Author: spectacletheater

JUNE MIDNIGHTS 2018

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DIGITAL MAN
Dir. Philip J. Roth, 1995
Nevada, 91 min.
In English.
SATURDAY, JUNE 2 – MIDNIGHT
SUNDAY, JUNE 3 – 5 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 8 – MIDNIGHT
ONLINE TICKETS HERE

In memory of Philip Roth, we are bringing back Philip J. Roth’s DIGITAL MAN, all June 2018!

Spectacle offers up this late-night cyberwar curio fielded from the pixelated precipice between Atari and The Matrix. Starring an Altmanesque corps of noteworthy surnames, Philip Roth’s Digital Man concerns a glitch in national security so cruel, it’d be divine if it weren’t so damn digital: a time-traveling supercyborg touches down in the small-town Southwest just in time to hijack an apocalypse’s worth of nuclear launch codes.

Fresh off a realm too insane in its violence and punishment for mere humans  to enter, the Digital Man must be stopped – and it’s up to a motley crue of wisecracking heavyweights (some military experts, some shotgun-toting salt of the earth) to take him out, analog style. Tons and tons and tons and tons of fireball explosions (replete with slo-mo backflips and brutal, spaghetti-worthy shootouts) ensue, culminating in one night you can’t merely “attend” while on your laptop.

Digital Man is a very entertaining movie, with good acting, excellent photography and outstanding F/X. It does suffer from a mediocre script however. A very good, overall effort from a bunch of actors who fall  into the category of “where have I seen them before?” A rating of 8 out of 10 was given. – VCRanger, IMDB

“lets get down to brass tax where can we get this movie someone upload cmon it cant be ilegal look at it buying it would be a magor crime” – Jamie Mcfayden, YouTube

“I’ve seen Digital man almost a decade ago when it came to video. My dad rented me this movie to watch over the weekend since he was leaving with my mom. I loved it so much that I’ve watched it five or six times in 48 hours !!!” – thebigmovieguy, IMDB

“Don’t just settle for T2 ,experience this equal ,yet lower budget Sci-Fi action outing,with martial arts giant Matthias Hues in the lead.” – “A Customer”, Amazon

“I rented this when it came out on video. I remember thinking the special effects and costumes were pretty cool back then. And in the early-to-mid-1990s computer animation was a novelty, so that added to the movie’s appeal. (And back then CGI looked cooler with those smooth surfaces.)” – felicity4711, YouTube


THE HANGING WOMAN (La orgía de los muertos)
Dir. José Luis Merino, 1973
Spain, 95 minutes
SATURDAY, JUNE 9 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, JUNE 16- MIDNIGHT
ONLINE TICKETS HERE

Akin in spirit and substance to the Italian atmosphere-heavy Gothic horror of the late 60s, THE HANGING WOMAN (known in its home country as La orgia de los muertos) takes that template to Franco-era Spain. There’s a genuine mystery at the heart of the film, but director José Luis Merino takes the inspector-investigating-a-crime-at-a-spooky-castle theme and adds a bit of, well, everything: a secret laboratory for the maddest of science, nightgown-clad midnight strolls by candlelight, schemes and double-crosses over the inheritance of a mysterious Count, a crypt with fog machines on full blast, devil worship, reanimated frogs and none other than El Hombre Lobo himself, Paul Naschy, in a supporting role as a necrophiliac gravedigger! In an excellent restoration thanks to our friends at Troma, THE HANGING WOMAN is the perfect film for sweaty June midnights.

(abandoned): ZIA ANGER

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SUNDAY, JUNE 17th  – 7:30 PM
FILMMAKER IN PERSON! ONE NIGHT ONLY!
(THIS EVENT IS $10)

ONLINE TICKETS HERE
FB EVENT

Zia Anger’s film and video work has played at the New York Film Festival (MY LAST FILM with Rosanna Arquette and Lola Kirke), New Directors/New Films (2015’s I REMEMBER NOTHING), Maryland Film Festival, Locarno, Basilica Soundscape and others. She has collaborated with Jenny Hval, Angel Olsen, Beach House, and Mitski.

You may have seen some of her work. She is particularly adept at depicting characters, typically women, in various stages of fragmentation — identities blend and the seams of personas are frayed.

