Scummer’s not over til it’s over.

PIG DEATH MACHINE
dir. Jon Moritsugu, 2013
82 mins. United States.

*Preceded by the short MOMMY MOMMY WHERE’S MY BRAIN (1986)

FRIDAY, AUGUST 9 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 17 – MIDNIGHT
MONDAY, AUGUST 19 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28 – 10 PM

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If you joined us for July’s selections, you know by now that Jon Moritsugu has a thing with meat, especially in raw form. In MOD FUCK EXPLOSION London walks through 800 pounds of the stuff, and MY DEGENERATION features a punk band sponsored by the beef industry. PIG DEATH MACHINE explores the supernatural power of rancid pork, which transforms the lives of two women who consume it. Amy Davis has a sudden spike in brain power, her IQ rising faster than temperatures in the New Mexico desert. Hannah Levbarg, a punk plant-lover, develops a psychic connection with the local flora that includes their screams for water and attention. This film was shot digitally, adding to the garish putridness of the whole operation. All of this is bookended by a mysterious pig-mask love affair, hinting at the origins of the shipment of magic meat.

FAME WHORE
dir. Jon Moritsugu, 1997
73 mins. United States.

*Preceded by the shorts BRAINDEAD (1987) and DER ELVIS (1988)

FRIDAY, AUGUST 2 – 10 PM
SATUDAY, AUGUST 17 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 22 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 26 – 10 PM

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They say fame comes at a price. For the psychos found in the last gem of Moritsugu’s 16mm empire, that price is sanity. Told in triptych, FAME WORE examines three unrelated eccentrics lost in total delusion within their profession, all taking place on a day where each get smacked hard with reality checks that force consideration for saner perspectives.

One story follows that of Jody George (Peter Friedrich)—a ruthless bro whose blessed tennis prowess has earned him the #1 rank in the field worldwide. But once rumors spreading through the newspapers put his straightness into question, his several investors begin to drop him one by one, throwing him on a infantile rampage in his SF hotel suite. Another tale peers into the office of a milquetoast animal lover (Victor of Aquitaine) whose dignity is continuously trampled on at his New Jersey dog adoption agency. All the intensely bottled up repression and isolation naturally lead him to manifest an imaginary friend (a sauced St. Bernard who offers half-hearted advice).

But frankly it’s Amy Davis who steals the show as the true Fame Whore, Sophie: a seriously talentless, bong ripping New Yorker, who lives in a business suit but can’t seem to file her own taxes. Tormenting her unnecessary personal assistant, J (Jason Rail), with endless self-obsessed and hyper-judgmental confab while her headshots go unautographed, Sophie’s fate unlikely holds fame and glory, but rather a doomed personal esteem, void of substance or meaning.

SCUMROCK
dir. Jon Moritsugu, 2002
79 mins. United States.

*Preceded by the shorts CRACK (1999) and SLEAZY RIDER (1988)

TUESDAY, AUGUST 6 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 17 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, AUGUST 20 – 10 PM

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Youth is forever fading, but sleaze will never die… In this departure from celluloid, Moritsugu and Davis probe at juvenescence on its deathbed, as a cast of all too familiar drifting personalities tussle with not just the imminent death of their 20s, but the existential perils of preserving creative and offbeat livelihoods in the face of daunting adulthood, chilling reality, and personal failure.

Trashing and thrashing through the streets of a yet to be tech gentri-fried San Franciscan milieu, a no-budget underground filmmaker (sound familiar?) writhes his precarious sanity in order to hopefully yield a cinematic opus, while on a vaguely non-linear beaten course, a pissed miscreant (none other than Amy Davis) fumes and flounders to stubbornly keep her lowly punk band from being swallowed into the abyss of obscurity (and not the cool kind either).

Pressing on the perishability of the proverbial salad days, SCUMROCK is a tenderly relevant meditation for the aging hipster with chronic slacker-depression, which should inspire all of us to ask ourselves “What do I have to show for all my avant-gardness?”

