FEDAYIN

FEDAYIN

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FEDAYIN
(فدائيين)
dir. Collectif Vacarmes Films, 2020
80 mins. Palestine/Lebanon/France.
In Arabic with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19 – 8PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY – in-theater and at stream.spectacletheater.com

Tickets for this event are on a suggested donation basis of $10; RSVP here. All proceeds will go towards the campaign to free George Abdallah.

In collaboration with our friends at Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network and the Palestinian Youth Movement, Spectacle is thrilled to host a one-night only screening (and streaming) of Collectif Vacarmes Films’ new documentary FEDAYIN.

FEDAYIN traces the life of Georges Abdallah, Lebanese Arab Communist and struggler for Palestine and one of the longest-held political prisoners in Europe. It moves from the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon where his political consciousness was forged to the international movement to demand his liberation from French prisons.

The film includes a number of interviews, including with Palestinian leftist writer and activist Khaled Barakat; Samidoun international coordinator Charlotte Kates; Samidoun Europe coordinator Mohammed Khatib; former political prisoners Jean-Marc Rouillan and Bertrand Sassoye; lawyer Jean-Louis Chalanset; Georges Abdallah’s brothers Robert and Maurice Abdallah; and advocate for Georges Abdallah’s liberation Suzanne Le Manceau, among others.

On October 23, a national march and rally will gather outside Lannemezan prison in France once again, to demand the release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, the longest-held political prisoner in Europe. In the month prior to the march, solidarity groups around the world are organizing events to commemorate the anniversary of Abdallah’s arrest.

FEDAYIN is available with French, English, Arabic and Spanish subtitles. If you would like to organize a screening in your community, please email vacarmesfilms@gmail.com.

Special thanks to Kaleem Hawa and Samar Al-Saleh.

CAPTAIN MILKSHAKE

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CAPTAIN MILKSHAKE
dir. Richard Crawford, 1970
98 mins. United States.
In English.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19 – 7PM in-theater
ONE NIGHT ONLY!
Q&A WITH FILMMAKER RICHARD CRAWFORD LIVE VIA ZOOM! (This event is $10.)

GET YOUR TICKETS!

Made fifty-one years ago in the wake of a fresh new mode of studio filmmaking, CAPTAIN MILKSHAKE is a lost piece of cinema history: one of the first dramatic independent feature films to deal directly with the controversial political and cultural issues surrounding the Vietnam War era. “An authentic Sixties flashback,” it is a now-classic story of women’s liberation, free love and rock ‘n roll, all set during an anti-war protest in Berkeley.

A young Marine, Paul (played by Geoff Gage), has two weeks emergency leave from Vietnam action to return home. He meets a beautiful young woman, Melissa (played by Andrea Cagan), who turns him on to the counter-culture lifestyle. The war debate that ensues casts light on the country’s divided opinion about the war and threatens Paul and Melissa’s love affair. CAPTAIN MILKSHAKE is a pure and earnest discovery, not lastly thanks to the sounds rooted in weed, activism and then-fresh performances from Quicksilver Messenger Service, Country Joe & The Fish, The Steve Miller Band and Kaleidoscope.

Carlsbad, CA resident Richard Crawford, who would go on to become an Emmy award-winning producer/director, filmed CAPTAIN MILKSHAKE in San Diego and Berkeley in 1970 during the War that ended five years later. After a brief release in 150 cities in 1972, this original psychedelic entry was taken out of circulation for dubious reasons, shelved, and even banned by the U.S. military. A legal dispute locked the film out of circulation for 35 years. Only in 2006 was Crawford able to get the rights back to his film, when it had its European premiere at the Viennale, Rotterdam, and Leeds International film festivals.

“Absolutely stunning and something very special…a very moving, political, cinema-graphic film …absolutely fresh- it’s as if no time has gone by… It ‘s eye-opening, joyful, delightful, liberating, amazing, surprising… so full of images you wouldn’t expect…” — Hans Hurch, Director of the 2006 Viennale International Film Festival

ZOO ZERO

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ZOO ZÉRO
dir. Alain Fleischer, 1978
France. 96 min.
In French with English subtitles.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 4 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 28 – 10 PM

GET YOUR TICKETS!

During a cataclysmic rainstorm in a Paris largely reduced to ruins and rubble, guests in baroque animal masks crowd a smokey nightclub called Noah’s Ark. Here, Eva (Eden and After’s Catherine Jourdan) takes the stage to perform a riviting song of illicit interspecies desire and a formative erotic experience involving a lion mauling at the Berlin Zoo. It’s the last number, of the night, and maybe of the city — “an accident or a disease” has ravaged the streets as trucks trundle over cobblestones with news of the military government in crisis and the animal world seems poised to reclaim lost ground from a waning humanity. But an encounter with a stranger at the club (a tuxedoed, stammering Pierre Clementi) sends Eva out into this city of crumbling bordellos and verdant parks to a series of fateful meetings with a fragmentary family — a mother ogre, a ventriloquist chauffeur who narrates the failure of the Spanish revolution with a Donald Duck puppet, twin foley artists, and, narrating from a vocoder organ at the heart the liminal human-animal space of the city zoo, a mournful Klaus Kinski. But like other pulp peaks of the 70s, this is less a film that suggests tidy synopsis than a true cinematic dream, where nocturnal correspondences between Mozart, escaped large cats, and the grasping of all-too-temporary human edifices override the logic of the waking world and categories become blurred by their own mysterious logic.

