This month, Spectacle brings you an embarrassment of riches pulled deep from the vaults of Joseph Lai’s IFD Films & Arts.

Chances are if you’ve seen a questionably-dubbed actioner from the 70s/80s with the word “ninja” in the title, you may already be familiar with IFD’s oeuvre. Founded in 1973 by Joseph Lai, International Finance Development– not to be confused with Intercontinental Film Distributors, Lai’s sister’s production & distribution company where he got his start as a producer/director (trust us, it only gets more confusing from here)– began as a modestly-sized distribution company that specialized in bringing in European films to play on colonial Hong Kong’s English-language theater circuit; at the time a rarity for a Chinese-owned distributor.

But with limited resources, regular trips to Greece, Cannes, and Rome to source new titles proved untenable. Lai soon realized that it was both simpler and cheaper to source titles from South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, and elsewhere throughout the Asia-Pacific region, dubbing them into English so as not to lose his foothold in the English-language circuit. By the late-70s, Lai would team up with fellow former Shaw Bros. acolyte Godfrey Ho– who helped pioneer the concept of the “cut-and-paste” film, mostly spliced together from existing works and given an original overdubbed narrative– and between them a new, supremely economical business model was born.

Over the next two decades, IFD Films & Arts would release upwards of 200 titles ranging from wholly original masterpieces to films cobbled together from sources so disparate that they supposedly didn’t even know who to credit as director. These four films showcase the variety and sheer audacity of ideas that the IFD catalogue has to offer.

ANGER (领野)
aka ANGELS WITH GOLDEN GUNS
aka MARKING
aka VIRGIN APOCALYPSE
dir. Leung Pasan, 1981
Hong Kong/Philippines. 82 min.
In English (dubbed).

FRIDAY, APRIL 4 – MIDNIGHT
TUESDAY, APRIL 8 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, APRIL 12 – 10 PM
MONDAY, APRIL 21 – 10 PM

TICKETS

WARNING: This film contains a brief scene of animal violence.

A group of women imprisoned by a gang of white slavers mount a daring escape. Later, three of the survivors, with the help of an amorous disco-dancing undercover cop, take bloody revenge against their captors one by one.

Part titillating women-in-prison flick, part merciless revenge thriller, ANGER is a bonafide lost trash-terpiece courtesy of IFD. Needless to say there’s some questionable splicing & dicing of scenes from other films, but what it lacks in cohesion it more than makes up for with its excess of over-the-top action: Gun fights, fist fights, a, uh… “mummy” fight, and what’s quite possibly the largest prison cat fight ever put to film.

THUNDER OF GIGANTIC SERPENT (大蛇王)
dir. Lee Chiu & Godfrey Ho, 1984/1987
Taiwan/Hong Kong. 87 min.
In English (dubbed).

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2 – 10 PM
MONDAY, APRIL 7 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, APRIL 12 – MIDNIGHT
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30 – 10 PM

TICKETS

A top secret formula called “The Thunder Project” that causes plants and animals to grow a thousand times in size is stolen by a terrorist organization led by the ruthless Solomon. The formula is lost in the ensuing chase, but is later recovered by a young girl who accidentally exposes her pet snake Martha to it, turning Martha into an immense skyscraper-sized serpent. While an American mercenary pursues Solomon and his terrorists, the terrorists go after the girl, sending Martha on a deadly rampage that reduces much of Hong Kong to a pile of rubble.

Largely adapted from the Taiwanese kid-friendly kaiju feature, KING OF SNAKE, Lee Chiu & Godfrey Ho’s THUNDER OF GIGANTIC SERPENT is an insane piece of work even by IFD standards. The film falls somewhere between G-rated E.T. riff and R-rated shoot-’em-up, pivoting between cutesy animal antics and gun-blazing violence on a dime, and ending in a trail of destruction that would make Godzilla blush. Quite possibly the crown jewel of IFD’s library despite there not being a ninja in sight.

U.S. CATMAN: LETHAL TRACK (英勇幹探)
aka CATMAN IN LETHAL TRACK
dir. Godfrey Ho, 1989
Hong Kong/United States. 90 min.
In English (dubbed).

SATURDAY, APRIL 5 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, APRIL 15 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, APRIL 19 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23 – 7:30 PM

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Sam is a courier running a top secret delivery for the CIA. The precious cargo: A radioactive cat. When a couple of junkies attempt to steal his van, Sam is scratched by the cat and begins to develop strange new powers including super strength, the ability to manipulate electronics, and, like all cats, the power to light cigarettes with his mind (and possibly something involving his dick but that one isn’t made super clear). As the masked vigilante Catman, Sam teams up with his non-superpowered buddy Gus to fight crime, eventually pitting them against the villainous Father Cheever, an evil priest who, like all clergy, is hellbent on world domination. There’s also an unrelated war happening between some Southeast Asian gangs and an unnamed “security organization”, which is neither here nor there but we at least get some kickass fights out of it.

