Author: spectacletheater

OUR DAY WILL COME: DSA EMERGE PRESENTS THE PATRIOT GAME

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THE PATRIOT GAME
dir. Arthur MacCaig, 1979
France. 93 min.
In English

THURSDAY, MARCH 17 – 7:30pm
ONE NIGHT ONLY

TICKETS HERE

Skip the green pints of beer this year and instead partake in an antidote to St. Patrick’s Day: an evening of celebrating anti-colonialism and the struggle for Irish independence. Spectacle and NYC-DSA’s Emerge caucus are teaming up for a one-night-only presentation of Arthur MacCaig’s debut feature documentary THE PATRIOT GAME (1979).

The film will be introduced by Emerge members Brendan O’Connor and John White.

Rich in emotional images, often tender but more often terrifying, THE PATRIOT GAME documents the long and bitter battle for Northern Ireland. MacCaig, a leftist Irish-American, had been inspired by the stark disparity he perceived between the tribal, religious conflict he saw depicted in the media, and what he experienced on the ground as a struggle between “the colonizer and the colonized.” The end result was a searingly intense and poignant piece of political cinema.

The film tells the story of the Northern Irish conflict, covering Ireland’s history from British colonization to the territory’s division in 1922. It then depicts the events of the decade beginning in 1968, witnessing street riots, police violence and firebomb attacks. MacCaig shot much of the footage clandestinely, capturing in raw detail the spirit of Irish resistance, while also providing a lucid overview of the political struggle at hand, as well as the confusion and pain inside the Irish Republican Army itself.

Produced by Iskra, the radical French film collective founded by Chris Marker, THE PATRIOT GAME was one of the first films to portray the Northern Irish nationalist perspective, and the Troubles from an unapologetically socialist point of view. MacCaig would go on to make seven more films in Northern Ireland, earning unprecedented access to the underground IRA and charting the evolution of the struggle for a united Ireland over a 25-year period.

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Emerge is a caucus of NYC-DSA that has come together under the banner of communism. For us, communism is the goal as well as the process of full self-emancipation from capitalism and its attendant effects, including imperialism, colonialism, racial and national oppression. Political education is an important part of our caucus life, and we believe that cinema is an important tool for leftist education, which can deepen our politics.

With thanks to Dónal Foreman and Icarus Films.

Tiocfaidh ár lá comrades!

MULHERES: UMA OUTRA HISTORIA: FIVE FILMS ON FEMALE LABOR

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MULHERES: UMA OUTRA HISTORIA: Five Films on Female Labor highlights the essential contributions of women filmmakers to the documentary form in Brazil. These short-form feminist works, originally presented on television, in feminist film clubs, and at international film festivals address key labour challenges from the brothels of São Paulo’s Boca do Lixo to the economic revolution of the women of Santa Cruz do Capibaribe in Pernambuco.

In collaboration with Another Gaze and Cinelimite

SATURDAY, MARCH 5 – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 12 – 7:30PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 27 – 5PM

TICKETS HERE

Creche-Lar
dir. Maria Luiza d’Aboim, 1978
Brazil. 8min.
In Brazilian Portuguese with English Subtitles

During the seventies, filmmaker Maria Luiza d’Aboim was part of the Center for Brazilian Women (CMB), a feminist organization that advocated for elevating women’s positions in society. The lack of day care centers, and the urgent need to create conditions that would give mothers help in caring for their children, were recurring points of discussion. Creche-Lar (‘Home-Daycare’), D’Aboim’s first film, arises from this search for answers and documents an experimental community daycare project in Vila Kennedy, Rio de Janeiro, which employed resident mothers from the local community.