You have not seen other work of hers. No one has. The internet, perhaps of its own officiary volition, has deemed it “abandoned.” For one evening, we will attempt to recover it: embarking down the shadowy online systems that entomb the unscreened works of independent film, through hyperlinks and password protected screeners. Join the filmmaker at Spectacle this June for an in-person, semi-improvisatory discussion and performance.

ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSES: AN EVENING WITH LEV KALMAN

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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27th – 8PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!
THIS EVENT IS $10

ONLINE TICKETS HERE
FB EVENT

Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn have been making films together for fifteen years, blending low-fi metaphysical explorations with steady bursts of absurdist humor. Their films BLONDES IN THE JUNGLE and L FOR LEISURE have attained cult-film status and enjoyed long lives at festivals and microcinemas (including Spectacle.) But many of their other equally audacious and wonderful films have gone largely unseen, screening only at private parties, in art galleries, or languishing in Youtube deserts. On the eve of the BAMCinemaFest World Premiere of TWO PLAINS & A FANCY, Lev will present his favorites of these shorts at SPECTACLE, featuring time traveling teens, purgatory ping-pong and Bloomingdales shopping sprees. Intimate and candid conversation to follow.

RAMBLIN’ ON MY MIND

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Catch out with Spectacle for the summer with these four documentaries spanning five decades all revolving around the mythical hobo and their prefered mode of transport, hopping freight trains. Filled with lush landscapes, and scenery that make the Hudson River Valley school of painters look like Thomas Kinkade, these films use train riding as a vehicle to tell unique stories of the hobo subculture, class disparity in the United States, and personal stories of those out there riding the rails.



WHO IS BOZO TEXINO?
Dir. Bill Daniel, 2005
USA. 57min

TUESDAY, JUNE 19th – 7:30 PM & 10 PM, FILMMAKER IN PERSON
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

ONLINE TICKETS HERE
FB EVENT

Shot in 8mm and 16mm over 16 years, the infamous WHO IS BOZO TEXINO? is an experimental documentary searching for the identities and stories behind the ubiquitous and yet esoteric art of hobo graffiti found on the sides of boxcars, grainers and train bridges spanning North America from coast to coast. Landing somewhere between outsider art and subculture minutiae—utilizing the conjecture, half-truths, tall tales and mythology that occupies the jungles and campfires—Daniel interviews an array of old timers, hobos and rail workers as well as streak and moniker heavyweights like Herby, The Rambler, and Colossus of Roads.

Bill Daniel is a filmmaker, photographer and installation artist based in the Gulf coast of Texas. Bill is currently touring on his newly released book of photos Tri-X Noise, and will have copies and other goods for sale at the screening.


HOBO
Dir. John T. Davis, 1992
UK. 90min
FRIDAY, JUNE 1 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, JUNE 5 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, JUNE 21 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27 – 10 PM
ONLINE TICKETS HERE

Irish director John T. Davis follows Beargrease, a vietnam veteran and father, as he travels and philosophizes from Minneapolis to Seattle via freight train. HOBO is a powerful portrait of the American poor and working class, using the train line as a means to get from town to town, meeting the depressed and marginalized along the way in the soup kitchens, unemployment offices and jungles at the sides of the tracks. With scenes of hobos reading newspapers, listening to the radio news programs and slandering politicians, the documentary shows the hobo not as an out-of-touch outcast from society, but an engaged yet struggling worker trying to make ends meet with what is at their disposal; chancing the risk of arrest or even death for a free ride to the next town. HOBO addresses subjects of homelessness, class disparity, alcoholism, and even sex-workers’ rights through Beargrease’s conversations with his traveling partners and land-locked friends along his route.



LONG GONE
Dir. Jack Cahill, David Eberhardt, 2003
USA. 90min

SUNDAY, JUNE 10 – 5 PM
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 22 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 29 – 10 PM
ONLINE TICKETS HERE

Featuring an original score by Tom Waits and filmed over seven years and 30,000+ miles, LONG GONE follows a large cast of hobos spanning multiple generations: The aging veterans Horizontal John & Joshua Long Gone; the publically besmirched Dogman Tony with his young bride and loyal tramp friends, and the steadfast, level-headed New York Slim, are contrasted with the younger generation of punks that have taken to hopping trains, James, Jessie, and Stonie. Filmmakers Jack Cahill and David Eberhardt are so comfortable with their subjects that the camera becomes invisible as they deal with depression, loss, drug use, alcoholism and being a scapegoat for the state to pin multiple murder charges on (really!). LONG GONE is less about the act of riding the rails, and more about the personal stories and circumstances of those riding them.


