Author: Zach Fleming

ROTTEN LOVE REDUX

Posted on by Zach Fleming

Banner image from REMOVED (Naomi Uman, 1999)

Rotten Love Redux tips its hat to the days of theatrical porn-going with a celebration of tactility, eroticism and utter decay. The program features 16mm porn and erotic films, each which incorporates decomposed or manipulated film stock in its depiction of erotic femme bodies. Working with both found and original footage, the filmmakers in this program employ a wide range of analog techniques—soaking, solarization, painting, scratching, burning—to alter celluloid’s chemical make-up and add a material element to the onlooker’s gaze. Treating film stock as continuous with the human body, Rotten Love Redux revels in the entangled acts of sex, fetish, and image-making.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11 – 7:30PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

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TRT: 69 mins.
Full program listed below.

ENDURING ORNAMENT
dir. MM Serra & Josh Lewis, 2015
14 mins. USA.
Digital file courtesy of The Film-Makers’ Cooperative.

Sourced from five 16mm filmstrips found outside of a closing adult bookstore on New York’s former 42nd Street sex district. Making use of a salvaged contact printer and chemical alterations applied directly to the subsequent prints, these storied images transform into a primordial celebration of bodily spectacle. Threaded throughout the film is the exuberant compound word poetry of Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven, giving voice to an immediate and transgressive consciousness.

FUSES
dir. Carolee Schneemann, 1965
30 mins. USA.
*brand new* 16mm print courtesy of Canyon Cinema.

“Pornography is an anti-emotional medium, in content and intent, and its lack of emotion renders it wholly ineffective for women. This absence of sensuality is so contrary to female eroticism that pornography becomes, in fact, anti-sexual. Schneemann’s film, by contrast, is devastatingly erotic, transcending the surfaces of sex to communicate its true spirit, its meaning as an activity for herself and, quite accurately, women in general. Significantly, Schneemann conceives the film as shot through the eyes of her cat – the impassive observer whose view of human sexuality is free of voyeurism and ignorant of morality.” —B. Ruby Rich, Chicago Art Institute

REMOVED
dir. Naomi Uman, 1999
7 mins. USA.
16mm print courtesy of Canyon Cinema.

Using a piece of found European porn from the 1970s, nail polish and bleach, this film creates a new pornography, one in which the woman exists only as a hole, an empty, animated space.

SOLITARY ACTS #4
dir. Nazlı Dinçel, 2015
8 mins. USA.
*brand new* 16mm print courtesy of Canyon Cinema and the artist.

Wittnerchrome, Exacto Knife, Typewriter

The filmmaker films herself masturbating the object of debate. She hears others claim her body, her habits: those in her conservative surroundings as a child.

THE COLOR OF LOVE
dir. Peggy Ahwesh, 1994
10 mins. USA.
16mm print courtesy of The Film-Makers’ Cooperative.

Ahwesh subjects an apparently found pornographic film to coloring, optical printing and general fragmentation; the source material threatens to virtually collapse under the beautiful violence of her filmic treatment. What emerges is a portrait at once nostalgic and horrible: the degraded image, locked in symbiotic relation with an image of degradation.

Rotten Love Redux is curated by Emily Apter. The first iteration of this program took place at the Film-Makers’ Cooperative on February 13, 2019.

Prismatic Ground is a film festival centered on experimental documentary. Its inaugural edition was hosted virtually from April 8-18, 2021, in partnership with Maysles Documentary Center and Screen Slate, and presented with support from Canyon Cinema, Icarus Films, Video Data Bank, and Microscope Gallery. Over 6,700 unique visitors logged on from around the world to watch work by 70 filmmakers across a period of 11 days. Prismatic Ground was founded by Inney Prakash.

NEW YORK NINJA

Posted on by Zach Fleming

NEW YORK NINJA
dirs. John Liu and Kurtis Spieler, 1984/2021
93 mins. United States
In English.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18 – MIDNIGHT
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20 – 5PM
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23 – 10PM
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26 – MIDNIGHT

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John is just an average man working as a sound technician for a New York City news station, until one day his pregnant wife is brutally murdered after witnessing the kidnapping of a young woman in broad daylight. Turning to the police for help, John soon learns that the city is overrun with crime and the police are too busy to help. Dressing as a white ninja, John takes to the streets as a sword wielding vigilante hell bent on cleaning up the streets of the city he once loved by ridding it of muggers, pickpockets, rapists, and gang members. However, in John’s quest for justice, he soon finds himself the target of every criminal in the city, including a mysterious villain known only as the Plutonium Killer. Will John survive to become the hero that New York City so desperately needs?

