GOING SOUTH

GOING SOUTH
dir. Dominic Gagnon, 2018
Canada, 104 min
In English

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4 – 5 PM
MONDAY, DECEMBER 12 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20 – 7:30 PM

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The second part of Dominic Gagnon’s tetralogy exploring “the cardinal points of the internet in a post-truth era,” GOING SOUTH follows its controversial predecessor, OF THE NORTH, with a wide-ranging look at the first-world’s often-fraught relationship and imagining of the global south. Culled from a wide swath of internet videos Gagnon creates an auto-ethnographic portrait of the droll, post-apocalyptic, digitally-suffused banal existence we call contemporary life. From cruise ship revelers swimming through typhoons to Grandmothers narrating walkthroughs of survival videogames to all sorts of wannabe social media presences airing their anxieties and purse contents on the internet, Gagnon slowly paints a bleak, portrait of today’s malaise without ever seeking to narrativize or directly comment upon it.

“Without leaving the comfort of his own browser, Gagnon has made a film cosmic in scope, including material that could be taken as his own gloss on 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), shuttling as he does between outer space and prehistory, albeit a prehistory of a very contemporary sort. Gagnon’s collage offers us a panoramic view of a human race convinced of salvation through the self, including and especially through the optimal monetization of personal branding and validation via metrics, while its shared home dies for want of collective action, mankind unable to find common cause in preserving the environment due to an increasingly epidemic mistrust in any passed down knowledge that isn’t derived from firsthand experience. In the end you’ve only got yourself! You only know what you know, you know?

Rather than any single latitude, the imagery here locates us generally in the vague terrain of vacation, retreat, getaway—there is merriment on waterslides, bros in wetsuits barfing up the contents of beer bongs, and a nude woman well into middle age being airbrush body-painted before strolling the precincts of a Fantasy Fest street fair in Key West. Very often, though, there is trouble in paradise, with things found going terribly awry on account of either environmental catastrophe, human incompetence, or a combination of the two. A cruise ship swimming pool is seen sloshing about in choppy waters; parasailers are blown off-course by an incoming storm; airplanes are disturbed by incoherent and insurgent passengers or witnessed in the process of crash landing protocol.”
—Nick Pinkerton, Reverse Shot

LAGUNA AVE

LAGUNA AVE
dir. David Buchanan, 2021
USA, 80 min
In English

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2 – 7:30 PM w/ Q&A (This event is $10)
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16 – MIDNIGHT

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A former musician, Russel, with inner demons and a prosthetic hand dive into the mysterious and sinister world of his downstairs neighbor. As he searches for work in Hollywood’s underbelly. His former boss owes him money, his partner is always out of town and inaccessible, and his new downstairs neighbor, Gary keeps him awake at night with strange noises. But everything changes one evening when Gary pays Russell a visit introducing him to a sinister world of an accelerationist conspiracy.

There will be a Q&A with the filmmaker following the screening on Friday, 12/2.

BONEY PILES

BONEY PILES
dir. Taras Tomenko, 2021
Ukraine, 90 min
In Ukrainian & Russian w/ English subtitles

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9 – MIDNIGHT
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15 – 10 PM

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BONEY PILES is a harrowing film about the impact of war on children and how it affects their psyche. Dissonant images of youth and the consequences of war are shown in striking contrast to one another. The film explores the lives of children who live near the front lines of Ukraine’s war with Russia, the Donbass region. For the children featured in the film, their lives resemble the Hunger Games—dystopian. They scavenge for pieces of metal or dig graves for subsistence while day by day they forget what their former lives were before the war started.

HEDDY HONIGMANN (1951-2022)

In partnership with Icarus Films, Spectacle is thrilled to host this tribute to the late and great documentarian Heddy Honigmann, who passed on in May of 2022. Her 1992 documentary METAL AND MELANCHOLY – about taxicab drivers in her native Peru – was a surprise Spectacle hit when we showed it in 2012; this miniature tribute reprises that film plus four others, representing a small taste of Honigmann’s overall filmmaking career, which spanned four decades and several continents. Honigmann was renown for her incisive perspective on the foibles of humankind, and her ability to seek answers to delicate questions without probing or harassing her subject-collaborators. Taken in sum, they represent a vision of nonfiction filmmaking equally as shrewd as it is compassionate. “I don’t do interviews,” Honigmann said. “I make conversation.”

