TO SLEEP SO AS TO DREAM
(夢みるように眠りたい」フィルム修復)
dir. Hayashi Kaizô, 1986
73 mins. Japan.
Silent.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 14 – 5 PM with filmmaker Hayashi Kaizô and makeup artist Yoshida Mika for combination Zoom/IRL Q+A!
(This event is $10.)
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26 – 10PM

GET YOUR TICKETS!

For those who remember Hayashi Kaizô’s MAIKU HAMA: #1 PRIVATE EYE trilogy we screened in 2018, a reprise of one of our favorites from this summer’s outdoor screenings in a gorgeous 2k restoration.

Born from the vestiges of some long forgotten dream, TO SLEEP SO AS TO DREAM is a hauntingly beautiful ode to the silent era that yearns for a distant past—back to an illusory world teeming with new excitements, novel invention and cryptic riddles. Under the faint glimmer of an electric lamp, an aging silver-screen starlet seeks the aid of two steadfast detectives when her darling daughter, the ethereal Bellflower, is kidnapped for ransom. The sleuths find themselves caught in a heady game of cat and mouse as they journey deeper into a sleepless realm of benshi performers, archetypal villainy and never-ending serials. Transposing the silent era’s cinematic language into a work that walks the line between antiquity and fantasy, dream and waking state, TO SLEEP SO AS TO DREAM casts a spell over the spectator in dream-like fashion, harking back to the magical, early days of cinema.

Special thanks to K.F. Watanabe, Tetsuki Ijichi and Arrow Films.

MONDAY, JULY 5 – 8PM EST only at The City Reliquary backyard

IRL… ONE NIGHT ONLY! 

ONLINE TICKETS ($5)

Schedule:
7 pm – Doors open, tunes by DJ Daniel DiMaggio (Home Blitz), refreshments
8 pm – Show begins, opening remarks, Spectacle trailers
8:10 pm – THE ETERNAL FRAME
8:35 pm – MORGAN’S CAKE

On the occasion of the post-Fourth of July comedown, Spectacle is pleased to present two classics of mondo Americana:

MORGAN’S CAKE
dir. Rick Schmidt, 1988
United States. 85 mins.

preceded by

THE ETERNAL FRAME
dirs. Ant Farm & T.R. Uthco, 1975
United States. 23 mins.

Can one have their cake and eat it too? Such is the guiding quandary in Bay Area filmmaker Rick Schmidt’s fourth feature, MORGAN’S CAKE, a largely improvised coming-of-age movie filmed on a shoestring budget of $15,000. Morgan (played by Schmidt’s real-life son, Morgan Schmidt-Feng) is down on his luck and turning 18. His girlfriend is pregnant and his bohemian parents don’t offer much stability. He’s conflicted about registering for the draft and spends his time meandering around the city, chatting with an assortment of local eccentrics. What elevates an otherwise straightforward premise is the realness of the performances, from the substanial—e.g. Morgan’s father, played by wily video artist Willie Boy Walker, regaling his son with his true-life story of loading up on LSD to deliberately tank his army psych exam—to the minor, like street-casted San Franciscan denizens sounding off on their feelings about the draft. A breezy pace and natural warmth make this a “slice” of life that is funny, outlandish, and gently elegiac.

It’ll be preceded by what’s maybe the magnum opus of both Ant Farm and T.R. Uthco, two stalwart art collectives from the heyday of heady West coast performance. Funded in part by National Lampoon and the Dilexi Gallery’s Jim Newman, THE ETERNAL FRAME documents the two groups’ efforts to re-enact the assassination of John F. Kennedy, meticulously costuming and choreographing a shot-for-shot remake of the Zapruder film (then not so easy to track down) in front of spectators in Dealey Plaza. Done not merely out of irreverence or post-Watergate bicentennial fatigue, the performance probes media and simulation’s disquieting roles in producing political mythology. Asked at the end of the video “Who killed Kennedy?” T.R. Uthco’s Doug Hall replies, “Who cares? We all did.”

••• Previously scheduled for March 2020, this program was cut short due to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. A year later we are delighted to celebrate Anna Karina and revive this series for online streaming. Full program notes below. •••

On December 14th, 2019, the film community mourned the loss of the iconic actress, director, writer, and quintessential joie de vivre of the French New Wave, Anna Karina. While fellow movie-houses paid countless tributes to the Nouvelle Vague starlet with screenings of some of her most recognizable roles, at Spectacle we decided to memorialize one of our favorite silver-screen icons with the lesser known masterworks, which together along with the Godard films, forged a career that is singular in its breadth and intercontinental impact. Anna Karina who had become the symbol for cinematic revolution in 1960’s France had an instinctual command of style, beauty, and mystique that is present in all of her performances.

