Puerto Rico is the oldest colony in the world, a territorial possession ceded to the United States after it invaded the islands in 1898 during the Spanish American War, or in the words of Rita Indiana: ‘a social experiment full of contradictions’. In 1917, Puerto Ricans were imposed US citizenship; by 1970, New York City’s Puerto Rican population reached its zenith, making Puerto Ricans the city’s largest ‘minority’ population during that decade. Puerto Rican contributions to the city of New York are far and varied, from bodegas to salsa, from the Young Lords to Spanish being taught in elementary schools, from Pedro Pietri’s poetry and the Nuyorican movement to Hip-Hop, from Puerto Ricans involvement in Communist and Socialist parties to their contributions to the city via co-op buildings and social clubs forming close social webs. La Bodega Sold Dreams seeks to uncover the cultural legacy of Puerto Ricans in the city by presenting a body of films that captured the sentiment, makeup and preoccupations of displaced Puerto Ricans living in the U.S. metropolis. This series dabbles with the constructions edified by both outsiders and insiders of the Puerto Rican diaspora, during two decades where Puerto Ricans were demonized for anything including being unclassifiable, minding your business, and bombing the Defense Department in Madison Avenue in support for Puerto Rican Independence.

Programmed in collaboration with Caroline Gil. Special thanks to Larry Revene, Carlos de Jesus, Robert B. Young, Diego Echeverria, XFR Collective and David E. Wilt.

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

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 – MIDNIGHT
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 – 7:30 PM

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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.

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

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 – MIDNIGHT
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 – 10 PM

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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.

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

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 – 5 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 – 10 PM

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“I don’t know how much of a human being I would be if I met you on the sidewalk.”

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.)

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

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 – MIDNIGHT

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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.

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

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 – 7:30 PM w/THE DEVIL IS A CONDITION filmmaker Carlos de Jesus in person for Q&A!
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 – 10 PM

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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.)

Perhaps one of the most crucial voices in Paraguayan and Latin American Cinema, Paz Encina‘s films are haunting mementos of a nation’s past, often told through the perspective of voices often marginalized or oppressed. Born during the height of Alfredo Stroessner’ brutal dictatorship, the longest in Latin America, Encina combines poetic visuals with complex sounds to create documents that evoke that oppressive time. Her protagonists are often dealing with some kind of trauma, often relating to a certain moment in Paraguayan history and thus excavating the complex way in which a nation remembers. Add to that the inclusion of Guarani, an indigenous language spoken by a majority of the people in Paraguay, in her work and it adds another element in which language can evoke national ties. In recent years, Encina’s work has been informed by the Archives of Terror, which documented the activities of Stroessner’s secret police and the various other dictatorships in Latin America. All this combined calls for the need to remember, both the way in which nations form their histories, and the people who were forgotten, to ensure that the painful moments of the past are not repeated.

Programmed in collaboration with Anthony Chassi. Special thanks to Lita Stantic, MPM Premium and Filmes do Tejo/Maria & Mayer.

HAMACA PARAGUAYA
(PARAGUAYAN HAMMOCK)
2006. 78 mins. Paraguay.
In Guarani with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 6 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 11 – 5 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 22 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 30 – 7:30 PM

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Paz Encina’s debut feature focuses on elderly couple Ramón (Ramon Del Rio) and Cándida (Georgina Genes) as they spend their days on an isolated hammock in the woods, awaiting on news from their son who’s off at war. Set during the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay, the film shows the two conversing about anything but the actual details of the war, of which they know little about. Instead, conversations about whether it’s going to rain and how to shut their son’s dog up take up their time. Between these conversations we hear flashbacks of the conversations that led up to their son leaving, juxtaposed with moments of labor and inaction. With its static long takes and atmospheric setting, HAMACA PARAGUAYA invites viewers into a space where our understanding of the temporal and spatial are vague, and campesino life become as abstract as any work can dare to be.

EJERCICIOS DE MEMORIA
(MEMORY EXERCISES)
2016. 70 mins. Paraguay.
In Spanish and Guarani with English subtitles.

MONDAY, AUGUST 19 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 29 – 7:30 PM

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Part documentary, part testimonial, and part fiction, Paz Encina’s second feature EJERCICIOS DE MEMORIA focuses on one of former Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner’s most prominent opponents, through the memories of his children. Agustín Goiburú, a politician and doctor, planned a failed assassination attempt on Stroessner and later disappeared while in exile in Argentina in 1976. 35 years after his disappearance, his children are asked to return to a specific moment in their childhood but also a brutal period for the country and the majority of Latin America. Encina’s recent work is informed by the Archives of Terror, which collected documents chronicling the human rights violations by the Stroessner dictatorship’s secret police force and was used to prove the existence of Operation Condor. EJERJICOS DE MEMORIA recontextualizes the history of the nation by excavating the memory of those affected by it during its most oppressive time, forming a haunting poem that demands reflection.

