Ongoing Series – Page 7 – Spectacle Theater

FEMINIST HOLLYWOOD TAKEOVER

Posted on February 21, 2014December 23, 2019 by spectacletheater

Feminist Hollywood Takeover is a series of shorts by female filmmakers who have deconstructed the predictable roles we tend so fondly remember when we think of old Hollywood films. Daringly, each film rebels against the tired archetypes of the mammy, tragic heroine, and hetero-glamourpuss comprising a joint rejection of oppressive stereotypes, and starring some of the most iconic Hollywood starlets to grace the silver screen.

Special thanks to Women Make Movies!

MONDAY, MARCH 10 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 14 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19 – 10:00 PM

LIP
Dir. Tracey Moffatt, Edited by Gary Hillberg, 1999
Australia, 10 min.

Australian artist, Tracey Moffatt, takes aim at Hollywood’s portrayal of black women in a cheeky montage of (surprise) maids throughout film history. Moffatt recontextualizes your favorite actresses as pegs in a machine of oppressive stereotyping and bigotry, in this strangely hilarious short, which sheds a familiar yet refreshing light on #whitegirlproblems. With clips including a young Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand, and Patty Duke, among others, LIP is like a trip down memory lane with modern criticism instead of nostalgia.

THRILLER
Dir. Sally Potter, 1979
UK, 34 min.

Performance artist, experimental filmmaker, composer, dancer, and general badass Sally Potter eschews the typical Hollywood narrative with a deconstruction and rewriting of Puccini’s LA BOHEME. A staple of feminist film theory, THRILLER is one of Potter’s first international successes as a filmmaker in a career that includes such undertakings as ORLANDO and YES. In Potter’s version of Puccini’s legendary opera, Mimi, the tragic heroine who is supposed to die by the end of the opera, is granted the agency to question her own life story and the reasons behind her death. She juxtaposes her own role in the story with that of her female foil, Musetta, the “easy” woman, and challenges the idea that the “good” girl should always be youthful, weak and distressed.

MEETING OF TWO QUEENS
aka Encuentro entre dos reinas
Dir. Cecilia Barriga, 1991
Spain, 14 min.

Cecilia Barriga’s culty video montage tells the story of two queens who fall in love, unwittingly played by Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo. Clipped from their most iconic works, the Chilean born video artist manipulates scenes from the legendary actresses to turn two of the most well known Hollywood starlets in film history into a silent-film style lesbian fantasy. Barriga drives the narrative using common motifs such as the cigarette and the one-eyed glance from beneath a wide brimmed hat, motifs which are familiar to us, but recontextualized within a queer narrative. Major points for including a rainmaker in the soundtrack.

THREE FILMS BY KIM LONGINOTTO

Posted on February 18, 2014December 23, 2019 by spectacletheater

DIVORCE IRANIAN STYLE
Dir. Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini, 1998
Iran/England, 80 min.
In Farsi with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, MARCH 18 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 25 – 7:30 PM

Special thanks to Women Make Movies!

Hilarious, tragic, stirring – this fly-on-the-wall look at several weeks in an Iranian divorce court provides a unique window into the intimate circumstances of Iranian women’s lives. Following Jamileh, whose husband beats her, Ziba, a 16-year-old trying to divorce her 38-year-old husband, and Maryam, who is desperately fighting to gain custody of her daughters, this deadpan chronicle showcases the strength, ingenuity, and guile with which they confront biased laws, a Kafaka-esque administrative system, and their husbands’ and families’ rage to gain divorces.

With the barest of commentary, acclaimed director Kim Longinotto turns her cameras on the court for a subtle, fascinating look at women’s lives in a country which is little known to most Americans. Directed by Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini, author of MARRIAGE ON TRIAL: A STUDY OF ISLAMIC FAMILY LAW.

“A fascinating verite-style documentary that counters with compassion, humor, and a keen nose for spotting empathetic characters, strong-willed women, and dramatic moments, the traditional stereotypes of women in the Muslim world as passive victims.” – Hamid Naficy, Author, ‘The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles’

SHINJUKU BOYS
Dir. Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams, 1995
Japan/England, 53 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles

SATURDAY, MARCH 15 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 18 – 7:30 PM

Special thanks to Women Make Movies!

From the makers of DREAM GIRLS, SHINJUKU BOYS introduces three onnabes who work as hosts at the New Marilyn Club in Tokyo. Onnabes are women who live as men and have girlfriends, although they don’t usually identify as lesbians. As the film follows them at home and on the job, all three talk frankly to the camera about their lives, revealing their views about women, sex, transvestitism and lesbianism. Alternating with these illuminating interviews are fabulous sequences shot inside the Club, patronized almost exclusively by heterosexual women. This is a remarkable documentary about the complexity of female sexuality in Japan today.

GAEA GIRLS
Dir. Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams, 2000
England/Japan, 106 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, MARCH 15 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 25 – 10:00 PM

Special thanks to Women Make Movies!

This fascinating film follows the physically grueling and mentally exhausting training regimen of several young wanna-be GAEA GIRLS, a group of Japanese women wrestlers who are just as violent as any member of the World Wrestling Federation. One recruit, Takeuchi, endures ritual humiliation not seen on screen since the boot camp sequences of FULL METAL JACKET.