This series, which selects films made from 1965-1974, is by no means absolute: but it serves to further illustrate Anna Karina’s worldwide reach and international stardom while highlighting some of her greatest works made outside the orbit of Jean-Luc Godard. Composed of four languages and produced with five countries, these films while uniquely different are unified by the dear Anna Karina, and it is to her charisma and ever-fascinating career that we dedicate this program of deep cuts and revivals.

Special thanks to: Greg Eggebeen, Cathérine Delvaux, Minerva Pictures, VITTO IT, Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique, and Universal Music.

RENDEZVOUS À BRAY
(aka APPOINTMENT IN BRAY)
dir. André Delvaux, 1971
France/Belgium/Weat Germany, 86 min.
In French with English Subtitles

MONDAY APRIL 19 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com
TUESDAY, APRIL 27 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com

“As much as I revere some of the Belgian films of Chantal Akerman, if I had to choose only one Belgian film to take with me to a desert island, I’d have a pretty rough time forsaking this 1971 masterpiece by André Delvaux.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum

Paris 1917: a young pianist (Mathieu Carrière) receives a note from an old friend in the Air Force to join him at his lush country estate that happens to be close to the front lines of World War I. He arrives but his friend is nowhere to be found, with only the quiet, beautiful housekeeper (Anna Karina) present. While he spends days waiting for his friend’s arrival, his mind wanders to past events. At night, the mysterious woman appears again…

Based on a short story from surrealist Julien Gracq, Belgian auteur André Delvaux marries his trademark amalgam of fantasy and reality to Gracq’s shape-shifting text. Much like the film protagonist, Delvaux got his start by playing the piano to silent films in 1950s Brussels, and his musicality is on full display in the film’s sonata-like form, weaving variations of memories and moments into an ambiguous, intriguing mood piece. Cloaked in dense Gothic atmospheres and muted colors, RENDEZVOUS À BRAY gives off a melancholy, dream-like aura, subtle in approach but haunted by unspoken desires and half-imagined nostalgia.

Working with Delvaux’s daughter, we’re honored to re-introduce this classic of Belgium cinema.

LE TEMPS DE MOURIR
(aka THE TIME TO DIE)
dir. Andre Farwagi, 1970
France. 82 mins.
In French with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, APRIL 20 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com

A stylish, puzzling sci-fi mystery dealing with time travel and destiny, THE TIME TO DIE features loads of retro-cool technology futurisms and immaculate production design, but also manages to treat its subject matter with philosophical seriousness and respect. It supposes that the future is inevitable and the best we can do is hurl forwards towards our fated destiny.

LE SOLDATESSE
(aka The Camp Followers)
dir. Valerio Zurlini, 1965
Italy. 120 min.
In Italian and Greek with English subtitles.

THURSDAY, APRIL 22 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com
FRIDAY, APRIL 30 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com

An intimate anti-war ensemble film about a group of prostitutes (led by Anna Karina & Marie Laforêt) who are being escorted through the treacherous mountains of Albania in order to service the Italian soldiers of World War II.

LE SOLDATESSE (aka, THE CAMP FOLLOWERS) is a Neo-Realist tour-de-force which demonstrates the futility of war and the magnitude of suffering through its black and white photography and its tragic inevitable conclusion. Filmed in a compositional mode evoking the lyricism of Antonioni, the film is also a delicate study on women camaraderie told through shared adversity and collective resistance.

ANNA
dir. Pierre Koralnik, 1967
France. 85 mins.
In French with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, APRIL 23 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com
MONDAY, APRIL 26th – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com

A kaleidoscopic, energetic burst of bright colors, infectious musical numbers, and absurdly charming performances, ANNA, which played Spectacle in 2014, is a pop-art musical masterpiece that has been locked away for far too long.

Originally made as the first color film for French TV, Anna Karina stars as a shy artist who is unknowingly photographed one day and soon becomes the obsession of an advertising executive (played by French New Wave stalwart Jean-Claude Brialy).The Yé-Yé music, scored and soundtracked by French pop icon Serge Gainsbourg (who also makes several on-screen appearances), is some of the most infectious and catchy work of his career, with Karina’s vocals shining throughout,.Anna Karina also reunited with key Godard personnel, including editor Françoise Collin (BAND OF OUTSIDERS, PIERROT LE FOU, 2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER) and DP Wally Kurant (MASCULINE FEMININE).

Impossible to resist, the film feels like a pitch-perfect melding of Godard’s A WOMAN IS A WOMAN and Demy’s THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, with Karina’s adorable beauty and effervescent charm as the center of attention. And be on the lookout for a Marianne Faithfull cameo.The film was a hit on French television in the late 60s and received a brief Japanese theatrical run in the 90s, but has since vanished and, to the best of our knowledge, has never screened before in the US. Working with Universal Music, Spectacle is enthralled to once again revive this lost gem of 60s French cinema.

