Author: spectacletheater

NOIRVEMBER IV

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Wave adieu to somber autumn nights & join us in celebrating Noirvember, for our fourth installment, beginning at 5pm and continuing through shadow and fog, into the darkest hours of the evening.

This year’s slate attempts to investigate the diametrical range of the genre through its multitude of disguises. Starring Hollywood’s brightest stars in some of their most inconspicuous roles, this year we honor the b-film and all of its fruitful variations.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18 – 5 PM – ????

FULL DAY PASS – $20
$5 per title (cash at the door)

Note: ONLY ADVANCED FULL DAY PASSES AVAILABLE ONLINE

TICKETS HERE

5:00pm – ??????? ??????? (1954)

We start things off with a Roger Corman produced (& co-conspired) cross-country noir set almost exclusively in broad daylight and starring a certain, woman in the window.

6:30pm –

???? ?????? (1946)

a neglected film noir under the disguise of melodrama starring the once upon time queen of the Warner Bros lot.

8:00pm –  ??????? ?? ???

an uncharacteristic break from the classical period of American film noir to explore a gritty poetic masterwork from Mexico’s golden age of cinema.

10:00pm – ??? ???????? ?????? (1946)

An under-seen moody film noir which updates a classic fairy-tale for the new york art scene of the 40’s, lensed by john alton.

12:00am – ????? ??? ? ???????? ???? (1948)

a sleepytime film noir/horror thriller starring the great Edward G. Robinson in what culminates into a poetic & surrealistic hazy dream.

Screening Pathology (Or, Keep Your Friends Close): Post-Digital Feminisms, Isolated Intimacy & Collective Loneliness

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ONE NIGHT ONLY!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3 – 5 PM
TICKETS HERE

Join us as we take a deep dive into the darkest recesses of the internet. Together with film theorist Andrea Avidad, as well as filmmakers Gabrielle Stemmer and Gala Hernández, Spectacle Theater presents a one-night only investigation of despair and delusion on the internet.

Many films in recent years have tried to make a spectacle of outré online communities by emphasizing their idiosyncrasies. Such projects like FEELS GOOD MAN (2020) and QANON: THE SEARCH FOR Q (2022) have resulted in harmful portraitures of social outcasts, simultaneously catering to viewers’ fantasies about othered demographics and producing distinctly alien, rather than nuanced, representations of incels and similarly radicalized online users. Gabrielle Stemmer’s CLEAN WITH ME (AFTER DARK) and Gala Hernández’s THE MECHANICS OF FLUIDS both employ different means of characterizing the different online communities they choose to depict. Their approach balances structural analysis with compassion, producing a complex picture of the cultural catalysts and systemic pathways that allow these micro-cultures to form.

Our screening of these films will be preceded by a lecture courtesy of Film-Philosophy Award Recipient Andrea Avidad and followed by a remote Q&A with filmmakers Stemmer and Hernández.

CLEAN WITH ME (AFTER DARK)
dir. Gabrielle Stemmer, 2019
France. 21 min.
In English.

In recent years, women across America have recorded themselves cleaning their homes. Their videos have gained popularity online. Intrigued by this phenomenon, Gabrielle Stemmer investigates what inspires these women to document their domestic work in CLEAN WITH ME (AFTER DARK). Her desktop documentary about the viral videos slowly morphs into something unexpected over the course of its short runtime, untangling the many ways in which online customs disregard the plight of content producers.

LA MÉCANIQUE DES FLUIDES (THE MECHANICS OF FLUIDS)
dir. Gala Hernández López, 2022
France. 39 min.
In English.

THE MECHANICS OF FLUIDS charts its inquiry into incel culture around an elusive Reddit poet called AnathemicAnarchist. As the narrator scours the internet in search of AnathemicAnarchist following his sudden disappearance, she learns more about his online community and how it influenced his outlook on life. Using YouTube videos and computer-graphics, Hernández’s film embodies the look-and-feel of the field it explores. Her essayistic venture into the world of incel culture is both troubling and insightful; it reflects the mindset of a filmmaker fully consumed by their subject matter.

 

Special thanks to Andrea Avidad, Gala Hernández, Gabrielle Stemmer, and Emmanuel Precourt Senecal at La Fémis.