Exquisitely shot in oneirically shadowed day-for-night (and night-for-night) by Bruno Nuytten (of such Spectacle essentials as INDIA SONG, MON COEUR EST ROUGE, and POSSESSION!), and with assistant direction by Claire Denis, ZOO ZÉRO has been all but unseeable outside of messy bootleg transfers for far too long. Now, at last, artist and director Alain Fleischer’s masterpiece has been newly restored from 35mm, in a gorgeous HD transfer.

Newly restored HD print courtesy of Alain Fleischer, with English subtitles newly corrected and custom retimed by Spectacle volunteers.

SOUND AND FURY

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SOUND AND FURY
(DE BRUIT ET DE FUREUR)
dir. Jean-Claude Brisseau, 1989
95 mins. France.
In French with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 6 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20 – MIDNIGHT
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 25 – 10 PM CLOSED

Ten years after we showed it in our DON’T LET OUR YOUTH GO TO WASTE series of teen rebellion films, Spectacle is thrilled to reprise Jean-Claude Brisseau’s searing portrait of disaffected youth, officially available to U.S. audiences for the first time courtesy of our friends at Altered Innocence in a gorgeous new digital restoration.

Considered an important entry in French cinema’s new naturalism from one of the most promising French filmmakers of the Eighties, SOUND AND FURY presents a shocking, surreal, and humanistic look at the tragic lives of impoverished children living in the Paris projects.

Bruno is a teenaged boy who has just moved into a high-rise project with his hard working but absent mother. Other than his pet bird Superman keeping him company, Bruno is alone. The apartment is located in one of the city’s roughest suburbs and Bruno’s involvement with crime seems inevitable. Shortly after, he is befriended by the streetwise but deeply troubled Jean-Roger, and Bruno goes out thieving, destroying property and harming people with a vengeance… hoping to receive the type of attention he so desperately wants at home.

“SOUND AND FURY is less concerned with social problems and their possible solutions than with evoking the pervasive aimlessness of a world that lives entirely in the present tense. The film records the specific details of terrible events without editorial comment… Mr. Brisseau has such authority as a director that he can slip into and out of moments of wildly heightened reality without prompting derisive giggles. The movie is soundly based.” – Vincent Canby, The New York Times

“None of my films are realistic, and certainly not naturalistic, including SOUND AND FURY, even though it touched on a certain social reality. They all contain a shadow zone. I do like to come back to social reality, but I do it through the mixing of genres and the insertion of surrealist elements. When the Cinémathèque Française asked me to select some films that had influenced me to accompany a retrospective of my work, I realized that I’d chosen movies that all assumed an air of realism while completely evading it. Take Alain Resnais’s LA GUERRE EST FINIE: the film seems to deal with the political reality of the time, and yet that isn’t what Resnais filmed. In my own work, the subject is never naturalism but a certain kind of relation to reality. With each film, I try to find a new way to confront these complex relations. Watching one of my movies, you always have to ask yourself if you’re reading it correctly—for instance, should you be laughing at a film that began in such a somber way. During the first screening of SOUND AND FURY, the younger audience members laughed, and I was more or less with them. Meanwhile, the more serious viewers felt the kids had no right to make fun of such things.” – Jean-Claude Brisseau, as told to Frédéric Bonnaud in Film Comment

Special thanks to Altered Innocence and Matthew Sniegoski.

MILLENIUM FILM WORKSHOP presents THE SPECTRAL CINEMA

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MILLENNIUM FILM WORKSHOP presents THE SPECTRAL CINEMA
Sunday, October 17 – 7:30pm

A collection of short works connected by the ghostly stains on our souls left by the cinematic image. This program opens with the first volume of filmmaker Jawni Han’s ongoing, Walter Benjamin-inspired video essay The New Arcades Project, Part 1: Angelica’s Riddle. Using the ghostly narrative of Manoel de Oliviera’s The Strange Case of Angelica as a jumping-off point, Han constructs a video dissection of the illusory aspect of the cinema that breathes life into dead, still images, making the past present and hauntingly visible. From there we diverge and offer a series of works to be considered in light of its observations. In these films, the spirits of dead stars possess our souls, empty houses are haunted by past lives captured on home video, the faces of star-crossed lovers are frozen for eternity, dark details of an empty opera are revealed to us in grainy still images, and in the end, Everybody Dies.

THE NEW ARCADES PROJECT, PART 1: ANGELICA’S RIDDLE
Dir. Jawni Han, 2020
USA, 18 min

The New Arcades Project has its origins in two cultural objects: Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project and a lyrical fragment from Pavement song Gold Soundz. It is well known that Benjamin intended the Arcades Project to be more or less a collection of quotations pulled out of context from their original sources, then assembled together in a way that they generate new meanings via Benjamin’s collage technique. Putting his theory of weak messianism into practice, he sought to redeem these fragments of the past by building a sanctuary where they can stay and form new constellations of histoire(s). Benjamin’s quotation-collage technique and philosophy of history find their unlikely epigraph in Pavement’s Gold Soundz, in which Stephen Malkmus sings “you can never quarantine the past.”

In Angelica’s Riddle, we start with the irreconcilable tension between photography and cinema in terms of how time and duration are dealt with in each respective medium. Manoel de Oliviera’s haunting love story about a photographer obsessed with moving image The Strange Case of Angelica is our jumping off point. The illusion of 24 frames per second (Zeno’s paradox) takes us everywhere from Deleuze’s meditation on motion via Bergson, Derrida sketching out the early foundation of hauntology on camera, Kafka through Chantal Akerman’s News from Home, and finally, last but not least, to a mash-up of Kiarstami’s Shirin and Godard’s Breathless.