Originally directed by and starring martial arts actor John Liu (The Secret Rivals, Invincible Armor) in his only American production, New York Ninja was filmed entirely on 35mm in 1984, but the project was abandoned during production resulting in all original sound materials, scripts, and treatments going missing. 35 years later, Vinegar Syndrome acquired the original unedited camera negative and painstakingly constructed and completed the film. Enlisting the voice talents of genre favorites: Don “The Dragon” Wilson (Bloodfist, Whatever it Takes), Linnea Quigley (Return of the Living Dead, Nightmare Sisters), Michael Berryman (The Hills have Eyes, Auntie Lee’s Meat Pies), Vince Murdocco (Night Hunter, LA Wars), Matt Mitler (The Mutilator, Battle for the Lost Planet), Leon Isaac Kennedy (Lone Wolf McQuade, Penitentiary), Ginger Lynn Allen (The Devil’s Rejects, Vice Academy), and Cynthia Rothrock (China O’Brien, Martial Law) Vinegar Syndrome is extremely proud to present this truly one of kind film experience. Restored in 4K from the original camera elements, New York Ninja is finally available in all of its ridiculous over-the-top glory for the first time ever after spending nearly four decades in film obscurity.

ROCKUARY

Posted on by Zach Fleming

TWO FILMS BY MICKEY REESE

Rockuary returns to the Goth Bodega with a double-bill from Oklahoma City-based auteur Mickey Reece! Dubbed “the Soderbergh of the Sticks” by Laser Blast Film Society’s Peter Kuplowsky, Reece’s singularly independent approach to genre filmmaking remains criminally underseen. For fans of last year’s Spectacle in Exile retro of the overlooked auteur, this is a rare opportunity to experience two gems in his rockin’ oeuvre.

Alien
Dir. Mickey Reece, 2017
80 min. USA.
In English

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 3 – 7:30PM
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 9 – 7:30PM
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 15 – 10PM
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26 – 10PM

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A mythic portrait of Elvis Presley (Jacob Snovel) and those in his orbit — particularly his wife Priscilla (Cate Jones) — during the weeks that led to his television comeback special in 1968. Haunted by surreal visions and ridden with self-doubt, the listless King of Rock ‘n Roll quarrels with his management, friends and family on the Graceland estate before a sudden tabloid claim of a bastard son sends him on an existential road trip.

From there, writer/director Mickey Reece conjures an entrancing journey that ruminates on the enigma of celebrity, the profundity of progeny, and the anxieties of art, while Joe Cappa’s stark black and white cinematography envelops the outstanding ensemble cast in a dreamlike glow that is unlike any Elvis flick you’ve ever encountered.

Suedehead
dir. Mickey Reece, 2015
78 min. USA.
In English

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 3 – 10PM
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 6 – 5:00PM
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 9 – 10PM
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26 – 7:30PM

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Kenny Walker (Mason Giles) has a ten-step plan to get his life back together following a decade of jail time, but best laid plans go awry for the aspiring musician when he discovers that his girlfriend has moved on, his band has jumped scenes, and the only job his doting mother (Brenda Stacey) was able to get him is a security shift at a decrepit shopping mall under the supervision of a straight-laced square (Jacob Snovel). When a local mobster (John Selvidge), impressed by Kenny’s criminal record, offers a mysterious opportunity, the jaded ex-con is confronted with a moral dilemma that risks him losing everything all over again. One of Mickey Reece’s most acerbic comedies, SUEDEHEAD’s quirky trajectory is rife with hilarious digressions and endearingly vivid characters.

A NOITE DO ESPANTALHO (THE NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW)
dir. Sérgio Ricardo, 1974
92 min. Brazil.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 2 – 7:30PM
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10- 10:00PM
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 15 – 7:30PM

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A NOITE DO ESPANTALHO (THE NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW) – Sérgio Ricardo, 1974 from Spectacle on Vimeo.

In the miserable Northeastern Brazil, a ruthless land Baron wants to throw a poor farming community out of their land. They unite in an attempt to overthrow the Baron and win back their freedom.

One of the zaniest Brazilian musicals is directed by one of the greatest film composers of Brazilian cinema. The film played the NYFF in 1974, but has since received little attention outside Brazil, where it has become a kind of cult hit over the last 20 years. The music is wonderful, and the campy aesthetics feel like nothing out of Brazilian cinema from this period.