 

KILLER KIDS

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The killer kids sub-genre began with the release of the 1956 movie THE BAD SEED and secured its place in the horror canon with CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED four years later. Although the sub-genre never had a definitive golden age, killer children have been a staple in horror cinema for the last seventy years, with notable booms after the success of THE OMEN (1976) and PET SEMATARY (1989).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, since these films frequently break the unwritten rule of not killing children on screen, the killer kids sub-genre is canonically bleak. Parents and adults must decide whether to cross the mortal threshold or let the villains survive. Either way, the audience can expect a nihilistic ending rife with moral compromise.

This November, Spectacle invites you to experience three killer kid movies, SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN (1983), WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? (1976) and MUMSY, NANNY, SONNY AND GIRLY (1970).

SUFFER, LITTLE CHILDREN
dir. Alan Briggs, 1983
United Kingdom. 74 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3 – 11:55PM
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10 – 10 PM
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24 – 11:55PM
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 27 – 7:30 PM

GET YOUR TICKETS!

A mute child arrives at a children’s home and starts terrorizing the other children with her demonic powers.

Written by producer Meg Shanks (who also owned the school that supplied the movie’s child actors), SUFFER, LITTLE CHILDREN is one of the most unforgettable and immersive shot-on-video horror movies in existence. Combining exploitive “true crime” elements with a hallucinatory aesthetic, the movie purports to be a “recreation” of supernatural events that took place in August 1984 at an orphanage in Surrey, England. Whether or not these events are true is a moot point. Banned during the UK’s Video Nasty witch hunt and previously only available via VHS bootlegs, SUFFER, LITTLE CHILDREN is a true bludgeon to the brain — now fully uncut and uncensored for the first time ever.

WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? 
dir. Narciso Ibáñez Serrador. 1976.
Spain. 102 mins.
In English and Spanish.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17 – 11:55PM
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29 – 7:30 PM

GET YOUR TICKETS!

English tourists Tom and Beth take a trip to the remote island of Almanzora off the Spanish coast. They discover there are no adults on the island, only children.

WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? was riddled with distribution problems. In an attempt to sell the movie, producers renamed it multiple times for different regions, including CHILDREN OF THE CORN TORTILLA and TRAPPED. Luckily, the film withstood the test of time and eventually became a cult classic. The film was remade in 2012 as COME OUT AND PLAY.

For this presentation, Spectacle will be showing THE ISLAND OF THE DAMNED cut of the movie. This version was the original release in the US, without the opening ten minutes of child murder documentary footage.

MUMSY, NANNY, SONNY AND GIRLY
dir. Freddie Francis. 1970.
United Kingdom. 102 mins.
In English.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10 – 11:55PM
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30 – 10 PM

GET YOUR TICKETS!

Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly kidnap men and dub them their new friends. These new friends are forced to participate in an elaborate role-playing game, and if they refuse, they are put on trial and “sent to the angels.”

An oddity in the killer kids subgenre, MUMSY, NANNY, SONNY AND GIRLY, deals with young adults role-playing as children. The film is tonally and thematically similar to Jack Hill’s SPIDER BABY (1967), asphyxiating the audience in an unrelenting nightmare of madness and anxiety.

Director Freddy Francis was inspired to write MUMSY, NANNY, SONNY AND GIRLY after visiting the famous Hammer Horror filming location Oakley Court. Francis shot the exteriors of Oakley Court for the film but wished he could have showcased the interiors.

Upon release, MUMSY, NANNY, SONNY AND GIRLY sparked a moral panic in the UK. The press misinterpreted the film as having incestuous undertones, which led theaters to refuse to show it. Luckily, producers rebranded the film as GIRLY and sold it to a US market with moderate success.

MISSION DRIFT

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MISSION DRIFT
dir. Charles de Agustin, 2023
USA. 13 mins.
In English with audio description and open captioning.
ASL interpreter available upon request.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 8 — 7:30 PM
VIDEO FOLLOWED BY OPEN DISCUSSION WITH FILMMAKER, GUESTS AND AUDIENCE
$5 SUGGESTED — NO ONE TURNED AWAY FOR LACK OF FUNDS

TICKETS HERE

Arts workers and their accomplices are invited to join us for a screening and open discussion around Mission Drift, a new film by Charles de Agustin, at Spectacle Theater on Wednesday, November 8, 2023, at 7:30pm.