MOD FUCK EXPLOSION
Dir. Jon Moritsugu, 1994
67 min. USA

SUNDAY, AUGUST 25 – 7:30 PM **Q&A WITH DESI DEL VALLE [M16]**
SUNDAY, AUGUST 25 – 10 PM **PHONE Q&A WITH JON MORITSUGU & AMY DAVIS**
SATURDAY, AUGUST 31 – 7:30 PM **Q&A WITH CINEMATOGRAPHER TODD VEROW**
SATURDAY, AUGUST 31 – 10 PM **PHONE Q&A WITH JON MORITSUGU & AMY DAVIS*

ALL SCREENINGS ON 16MM!
*THIS EVENT IS $10*

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The Nipponese bikers have leather jackets and London, a broken-family blonde, wants a leather jacket more than anything. Her sister Nasty has one, but she’s a post-Quaalude comic artist and won’t give it up. London’s brother is a dumb wannabe mod, clinging to a style that is just nativism with thick-framed glasses. Top Mod Madball sums up their situation with a joke:

“Why did Hitler kill himself?”

“To get to the other side!”

All London has to do is party with the bikers and tell Kazumi that he has a great bod, but instead she’s in love with death-obsessed M-16. Cleopatra, the supernatural succubus and queen of feces, tries to give London some T-R-U-T-H but she won’t hear it! Everything is leading in a fucked-up, not-knowing-how-to-fuck direction not to mention the ultimate showdown between the pale mods and a powerful biker gang.

LONG WEEKEND
dir. Colin Eggleston, 1978
97 mins. Australia.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 3 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, AUGUST 10 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, AUGUST 23 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 30 – MIDNIGHT

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“Their crime was against nature. Nature found them guilty.”

Given the crushing heat waves and our full throttle race to planet-death, it seems as good a time as any to give LONG WEEKEND another look. Safe to say its aged entirely too well.

Peter and Marcia are going through a bit of a rough patch, so the natural solve is, of course, go camping. Marcia wanted to go away for the weekend with their good friends, but Peter is set on a long weekend of camping on a remote beach. Thinly buried resentments quickly bubble to the surface as they take out their frustrations on the natural world around them in increasingly egregious ways.

One of the best when nature attacks films ever made, it has some of the spirit of Daphne du Maurier’s original short story of THE BIRDS, diving full on into the existential dread of man’s ignorance and impotence in the face of nature’s wrath.

MUBI PRESENTS: JAMILIA
dir. Aminatou Echard, 2018
84 mins. Kyrgistan/Russia.
In Kyrgyz with English subtitles.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 1 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 5 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7 – 7:30 PM

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“It’s hard being a human, but being a common person in China is even more difficult.” – UP THE YANGTZE

Who gets left behind in the name of progress? In these two documentaries, low-income people struggle to stay afloat in the midst of China’s rapid economic growth and bold technological endeavors. In STREET LIFE, director Zhao Dayong offers a vérité portrait of migrants from rural China living in Shanghai who occupy Nanjing Street, an upscale shopping district, collecting and selling recyclables. In UP THE YANGTZE, directed by Yung Chang, a teenaged girl whose home will soon be flooded by the impending Three Gorges Dam finds herself working on a cruise ship offering tours of the river that will soon swallow all she knows. With these two films, the directors offer portraits of people who have no other option but to make way for progress- to bend to its will and hope that the future will be kinder.

STREET LIFE (南京路)
Dir. Zhao Dayong, 2006
China, 98 mins.
In Mandarin with English subtitles.

MONDAY, JULY 1 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 7 – 5 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 18 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 21 – 7:30 PM

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Zhao Dayong’s first nonfiction film is a colorful and honest portrait of a group of migrants who live and work on Nanjing Road, an upscale shopping district in Shanghai, collecting and selling recyclables. There’s “Big Fatty,” the wise fool who sings poems and rhymes referencing Chinese literature and politics; Ah Qiao, the dishonest entrepreneur who purchases cans off the other migrants; and “Black Skin”- the anti-hero of the story, whose innocence and hard-working nature leaves him susceptible to attack. After Ah Qiao betrays him, Black Skin spirals into apathy and insanity.