“Longinotto and Williams’s ability to penetrate facades is remarkable. The filmmakers build their story in a way that’s more compelling and suspenseful than many narrative films.” – Chicago Film Festival

Film synopses courtesy of Women Make Movies!

AKERMANIA: THREE DOCUMENTARIES FROM CHANTAL AKERMAN

Posted on February 18, 2014December 19, 2019 by spectacletheater

These three documentaries by Chantal Akerman form a part of her loosely defined “directional” series; films with titles denoting direction and dealing with subjects of borders and displacement. This month, thanks to Icarus Films, we are excited to present the first three films of the series: FROM THE EAST (1993), SOUTH (1999) and FROM THE OTHER SIDE (2002).

Don’t wait for the next shot; the next shot will happen. – Chantal Akerman

FROM THE EAST
aka D’Est
Dir. Chantal Akerman, 1993
France/Belgium, 110 min.

TUESDAY, MARCH 4 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 7 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19 – 7:30 PM

Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and “before it was too late”, Chantal Akerman made a journey from East Germany in late summer, across Poland and the Baltics, to deepest winter in Moscow, “filming everything that touched me”. Tracking across city streets, landscapes, and faces, the film also takes us inside the private spaces of the countries’ inhabitants, where they peel potatoes, watch old TVs or stoically stare down the camera.

Akerman takes satisfaction in the demanding nature of her films. Most directors feel complimented, she has said, when viewers say they are not aware of passing time: “But with me, you see the time pass. And you feel it pass. You sense that this is time that leads towards death… I’ve taken two hours of [your] life.” – Film Comment

While taking a minimalist approach to its form, FROM THE EAST is rich in content, with fascinatingly culturally specific settings, music and images creating an entertainingly retro and unexpectedly moving experience.

SOUTH
aka Sud
Dir. Chantal Akerman, 1999
France/Belgium, 70 min.
In English.

SATURDAY, MARCH 1 – 10:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12 – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 17 – 10:00 PM

Chantal Akerman originally planned to make a meditative film on the American South. On June 7th, 1998 in Jasper, Texas, only days before filming began, James Byrd, Jr., a black man aged 49 was brutally murdered by three white men. Byrd, after being severely beaten, was chained to the back of a pickup and dragged three miles down an asphalt road. What was left of his body was dumped in front of a black cemetery.

SOUTH is a quiet portrait of the town of Jasper and its residents. Rather than focusing on the aftermath of the killing on national politics or the murderers themselves, Akerman centers on the environment of Jasper and the people affected by Byrd’s death. Akerman was allowed to film Byrd’s funeral and the ceremony is a considerable segment of the film.

Akerman writes, “How does the southern silence become so heavy and so menacing so suddenly? How do the trees and the whole natural environment evoke so intensely death, blood, and the weight of history? How does the present call up the past? And how does this past, with a mere gesture or a simple regard, haunt and torment you as you wander along an empty cotton field, or a dusty country road?”

SOUTH is constructed of static shots and long pans along country roads interspersed with interviews with townspeople. The structure of the interviews feel somewhat naïve if one were to focus more acutely on the politics of the racially motivated murder. Through what could have been a lack of probing, the interviewees talk uncomfortably around issues, and Akermans’ concern with not interfering obstructs deeper analysis.

Nonetheless, Akerman is a tourist and an outsider, and she seems aware of this. SOUTH could be considered a contribution to a cinema, including Alain Resnais’ fictional HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR or Alexander Kluge’s BRUTALITY IN STONE, that attempts to recognize human suffering while being critical of its representation. Though, as a documentary, the film raises slightly different questions. Is it possible in documentary to construct representations of someone’s pain, and if so, is this ethical?

FROM THE OTHER SIDE
aka De l’autre côté
Dir. Chantal Akerman, 2002
France/Belgium/Australia/Finland, 99 min.
In English, Spanish and French with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, MARCH 1 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 9 – 5:00 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 17 – 7:30 PM

FROM THE OTHER SIDE looks at the situation of Mexican immigrants at the border between Agua Prieta, a Mexican border town in the state of Sonora, and Douglas, Arizona, the city on the other side. The first half of the film is set in Mexico. Between static and tracking shots of desert landscapes and the border wall, Akerman interviews people who plan to or have attempted to cross the desert into the US, including a young boy in an orphanage. She quietly interviews an older couple whose son died in the desert when his group lost their way.

Similar in structure to her earlier film SOUTH, and stylistically reminiscent to FROM THE EAST, FROM THE OTHER SIDE feels perhaps the most active. By physically crossing the border and filming on both sides, we experience Akerman’s and our own ease of travel between, as well as witness the shift into the militaristic and racially skewed reality existing in Douglas, Arizona. While in Douglas, Akerman interviews a Mexican consulate, the sheriff and paranoid white locals.

Through Akermans’ signature steady gaze, she “insists” – we have no choice but to look, think, settle into the image, and to let the image settle in; in a way the length of the shots summon respect for the person on the screen. In one scene, per his request, a man reads a pained statement among his traveling companions in a cafeteria. He tells us why his group is migrating and what the journey has been like for them. Akerman says, “You have to be really like a sponge when you make a documentary.” FROM THE OTHER SIDE urges the viewer to be porous.