Special thanks to Cinelimite & Marina Lutfi

GLASTONBURY FAYRE
dir. Peter Neal & Nicolas Roeg, 1971
86min. United States.
In English.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 2 – 10PM
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25 – 7PM (ZOOM Q&A With Peter Neal)  *this event is $10

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Directed by Peter Neal and Nicolas Roeg (DON’T LOOK NOW, INSIGNIFICANCE), GLASTONBURY FAYRE was the first film made about the Glastonbury Music Festival in the summer of 1971 featuring performances by Terry Reid, Traffic, Melanie & others. Don’t be fooled though, as the real stars of the film are the attendees who blissfully dance to the music (often in the nude), organize mystical lectures, and indulge in various psychedelics, searching for grace in their utopian playground while the summer of love fades further into the rearview. Roeg & Neal’s impressionistic time capsule unravels like an elegy to the counterculture while also functioning as a study of performance, performance art, and hippiedom.

Special Thanks to Screenbound UK & Peter Neal

TREDICI BACCI LIVE AT TV EYE
dirs. Simon Hanes & Gabriel Garcia, 2021
57 mins, USA

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 5 – 10PM
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 8 – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12 – 5PM
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 16 – 10PM

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Tredici Bacci, New York’s premier 15-piece soundtrack-pop orchestra, draws a great deal of inspiration from the grand tradition of Italian film, specifically the luxe, mondo B-movies made circa 1960-80. Fans will recall their incredible day-long film marathon in September 2019, when the group’s bandleader and composer, Simon Hanes, treated audiences to a slate of unforgettable Italian pulp pictures.

Now Tredici Bacci returns for a special Rockuary premiere of their first concert film – the next best thing to a live show! On October 28, 2021, the singular-sounding ensemble took to the stage at Queens venue TV Eye and brought the house down. With the cameras rolling, Tredici Bacci brought a completely maniacal hour of musical insanity to the gathered.

Don’t miss the big sounds of Burt Bacharach, free improvisation, operatic screaming, proto-minimalism, and British prog from one of New York’s most exciting live acts.

ANTI-VALENTINES

Posted on by Zach Fleming


D’AMORE SE VIVE
(WE LIVE OF LOVE)
dir. Silvano Agosti, 1984
93 mins. Italy.
In Italian with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4 – 10PM
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13 – 5PM
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 19 – 5PM
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 24 – 10PM
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26 – 3PM w/REMOTE DIRECTOR Q&A! (This event is $10.)

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First broadcast on Italian television and never officially released in the United States, D’AMORE SI VIVE is an object lesson in the art of the conversational (not to be confused with “talking head”) documentary.
Consistently audible behind the camera but never appearing onscreen, director Silvano Agosti conducts wide-ranging interviews about love and its manifestations with: a priest’s daughter who was unable to orgasm until long after she got married, a precocious (and frequently hilarious) eight-year-old boy, a middle-aged ex-sex worker, and two trans women with radically different life stories. Out of hundreds of candidates, these interviewees were chosen for their unique observations on love and sex, as well as their willingness to open up to Agosti, resulting in harrowing, unpredictable and moving results. Agosti is a fearless interloper, and his talent for probing into desire, trauma, denial, repression, family and fantasy – as well as to receive criticism in return – makes for an intense viewing experience, guaranteed to get under your skin in a matter of minutes (if not seconds.)

“I screened D’AMORE SI VIVE at Teatro Regio in Parma, which is the shrine of official culture. And when I left the theater I was met by the DIGOS [the General Investigations and Special Operations Division of the Italian police]. A gentleman from the police force told me, ‘Mr. Agosti, your film is under arrest.’ I offered him a DVD of the film and I told him, ‘Well, if it has to be kidnapped, kidnap it.’ ‘We are not allowed. You must hand it over to us.’ Curiously and fortunately, the judge had seen the film twice in theaters and considered it to be an important film. I always operate from within a kind of catalyst that some people, in bad faith, refer to as ‘provocation,’ but that I prefer to define as ‘stimulation.’ As Vladimir Mayakovsky said: ‘Cinema is an athlete. Cinema is the bearer of ideas. Cinema modernizes literature but cinema is sick. The industry threw a handful of gold coins in its eyes, skilled entrepreneurs with tearful or violent stories deceive people.'” – Silvano Agosti, in conversation with Adelita Husni Bey

Please be advised: this film contains a disturbing reference to suicide, as well as a historically controversial scene where a minor is asked about masturbation. Viewer discretion is advised.