THE SHORT FILMS OF PAZ ENCINA
2000-2014. Paraguay/Argentina.
Total runtime: 60 mins.

MONDAY, AUGUST 5 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 11 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 18 – 5 PM
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28 – 7:30 PM

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SUPE QUE ESTABAS TRISTE
(I KNEW YOU WERE SAD)
dir. Paz Encina, 2000
5 mins. Argentina.

A family photo, the sound of the oncoming storm, the cat wandering the kitchen, a man alone in this space. Paz Encina’s early melancholic short is a conversation not shown on screen. Has it already occured or does it take place after this brief moment in time? Using only subtitles and visual language, SUPE QUE ESTABAS TRISTE creates an array if emotions without ever having to “show” anything.

HAMACA PARAGUAYO
(PARAGUAYAN HAMMOCK)
2000. 8 mins. Paraguay/Argentina.
In Guarani with English subtitles.

Made while she was attending the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires, Encina’s early short, which was expanded into a feature length film years later, contains the same components and mood as the feature. HAMACA PARAGUAYA establishes the traits Encina would be known for later in her career. A couple awaits on any news regarding their son, who is off at war, they spend their time conversing about the rain or how the dog won’t shut up. Shot on video, the film moves in waves, similar to a dream or a faded memory, Becoming a sensory experience.

FAMILIAR
(FAMILY)
2014. 9 mins. Paraguay.
In Guarani and Spanish with English subtitles.

ARRIBO
(ARRIVAL)
2014. 10 mins. Paraguay.
In Spanish with English subtitles.

Constructed by documents, audio, and images uncovered in the Archives of Terror, ARRIBO and FAMILIAR were originally intended to be shown in a gallery space. These two shorts remind us of the need to recognize the actions of the Stroessner dictatorship as human rights violations, while also asking the viewer to remember those interrogated, beyond that context. ARRIBO is a collection of surveillance images accompanied by an interrogation in Guarani while FAMILIAR combines these same components with unrelated home movies. Both films transport us to a troubled time in Paraguayan history, excavating the past in hopes that those affected throughout the dictatorship aren’t forgotten.

TRISTEZAS DE LA LUCHA
(SORROWS OF THE STRUGGLE)
2016. 7 mins. Paraguay.
In Spanish and Guarani with English subtitles.

Continuing her research on the Archives of Terror to create moving pieces, TRISTEZAS DE LA LUCHA once again serves as a time capsule to a particular moment in the nation’s history, where one political party was dominant and those opposed to it feared for their lives. Combining the audio of a rally from the right-wing Colorado party, the only legal political party during the Stroessner dictatorship, and a short story by the anarchist Rafael Barrett, the film reminds us of the struggles both sides face when they’ve been robbed of their autonomy. As a lone figure walks along the rural Paraguayan woods, a political prisoner under house arrest has a phone call detailing the soldier that has been tasked with guarding him. Though this soldier could be seen as his oppressor, the prisoner instead feels compassion for him, wondering if he’s too cold and if he’s lonely outside. TRISTEZAS DE LA LUCHA reminds us of the humanity in the face of terror, which can sometimes come from unlikely sources.

VIENTO SUR
(A WIND FROM THE SOUTH)
2012. 23 mins. Paraguay.
In Spanish and Guarani with English subtitles.

Two brothers, both fisherman, are the subjects of this atmospheric short. Their lives are defined by the Paraguay River, and when their lives depend on crossing the river to escape harm from Stroessner’s troops, they begin to question whether to run or stay. One of the brothers is determined to cross as soon as possible to avoid being caught in the crossfire, while the other is still weary of migrating, fearing that they’ll get caught in the August rainfall during their travel. With seemingly unrelated images and the attention to sound that Encina is known for, VIENTO SUR reflects on forced migration and how survival to some can form through various different solutions.