“These beggars and litter-collectors exist as invisible and forgotten shadows of Shanghai, moving in a sort of parallel reality but strictly linked to the same boom that excites the city. It is just the other side of the capitalist coin, the extreme poverty of the periphery juxtaposed with the growing wealth of the center, adopting the same capitalist strategies for surviving in a dramatic, grotesque fashion.” – Sara Beretta, “A Mad Dance on Shanghai Streets: Zhao Dayong’s Street Life”

After graduating from China’s Lu Xun Art Academy in 1992, Zhao Dayong worked for a number of years as a professional artist and advertising director, first in Beijing and later in Guangzhou. In 1997, he founded Guangzhou Dake, a design company. He was also founding editor of Culture & Morals, a now deceased journal for the contemporary arts in China. Zhao began exploring the medium of digital video in 2002. His first documentary film, STREET LIFE, premiered at Austria’s Viennale in October 2006. Zhao’s second documentary film, GHOST TOWN, a collage of stories that take place in the former government seat of Zhiziluo in remote northwestern Yunnan province, premiered at the New York Film Festival in 2009. His first fiction feature, THE HIGH LIFE, premiered at the Hong Kong International Film Festival in 2010, winning both the FIPRESCI Award and the Silver Digital Award. THE HIGH LIFE made its European premiere in the main competition at the Mannheim-Heidelberg International Film Festival in November 2010, where it won both the Werner Fassbinder Prize and the FIPRESCI Jury Prize.

UP THE YANGTZE (沿江而上)
Dir. Yung Chang, 2008
China, 94 mins.
In Mandarin with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 3 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 9 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 14 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 24 – 7:30 PM

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“Everywhere there are reminders of progress and sacrifice.”

The Three Gorges Dam, the largest power station in the world in terms of installed capacity, spans the Yangtze River, the largest and most revered river in Asia. It’s named for the three gorges it flooded, the Qutang, Wu Xia, and Xiling, which stretch for 124 miles and were renowned for their scenic beauty. Reportedly 1.3 million people (and up to 2 million) living in 1,500 cities, towns, and villages along the river were displaced as a result of its implementation.

In 2007, before the waters rose completely, 16 year old Yu Shui sets off from her impoverished family and their riverside home to work on a Yangtze river cruise called Farewell Cruises, offering a final glimpse of the Yangtze to wealthy tourists before the waters rise. Her parents, illiterate farmers, are saddened by having to send their daughter off to work instead of allowing her to continue her studies. Yu Shui suddenly has a new English name, Cindy, and is thrust into a whole new world where she must cater to wealthy foreigners on their vacations. Along with Yu Shui is Chen Bo Yu, or “Jerry,” an only child from a middle-class family who, with far less to lose, takes his job far less seriously. As Yu Shui struggles to navigate the modern world, her family seeks higher ground.

“It’s a tender and profound portrait of unwieldy, mass-scale modernization at work, a process multifaceted enough to include Yu Shui’s dawning optimism, Chen Bo Yu’s dispiriting setbacks, and a cheery tourist rendition of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” that also serves as a lament for tradition’s demise.” -Nick Schager, Slant

Yung Chang is the director of UP THE YANGTZE (沿江而上), CHINA HEAVYWEIGHT (千錘百鍊), and THE FRUIT HUNTERS. He is currently completing a screenplay for his first dramatic feature, Eggplant (茄子), and in post-production for a feature documentary about Robert Fisk, the controversial Middle East correspondent, co-produced by the National Film Board of Canada. His latest, Gatekeeper, is on the festival circuit and streaming on Field of Vision, Laura Poitras’ curated online film unit. Chang is the recipient of the Don Haig Award, the Yolande and Pierre Perrault Award, and the Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award. He is a member of the Directors Guild of Canada. In 2013, he was invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Academy Awards / Oscars®.