2024 marks a full decade since the release of Gareth Edwards’ attempt to memory-wipe Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich’s misbegotten GODZILLA (1998). And despite being curiously stiff and overburdened by an ensemble of screaming A-listers, Edwards’ GODZILLA was successful enough to trigger further reexhumations like KONG: SKULL ISLAND, APE VS. MECHA APE, PACIFIC RIM, THE LAKE and 2025 ARMAGEDDON, while Japanese audiences were blessed with SHIN GODZILLA in 2016 and GODZILLA MINUS ONE in 2023, both of which took the radioactive reptile seriously in discretely breathtaking ways.

But even if kaiju season has returned to the world of cinema, the DARK KNIGHT-ification of Godzilla seems to have hit a wall in the Legendary/Warner Brothers “Monsterverse”, as each of those movies tend to feature their version of “Godzilla” onscreen for about fifteen minutes or less. Thus, it feels like a strange blessing that Gamera – giant firebreathing turtle, friend to children worldwide, and Godzilla’s most formidable competitor outside the Toho constellation of monsters – is yet to receive a full CGI makeover or, worse yet, American “reboot”. (To commemorate the half-centennial of Gamera’s debut in 1965, Gamera’s rightsholders did commission a quite promising trailer from filmmaker Katsuhito Ishii, but pulled the plug on the project thereafter.)

For these reasons, it feels like a better time than ever to reexamine the trilogy of Gamera films made by Shūsuke Kaneko between 1994 and 1999, glorious remnants of the late pre-digital era of kaiju cinema regarded by fans as some of the greatest monster films ever made.

“Kaiju films are the Japanese equivalent of American action movies… In U.S. films, the panic arises from a focused situation. For example, the siege of the building in DIE HARD. In kaiju films, this comes from a national, collective panic. Godzilla and Gamera films have the same goal: to show Japan in a panic. Toho’s way is to present Japan as an economically strong, traditionalistic country that then has inharmonious elements dropped in that disrupt the flow of order. In my Gamera films, I approach Japan from underneath, showing the people and their daily lives, and create panic from threatening that life.” – Kaneko Shūsuke, Fangoria

 

( poster by Blake Cox )

GAMERA: GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE
(ガメラ 大怪獣空中決戦)
dir. Kaneko Shūsuke, 1995
95 mins. Japan.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 – 5 PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 – 5 PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 – 7:30 PM

TICKETS

A great duel of supersonic speed.

A ship runs aground on a mysterious atoll leading to an investigation by insurance representative Kusanagi, who discovers an ancient bead that he gives to his daughter Asagi. Meanwhile, ornithologist Nagamine investigates reports of a new species of large bird named Gyaos. As the Gyaos begin to attack, an ancient guardian with a bond to Asagi emerges.

GAMERA 2: ATTACK OF LEGION
(ガメラ2 レギオン襲来)
dir. Kaneko Shūsuke, 1996
100 mins. Japan.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 – 5 PM
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 – 5 PM

TICKETS

Who will be extinct, Japan, or Legion?

A strange meteor lands in Japan and unleashes hundreds of insect-like “Legion” creatures bent on colonizing the Earth. When the military fails to control the situation, Gamera shows up to deal with the ever-evolving space adversary. However the battle may result in Gamera losing his bond with both Asagi and humanity.

GAMERA 3: REVENGE OF IRIS
(ガメラ3 邪神覚醒)
dir. Kaneko Shūsuke, 1999
108 mins. Japan.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 – 5 PM

TICKETS

I will not forgive Gamera.

With the Gyaos re-emerging, Gamera’s ties to humanity have been severed with his bond to Asagi broken. Nagamine and Asagi investigate while an orphaned girl named Ayana discovers a new creature she names Iris. Nagamine and Asagi must reach Ayana before she takes her revenge on Gamera, who she blames for the death of her family.

HÉCATE
dir. Daniel Schmid, 1982.
France/Switzerland, 105m.
In French with English subtitles

screening with

THE WOMAN WITH A HUNDRED FACES
(LA FEMME AUX CENT VISAGES)
dir. Jean-Daniel Pollet, 1966.
France, 10m.
In French with English subtitles.

TICKETS

Despite sharing intimate personal and professional relationships with both Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Schroeter, the work of Swiss filmmaker Daniel Schmid remains significantly underappreciated compared to that of his New German Cinema friends. Indeed, as actress-screenwriter Bulle Ogier wrote in her book J’ai oublié, “Some of [my friend Daniel Schmid’s] films are disappearing, and not only because my memory keeps fading.”