THE LAST OF THE AMERICAN HOBOES
Dir. Titus Moede, 1967
USA. 82 min
FRIDAY, JUNE 1 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, JUNE 4 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 16 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 22 – 10 PM

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

A labor of love for director, schlockmeister, and jack of all film-trades, Titus Moede—who himself played a hobo in the 1964 film THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES!!?, and is considered to be one of the better directors of early B-grade adult films—LAST OF THE AMERICAN HOBOES is a docu-drama love letter to the hobos, hitchhikers and working men of decades past. Part historical documentary, part afterschool special, part original musical and all ‘bo-sploitation, the film is good-natured at heart, attempting to dispel the myths and misconceptions that accompany tramps and vagabonds, but at points just ends up enforcing others. Featuring flashbacks within flashbacks, and even a segment devoted to the Wobblies via a miniature Joe Hill bio-pic. With all the attention that surfers, bikers and even cannibals got in the 60s and 70s, one wonders how ‘bo-sploitation never took off as a genre.

Note: a low buzz intermittedly accompanies the first 20 minutes of audio.

Special thanks to Joe Ziemba & Bleeding Skull.

MAY MIDNIGHTS

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SATANIC ATTRACTION (Atração Satânica)
Dir. Fauzi Mansur, 1989
Brazil, 107 min
English dub
FRIDAY, MAY 5 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, MAY 19 – MIDNIGHT
ONLINE TICKETS HERE

We’re back to Brazil for more lurid horror with Fauzi Mansur’s follow-up to RITUAL OF DEATH! In SATANIC ATTRACTION Fernanda, a dj who shares stories of gruesome sex murders and occult blasphemies over the air, is startled to discover someone out in the night is turning her stories into grisly fact! Shades of TENEBRAE (or Lamberto Bava’s Spectacle classic DELIRIUM) may come to mind, but we’re a long way from Italy, and this is a film more about scuzz than sheen . Creepy kids, cult scenes, spitting blood, secret poisons and more! Taken from a grubby VHS bootleg (ignore the Portuguese subtitles, unless you speak Portuguese, in which case you’re welcome!), SATANIC ATTRACTION is a perfect fit for increasingly warm midnights.


WEREWOLF IN A GIRLS DORMITORY
(aka: LYCANTHROPUS)
dir. Paolo Heusch, 1961
Italy
83 min.
SATURDAY, MAY 12 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, MAY 25 – MIDNIGHT
ONLINE TICKETS HERE

“Mary has a marvelous ability for always being in trouble.”

Spectacle Midnights are about to give going back to college the old college try. There’s a ghoul in school and it’s a wonder anyone can even get a quality education amidst all the blackmail, seduction, and carnage.

A new professor, with a murky past, arrives at school for troubled girls outside of a quiet little town besieged by wolf attacks. On his first night there, a young girl is savagely torn apart just outside of the school. With the mile long suspect list growing ever shorter as the stack of bodies grows taller, the film – penned by the legendary scribe Ernesto Gastaldi (The Long Hair of Death, The Horrible Dr. Hitchcock, Torso, My Name is Nobody, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, The Case of the Bloody Iris, etc.) this film keeps you guessing til the end. Featuring a snappy theme song and a soundtrack peppered with bassoons and flutes and presented UNCUT with footage TOO SHOCKING FOR SIXTIES CENSORS!

“I saw. You’re a beast not a man my dear so go to the Devil.

I haven’t done anything.
I haven’t done anything.”


DEAD GIRLS
dir. Dennis Devine, 1990
105 min, USA
FRIDAY, MAY 18 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, MAY 26 – MIDNIGHT
ONLINE TICKETS HERE

Lucy Lethal, Cynthia Slayed, Nancy Napalm, Randy Rot and Bertha Beirut are all members of the metal band Dead Girls. These girls are not fucking around either. All their songs are about murder, suicide, death, and carnage. This whole schtick comes back to bite them in their collective ass when a fan tries to commit suicide while listening to their latest single aptly titled YOU’VE GOT TO KILL YOURSELF on repeat. No ones ass is more bitten however than lead singer Bertha when she discovers this fan is none other than her younger sister.

After repeated attempts at getting the girls to switch it up and go in a direction that’s less gore and more Leslie Gore, Bertha decides the Dead Girls are in need of a vacation. So to hit the reset button the band high-tails it out of town to a cabin in the woods for some sun and fun.

