SUNDAY, MARCH 17 – 5 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!
FACEBOOK EVENT

Calling all tapeheads! Do you have mystery MiniDV, Hi-8, or VHS assets languishing in storage? Unsure of what to do with these plastic treasures, or even what’s on them? Put your trust in radical archival group XFR Collective for a special one-night only event at Spectacle.

XFR Collective “partners with individuals and organizations to provide low-cost digitization services and to develop sustainable models for managing and providing access to audiovisual materials.” With their mobile tape transfer units, XFR has been popping up in venues all over town, ingesting and preserving now-defunct formats for special events that combine the best of a swap meet with a little experimental cinema exhibition. Think of it as Antiques Roadshow, for fans and collectors of analog video!

Here’s how it works: you, the audience, bring your mystery tapes to Spectacle. While XFR Collective is transferring the goods, sit back and enjoy a showcase screening of their best finds! When the evening’s transfers are complete, the veil is lifted and all participants can get a nice juicy eyeful of what turned up.

So bring a buddy, bring a beer, and bring that dusty unlabeled MiniDV tape you found at Goodwill, because you never know what’s going to happen when XFR Collective is on the scene!

Tape transfers start at 6pm, but get there early to grab a set and a spot in the queue!

This March, Spectacle is proud to welcome the esteemed DJ/VJ duo Smash TV (Brendan Shields & Ben Craw) back behind the velvet curtain for a mini-retro (emphasis on retro) every Thursday night. Since 2012 Smash TV, has been gracing the Spectacle screen with “long for entertainment for short attention spans” showcasing a love of cinema spanning multiple genres and decades.

THURSDAY, MARCH 7th – 7:30 PM – SKINEMAX (2011)
THURSDAY, MARCH 14th – 7:30 PM – MEMOREX (2012)
THURSDAY, MARCH 21st – 7:30 PM – GUNSLINGER (2014)
THURSDAY, MARCH 28th – 7:30 PM – MEGAPLEX (2016)

SKINEMAX
edited by Smash TV, 2011
55 min, USA

THURSDAY, MARCH 7th – 7:30 PM

Skinemax is Koyaanisqatsi for a generation raised on late night television and B-movie VHS tapes. It’s long form entertainment for short attention spans. An hour long VJ odyssey, it will move your body and warp your mind.

A nostalgic look back at a half remembered childhood growing up in the 80s and early 90s, Skinemax takes a close look at the culture of that era. The images that motivated, delighted, and terrified us on the silver screen, set to propulsive modern music that pines for a simpler time.

Containing lightning quick edits from 44 different films, Skinemax has been described as “hypnotizing” and “a veritable nostalgia nuke.” Recently featured on six of the top 25 blogs in the world, it aims to draw attention to the rapidly developing art of the mashup or supercut. It also holds the distinction of being one of the longest duration videos to ever go viral.

MEMOREX
Edited by Brendan Shields, 2012
50 minutes

THURSDAY, MARCH 14th – 7:30 PM

SMASH TV’s latest opus, MEMOREX is the most nostalgic thing you’ve ever seen if you were a kid in the 80s. Culled from over forty hours of 80’s commercials pulled from warped VHS tapes. Endless beach parties, Saturday morning cartoons, sexy babes, sleek cars, toys you forgot existed, station idents, early computer animation, all your favorite sugary cereal mascots, and so much more. An ode to the hyper consumerism and sleek veneer of a simpler time.

The audio, mixed by your friends at Smash TV, provides a perfect accompaniment to the warped and weirdly nostalgic footage, like finding your favorite cassette from childhood after it’s been baking in the sun for 25 years. VHS Head, Hype Williams, LA Vampires, and Boards Of Canada are just a few of the artists you can expect to hear.

It’s the nostalgiapocalypse for anyone born between 1975 and 1985. Your favorite everything you totally forgot existed.

screens with:

GUNSLINGER
edited by Smash TV, 2014
62 min, USA

Gunslinger is the ultimate tribute to the Old West. The BACK TO THE FUTURE III of our trilogy, if you will, Smash TV has bid a fond farewell to the neon excess of the 80s and set the controls of the DeLorean back to 1885. A simpler – and infinitely more dangerous – time.

Painstakingly assembled from more than 50 Western movies, ranging from Sergio Leone’s early Spaghetti Westerns all the way up to 90s re-imaginings such as DESPERADO and WILD WILD WEST, GUNSLINGER serves as a humble attempt to pay homage to one of the longest running and most influential genres of the silver screen.