ANTES, O VERÃO
(BEFORE, THE SUMMER)
dir. Gerson Tavares, 1968
80 min. Brazil.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 6 – 7:30PM
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10 – 7:30PM
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22 – 10:00PM

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Two of the greatest actors in the history of Brazilian cinema (Jardel Filho and Norma Bengell) pair together in a tale of doomed-love influenced by American film noir. ANTES, O VERÃO (1968) was considered a lost film until it was rescued by film archivist Rafael de Luna Friere who managed to restore the film through government funding in Rio. Since its re-discovery, the film has had an impact on reshaping what scholars/cinephiles think about 60s Brazilian cinema, which had evident occupations beyond the revolutionary styles and ponderings of Cinema Novo. Spectacle Theater is pleased to collaborate with Cinelimite on the first ever US screening of one of the most lyrically haunting Brazilian films of the 60s in a brand new DCP.

Special thanks to Cinelimite, Rafael de Luna Freire, & Rodrigo Tavares.

THE SCAR
(แผลเก่า)
dir. Cherd Songsri, 1977
133 mins. Thailand.
In Thai with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 5 – 7:30PM
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13 – 7:30PM
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17 – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26 – 5PM

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Taking place largely in the Thai rice paddies of the 1930s, Cherd Songsri’s screenplay follows Kwan (Sorapong Chatree) and Riam (Nantana Ngaograjang), two young farmers descended of warring tribal chiefs. Instead of permitting her to keep seeing Kwan, Riam’s father sends her to Bangkok where she is sold into slavery, only to be adopted by an sympathic yet controlling aristocrat who transforms her into a surrogate daughter, complete with western-style clothes and an arranged, or at least heavily suggested, fiancee. The inevitable return of Riam to her home village means seeing Kwan again, reigniting the unrequited flame of teenage love, and setting off a chain of events that can only end in tragedy.

THE SCAR was the highest grossing film in Thai history upon its 1977 release, and occasioned a remake in 2002; pulse-pounding, saturated in color and sweeping in scope, it’s an unabashedly emotional epic comparable to those of David Lean or Sergei Bondarchuk. These will be THE SCAR’s first public screenings in the United States since the Thai Film Archive premiered their 4K restoration at the Museum of Modern Art in 2020.

Special thanks to Kong Rithdee and Sanchai Chotirosseranee (Thai Film Archive.)

ABERRATION
dir. Tim Boxell, 1997
93 min. New Zealand.
In English.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 1 – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 19 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25 – MIDNIGHT

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“Where civilization ends… the nightmare begins!”

The wildest snowed-in creature feature from New Zealand that you’ve never heard of, ABERRATION follows a woman named May, hiding out in a remote cabin for unknown reasons, who has a meet-cute with a nature field researcher investigating the strange extinction of small animals and insects in the area.

ABERRATION feels like a particularly gnarly made-for-TV movie (and we mean that as a compliment), jumping between romantic comedy and good ol’ fashioned splatter. ABERRATION also features an extremely Nineties soundtrack by Plan 9 and a few wild shifts in tone.

OLIVIA
(aka A TASTE OF SIN)
dir. Ulli Lommel, 1983
85 min. United States.
In English.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 5 – MIDNIGHT
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 8 – 10PM
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11 – MIDNIGHT
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 27 – 7:30PM

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“This, being one of Lommel’s most obscure efforts, is quite possibly his best.” – Zachary Paul, Bloody Disgusting

An offbeat highlight in the fascinating career of Fassbinder collaborator / exploitation auteur Ulli Lommel (THE BOOGEYMAN, THE DEVONSVILLE TERROR), OLIVIA finds a distinctive blend of slasher, erotic thriller and straightforward sleaze, seasoned with touches of semi-surrealism.

As a child, Olivia (Suzanna Love) witnessed the murder of her streetwalking mother at the hands of an angry john. As an adult, her mother’s ghost demands Olivia avenge her death by seducing and slaying men! While disposing of a body near the London Bridge, Olivia meets a friendly American who aims to dismantle and move the bridge to Arizona — setting off a series of increasingly strange events, and a lot more bloodshed.

SUKKUBUS – DEN TEUFEL IM LEIB
dir. Georg Tressler, 1989
80 min. Germany.
In German with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 1 – 10PM
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12 – MIDNIGHT
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17 – 10PM

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SUKKUBUS tells the story of three cattle herders living in isolation in the Alps, sworn to a life of piety as they tend to their flock. As ‘baser’ instincts and temptations take hold on a drunken night, they build a makeshift sex doll.

