DIA NA RAMPA
dir. Luiz Paulino dos Santos, 1960
10mins. Brazil.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

UM DIA NA RAMPA explores a day on the market ramp of the Mercado Modelo in Salvador, Bahia, where saveiros arrive returning from the Recôncavo Baiano with products for trade in the capital. Traditions of capoeira, candomblé and other customs are presented throughout the course of this 1955 film.

Jeff Preiss is a filmmaker and cinematographer living in New York. His work has run the gamut from 8mm experimental cinema, television commercials, music videos, narrative filmmaking, documentary cinematography, and more!. This program shows us three distinct sides of the filmmaker through three of his major works. Together, these films give us a unique perspective on fatherhood, music, and living a life as an artist. Preiss and guests will be appearing for Q&As over the course of the month. The series concludes with “An Evening With Jeff Preiss,” where the filmmaker will show a selection of rare and under-seen short films.

LOW DOWN
Dir. Jeff Preiss, 2014.
United States, 114 min.
In English

FRIDAY, APRIL 8 – 10PM w Q&A (THIS EVENT IS $10)
SUNDAY, APRIL 10 – 5PM
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20 – 10PM
SATURDAY, APRIL 30 – 7:30PM

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Based on the memoir by Amy-Jo Albany, LOW DOWN is a compassionate, tender look at the complex relationship between Amy-Jo (Elle Fanning) and her father Joe (John Hawkes), a man torn between his musical ambition, his devotion to his teenage daughter, and his suffocating heroin addiction. Set against a sensuously textured 1970s Hollywood, the film beautifully evokes a colorful, seedy world of struggling musicians, artists, and vagabonds, in which Joe and Amy-Jo strive to live the lives they want against seemingly insurmountable odds.

STOP
Dir. Jeff Preiss, 2012.
United States, 120 min.
In English

SATURDAY, APRIL 9 – 7PM w Q&A (THIS EVENT IS $10)
THURSDAY, APRIL 14 – 10PM
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20 – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, APRIL 30 – 10PM

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STOP is a feature-length chronicle distilled from 2,500 100-ft camera rolls (354 assembled lab rolls) of 16mm film that was shot between 1995 and 2011 and finished editing in 2012. Organized sequentially into four half-hour programs, it operates around the conventions of home movies: the images are of Preiss’ own life and as home-movie form dictates: the alternating subjects of family, friends and travel are set by the filmstrip with absolute chronological certainty. The film is anchored by his child’s heroically decisive transformation of gender expression.

CHET BAKER: LET’S GET LOST
Dir. Bruce Weber, 1988.
United States, 120 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, APRIL 8 – 7PM w Q&A (THIS EVENT IS $10)
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13 – 10PM
SATURDAY, APRIL 23 – 10PM
SUNDAY, APRIL 24 – 5PM

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Jazz legend Chet Baker gets the limelight in Bruce Weber’s documentary CHET BAKER: LET’S GET LOST, an ultra-stylish look back on the musician’s tragedies, triumphs, and moments of musical bliss. The silky somber tones for which Baker was famous is captured in stark black & white by cinematographer Jeff Preiss, images that all-at-once deliver frenetic moments of youth, jagged edges of drug-use and age, and sultry shadows of euphoric melancholy. This iconic documentary is one nomination the Academy got right, and for Documentary Now! completionists, it is the source material for 2019’s episode, “Long Gone.”

AN EVENING WITH JEFF PREISS
Dir. Jeff Preiss, ???, ????-2022.
United States, 85 min.
In English.

SATURDAY, APRIL 16 – 7PM

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Join us for a one of a kind event in which filmmaker Jeff Preiss screens a selection of rare and underscreened works from his rich filmography. The specific films will not be announced beforehand but the selection will include rare Bruce Weber shorts, freshly completed restorations and films that have never played in a theatrical setting. Preiss will also offer insight into his filmmaking process and take questions from the audience.

In Hong Kong cinema, the “Category III” label is the rough equivalent of an “X” rating in the United States – no one under 18 admitted. More than identifying extreme content, however, the classification denotes a certain sensibility in HK cinema since the late 1980s – an impulse to not only repulse but also to do so in the most confounding, counter-logical manner possible (usually in quivering acres of latex and gallons of profuse goop). While Category III classics like Riki-Oh and Three Extremes are better known to American audiences, Spectacle is proud to plumb the depths of dubious morals and devil feti to present a selection of lesser-known features from the genre.

Devil Fetus
dir. Hung-Chuen Lau, 1983.
Hong Kong. 84 min.
In Cantonese with English subtitles.

CONTENT WARNING: SEXUAL ASSAULT

FRIDAY, APRIL 1 – 11:59PM
FRIDAY, APRIL 8 – 11:59PM
SUNDAY, APRIL 10 – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, APRIL 23 – 11:59PM
THURSDAY, APRIL 28 – 10PM

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Devil Fetus does not lend itself to pithy summary – the film refuses the motion of a generic genre plot in order to trace the diffuse and increasingly bizarre manifestations of a vaguely defined family curse, commencing with the shattering of an evil vase and ending with wormy cakes, flying cats, and portmortem parturition. Filmgoers are not advised to grow attached to any character or narrative thread as director Hung-Chuen Lau ravages both with equal abandon – imagine the last ten minutes of Hereditary on repeat for ninety minutes and you’re close to the bugfuck energy of Devil Fetus.