MISSION DRIFT follows a nonprofit art gallery worker who tries to stay afloat when a horny sadomasochistic philanthropist infiltrates the organization. An experimental essay film tinged with noir and fantasy, the work is driven by research into the sparse history of federal US arts funding since the 1930s and more recent universal basic income trials. The film’s tragic narrative takes aim at how seductive philanthropy can be and points toward the need to constantly reinvent strategies against mechanisms of capture. Various formal strategies in the work also intend to explore the relationships between accessibility, complicity, precarity, and cinema.

Its medium described as “video and discussion,” MISSION DRIFT may only be publicly presented if it is followed by a robust audience discussion on the issues at hand. All guests will be essential parts of the conversation with artist Charles de Agustin, Spectacle volunteers and other guests, rooted in all of our experiences of working in the arts alongside the hosting institution’s specific context. The aim is to expose untapped potential for organizing through the arts, considering what relationship art should have with the state, philanthropy, labor, and social justice today.

Free copies will be provided of a zine of Emily Apter’s essay “The Politics of Cum,” released by Cine Móvil. Inspired by the film, the zine breaks down the artistic and political limitations of NPIC, written with the insider perspective of an arts worker.

Please note that the discussion audio will be recorded, though only an anonymized —with names and other identifying details deleted— text transcript will be used for the artist’s future research purposes.

 

BONI: THE WELCOMING FIRE

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BONI: the welcoming fire ぼに〜迎火
dir. Masaki Hosokawa, 2020
75 mins. Japan.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 6 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12 – 5 PM
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 28 – 7:30 PM

TICKETS HERE

Shot on location in 2020 and long overdue for a stateside release, Masaki Hosokawa’s BONI: the welcoming fire is a hybrid feature that blends allegory and documentary. An ethno-fiction emerges from focal points of traditional song and dance as part of Tokushima, Japan’s annual Bon festival— when beloved spirits return once a year. The film is a story of blissful reunion and memory unaware.

LAST MOVIES

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“Last Movies raises the status of the film programme to that of monumental funerary artwork.”
— Gareth Evans (Adjunct Curator of Moving Image, Whitechapel Gallery)

A durational moving-image experience, film program and parallel publication (Tenement Press, 2023) by Stanley Schtinter, Last Movies remaps the century of cinema according to the final films watched by a selection of its icons, giving an audience the opportunity to see what those who no longer see last saw.

Last Movies is a single-day, multi-venue screening presented in conjunction with Nitehawk Cinema and Light Industry. On November 4, Spectacle will host an afternoon screening of the last film watched by writer Franz Kafka (d. 1924), alongside a compilation of last scenes viewed by 20th-century luminaries as they drew their final breaths.

THE KID
Dir. Charlie Chaplin, 1921
60 mins. USA.
Silent with English intertitles.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4 – 3PM (Tickets for this event will be $10)
SCREENING ON 16mm with LIVE SCORE by DAN ARNÉS and ERIK GUNDEL

TICKETS HERE

“That’s a very energetic, work-obsessed man. There burns in his eyes the flame of despair at the unchangeable condition of the oppressed, yet he does not capitulate to it. Despite the white face and the black eyebrows, he’s not a sentimental Pierrot, nor is he some snarling critic. Chaplin is a technician. He’s the man of a machine world, in which most of his fellow men no longer command the requisite emotional and mental equipment to make the life allotted to them really their own. They do not have the imagination. As a dental technician makes false teeth, so he manufactures aids to the imagination. That’s what his films are. That’s what films in general are.” – Franz Kafka on Charlie Chaplin, from Gustav Janouch’s 1971 memoir “Conversations with Kafka.”

Chaplin’s heartwarming story of a street urchin and his down-and-out protector was the last movie Franz Kafka watched before his death in 1924 from tuberculosis. Where and how he came to watch this 1921 tear-jerker is unclear, but Kafka’s well-documented fondness for Chaplin and his tragic screen persona leaves much to consider.

Screening with:

EXCERPTS FROM LAST MOVIES
Dir. Various
37 mins. USA.