LAUGHTER IN THE DARK
dir. Tony Richardson, 1969
United Kingdom & France. 104 mins.
In English.

SUNDAY, APRIL 25 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com

Adapted from Vladimir Nabokov’s novel of the same name, LAUGHTER IN THE DARK deals with the obsession of a middle-aged man (Nicol Williamson) and his younger cunning mistress Margot (Anna Karina)– think Scarlet Street meets the British new wave. Tony Richardson trades Nabokov’s 1930’s Berlin for the Swinging 60’s of London in this lustful thriller of deceit which was never released on home video and has rarely-screened since its 1969 release. Anna Karina shines in her all-English role as the charming irresistible seductress who cultivates something mysterious behind her delicate, wide eyes.

L’INVENZIONE DI MOREL
(aka MOREL’S INVENTION)
dir. Emidio Greco, 1974
Italy. 110 mins.
In Italian with English subtitles.

THURSDAY, APRIL 29 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com
Please note this stream will only appear to viewers based in the United States.

Adapted from the novella which inspired LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, Emidio Greco’s MOREL’S INVENTION is a chilling slow-burning metaphysical oddity serving as a meditation on time, mortality, and the cinema itself. Starring Anna Karina as Faustine, a sort-of Fellini-esque femme-enigma who is forever lost in the island’s haunting secrets of art-deco, socialite costume, and jazz.

The word “collective” brings to mind infinite potentials — an unlimited number of practices towards horizontality within an artistic ecosystem. Some of these practices are more tenable than others, but throughout history activist-minded artists have collectivized in an effort to change what the economic, social and political model of making arts looks like. From West Berlin to DC, the Second Wave to riot grrrl, we present a cross-section of female artists coming together in times of political need.

Organized in collaboration with Mary Billyou. Special thanks to Women Make Movies, Filmmaker’s Co-op, Facets, K8 Hardy and Wynne Greenwood.

UNDER THE PAVEMENT LIES THE STRAND
(aka UNTER DEM PFLASTER IST DER STRAND)
dir. Helma Sanders-Brahms, 1975
Germany. 99 mins.
In German with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com

A sociological document on the working woman and abortion, an anti-matrimonial and anti-utopian communist manifesto, Unter dem Pflaster is an intimate chronicle of post-68 malaise and the growing schism between sexual and political revolutions. An illicit and ludic affair between two actors with a shared past in the student rebellions opens up onto the history of German revolution and fascism, the constraints of domestic monogamy and claustrophobia of private property, as they watch themselves become the very parents they mutinied against. Caught at a crux of early postmodernity, Sanders-Brahms pinpoints the exigency of a women’s movement in the stale husk of ’68 macho militancy and growing recuperation in post-Fordist women’s reformism.

WOMEN’S PUNK ART MAKING PARTY
dir. Mary Billyou, 1996.
US. 33 min.

TUESDAY, MARCH 16 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com

A documentary in which a group of young women meet for an art-making party. Located at The Beehive Collective in Washington, DC, six individual episodes are loosely interspersed, allowing each participant a chance to represent themselves. Included: a feminist stripper preparing for work, a puppet show, and a music video.

playing with

SHE HAD HER GUN ALL READY
dir. Vivienne Dick, 1978.
US. 28 min.

Vivienne Dick takes aim at reverence and power dynamics among women in one of her best known shorts, an 8mm Lower East Side-set psychodrama starring Lydia Lunch.

NEW REPORT ARTIST UNKNOWN
dirs. K8 Hardy and Wynne Greenwood, 2006
United States. 16 mins.

A collaborative project envisioning a news service in a post-feminist world, this comedic short features K8 Hardy (founder of the queer feminist art collective LTTR) and Wynne Greenwood (of Tracy and the Plastics) playing Henry Irigaray and Henry Stein-Acker-Hill, an anchor and roving correspondent for WKRH, a feminist TV news station whose tagline is “pregnant with information.”

THE ALL-ROUND REDUCED PERSONALITY
(aka DIE ALLSEITIG REDUZIERTE PERSÖNLICHKEIT)
dir. Helke Sander, 1979
Germany. 98 mins.
In German with English subtitles.

MONDAY MARCH 22 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com
WEDNESDAY MARCH 31 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com

“Emancipation or not, you want to sell a story.”

Threatened by the increasing cost of living (not to mention of producing images), a women’s photography collective attempts to subvert a commission given to them by the politically and sexually repressive West German government. Drifting from private moments to Godardian accounting, urban survey to bureaucratic detentes, Sanders probes the possibility of reintegrating art into social space as a means of ending grey-on-grey capitalism and socialism, two sides of the same valueless coin.