Pituitary Hunter
dir. Dan Pan, 1990.
Hong Kong. 83 min.
In Cantonese with English subtitles.

In partnership with our friends at Icarus Films, Spectacle is proud to present five newly restored early short film masterpieces from legendary filmmaker Alain Resnais (1922-2014). Resnais would go on to make his mark in feature films, including the Oscar-nominated HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, but these early-career shorts demonstrate an already keenly developed eye. The films are a remarkable compendium of the stylistic elements found in his features, and represent an important contribution to the distinguished French documentary tradition. All five have been newly restored in 2K by the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC) and made available on home video in North America for the very first time.

FRIDAY, APRIL 1 – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, APRIL 9 – 10PM
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13 – 7:30PM
SUNDAY, APRIL 17 – 5PM
FRIDAY, APRIL 22 – 12AM

VAN GOGH
1948. 18 mins.

This 1948 boundary-pushing short brilliantly evokes the life of Vincent Van Gogh, using only his paintings as visuals. VAN GOGH traces the great painter’s life and work, from his early days as a realist in the Netherlands, to his stay in Paris, the peak of his career in Provence, and then the dark days of madness that descended on him. The black-and-white renderings of Van Gogh’s paintings, coupled with a dramatic musical score, are surprisingly evocative.

PAUL GAUGIN
1949. 13 mins.

PAUL GAUGUIN uses the artist’s own writings and artwork to trace his creative journey. The film begins with Gauguin losing his job in finance—the catalyst for his commitment to paint every day—and continues through to his final days in Tahiti.

After leaving Paris, Gauguin settles in Brittany, where he is inspired the landscape and the locals. In the sound of their clogs, he writes, “I hear the muffled, dull, powerful sound I seek in my painting.” After a time though, Gauguin, miserable and impoverished, sets off for Tahiti. Here, he would create the paintings that would bring him lasting fame, but near the end of his life he considered his Tahitian sojourn a “crazy sad adventure.”

GUERNICA
1949. 14 mins.

In 1937, Spanish nationalists called on Nazi and Italian Fascist forces to bomb the Basque town of Guernica. The horrors of the bombing led Pablo Picasso to create perhaps his greatest work, “Guernica”: a massive painting powerfully representing the horrors of war. GUERNICA features paintings, drawings and sculptures made by Picasso between 1902 and 1949. Accompanying the artworks is a dramatic piece by surrealist poet Paul Eluard, read by actor Maria Casares. In the first few minutes of the film, Picasso’s deeply human drawings evoke daily life. Then comes the bombing, with lives shattered and destroyed. Here, the focus is on “Guernica” itself, as the film spotlights details of the painting over a frenzied and disturbing score.

ALL THE WORLD’S MEMORY
(TOUTE LA MEMOIRE DU MONDE)
1956. 21 mins.

Much like Susan Orlean’s The Library Book, ALL THE WORLD’S MEMORY takes us on an impressive and impressionistic tour, from the reading rooms, to the stunning architecture, to the stacks and the physical plant. We also accompany a new arrival to the library – a recently published book – on its journey from reception to cataloguing to the moment it takes its place on a shelf, joining millions of other items that have made their home here for centuries. At the intersection of artistic and informative, ALL THE WORLD’S MEMORY is a unique look at the effort to catalogue as much knowledge as possible in one of the world’s great libraries. Resnais would go on to make his mark in feature films, but this early-career short demonstrate an already keenly developed eye.

THE SONG OF STYRENE
(LE CHANT DU STYRENE)
1957. 13 mins.

THE SONG OF STYRENE is the perfect example of how to turn a commissioned industrial film into a lyrical, satirical film masterpiece. When the young Alain Resnais was asked by the Péchiney plastics giant to make a short documentary on polystyrene, “that noble, entirely man-made matter,” Resnais sensed a rapport between Alexandrine verse and CinemaScope. With text by Raymond Queneau and music by Pierre Barbaud, THE SONG OF STYRENE is a beautiful, surrealist film.

“If short films didn’t exist, Alain Resnais would have surely invented them. Never, I believe, since Eisenstein’s shorts, has a film been as scientifically thought out as LE CHANT DU STYRENE. LE CHANT DU STYRENE represents fourteen months of work for a fourteen-minute film about plastics. It’s also a script by Raymond Queneau who brings a Tashlinesque feel to each image by introducing Renoir’s famous and cherished ‘décalage.’ And here is the result, in cinemascopic color: Shots so tightly sequenced despite the absence of any living figure; shots, one hundred of them, with minimal editing for dramatic effect, are so harmoniously cut together that they convey the magical feeling of being one long take, a single and commanding shot whose remarkable wording can evoke Johann Sebastian Bach’s greatest cantatas.” — Jean-Luc Godard, “À la recherche du cinéma, Cahiers du Cinéma n.92, February 1959