Trabalhadoras Metalúrgica
dir. Olga Futemma and Renato Tapajós, 1978
Brazil. 17min
In Brazilian Portuguese with English Subtitles

In the late seventies, a group of Brazilian documentary filmmakers traveled to São Paulo’s ABC Region in order to record a wave of worker strikes taking place in response to the increasingly powerful and abusive automotive industry. Olga Futemma and Renato Tapajós’ Trabalhadoras Metalúrgicas is a key title among films produced during this historical event, documenting striking women metallurgical workers. By doing so, Futemma and Tapajós reveal the harsh working conditions these workers were forced to operate in, intercut with scenes filmed during the first Congress of Metallurgical Women of São Bernardo and Diadema in 1978.

Mulheres da Boca
dir. Inês Castilho and Cida Aidar, 1982
Brazil. 22min
In Brazilian Portuguese with English Subtitles

Filmmakers Cida Aidar and Inês Castilho met as part of the feminist collective that edited the newspaper Nós Mulheres (We Women) between 1976 and 1979. They came together in 1981 to make Mulheres da Boca, a film about the Boca do Lixo region of São Paulo, famous for its porntheaters and brothels. Mulheres da Boca captures the daily life of prostitutes, revealing the corruption and abuse that exists around them.

Sulanca
dir. Katia Mesel, 1986
Brazil. 14min
In Brazilian Portuguese with English Subtitles

The Feira da Sulanca still exists as a famous market in Brazil’s Northeastern city of Pernambuco that sells and exports items for the national clothing industry. While markets like these were once an unfriendly place for women to make a living, Katia Mesel’s Sulanca documents the economic revolution of the Women of Santa Cruz do Capibaribe who, through sewing, collaboration and willpower, managed to make livings for themselves and change the socioeconomic panorama of Brazil’s entire Northeastern region.

Mulheres: uma outra história
dir. Eunice Gutman, 1988
Brazil. 35min
In Brazilian Portuguese with English Subtitles

Mulheres: uma outra história focuses on aspects of women’s participation in the Brazilian political scene, featuring interviews with women in the Constituent Assembly and leaders of the rising women’s rights political movement. Suffragist Carmen Portilho appears in the film to remind viewers about the long history of struggle for women to earn the right to vote in the country.

RANDOM MAN PRESENTS: PSYCHOLOGY TODAY BY EXTREME ANIMALS

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RANDOM MAN PRESENTS: PSYCHOLOGY TODAY by EXTREME ANIMALS
Dir. Jacob Ciocci  & David Wightman
30 min. USA.
In English.

Content Warning: STROBING LIGHTS

FRIDAY, MARCH 18 – 7:30 w Q+A (this event will be $10)
SATURDAY, MARCH 26 – 7:30 w Q+A (this event will be $10)

TICKETS HERE

In information theory, the repetition of messages tends towards the obliteration of meaning. This theorem is vitally demonstrated in Extreme Animals’ 2021 video Psychology Today, which traces the algorithmically accelerated decomposition of images from the post-millennial cultural imaginary: Shrek, the Joker, and other depressive icons of our interminable financial crisis inspire a legion of exhausted reenactments by children’s birthday party workers and freelance Blender artists. Interwoven with motivational programming staged at depreciating levels of conviction, the final assembly speaks not so much to the experience of overstimulation as to the unique combination of sensory hypertrophy and apathy characteristic of life post-2020.

This is presentation is the first of a collaboration between Spectacle and the Queens-based art publisher Random Man Editions, which specializes in broadcasting various genres of the indescribable and documenting fringe practices across analogue and digital media. More information available at randomman.net.

“Anarchy prevails—children covered in paint stand defiant against parental authority in suburban bathrooms, a decapitated snake, running on pure electrochemical reflex, bites its own twitching body, crows mass ominously over a McDonalds—but this found footage is culled from corners of the internet that still feel largely wholesome. They’re more verité cinema than viral capitalism.” – Claire Evans

“In Psychology Today, empathy and identification find a place next to schadenfreude. Plaintive wails mix with clarion calls, chirping electronics with heavy metal guitars. The abject and the inspirational are everywhere entwined. Found footage combines with stock images and animated gifs as well as artist-made drawings and Flash animations. Slow-motion video is subjected to stroboscopic cuts, building to purgative crescendos.” – BOMB Magazine

 

MILLENIUM FILM WORKSHOP PRESENTS: THE SPECIAL PEOPLE

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THE SPECIAL PEOPLE
Dir. Erica Schreiner, 2021
USA. 120 min.
Silent w/ English subtitles.