Yet during his life, Schmid’s films were celebrated at international festivals and were allegedly the subject of the first full Japanese retrospective of a non-Japanese filmmaker, curated by the critic Shigehiko Hasumi. Those who champion Schmid’s work are taken by the way his films oscillate between classical, operatic Italian references from the south and German expressionist and avant-garde influences from the north, frequently exploring how details, surfaces, and surroundings disclose the uneasy spirit below—how the heart is known through the mask.

HÉCATE explores these ideas through an allusion to the ancient Greek three-headed goddess of boundaries, travellers, the underworld, and witchcraft. The film begins with Julien, a consular attaché who is escaping the tensions of the European interwar period by absconding to the “international city” of Tangier, where he begins an affair with Clothilde, a mysterious woman played by Lauren Hutton. They consummate a physical relationship, but intimacy remains elusive and a burgeoning limerence demands increasingly extreme gestures to sustain itself. The creeping shadows erasing Julien’s sense of self are brilliantly captured by Renato Berta’s camera. The colonial horrors concealed by fantasies of the bon vivant class are ultimately disclosed.

While many readers interpret the source novella, Hecate and her Dogs by Paul Morand, as an autobiographical examination of the author’s guilt about his own wartime collaborationist sympathies, Schmid carries no such history and instead uses the myth to hint at a condition perhaps more ontological: the perversity haunting the human desire to possess.

Preceding the feature is one of Jean-Daniel Pollet’s most enigmatic works, THE WOMAN WITH A HUNDRED FACES, which was built around Antoine Duhamel’s music for Godard’s Pierrot le fou. Its script, written by Jean Thibaudeau, evokes the constitutive distance at the heart of desire.

New Circle of Cinema is a microcinema project that has hosted pop-up screenings across Toronto since 2021. Inspired by Henri Langlois’ Circle of Cinema film club, which held in his mother’s cramped living room clandestine screenings of salvaged films discarded by the studios, New Circle of Cinema is similarly committed to screening undistributed and out-of-print films in intimate, unconventional spaces. As Langlois said, “A film that isn’t screened is dead.”

Donald Neilson, aka The Black Panther. Was responsible for over 400 house burglaries. Between 1971 and 1974, Neilson robbed 18 sub-post offices, breaking into them in the night. In 1974, Neilson committed three murders during his post office robberies, killing two sub-postmasters and the husband of a sub-postmistress during robberies in Harrogate in North Yorkshire, Baxenden in Lancashire, and Langley, West Midlands respectively. On January 14, 1975, he kidnapped Lesley Whittle, an heiress from Highley, Shropshire. She would later die in his captivity. He was convicted of four counts of murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment in July 1976. He died at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital after being transferred there from Norwich Prison on December 17, 2011, aged 75. THE BLACK PANTHER is based on his crimes. 

Dennis “Des” Nilsen, aka The British Jeffrey Dahmer. Killed at least twelve young men and boys in his two North London flats between 1978 and 1983. He also attempted to kill seven more and initially confessed to there being 15 victims, but later recanted his story, saying the 3 additional murders never took place. He was convicted of the murders of six men and two attempted murders on November 4, 1983 and sentenced to life imprisonment. He died at York Hospital on May 12, 2018, aged 72. COLD LIGHT OF DAY is based on his crimes.

THE BLACK PANTHER
Dir. Ian Merrick, 1977.
United Kingdom. 102 min.
In English.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3 – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7 – MIDNIGHT
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – 10PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 – 10PM

TICKETS

Not to be confused with MCU trash, Ian Merrick’s debut film THE BLACK PANTHER recounts the criminal escapades of Donald Neilson, an armed robber, kidnapper and murderer who terrorized the north of England in the 1970s.

The film caused an enormous controversy upon its release in late December 1977, just one year and a half after Neilson’s sentencing to life in prison. Its initial run in UK cinemas was canceled due to protest and mounting media pressure, though the film eventually found a home on VHS in both the US and UK in the 1980s.

Screenwriter Michael Armstrong, of MARK OF THE DEVIL fame, took a journalistic approach to adapting the case to the screen and resolved to depict on film only that which was totally verifiable. Pursuing absolute accuracy, he even based much of the main character’s dialogue on court transcripts and media interviews with Neilson himself.

The result is a shockingly realistic and minimalist docudrama and a haunting and disturbing piece of true-crime cinema. Directed with unflinching intensity by Ian Merrick, it is a sobering look not only at Neilson’s method and psyche, but also at how police incompetence and press unscrupulousness contributed to Neilson’s most infamous crime.