Working from curator Stanley Schtinter’s meticulous list of LAST MOVIES, this cinematic prayer for the dead brings together a rapid-fire succession of final films seen by some of the 20th century’s most luminary figures.

Boris Vian (d. 1959)
I Spit on Your Grave (Michel Gast, 1959 [heart attack during the first minutes of the film’s premiere]) *5m screened*

Sergio Leone (d. 1989)
I Want to Live! (Robert Wise, 1958 [heart attack while watching on television]) 120m *30m screened*

Stanley Kubrick (d. 1999)
Eyes Wide Shut Trailer (Stanley Kubrick, 1999) 1m

COLLAGE NOIR

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“It is important that your investigation ends with the question, rather than the answer.”

Mopping up the carnage left by last month’s SPECTOBER, Spectacle is following up its COLLAGE HORREUR series with COLLAGE NOIR, a selection of brooding, introspective, and nihilistic experimental capers and detective films befitting our annual NOIR-VEMBER marathon and in no short supply of trench coats, cigarette smoke, window shades, urban decay, thievery, betrayal, infidelity, fatalistic monologues, and murder.

Following up on last month’s screening and discussion of THE PHILOSOPHY OF HORROR, Hungarian filmmaker Péter Lichter returns with the North American premiere of THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES, an Agatha Christie adaptation exploding with a phantasmic suturing of early cinema and desktop documentary. Screening with Lichter’s feature is the crime novel and noir film fantasia EXTERIOR NIGHT by Mark Rappaport, who was the subject of a Spectacle retro in 2018. 

Croatian animator Dalibor Barić, whose collage horror shorts graced the theater in October, also returns with ACCIDENTAL LUXURIANCE OF THE TRANSLUCENT WATERY REBUS. Barić’s first feature is a psycho-spelunking paranoic ego-fuck that fuses noir and sci-fi into an experience that can be described in short hand as ALPHAVILLE on DMT. 

We are also delighted to be hosting the work of collage film pioneer Lewis Klahr with his 1963-set crime feature THE PETTIFOGGER, preceded by two shorts: the black and white ENGRAM SEPALS projected on 16mm and the world premiere of THIN RAIN.

As in October, each filmmaker will be tele-present for remote Q&As throughout the month.


THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES
dir. Péter Lichter, 2022
65 mins. Hungary.
In Hungarian with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4 – 5 PM ($10 w/Q&A)
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 28 – 10 PM

TICKETS HERE

Undoubtedly the better of the two films featuring detective Hercule Poirot to screen in the United States this year, Lichter’s latest foray in appropriation filmmaking adapts Agatha Christie’s 1920 murder mystery of the same name through a combination of intermedial elements such as classic silent and early sound films, video games, Excel spreadsheets, Google street views, and other software tools. The result is a dizzying black and white array of overlapping split-screens that simultaneously reconfigure a century’s worth of analog and computational visual artifacts. At times overwhelming by design, this retelling of Poirot’s first case never obscures the grisliness or wit of Christie’s tale.

Lichter will be joining us again for a remote Q&A on Saturday, November 4 after the 5pm screening.

Screening with:

EXTERIOR NIGHT
dir. Mark Rappaport, 1993
36 mins. United States.

A hard-boiled melodrama, EXTERIOR NIGHT is an ironic and sentimental ode to the intoxications of film noir. Shot in color over black and white backdrops from studio classics such as THE BIG SLEEP and STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, a young man explores his dreams to unravel an inter-generational mystery surrounding the death of his elusive gumshoe-turned-mystery novelist grandfather, Biff (David Patrick Kelly).

THE PETTIFOGGER
dir. Lewis Klahr, 2011
65 mins. United States.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – 7:30 PM ($10 w/Q&A)
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 21 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24 – 7:30 PM

TICKETS HERE

“A year in the life of an American gambler and con man circa 1963. A diaristic montage full of glimpses, glances, decaying ephemera and elliptical narrative. An abstract crime film and, like many other crime films involving larceny, a sensorial exploration of the virulence of unfettered capitalism. An impressionistic collage film culled from a wide variety of image and sound sources that fully exploits the hieroglyphic essence of cutouts to ponder what appropriation and stealing have in common. Definitely the longest continuous film I’ve ever created.” —Lewis Klahr

Preceding each screening of the PETTIFOGGER are two of the filmmaker’s other noir-inflected shorts, ENGRAM SEPALS and THIN RAIN, which will receive its world premiere on Saturday, November 11th. This screening will be followed by a remote Q&A moderated by curator, critic, and filmmaker Paul Attard. 