METAL AND MELANCHOLY
dir. Heddy Honigmann, 1992
Peru/The Netherlands, 80 min
In Spanish w/ English subtitles

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8 – 10 PM
MONDAY, DECEMBER 19 – 7:30 PM

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“I once read that a famous Spanish poet said that Peru was made of metal and melancholy. He was right, perhaps because pain and poverty have made us hard as the hardest of our metals, and melancholy because we are also tender and we long for better times that were lost in oblivion. “

This documentary is an offbeat “road movie” in which acclaimed documentarian Heddy Honigmann travels with, and thereby discovers the stories of, taxi drivers in Lima. In the early 1990s, in response to Peru’s inflationary economy and a government destabilized by corruption and Shining Path terrorism, many middle-class professionals used their own cars to moonlight as taxi drivers in order to weather the financial crisis. METAL AND MELANCHOLY learns how these part-time cabbies, including a teacher, a Ministry of Justice employee, a film actor, and a policeman, among others, manage to navigate through Lima’s congested, pothole-filled streets in dilapidated cars whose survival techniques are as fascinating as those of their owners.

“Offers a candid and kaleidoscopic view of the poverty-stricken metropolis through each driver-philosopher’s tale of hardship. Some of the stories are disarmingly amusing, even comical; others are poignant and sobering.” — Ted Shen, Chicago Reader

O AMOR NATURAL
dir. Heddy Honigmann, 1995
76 mins. Brazil.
In Brazilian Portuguese with English subtitles.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9 – 10 PM
MONDAY, DECEMBER 19 – 10 PM

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O AMOR NATURAL is a documentary film about the erotic poetry of one of the greatest Latin American poets of the 20th century, the Brazilian Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902-1987).

The erotic poems of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, a household name in Brazil, remained unpublished during his lifetime, as he feared they would be deemed pornographic. In this celebration of his poetry and sensual vision, elderly residents of Rio read his poems and comment on their graphic, voluptuous imagery with tremendous candor and enthusiasm. “We’re old. We’re not dead!” interjects one reader, as memories of stolen pleasures and bittersweet melancholy unfold. Says Honigmann: “The poems sometimes functioned as a kind of corkscrew, sometimes as a glass of water, sometimes as a glass of brandy.”

“Approaching literature not through critical analysis but through its effect on everyday people – in this case, elderly Brazilians gamely reciting the poet’s voluptuous verses – this warm, simple film uncovers a rich vein of ageless, grassroots sensuality and joie de vivre.” Variety

THE UNDERGROUND ORCHESTRA
dir. Heddy Honigmann, 1999
108 mins. Peru/France.
In French with English subtitles.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 5 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10 – 5 PM
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13 – 7:30 PM

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THE UNDERGROUND ORCHESTRA is a glorious documentary profile of musicians who play on the sidewalks of Paris and in the Metro. Honigmann illuminates the lives and music of a ragtag group of international bohemians: an Argentine pianist, Romanian father and son violinists, a Venezuelan harpist, and singers from Mali and Vietnam. All are united by their experiences with political repression, and by a luminous spirit and boundless courage that led them to flee any number of horrendous situations throughout the world. Finding refuge in Paris, music becomes their economic lifeline, but as this film makes movingly clear, it is also a shining metaphor for their will to survive.

FOREVER
dir. Heddy Honigmann, 2007
95 mins. Peru/France.
In French with English subtitles.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 5 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13 – 10 PM

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Through a leisurely tour of the world-famous Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, the final resting place for legendary writers, composers, painters and other artists from around the world, FOREVER provides an unusually poignant, emotionally powerful meditation on relations between the living and the dead, and the immortal power of art. During its visits to many famous graves – including those of Frédéric Chopin, Marcel Proust, Guillaume Apollinaire, Amadeo Modigliani, Oscar Wilde, Jean-Auguste Ingres, Maria Callas, Georges Méliès, Jim Morrison, Yves Montand and Simone Signoret – FOREVER also introduces us to the Parisians and tourists who make pilgrimages to these tombs, whether to pay their respects, leave flowers or personal messages, or even to tend to the upkeep of the tombstones. The film also pays moving tribute to talented young artists who died prematurely as well as to the less celebrated deceased remembered primarily by next of kin.