Taking a magnifying glass to one of the most prolific genres in film history, GUNSLINGER aims to preserve the ideals and struggles of a unique time and place in history which becomes more and more foreign to our daily lives with each passing year. Deliberately paced to match the look and feel of a Western, it recontextualizes classic tropes of the genre to deliver a unique and fast paced narrative.

A mysterious stranger arrives in town, authority is challenged, vengeance is sought, tensions run high at the saloon, a frantic horse chase ensues, and everything goes to hell in an epic gunfight you’ll have to see to believe.

The audio borrows from a number of different genres; from time-honored soundtracks by Ennio Morricone and John Barry, to modern hip hop and electronic reworkings of genre standards.

Gunslinger condenses 30 years of Western movies into one unforgettable hour. The good. The bad. The ugly. An ode to the Man with No Name.

MEGAPLEX: BEYOND & TURBO
edited by Smash TV, 2016
80 min, USA

THURSDAY, MARCH 21st – 7:30 PM

MEGAPLEX is the most insane double feature the world has ever seen. With a running time of 80 minutes and thousands of cuts from more than 80 movies, Smash TV has spent the past year and a half cramming the most entertainment possible into every second. It’s dense enough to pressurize these diamonds in the rough into gleaming treasures.

MEGAPLEX is the long awaited followup to the critically acclaimed SKINEMAX, much more fully realized, utilizing myriad editing and layering tricks picked up over the past five years. Deeper, darker, and definitely more bizarre.

Borrowing from the Grindhouse tradition and from Tarantino’s more recent tribute, MEGAPLEX is a double feature comprised of BEYOND (Sheilds) and TURBO (Craw) that both members of Smash TV worked on independently to create a massive cinematic sandwich.

Dirs. David Hall and Thomas D. Rotenberg, 2019 Canada, 95 min.
In English

TUESDAY, MARCH 19 – 7:30PM & 10PM
DIRECTOR Q&A AND SPECIAL SKYPE CALLS  
10PM followed by afterparty at Un**n P**l ($5 for Spectacle Theater ticket holders)

SATURDAY, MARCH 23 – 7:30PM & 10PM
DIRECTOR Q&A AND SPECIAL SKYPE CALLS  

WORLD PREMIERE!
LIVE PRANK CALLS BY LONGMONT POTION CASTLE! FILMMAKERS IN ATTENDANCE!
For over 30 years, the artist known only as Longmont Potion Castle has been beguiling and bedeviling random victims across the country with the most avant-garde prank calls ever recorded. Throughout it all he has remained completely anonymous, released over 16 original albums, and become a cult favorite, notably amongst musicians. LPC describes the albums as his “phone work,” or “absurdist art” rather than the clumsy label “prank phone calls.” The recordings combine prank calls with sound collages, often filtering his voice through a Digitech RDS 8000 delay unit to produce odd sound effects, thus making whoever he has called even more confused.
This March, Spectacle is proud to host the world premiere of the very first Longmont Potion Castle documentary, “Where In The Hell Is The Lavender House? The Longmont Potion Castle Story.” Directed by David Hall & Thomas D. Rotenberg, the film includes interviews with Rainn Wilson, Andrew Bujalski, Pissed Jeans, Municipal Waste, NBS Electronics, Twist and Shout, Pig Destroyer, Weyes Blood, Cattle Decapitation, Pinback, and a variety of hard-core fans, the film peeks behind the curtain of America’s Underground Prank Call King.

Both screenings at this historic event will feature the filmmakers in attendance, and Longmont Potion Castle himself will be calling in to conduct live prank calls from the theater. You don’t want to miss this.
And don’t forget the AFTER PARTY! After the 10PM screening, head to Union Pool with your ticket stub for a discounted ticket to the after party. ($5 for ticket holder, $10 for non-ticket holders.)

Does the phrase “New York microbudget indie” give you hives? Are you worn out from watching the same three sadsacks navigate “existential crises” and blather on about Artaud as they amble down Brownstone-lined sidestreets? Rest easy, weary cinephile, because Spectacle has a hotshot of free-wheeling macabre aimed directly at your jugular!

Cultural anthropology and low-budget unpredictability mix and mingle on the mean streets where writer-director Michael M. Bilandic has trained his jaundiced camera eye. Burned-out techno DJs, gangs of marauding teen rap-rockers, and a rollerblading drug dealer are just a handful of strange characters you’ll meet in this alt-teur’s cinematic Rolodex. Bilandic’s films are something of best-kept secret around these parts – produced the fringes of New York’s humble movie colony, these sui generis works beg to be celebrated.