Screening with:

ENGRAM SEPALS
2000. United States.
6 mins. 16mm.

“The dead body remembers. The Tibetan book of the dead meets film noir. An elliptical narrative of adultery and corporate espionage set to a score by Morton Feldman and shot in high contrast B&W. There’s a glimpse of Eternity in those deep, luminous blacks. The title film is from my feature length series ENGRAM SEPALS (Melodramas 1994-2000) which traces a history of American intoxication from World War 2 to the 1970’s.” —Lewis Klahr

THIN RAIN
2023. United States.
15 mins. 

An amnesiac noir and city symphony, Klahr’s first black and white film in almost a decade, contemplates inner and outer voids; an opaque consciousness and the decaying civilization it finds itself within. The film’s trench-coated protagonist is a walking shadow, a lonely silhouette that traverses painted and photographed cityscapes of 20th century New York City. The impressions and atmospheres invoked recall the late Peter B. Hutton’s NEW YORK PORTRAIT, to whom the film is dedicated.

ACCIDENTAL LUXURIANCE OF THE TRANSLUCENT WATERY REBUS
dir. Dalibor Barić, 2020
81 mins. Croatia.
In Croatian with English subtitles.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25 – 5 PM ($10 w/Q&A)
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30 – 7:30 PM

TICKETS HERE

Barić’s first feature-length animated film is the abstract chronicle of a couple, pencil-pusher Martin and conceptual artist Sara, as they attempt to break out of a future dystopian surveillance state. At their heels is the ambivalent Inspector Ambroz, who pushes the case forward despite a mounting existential crisis. Relentlessly polychromatic and hallucinatory, the film’s modulated, fragmented images and cryptic voice over narrations recall the often murky and worryingly uncanny qualities of AI-generated art. In line with noir’s signature pessimism, REBUS imagines a world where the deepest recesses of the human mind have all been thoroughly externalized and everything rendered predictable. A hope granted in viewing the film is that at least some creativity can be found from excavating the cultural wastes.

Special thanks to the enormous generosity of Dalibor Barić, Lewis Klahr, and Péter Lichter. Additional thanks to Paul Attard and Nate Dorr.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ARMENIA IN POST-PANIC: The Films of Maria Saakyan

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Independent Armenia—living in the perpetual limbo of post-soviet Asia—hasn’t been able to escape an identity defined by past atrocities and aggressions suffered. Today’s generations are left reconciling the uneasy present they’ve been handed while dreaming of a future that doesn’t seem to exist. Young musicians in the budding scene in Yerevan have coined a genre that describes this suffocating state of being that also seeks to resist against the odds: Post-Panic. If ever there were a filmmaker to embody the Post-Panic spirit, it’s the late Maria Saakyan, whose premature passing in early-2018 left us mourning yet another lost Armenian future.

With tensions rising in the region yet again and another genocide of Armenians threatening, Spectacle presents this COVID-delayed retrospective of some of Maria’s films, all of which embody a rather materialist hope against a more existential dread.

From her early shorts to the (few) features she was able to make, a consistently haunting ethereality seeps in the muted tones of her images, exploring a matter-of-fact type of depression that finds comfort in objects and the body. Occasionally surreal, her work subtly confronts the disappointments of generations past, never forgetting their hardships all the while. Though Saakyan draws from the soviet masters that came before (Tarkovsky, Paradjanov, et al.), she was able to develop a raw yet pointed style that cements her as perhaps the most important Armenian filmmaker since Don Askarian.