“CATMAN IN LETHAL TRACK is truly one of the masterworks of the decade […] It also contains a vivid and livley [sic] musical score- it is un-parraleled [sic] even to the masterpeices [sic] of mozart, beethoven, bach, and others. It’s a fine movie that is for the whole family to enjoy.”
—IMDb user oboeman413

(Spectacle would like to note that this is not, in fact, a movie for the whole family to enjoy.)

U.S. CATMAN 2: BOXER BLOW (勇鬥地頭龍)
aka CATMAN IN BOXER’S BLOW
dir. Godfrey Ho, 1989
Hong Kong/United States. 89 min.
In English (dubbed).

SATURDAY, APRIL 5 – MIDNIGHT
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, APRIL 19 – MIDNIGHT
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23 – 10 PM

TICKETS

Sam and Gus are back for another Cat-tastic adventure. With Cheever dead, a new villain has literally punched his way up the corporate ladder and installed himself as the leader of Cheever’s old gang. It once again falls on our fighting feline vigilantes to finish the gang off once and for all. “But what about the movie’s other 70 minutes,” you ask? Unclear! There’s a subplot involving an escaped convict caught up in violent gang war, and another about a woman with a mysterious secret involving nuclear weapons searching for her uncle deep in the jungles of Thailand San Francisco. But mostly what it is is fighting… like *a lot* of fighting… like twentysomething different fight scenes featuring fists, guns, swords, sticks, stones, nunchucks, tables, chairs, and even a weedwacker all flying furiously across your screen, truly defying the definition of “filler”.

“CATMAN IN BOXER’S BLOW is truly one of the masterworks of the decade […] It also contains a vivid and livley [sic] musical score- it is un-parraleled [sic] even to the masterpeices [sic] of mozart, beethoven, bach, and others. It’s a fine movie that is for the whole family to enjoy.”
—IMDb user Userdoe1560

(Spectacle would once again like to note that this is most certainly not a movie for the whole family to enjoy. Please do not bring your kids.)

Special thanks to IFD Film Arts & Services.

CONTENT WARNING: This film contains flashing lights, which may not be suitable for those with photosensitive epilepsy, as well as explicit images of violence.

¡AOQUIC IEZ IN MEXICO!
(Mexico Will No Longer Exist!)
Dir. Annalisa D. Quagliata Blanco, 2024
Mexico, 80 min
In Nahuatl and Spanish with English subtitles

THURSDAY, APRIL 3 – 10 PM

TICKETS

Annalisa D. Quagliata Blanco’s debut feature explores the many violences and contradictions at the heart of Mexican history. Divided into five chapters, this quicksilver experimental documentary combines an analytical framework with exploded cinematic grammar to probe the origins of several Mexican myths and their relationship to the nation’s identity.

Per researcher Byron Davies, it was inspired by the work of Dziga Vertov and Teo Hernández, but Quagliata Blanco’s penetrating commentary on Mexican iconography and traditions also feels like a natural continuation of famed experimental filmmaker Rubén Gámez’s unique, underappreciated missives. Her work directly challenges foundational texts on Mexican identity, from early words by Spanish friars trying to make sense of the nation-to-be, to more recent musings from Octavio Paz. The film does not present Mexico’s heart so much as it shows the country’s bleeding wounds.

Special thanks to Annalisa D. Quagliata Blanco and Byron Davies.

CONTENT WARNING: These films contain flashing lights which may not be suitable for those with photosensitive epilepsy, as well as explicit images of violence.

Annalisa D. Quagliata Blanco has built an impressive body of work over the last two decades. Her frenetic and direct cinematic practice melds an interest in formal experimentation with political intervention. Her feature debut, the audacious and refreshingly unusual ¡Aoquic iez in Mexico! (2024), will have its own Spectacle screening, but her earlier shorts constitute their own powerful block of cinematic assaults on the traditions of the medium, Mexican society, and the passive spectator. Quagliata Blanco will present her entire filmography, from work she developed at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design under the tutelage of experimental film luminaries like Saul Levine, to her more recent pieces which anticipate the political fury of her feature.

THURSDAY, APRIL 3 – 7:30 PM

TICKETS

LA OTRA PIEL
2015-2017, 9 min, 16mm

A collection of seven handmade shorts from the beginning of Quagliata Blanco’s career. Demonstrating an emphasis on texture, these films reflect her incipient interest in film as material, and in material as an inherently expressive matter.

CALYPSO
2016, 5 min

Inspired by The Odyssey, Quagliata Blanco crafts a cinematic portrait of the nymph Calypso. Not beholden to the specifics of mythology, she offers a sensuous and surprising queer reinterpretation of the classic.