Jawni Han was born in Seoul and currently lives and works in Brooklyn. She received her BA in philosophy and makes films to explore and communicate her philosophical interests. Her films deal with various forms of specters from history that live among us, the destabilization of identity, and the possibility of non-linear experience of time through cinema. Jawni’s formal approach, which combines experimental and narrative traditions, is one way she makes sense of her queer identity and works through the contradictions she encounters in her experience as a transfem.
MISS EVE
Dir. Elizaveta Allyson, 2021
USA, 17 min
A woman haunted by her crippling obsession with a dead Hollywood actress confides in how it has overtaken her life and very being. We follow this woman, Eve, through her days and compulsive ritualistic routines. With intermittent interviews, talk sessions even, time and reality are obscured. It is left to wonder if what is shown takes place in her life or are in fact delusions replaying in her mind.
Elizaveta A. Rubin is a Brooklyn based underground filmmaker, actor and artist. A graduate of the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute and student of NYU Tisch, Elizaveta has trained in acting extensively and is a self taught filmmaker and screenwriter. Inspired by Surrealism, Tanztheater, ancient art, mystical mythologies, and the Russian avant-garde, she infuses her work with her personal research and seeks to find the nexus between her various artistic and intellectual interests and narrative storytelling. Elizaveta has recently been creating sculptural jewelry through the lost wax casting technique and has several films in the works.
SILENT LOVERS 
Dir. Julie Orlick, 2017
USA, 11 min

Obedient to the sovereign ruler of his silent universe, a hopeless mime plays lap dog to a covetous queen in their silky echo chamber of imprisonment. As revelations befall upon the crestfallen clown, he realizes his dis-enthrallment through a shattering escape with the hand of a pirouetting harlequin, while Her Majesty’s empire and identity spiral into vibrant agony.

Presented on 16mm.
Julie Orlick (b. 1990; Los Angeles, California) is an American underground experimental filmmaker, analog photographer, poet & artist. Her visual landscape is evocative of the nascent stages of the artform in tandem with cult-cinema of mid-century American experimental filmmaking. Using a Bolex h16 Rex-5, her signature style employs in-camera bolex tricks, multiple exposures, slow motion, fast motion & superimpositions, to effect a pastiche of 20th century pop-culture, an epoch intimately bound to, and defined by, film.

MOVE OUTS
Dir. Justin Clifford Rhody, 2020
USA, 18 min
A drifting malaise searches the domestic American interior for signs of life. Composed from found footage discovered on a VHS tape in a Midwestern alleyway. Original soundtrack by Carlos Gonazalez.

Justin Clifford Rhody is a photographer, filmmaker and sound artist living in New Mexico. He operates the media imprint PHYSICAL and organizes the No Name Cinema film series. More info available at: www.justincliffordrhody.com


DEI NOTTURNI SPLENDORI
Dir. Anderson Matthew, 2020
Germany, 10 min

The sound of a distant whistle and theorbo calls a sleeping singer through the empty streets of Stuttgart in a midnight journey to the opera house.

Commissioned by the Staatsoper Stuttgart early into Germany’s pandemic lockdown, Anderson Matthew captures the singer Helene Schneiderman in ecstatic 35mm photo roman, singing a madrigal by Tarquinio Merula from 1638.
“And, ‘twixt the shadows and frights / of nocturnal splendors, / My beloved will secretly be hiding. / Say what you will, say what you may.”

EVERYBODY DIES
Dir. Anderson Matthew, 2020
USA, 8 min
In Super 8mm, time, space and the body fold in on themselves. It’s a poetic journey into the desert — a reflection on the nature of death as something not to be feared but embraced as part of an intimate and universal human experience. Film by Anderson Matthew. Starring and scored by DNZ.
Anderson Matthew is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. His work centers on film experimentation and queer perspectives. More info available at: www.andersonmatthew.com / @and.matthew

THE SPECTRAL CINEMA is part of MEANS OF PRODUCTION: NEW ARTISTS’ CINEMA presented by MILLENNIUM FILM WORKSHOP
This series will be devoted to showcasing works from overlooked and unknown American and International contemporary artists working in film and video, and pushing bounds beyond the limitations implied in those forms. Whether presenting intimate-scale epic by heretical artists re-interpreting the world as they see it on a no-string budget, or artists expanding vision via new tools of expression in the present and future age, Means of Production is about looking forward to a 21st century where economic and technological barriers are broken down, ushering in a new era of highly original cinematic handiwork.
The Millennium Film Workshop was founded in 1967 by a group of filmmakers with a vision to expand accessibility to the tools, ideas, and networks of filmmaking beyond the confines of institutions and corporate studios. Millennium has put on countless educational workshops, artist-hosted screenings, printed our renowned publication The Millennium Film Journal, served as a production hub kickstarting the careers of many prominent filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage, Todd Haynes, Yvonne Rainer, Carolee Schneeman, Michael Snow, Bruce Connor, Nick Zedd, Andy Warhol and Bruce Connor  and has played a large role in dismantling the monetary and educational barriers separating the art and craft of filmmaking from the general public.