Honigmann’s own artistry is also on display here, including a poetic cinematic style that conveys the melancholy beauty of the cemetery’s memorial statuary and tombstones, and her ability to elicit surprisingly intimate human-interest stories from those she encounters. As a result, FOREVER will provide every viewer the opportunity to reflect on the transcendental importance of art in our lives, on our need to commune with the spirits of the departed, and perhaps on our own mortality as well.

OBLIVION
dir. Heddy Honigmann, 2008
93 mins. Peru.
In Spanish with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7 – 10 PM
MONDAY, DECEMBER 12 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16 – 10 PM

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OBLIVION focuses on Peru’s capital city of Lima, revealing its startling contrasts of wealth and poverty, and how many of its poorest citizens have survived decades of economic crisis, terrorism and government violence, denial of workers’ rights, and political corruption. Demonstrating anew Honigmann’s extraordinary talent as one of the most empathetic of documentary filmmakers, OBLIVION provides intimate and moving portraits of street musicians, singers, vendors, shoeshine boys, and the gymnasts (some mere children) and jugglers who perform at traffic stops.

The film also visits with small business owners, from a leather-goods repairman and a presidential sash manufacturer to a frog-juice vendor, and contrasts the work and home environments of bartenders, waiters and waitresses employed at Lima’s finest restaurants and hotels but who live in slums in the city’s surrounding hillsides. For most viewers, who are reminded of Peru only by news reports of a major earthquake, a presidential election or the discovery of a decades-old mass grave of army massacre victims, OBLIVION introduces us to the everyday reality of Lima, celebrating a people who, albeit politically powerless, have resisted being consigned to oblivion.

CHRONOPOLIS

CHRONOPOLIS
dir. Piotr Kamler, 1982
Poland, 52 min
In Polish w/ English subtitles

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10 – MIDNIGHT
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18 – 7:30 PM

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“There is not sufficient evidence for the non-existence of the city of Chronopolis. On the contrary, dreams and manuscripts similarly conclude that the history of this city is a history of eternity and desire. Despite the monotony of immortality, they live in expectation; a turning point will occur during a momentary encounter with a human being. This moment is, in fact, being prepared for.”

REVOLUTION SELFIE

REVOLUTION SELFIE

REVOLUTION SELFIE
dir. Steven de Castro, 2017
USA, 115 min
In English & Tagalog w/ English subtitles

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7 – 7:30 PM w/ Q&A (This event is $10)
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18 – 5 PM
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21 – 7:30 PM w/ Q&A (This event is $10)

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REVOLUTION SELFIE expands the horizons of documentary storytelling while broadening our understanding about the lesser-known fronts in the global “War on Terror.” Filmmaker Steven De Castro paints a portrait of a 48 year-old Maoist guerilla army in the Philippine hinterlands known as the New People’s Army. But rather than simply presenting interviews and images in a traditional journalistic manner, this film weaves fantasy elements and web-based camera techniques into the documentary form to disrupt our entire matrix of widely held beliefs underpinning the discussion of terrorism, poverty, and the motivations of the warriors who fight in a peasant revolution.

The film is narrated and shot almost entirely from a first person point of view, using a small GoPro action camera that the filmmaker is wearing. Because of this unique shooting angle, the film succeeds at times in giving the audience an almost video game-like immersion in the narrator’s experience.

“Discovering REVOLUTION SELFIE happened at random. The trailer surfaced on some non-movie Facebook group. The trailer brimmed with possibility of some unseen masterpiece. It played many times outside of the country, but, to my non-surprise, American film festivals did not seem to take to it. The ambition of this thing was pretty obvious from my first glance of the trailer — a movie that thinks it is a video game about the Maoist New People’s Army in the Phillipines. Employing a microbudget, rough and tumble guerilla aesthetic, director Steven DeCastro spends time with this group detailing the current political situation in the country while also providing historical context (sometimes hard-hitting and grim, other times very playfully).