THURSDAY, MARCH 10 – 7:30pm
ONE NIGHT ONLY

TICKETS HERE

The Special People is a darkly humorous consideration of the hypnotic state induced by smart technology and the human desire for freedom and authenticity. The audience goes through a journey while bathing in sparkling storybook sets, an eerie combination of VHS nostalgia and foreboding dilemmas.

The citizens of a pink forest stare into iridescent cubes and cannot look away. Apple, Bird and Violet manage to break their trance, and indulge in philosophical conversation. They question why they are free while the others are not. They had their voices removed when they were babies so they learn to communicate telepathically. They experience the sensuality of fruit and each other in The Forest, but soon feel it is not enough. The Special People decide to embark on a journey to bring the other citizens of The Forest back to consciousness by attempting to destroy the master cube, guarded by The Overlords. On this journey, the three get separated and Apple must continue the journey alone. She encounters many of The Obstacles along the way and learns if she is to free the citizens of The Forest, she’ll have to sacrifice her life.

Erica Schreiner wrote, directed, and stars in The Special People. She single handedly built elaborate, colorful and sparkling sets in her apartment where she filmed the feature on her VHS camera. This avant garde art film is reminiscent of 1960s experimental cinema like that of Kenneth Anger or Jack Smith. The other actors in this film are her friends. Local art stars like Matthew Silver, Chris Carr, Nick Walther, Lily Chambers and Oya Damla all have major roles in the film. The Special People was produced by Alex Norelli and is a silent film with a musical score by Johnny Dydo of The Johns.

“The Special People is a modern metaphorical battle. Will you wake up or sleep for the rest of your life? Shot in a nostalgic 70s video style; it’s a treat for the eyes!”  —Matthew Silver (performance artist, filmmaker)

“The many playful elements that comprise Erica Schriener’s The Special People coalesce to provide lucky audiences with beautiful and humorous up-close portraits of a society buckling under tech-induced hypnosis. Through a sugary glaze of VHS fuzz, a lush low-fi score that adds a stimulating dimension of whimsy, and a surplus of homemade heart to eclipse the Kuchar brothers’, the writer/director/lead actor Erica’s glitter-and-sequin-drenched Brooklyn apartment serves as the sprawling social tundra that the film’s heroes traverse. Telepathy and empathy both drive the narrative and serve as the character’s interpersonal currency as they meander but never waver from their fact-finding mission. I was left smiling, and would recommend this film to lovers of experiments and Marvel movie enthusiasts alike.”  —Toby Goodshank (musician, The Moldy Peaches)

THE SPECIAL PEOPLE is part of MEANS OF PRODUCTION: NEW ARTISTS’ CINEMA presented by MILLENNIUM FILM WORKSHOP, curated by Joe Wakeman.

This series will be devoted to showcasing works from overlooked and unknown American and International contemporary artists working in film and video, and pushing bounds beyond the limitations implied in those forms. Whether presenting intimate-scale epic by heretical artists re-interpreting the world as they see it on a no-string budget, or artists expanding vision via new tools of expression in the present and future age, Means of Production is about looking forward to a 21st century where economic and technological barriers are broken down, ushering in a new era of highly original cinematic handiwork.