NOTES ON MARIE MENKEN

Posted on February 18, 2014July 23, 2015 by spectacletheater

NOTES ON MARIE MENKEN
Dir. Martina Kudláček, 2006
USA, 97 min.

Screening with ARABESQUE FOR KENNETH ANGER (Marie Menken, 1961, 5 min.)

MONDAY, MARCH 3 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 16 – 5:00 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 28 – 7:30 PM

Special thanks to Icarus Films.

Martina Kudlácek, director of the critically acclaimed IN THE MIRROR OF MAYA DEREN brings us the story of Marie Menken (1909-1970), one of New York’s outstanding underground filmmakers, who inspired and worked with renowned artists Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Kenneth Anger and Gerard Malanga, and became known as “the mother of the avant-garde.”

Originally an abstract painter and collage artist, Menken produced nearly two dozen experimental shorts, gracefully using a hand-held Bolex camera to create rhythmic patterns of light, color, form and texture, and compose exquisite visual poems. Rich in excerpts of Menken’s work, the film also features the rare and fascinating footage of “The Duel of the Bolexes” she conducted with Andy Warhol on a New York rooftop.

The large, loud and tempestuous Menken, whose volatile relationship with husband Willard Maas reportedly inspired Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, became a Warhol superstar making memorable appearances in THE LIFE OF JUANITA CASTRO and THE CHELSEA GIRLS.

Featuring interviews with Jonas Mekas, Kenneth Anger, Gerard Malanga, Peter Kubelka, Alfred Leslie, Billy Name, and THE CHELSEA GIRLS star Mary Woronov, and music by John Zorn.

Text courtesy of Icarus Films.

KINETIC CINEMA: A SCREENING AND DISCUSSION WITH NEL SHELBY

Posted on February 17, 2014December 23, 2019 by spectacletheater

KINETIC CINEMA: A SCREENING AND DISCUSSION WITH NEL SHELBY
Dir. Nel Shelby, Various years
USA, ca. 90 min.

ONE NIGHT ONLY!
THURSDAY, MARCH 13 – 8:00 PM

Pentacle is pleased to invite Nel Shelby, an extraordinarily talented dance videographer, to present an evening of films and videos that have inspired her illustrious career in dance and video.

Nel writes: “When I double-majored in dance and broadcast video, I had no idea where it would lead. Now, when I sit in a dark theater watching dance, trying to type as many notes as possible into my iPhone, I pinch myself and wonder if there’s any place I’d rather be. (The answer is NO!) Whenever I walk into a theater, it feels like home. Whether it’s midtown Manhattan, Vail, Colorado, or Becket, Massachusetts, each and every day I am inspired by the work that I do. More than anything, I want artists to have beautiful video to showcase their work so they can book more performances and keep sharing what they do best.”

Nel Shelby, Founder and Principal of Nel Shelby Productions, is deeply dedicated to the preservation and promotion of dance through documentation of live performances, fully edited marketing reels, live-stream capture, and documentaries and films that encapsulate the essence of nonprofit organizations.

Her New York City-based video production company has grown to encompass a diverse list of dance clients including American Ballet Theater II, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Gallim Dance, Gotham Arts, Kate Weare and Company, Keigwin + Company, Monica Bill Barnes Company, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Shen Wei Dance Arts, Wendy Whelan and many more. She has filmed performances at venues throughout the greater New York area including The Joyce Theater, New York Live Arts, Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, St. Mark’s Church and Judson Church, to name a few.

For the past eight years, Nel has served as Festival Videographer for the internationally celebrated Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in the Berkshires. Each season at the Pillow, Nel’s responsibilities include documenting aspects of festival culture in addition to its 20 mainstage dance performances, filming and overseeing documentation of more than 100 free performances and events, managing two dance videography interns and an apprentice, and educating students about the technical and philosophical aspects of filming dance.

She now also serves as Resident Videographer at the Vail International Dance Festival where she spent her first summer creating five short dance documentary films about the festival in addition to documenting its events and performances. Her longer-form, half-hour documentary on Vail’s festival, THE ALTITUDE OF DANCE, debuted on Rocky Mountain PBS in May 2013.

This year, she is creating four short films for Wendy Whelan’s Restless Creature. In 2012, she collaborated with Adam Barruch Dance to create a short film titled FOLIE A DEUX, which was selected and screened at the Dance on Camera Festival in New York City. Nel’s videos for the New Jersey Hall of Fame were shown to an audience of 2000 people, and she is currently editing a dance documentary featuring Nejla Y. Yatkin that she filmed for three-and-a-half weeks in Central America in 2010. Nel has a long personal history with movement – she has a B.A. in dance and is a certified Pilates instructor. She continues to train with world-renowned Master Teachers Romana Krysnowska and Sari Pace, original students of Joseph Pilates. In addition to her dance degree, Nel holds a B.S. in broadcast video. She often collaborates with her wonderful husband, dance photographer Christopher Duggan on creative projects with dancers in New York City and beyond. They live with their beautiful daughter Gracie in Manhattan.

Kinetic Cinema, is a regular screening series of Pentacle’s Movement Media curated by invited guest artists who create evenings of films and videos that have been influential to their own work as artists. When artists are asked to reflect upon how the use of movement in film and media arts has influenced their own art, a plethora of new ideas, material, and avenues of exploration emerge. From cutting edge motion capture animation to Michael Jackson music videos, from Gene Kelly musicals to Kenneth Anger films, Kinetic Cinema is dedicated to the recognition and appreciation for “moving” pictures. We have presented these evenings at Collective: Unconscious, Chez Bushwick, IRT, Launchpad, Green Space, Uniondocs, CRS, 3rd Useless and The Tank in New York City, as well as at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia.

