EPHEMERA: WHAT WAS NEW YORK?
1939-1969, TRT: 90m, Color/B&W, USA.
MONDAY, MAY 13 – 8:00 PM TUESDAY, MAY 28 – 8:00 PM
As one of the most characteristically diverse places on the planet, New York City’s 20th-century history has produced sights and sounds of an astonishing breadth. May’s EPHEMERA program WHAT WAS NEW YORK? offers a curated selection of moments from the history of NYC as it has been captured on celluloid. From specific transit exposés to neighborhood profiles, this edit utilizes a variety of framing contexts interchangeably to present an appropriately-scattered portrait of a location in constant flux; its assembly chronological yet timeless.
Preceding the feature program is LIVE AND LET LIVE (1947, 10m, Color, USA), an innovative safety awareness film produced by the Aetna Casualty & Surety Company that utilizes brightly-colored model cars to demonstrate traffic scenarios via tabletop stop-motion animation.
Sources for WHAT WAS NEW YORK? include: Around The World In New York (1940), Arteries Of New York City (1941), Coney Island (1940), For The Living (1949), R.F.D. Greenwich Village (1969), Story Of A City (1947), Story Of Newspaper History In The Making (1945), The City (1939), Third Avenue El (1950) and Village Sunday (1960), as well as many private home movies.
Special thanks to the Internet Archive, Rick Prelinger and everyone at the Prelinger Archive.
Rick Prelinger began collecting “ephemeral films”—all those educational, industrial, amateur, advertising, or otherwise sponsored—in 1982, amassing over 60,000 (all on physical film) before his Prelinger Archive was acquired by the Library of Congress in 2002. Since then, the collection has grown and diversified: now it exists in library form in San Francisco and is also gradually being ported online to the Internet Archive (http://archive.org), where 3,801 of its films are currently hosted (as of this writing).
Of course, the content of the Prelinger Archive’s films varies in accord with the variety of mankind. Historic newsreels, mid-century automobile infomercials, psychological experiments, medical procedurals, big oil advertisements, military recruitment videos, political propagandas, personal home videos, celebrity exposes, amateur narratives, scientific studies, war bulletins, instructional films, special interest op-eds, safety lessons, hobby guides, travel destination profiles and private industry productions all sit comfortably together in one marginalized category.
FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART: APRIL 2013 SELECTIONS FROM THE CHAPTER ‘WESTERN LEFT & REVOLUTIONARY CINEMA’ TUESDAY APRIL 30TH — 7:30 & 10PM
The revolutionary moment of the sixties is as dead as anything, and good riddance. Though we may yearn for that level of revolutionary fervor, we’re glad to see the backs of all those patriarchal Maoist puritans, misogynist homophobic “free love” partisans and statist non-violence ideologues (ok, maybe those fuckers are still around). But what of the films they left behind? What of the documents of their struggles? Do those have any power remaining to subvert, or are they merely that, documents?
In our monthly series, Film as a Subversive Art, we’ve been looking at films from Amos Vogel’s book of the same name. In February we looked at Third World revolutionary cinema, this month it’s revolutionary cinema from “The West”.
Increasingly, we’ve been confronted with the question of these films’ relevance, their subversive power, their meaning and their value 40-50 years after the fact. This month we’ll see dystopian statist political prisons, listen to manifestos from the lips of long-dead revolutionaries, witness insurrectionary violence, staged and actual, and a plethora of rebellious aesthetic upendings.
What good are old political statements? What is the difference between ‘subversive’ and ‘revolutionary’, and what are either worth? What, if anything, can these films do politically? And do they point toward a potential revolutionary use for cinema today?
We will definitely answer all of these questions entirely to your satisfaction. (And stoke the fires for that loveliest of days, the First of May.) With introductions by New Inquiry editor Willie Osterweil and members of the Anti-Banality Union, makers of Police Mortality.
GRAFFITI REPORT FORM
Dir. Frank Heath, 2012.
52 min. USA.
INVASIVE SPECIES
Dir. Frank Heath, 2012.
11 min. USA.
ASYMPTOMATIC CARRIER
Dir. Frank Heath, 2013.