SOUTHSIDE FILM FESTIVAL

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This October, in collaboration with our friends at Los Sures, Mi Casa Studios and the office of City Council Member Antonio Reynoso, Spectacle is thrilled to host the first-ever Southside Film Festival, a three-day celebration of Latino cinema (plus a block party on October 9) combining short documentaries about the neighborhood around South 3rd Street, a one-night-only outdoor screening of Leon Gast’s seminal Fania Records documentary OUR LATIN THING (1972) and a reprise of our classic LA BODEGA SOLD DREAMS program spotlighting Nuyorican cinema of the 1960s and 70s.

SOUTHSIDE SHORTS PROGRAM
dir. various, 2015-2021
approx 90 mins. United States.
In English, and in Spanish with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8 – 7:30 PM in-theater
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 10 – 7:30 PM in-theater

FILMMAKERS IN PERSON FOR Q+A!

This program spotlights filmmakers working in Williamsburg’s South Side, focusing in particular on portrait documentaries of beloved figures such as Tonita (Caribbean Sports Club), Papa Frenchie (Frenchie’s Gym) and boxer Wesley Ferrer, AKA “El Bongocero”.

NATAS ES SATAN
dir. Miguel Ángel Álvarez, 1977
89 mins. United States.
In Spanish with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8 – 10 PM in-theater

Best known for his comic persona “El Men” back in Puerto Rico, Miguel Ángel Álvarez delivers a blood-curdling performance in the lurid 1977 exploitation thriller NATAS ES SATAN, as an NYPD officer who is literally the devil (re)incarnate. (Screenwriter Joe Zayas based his sordid tale of blackmail and murder on true events.) Despite being Satan, Natás is also a surprisingly plausible supervillain, at one point enacting vengeance on his enemy, a businessman named Victor (Frank Moro), by hiring a “double” (played by Moro again) to put him in a compromising position. Like LA TIGRESA, this film was shot entirely en español on location in Manhattan; while the dramatic stakes are small, NATAS ES SATAN succeeds as both a crime procedural and a hysterical psychodrama. Long before Natas has invited three transgender assassins over to his place to murder Victor during a DIY porn screening, you’ll agree the end product also feels not unlike an artifact from an alternate universe. Stay alert…. Natas may return!

NATAS ES SATAN is screening with English subtitles for the first time in the United States, translated by Aida Garrido and timed by Garret Linn.


YE YO
dir. Tony Betancourt, 1975
79 mins. United States/Puerto Rico.
In Spanish.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8 – MIDNIGHT in-theater

Puerto Ricans were imposed U.S. citizenship in 1917 via the Jones-Shafroth Act. Lore recounts that Puerto Ricans were given citizenship so that they could be discharged as cannon fodder for the First World War and all succeeding wars that the U.S. engaged in thereafter. Produced by Changó International Films and shot by the prolific adult film cinematographer Larry Revene, YE YO tells the story of Rogelio Sotomayor, a Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war with PTSD who returns to New York after the war. Upon his return he finds his wife Nydia with a lover and murders them. In an epic, days-long run-off from corrupt cops, Ye Yo relies on his community for cover in this Blaxploitation inspired drama.

YE YO is screening with English subtitles for the first time in the United States, translated by Aida Garrido and timed by Garret Linn.

OUR LATIN THING
(NUESTRA COSA LATINA)
dir. Leon Gast, 1972
100 mins. United States.
In English and Spanish.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9 – 7:00 PM – OUTDOOR at LOS SURES COMMUNITY CENTER (145 S 3rd St)
and at stream.spectacletheater.com

FREE! ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Among other legends, 2021 witnessed the passing of documentarian Leon Gast (WHEN WE WERE KINGS) and salsa legend / “El Judio Marvellosio” Larry Harlow. In honor of both – as well as the first-ever Southside Film Festival – we’re hosting a one-night-only outdoor screening of Gast’s classic Fania Records documentary OUR LATIN THING, widely heralded as one of the greatest concert films ever made.

Gast’s relationship with Fania predates OUR LATIN THING, as he had photographed seminal album covers released by the then-burgeoning salsa label. As a result, OUR LATIN THING benefits from an obvious camaraderie between the stars – which, beside Harlow, include Ray Baretto, Johnny Pacheco, Hector Lavoe, José Feliciano and Willie Colón – and the filmmaker. The film spans two days, interweaving an epic concert at the now-defunct midtown Cheetah nightclub with street scenes from the Lower East Side – santeria, domino games, shaved ice, a riveting cockfight – with a roving camera whose ambling style anticipates works like Richard Linklater’s SLACKER. At the center of it all is the unforgettable Fania All-Stars concert at Cheetah – a sweaty, panoramic drama in its own right.

Spectacle is thrilled to present OUR LATIN THING, one night only, outdoors and online, free of charge, in a gorgeous new digital restoration courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.

Special thanks to Edda Manriques and Geri Spolan-Gast.

LA TIGRESA
dir. Glauco del Mar, 1969
85 mins. United States.
In Spanish with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8 – MIDNIGHT in-theater

Glauco del Mar’s penultimate film LA TIGRESA is perhapsx his most accomplished, yet far less popular than his apogee, 1975’s TONO BICICLETA. It is in this bewilderingly feminist redemption narrative that we meet Patricia, a young woman living with her father, who is mercilessly ullied by her schoolmates, assaulted and raped in her home and is left with no resolve. Her alcoholic good-for-nothing father is killed during her attack. After inheriting some money and recovering her personal power, she sets off to avenge every single last person that did her wrong – making her list, and checking it twice. This classic redemption tale combines the amazing Perla Faith a legendary vedette with espiritismo, folklore, Miguel Poventud’s jangly guitar boleros, corrupt cops, and entrancing Harlem landscapes.