Spectacle would like to share a few organizations that are accepting donations in light of the ongoing and escalating aggressions in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Any help provided to the affected indigenous Armenians is deeply appreciated. *linktree/orgs to come*


MAYAK (LIGHTHOUSE)
(Маяк)
dir. Maria Saakyan, 2006
Armenia/Russia. 78 min.
In Russian with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – 5 PM
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20 – 7:30 PM

TICKETS HERE

Saakyan’s MAYAK tells a distinctly Hayq (and unfortunately very timely) tale of living through a one-sided war. A young woman, Lena, attempts to convince her grandparents to escape to Russia, only to find herself trapped by invading forces. And yet, life goes on. What does it mean to live—and be alive—in this existence? Gorgeous, somber images, object comfort, and a tragically accepted melancholy coalesce into the defining text of Maria’s style, also the first Armenian feature to be completed by a woman.


I’M GOING TO CHANGE MY NAME (ALAVERDI)
(Это не я)
dir. Maria Saakyan, 2012
Armenia/Russia. 103 min.
In Russian with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 15 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 26 – 5 PM

TICKETS HERE

Set in the small North Armenian town of Alaverdi, I’M GOING TO CHANGE MY NAME sees the neglected, aimless, isolated 14-year-old Evridika experiencing the first extremes of adolescent emotion as she frequents the chat rooms of an online “suicide club” and grows closer to one of its mysterious members. Partially based on the nine-part song ‘Sharakan’ (which Evridika’s absent mother is also touring with her choir), partially based on disoriented fragments of Eurydice’s imprisonment and Oedopis’ tragedy, Maria’s haunted film examines youth’s connection to reality through screens and lo-fi cell phone footage. A quintessential film in the “depression as boredom” canon, is it possible to exist if no one sees you? If no one touches you?

 

DECADES OF DEBRIS (fka BENJI’S WORLD)

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This fall, Spectacle embarks on a mission nearly ten years in the making: honoring the opinions of one Benjamin Pequet, the mild-mannered Belgian you may have seen sitting between two craft IPAs at your favorite (or least-favorite) screening. Of course Benjamin is not the only Spectacle diehard, but his years of loyal service and stubborn refusal to cross the patron-volunteer threshold have made him a kind of arbiter of taste (or human Richter scale) for Spectacle programming.

After months of feverish discussion with Benjamin, we’re thrilled to kick off this monthly carte blanche series with a special one-night Friday the 13th event honoring the enigmatic Twitch streamer and bricolage-r of the audiovisual unknown who calls himself FORGOTTEN_VCR.

Then, later in October, join Benjamin for two films by Soda Kazuhiro, building off of our 2019 retrospective: his breakout 2008 documentary MENTAL, followed by the little-screened sequel documentary ZERO. Both shows will be followed by a remote Q+A with Soda and his producer Kashiwagi Kiyoko, guided if not moderated by Benjamin Pequet.

AN EVENING WITH FORGOTTEN_VCR

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13 – 7:30PM and 10PM followed by remote Q+A with FORGOTTEN_VCR
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

GET TICKETS HERE!

(These events are $10.)
Stay inside. Watch TV. 
 
The mysterious St. Louis, MO-based university professor FORGOTTEN_VCR (who prefers to just go by “VCR”) came to Benjamin Pequet’s attention during the COVID-19 lockdowns of spring/summer 2020, when he began showcasing original music videos (which cut an entire feature film down to fit a specific song) on his Twich stream, as well as homemade mixtapes drawing from abandoned VHSes. Here’s the thing: VCR edits his work entirely on VCR. Here’s how he explained it to PC Gamer in 2020: “When I have this VCR and you hear it and see the little icon that says ‘play’ and ‘stop’ and all that, it immediately makes it feel like ‘I have to be here. This is on a tape.’ It’s part of the look of the stream.”

Ninja cinema, fossilized technology, toy commercials, moment of impossible promise from the dawn of the computer age: it’s all here. For ONE NIGHT ONLY, join Benjamin on a brain-breaking odyssey into this misunderstood and much-neglected analog cosmos that is FORGOTTEN_VCR.

MENTAL
(精神)
dir. Soda Kazuhiro, production associate Kashiwagi Kiyoko . 2008.
135 mins. Japan.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28 – 5 PM with Soda Kazuhiro and Kashiwagi Kiyoko for remote Q+A

ONE NIGHT ONLY!

(This event is $10.)

GET TICKETS HERE!

