SPIRIT RISER
Dir. Dylan Mars Greenberg. 2024.
United States. 98 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15– 7:30 PM w/ Q&A (this event is $10)
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25 – 7:30 PM

TICKETS

Q&A TICKETS

“A NEON FAIRY TALE BEYOND IMAGINATION!”

Flung to far corners of the nation by a dark and lonely entity, sisters Ingrid and Sydney find themselves forgetting. Forgetting their family, themselves, and their own power locked inside! As the two girls race against the odds to reunite, they are targeted and hunted down by sinister cosmic forces that will stop at nothing to see them destroyed. Can our heroes find peace in a world that wants them gone?

Quickly after its spring premiere at The Museum of the Moving Image, Dylan Mars Greenberg’s punk as fuck genre-busting horrorurreal kung-fantasy phantasmagoria known as SPIRIT RISER began taking the country by storm. This fall, the storm comes to us… GOD help us all. Join us as we Protect The S on November 15th at 7:30 PM for an extradimensional Q&A with director Dylan Mars Greenberg. Hosted by Philip Ginley!

Starring a wall-to-wall-who’s-who cast of cherished and unconventional art, music and film fixtures including: actress Lynn Lowry, sisters Kansas and Parker Love Bowling, musicians Cherie Currie and Dorian Electra – as well as appearances from directors Lloyd Kaufman, Ryan Trecartin, and Trent Harris. Narrated by Mr. Blonde himself Michael Madsen and featuring trans icon and writer Kate Bornstein as GOD.

“A surreal mindtrip with an ending that will haunt your dreams.” – James Rolfe, The Angry Video Game Nerd

“Frenzied, surreal and with wild abandon: Dylan Mars Greenberg’s fever dream, SPIRIT RISER is a banger.”  – James Merendino, director of SLC PUNK

“SPIRIT RISER is utterly fabulously WILD! A Lynchian wild-ride through a queer dreamscape of beauty and horror that must be experienced as it’s practically impossible to describe.” – Peaches Christ

“9.5/10; SPIRIT RISER is a relentlessly exhilarating underground masterwork that will light up your synapses like a Christmas tree tornado.” – Michael Talbot-Haynes, Film Threat 

“A classic in the making”  – Mary Beth McAndrews, Dread Central 

“A multidimensional mind blower… Dylan Mars Greenberg’s vision is a breath of fresh air” – Jodi Wille, director of THE SOURCE FAMILY

Join us for a one-night special event featuring 3 short documentaries by Courtney Bush, followed by a Q&A with poet Ari Lisner.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22 – 7:30PM

TICKETS

PARIS J’I DON’T HATE YOU AS MUCH AS I DID WHEN I WAS 21
dir. Courtney Bush, 2024
USA. 54 min.
In English.

~One day, a woman crosses every bridge on the Seine with her best friend, Anne-Louise.~

As much a documentary as it is a video diary or a poetic essay, PARIS J’I DON’T HATE YOU AS MUCH AS I DID WHEN I WAS 21 finds the filmmaker-poet-comedienne traversing the titular city while examining her friendship and her own changing relationship with Paris through lenses of literature (Rilke’s The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge) and pop culture (The Sopranos) which deal in their own ways with the anxiety and emotion induced by the city and the overpowering aesthetic institution of “Paris.”

Screening with

HELL: A FILM ABOUT BILOXI, MISSISSIPPI
dir. Courtney Bush, 2024
USA. 18 min
In English.

In this darkly comic exploration of a small area of Biloxi, Mississippi, the filmmaker braids together local legend, a murder scandal from the 80s, and strange occurrences related to the BP oil spill and Hurricane Katrina (including a mysterious visit by the actor Kirsty Alley) as an attempt to approach her complex relationship to her hometown.

And

A DISORIENTING VIDEO OF SCOTTISH SHEEP
dir. Courtney Bush, 2024
USA. 5 min.

In English.

See title.

Courtney Bush is a poet and filmmaker from the Mississippi Gulf Coast. She is the author of the books Every Book Is About The Same Thing (Newest York Arts Press, 2022), I Love Information (Milkweed Editions, 2023), and the forthcoming A Movie (Lavender Ink, 2025). Once her homemade cinema pieces have been projected as light at least once, which symbolically completes the cycle and makes them “real movies,” they can be found on Youtube.

By the time of these screenings you will most likely be fully fed up with the cacophony of noise that is the 2024 race for United States President. Tired of the incessant barrage of the 24 hour news cycle’s obsession with candidates Trump and Harris’ every move. Escape with us 32 years into the past to see all the lessons that were never learnt from two documentary films concerning the 1992 presidential election that pull back the curtain on the behind-the-scenes happenings and illuminate the full on charade that is US politics: Kevin Rafferty and James Ridgeway’s FEED (1992) and Brian Springer’s follow-up, SPIN (1995). Both films utilize pirated television satellite feeds obtained by Springer that show a side of the race and the personalities at play that were/are often unseen by the general public.