COLD LIGHT OF DAY
Dir. Fhiona Louise, 1989.
United Kingdom. 80 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 – MIDNIGHT
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 – 10PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 – MIDNIGHT

TICKETS

Bob Flag, who bears a striking resemblance to the real Dennis Nilsen, plays Jordan Marsh, a seemingly kindly civil servant who befriends down and out young men and lures them back to his “flat of horror” (as it was dubbed at the time by the tabloid press) with promises of food, drink and shelter only to strangle them with a necktie, drown them in his bathtub and dismember their bodies in a film based on the crimes of Dennis Nilsen.

This fictionalized account of the Nilsen murders dramatizes key elements of his modus operandi. Flag plays Nilsen with quiet menace and pathetic confusion, as a diseased man unable to comprehend his affliction or explain his drive to kill. Written and directed by 21-year-old Fhiona Louise in her first and only directorial credit (still the youngest woman to have directed a feature film in Britain), it is a strangely observational look at the daily rituals and routines of a life turned toward killing.

Shot on grainy 16mm film on a micro budget, in the grottiest of flats, caffs, pubs, and in the red light district of Soho, it is a film of unrelenting bleakness and suffocating grayness, offering an oblique insight into a disturbed criminal mind in the cold light of Thatcher’s London.

 

 

FUCKING CITY
dir. Lothar Lambert, 1982.
Germany. 88 min.
In German with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 – 10PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 – 10PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 – 7:30PM

TICKETS

Lothar Lambert’s FUCKING CITY follows four desperate characters on their quest for emotional and sexual fulfillment in the urban jungle of West Berlin. Married couple Rüdiger and Helga dive headfirst into the world of sexual liberation, racially fetishizing the local migrant communities in an attempt to save their failing relationship. In a meta-commentary on Lambert’s own practice, Rüdiger sublimates his impotency through an increasing obsession with exploitative, amateur filmmaking. Meanwhile, Helga’s gay coworker Kurt (Lothar Lambert) jumps from man to man, struggling to sustain a lasting bond with any of them, while his sister, Klara, visits from the provinces for her first bittersweet taste of city life. At once a capsule of a uniquely specific milieu and a timeless exploration of the inadequacies that plague the petty bourgeoise, FUCKING CITY represents a defining work of German underground cinema and one of Lambert’s most fully realized visions.

As director, screenwriter, and frequent cameraman, editor, producer, and distributor of over forty films since 1971, Lambert has cultivated an expansive, wholly independent, and unabashedly queer body of work that is all his own, and yet his films remain largely unseen outside of Germany. Fresh from receiving the 2024 Berlinale’s Special Teddy– awarded for outstanding achievement and long-term service to queer cinema, and whose previous winners include Werner Schroeter, Ulrike Ottinger, Udo Kier, and Rosa von Praunheim – the DIY renegade seems destined for more widespread recognition. This September, Spectacle is thrilled play a role in Lambert’s resurgence as we unveil this recent restoration of FUCKING CITY for the first time in North America.

Eldar Shengelaia (b. 1933) was born into filmmaking. The son of silent-era Georgian film star Nato Vachnadze and Director Nikoloz Shengelaia, Eldar studied film in Moscow before returning home to Georgia to work in Tblisi’s Gruziya-film studio; one of the oldest film studios in the world. After a successful career with widespread praise for his work in the 1980s, Shengelaia paused filmmaking to pursue a second career in the Georgian parliament as part of the country’s Independence movement, where he served from 1990 until 2004. This change shines an intriguing light on the loving portrayal of his country and the critical and mocking portrayal of the Soviet occupation seen allegorically throughout his films.

Spectacle is pleased to present four of Shengelaia’s works made before the collapse of the Soviet Union that showcase his native country as he saw it. His multiple efforts to portray Georgia’s truth on film exhibit similarities in their themes: life is tough, it is a constant struggle with the people around us, and the geography in which we inhabit.

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BLUE MOUNTAINS, OR UNBELIEVABLE STORY
(ცისფერი მთები ანუ დაუჯერებელი ამბავი)
Dir. Eldar Shengelaia, 1983.
Georgia. 97 min.
In Georgian with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 – 7:30PM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 – 10PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 – 5PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 – 10PM

TICKETS

The film concerns a young writer, Soso, attempting to get his novel—the titular Blue Mountains—read by the editorial board of a state-run publishing company. His hopes are dashed in a comedy of errors as his attempts to have the manuscript reviewed are thwarted by everyone else’s preoccupations: chess games, lunches, vacation time, suspicious husbands, constant meetings, the vibrations from neighboring games of motoball (or is it the subway?), and most importantly, a painting of Greenland threatening to fall from its precarious perch.