These three feature films – HAPPY LIFE, HELLAWARE, and the spanking-new JOBE’Z WORLD – are untouchable works of rare art that mark this cool cat as one to watch. Think you can handle the multi-sensory stimulation of American independent cinema’s boldest visionary? Shed those presumptions and take a dip – the water’s fine!

JOBE’Z WORLD
dir. Michael M. Bilandic, 2018.
USA. 68 mins.

FRIDAY, APRIL 5 – 7:30 w/Mike Bilandic, Jason P. Grisell, Theodore Bouloukos, and others for Q&A
(This event is $10.)
TUESDAY, APRIL 9 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, APRIL 12 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, APRIL 13 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, APRIL 23 – 10 PM

ONLINE TICKETS           FACEBOOK EVENT

The latest – and, arguably, greatest – from Bilandic and his stable of collaborators is a downtown elegy dedicated to the nitehawks, weirdos, and recluses that haunt the shadier corners of our fair metropolis. Combining the director’s trademark satirical sensibility with a ticking-clock suspense story, JOBE’Z WORLD charts one night in the life of the titular rollerblading pill-slinger (Jason P. Grisell) and his beastin’ cadre of tough customers. Jobe’s otherwise average workday takes a turn for the bizarre with a special delivery for master thespian Royce David Leslie, a larger-than-life A-list star heartily portrayed by Theodore Bouloukos (recently anointed by New Yorker critic Richard Brody as “a secret weapon of independent cinema!”). After Leslie’s livestreamed drug overdose goes viral, Jobe takes to the streets, evading paparazzo and police with mercurial swiftness and an armload of disguises. Spacey, succinct, and side-splittingly hilarious, here’s a chance to see one of the year’s best.

HELLAWARE
dir. Michael M. Bilandic, 2013.
USA. 73 mins.

SATURDAY, APRIL 13 – 7:30 PM w/Mike Bilandic, Keith Poulson and others for Q&A
(This event is $10.)

THURSDAY, APRIL 11 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, APRIL 16 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, APRIL 23 – 7:30 PM

ONLINE TICKETS             FACEBOOK EVENT

Local heartthrob Keith Poulson stars as aspiring photographer Nate, whose disgust with – and desire for – art-–world legitimacy leads him down the darkest alleys of the world wide web and into the thick of rural America’s rap-rock scene. After a bro-y photoshoot with a group of teenaged, would-be Juggalos, Nate achieves meteoric success as a documentarian of backwoods subculture – but at what cost? The tenuous nature of “authenticity” and a wicked examination of the contemporary art industrial complex dog our hero’s journey from poseur hanger-on to enfant terrible. The sinister nature of his sudden success – like the subjects themselves – is a mere stepping stone, sending Nate and his pals hurtling toward a schadenfreude-laden conclusion that scratches every bitter itch.

HAPPY LIFE
dir. Michael M. Bilandic, 2009.
USA. 73 mins.

SATURDAY, APRIL 20 – 10PM w/Mike Bilandic & cinematographer Sean Price Williams and others for Q&A
(This event is $10.)

MONDAY, APRIL 8 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, APRIL 28 – 7:30 PM

ONLINE TICKETS            FACEBOOK EVENT

“Culture is like a pendulum… statistically, it’s going to swing back in my direction.”

Bilandic’s first feature outing is a portrait of the artist as an aging trance DJ that predates the inevitable revival of this head-crushing dance genre by a good decade. Released in 2009 to considerable acclaim – including glowing reviews from Variety and the New York Times – the swift and scrappy dark comedy follows schlubby record store proprietor/mixmaster Keith as he attempts to save his business from the gaping maw of hyper-gentrification. Shot on bleeding, beautiful digital video by cinematographer Sean Price Williams, and executive produced by Abel Ferrara, HAPPY LIFE is a film about nostalgia that, in the ten years since its release, has matured into a document of a recent past gone by.

MIKE MADNESS MIDNIGHT: A YOUTUBE JOURNEY
dir. The Internet, 1989 – ????
USA. ???? mins.

SATURDAY, APRIL 20 – MIDNITE
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

ONLINE TICKETS            FACEBOOK EVENT

In addition to being among New York’s Finest [Directors], Michael M. Bilandic is world-renowned for his abundant gifts as a champion YouTube surfer and found web art curator. Who knows what’s coming up in the rotation with MB in the driver’s seat? Satiate your rabid curiosity for a paltry $5!