Following the horrifying success of last year’s SEX DEMON, historian and archivist Elizabeth Purchell (of Ask Any Buddy) returns to Spectacle for a program of incendiary and exciting documentaries by German filmmaker and writer Rosa von Praunheim. Spanning the late 1970s through the mid-1990s, these six films offer a changing portrait of queer sex and sensibility, addressing respectability, popular culture, and the radical efforts of AIDS activists across a shifting political landscape.

ARMY OF LOVERS, OR REVOLT OF THE PERVERTS
dir. Rosa von Praunheim, 1979
108 mins. Germany.

ONLINE TICKETS

SUNDAY, JUNE 05 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 11 – 11:55 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 24 – 7:00 PM (with introduction $10)
MONDAY, JUNE 27 – 10:00 PM

Shot over the course of seven years, ARMY OF LOVERS traces the development — and splintering — of the American gay rights movement from the Mattachine Society through the end of the 1970s. From gay porno legend Fred Halsted to Anita Bryant and beyond, this polarizing film is a crucial document of the liberation era and a condemnation of gay complacency that still resonates.

TALLY BROWN, NEW YORK
dir. Rosa von Praunheim, 1979
93 mins. Germany.
In English.

ONLINE TICKETS

FRIDAY, JUNE 03 – 11:55 PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 18 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 24 – 10:00 PM (with introduction $10)

Classically-trained opera singer, cabaret mainstay, and underground film star Tally Brown commands the screen in this German Film Award-winning portrait by Rosa von Praunheim. With appearances and appreciations by Divine, Taylor Mead, Holly Woodlawn, and more, TALLY BROWN, NEW YORK is a tribute to a larger-than-life personality and an elegy for a changing city.

THE AIDS TRILOGY:

1. POSITIVE
dir. Rosa von Praunheim, 1990
82 mins. Germany.
In English.

ONLINE TICKETS

FRIDAY, JUNE 03 – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, JUNE 06 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JUNE 26 – 5:00 PM

In this first installment of the AIDS Trilogy, Rosa von Praunheim teams up with gay activist filmmaker Phil Zwickler to give a multifaceted look at the New York gay community’s response to the epidemic and their efforts to provoke Mayor Ed Koch into taking action to fight it. Devastating, inspiring, and, as always, fiercely controversial, POSITIVE is an essential, yet overlooked piece of activist filmmaking and one of the finest chronicles of the epidemic at a time it was still largely being ignored.

2. SILENCE = DEATH
dir. Rosa von Praunheim, 1990
58 mins. Germany.
In English.

ONLINE TICKETS

TUESDAY, JUNE 07 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 17 – 10:00 PM
SUNDAY, JUNE 26 – 6:30 PM

Designed by Rosa von Praunheim and Phil Zwickler as the ‘angrier’ companion to POSITIVE, this middle installment of the AIDS Trilogy focuses on New York artist’s reactions to the epidemic and its influence on their work. Anchored by a series of fiery monologues by David Wojnarowicz and also featuring interviews and performances by Emilio Cubeiro, Allen Ginsburg, and Keith Haring, SILENCE = DEATH is a powerful call to action in the face of government apathy.

3. FEUER UNTERM ARSCH
dir. Rosa von Praunheim, 1990
52 mins. Germany.
In German with English subtitles.

ONLINE TICKETS

FRIDAY, JUNE 10 – 10:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15 – 10:00 PM
SUNDAY, JUNE 26 – 8:00 PM

In this final chapter of the AIDS Trilogy, Rosa von Praunheim turns his camera to the state of AIDS activism — or, more accurately, lack of it — in his native Germany. A sobering contrast to POSITIVE and SILENCE = DEATH, the rarely-screened FEUER UNTERM ARSCH led directly to one of the most controversial events of von Praunheim’s long career: his televised campaign of outing closeted gay German celebrities to force action against the epidemic in the early 1990s.

TRANSEXUAL MENACE
dir. Rosa von Praunheim, 1996
78 mins. Germany.
In English.

ONLINE TICKETS

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 08 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 11 – 10:00 PM
THURSDAY, JUNE 16 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 24 – 11:55 PM

Rosa von Praunheim teamed up with acclaimed photographer Mariette Pathy Allen for this nuanced portrait of American trans lives and politics in the 1990s. Similar in form to ARMY OF LOVERS and the AIDS Trilogy, this film explores the various factions of the burgeoning trans rights movement, from pioneers like Leslie Feinberg and Virginia Prince to events like the activist group Transexual Menace’s protest at the first Transgender Lobby Day and the Southern Comfort and Fantasia Fair conferences. Woefully underseen and rarely screened, TRANSEXUAL MENACE is an essential piece of trans film history that’s sadly now more relevant than ever.