The Millennium Film Workshop was founded in 1967 by a group of filmmakers with a vision to expand accessibility to the tools, ideas, and networks of filmmaking beyond the confines of institutions and corporate studios. Millennium has put on countless educational workshops, artist-hosted screenings, printed our renowned publication The Millennium Film Journal, served as a production hub kickstarting the careers of many prominent filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage, Todd Haynes, Yvonne Rainer, Carolee Schneeman, Michael Snow, Bruce Connor, Nick Zedd, Andy Warhol and Bruce Connor and has played a large role in dismantling the monetary and educational barriers separating the art and craft of filmmaking from the general public.

https://www.millenniumfilm.org
http://www.mfj-online.org/

STICE’S SATYRICON

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STICE’S SATYRICON

dir. Stice, 2022
45 mins, United States.

STICE IN ATTENDANCE

FRIDAY, MARCH 4 – 7:30PM
(One night only!)

GET TICKETS!

One cold midnight in 2019, breakcore duo Stice debuted their first batch of demented video-poems. A mysterious pet project by two fresh-faced net-trawlers, Spectacle expected a meager showing, but much to the theater’s surprise, the house was packed by 11:45 and Ubers were still rolling up well past 1 AM for standing-room only tickets. Three-tenths of a decade later, Stice is back with glossed-up credentials—an honest-to-god label, three-and-a-half tours under their belt, and even a review in the “The Quietus”—but they’re still serving the same putrefied, ADHD-addled, banned-on-your-school’s-computer sludge. Their newest video-album effort, a 45-minute, built-in laptop camera remake of Fellini’s Satyricon, is among the darkest, rancidest, most nutso grab-bag of tunes that the duo has thus far cooked up. 

(DE)INSTITUTIONALIZED DOUBLE FEATURE AKA MARCH MADNESS

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The gradual decline of state mental hospitals in the late twentieth century made them ripe territory for genre experiments. While many fell back on lazy cliches of flickering lights and vertiginous hospital corridors, others drew attention to the various indignities awaiting the former inhabitants of institutions upon their release – this March, Spectacle presents two curious takes on post-institutional living and its attendant horrors.

PICTURE MOMMY DEAD
dir. Bert I. Gordon, 1966.
USA. 83 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, MARCH 4 – 10PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 10 – 10PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 13 – 5PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 25 – 10PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 31 – 7:30PM

TICKETS HERE

A unique mid-career effort by Bert I. Gordon (EMPIRE OF THE ANTS, FOOD OF THE GODS) that sees the director wading uncharacteristically into gothic-horror territory to tell the story of Susan Shelley, a young heiress who must evade the machinations of her incompetent, conniving guardians to solve the mystery behind her mother’s (Zsa Zsa Gabor) death. Fresh out of the asylum, Susan struggles to distinguish between hallucination, supernatural phenomena and the trickery of her spendthrift father and his covetous partner, who wish for nothing more than to see her recommitted and to lay claim to her inheritance. Gordon cleverly keeps things ambiguous until the fiery finale.

 

CRIMINALLY INSANE
dir. Nick Millard, 1975
USA. 62 min.
In English.

SUNDAY, MARCH 6 – 5PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 12 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, MARCH 19 – 5PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 26 – 5PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 31 – 10PM

TICKETS HERE

Released from the state institution into the care of her overweening grandmother, Ethel Janowski embarks upon a murderous crusade against electroshock sessions and forced dietary restrictions in this charming discount thriller from 1975. An unsung anti-hero of late twentieth-century cinema, Ethel embarks upon a murderous spree to preserve her life of leisure against the irksome attentions of annoying family members with unwanted advice and numerous agents of the state medico-legal complex.

IT CAME FROM CONNEMARA!

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IT CAME FROM CONNEMARA!
dir. Brian Reddin, 2014
Ireland. 59 min.
In English

THURSDAY, MARCH 3 – 7:30PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 11 – 10PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 20 – 5PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 25 – 7:30PM

TICKETS HERE

Spectacle audiences are undoubtedly at least somewhat familiar with legendary independent film producer, the “King of B Movies,” the inimitable Roger Corman. However, his time spent making his brand of notoriously fun, low-budget pictures over on the Emerald Isle is an era that has been lost to cult cinema history. IT CAME FROM CONNEMARA! tells the story of Concorde Anois, Corman’s short-lived production company that operated out of Connemara, County Galway in the late 1990s. Invited by the Irish government to help develop filmmaking in the west of the country, Concorde Anois employed hundreds of people (most of whom were brand new to filmmaking and film production) in its few years and released around 20 features,  all shot in Connemara with Irish crews and Irish actors.