After being diagnosed with “burnout” at the end of too many grueling work weeks, Soda became fascinated by alternative means of mental health treatment. MENTAL is a portrait of an outpatient psychiatric clinic called Chorale Okayama, founded by one Dr. Masatomo Yamamoto – the protagonist of the film, an elderly doctor working for essentially nothing. Chorale Okayama serves people with incurable mental disorders, who Yamamoto essentially believes can be nevertheless helped by a sympathetic community of listeners.Soda structured MENTAL so that viewers would will feel like they’re stepping into the clinic just like he did for the first time, unaware of what he would find. It’s not the easiest film in his body of work to watch but is nevertheless an act of courage, looking beyond what the filmmaker calls “the invisible curtain” that separates the well from the unwell (a questionable dichotomy to begin with.) As Soda speaks with Yamamoto’s patients about their lives, struggles, hallucinations and dreams, MENTAL becomes an extraordinary cross-examination of taboo in Japan, to say nothing of the accumulated costs of trauma and, finally, the documentary form’s inherent potential for compassion.

 

ZERO
(精神0)

dir. Soda Kazuhiro, production associate Kashiwagi Kiyoko. 2019.
128 mins. Japan.
In Japanese with English subtitles.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28 – 8PM followed by remote Q+A with Soda Kazuhiro and Kashiwagi Kiyoko
ONE NIGHT ONLY!
This event is $10.

GET TICKETS HERE!

At the age of 82, Dr. Yamamoto  is suddenly retiring from the clinical field, causing a lot of anxiety for many of his patients who have been relying on him as their lifeline for many years. Now he needs to spend time to care for his wife Yoshiko. In early spring, Dr. Yamamoto and Yoshiko embark on a new life, facing challenges they never faced before.

“Shooting Dr. Yamamoto, a self-described workaholic, I immediately felt that for him, mental healthcare was his life. His work defined who Masatomo Yamamoto was. It gave him a reason to live. And he was about to let that go. When Yamamoto becomes just a human being without a title or role as a doctor, how will he live? Being a workaholic myself, I was really curious. The path he is about to take is the one I will need to take one day. It is actually a universal path that many people must experience some day.

While I was shooting Yamamoto with such a point of view, another protagonist emerged: Yoshiko Yamamoto, his wife. The film turned out to be about the couple rather than the doctor. As a result, I unexpectedly made a film about ‘pure love.'” – Kazuhiro Soda

SHRIEK SHOW XII

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SHRIEK SHOW XII

It’s that time again! Come on down to Spectacle Theater for the TWELFTH (!!) EDITION of our annual SHRIEK SHOW MARATHON!

From noon through midnight, we’ll present a smattering of our favorite hidden gems of horror movies, ranging from high budget ghost stories to the cheapest SOV slasher garbage you’ve ever seen. Think of it like a transcontinental multi-decade 14 hour Blood Brunch session, curated for maximum brain shreddage.

Starting SATURDAY, 10/14 at NOON – miss it if you dare!!!!

APPROXIMATE START TIMES:

MOVIE 1 – 12PM

MOVIE 2 – 2PM

MOVIE 3 – 3:45PM

MOVIE 4 – 5:30PM

MOVIE 5 – 6:45PM

MOVIE 6 – 8:00PM

MOVIE 7 – 10PM

MOVIE 8 – MIDNIGHT

Trailer and hints below! Day passes $25 / individual screenings $5 each

ADVANCE DAY PASSES


12:00 PM
XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX XXX XXXX XXXXXXXX
dir. XX XXXXXX, XXXX XXXX, 1989
China. 93 min.
In Cantonese with English subtitles.

We kick off with our gentlest selection of the day, a rare big budget mainland Chinese horror film that has the energy of a Saturday morning cartoon (and some rudimentary effects that, lord help me, managed to spook this jaded programmer!).

Set during the production of a film, a sound engineer and lead actress stumble on the ghost of a murdered girl while recording foley in a suitably abandoned mansion. Features the cutest ghost you’ve ever seen, an action montage of sound equipment being assembled, and a rousing MIDI rendition of Also sprach Zarathustra.


2:00 PM
XXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXX
dir. XXXX XXXXXX, 1983
United States. 82 min.
In English.

Next up, a recently unearthed gem directed by one of Fassbinder’s protege’s.

Follows a small town that’s been cursed since they burned witches at the stake in the 1700s. When three modern women move to town, the delicate balance is upset, and buried resentments come to the surface.