LA BODEGA SOLD DREAMS: SHORTS 1968-1980
dirs. Various
approx. 90 mins.
In English and Spanish with English subtitles.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 10 – 3PM in-theater

Bracketed by two short TV documentaries – PUERTO RICO: A COLONY THE AMERICAN WAY, and THE DEVIL IS A CONDITION – this program looks at depictions of both Puerto Rican and Nuyorican culture regarding the island’s de facto status as an outpost of American imperialism. The material screened will include interviews with Ruben Berrios, leader of the Independence party, Rafael Hernández Colón, governor candidate for the Popular Democratic Party, and Carlos Romero Barceló, governor of the islands, known murderer, and darling of the Pro-Statehood party, the PNP. (Today, the PNP is the same political party incriminated in the recent upheavals over the #rickygate, #rickyrenuncia, #wandarenuncia, etcetera.)

SHORT EYES
dir. Robert M. Young, 1977
100 mins. United States.
In English.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 10 – 5PM in-theater

Adapted by poet Miguel Piñero from his play of the same name, SHORT EYES is closely based on his experiences incarcerated at Sing Sing after an armed robbery charge. Robert M. Young (ALAMBRISTA!) shot the film on location in the infamous Tombs, on White Street, while the prison was fully operational; the plot follows a gang of Black and Puerto Rican inmates figuring out what to do with a bourgeois white inmate named Clark (Bruce Davidson, making his big screen debut) who has been accused of raping an underage girl. “Short Eyes” is the in-prison nickname for pederasts, and Piñero’s screenplay doesn’t hold back in dissecting the dog-eat-dog culture among the inmates – several of whom have designs on Clark, who they consider the lowest of the low. A flawlessly executed ensemble piece buttressed by a silky-yet-menacing Curtis Mayfield soundtrack, SHORT EYES is a gripping and surprisingly even-handed look at life behind bars, widely considered one of the greatest prison films ever made. Young’s compassionate realism and focus on authenticity is a perfect match for Piñero, who also acts in the film (as do Mayfield and Freddy Fender, in bit parts), and whose run-ins with law enforcement would continue during and after production.

(SHORT EYES will screen with a 17-minute clip of Miguel Piñero reading at Magic Gallery in 1984, preserved and digitized thanks to XFR Collective.)

The Return of GET REEL

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ONE NIGHT ONLY!
Friday, October 22 –  10pm
$15

ADVANCE TIX

This Fall, we here at Spectacle are pleased as pumpkins to welcome the return of the almighty GET REEL! Get Reel is a movie-focused comedy show, in which comedians dub over movie clips live, while hosts Joe Castle Baker and Max Wittet interject between acts, in different characters every month.

Please arrive at the theater no later than 15 minutes prior to the start of the show to secure your seat. At that time any unclaimed tickets will be made available to those in the standby line. No refunds. 

Proof of vaccination and masks are required for all audience members. Performers will also be vaccinated, but may choose not to wear a mask.

ASK ANY BUDDY presents: SEX DEMON

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SEX DEMON
dir. J.C. Cricket, 1975
USA. 60 min.

NEW YORK CITY PREMIERE
Friday, October 29 – 7:30pm
Saturday, October 30 – 10pm

“A non-stop shocker that both sizzles and chills. A totally daring new dimension in male erotica!” – Michael’s Thing

All hell breaks loose when John’s last-minute anniversary gift inadvertently causes his younger lover Jim to become possessed by a SEX DEMON in J.C. Cricket’s all-male horror film.  Openly inspired by both The Exorcist and its Blaxploitation cousin, Abby, SEX DEMON is a ferocious mix of the erotic and the grotesque that’s primed and ready to shock audiences again after being lost for the past forty years. In the words of Gay Scene critic Bruce King, “the squeamish may not want to watch, but if you do, you won’t forget it!”

SEX DEMON was the first film effort by actor, erotic dancer, and gay television pioneer J.C. Cricket. After the release of this film, he’d go on to direct over a dozen more under various pseudonyms before cofounding and directing the gay public-access programs Christopher Street After Dark, Diversions, Connections, and Gay Morning America. Cricket passed away from AIDS-related complications in 1992.

Last screened theatrically in 1981 and never given a home video release, SEX DEMON is a crucial — yet long-lost — piece of queer horror history. Presented in a new 2k preservation from a recently discovered 16mm theatrical print.

Evan Purchell is a queer film historian and archivist. His Instagram project, Ask Any Buddy, explores the gay adult film industry’s role in both the development of queer cinema and the spread of gay culture at large.

SPECTOBER 2021

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CHOPPING MALL
Dir. Jim Wynorski 1986
USA 77 minutes.

A group of young shopping mall employees stay behind for a late night party in one of the stores. When the mall goes on lock-down before they can get out, the robot security system malfunctions, and goes on a killing spree.

ONE NIGHT ONLY!
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1ST – 10:00pm
(This screening is $10)

GET YOUR TICKETS!

Join us for a night of music, movies and mixed media with antifolk legend Jeffrey Lewis.
Lewis will perform a short acoustic set and then present the film Chopping Mall which he has never seen! After the film he will take questions from the audience.