Spectacle is excited to share some of our favorite pieces of documentary exposé with you this Election Day (as well as a few days prior). Because if you’re like us, you will much prefer watching them instead of the mind-numbingly slow and drawn out parade of live exit polls and results from states across the country. Fuck the cable news channels, come hang with us as we completely ignore the 2024 election, and laugh at our bizarre past that was the 1992 election.

SPIN
Dir. Brian Springer, 1995
United States. 57 min.
In English

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5 – 7:30 PM, this event is $5, but it is $10 if you are wearing an “I Voted” sticker.*

[ TICKETS ]

During the year leading up to the 1992 Presidential election, artist Brian Springer spent his time tuning into satellite feeds used by the campaigns and the television networks that were not intended for public consumption, but were available to those with the know-how and the technological means to intercept them. The footage collected and Springer’s commentary shine a light on the manipulative practices of mass media. Pulling the mask back on the insidious system that silences public debate and shuns anyone outside the inner circle of those manufacturing the news; politicians, journalists, spin doctors, and televangelists. It is truly a must see for any paranoiac.

SPIN’s revelations highlight the fact that the job of President is really more about presentation, look, and likeability than it is policy. And that it is more in line with the job description of an actor, or television host/personality. Seeing the entertainment-ification of the presidential election which we now cannot escape from. In addition to the main characters of the election, George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, and even Al Gore and Larry King, SPIN also looks at the events of the Los Angeles Rodney King riots and its racist portrayal by the news media as well as the unsuccessful presidential bid by Larry Agran, who was ignored and excluded by the media despite his polling numbers.

Brian Springer is an artist, educator, and documentarian, working primarily in video, sound and performance. Springer has exhibited internationally, and taught at a number of institutions across the States.

Special thanks to Video Data Bank.

FEED
Dirs. Kevin Rafferty, James Ridgeway, 1992.
United States. 76 min.
In English.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5 – 9 PM, this event is $5, but it is $10 if you are wearing an “I Voted” sticker.*

[ TICKETS ]

A comedy about running for President

FEED is a collage of a documentary, presenting footage of the 1992 presidential election’s New Hampshire primaries and showcasing the candidates and their staff without commentary or narration. Using moments filmed on the campaign trail as well as pirated satellite feeds where the candidates are caught between segments in their more natural state. Released in October of 1992, just weeks before the general election, FEED features a cast of characters including Jerry Brown, Pat Buchanan, Bob Kerrey, Ross Perot, Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Bush Sr., Bill & Hillary Clinton, and many more.

The satellite footage was supplied to the film by SPIN’s creator, Brian Springer, and both documentaries feel like desperate pleas with the public for media literacy. An appeal which is represented in a scene in FEED where candidate Jerry Brown pleads with a classroom of college students about propaganda and if any of them have even so much as heard of Marshall Mcluhan. They had not. Unlike SPIN, which skewers media manufacturing, FEED takes aim at the personalities that are running for office and their buffoonish antics with a comedic tendency which invites the audience to laugh at them, not with them.

* This is a joke.

RESIDENCY
dir. Winnie Cheung, 2023
75 min. United States.
In English.

screening with

MY BODY IS A CAR
dir. Lucy Rosa Blanca Gaehring, 2023
3 min. United States.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 27 – 5 PM followed by Q+A with filmmakers Winnie Cheung and Lucy Rosa Blanca Gaehring

ONE NIGHT ONLY!

TICKETS

Spectacle is thrilled to host a one-night-only pre-Halloween screening of New York City filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist Winnie Cheung’s RESIDENCY, paired with Lucy Rosa Blanca Gaehring’s short film MY BODY IS A CAR (2023).

RESIDENCY was filmed during an interdisciplinary artist residency hosted by The Locker Room, a Brooklyn based underground art space. Director/writer/cinematographer/editor Winnie Cheung taps into the ethos of DIY cinema, leveraging the gallery as the set and her cohort of artists as performers.

RESIDENCY boldly redefines the legacy of Kenneth Anger, the Cinema of Transgression and No Wave Cinema. The film is a love letter that taps into the frenzied emotional psychogeography of New York City where the narrative structure is deliberately fragmented, creating an immersive experience that mirrors the unattainable nature of memory. In Cheung’s own words: “What if Warhol made a horror film about life at The Factory?”