For more info on the current Kinetic Cinema season please visit our website and our blog, movetheframe.com.

About Pentacle’s Movement Media

Pentacle’s Movement Media provides services, strategies, and opportunities for dance artists to make dance works for screen and use media to promote and enhance their artistic pursuits. The core activities of Movement Media are screenings, consulting services, workshops, and interactive media publications (blogs, social networking, online videos, etc). These services address a growing need for dance artists to engage with Media, particularly online and on new media platforms, in order to reach audiences, grow artistically, and stay relevant in today’s media-rich world.

Pentacle’s Movement Media programming is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. KINETIC CINEMA is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The 2014 season of Kinetic Cinema is made possible through the contributions of generous individuals like you.

FEBRUARY MIDNIGHTS

Posted on January 25, 2014December 23, 2019 by spectacletheater

LASER MISSION
Dir. BJ Davis, 1989
USA, 84 min.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1 – MIDNIGHT

On Saturday February 1st at MIDNIGHT, we are celebrating what would have been the 49th birthday of BRANDON LEE. Who is that, you ask? You’re reading this on a computer, right?

Before he was THE CROW (but definitely after his LEGACY OF RAGE), Lee was Michael Gold – a cocky, self-righteous asshole who upends his fully free agent status and chooses to accept a LASER MISSION on offer from the CIA (but, like, eschewing CASH MONEY USA in favor of action man SWAGGER ethics). There’s something about the WORLD’S LARGEST DIAMOND gone missing, along with some LASER expert (expertly lazied by ERNEST BORGNINE) being held in Angola (or somewhere) by the KGB (or Cuban military or some Austrian madman or something). All this adds up to is TROUBLE and the potential END of the WESTERN WORLD as we KNOW IT. When not donning gross disguises to fool bumbling cartoon humans, Gold is totes in NEGGING WAR III with terminal television episoder DEBI MONAHAN (who may or may not be portraying a daughter or a double agent or whatever).

Even if you HAVE seen LASER MISSION, you won’t want to MISS our special WIDESCREEN presentation, with all the EXPLOSIVE action (and sometimes admittedly great wide tracking shots) as NEVER BEFORE SEEN in domestic US BARGAIN BINS and FIFTY-FILM DVD collections. Unfortunately we weren’t able to get our hands on the legendary FULLY UNCUT version on GERMAN VHS, but if you come by SATURDAY FEBRUARY 1ST, maybe we’ll SHOW you some STILLS AND talk you THROUGH THE cuts.

If you HAVEN’T seen LASER MISSION, then grab your favorite brand of adult diapers and head the hell over here. Sounds appealing? Then make like an ORANGE and GET JUICED.

ARTIFACT VIDEO CLUB PRESENTS
PIZZA
Karthik Subbaraj, 2012
India, 127 min.
In Tamil with poor yet remarkably effective English subtitles

Artifact Video Club is conceptually premised upon screening international bootlegs of popular cinema. See end of description for notes on quality.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7 – MIDNIGHT

What is two hours long and kicks ass? PIZZA.

You have never seen a movie like PIZZA. This charming and offbeat Kollywood romantic horror comedy thriller is sort of like a mix between Edgar Wright, Luis Buñuel, Henri George Clouzot, Nora Ephron, and pizza. It’s about a guy who delivers pizza and is compelled to marry his live-in girlfriend, an aspiring horror novelist, following an unexpected pregnancy. But after the protagonist suddenly finds himself participating in the exorcism of his boss’s daughter, really weird stuff — like, weirder than randomly participating in the exorcism of his boss’s daughter — starts to happen.. Forty minutes in, PIZZA ruptures into an extended, hallucinatory, and terrifying horror film sonata before taking another left turn or two through mystery and thriller genres and delivering a hot, satisfying conclusion. It leaves one feeling really, stupidly great. Movies really don’t get as sweet, terrifying, strange, smart, and funny as PIZZA.

Audiences agreed. PIZZA was a huge critical and commercial success in Tamil cinemas and has already been remade in Kannada, Bengali and Hindi, dubbed into Telugu, and followed up with a generally unrelated sequel, PIZZA II: VILLA, in which the title food, pizza, appears to play an even more tangential or perhaps even non-existent role.

Anyway, as with life itself: Kollywood cinema simply does not get better than PIZZA.

This is the second screening of Spectacle’s unauthorized contemporary international pop cinema bootleg midnight screening series ARTIFACT VIDEO CLUB. Nodding to our international colleagues running Ghana movie clubs and VCD videotheques, AVC is an intrepid exploration of vernacular cinema from around the globe. Intentionally half-baked in concept and execution, AVC dwells in the ether between armchair anthropology, misapplied critical theory, and superfried midnight madness.

Please be advised that PIZZA will be served with piracy-prevention watermarks and superimposed anti-smoking warnings that appear every time anyone smokes a cigarette. Which is a lot, ‘cause delivering pizzas is stressful!!!