About Jeffrey Lewis: Jeffrey Lewis and his various bandmates have perfected a scuzzy, urban style of indie-folk, developing from late-90s New York City bedroom tapes into a mighty 21st Century mash-up of folksy spiel and artsy garage, like Pete Seeger meeting Sonic Youth. A born and raised denizen of the Lower East Side, Lewis’s home recordings were discovered by Rough Trade Records in 2001 (famed label of The Smiths, The Strokes, Belle & Sebastian and more) while Lewis was briefly living in Austin, Texas. Since the 2001 release of his first official album “The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane and Other Favorites” on Rough Trade Records, Lewis has toured the world and released numerous acclaimed albums on Rough Trade and other labels. He’s built a worldwide fanbase while regularly changing band names, most recently recording as Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage for Don Giovanni Records and Moshi Moshi Records.

LITAN
dir. Jean-Pierre Mocky, 1982
87 mins. France.
In French with English subtitles.

Sunday, October 3 – 7:30pm
Saturday, October 23 – 10pm
Friday, October 29 – 10pm

GET YOUR TICKETS!

STREAMING AT STREAM.SPECTACLETHEATER.COM
Tuesday, October 5 – 7:30pm

Nora and Jock arrive in the strange village of Litan during the Festival of the Dead.
Co-written, produced, edited, directed by and starring Jean-Pierre Mocky, Litan loosely follows Nora, who is deeply concerned about her husband, Jock (actual spelling), after she has a nightmare he’s been killed. Soon, townsfolk are wandering around as if hypnotized, and a boy scout drowns in an underground cavern.
The ‘plot’ quickly devolves into a Boschian nightmare, drifting between a mad scientist and a bumbling police chief, among others, but plot is not really the point here, spinning ever further into a foggy dreamworld. Part art-house fever dream, part giallo, and yet entirely its own thing, Litanis as darkly comedic as it is unsettling and grotesque.

THE BLACK BEYOND TRILOGY
dir. Steven Toriano Berry, 1992
73 mins. United States.
In English.

Thursday, October 7 – 7:30pm
Friday, October 15 – 10:00pm
Saturday, October 23 – 7:00pm w/ filmmaker Q+A (this screening is $10)

GET YOUR TICKETS!

STREAMING AT STREAM.SPECTACLETHEATER.COM
Wednesday, October 13 – 7:30pm

“What really lies beyond this world? A vast void of nothingness? Or a place where the justice and retribution not realized in this life becomes a governing force? Who really knows? When your turn comes, who will be waiting for you?”

Our original plan this Spectober was to invite S. Toriano Berry – a renown independent filmmaker and longtime scholar of African-American cinema – for a special 25th anniversary presentation of his hood classic THE EMBALMER (1996), a surprisingly earnest (and disgusting!) slasher thriller shot on a shoestring budget in Washington, D.C. Bureaucratic matters hindered the screening – for now – But Berry had an irresistible ace up his sleeve: a new digitization of his BLACK BEYOND TRILOGY. Shot on video, THE BLACK BEYOND anthologizes three tales of terror in a style clearly indebted to The Twilight Zone; per Berry’s voiceover introduction, the Black Beyond is a place where “darkness is more than nothingness, and justice is not blind…”

The trilogy consists of three episodes. In “Deathly Realities”, a serial killer hiding behind a rubber mask receives comeuppance from his victims, beyond the grave; in “The Coming of the Saturnites”, a space alien (played by Berry!) struggles to ingratiate himself among humans without blowing his cover; and in “Money’ll Eat You Up!!!” a rogue dollar bill (or “dirty green”) makes its victims disappear – a brutal riposte to Gordon Gekko’s then-popular mantra of “greed is good”. Shot in part as Berry was completing his film production studies at UCLA (and, later, teaching film at Howard), THE BLACK BEYOND combines trenchant social commentary on the African-American experience with lovingly lo-fi videographic and prosthetic effects, as terrifying as it is hilarious. Spectacle is thrilled to include this hidden gem of 1980s phantasmagoria in our annual SPECTOBER program, quite possibly THE BLACK BEYOND‘s first ever public screening in New York City.

HEAVEN IS ONLY IN HELL
dir. Wim Vink, 1994.
Netherlands, 86 min.
 
Thursday, October 14 – 10pm
Saturday, October 23 – 5pm
Saturday, October 30 – Midnight

GET YOUR TICKETS!

STREAMING AT STREAM.SPECTACLETHEATER.COM
Wednesday, October 27 – 7:30pm

There is no Heaven. There is Hell. Therefore, Heaven is only in Hell.

Wim Vink’s first and only feature length film, Heaven is Only in Hell is a no budget murderdrone masterpiece. It loosely follows Michael and Sharon (played by Angelique Vink, who also composes the incredible title theme) as their lives are slowly enveloped by a cursed well containing a demonic portal in Michael’s basement. The score is uniformly awesome, and the gore is homemade and sporadic, all tied together by nearly dialogue-free bizarre and hilarious performances. You won’t regret seeing this with a crowd!

This Spectober, Spectacle is proud to bring you some of the finest no-budget splatter filmmaking ever to come out of the Netherlands. Join us for two installments of Vink (plus a bonus long-short by a similarly inclined splatteur from the UK, Michael J Murphy).

WIM VINK SHORTS BLOCK

Saturday, October 16 – 5pm
Thursday, October 21 – 10pm
Saturday, October 30 – 5pm

GET YOUR TICKETS!

STREAMING AT STREAM.SPECTACLETHEATER.COM
Monday, October 25 – 7:30pm

HALF PAST MIDNIGHT
dir. Wim Vink, 1988.
Netherlands, 35 min.
A short and brutal SOV blast of splatter, Half Past Midnight follows a chronically bullied highschool student as she takes revenge on her classmates after a prank goes too far. Opening with a title card sequence that borderline recaps the short in trailer form, and featuring another absolutely stellar homemade synth score (this time by Rob Orlemans), this is a singular piece of insanity that you don’t want to miss.