During their encounter, the sex doll takes on a life of its own and soon begins to hunt the men, one by one.

Easily the horniest (and weirdest) movie about herdsmen ever to come out of Germany, Spectacle is proud to present a beautiful remaster of this new Anti-Valentine Classic.

Special Thanks to Mondo Macabro.

Content warning: sexual assault, dead cow butchery

THE PILL

Posted on by Zach Fleming

The Pill
Dir. Franco Clarke
81 mins., 2021, USA

FRIDAY, 2/11 – 10PM
SATURDAY, 2/12 – 7:30PM WITH Q&A! (this event is $10)
FRIDAY, 2/18 – 10PM
SUNDAY, 2/27 – 5PM WITH Q&A! (this event is $10)

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Filmmaker Franco Clarke’s feature debut The Pill premiered at the 2021 Indie Memphis Film Festival, where it nabbed a much-deserved award for Best Narrative Screenplay. Now Spectacle is excited to bring Clarke’s darkly comedic, deeply poignant dystopian family sci-fi to New York!

Clarke’s family portrait follows the Brooklyn-based Burdens – father Stanley, mother Monica, and their son Jeremy – as they navigate their respective day-to-days of a corporate boardroom, culinary academy, and a tony private school. As the only black executive at his job, Stanley is on the verge of a mental breakdown. That is, until he gets ahold of “The Pill”, a mind-altering drug that shields him from racism throughout the day with an eight-hour dose of soothing R&B. When Stanley offers Jeremy a supply of his own, the family’s tenuous bubble is thrown into turmoil.

Spectacle is thrilled to present the NYC theatrical premiere of THE PILL.

A BLACK RIFT BEGINS TO YAWN

Posted on by Zach Fleming

A BLACK RIFT BEGINS TO YAWN
dir. Matthew Wade, 2021
102 min. USA
In English

FRIDAY, 2/4 – 7:30PM WITH REMOTE Q&A! (this event is $10)
SATURDAY, 2/12 – 10PM
SATURDAY, 2/19 – 10PM
FRIDAY, 2/25 – 10PM WITH REMOTE Q&A! (this event is $10)

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A BLACK RIFT BEGINS TO YAWN (Matthew Wade, 2021) from Spectacle on Vimeo.

Two scientists come into possession of their recently-deceased professor’s set of cassette tapes. As the former classmates dig into the recordings, they begin to feel memory, time and their identities slip into obscurity.

A no-budget feature filmed entirely in Idaho by a small group of friends, A Black Rift Begins to Yawn is a tone poem that drifts through perceptions of identity, one’s place in the universe, and how we contextualize ourselves and those around us. It follows two former classmates-turned-scientists who dig back into the mysterious work of a former professor after he has left them his archives: tapes that may contain recordings of ancient signals from beyond the stars.

The film premiered at Slamdance ’21, where it took home an Honorable Mention from the jury who noted the film’s strong esthetic choices and specifically the collaboration between director, Matthew Wade and first-time cinematographer, Lila Streicher. It also won best Pacific Northwest Film at the Tacoma Film Festival and was the feature film selected to screen at the first live event back at NewFilmmakers Los Angeles in January 2022.

Matthew Wade is an illustrator, animator, filmmaker & musician from the Northwest United States. He studied Classical Animation at Vancouver Film School before working as a freelance commercial animator in LA for brands such as Footlocker, Vans, Apple, Target, SyFy Channel, Whole Foods, Patagonia, the NFL, and on music videos for the bands Good Times Ahead (formerly G.T.A.), Brockhampton, and more.

Matthew’s short films have premiered in Oscar-qualifying festival competitions including Slamdance (4 times) and San Francisco International Film Festival, as well as having screened around the world, including ExGround, Alchemy Film & Arts, Oak Cliff Film Festival, Maryland Film Festival, Sun Valley Film Festival, GIRAF, and at the Hollywood Arclight Cinema’s (R.I.P) Slamdance Presents series.

Matthew’s work has been covered in Filmmaker Magazine, Film Threat, Screen Anarchy, NoBudge, Cartoon Brew, Hammer to Nail, Brooklyn Magazine, Horror Buzz, The Journal of Religion & Film, Moviemaker Magazine, and more.

Matthew currently lives with his wife/producing partner, Sara Lynch, in the Pacific Northwest, USA.