SAMURAI REINCARNATION (Makai tenshô)
Dir. Kinji Fukasaku, 1981
Japan, 121 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8 – MIDNIGHT

“I don’t want a sword that can only kill human beings. I want to kill devils.”
Director Kinji Fukasaku (Battle Royale, Graveyard of Honor) teams up with his old pal Sonny Chiba (The Street Fighter series) facing off against Kenji Sawada (The Happiness of the Katakuris) for all the supernatural swordfighting you can handle in Samurai Reincarnation. After the defeat and massacre of his troops, a general renounces God and sells his soul for the ability to bring the dead back to life, building an undead army. Meanwhile, swordsman Yagyu Jubei seeks an evil sword able not only to kill people but demons as well. From here, there’s swordfights aplenty (no surprise this film was the inspiration for the video game Samurai Showdown), crazy effects, jaw-dropping award-winning art direction and more of everything — those expecting a staid Edo-era period piece might not like it, but any cold-as-ice Chiba fan will be delighted. There’s even an unhealthy dollop of nudity and Roman porno-style sexual depravity for the midnight trenchcoat crew! Keep an eye out for a small role by Tomisaburo Wakayama (Lone Wolf & Cub)!

VASE DE NOCES
(aka Wedding Trough, aka The Pig Fucking Movie)
Dir. Thierry Zéno, 1974
Belgium, 79 min.

Special thanks to Thierry Zéno

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15TH – MIDNIGHT

40TH ANNIVERSARY! • FIRST US SCREENING IN 20+ YEARS!

[TRIGGER WARNING: Contains simulated scenes of animal cruelty, animal killings, bestiality, defecation, coprophagia, and unsimulated scenes of vomiting and live animal birth.]

A nightmarish, haunting dirge with an often-maligned reputation, VASE DE NCOES is a notorious 1974 film concerning a lone farmer’s sexual relations with his favorite sow. And while the subject matter is shocking, it’s certainly not in the name of exploitation. In fact, there’s a fair amount going on for a film infamously bestowed the US title of ‘The Pig Fucking Movie’…

Set in a post-apocalypse rural farm, the unnamed man tends to his daily activities, before eventually fixing his eye on a large sqealing pig. A few fantasies later, the farmer finds himself alone with his love interest and they copulate, with the pig eventually giving birth to three piglets. When he takes an invested interest in raising them, the piglets try to rejoin their mother, setting off a chain of events that push the film into darker and more phantasmagorical territories…

Completely devoid of dialogue, fermented in Year Zero bleakness, shot in monochromatic black-and white and featuring a raucous sound design of Gregorian chants, early electronic synthesizers, and animal wailings of all kinds, the film feels beamed from another plane of existence. Indeed, its comparisons to Eraserhead are justified in the technical and aesthetics departments, though interestingly it was released two years prior to David Lynch’s debut.

The last exit on the fringe film highway, VASE DE NOCES is a film more whispered about than actually seen, chiefly due to its extremely limited screenings since its initial festival run (which included Cannes and New Directors/New Films, amongst others). Finally, in 2009, German distributor Camera Obscura granted the film its first-ever official release and a new restoration, though the film is still not commercially available in the US. Working with director Thierry Zéno, Spectacle is proud to present the new restored digital version of this legendary arthouse oddity on the occasion of its 40th anniversary.

“Both obscene and spiritual… not for the squeamish.” -MoMA

“A journey to the end of the night… a mystical allegory… continuously fascinating, continuously disquieting.” -Film Comment

“This bizarre, hypnotic, humorless tale of a demented farm boy and his four-legged barnyard sweetheart may be the ultimate in solipsistic filmmaking. Whatever one’s reaction to it… it cannot be passed of as a mere piece of cinematic sensationalism… a combination of grand-guignol, theatre-of-cruelty and demonic mysticism…” -Buck Henry

ANIMAL PROTECTOR
Dir. Mats Helge, 1988
Sweden/USA, 96 min.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21 – MIDNIGHT

Like Spectacle after-dark idols Godfrey Ho (HARD BASTARD) and Arizal (AMERICAN HUNTER), Swedish filmmaker Mats Helge singlehandedly helmed dozens of cornea-crushing Z-grade action pictures in the 70s and 80s, only a fistful of which are accounted for today. Perhaps second-famous after his much-whispered-about THE NINJA MISSION, ANIMAL PROTECTOR sees Helge standing at the cynosure of 80s late-night movie financing. Shooting in and around a Scottish castle, Helge’s camera betrays a magnetic pull towards David Carradine’s demented hardass Colonel Whitlock. Lording over an operation guarded by special ops, infantrymen and non-American Green Berets, Whitlock is no mere animal-experimenting megavillain but a damn Reagan-era Doctor Moreau.

For a time, Helge’s bleak vision is like watching a powerful Bond villain with no comeuppance anywhere near to the horizon. But justice does indeed touch down at Whitlock’s doorsteeple in the hands of C.I.A. agent Santino (A.R. Hellquist), plus a bevy of uzi-gun toting blondes in shredded jeans and camo. Impassioned to free Whitlock’s mammalian victims (if without an escape plan beyond the island), the crew chews up scores of foot soldiers and flunkies before running smack into its greatest obstacle: Whitlock. Carradine the order-barker suddenly morphs into Carradine the wild man of kung fu, exploding out of the castle and onto the beach. There, Santino’s mission vanishes into the sunrise in a one-on-one deathmatch that can only define both men as animal.