These days it is difficult to find a smart “political” film in general. One that actually plays with film language is even harder. REVOLUTION SELFIE is a miracle.”
—Christopher Jason Bell, writer/director of THE WINDS THAT SCATTER and INCORRECTIONAL

SKIN DIVE

SKIN DIVE

SKIN DIVE
dir. Luke Wyatt & Ari Russo, 2020
USA, 45 mins
In English

ONE NIGHT ONLY!

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3 – 9 PM w/ Intro (This event is $10)

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Spectacle Theater is proud to present: SKIN DIVE.

This event will feature an eight-part experimental video series created by LUKE WYATT and ARI RUSSO, exclusive to 4:3, that also includes a brief introduction by the artist. The video series features a collage of found video, manipulated, rearranged, distorted, and reimagined with layers of graphics and sound.

Luke Wyatt is an experimental musician and visual artist who has released over 20 records as Torn Hawk and other aliases. His work manifests from video sources that adhere to a form he calls “video mulch.”

Ari Russo is an artist who reanimates lost and forgotten content, reimagining its parts into a balanced and elegant new whole. As of late, this work has become more integrated and spans music, video and software.

YELLING FIRE IN AN EMPTY THEATER

YELLING FIRE IN AN EMPTY THEATER
dir. Justin Zuckerman, 2021
USA, 71 min
In English

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8 – 7:30 PM w/ Q&A (This event is $10)
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10 – 7:30 PM w/ Q&A (This event is $10)
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 11 – 5 PM w/ Q&A (This event is $10)
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15 – 7:30 PM w/ Q&A (This event is $10)

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YELLING FIRE IN AN EMPTY THEATER is a miniDV curio that follows a young college grad, Lisa (Isadora Leiva), as she attempts to “make it” in New York. Filled with conviction that the best plan is no plan at all, she ends up moving in with a slightly older couple and quickly becomes entangled in their bizarre and crumbling relationship. While Lisa struggles to keep her head above water and maintain her unmitigated freedom, her relationships with her roommates, coworkers, and lovers all start to become casualties in the process.

Made for less than the average rent of a Brooklyn apartment, YELLING FIRE IN AN EMPTY THEATER is a loving ode to the young and naive masses who flock to the greatest city on earth every year. First-time filmmaker Justin Zuckerman offers a distinctive mix of the ridiculous and the real, crafting a timeless tale about the struggle between charting your own path or going back home to Florida.

There will be a Q&A discussion with the filmmakers in-attendance after each screening this month.

A Fandor/Cinedigm release

LA FREEWAVES PRESENTS: VAGUELY HUMAN

VAGUELY HUMAN
dir. Various, 2001-2021
USA/France, 70 min
In English

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9 – 7:30 PM w/Q&A (This event is $10.)
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21 – 10 PM

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Vaguely Human is a video art program alongside LA Freewaves, a community based arts organization from Los Angeles who are dedicated to exhibiting culturally relevant independent new media. Our collaboration includes work by contemporary experimental filmmakers from Europe & US. Artists explore existential dilemmas in relation to the body, using conceptual erotic imagery, Fluxus techniques (i.e, chance, inderminancy, improvisation), and humor. We are pleased to present films by: TARWUK, Bradford Kessler, Miles Pflanz, Sophie Hoyle, Broderick Fox, and Calvin Phelps.

There will be a Q&A panel with the filmmakers in-attendance after the screening on Friday, 12/9, hosted by Sabrina Tamar.

Special thanks to Anne Bray from LA Freewaves, for more information visit: freewaves.org

Program selection includes the following works:

-1%
dir. Bradford Kessler, 2015
USA, 7 min
In English

A young Upper East Side Princess who hunts Liberal arts students around NYU for her sexual appetite.

3 SHORT FILMS: SAVAGE NECESSITIES / WAR CODA / NET OP LOSS
dir. Miles Pflanz, 2019
USA, 30 min
In English

SAVAGE NECESSITIES, features Kembra Pfahler along with group of NYC art students stuck in a room with an obscene amount of pennies that they choose not to spend.