The film career of Franky Schaeffer has largely faded from public mind, but nonetheless remains a curious and inscrutable chapter in ‘80s genre B-movies. Francis “Franky” Schaeffer, Jr. grew up as the son of noted Evangelical theologian and pastor Francis Schaeffer, known as the founder of the Swiss alp spiritual center L’Abri in 1955, an influential philosophy seminar and commune hybrid that attracted bohemian spiritual seekers and rigid neo-Calvinists alike. A lover of Christian art and texts, Schaeffer Senior honed a strict presuppositionalist approach to theology and ethics, developing a worldview highly cautious of attitudes and art trends he deemed “post-modern” (especially directing his ire towards John Cage and Andy Warhol, et al), meanwhile preaching a brand of Christian Reconstructionism that sought to reinvigorate evangelical participation in official state politics.

In the years leading up to Ronald Reagan, Schaeffer Senior was a critical figure in the burgeoning Protestant Right—particularly on the issue of abortion, which prior to his influence was primarily the domain of the Catholic Church. With the help of former White House chaplain, and personal spiritual counsel to born-again Gerald Ford, Billy Zeoli, Schaeffer Senior was able secure funds (in part from Amway billionaire Richard DeVos) to adapt his book and lecture series HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? into a 10-episode television show directed in part by his then-25-year-old son Franky. (It was post-produced by evangelical pastor Mel White, later an out gay man and LGBTQ advocate, as well as father of SCHOOL OF ROCK scribe Mike White.) The program was a history of Western civilization told from the Christian point-of-view, designed to assert the necessity for a new dominion; and indeed, it did fire up a young generation of right-wing Jesus freaks, among them Tea Party firebrand Michele Bachmann who noted it as a core influence. Later, in 1979, Schaeffer Senior co-penned a notorious anti-abortion screed titled Whatever Happened to the Human Race?—conspicuously, with soon-to-be Reagan Surgeon General D. Everett Koop.

Following his TV show production credit, Schaeffer Jr.’s interest in the entertainment industry would only grow. In 1981, the aspiring filmmaker penned a fascinating diatribe titled Addicted to Mediocrity, drawing in part from his rigorous education at L’Abri. He argues that Christian art once reigned supreme in craft and complexity but was by the 20th century losing out to secular artistic endeavors, and that it was up to a new generation of Christians to re-emphasize cultural production. Schaeffer Jr. imagined a world in which dyed-in-the-wool conservative Christians would make prestige art on par with Fellini and Bergman, a culture war with its eye on capital-C culture.

The films he eventually made were perhaps another story. Shortly after his father passed away three years later, in 1984, Schaeffer Jr. distanced himself from the ministry and cancelled further speaking engagements, instead burrowing himself on the edge of the film industry with hopes of making elevated sci-fi films on par with A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, BLADE RUNNER, or REPO MAN. Reception was poor. One former devotee, inspired by Schaeffer Jr. to continue to soldier on in the film world despite it conflicting so drastically with his evangelical life, wrote in the LA Times: “Yes, I was indeed “blown away” by WIRED TO KILL. That someone as literate as Schaeffer could write such a dull-witted and thudding rehash of tired old themes and then presume to pass this off as a committed Christian making a philosophical statement is appalling.”

For Christians, the films weren’t explicit enough; for audiences at the time, they were simply mediocre. But for Spectacle’s audiences, watching now with over three decades of hindsight, these films might reveal something else. They are a snapshot of a religious right refuge in the thick of the Reagan years, capturing Schaeffer in increasing doubt before he left Protestantism entirely and disavowed his politics. (He was a diligent Obama supporter, appearing as a talking head on network news often in the ‘00s; today he describes himself as a “Christian atheist” and is affiliated with the Orthodox church.) They’re crypto-Christian oddities, unsure of whether they want to ooze into the pop-cultural membrane as popcorn action flicks or philosophizing high art. But most of all, they’re pretty good B-movies, filled with good bad synth leads, suspect practical FX, set pieces pulled off to varying degrees of success, and of course the schlock and sheen of the Me-First decade and its discontents.

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WIRED TO KILL (a.k.a. BOOBY TRAP)
Dir. Francis Schaeffer, 1986
96 min, USA

THURSDAY, AUGUST 04 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 08 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, AUGUST 23 – 10:00 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 27 – 10:00 PM

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Taking place in an alternate 1998 in which famine has transformed society into a wasteland of miscreant gangs and deindustrialized clutter, Schaeffer was perhaps trying to channel ROBOCOP (one particularly Verhoeven-ian throwaway gag has a hospital dispatcher reminding patients that if they wish to sue their doctor, there’s a round-the-clock toll-free number) but instead taps more into the proto-militia movement survivalism of John Milius’s RED DAWN. Steve (Devin Hoelscher) lives a quiet life with his law-abiding suburban family, moonlighting as an electrical engineer in his spare time, toying with primitive robotics and perfecting his own synth pop rig. When a gang murders his family and leaves him legless, he and Rebecca (Emily Longstreth of PRETTY IN PINK) conspire to exact revenge. Per the film’s seething tagline—“If you want to make history, you gotta make your own”—it’s got a creeping soft Nietzschean undertone that might pass for Christian allegory. Co-produced by future Christian right-wing radio personality Paul McGuire. Schaeffer says he “laced” WIRED TO KILL “with what [he] would describe as small Felini tributes”… but if you can guess how or where, you deserve to be refunded the price of admission!