 Featuring interviews with cast and crew members at Concorde Anois (including Roger Corman himself), as well as behind-the-scenes footage from the action, horror, and sci-fi films produced during the studio’s run,  IT CAME FROM CONNEMARA! tells the story of the thrills, chills, local controversies, and movie-making mayhem of Corman’s five gloriously gruesome years in Ireland.

IRISH MIDNIGHTS

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In honor of St Patrick’s Day, Spectacle is proud to present this smattering of midnight features from the Emerald Isles.

RAWHEAD REX
dir. George Pavlou, 1986
UK / Ireland. 89 min.
In English

THURSDAY, MARCH 3 – 10PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 12 – 5PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 20 – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 26 – MIDNIGHT

TICKETS HERE

He’s pure evil, pure power, pure terror.

A demon in the Irish countryside goes on a rampage after being resurrected by a bolt of lightning, while a U.S. historian on vacation with his wife and son tries to stop it.

Written and disowned by Clive Barker (he wrote the monster as a giant phallus, which the filmmakers chose to turn into a giant ape-like creature), Rawhead Rex maintains just enough of his signature weirdness, along with above average practical effects, to make this a creature feature worth your while.

IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE
dir. Riccardo Freda, 1971
Ireland. 92 min.
In English

SUNDAY, MARCH 6 – 7:30PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 11 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, MARCH 19 – MIDNIGHT
THURSDAY, MARCH 24 – 10PM

TICKETS HERE

“One of the more entertaining exercises in post-Argento giallo.” — Flickering Myth

The most cruel and unpredictable crimes that you will ever see again on the screen!

A severely unusual Euro proto-slasher which places its requisite black-gloved killer on the mean streets of Dublin, where he (or she?) delights in tossing disfiguring acid in victims’ faces before the straight razor finishes the job. THE IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE is notorious for being one of the more reckless and inventive giallos, absolutely packed with a multitude of wingnuts, red herrings, and indescribably eccentric characters — and kills! — made at the misanthropic apex of Italian cinema’s murdermania.

Restoration courtesy of Arrow Films and the American Genre Film Archive.



 

 

DECEMBER MIDNIGHTS

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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18 – MIDNIGHT

TICKETS

WINTERBEAST
dir. Christopher Thies, 1992
92 min. USA

“In this movie, reality is devoured, digested, and recreated for our benefit.” — Joseph A. Ziemba, BLEEDING SKULL!

A film which truly justifies the term “unclassifiable,” WINTERBEAST was shot on and off for nearly half a decade and with a mix of super 8mm and 16mm, resulting in a one of a kind piece of outsider art-horror filmmaking that must be seen to be believed. When The Wild Goose Lodge is overrun with mutilation-minded beastoids, it’s up to Sergeant Whitman and Forest Ranger Stillman to take care of business! But what about the creepiest lodge proprietor who ever creeped around in a plaid suit, Mr. Sheldon? And what about Whitman’s shape-shifting mustache?! Loaded with surreal dialogue, mind-blowing stop motion animation, homemade gore effects, and more than a few genuinely creepy moments, this forgotten cult gem has been newly restored and reconstructed from its original film elements.

Restoration courtesy of Vinegar Syndrome and the American Genre Film Archive.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17 – MIDNIGHT

TICKETS

THE MASK OF SATAN aka DEMONS 5: THE DEVIL’S VEIL
dir. Lamberto Bava, 1989
94 min. Italy.
In Italian with English subtitles.