SE BUSCA (UN MAR DE AUSENCIA)
(Searching for (a sea of absence))
2016, 2 min

Se busca roughly translates to “wanted” in English, but “searching for” is perhaps more fitting within the context of Quagliata Blanco’s film and the ongoing crisis of missing women in Mexico. This short compiles 50 images of missing women, whose “Se Busca” posters are circulated in efforts to find them.

FIN ES UNA PELÍCULA MEXICANO
(The End – A Mexican Movie)
2016. 3 min

Juan Bustillo Oro’s Dos Monjes (1934), a classic of Mexican cinema, is an expressionist work about fraternal hate and masculine violence. This short focuses explicitly on the murdered female protagonist at the heart of Dos Monjes. It’s both a work of criticism and a revelation of Mexico’s age-old violence against women.

CRISÁLIDA
(Chrysalis)
2017, 3 min

A handmade film about metamorphosis. Typical of Quagliata Blanco, the content is as shapeshifting as its form.

A NUESTRO TIEMPO
(Closer to Our Time)
2018, 6 min

Quagliata Blanco turns to the archive once more. Here she samples images from Leobardo López Arretche’s landmark 1968 protest documentary El Grito to stress the unresolved promises of the 1968 cultural revolution in Mexico.

MY CELL PHONE
2018, 2 min

A fun (and troubling) investigation into people’s attachment to their phones.

Special thanks to Annalisa D. Quagliata Blanco.

Playing as a double bill:
WEDNESDAY 4/9 – 10PM
TUESDAY 4/15 – 7:30PM
FRIDAY 4/18 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY 4/25 – 10PM

TICKETS

The history of Welsh language film and television has been fraught with challenges, including persistent underfunding and a lack of effective film infrastructure. These obstacles have been compounded by the British government’s reluctance to prioritize Welsh culture and language in media, leading to insufficient support for Welsh-language projects. Additionally, there has been a notable hesitation among British distributors to handle Welsh-language films, which has further restricted their ability to reach larger international audiences. Director Wil Aaron stated in the Welsh magazine Barn “There will be no further developments in Welsh-language film until the BFI is persuaded that the Welsh have as much right as the English to their own celluloid culture”. This sentiment sparked Aaron to create the independent Welsh language television company Ffilmiau’r Nan in 1976.

In 1952, when the BBC launched a transmitter in Glamorgan, Welsh-language television programming was minimal, peaking at just half an hour per week by 1957. The establishment of BBC Wales in 1962 allowed a slight increase to six to seven hours weekly, yet the struggle for substantial recognition and funding persisted. Throughout the 1970s, the campaign for a dedicated Welsh-language channel gained traction, driven by groups like Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg and Plaid Cymru. However, political pledges made by parties were often unfulfilled, with Thatcher’s Conservative government initially backtracking on commitments made during the 1979 elections. This led to significant unrest, culminating in a protest by Gwynfor Evans, who threatened to fast until the promise of a Welsh channel was realized, dramatized in the 2023 film Y SWN.

During this same period, Welsh-language films were virtually nonexistent, prompting the establishment of the Welsh Film Board (Bwrdd Ffilmiau Cymraeg) in 1971 to promote Welsh-language cinema. Unfortunately, the British Film Institute (BFI) perceived the WFB as a ‘language activity rather than a film project,’ leading to inadequate funding for its initiatives. Filmmaker Wil Aaron, a member of the WFB, produced four films with their support, including two featured in this retrospective, but he remained disillusioned with the organization’s approach, famously stating, “The board has no expertise, no experience of the film.”

In 1982 the Welsh language television channel S4C (Sianel Pedwar Cymru – Channel Four Wales) was finally established, broadcasting 22 hours a week, mostly in primetime slots, and giving Welsh language programming priority over English language shows. Through his television company Ffilmiau’r Nant, Wil Aaron started producing content for the channel very early on, including shows such as ALMANAC (1982 – 1986), C’MON MIDFIELD! (1988 – 1994) and DERYN (1986 – 1992). In his book Wales and Cinema: The First 100 Years, David Berry states that ‘Aaron’s Caernarfon-based company Ffilmiau’r Nant has become one of S4C’s most prolific independent suppliers of films.’

Today, S4C continues to thrive, broadcasting 115 hours of Welsh-language content each week, including news broadcasts and original programming. Despite this robust output, Welsh-language cinema remains underrepresented, with films still struggling to achieve widespread distribution, and filmmakers often facing challenges securing adequate funding for their projects. Nevertheless, there have been notable successes in Welsh-language cinema recently, particularly with the release of the critically acclaimed film THE FEAST (2021). This success underscores the vibrant creativity present in Welsh cinema and the appetite for it when it is supported effectively.