10 min. USA.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 29 – 8:00 PM
“& Other Works” is a series of screenings focusing on video and film from contemporary artists, organized by C. Spencer Yeh. “& Other Works” seeks out artists’ efforts which invite and evoke the cinematic experience, yet are typically looped on crowded walls or locked up in online isolation. “& Other Works” screens beginning to end, in an informal but focused communal viewing experience. In other words – “film, folks, fun.” The inaugural program features artist Frank Heath, who will be in attendance.
Invasive Species begins as a document of a peculiar request by phone, set against a beautiful day at Green-Wood Cemetery. The exchange meanders into multiple tangents, from parakeets to numerology, while the onscreen events turn bizarrely synchronous. Asymptomatic Carrier, created for this year’s Frieze Arts Fair NYC, flies over the abandoned North Brother Island in the East River. Wikipedia says “now a bird sanctuary, the island is currently abandoned and off-limits to the public… …from the 1980s through the early 2000s it supported one of the area’s largest nesting colonies of Black-crowned Night Heron. However as of 2011 this species has abandoned the island for unknown reasons.”
Graffiti Report Form is described a press release excerpt:
“Heath’s formally complex video Graffiti Report Form, which as the title suggests, was actually submitted to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. What begins as a first person account of a concerned citizen wishing to report an instance of graffiti in Morningside Park becomes a film within a film and a subtle meditation on history, place, and narrative structure. Shot over a period of five years, this expanse of time is both compressed and extended through a confluence of interventionist gesture, historical anecdote, and fictional narrative. Dystopian survival story in the guise of an urgent militaristic transmission, the film elicits issues of public and private space, the arbitrary nature of anniversary, and the peculiar history of this specific park as the starting place for the infamous 1968 student revolt at nearby Columbia University.”
Frank Heath, born in St. Joseph, MO in 1982, lives and works in New York. Last spring, he made his first solo exhibition in New York at Simone Subal Gallery. Two-person shows include Bcc:, with Brendan Meara at Roots and Culture, Chicago (2011), and Econoline 1, with JJ PEET at Videotage Gallery, Hong Kong (2007). Past group shows and screenings include Matter Out of Place at The Kitchen (2012), Someone Has Stolen Our Tent at Simon Preston Gallery, New York (2012), Single Channel at Soho House, Miami FL (2011); Forcemeat at Wallspace, New York (2011); and Suddenly: Where We Live Now at Cooley Gallery, Reed College, Portland, OR; and Pomona College Museum of Art (2008, 2009).
EPHEMERA: FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIAL GUIDANCE
1947-1963.
TRT: 90 min.
SATURDAY, APRIL 13TH – 10PM WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24TH – 7:30PM
Our Prelinger Archives series returns for another installment this April!
No outlet served post-war American culture’s ebullient pride and prosperity better than that of the now-infamous educational film. Pioneered by the Coronet Instructional Films company, Centron Productions, McGraw-Hill and Encyclopaedia Britannica—as well as more eccentric individuals like Sid Davis and Jam Handy—these films today have been relegated to sideshow status by the likes of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, Weird Al, MST3K and Adult Swim, who freely lampoon these easy targets for their comically dated sensibilities.
April’s EPHEMERA program FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIAL GUIDANCE compiles moments from these films that focus on the frequent theme of social development. Looking to properly shape the future sons and daughters of the U.S.A. into well-adjusted citizens, the milquetoast, aw-shucks sincerity of these shorts of course strikes an uncanny, off-kilter chord to today’s audience. This compilation arranges its selections into a rough narrative of growing-up; our protagonists age and learn lessons stage-by-stage, gradually maturing into utterly perfect adults ready to meet the challenges of tomorrow.
Preceding the feature collage will be the full short A DATE WITH YOUR FAMILY (1950, 10m, B&W, USA) interspersed with full-color outtakes from the set of the film itself, exposing glimpses of the personalities behind the actors in gag-reel relief; a fascinating peek beneath the characteristically unnatural, almost inhuman veneer of sponsored films from this era.