ROAR
Dir. Noel Marshall, 1981
USA, 102 min.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22 – MIDNIGHT

Made over the course of 10 years and with a reported 70 crew injuries – most notably a tiger mauling that resulted in what was perhaps Melanie Griffith’s first (and certainly not last) plastic surgery — ROAR emerges in hindsight as one of history’s most expensive home movies, a Hollywood albatross never released theatrically in the US.

Tippi Hedrin (THE BIRDS) and husband/producer Noel Marshall were at the time noted animal rights activists with a menagerie of cheetahs and tigers kept in waiting at their Acton, California ranch, “The Shambala Preserve”. They doubled the Golden State location as exotic Africa and cast themselves as an animal researcher and estranged wife, respectively, who reconnect against a backdrop of escaped tigers and evil game hunters, pouring $17 million dollars into a still-unrecovered black hole in the process.

But of course none of that counts in a film where Tippi Hedrin gets flipped upside down by an elephant en route to a would-be heartwarmer of an ending that lands closer to perverse surrealism. The notorious production had trouble corralling its fauna, and it shows all over: everything and everyone is out of control here. Perhaps most important is that however dunderheaded it may be, ROAR is exactly what it purports to be: a naïve safari picture in the tradition of Trader Horn and Hatari! whose raw encounter with the animal species triumphs over narrative, ethical, and – yes, hygienic – concerns.

NUKING OZ AT MIDNIGHT: SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM & OTHER SICK HUMOR VISIONS OF THE APOCALYPSE IN AUSTRALIA

SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM
Dir. Ray Boseley, 1988
Australia, 48 min.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28 – MIDNIGHT

With:
DUCKED & COVERED: A SURVIVAL GUIDE TO THE POST APOLCALYPSE
Dir. Nathaniel Lindsay, 2009
Australia, 8:26 min.

I LOVE SARAH JANE
Dir. Spencer Susser, 2007
Australia, 14 min.

SPIDER
Dir. Nash Edgerton, 2007
Australia, 9 min.

From ON THE BEACH to THE ROAD WARROR to TOMORROW, WHEN THE WAR BEGAN, Australia has figured prominently in cinematic depictions of the events surrounding total war, including the use of thermonuclear weapons.

Maybe it’s something to do with the “Convict Stain,” but Oz has also found itself to be ground zero for some of the more twisted takes on atomic destructions (if not physical, then spiritual). Not quite bummers from Down Under, these shorts view The End of Civilization, whether overtly or not, with a bleak, black humor—this evening, the Spectacle presents two atomic war perspectives, one zombie apocalypse, and one relationship apocalypse, because sometimes a breakup really feels like the end of the world.

“So what are we going to do? Take it easy and conserve our strength, or are we gonna run ourselves ragged?!?”, demands party-thrower Jon (Rob Howard) in his well-stocked bomb shelter in Ray Boseley’s marvelous SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM (at 48 minutes, a sort of cinematic novella). The bombs have dropped, the land is scorched, and the heavy radiation is penetrating the bunker, dooming everyone.

At the shelter, all who survived are invited to knock back a few, chow down, and puff a bong. “This is a casual affair: Come as you are, smoke ’em if ya got ’em,” he says.

Released and highly praised by Chris Gore’s Film Threat in 1988, SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM was promptly lost and forgotten. Snappy and stylish, wearing its Aussie Punk Rock heritage on its sleeve (the singer in the film’s band has that Birthday Party look about him), it’s the best soiree you could ever be invited to—lots of good food, great booze and drugs, wanton sex—it’s just too bad the End of the World is happening.

Made in the Reagan-Bush Era when nuclear war was expected at any moment—Whew! Sure glad those days are over — SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM is infused with pitch-black, yet often dry or absurdist humor, which, as Slow Radiation Death creeps upon the characters, becomes philosophical, bittersweet and even sentimental sometimes.

Joining SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM are three additional short films, all of which are sick, sick, sick.

Nash Edgerton (director of 2008’s acclaimed THE SQUARE) helms the first short of the program: SPIDER (2007), where a hapless, immature prankster might as well be dropping an atomic weapon into his love life.

The Zombie Apocalypse makes its way Down Under in Spencer Susser’s I LOVE SARAH JANE (2007), but not even that can stop the serious crush young Jimbo has on classmate Sarah Jane (current “It Girl” Mia Wasikowska in a very early role) in this DAWN OF THE DEAD/LORD OF THE FLIES mash-up.

Early-1980s public safety films are expertly spoofed in Nathaniel Lindsay’s animated DUCKED & COVERED: A SURVIVAL GUIDE TO THE POST APOCALYPSE (2009) in this evening’s penultimate short. Now you will know what to do when the killer robots show up, or if you have too many skulls lying around.

KINETIC CINEMA: STORY, POEM, METAPHOR: THE DANCE FILMS OF GABRIELLE LANSNER

Posted on January 16, 2014December 23, 2019 by spectacletheater

STORY, POEM, METAPHOR: THE DANCE FILMS OF GABRIELLE LANSNER
Dir. Gabrielle Lansner
USA, ca. 90 minutes

THURSDAY, MAY 8 – 7:30 PM
Gabrielle Lansner in attendance!