Season’s pass as Soso’s visits to his publisher grow increasingly hectic and frustrating as he bounces from office to office, and nothing seems to progress or get done. Like the bureaucracy stifling Soso’s progress, where everyone is looking up at someone else to pass the buck to, the employees’ eyes are literally looking upward as the ceiling in the building cracks and plaster rains down upon them. Will they do anything to stop the impending doom? Or will their reliance on the system be their downfall?

The film’s popularized English title uses “unbelievable” to describe the story, whereas “improbable” or “incredible” may be a more apt translation. Considering this is Shengelaia’s last film before entering Georgian Parliament 6 years later, one can infer that his treatment by, and experience with, the bureaucracy of the Soviet film industry spurred this poison pen classic. To the members of this theater’s volunteer collective, this film will either be seen as cathartic, charming, hilarious, and be received with cheers of “preach!”; or be a trigger for the PTSD that comes with collectivism, and be seen as far too real.

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THE ECCENTRICS
(შერეკილები)
Dir. Eldar Shengelaia, 1973.
Georgia. 79 min.
In Georgian with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 – 10PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 – 7:30PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 – 10PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 – 7:30PM

TICKETS

Shengelaia’s most outright comedic, surrealistic, and fantastical film of the bunch, THE ECCENTRICS tells the story of Ertaoz, a free spirited young man living in the Georgian countryside. After the death of his equally free spirited father, and left without house and home, Ertaoz wanders to the nearby city where he becomes entangled in the goings on of the local adulteress Margalita, her ever-absent train conductor husband, her jail warden boyfriend, and her psychiatrist suitor.

When an encounter with the warden and the temptation of Margalita’s seduction lands him in jail, Ertaoz meets a new paternal (uncle-grandpa?) figure and friend in the eccentric Kristephore, a mathematician and inventor kept in an underground cell. Together they hatch a plan to escape via an unlikely flying machine inspired by Ertoaz’s pet hen. Hilarity ensues. Will their machine take flight? Will they make it out alive? Will Ertaoz win the heart of Margalita in the process?

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AN UNUSUAL EXHIBITION
(არაჩვეულებრივი გამოფენა)
Dir. Eldar Shengelaia, 1968.
Georgia. 89 min.
In Georgian with English subtitles.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7 – 5PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 – 10PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 – 10PM

TICKETS

AN UNUSUAL EXHIBITION showcases the life and adventures of Aguli, a sculptor who, injured in the second world war, returns home to resume his artistic practice. In his studio’s courtyard stands a large piece of marble gifted to him by his former teacher. The white marble becomes the artist’s white whale. Unable to ever begin carving due to everchanging ideas, commissions for grave monuments, the war effort, a seemingly unending amount of children, and even his own drunken indiscretions. The behemoth blank page plagues the artist, who takes out his inability to spend time on his own work on his wife, who takes on all domestic responsibilities, and his father.

Shengelaia approaches the life of an artist with his usual brand of humor, satire, and sardonicism. Aguli encounters all of the naysayers a creative might deal with in their career. Finicky clients who just need to see the smallest amount of their own direction in the work, regardless of how much actually changes. Never able to create his own artistic expressions, the local graveyard becomes his exhibition where Aguli can look back on his accomplishments and past commissions. The film presents a truth for the aspirational working class creative: life gets in the way. But for Aguli, and the rest of us, perhaps it’s the art that got in the way of life.

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THE WHITE CARAVAN
(თეთრი ქარავანი)
Dirs. Eldar Shengelaia, Tamaz Meliava, 1963.
Georgia. 93 min.
In Georgian with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7 – 10PM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 – 7:30PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 – 5PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – 10PM

TICKETS

THE WHITE CARAVAN follows its narrator Gela, who is the eldest son of Martia, a shepherd who leads a group of seven as they guide their flock of sheep across the challenging landscape of Georgia to their winter pasture. The flock is their village’s main economic livelihood, with the entire population relying upon its success. The work is hard and the terrain dangerous.

Gela is unhappy and despondent, feeling trapped in his life with the flock on the road. Lured by the excitement and possibilities of the city he abandons his group, his flock, and the love of his fiancee for ‘greener pastures’. But after a tragic accident brings him back, what regrets await him? Was chasing a dream a mistake? What does it mean to live?

THE WHITE CARAVAN is the 3rd feature film that Shengelaia worked on in a directorial role, sharing responsibilities with Tamaz Meliava. While it is the earliest film we are presenting in this series, in some regards it feels the grandest in scale. Walking a line between a rural slice of life, and an epic western. The film utilizes both the relationship of the father and the son, as well as the countryside and the city, to discuss Georgia’s national identity and the schism between tradition and modernity, old and new. Two sides of the same coin, one looking forward, the other looking back, unable to see one another face to face. Some New York transplants might feel this one in their bones.

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