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HEADHUNTER
Dir. Francis Schaeffer, 1988
91 min, USA

TUESDAY, AUGUST 02 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 12 – 11:55 PM
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 17 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 27 – 7:30 PM

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Schaeffer’s first with Gibraltar Entertainment, the ‘80s cheapie studio headed by VALLEY GIRL writer Wayne Crawford, HEADHUNTER follows cop Pete Giuliani (Crawford) as he trails a voodoo ritual serial killer who has beheaded a Nigerian immigrant in Miami. (In actuality, it’s South Africa, which leads to roughly the same feel as RUMBLE IN THE BRONX’s Vancouver-Bronx). As many reviews have noted, the movie attempts to fuse its cop-procedural-slasher with a rather ‘deliberately paced’ domestic drama, as Giuliani is coping with a recent divorce due to his wife taking a female lover—a reminder that Ari Aster didn’t invent melodrama-occult-horror hybrid. Notable is its climax, which juxtaposes the final encounter with the killer with a television broadcast of THE HIDEOUS SUN DEMON.

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RISING STORM (a.k.a. REBEL STORM, a.k.a. REBEL WAVES, a.k.a. SHIP OF THE DESERT)
Dir. Francis Schaeffer, 1989
95 min, USA

FRIDAY, AUGUST 05 – 10:00 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 13 – 11:55 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 19 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31 – 7:30 PM

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Made in the thick of several high-profile televangelist scandals (Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart in quick succession), RISING STORM imagines a world in which the bunk TV preachers have taken over, a zany Terry Gilliam-esque dystopia of Reagan-Bush proportions. It’s 2099 in Los Angeles and Joe (Gibraltar’s Wayne Crawford) has just gotten out of prison, reuniting with brother Artie (Zach Galligan of GREMLINS). America has become some sort of post-nuclear barren wasteland crossed with the twin influences of supreme spectacle (WWE wrestling and archaeological digs for ‘80s pop culture ephemera) and biblical repression (citizens are allotted one act of intercourse a month). The brothers lead an underground resistance against the tyrant president Reverend Jimmy Joe II, teaming up with a pair of affable blonde women. Schaeffer’s most cynical—and personal?—film, it’s relentlessly down on the merchandise frenzy and mediatized religious fervor of the late ‘80s.

Scummer’s not over til it’s over.

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PIG DEATH MACHINE
dir. Jon Moritsugu, 2013
82 mins. United States.

*Preceded by the short MOMMY MOMMY WHERE’S MY BRAIN (1986)

FRIDAY, AUGUST 9 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 17 – MIDNIGHT
MONDAY, AUGUST 19 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28 – 10 PM

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If you joined us for July’s selections, you know by now that Jon Moritsugu has a thing with meat, especially in raw form. In MOD FUCK EXPLOSION London walks through 800 pounds of the stuff, and MY DEGENERATION features a punk band sponsored by the beef industry. PIG DEATH MACHINE explores the supernatural power of rancid pork, which transforms the lives of two women who consume it. Amy Davis has a sudden spike in brain power, her IQ rising faster than temperatures in the New Mexico desert. Hannah Levbarg, a punk plant-lover, develops a psychic connection with the local flora that includes their screams for water and attention. This film was shot digitally, adding to the garish putridness of the whole operation. All of this is bookended by a mysterious pig-mask love affair, hinting at the origins of the shipment of magic meat.

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FAME WHORE
dir. Jon Moritsugu, 1997
73 mins. United States.

*Preceded by the shorts BRAINDEAD (1987) and DER ELVIS (1988)

FRIDAY, AUGUST 2 – 10 PM
SATUDAY, AUGUST 17 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 22 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 26 – 10 PM

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They say fame comes at a price. For the psychos found in the last gem of Moritsugu’s 16mm empire, that price is sanity. Told in triptych, FAME WORE examines three unrelated eccentrics lost in total delusion within their profession, all taking place on a day where each get smacked hard with reality checks that force consideration for saner perspectives.