Seven Italian teens on a ski trip fall into an icy crevasse in the mountains, where they discover a corpse with a strange mask. One of them immediately removes the mask (of course), releasing an ancient curse.

A (very loose) retelling of Mario Bava’s classic BLACK SUNDAY set at a haunted ski lodge in the 80s, MASK OF SATAN aka DEMONS 5 makes the most of its clearly meager budget and delivers a heaping dose of wintery WTF.

 

MILLENIUM FILM WORKSHOP presents THE SPECTRAL CINEMA

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MILLENNIUM FILM WORKSHOP presents THE SPECTRAL CINEMA
Sunday, October 17 – 7:30pm

A collection of short works connected by the ghostly stains on our souls left by the cinematic image. This program opens with the first volume of filmmaker Jawni Han’s ongoing, Walter Benjamin-inspired video essay The New Arcades Project, Part 1: Angelica’s Riddle. Using the ghostly narrative of Manoel de Oliviera’s The Strange Case of Angelica as a jumping-off point, Han constructs a video dissection of the illusory aspect of the cinema that breathes life into dead, still images, making the past present and hauntingly visible. From there we diverge and offer a series of works to be considered in light of its observations. In these films, the spirits of dead stars possess our souls, empty houses are haunted by past lives captured on home video, the faces of star-crossed lovers are frozen for eternity, dark details of an empty opera are revealed to us in grainy still images, and in the end, Everybody Dies.

THE NEW ARCADES PROJECT, PART 1: ANGELICA’S RIDDLE
Dir. Jawni Han, 2020
USA, 18 min

The New Arcades Project has its origins in two cultural objects: Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project and a lyrical fragment from Pavement song Gold Soundz. It is well known that Benjamin intended the Arcades Project to be more or less a collection of quotations pulled out of context from their original sources, then assembled together in a way that they generate new meanings via Benjamin’s collage technique. Putting his theory of weak messianism into practice, he sought to redeem these fragments of the past by building a sanctuary where they can stay and form new constellations of histoire(s). Benjamin’s quotation-collage technique and philosophy of history find their unlikely epigraph in Pavement’s Gold Soundz, in which Stephen Malkmus sings “you can never quarantine the past.”

In Angelica’s Riddle, we start with the irreconcilable tension between photography and cinema in terms of how time and duration are dealt with in each respective medium. Manoel de Oliviera’s haunting love story about a photographer obsessed with moving image The Strange Case of Angelica is our jumping off point. The illusion of 24 frames per second (Zeno’s paradox) takes us everywhere from Deleuze’s meditation on motion via Bergson, Derrida sketching out the early foundation of hauntology on camera, Kafka through Chantal Akerman’s News from Home, and finally, last but not least, to a mash-up of Kiarstami’s Shirin and Godard’s Breathless.

Jawni Han was born in Seoul and currently lives and works in Brooklyn. She received her BA in philosophy and makes films to explore and communicate her philosophical interests. Her films deal with various forms of specters from history that live among us, the destabilization of identity, and the possibility of non-linear experience of time through cinema. Jawni’s formal approach, which combines experimental and narrative traditions, is one way she makes sense of her queer identity and works through the contradictions she encounters in her experience as a transfem.
MISS EVE
Dir. Elizaveta Allyson, 2021
USA, 17 min
A woman haunted by her crippling obsession with a dead Hollywood actress confides in how it has overtaken her life and very being. We follow this woman, Eve, through her days and compulsive ritualistic routines. With intermittent interviews, talk sessions even, time and reality are obscured. It is left to wonder if what is shown takes place in her life or are in fact delusions replaying in her mind.
Elizaveta A. Rubin is a Brooklyn based underground filmmaker, actor and artist. A graduate of the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute and student of NYU Tisch, Elizaveta has trained in acting extensively and is a self taught filmmaker and screenwriter. Inspired by Surrealism, Tanztheater, ancient art, mystical mythologies, and the Russian avant-garde, she infuses her work with her personal research and seeks to find the nexus between her various artistic and intellectual interests and narrative storytelling. Elizaveta has recently been creating sculptural jewelry through the lost wax casting technique and has several films in the works.
SILENT LOVERS 
Dir. Julie Orlick, 2017
USA, 11 min