This April, Spectacle proudly presents two of Wil Aaron’s Welsh-language films produced through the Welsh Film Board: O’R DDAEAR HEN (FROM THE OLD EARTH) (1981) and GWAED AR Y SER (BLOOD ON THE STARS) (1975).

O’R DDAEAR HEN
(FROM THE OLD EARTH)
Dir. Wil Aaron, 1981.
Wales. 47 min.
In Cymraeg with English Subs.

William Jones discovers an ancient Celtic stone head in his garden with horrifying consequences. Can the local archeologists help him shake this ancient curse?

O’R DDAEAR HEN is steeped in Welsh folklore and tradition and is probably the first true horror film to be produced in the Welsh language. In Wales and Cinema: The First 100 Years Berry states ‘the film is a work of undoubted flair’. The plot echoes the classic ghost stories of M.R. James, featuring an unsuspecting character who unearths an ancient artifact, only to find that the past has come back to haunt them. Although the quality of films from the Welsh Film Board was often scrutinized, even by Aaron himself, O’R DDAEAR HEN shines as a beacon of quality and would seamlessly fit into the BBC’s original run of A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS (1971-1978).

The film was one of Aaron’s first works showcased on S4C, the newly created Welsh-language television network in 1982. While it received acclaim, not all screenings were met with positivity. One mission of the Welsh Film Board was to expose children to the Welsh language, which involved organizing school trips for primary school children aged between five and eleven to view their latest films. The school trip to watch O’R DDAEAR HEN has become notorious for traumatizing a generation of kids. Mari Williams, one such child now in her forties, reminisced about her experience in a BBC article, stating, “I remember lying in my bed that night numb with fear, certain that a man with horns was standing outside the bedroom.”

GWAED AR Y SER
(BLOOD ON THE STARS)
Dir. Wil Aaron, 1975.
Wales. 60 min.
In Cymraeg with English Subs

Welsh celebrities from all over the country are scheduled to perform at a local talent show, however, they start turning up dead in increasingly bizarre ways.

GWAED AR Y SER was Wil Aaron’s third film made with support from the Welsh Film Board, after HEN DYNNWR LLUNIAU (THE OLD PHOTOGRAPHER) and SCERSLI BILIF (SCARCELY BELIEVE). Aaron masterfully walks the line between horror and the blackest of comedy to create a charming, but perhaps somewhat deranged, film. Regarding GWAED AR Y SER Berry wrote  “Aaron delivers the robust gags, the shameless ironies and the shocks with such gusto.”

This achievement becomes even more remarkable given the meager budget of only £6,000, provided by the Welsh Film Board, and given a shooting schedule of just ten days. Many of the actors are locals from Nantperis, with most of the celebrity appearances being friends of Aaron’s from his years in broadcast TV.

The Welsh Film Board also screened this film for primary school children in 1975. While it did not provoke the same level of outcry as O’R DDAEAR HEN, it still managed to traumatize some schoolchildren and received multiple complaints from parents. Aaron commented, “The problem with Welsh films at that time, was that everyone assumed they were the kind of thing that was shown in Sunday School. Did no one consider that there might not be a little bit of sex and a little bit of fear in them…”

This 2K restoration was produced by Severin Films with the support of Matchbox Cineclub. It was restored using the original camera negative and original mono track negatives. All the elements were provided courtesy of the Bwrdd Ffilmiau Cymraeg/Welsh Film Board collection at the National Library of Wales Screen and Sound Archive.

THE MARIJUANA AFFAIR
Dir. William Greaves, 1975
Jamaica. 82 min.
In English

SUNDAY, APRIL 20 – 7:30 PM

[ BUY TICKETS ]

A tale of international intrigue from Trinidad to Jamaica, Harlem to Kingston. United States narcotics agent Dick Farrington (Calvin Lockhart) is on sabbatical after inadvertently gunning down a youth who got in his crosshairs on the streets of New York City. But there’s no rest for the wicked, because this is a working sabbatical. The higher-ups have sent him to his hometown of Kingston, Jamaica to look into the marijuana trade, specifically: what sort of illicit activities are going on in U.S. intelligence operations? But everyone keeps telling Dick that Marijuana isn’t where the real action is. Nope, cocaine and heroin are where things are really happening, but the higher-ups aren’t interested in those, they want to break up the ganja ring. Corruption abounds, from the government, to the local cops, and back again.

Thought to be long lost, and recently unearthed from a low quality U-matic cassette tape found in a storage unit. Greaves was purportedly unhappy with the film, with his widow Louise not being interested in a potential re-release in 2018. We are very thankful to the Greaves family for allowing this one-time screening of THE MARIJUANA AFFAIR.