Little do they know that lurking in the shadows is every woman’s nightmare – a man in a fedora. He also has a skull mask, but still. The band members are picked off one by one in manners related to some of their more ghastly tunes. Who is this masked killer???

THERE’S A STRONG WIND IN BEIJING

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THERE’S A STRONG WIND IN BEIJING
dir. Ju Anqi, 1999
50 mins. China.
In Mandarin with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, MAY 1 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, MAY 23 – 7:30 PM – w/intro from Aaron Fox-Lerner, guest programmer and Time Out Beijing film editor!
SATURDAY, MAY 26 – 7:30 PM

Like some unholy combination of avant-garde independent film and Jackass or a YouTube prank video, Ju Anqi’s documentary THERE’S A STRONG WIND IN BEIJING sets a small camera crew loose on late-90s Beijing, barging into any possible public or private space to ask one simple question: “Is the wind in Beijing strong?”

This blunt query coupled with the unexpected presence of cameras spawns a world of responses, while the movie itself, shot on a limited amount of expired film, forms a street-level portrait of a city in transition that’s already practically unrecognizable 20 years later.

AN EVENING WITH KATRINA DEL MAR

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AN EVENING WITH KATRINA DEL MAR
Dir. Katrina del Mar, 1999-2018
US, TRT 90 mins
SUNDAY MAY 13 – 7:30p FILMMAKER IN PERSON
WEDNESDAY MAY 16 – 7:30p FILMMAKER IN PERSON
ONLINE TICKETS HERE
FB EVENT

Throughout her decades-long career as a photographer and filmmaker, Katrina del Mar has been described as “intimidatingly badass” (The Huffington Post), “a speedy person” (Eileen Myles), and a producer of “filth of the highest quality.”

Her obsession with Americana iconography — pinups, burlesque, superheroes and leather-jacketed toughs — strikes an immediate dichotomy with her feeling most at home among queer outcasts caked in the urban grime of New York. Typically armed with an 8mm camera, her extreme close-ups and jarringly visceral cutting cast a beautiful, flickering spell. She and her friends — skaters, musicians, and punks — become larger than life figures with an unforgettable allure.

In addition to showing her iconic, rarely-screened GANG GIRL TRILOGY, Spectacle is proud to welcome del Mar for an overview of her career. The program features scuzzy No-Wave video experiments, rock and roll lesbian vampires, episodes of her plotless experimental hangout webseries delMarvelous, and a look at her upcoming feature doc about her artist/mail carrier father (plus other surprises).

Special thanks to Katrina del Mar and Kristen Fitzpatrick.

IL-MATIC FOR THE PEOPLE: NORTH KOREAN CINEMA

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As a gesture of goodwill towards our new Axis of Evil partners, Spectacle will be screening a handful of works from North Korea’s towering cinema canon.
North Korea’s late Kim Jong-Il was, by all accounts, a legendary cinephile who aimed to surpass the technical and artistic standards of Moscow. The films produced under his leadership engage directly with the concept of juche, a particularly North Korean form of Marxism-Leninism generally revolving around the idea of total, homegrown self-reliance; in the senior Kim Il Sung’s words: “having the attitude of master toward revolution and construction in one’s own country…using your own brains, believing your own strength and displaying the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance, and thus solving your own problems for yourself on your own responsibility under all circumstances.”
Initially working as department director of propaganda and agitation, the young Kim Jong Il instituted wide-sweeping reforms in the North Korean film industry, mandating that artists avoid both art-for-art’s sake on one extreme and stiff, dogmatic films that neglect form and artistry on the other. He then actively encouraged people to emulate the heroes from films: “Day after day, leading characters in the works of art become real in each factory and each workshop,” he wrote.
Being at once proudly insular and aspiring to the artistic achievements of great Russian filmmakers and the magic of Hollywood, North Korean film is singularly baffling, enrapturing, inspiring and unsettling.