An early 80s film with a surprisingly progressive POV, and a delicious tale of supernatural revenge – bit of a slow burn but features some great practical effects and a few notable face melts, as well as a supporting turn by one of the greatest character actors to have ever lived.


3:45 PM
XXXXXXXX
dir. XXXX XXXXXX, 2005
United States. 94 min.
In English.

Our third offering of the day is an underseen late career high point from one of horror’s most celebrated auteurs.

The synopsis is about as stock as it comes – family moves to new place to start over (this time a mortuary in a small town in California), spooky things start happening – and it may start a little rough, but once it gets cooking, it’s a funhouse ride for the ages set in the industrial rot of America in decline.

Full of disgusting splatter effects, jump scares galore, unhinged performances, and a killer ending. Not to be missed!


5:30 PM
XXXXX XXXXXX
dir. XXXXXXXXX XXXXXX
Japan. 54 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

Our fourth film of the day is a short one, clocking in at just under an hour, but it manages to pack in quite a bit in its limited runtime.

The plot loosely follows two photographers investigating rumors of paranormal phenomenon in a forest when one of them is ‘infected’ by a mythical woodland creature, bringing it home to his unsuspecting wife…

Lands somewhere between a live action anime and the tiki doll segment of Trilogy of Terror, and packs more gore and squirms into 54 minutes than some movies twice its length.


6:45 PM
XXXX XXXXX
dir. XXXX XXXXX XXXX, 1992
United States. 70 min.
In English

It’s almost dark, and it’s time for our first sleazo SOV of the day – one of over a dozen films by this no-budget slauteur (sorry).

This film takes place over the course of one night – it’s the last day of high school, and local punching bag and universally hated nerd Jimmy is about to get pranked hard. Shortly after recovering, Jimmy, a chemistry wizard, whips himself up a rage-potion that gives him telekinetic powers (naturally), and starts murdering his tormentors one by one.

Starring the oldest high schoolers you’ve ever seen + featuring some hilarious and inventive home brew kills, plus a hilarious “twist” ending and a killer lo-fi metal soundtrack tying the whole thing together.


8:00 PM
XXXXXXXXXXXX
dir. XXXXX X XXXXXXXX, 1982
Canada. 85 min.
In English

Regular Spectacle attendees may recognize our sixth film of the night from the Blood Brunch trailer – a Canadian video-nasty set in New England, where a hot young reverend (played by a notable 70s soap opera star) and his family move into an abandoned historic house with a bad history to keep it from being demolished after two local kids are killed in a delightfully gruesome cold open.

Featuring a surprisingly high body count and fantastic effects, as well as a great Goblin-aping score, this is an underrated gem. Fun fact, it was such a hit on video in the UK that it went on to be released theatrically there 2 years later under a different title!

10:00 PM
XXXXXXXX: XXX XXXXXX XXXXX
dir. XXXX XXXXXXXXX, 1997
Germany. 106 min.
In German with English Subtitles

Seven features in – reality is a long forgotten dream. The outside world is a myth. There is only the shrieking and the show of shrieks.

A splatter masterpiece by one of the best no-budget gorehounds ever to have lived. Easily the highest body count of the night by several orders of magnitude, the plot loosely follows a dysfunctional family and their teenage son who’s having strange dreams. The teen soon digs up a strange book and potion in his garden, awakening a demon and an army of the undead in the process.


MIDNIGHT
XX XXXX XXXX XXXXX
dir. XXXXX XXXXXX, 1999
United States. 77 min.
In English

We’ve done it. We’ve made it through seven films. There is only one, the final reckoning, our midnight special.

While this final flick can’t hope to hold a candle to the bloodshed of the 10pm, it more than earns its keep in pure gusto and go-for-broke DIY energy.

A New England shot-on-mini-DV gem featuring vampires, angels, demons, incredible t-shirts and the best possum appearance in cinema history. Think FROM DUSK TIL DAWN made with the budget and enthusiasm level of a backyard wrestling video (the new blu-ray release features an archival blooper reel titled “scenes that hurt”), unhinged lore drops, and some of the best and most inventive gore no-money can buy.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, SHRIEKERS!!!!