WAR CODA, explores the inner world of couch potatoes who relish on bodega fries while musing on true crime; they want to solve a murder mystery but cannot proceed without the perfect victim.

NET OP LOSS, digital art and stream of consciousness merge in this dark comedy about an unknown narrator who feels estranged from their family, society, and especially, politics.

BAKA
dir. TARWUK & Matthew Goedecke, 2020
USA, 15 mins
In Croatian w/ English subtitles

First time screening in NYC, Baka is a body horror short about a family while surrounded by one another at the dinner table.

HYPERACUSIS (PART 1)
dir. Sophie Hoyle, 2021
France, 8 min
In English

Set in a biohacking lab, Hoyle’s short explores transcultural psychiatry, and the intergenerational impact of racism and colonialism.

THINGS GIRLS DO
dir. Broderick Fox, 2001
USA, 10 min
In English

A short film that explores the intersection between anorexia, sexuality, and gender shot in the intimate confines of the home.

THE KISS
dir. Calvin Phelps, 2002
USA, 1 min
In English

This is a short film shot from across someone’s window; it’s mundane voyeurism but not quite what you think.

THE STICKY SIDE OF HONG KONG CINEMA: A CATEGORY III REPRISE

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17 – ALL DAY

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In early 2022, Spectacle unearthed a series of little-seen grimy genre features from 1980s-90s Hong Kong. Loosely related by virtue of sharing HK’s “Category III” rating classification – the rough equivalent to Britain’s “Video Nasties” label or the deprecated X rating in the United States – the features nonetheless shared an unparalleled ability to confuse, repulse, and entertain in equal measure. The typical Cat-III feature might cycle through graphic depictions of bug-ridden necrophilia, budget black-magic theatrics, and groan-inducing romantic comedy over the course of several minutes without blinking. This December, Spectacle Theater is proud to host a day-long reprise of our exploration of underappreciated Hong-Kong genre gems, featuring both audience favorites from the series and a slew of new mystery selections that will surely test the patience and digestive fortitude of even the most hardened Spectacle genre goober.

CONTENT WARNING: These films contain graphic depictions of violence and sexual assault.

Program details and estimated showtimes are as follows:

1:30 PM
BLACK MAGIC WITH BUDDHA (脑魔)

dir. Lo Lieh, 1983
Hong Kong/Thailand, 94 min

Disembodied brain cannibalizes kin in hopes of recovering limbs.

3:15 PM
HELL HAS NO BOUNDARY (魔界)

dir. Richard Yeung Kuen, 1982
Hong Kong, 91 min

Reincarnation curse ails cop; color-saturated skin conditions and crustacean deaths ensue.

5:00 PM
PITUITARY HUNTER (盗脑者)

dir. Chan Ta, 1982
Hong Kong, 87 min

Poorly-subtitled detectives comb Hong Kong for a serial gland thief.

6:45 PM
CORPSE MANIA (尸妖)

dir. Kuei Chih-hung, 1981
Hong Kong/China, 82 min

Grisly period piece following the wormy travels of an habitual necrophile through the bordellos of 19th century Hong Kong.

8:30 PM
DEVIL FETUS (魔胎)

dir. Lau Hung-chuen, 1983
Hong Kong, 87 min

A crown jewel of ’80s HK horror in which a cursed and virile vase fathers a malevolent feus and a host of other incoherent manifestations.

10:15 PM
RUN AND KILL (乌鼠机密档案)

dir. Billy Tang Hin-shing, 1993
Hong Kong, 90 min

Spurned schlub sparks gang war after drunkenly commissioning a hitman.

MIDNIGHT
SEEDING OF A GHOST (种鬼)

dir. Richard Yeung Kuen, 1983
Hong Kong, 87 min

Cabbie makes amends with wizards to unleash slimy and strangely lascivious vengeance on his wife’s murderers.

1:30 AM
??????????

dir. ??????????

If you’re not unconscious, absent, or perma-fried by now, you will certainly wish you were. A synopsis so vile we cannot recount it here. For hardened genre slobs only!