Sources for FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIAL GUIDANCE include: Act Your Age (1949), Appreciating Our Parents (1950), Are You Popular? (1947), Beginning Responsibility (1951), The Benefits Of Looking Ahead (1950), A Better Use Of Leisure Time (1950), The Bully (1952), Cheating (1952), Cindy Goes To A Party (1955), Don’t Get Angry (1953), Each Child Is Different (1954), Family Life (1949), Good Table Manners (1951), Gossip (1953), How Quiet Helps At School (1953), How To Be Well-Groomed (1949), Office Etiquette (1950), The Procrastinator (1952), Shy Guy (1947), The Snob (1958), Social Courtesy (1951), Ways To Settle Disputes (1950), What Makes A Good Party (1950) and Your Junior High Days (1963).
Special thanks to the Internet Archive, Rick Prelinger and everyone at the Prelinger Archive.Rick Prelinger began collecting “ephemeral films”—all those educational, industrial, amateur, advertising, or otherwise sponsored—in 1982, amassing over 60,000 (all on physical film) before his Prelinger Archive was acquired by the Library of Congress in 2002. Since then, the collection has grown and diversified: now it exists in library form in San Francisco and is also gradually being ported online to the Internet Archive (http://archive.org), where 3,801 of its films are currently hosted (as of this writing).
Of course, the content of the Prelinger Archive’s films varies in accord with the variety of mankind. Historic newsreels, mid-century automobile infomercials, psychological experiments, medical procedurals, big oil advertisements, military recruitment videos, political propagandas, personal home videos, celebrity exposes, amateur narratives, scientific studies, war bulletins, instructional films, special interest op-eds, safety lessons, hobby guides, travel destination profiles and private industry productions all sit comfortably together in one marginalized category.
TUESDAY, APRIL 2ND – 10PM SATURDAY, APRIL 27TH – 7:30PM
In Oxhide II, a family sits together at the table making dumplings. The repeated movements and collective concentration are mesmerizing as the action unfolds in real time. A static camera cuts only eight times, moving around the table in forty five degree angle intervals, giving new perspective to the landscape of knives, vegetables, bowls and busy fingers that inhabit the exaggerated wide screen. A mother, father, and daughter (played by director Jiayin Liu and her parents) adeptly prepare the filling and stuff the dumplings over the course of more than two hours.
Through the mundane and understated, the intricacies of a family dynamic become apparent resulting in a meticulously formalist film that is also surprisingly warm and personal.
“Oxhide II is unpretentiously inventive, quietly virtuosic.” -David Bordwell
MONDAY, APRIL 8TH – 7:30PM MONDAY, APRIL 22ND – 10PM
Hoda (the luminous Samia Gamal) quits her job as Cairo’s most famous bellydancer to marry Mamdouh, a handsome young surgeon. Their life together is pure bliss until his voluptuous nurse Yolanda (Italian-born international icon Dalida), drives herself between the two of them against Mamdouh’s wishes. Hoda finds bitter consolation for her jealousy in booze and nicotine, a dependency made worse by Mamdouh’s airheadedness and their extended family of mistake-prone friends.
Laden with eyepopping bellydancing, stark visuals, Mack Sennett-worthy pratfalls and an explosive lead performance from Gamal, A Glass and A Cigarette deserves recognition as a top-quality Nasser-era tearjerker. The film is both moving and weirdly mischievous, bridging the pageantry of classic Egyptian cinema with the compromised compassion of its 50s European cousins.
SHE KILLED IN ECSTASY
Dir: Jesús “Jess” Franco, 1970.
74 min. West Germany/Spain.
In German with English subtitles.
In response to the automatic cuts implemented by the 2013 budget sequestration, the American Hunter is on his forced pay furlough for the month of April. In his place, we present to you:
SATURDAY, APRIL 6 – MIDNIGHT
Earlier this week, Spectacle was greatly saddened by news of the passing of Jesús “Jess” Franco (b. 1930) at age 82. Over half a century, Franco was a prolific and highly influential director of over 200 films variously comprising sexploitation, horror, giallo, cannibalism, vampirism, zombies, spy sagas, jungle adventures, exorcism, war, Nazism, surgical horror, nunsploitation, hardcore, and more, in countries including Spain, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Belgium. Parsing through sheer multifarious, multicultural, and multitudinous breadth of his filmography is, at at minimum, the job for some sort of perverted Cinema Studies PhD candidate. Suffice to say, he is an exuberant genius whose work continues to earn the fancy of intrepid cinephiles who aren’t afraid of getting their hands dirty.