Obedient to the sovereign ruler of his silent universe, a hopeless mime plays lap dog to a covetous queen in their silky echo chamber of imprisonment. As revelations befall upon the crestfallen clown, he realizes his dis-enthrallment through a shattering escape with the hand of a pirouetting harlequin, while Her Majesty’s empire and identity spiral into vibrant agony.

Presented on 16mm.
Julie Orlick (b. 1990; Los Angeles, California) is an American underground experimental filmmaker, analog photographer, poet & artist. Her visual landscape is evocative of the nascent stages of the artform in tandem with cult-cinema of mid-century American experimental filmmaking. Using a Bolex h16 Rex-5, her signature style employs in-camera bolex tricks, multiple exposures, slow motion, fast motion & superimpositions, to effect a pastiche of 20th century pop-culture, an epoch intimately bound to, and defined by, film.

MOVE OUTS
Dir. Justin Clifford Rhody, 2020
USA, 18 min
A drifting malaise searches the domestic American interior for signs of life. Composed from found footage discovered on a VHS tape in a Midwestern alleyway. Original soundtrack by Carlos Gonazalez.

Justin Clifford Rhody is a photographer, filmmaker and sound artist living in New Mexico. He operates the media imprint PHYSICAL and organizes the No Name Cinema film series. More info available at: www.justincliffordrhody.com


DEI NOTTURNI SPLENDORI
Dir. Anderson Matthew, 2020
Germany, 10 min

The sound of a distant whistle and theorbo calls a sleeping singer through the empty streets of Stuttgart in a midnight journey to the opera house.

Commissioned by the Staatsoper Stuttgart early into Germany’s pandemic lockdown, Anderson Matthew captures the singer Helene Schneiderman in ecstatic 35mm photo roman, singing a madrigal by Tarquinio Merula from 1638.
“And, ‘twixt the shadows and frights / of nocturnal splendors, / My beloved will secretly be hiding. / Say what you will, say what you may.”

EVERYBODY DIES
Dir. Anderson Matthew, 2020
USA, 8 min
In Super 8mm, time, space and the body fold in on themselves. It’s a poetic journey into the desert — a reflection on the nature of death as something not to be feared but embraced as part of an intimate and universal human experience. Film by Anderson Matthew. Starring and scored by DNZ.
Anderson Matthew is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. His work centers on film experimentation and queer perspectives. More info available at: www.andersonmatthew.com / @and.matthew

THE SPECTRAL CINEMA is part of MEANS OF PRODUCTION: NEW ARTISTS’ CINEMA presented by MILLENNIUM FILM WORKSHOP
This series will be devoted to showcasing works from overlooked and unknown American and International contemporary artists working in film and video, and pushing bounds beyond the limitations implied in those forms. Whether presenting intimate-scale epic by heretical artists re-interpreting the world as they see it on a no-string budget, or artists expanding vision via new tools of expression in the present and future age, Means of Production is about looking forward to a 21st century where economic and technological barriers are broken down, ushering in a new era of highly original cinematic handiwork.
The Millennium Film Workshop was founded in 1967 by a group of filmmakers with a vision to expand accessibility to the tools, ideas, and networks of filmmaking beyond the confines of institutions and corporate studios. Millennium has put on countless educational workshops, artist-hosted screenings, printed our renowned publication The Millennium Film Journal, served as a production hub kickstarting the careers of many prominent filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage, Todd Haynes, Yvonne Rainer, Carolee Schneeman, Michael Snow, Bruce Connor, Nick Zedd, Andy Warhol and Bruce Connor  and has played a large role in dismantling the monetary and educational barriers separating the art and craft of filmmaking from the general public.