Choreographer and filmmaker Gabrielle Lansner will screen her emotionally charged and story driven dance films. Coming from a dance/theater background, Gabrielle will discuss her creative process and the challenges she encountered in developing works for the camera that live somewhere between story, poem and metaphor. She will screen, DAD, wishing…, and THE STRONGER which have toured to Festivals in the U.S. and internationally, excerpts of early projects that served as drafts for completed films, and SET BREAKS, from 1980.

Gabrielle Lansner is a critically acclaimed choreographer, award winning filmmaker and artistic director of gabrielle lansner & company. Since 1997, she has been exploring the intersection of dance, film and theater. Her innovative dance/theater works have been presented at The Duke on 42nd Street, HERE, River to River Festival, The Peter Jay Sharpe Theater, among others. Most recently Gabrielle has been exploring the medium of film as another form of artistic expression. Her three short films have screened and received awards both in the U.S. and Internationally.

ABOUT KINETIC CINEMA

Kinetic Cinema is a regular screening series of Pentacle’s Movement Media curated by invited guest artists who create evenings of films and videos that have been influential to their own work as artists. When artists are asked to reflect upon how the use of movement in film and media arts has influenced their own art, a plethora of new ideas, material, and avenues of exploration emerge. From cutting edge motion capture animation to Michael Jackson music videos, from Gene Kelly musicals to Kenneth Anger films, Kinetic Cinema is dedicated to the recognition and appreciation for “moving” pictures. We have presented these evenings at Collective:Unconscious, Chez Bushwick, IRT, Launchpad, Green Space, Uniondocs, CRS, 3rd Ward, Fort Useless and The Tank in New York City, as well as at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia.

For more info on the current Kinetic Cinema season please visit our website and our blog, movetheframe.com.

KINETIC CINEMA is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Pentacle’s Movement Media programming is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

BEST OF SPECTACLE: EPHEMERALL™

Posted on January 1, 2014December 23, 2019 by spectacletheater

EPHEMERALL™
Dir. Various, 1930s-1970s.
USA, 60 min.

MONDAY, JANUARY 20 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, JANUARY 30 – 10:00 PM

Please consult with your doctor or another qualified health care professional before starting EPHEMERALL™.

EPHEMERALL™ from Spectacle Theater on Vimeo.

Bleeding our end-of-year BEST OF SPECTACLE tradition into the first month of the New Year is a summary of Spectacle’s 2013 EPHEMERA nights into one single, hour-long program: EPHEMERALL™.

No outlet served post-war American culture’s ebullient pride and prosperity better than that of the now-infamous educational film. Today these didactic artifacts are relegated to sideshow status by the likes of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, Weird Al, MST3K and Adult Swim, all of whom freely lampoon these easy targets for their comically dated sensibilities.

Last year’s monthly EPHEMERA program aimed to present these documents to a contemporary audience in perhaps a more even light, ideally free from the ironic framing that can easily overwhelm some of their more interesting details.

EPHEMERALL™ is a the entirety of these values, advice, commodities and information, all neatly compressed into one ultra-convenient dose. In the course a single sitting, an entire century of knowledge and wisdom will be yours.

Sources for EPMEHERALL™ include brief portions of nearly every clip from each of 2013’s 8 EPHEMERA programs:
-March: THE PRELINGER ARCHIVES
-April: FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIAL GUIDANCE
-May: WHAT WAS NEW YORK?
-June: ACT NATURAL
-July: SEX, THE PREDATOR, AND YOU
-August: PSYCHOLOGY AND CONCERN
-September: POPULUXE
-October: SAFETY FIRST!

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 6,074 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.

JANUARY MIDNIGHTS

Posted on January 1, 2014December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL HOTEL
Dir: Richard Baskin & Paul Justman, 1983.
85 min. USA.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 3 – MIDNIGHT • FREE!

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.

ARTIFACT VIDEO CLUB PRESENTS:
TURKISH PARANORMAL ACTIVITY
Dir. Hasan Karacadağ, 2012
Turkey, 119 min.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 10 – MIDNIGHT

Nodding to our international colleagues running Nollywood movie clubs, VCD videotheques, and illicit storefront cinemas, this year Spectacle inaugurates ARTIFACT VIDEO CLUB, a new monthly midnight series of bootlegged contemporary pop cinema from around the world. Pitched between armchair anthropology, misapplied critical theory, and superfried midnight madness, ARTIFACT VIDEO CLUB is an intrepid exploration of vernacular cinema from around the globe: things from countries whose film industries’ stateside visibility is generally restricted to annual consulate-sponsored showcases touting prestige productions. These are not such films.

Purposefully half-baked, the series is conceptually aligned with Ghana’s bootleg Hollywood video screenings, virus-infested Russian piracy sites, taxi stand televisions, Crown Heights bodegas DVD selections, the nether-reaches of YouTube trailer shows, and movies from two years ago that have an 8.7 IMDb rating based on tens of thousands of votes, yet of which apparently nothing has been written in English. Like the films it presents, it has been authorized by no one.