In memoriam of Franco’s life and career, we invite longtime fans and newcomers alike to enjoy 1970’s SHE KILLED IN ECSTASY, determined by group consensus of Spectacle programmers to be the maestro’s quintessential film. As Danny Shipka, PhD (–wha…?) writes, “Franco [takes] the standard revenge picture to new surrealistic heights” in this psychedelic sexploitation chiller starring muse Soledad Miranda. Emotionally shattered by the death of her research doctor husband, goaded to suicide by his peers over controversial stem-cell research, she recomposes herself into a cold killing machine, seducing and destroying those she holds responsible. Featuring a funky electronic score, wildly indulgent zoom shots, and suffused with an unsettling erotic distance and all-consuming weirdness, it contains all of Franco’s signature tropes with no shortage of sweet, bloody murder.
As we say here at midnight, “Get Weird Tonight, Stay Weird Forever” — thank you for making our lives stranger, Jesús Franco.
Edgar Wallace Weekend of Mystery Presents:
CREATURE WITH THE BLUE HAND
(aka The Bloody Dead)
Dir: Alfred Vohrer, 1967.
84 min. West Germany.
In German with English subtitles.
FRIDAY, APRIL 12TH – MIDNIGHT
The proto-giallo classic in its original, uncut German-language version!
Klaus Kinski stars twice-over as a pair of possibly evil twins, one of whom— but which?— has recently escaped from an institution for the criminally insane. Coincidentally, a mysterious caped killer begins stalking his estate, clutching victims one-by-one in the grip of its BLUE STEEL CLAW!
Director Alfred Vohrer is perhaps the greatest, and certainly one of the most prolific, practitioners of the krimi film, which became the primary influence on the giallo explosion. Creature with the Blue Hand is adapted from the work of Edgar Wallace and full of byzantine twists and insane red herrings while being just as lurid and Gothic as its Italian progeny.
In the U.S., it became a cult favorite though late-night television broadcast in the 1970s, dubbed into English and alternately chopped for violence or padded out with additional gore from unrelated movies. This evening we present the full, untouched German-language version, which totally slays.
Edgar Wallace Weekend of Mystery Presents:
DER HEXER
Dir: Alfred Vohrer, 1964.
95 min. West Germany.
In German with English subtitles.
SATURDAY, APRIL 13TH – MIDNIGHT
The Edgar Wallace Weekend of Mystery continues with another Alfred Vohrer helmed action-mystery! This time around, Vohrer splashes some eye-popping color in the title sequence and goes for a fast, fun, stylistically wild caper filled with laughs and ingenious twists.
The sister of a well known criminal genius, Der Hexer, is murdered, and now Scotland Yard is hot on the trail of the killer and Der Hexer, whom they suspect has returned from exile to seek revenge.
Who is Der Hexer? Will he be caught? Will the killer be found? The perfect late night mystery!
Twists, action, a jazzy score, nude photos and some ridiculous POVs- Vohrer pulls out all the stops in this murder filled romp set in fake-ass, swinging London! It all adds up to some Diabolik, Fantomas-style fun in Der Hexer!
In crisp, beautiful black and white!
Troma Entertainment Presents:
THE DEMON LOVER
Dir: Donald G. Jackson & Jerry Younkins, 1977.
76 min. USA.
FRIDAY, APRIL 19TH – MIDNIGHT
Just when you thought you’d reached the final room in the funhouse of bad moviedom, a door opens and you find, The Demon Lover– The Room 101 of crap cinema.
Laval Blessing (a man who clearly owns every Grand Funk Railroad release, as well as numerous live bootlegs) is having youngish long hairs over to his place for some casual occult parties. The group is there for kicks and not some “metaphysical bullshit,” but Laval goes too far, the group rebels and then one of the cinema’s gnarliest devils starts killing people.
Oh, and there’s karate too, lots and lots of karate.
This unheralded masterpiece is like getting into a custom van adorned with a beautifully detailed painting by Frank Frazetta and taking a huge bong rip while listening to Blue Oyster Cult. The Demon Lover is a window to a different, dumber time, and man, is it fun.