INVITATION TO HELL
dir. Michael J Murphy, 1982.
UK, 42 min.
A young woman attends a high school reunion that turns out to be a cover for a Druid occult ceremony, requiring the blood sacrifice of a virgin. Slightly more coherent than the average Vink (and definitely a lot more dialogue), but the same spirit (and synth) energy runs through this film.

DANCE MACABRE
dir. Wim Vink, 1986.
Netherlands, 22 min.

Vink packs nearly every horror trope and then some into 22 minutes in a brain melting blast of pastiche and loving homage (including bits of score directly lifted from Goblin’s work with Argento and Fabio Frizzi, among others). From blood sacrifices to zombies to possessions, this short really does have it all and then some.

WE ARE THE FLESH (Tenemos la Carne)
dir. Emiliano Rocha Minter, 2016.
Mexico. 76 minutes.
In Spanish with English Subtitles.

Saturday, October 16 – 7pm followed by Zoom Q+A w/ Emiliano Rocha Minter
Saturday, October 23 – Midnight
Saturday, October 30 – 7:30pm

GET YOUR TICKETS!

STREAMING AT STREAM.SPECTACLETHEATER.COM
Tuesday, October 26 – 7:30pm

With special thanks given to Georges Bataille and Antoin Artaud, Emiliano Rocha Mintner’s We Are the Flesh is a hypnotic piece of transgressive cinema whose shocks ring deep. Set in a sort of post-apocalypse of the mind, the film brings three characters together into a horny cycle of violence and Sadean sexual depravity. Stumbling upon middle-aged pervert Mariano (Noe Hernandez) busy cooking up odd gasoline-based narcotics in the dilapidated building where he lives, brother and sister duo Fauna (María Evoli) and Lucio (Diego Gamaliel) quickly become playthings in dangerous games of desire. Incest, murder, patriotic  sing-alongs, and abject orgies – the film concocts a potent mixture of taboo subject matter and visual splendor into a primal fever-dream.

ALGUIEN TE ESTA MIRANDO
(aka SOMEBODY IS WATCHING YOU)
dirs. Horacio Maldonado and Gustavo Cova, 1988
72 mins. Argentina.
In Spanish with English subtitles.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1 – 7:30pm
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 16 – 10pm
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 24 – 7:30pm
STREAMING AT STREAM.SPECTACLETHEATER.COM
MONDAY, OCTOBER 4 – 7:30PM
Five students agree to be test subjects for a new American drug that allows people to share dreams. While on a trip to the countryside, they begin to notice strange occurrences happening around them. As they are terrorized by a local gang during their trip, we learn that the countryside trip is a dream they’ve been sharing together. However, one of them is beginning to take things in a much more brutal nature, putting the 5 at risk of dying in their dream and potentially never being able to wake up. Released in the years following the end of the military junta and before the neoliberal policies of Carlos Menem, ALGUIEN TE ESTA MIRANDO is everything classic Argentine cinema isn’t, influenced by slasher films and rock music with a youthful presence, along with a sci-fi twist that evokes future films with simulated reality as a major theme.
This SPECTOBER, Spectacle is thrilled to present ALGUIEN TE ESTA MIRANDO in a gorgeous new 5K restoration courtesy of Gotika releasing. Programmed in collaboration with Anthony Chassi.

ASK ANY BUDDY presents: SEX DEMON

SEX DEMON
dir. J.C. Cricket, 1975
USA. 60 min.

NEW YORK CITY PREMIERE
Friday, October 29 – 7:30pm
Saturday, October 30 – 10pm

“A non-stop shocker that both sizzles and chills. A totally daring new dimension in male erotica!” – Michael’s Thing
All hell breaks loose when John’s last-minute anniversary gift inadvertently causes his younger lover Jim to become possessed by a SEX DEMON in J.C. Cricket’s all-male horror film.  Openly inspired by both The Exorcist and its Blaxploitation cousin, Abby, SEX DEMON is a ferocious mix of the erotic and the grotesque that’s primed and ready to shock audiences again after being lost for the past forty years. In the words of Gay Scene critic Bruce King, “the squeamish may not want to watch, but if you do, you won’t forget it!”
SEX DEMON was the first film effort by actor, erotic dancer, and gay television pioneer J.C. Cricket. After the release of this film, he’d go on to direct over a dozen more under various pseudonyms before cofounding and directing the gay public-access programs Christopher Street After Dark, Diversions, Connections, and Gay Morning America. Cricket passed away from AIDS-related complications in 1992.

Last screened theatrically in 1981 and never given a home video release, SEX DEMON is a crucial — yet long-lost — piece of queer horror history. Presented in a new 2k preservation from a recently discovered 16mm theatrical print.

Evan Purchell is a queer film historian and archivist. His Instagram project, Ask Any Buddy, explores the gay adult film industry’s role in both the development of queer cinema and the spread of gay culture at large.

 

 

CEMETERY OF TERROR
dir. Rubén Galindo Jr., 1985.
Mexico, 91 min.
In Spanish w English Subtitles.

Saturday, October 2 – Midnight
Thursday, October 7 – 7:30pm
Sunday, October 31 – 7:30pm

GET YOUR TICKETS!