ROSA VON PRAUNHEIM is a German film director, author, painter and one of the most famous gay rights activists in the German-speaking world. In over 50 years, von Praunheim has made more than 150 films (short and feature-length films). His works influenced the development of LGBTQ+ rights movements worldwide. He began his career associated to the New German Cinema as a senior member of the Berlin school of underground filmmaking. He took the artistic female name Rosa von Praunheim to remind people of the pink triangle that homosexuals had to wear in Nazi concentration camps, as well as the Frankfurt neighborhood of Praunheim where he grew up. A pioneer of Queer Cinema, von Praunheim has been an activist in the gay rights movement. He was an early advocate of AIDS awareness and safer sex. His films center on gay-related themes and strong female characters, are characterized by excess and employ a campy style. They have featured such personalities as Keith Haring, Larry Kramer, Diamanda Galás, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Judith Malina, Jeff Stryker, Jayne County, Divine and a row of Warhol superstars.

ASHIM AHLUWALIA is a Mumbai-based independent filmmaker. He made his feature debut with the documentary JOHN AND JANE (2005) which received international critical acclaim. He then went on to direct his first fiction feature, MISS LOVELY (2012), which had its world premiere at the Cannes film festival. He received the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters from his alma mater Bard College for his “significant contribution to artistic or literary heritage.”

JOHN AND JANE
dir. Ashim Ahluwalia, 2005
78 mins. India.
In English with English subtitles.

ONLINE TICKETS

THURSDAY, JUNE 02 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JUNE 12 – 5:00 PM
TUESDAY, JUNE 14 – 10:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29 – 7:30 PM

JOHN AND JANE centers on the personal and professional lives of six telemarketers working in a Bombay call center. Tasked with cajoling American customers into buying things, the workers single-mindedly chase the American dream in neoliberal India. Darkly comic and deeply unnerving, the refreshingly unconventional style of the documentary blurs the line between fact and fiction and provides a sobering look at the insidious effects of globalization on culture and identity in a highly unequal world.

“Call it George A. Romero’s Bollywood OFFICE SPACE … an enraged critique of Western excess that you can dance to.” – Slant Magazine

MISS LOVELY
dir. Ashim Ahluwalia, 2012
109 mins. India.
In Hindi with English subtitles.

ONLINE TICKETS

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 01 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 04 – 11:55 PM
TUESDAY, JUNE 14 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, JUNE 21 – 10:00 PM

Brothers Vicky and Sonu crank out illegal-to-produce porn flicks for a living in the cut-throat cinematic underworld of 80s Bombay. The enterprising elder brother Vicky ventures into distributing the films on the hush and gets into trouble with the crime syndicate controlling the business. Struggling to distance himself from his brother’s recklessness, the naive Sonu sets his sights on Pinky and decides to go straight and make a clean romantic film with her. But unbeknownst to Sonu, Pinky has an unsavory history with Vicky in this slow-burn saga of sibling rivalry and betrayal.

“An idiosyncratically self-reflexive piece of cinematic art that will leave you drained as you leave the cinema” – Screen Anarchy

ONLINE TICKETS

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, JUNE 21 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, JUNE 27 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, JUNE 30 – 10:00 PM

In collaboration with Maysles Documentary Center, Spectacle is proud to host a special screening of newly restored works by Madubuko Diakité. Born in Harlem in 1940, Diakité emigrated to Sweden in the late ‘60s where he would work as a filmmaker, pursue doctoral studies in film, and become a Human Rights lawyer. He still resides in Sweden but will be present at Maysles Documentary Center on June 12th for the screening, followed by a Q&A with Kelli Weston. 

Seen on their own, FOR PERSONAL REASONS (1973) and THE INVISIBLE PEOPLE (1972) remind us of the axiom, the more things change, the more they stay the same. While colored by different contexts, Black liberation and abolition today like then remain of high concern and importance. Anti-blackness and exclusion along racial lines today, like then, inform constructs of the nation.

Seen side by side the films highlight several motifs, of stark note are the ways in which Madubuko Diakité explores and immerses himself in the local in which he finds himself at the time. In both films we are introduced to the respective locals, New York and Lund, Sweden, through the lenses and experiences of two different Black men. In FOR PERSONAL REASONS, in the early 1970s a young Black man stumbles upon a Black Panthers protest in Brooklyn. He says, “…[t]hey were saying a lot of the things I had been thinking, about how freedom fighters and people from all over the world are fighting the same thing, imperialism, oppression.” While in THE INVISIBLE PEOPLE we encounter the plight of international students in Lund in the early seventies, who today, like then, face similar bureaucracy, exclusion and discrimination along racial lines. When one of the interviewees describes practices of institutionalized discrimination, noting how admissions to some fields of study are conducted along racial and national lines, recent events come to mind.

Watching the films in light of recent world events, including the discrimination Black people faced at the Ukrainian and Polish borders, one is reminded that anti-blackness is deliberate and continually structures the world, then and now. Immersed in the then, we are reminded now that while the struggle against imperialism and oppression starts and sprawls out from our respective locals, it is importantly, also an international one.

FOR PERSONAL REASONS
dir. Madubuko Diakité, 1973
23 min. United States.
In English.