One story follows that of Jody George (Peter Friedrich)—a ruthless bro whose blessed tennis prowess has earned him the #1 rank in the field worldwide. But once rumors spreading through the newspapers put his straightness into question, his several investors begin to drop him one by one, throwing him on a infantile rampage in his SF hotel suite. Another tale peers into the office of a milquetoast animal lover (Victor of Aquitaine) whose dignity is continuously trampled on at his New Jersey dog adoption agency. All the intensely bottled up repression and isolation naturally lead him to manifest an imaginary friend (a sauced St. Bernard who offers half-hearted advice).

But frankly it’s Amy Davis who steals the show as the true Fame Whore, Sophie: a seriously talentless, bong ripping New Yorker, who lives in a business suit but can’t seem to file her own taxes. Tormenting her unnecessary personal assistant, J (Jason Rail), with endless self-obsessed and hyper-judgmental confab while her headshots go unautographed, Sophie’s fate unlikely holds fame and glory, but rather a doomed personal esteem, void of substance or meaning.

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SCUMROCK
dir. Jon Moritsugu, 2002
79 mins. United States.

*Preceded by the shorts CRACK (1999) and SLEAZY RIDER (1988)

TUESDAY, AUGUST 6 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 17 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, AUGUST 20 – 10 PM

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Youth is forever fading, but sleaze will never die… In this departure from celluloid, Moritsugu and Davis probe at juvenescence on its deathbed, as a cast of all too familiar drifting personalities tussle with not just the imminent death of their 20s, but the existential perils of preserving creative and offbeat livelihoods in the face of daunting adulthood, chilling reality, and personal failure.

Trashing and thrashing through the streets of a yet to be tech gentri-fried San Franciscan milieu, a no-budget underground filmmaker (sound familiar?) writhes his precarious sanity in order to hopefully yield a cinematic opus, while on a vaguely non-linear beaten course, a pissed miscreant (none other than Amy Davis) fumes and flounders to stubbornly keep her lowly punk band from being swallowed into the abyss of obscurity (and not the cool kind either).

Pressing on the perishability of the proverbial salad days, SCUMROCK is a tenderly relevant meditation for the aging hipster with chronic slacker-depression, which should inspire all of us to ask ourselves “What do I have to show for all my avant-gardness?”

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MOD FUCK EXPLOSION
Dir. Jon Moritsugu, 1994
67 min. USA

SUNDAY, AUGUST 25 – 7:30 PM **Q&A WITH DESI DEL VALLE [M16]**
SUNDAY, AUGUST 25 – 10 PM **PHONE Q&A WITH JON MORITSUGU & AMY DAVIS**
SATURDAY, AUGUST 31 – 7:30 PM **Q&A WITH CINEMATOGRAPHER TODD VEROW**
SATURDAY, AUGUST 31 – 10 PM **PHONE Q&A WITH JON MORITSUGU & AMY DAVIS*

ALL SCREENINGS ON 16MM!
*THIS EVENT IS $10*

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The Nipponese bikers have leather jackets and London, a broken-family blonde, wants a leather jacket more than anything. Her sister Nasty has one, but she’s a post-Quaalude comic artist and won’t give it up. London’s brother is a dumb wannabe mod, clinging to a style that is just nativism with thick-framed glasses. Top Mod Madball sums up their situation with a joke:

“Why did Hitler kill himself?”

“To get to the other side!”

All London has to do is party with the bikers and tell Kazumi that he has a great bod, but instead she’s in love with death-obsessed M-16. Cleopatra, the supernatural succubus and queen of feces, tries to give London some T-R-U-T-H but she won’t hear it! Everything is leading in a fucked-up, not-knowing-how-to-fuck direction not to mention the ultimate showdown between the pale mods and a powerful biker gang.

LONG WEEKEND
dir. Colin Eggleston, 1978
97 mins. Australia.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 3 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, AUGUST 10 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, AUGUST 23 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 30 – MIDNIGHT

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“Their crime was against nature. Nature found them guilty.”

Given the crushing heat waves and our full throttle race to planet-death, it seems as good a time as any to give LONG WEEKEND another look. Safe to say its aged entirely too well.

Peter and Marcia are going through a bit of a rough patch, so the natural solve is, of course, go camping. Marcia wanted to go away for the weekend with their good friends, but Peter is set on a long weekend of camping on a remote beach. Thinly buried resentments quickly bubble to the surface as they take out their frustrations on the natural world around them in increasingly egregious ways.

One of the best when nature attacks films ever made, it has some of the spirit of Daphne du Maurier’s original short story of THE BIRDS, diving full on into the existential dread of man’s ignorance and impotence in the face of nature’s wrath.