STREAMING AT STREAM.SPECTACLETHEATER.COM
Wednesday, October 6 – 7:30pm

“A fast-paced, no-questions-asked, gutter-level slasher/zombie romp with every ingredient (mis)placed for maximum pleasure.” — Joseph A. Ziemba, BLEEDING SKULL!

The directing debut of Rubén Galindo Jr. (DON’T PANIC, GRAVE ROBBERS), CEMETERY OF TERROR is easily the wildest zombie movie to ever emerge from Mexico. On Halloween night, a group of bored teenagers steal a corpse from the morgue and take it to a nearby cemetery. Once there, they perform a Satanic ritual in an attempt to bring it back to life. Unfortunately, the kids chose the body of a savage serial killer who has just been shot dead by police. Whoops! The group of fun-seeking youngsters unwittingly revive the undead sadist . . . and only occult expert Dr. Carden (legendary Mexican character actor Hugo Stiglitz) can end the madness! Filled with gratuitous gore effects that would feel right at home in a Fulci film, CEMETERY is non-stop thrills and bloodshed from beginning to end.

Restoration courtesy of Vinegar Syndrome and the American Genre Film Archive.

HOLLOW GATE
dir. Ray Di Zazzo, 1988.
USA, 86 min.
English.
Saturday, October 16 – Midnight
Sunday, October 31 – 5pm
Wednesday, October 20 – 7:30pm
“When Mark Walters throws a party, even Freddy and Jason wouldn’t dare to come!” — VHS tagline
“Mad” Mark Walters, in a burst of fury, unleashes his suppressed rage on a community on Halloween night. A night of Halloween fun turns into a night of terror for four innocent teenagers trapped in a malevolent web of horror. One by one, each becomes a victim to Mark’s sinister plans as he dons an appropriate costume to dispatch his prey. In a breathless, heart-stopping climax, one of the terrorized teens turns the tables on Mark . . . or does she? Hollow Gate is an underseen oddball slasher worth another look this Halloween, especially with an audience!  
Courtesy of Troma Entertainment and the American Genre Film Archive.

SCARY TALES
dir. Doug Ulrich, 1993.
USA, 70 min.
English.

Friday, October 15 – 10:00pm
Friday, October 22 – Midnight
Friday, October 29 – Midnight

GET YOUR TICKETS!

STREAMING AT STREAM.SPECTACLETHEATER.COM
Wednesday, October 20 – 10pm

“A super charming, homemade, SOV horror anthology with just enough dark overlords and Satanic necklaces.”
— Hollie Horror, Letterboxd

SCARY TALES proves that the films of John Waters and Don Dohler aren’t the only genre miracles from Baltimore. A shot-on-video horror anthology that plays out like a public access version of CREEPSHOW, this is what happens when Satanic necklaces, bloodthirsty slashers, and DUNGEONS & DRAGONS-styled live action role playing collide with cool dads, neon lightbulbs, and dungeon synthesizers. 

Spectacle is thrilled to present this charming, gore-filled dreamscape that has been meticulously pieced together from its original S-VHS master tapes.

Preservation courtesy of the American Genre Film Archive.

ALVARO PASSERI DOUBLE FEATURE

Posted on by Spectacle


After working as a set designer and visual effects artist for the likes of Luigi Cozzi and Ruggero Deodato in the 1980s, Alvaro Passeri directed a series of singularly bizarre sci-fi features around the turn of the millennium. His films were the inverse of the popular genre blockbusters of the period – never scaling his ambitions to meet his budget, Passeri developed a distinct style based on rubbery body horror and a permanently canted fish-eye lens. While he is best known for the video rental staple CREATURES FROM THE ABYSS (aka PLANKTON), Spectacle is proud to present two of his lesser-known features for a one-night blowout.

These films will screen in-theater as well as simultaneously at stream.spectacletheater.com.

FLIGHT TO HELL
Dir. Alvaro Passeri, 2002
86 min. Italy.
In English.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 – 7:30 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

The obnoxious inhabitants of a flying casino face an infestation of parasitic bugs in Passeri’s followup to MUMMY THEME PARK. Abandoning the latter’s near-exclusive reliance on practical effects, FLIGHT shows Passeri experimenting with digital animation – his trademark visual style translates surprisingly well to the medium, offering a unique take on the sub-ILM polygonal creations which were rife among direct-to-video horror offerings in the early 2000s.

As per the DVD box:

Don screams out as a horrific monster is about to eat him alive! But then he wakes up. It’s only a dream! That day he boards his private plane, a flying casino, that caters to the needs of fantastically rich clients who want to play for high stakes at high altitudes. But then the plane is engulfed in a strange thick fog that seeps into the cabin. The evil mist transforms the passengers and crew one by one into monstrous half human, half insect creatures with a ravenous appetite for human flesh. Don realizes that it is his nightmare come true – it is his FLIGHT TO HELL!

MUMMY THEME PARK
Dir. Alvaro Passeri, 2000
86 min. Italy.
In English.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 – 10 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

“It would not be too bold to declare this film the Francis Ford Coppola’s BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA of Italian mummy movies.” – Senseless Cinema

A garish amalgam of Westworld and The Mummy, Passeri’s 2000 masterpiece addresses the controversial practice of planting microchips in mummies in order to staff fantasy theme parks. Transcending its influences, the film boasts a uniquely queasy visual style crafted from greasy animatronics and a painfully saturated color palette. The plot concerns two dimwitted American journalists caught in the meltdown of the titular Mummy Theme Park – this, of course, is of secondary significance aside the exercise in discount worldmaking achieved through Passeri’s fabric-store scenography and a script rife with non-sequiturs.