Focusing on the Civil Rights Movement and a 1970 protest in New York, FOR PERSONAL REASONS was inspired by the Black Panthers and Malcolm X. An innovative mix of fact and fiction—a kind of critical fabulation—it juxtaposes militant speech with avant-garde jazz. The film won an Honorable Mention at the Grenoble Film Festival in 1973.

THE INVISIBLE PEOPLE
(DET OSYNLIGA FOLKET)
dir. Madubuko Diakité, 1972
30 min. Sweden.
In Swedish with English subtitles.

Diakité’s unique historical document, made together with Gary Engman and Nordal Åkerman, records the precarious living conditions of foreign students, immigrants, and in particular the African diaspora in southern Sweden in the 1970s.

* The new 2021 scan and subtitling of THE INVISIBLE PEOPLE was made possible by CinemAfrica, Story AB, Simon Klose, Rafaela Stålbalk Klose, Christian Rossipal, and the Afro-Swedish History Week (The Museum of Ethnography). The new 2021 scan of FOR PERSONAL REASONS was made possible by Nonami Film and Simon Klose, with Christian Rossipal as preservation consultant. The new 2022 scan of DREAMS OF G was made possible by Simon Klose, Christian Rossipal and Mansa Musa AB.

Special thanks to Cristian Rossipal, Inney Prakesh and Madubuko Diakité.

In Hong Kong cinema, the “Category III” label is the rough equivalent of an “X” rating in the United States – no one under 18 admitted. More than identifying extreme content, however, the classification denotes a certain sensibility in HK cinema since the late 1980s – an impulse to not only repulse but also to do so in the most confounding, counter-logical manner possible (usually in quivering acres of latex and gallons of profuse goop). While Category III classics like RIKI-OH and THREE… EXTREMES are better known to American audiences, Spectacle is proud to plumb the depths of dubious morals and devil feti to present a selection of lesser-known features from the genre.

DEVIL FETUS 2
dir. Tom Lau Moon-Tong, 1984.
101 mins. Hong Kong.
In Cantonese with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, MAY 6 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, MAY 14 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, MAY 27 – MIDNIGHT

Content Warning: sexual assault, abortion

The sequel to the legendary DEVIL FETUS finally delivers on the fetus its predecessor failed to deliver, retaining at the same time the wildly elliptical plot that begins with a horny, malevolent piece of thrift-store art and ends with our protagonists in various states of wet delamination. A sleazy photographer contends with the fallout of a drunken liaison between one of his models and an animate statue of a demon in his art collection. Birthed upon an autopsy table, the titular fetus proceeds to make things generally miserable for our protagonist, unleashing vomiting monks, kitchen accidents and other unsavory terrors from the Category III wheelhouse. As perverse and unpredictable as DEVIL FETUS with a few surprisingly eerie and artful set-pieces that elevate the proceedings above a straightforward repetition.

BLOOD RITUAL
dir. Yuen Ching Lee, 1989
92 mins. Hong Kong.
In Cantonese and Mandarin with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, MAY 7 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, MAY 20 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, MAY 28 – MIDNIGHT

A hyper-violent cult thriller soldered to a light-hearted romantic comedy, BLOOD RITUAL is notable for the jarring ease with which it switches between these registers – deftly choreographed fight scenes rife with dismemberings inexplicably transition to screwball bits about failed driving tests and…severed fingers. The queasier bizarro version of Miami Vice, in which a pervasive mood of cultic paranoia is punctuated by instances of perplexing humor and synth-ballad breaks.

EYES OF THE LAND: HAWAI‘I SHORTS BY NA MAKA O KA ‘AINA
dirs. Joan Lander and Puhipau, 1981 – 2016
90 mins. Hawai’i.
In English.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 18 – 7:30 PM with Q+A
(This event is $10.)

ONE NIGHT ONLY!

ONLINE TICKETS

Documentary filmmaker Joan Lander presents a program of vital Hawaiʻi documentary shorts produced by herself and partner Puhipau (1937-2016) as the collective Nā Maka o ka ‘Āina (“The Eyes of the Land”).

Lander and Puhipau have been at the forefront of documenting Hawaiian culture and politics since the 1970’s with a kinship to DCTV, Black Mask, and Paper Tiger Television. This program of hand-picked shorts from Lander’s vast archive provides a commentary on the current issues facing Hawaiʻi.

Hawaiʻi-based filmmaker and Nā Maka o ka ‘Āina archivist Sancia Miala Shiba Nash will join in-person, with Joan joining the conversation remotely at Spectacle.

ALL HAWAIʻI STAND TOGETHER.
6 mins.

NA WAI E HO’ŌLA I NĀ IWI – WHO WILL SAVE THE BONES?
1988. 26 mins.

NO TELL ME GO
1984. 3 mins.

WAIMANALO EVICTION
1985. 37 mins.

This event is co-presented with Cinema Guild in conjunction with their theatrical release of Anthony Banua-Simon’s Hawai‘i feature documentary CANE FIRE at BAM May 20th – 26th.