“RESIDENCY and MY BODY IS A CAR both distill New York City’s relentless, claustrophobic energy into personal vessels for inner peace and renewal.” – Winnie Cheung

“(RESIDENCY) resurrects the collective spirit that once defined New York City’s artistic ecosystem, yet the zombified venture spirals into derangement as the film shifts into the mode of funhouse horror.” – Artforum

“RESIDENCY is part of the North American new wave of indie micro-budget genre features.” – Variety

“A concise and concentrated evil diamond of a feature debut.” – Filmmaker Rebecca Falvey

WINNIE CHEUNG is a Hong Kong born, New York based filmmaker at the cross section of non-fiction, horror and arthouse cinema. She mixes fictionalized tales with half-truths for unsettling cinematic experiences. In 2019, Winnie’s morbid animated short Albatross Soup premiered at Sundance Hong Kong, won Vimeo Animation of the Year and Short of the Week’s “Short of the Year”. The following year, she co-produced and edited Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, Kier-La Janisse’s epic feature length documentary on the history of folk horror which went on to win SXSW’s Midnighters Audience Award and Best Documentary at Fantasia International Film Festival. Residencyy is Winnie’s first feature film which she co-wrote, directed, shot and co-edited.

LUCY ROSA BLANCA GAEHRING is a trans-femme latin(e) interdisciplinary artist from Miami, based in New York, working primarily in performance with a practice that includes dance, poetry, and sound/video. As a trans Uruguayan-Mexican living in the United States, she questions the binaries of the colonial and patriarchal Western framework that we live under. She often channels feminist stories of melodramatic heartbreak into site-specific performance. It is important to her to continue blurring the line between art-making and community building. She is currently studying at the School of Visual Arts’ BFA ‘Visual & Critical Studies’ program.

THE OUTCASTS
dir. Robert Wynne-Simmons, 1982
95 mins. Ireland.
In English.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5 – 5 PM followed by remote Q+A with Robert Wynne-Simmons moderated by filmmaker Dónal Foreman
(This event is $10.)
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29 – 10 PM

TICKETS

Q&A TICKETS

“The dead are our friends.”

This fall, Spectacle is thrilled to host the United States premiere of a new restoration of Irish filmmaker Robert Wynne-Simmons’ long-unavailable gothic masterpiece THE OUTCASTS.

Rich in earthy pastoral detail, THE OUTCASTS is a slow-burning feminist film disguised as a piece of folk horror. Set in 1810, the film depicts a remote farming community which is thrown into crisis by the arrival of a charismatic, wandering fiddler named Scarf Michael (Mick Lally). Most enamored by him is Maura (Mary Ryan), the daughter of an impoverished farmer, noted and often ridiculed among the townsfolk for her slowness and shyness. Maura gravitates to Scarf against the wishes of her family and neighbors, and is soon suspected of practicing witchcraft in her own right. As she suffers scapegoating from her community for being “mad”, Maura pushed further to the margins.

Before making his directorial debut with THE OUTCASTS, Wynne-Simmons was one of the screenwriters on Piers Haggard’s infamous THE BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW (1971), a similarly windswept cult film steeped in mythology (albeit on the British, not Irish, countryside.) Seamus Corcoran’s telephoto cinematography and the unfakeable locations of Ireland lend THE OUTCASTS the quality of a 95-minute dream (or nightmare) sequence in the vein of McCABE & MRS. MILLER or PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK, like a fairy tale hazily remembered. Ultimately, THE OUTCASTS is an unsparing and mesmerizing parable of stigma, prejudice, faith and tradition, interrogating how and why people become monsters in the eyes of others.

“I began filmmaking at age 11 and from the beginning I was fascinated by the way in which films appeared real, but in fact were more akin to dreams.  Within a film it is possible to step seamlessly from reality into fantasy.  The Irish Famine caused such a huge change in the country that in the minds of later storytellers memories of a time before the famine mingled with the world of folk tales. THE OUTCASTS takes place in this liminal landscape between myth and reality.” – Robert Wynne-Simmons

“Robert Wynne-Simmons’ successful attempt to take Irish myth and embroider it with a modern psychological understanding of people’s fears, needs and desires should have been a beacon for the nascent Irish film industry. We certainly have enough lore to draw on, and centuries of struggle and misery to dramatize.” – Irish filmmaker and critic Paul Duane, RTE

At the time of its release, THE OUTCASTS was the first fully Irish-funded film in over half a century. Spectacle is honored to host the United States premiere of the new 2K digital restoration by the Irish Film Archive for IFI’s Digital Restoration Project, painstakingly scanned from original 35mm negatives (which were, themselves, printed from blown-up 16mm film.) The restoration was funded by Screen Ireland/Fís Éireann with further support from Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE) and EU Creative Europe MEDIA programme.

ROBERT WYNNE-SIMMONS is a novelist, poet, composer, librettist and film director, best known for his screenplay of BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW, now regarded as one of the originators of the Folk Horror genre.

DONAL FOREMAN is an Irish filmmaker based in New York City. For more information please visit his website.

Special thanks to Robert Wynne-Simmons, Eleanor Melinn and Sunniva O’Flynn (Irish Film Institute), and Dennis Bartok and Craig Rogers (Deaf Crocodile).

(poster by Stephanie Monohan)