THE HERETICS
dir. Joan Braderman, 2009
United States. 95 mins.

FRIDAY, MARCH 19 – 8PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com

Tracing the influence of the Women’s Movement’s Second Wave on art and life, THE HERETICS is the exhilarating inside story of the New York feminist art collective that produced “Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics” (1977-92). On the road with her camera crew from New Mexico to Italy, Braderman reconnects with 28 other group members, including writer/critic Lucy Lippard, architect Susanna Torre, filmmaker Su Friedrich, and artists Ida Applebroog, Mary Miss, Miriam Schapiro, and Cecilia Vicuña. — Women Make Movies

Presented in partnership with Women Make Movies.

“Upbeat and affirmative…The stories these women tell envision a radically different moment in art-world history, one in which questions of career and market are barely mentioned, and philosophical arguments are firmly grounded in street-level politics.” — Ed Halter, Artforum

WOMANHOUSE
dir. Johanna Demetrakas, 1974
United States. 47 mins.

THURSDAY, MARCH 18 – 7:30 PM EST only at stream.spectacletheater.com

WOMANHOUSE is an historic documentary about one of the most important feminist cultural events of the 1970s. Judy Chicago (best-known as the creator of THE DINNER PARTY) and Miriam Shapiro rented an old Hollywood mansion and altered its interior through decor and set-pieces to “search out and reveal the female experience…the dreams and fantasies of women as they sewed, cooked, washed and ironed away their lives.”

Presented in partnership with Women Make Movies.

playing with

EXCERPTS FROM THE A.I.R. GALLERY OPENING, 1972
dir. Hermine Freed, 1972
United States. 11 mins.

Re-edited by filmmaker Mary Billyou, this film presents footage shot at A.I.R. Gallery’s first opening, shot by Hermine Freed. A.I.R. Gallery (Artists in Residence) is the first all-female artist-owned cooperative gallery in the United States. It was founded in 1972 with the objective of providing a professional and permanent exhibition space for women artists during a time in which the works shown at commercial galleries in New York City were almost exclusively by male artists.

FROZEN SCREAM-A-THON, 12/19/2020

Like Shriek Show, but frozen.

Don’t let the holidays get you down – cozy up with Spectacle for 12+ hours of cozy, wintery, Holiday-adjacent murder and mayhem.

12PM – MOVIE #1 – ?????? ???????

Kicking things off is an early 70’s weirdo horror-sci fi mashup featuring two extremely recognizable icons of horror on a nightmare train hurtling through Manchuria.

1:45PM – MOVIE #2 – ???? ??????

Next up, a short trip to Scandinavia. A glam rock band heads to a ski resort to film a music video when an avalanche traps them in the resort. Like a very-80’s The Hills Have Eyes, but dumber and snowbound.

3:30PM – MOVIE #3 – ???? ?? ????? AKA “?????? ?”

Continuing the longstanding Italian tradition of sequels that have nothing to do with their predecessors, our third offering is a snowed out riff on Black Sunday – bad dubs, adult teens, blind priests, styrofoam snow – a real treat.

5:15PM – MOVIE #4 – ???????????

A moody Canadian offering from the early 80’s, our fourth film follows three skiers who stumble into an abandoned (but still mysteriously heated) mountain resort. A slow creeper with plenty of mood to burn, pour a steaming cup of hot cocoa and bundle up for this chiller.

7PM – MOVIE #5 – ??????????

A woman on the run, a snowy cabin, a dorky bio-scientist and mutated lizards – what could go wrong? Equal parts “witty” banter and creature splatter, plus an extremely 90’s knock-off-pop soundtrack by ‘Plan 9’, this New Zealand shot oddity is sure to please.

8:45PM – MOVIE #6 – ????????

Buckle up, because we’re headed back to Canada. A genuinely chilling early 80’s slasher with a large cast of potential suspects and victims, the less said about this one the better.

10:30PM – MOVIE #7 – ???????????

Feeling spooked? Rinse your brain off with this absolute disaster, a no-budget labor of love from Massachusetts, shot over the course of 6 years on three types of film stock for $10,000. Home brewed splatter and stop motion FX abound, plus a ripping lo-fi synth score.

Content warning: early 90’s homophobia, ignorant appropriation of Native American myths and culture

12AM – MOVIE #8 – ??? ??????

Freezing out the marathon is an undersung Christmas horrorshow from the mid-80’s that follows a woman haunted by an occult object left by the previous tenant of her apartment. Directed by one of New York’s most prolific and underrated exploitation filmmakers, this freakout is on par with Fulci’s best, with huge dollops of sleaze and ooze to slide us into the holidays – and a Happy New Year.