Featuring Leatherface himself, the totally imitable Gunnar Hansen!
Come see this ever quotable extravaganza that will burn itself into your brain and never leave, like a kind of crappy tattoo of the grim reaper on a Harley sportster.
NIGHT OF THE HOWLING BEAST
Dir: Miguel Iglesias, 1975.
87 min. Spain.
SATURDAY, APRIL 20TH – MIDNIGHT
Noches De Naschy is dedicated to showcasing the films of Spanish horror icon and horror cinema’s most prolific Wolf Man, Paul Naschy.
The beloved, barrel chested Naschy was a renaissance man who turned his childhood love of gothic horror and fantasy into his life’s work. Naschy painted his monsters with a sense of romantic tragedy, leaving behind a wonderfully rich and surprisingly personal filmography.
Here’s Naschy in one of his most colorful, entertaining, action packed films, duking it out with another hairy legend, The Yeti! Night of the Howling Beast is a comic book come to life, filled with creatures, combat, romance and danger, with serial style adventure and wonderfully colorful lighting that recalls Mario Bava at his most sumptuous and playful.
Waldemar Daminsky, the sad-eyed lycanthropic Polish count, heads to the Himalayas in search of the Yeti but contracts werewolfism, escapes sexual imprisonment in a cave and falls in love, again, all en-route to a toe to toe showdown with the Sasquatch of the east!
Come see Waldemar Daminsky WOLF OUT as a GOOD GUY in arguably Naschy’s most fun fantasy adventure, and the film that landed his hairy butt on the legendary Video Nasties list!
Splatterdays Presents:
BONE SICKNESS
Dir: Brian Paulin, 2004.
98 min. USA.
FRIDAY, APRIL 26TH – MIDNIGHT
Alex is very sick with a very rare disease that makes his bones painfully brittle. He’s bed-ridden and under the constant care of his loving but overworked wife Kirsten.
But, Kirsten has help by way of Alex’s life long best friend Thomas. Together, they believe they have found a way to counteract the disease… by feeding Alex the grinded-up bones from the corpses that Thomas butchers at the mortuary where he works.
Everything is going well, but the trio soon finds out that their homeopathic remedy returns life and strength to more than just Alex.
As the butchered corpses from Thomas’s mortuary return from the dead to take revenge on those who would consume them, a shocking revelation threatens to fracture the bonds between the two best friends.
Can Alex and Thomas rise above their infighting in order to save their lives and the lives of the ones they love?
No, they can’t. Everyone is slaughtered.
XTREME VIOLENCE AND GORE
ROCK ‘N’ ROLL HOTEL
Dir: Richard Baskin & Paul Justman, 1983.
85 min. USA.
SATURDAY, APRIL 27TH – MIDNIGHT FREE!
Join Spectacle for another FREE monthly screening of a mythical cinematic orphan…
Birthed from the 80s neon Hollywood womb and shuttered away almost immediately,Rock ‘N’ Roll Hotel is a product of MTV-inspired music video excess and absurdity that has all but vanished into pop culture oblivion.
The story follows a young trio of musicians, played by Rachel Sweet, Matthew Penn (son of Arthur) and Judd Nelson, called The Third Dimension. They enter a battle of the bands in an old hotel called the Rock N’ Roll Hotel. However, rival band The Weevils are intent on stopping the young band from winning the contest and taking the title for themselves…
Essentially one of the first feature-length music videos, the film was produced in Richmond, VA, shot in 3D, filled with musical numbers, written by Russ Dvonch (Rock ‘n’ Roll High School), co-directed by Paul Justman (Standing In The Shadows of Motown) and featured 80s cable icon Colin Quinn as a local DJ… man, where has this film been for the last 30 years?
Victim to a trainwreck of a film production and a botched release, the film was lost for decades… until a VHS copy was found buried in the set designer’s closet. Read more about the bizarre history behind the film here.
This film has only ONE COPY IN EXISTENCE and we have it! Can you handle Judd Nelson shredding guitar while blazing along an open highway in the first 10 minutes of the film?!
If you still don’t believe the hype, see it for FREE and tell us we’re wrong.