We begin with what we are calling TURKISH PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. Though the seasoned Z-grade movie explorer is no doubt familiar with Turkey’s circa-1980 mockbusters like TURKISH STAR WARS, TURKISH WIZARD OF OZ, TURKISH E.T., TURKISH BATMAN, TURKISH STRAW DOGS, et al, one might believe this practice has been displaced by such contemporary arthouse darlings such as Nuri Bridge Ceylan, Rasit Celikezer, and Fatih Aiken. And yet it continues through the efforts of those such as Islamic Turkish horror filmmaker Hasan Karacadağ, who over the last decade has produced a steady stream of remarkably effective (and truly scary) unofficial horror remakes that unabashedly reinterpret hits from trend genres like J-horror, found footage, and torture porn via the The Quran — sort of like if Hollywood worshipped Allah instead of Mammon.

The plot of this one is simple: after a young woman experiences intensified sleepwalking episodes, her husband places cameras around the house to monitor her activity. As more unexplained, increasingly malevolent experiences occur during the night, including those which threaten their young daughters, the couple consult with a holy man and learn that they are being persecuted by the Quranic spirits of the Dabbe and Jinn — and may be under possession themselves. Because the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY films are so quintessentially formulaic, the well-studied, brazen appropriation of TURKISH PARANORMAL ACTIVITY renders it, at minimum, exactly as good as its North American counterparts (and, pleasantly, more gory). Only by framing its consumer-tech-steeped narrative in Islamic belief and folklore, it also presents a dialectic between tradition and modernization, portending grim consequences of secular living. The simple virtue of it’s existence amid a revitalized, international appreciation for Turkish arthouse cinema also suggests something of the country’s uneasy, unreconciled relationship to its history of exploitation cinema.

But maybe we’re over-explaining ourselves: TURKISH PARANORMAL ACTIVITY is totally awesome and scary as fuck.

HARD ROCK ZOMBIES
Dir. Krishna Shah, 1985.
98 min. USA.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 11 – MIDNIGHT

The town of Grand Guiginol (seriously) hosts a touring rock band who’s lead singer falls in love with a local girl, Cassie. A series of disturbing discoveries and even worse encounters with the inhabitants of the town, lead the band to a ghastly end. Can Cassie find a way to bring them back and save her from the town full of werewolves, nazis, killer hicks, bloodthirsty dwarves, and Hitler himself?

Celebrate Rockuary with horror and heavy metal excess! Raise a Black Label and cheer as metal conquers all!

THE PIT
Dir. Lew Lehman, 1981.
97 min. USA.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 17 – MIDNIGHT

FORGET KILL BILL, DEATH WISH AND STRAW DOGS: here is a revenge fantasy you can actually relate to. At 12-years-old, Jamie Benjamin already has a CV of torture that would make Dawn Weiner blush: the hot librarian at elementary school tears up the erotic collages he makes with her photos; the cool kid at recess splits his lip open; Jamie’s nubile live-in babysitter only has eyes for an indifferent jock; and even the old woman down the street tries to mow him down with her motorized scooter (“he’ll probably grow into one of those hippies…”). It’s not clear exactly what’s wrong with the kid—he shows signs of autism, and a creepily over-affectionate mother might have something to do with it—but he finds solace in friendship with his teddy bear and the afternoons he spends visiting a pit in the woods full of bloodthirsty, primordial trolls. The youngster does his best to see that they’re looked after, but a kid can only steal so much meat from the butcher truck before another solution is in order—and if it can satisfy two problems at once, so much the better.

THE WIDOWER
Dir. Marcus Rogers, 1999.
CA. 79 mins.

SATURDAY JANUARY 18 – MIDNIGHT

“The Widower, produced and directed by Canadians Marcus Rogers and Kevin McBride, is a highly stylized, deliberately paced David Lynchian fable about a very reticent man (Shawn Milsted) who keeps the rigor mortis-ridden corpse of his beloved deceased wife (Romona Orr) preserved, even taking her out on dates until a couple of bumbling cops get wise to his disturbing (if genuinely touching) necrophiliac activities. Visually augmented by nightmarish hallucinations, with a killer lounge-surf-rock-pop soundtrack, it is a rather romantic tale of mournful dementia.”

SHAKMA
Dir. Tom Logan / Hugh Parks, 1990.
USA/UK. 101 min.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 31 – MIDNIGHT

“The world’s angriest primate just got mad!”

What better time than midnight for a failed experiment? Moments after using a power drill to graft a microchip onto a baboon’s heart, it’s Friday – and so a plucky group of horny and misguided researchers decide to go after-hours LARPing in the lab. Trouble is, the baboon’s heart has been flooded with steroidal enyzmes, and he’s out for revenge!

Leading a sundry cast of lowercase-E expendables, Roddy McDowell lends simian blessings to a guesome, hardheaded terror-romp equal bits “man vs. nature” and haunted house. But the real star is the indestructible Shakma, played by a small company of real (and presumably authentically angry) baboons.

VERITY OR PROVOCATION: A Tour Documentary

Posted on December 28, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

VERITY OR PROVOCATION
Dir. AK. 1991.
122 min. USA.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 4 – MIDNIGHT

Following our special screenings of Dave Markey’s 1991: THE YEAR PUNK BROKE, we present a one-night-only midnight show of the far more commercially successful international tour documentary that is invoked throughout as a target of parody. Starring Jesus’s mom and featuring memorable cameos by the cast of DICK TRACY and a bottle of Vichy Catalan water. Great jams to boot. Get into the groove!