CENTRE FORWARD
Dir. Pak Chong Song, 1978
North Korea, 77 min.
In Korean with English subtitles
MONDAY, MAY 7 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, MAY 17 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, MAY 25 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, MAY 31 – 7:30 PM
ONLINE TICKETS HERE

“Oh, we are sportspersons of the Leader!” In CENTRE FORWARD, the DPRK’s first soccer movie, overzealous benchwarmer In Son botches his first match for the previously-undefeated Taesongan team. Their shameful loss is followed by a harrowing post-game self-recrimination session in which various team members take turns chastising themselves for In Son’s incompetence. Ultimately, the coach blames his team’s complacency and, remembering that “the Father Leader taught us to make this country a great Kingdom of Sports,” decides to “break from the old training program” in favor of a more merciless regimen. The players become resentful and lazy, drinking beer instead of training, while the party functionary Vice-Chairman implores the coach to go easier on them. Only In Son, inspired by his sister’s relentless dedication to the practice of dancing for “the collective spirit”, pushes himself to master the new program and his own self-doubt, recognizing that “when we beat the foreign teams, the entire Nation will share the joy.” But as the final game winds down with the unpromising score of 0-2, will this humble underdog get the chance to redeem himself – and the entire nation?


PULGASARI
aka Bulgasari
Dir. Sang-ok Shin, 1985
North Korea, 95 min.
In Korean with English subtitles

SATURDAY, MAY 5 – MIDNIGHT
WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, MAY 18 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, MAY 23 – 10 PM
MONDAY, MAY 28 – 7:30 PM
ONLINE TICKETS HERE

Over the span of 20 years, Sang-ok Shin – sometimes called “the Orson Wells of South Korea” – made upwards of 60 films but all that changed in 1978 when the studio closed. Things would go from bad to worse when in what should be an unbelievable turn of events, Shin and his wife (actress Choi Eun-Hee) were kidnapped by Kim Jong-il. Kim’s intent was to have Shin create films showcasing the power and might of the Korea Workers Party for all the world to see, with Choi Eun-Hee as their star. Before their escape to Vienna in 1986, and after years in prison camps, they would make 7 films – PULGASARI being a crown jewel among them.

While seemingly an obvious Godzilla rip-off, the film is about an evil king in feudal Korea who learns of a coming peasant rebellion. The king gathers all the metal he can find – farming tools, cooking pots, etc – to make into weapons to squash the small army. A dying blacksmith uses the last of his strength to create a monster made of rice – Pulgasari. When his daughters blood hits it, the monster comes to life and traverses the countryside, eating iron – as monsters are wont to do.

Not seen outside of Korea for over a decade after its release, the film has gained a cult following for its special effects – with Kenpachiro Satsuma who was Godzilla for over a decade in the Pulgasari costume!


URBAN GIRL COMES TO GET MARRIED
Dir. by Kim Il-Sung University students, 1993
North Korea, 73 min.
In Korean with English subtitles
SATURDAY, MAY 5 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, MAY 15 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MAY 21 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, MAY 29 – 7:30 PM
ONLINE TICKETS HERE

In URBAN GIRL COMES TO GET MARRIED, Ri Hyang, the best fabric cutter at an urban clothing factory, joins her all-female coworkers on a trip to the countryside as part of a “Peasant-Worker Alliance” program, where they “must work as demanded by Juche farming method”. Amid montages of joyous rice planting and flowing grain, Ri Hyang encounters the visionary young man behind the collective farm’s duck breeding project, Song Sik. She turns up her nose at first, but his commitment to the fatherly leader’s agricultural innovation protocol and rock ‘n roll drumming skills begin to win her over. When he tells her, “It’s time to feed duck dung to the gas furnace,” she says, “I can help you.” Together, they realize that this duck dung is just the beginning, for it will “contribute to agricultural development,” including “mechanization and chemicalization”.

Featuring a musical interlude where the principal characters perform the film’s titular theme song for assembled workers and peasants, URBAN GIRL COMES TO GET MARRIED claims that “a modern farm village is good to live in,” encouraging the best and brightest young urban women to marry men in the countryside so they can apply their worldly intelligence to the execution of “socialist rural theses”.

GANG GIRL TRILOGY

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GANG GIRL TRILOGY
Dir. Katrina del Mar, 1999-2010
US, TRT 87 mins
FRIDAY MAY 11 – 7:30p FILMMAKER IN PERSON (This event is $10)
WEDNESDAY, MAY 16 – 10:00p FILMMAKER IN PERSON (This event is $10)
SUNDAY, MAY 27 – 5:00P
ONLINE TICKETS HERE
FB EVENT

Filmmaker and photographer Katrina del Mar has been documenting the streetwise toughgirls of Manhattan and Brooklyn for going on two decades. Her unheralded butch opus the GANG GIRL TRILOGY imagines the city as an escapist playground free of men, where rival gangs of lesbian bikers, boarders, surfers and skaters call the shots. Del Mar draws from Russ Meyer and John Waters, but with a commitment to a distinctly personal sort of chaos. The films also unconsciously acts as a showcase for a rapidly changing Manhattan — an attempt to abscond from the concerns of the city and into a daydream of queer solidarity, leather, and raucous, wall-to-wall punk soundtracks.

GANG GIRLS 2000
Dir. Katrina del Mar, 1999
US, 27 mins
“A world without men featuring four Dangerous and Foxy gangs!”

The Glitter Girls, The Sluts, The Blades, and The Ponies… four female gangs wreak havoc upon the Lower East Side in Katrina del Mar’s first film. Filmed “in GlitterVision” on a borrowed 8mm camera, GANG GIRLS’ arch voiceover performances recall 60s JD films, while the filmmaking has the visceral edge of 80s and early 90s experimental and riot grrrl filmmakers. Featuring a climactic oceanside battle and music by Fugazi, Lunagirls and many more.


SURF GANG
Dir. Katrina del Mar, 2005
US, 25 mins
“GREY GARDENS meets THE WARRIORS.” – the filmmaker

Del Mar’s frenetic Rockaway-set sequel led her to cast Kembra Pfahler of glam rock group The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black (the only person she knew who could surf) as a young woman who paddles out and vanishes in the waves, leading her younger sister to start an ultraviolent gang of Ruffnecks.

HELL ON WHEELS GANG GIRLS FOREVER
Dir. Katrina del Mar, 2010
US, 35 mins
ALL WHEELS ALL THE TIME…

A massive ensemble cast brings the Gang Girl trilogy to a cacophonous close. HELL ON WHEELS takes place in a very different New York than GANG GIRLS did in 1999 — this time in HD. The same ribald energy pulses through this third chapter though, as it voyages between roller derbies and motorcycles and bare-fisted brawls.

Special thanks to Katrina del Mar and Kristen Fitzpatrick.


MONDO MAGENTO

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Mondo Magneto: An uncertain eulogy for the Cassette Tape and the never-ending hunt for the media we want (in the form we want it in).


CASSETTE: A DOCUMENTARY MIXTAPE
dir Zack Taylor, 2017
90 min, USA
WEDNESDAY, MAY 2 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MAY 14 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, MAY 26 – 10 PM (Q and A WITH DIRECTOR!)
ONLINE TICKETS HERE
FB EVENT

“In 2011, I read that the term cassette tape was being removed from The Oxford English Dictionary. As a child of the ’80’s I was completely bummed out by this; it was as if one of my favorite rock stars had died.

I decided that someone ought to give the cassette a proper eulogy.It’s difficult to say goodbye to a format that a new generation picked up on, either out of irony, nostalgia, or sheer tangibility. But whatever the reason, audiotapes refused to be killed. Cassette is an investigation into this strange resurgence, led by the medium’s inventor, Lou Ottens.”

Director Zack Taylor is a commercial videographer living in New York City. He studied film at the Newport Film School in Wales. Cassette is his first feature film.Zack began making mixtapes for friends as a teenager. Cassette grew out of a nostalgia not only for the medium, but for the process of compiling music for other people.


SO WRONG THEY’RE RIGHT
dir. Russ Forster, 1995
92 min, USA
MONDAY, MAY 7 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, MAY 17 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, MAY 20 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, MAY 25 – 10:00 PM
ONLINE TICKETS HERE

SO WRONG THEY’RE RIGHT chronicles a 10,000 mile journey around the US in search of “trackers”—fanatical collectors of 8-Track tapes, those funky clunky pre-recorded plastic cartridges from the ’70s.

Russ Forster and Dan Sutherland capture over 20 interviews, brimming with reminiscences, rants, political diatribes, fantasies, fix-it tips, sales pitches, and everything else that defines the skeptical yet inquisitive mind of the 8-Track enthusiast.

More than a film about pop-music nostalgia, it serves as a statement of outrage from a population of consumers who are tired of being told what to consume.

“A deadpan tribute to people who refuse to consider the past as passed.” —Wired Magazine

“A forum to celebrate 8-track culture: the candy-colored Panasonic players, the KACHUNK sound of putting the tape into the player, hunting down a treasured copy of the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks…” —Boston Herald