August 2013 – Spectacle Theater

FATHER, SON AND HOLY WAR

Posted on August 30, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

FATHER, SON AND HOLY WAR
Dir: Anand Patwardhan, 1994.
133 min. India.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 – 8:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25 – 8:00 PM

Presented in partnership with Icarus Films, a distributor of innovative and provocative documentary films from independent producers around the world. Description courtesy of Icarus Films.

In the politically polarized world, universal ideals are rare. In India, as in many regions, the vacuum is filled by religious zealousness. Minorities are scapegoats of every calamity as nations subdivide into religious and ethnic zones, each seemingly eager to annihilate the others, or to extinguish itself on the altar of martyrdom.

But why? FATHER, SON AND HOLY WAR explores in two parts the possibility that the psychology of violence against “the other” may lie in male insecurity, itself an inevitable product of the very construction of “manhood.”

Part 1: TRIAL BY FIRE

TRIAL BY FIRE, a reference to the ordeal Hindu god-king Lord Rama tested his wife Sita’s fidelity with, looks at the communal fires which have consumed India in recent years. “Sati,” a rite by which Roop Kanwar was thrown on her husband’s funeral pyre; the upper castes’ “purifying” fire rituals and the communal fires that ravaged Bombay after the demolition of the mosque in Ayodhya are set against a small group of fire fighters: a Rajasthani woman who, against the odds, condemns Sati; a Muslim woman who battles gender discriminatory laws; and a band of Hindus and Muslims who march for communal harmony in the riot-torn streets of Bombay.

Part 2: HERO PHARMACY

HERO PHARMACY examines “manhood” in the context of religious strife. The Hindu majority has been raised on stories of marauding Muslim invaders who raped their women, destroyed their temples, and forced religious conversions. Today, some Hindus demand revenge for crimes committed centuries ago. They reject non-violence as impotence and set out to be “real men.”

In this context, the Muslim minority – despite fears of genocide – will not take things lying down. They too are driven by the imperative to be “real men.” The result is carnage.

Is violence inherent in the human condition? Historically, people have co-existed for over 50,000 years in relative harmony. Wars began less than 5,000 years ago. But today the “macho” man rules in every land. Where do we go from here?

“Rampant machismo is never a pretty sight, and this two-part video contains a lot of excruciating imagery and some brutal truths: these are not pretty pictures… For showing to courses on current Indian politics, on religion and ethnicity, on women’s issues, the sociology of violence, or popular culture, FATHER, SON AND HOLY WAR is powerful stuff, but the faint of heart should be forewarned of its harrowing content.”—Gail Minault, Journal of Asian Studies

“FATHER, SON AND HOLY WAR, through a careful layering of images, views and counter-views takes you far beyond the generally superficial vision of Indian politics that the standard television documentary delivers.”—Pervaiz Khan, London Film Festival

Spirit of Freedom Prize Winner, 1995 Jerusalem Film Festival
Best Investigative Documentary, 1995 National Awards (India)
Special Jury Prize Winner, 1995 Bombay Film Festival
Special Jury Prize Winner, 1995 Yamagata Documentary Film Festival
1995 Human Rights Watch Film Festival
Special Jury Prize Winner, 1994 Vancouver Film Festival

FIST CHURCH

Posted on August 30, 2013July 1, 2022 by spectacletheater

A bi-monthly, mystery kung-fu matinee.

The 70’s, 80’s, and even into the early 90’s were a wonderful time when a boy or girl could sit down in front of their TV set after Saturday morning cartoons and tune into their local UHF station to catch a helping of hundreds of Kung Fu Matinees, or if you were a bit older and lived in the New York City area, you could go to one of the many infamous Times Square theaters and do the same (while “enjoying” some PCP if that was your thing).

Unfortunately due to the increasing popularity of cable TV, the decline of poorly dubbed and retitled VHS fare, and the slightly decreased popularity of openly smoking PCP in a movie theater, the Kung Fu Matinee tradition has withered on the vine. Luckily, Spectacle and Kissing Contest believe a revival of this tradition is long overdue, with a bit of a spin of course.

Every other Sunday we’ll be mining the depths of VHS, VCD, DVD, and the darkest corners of the internet to bring you the wildest post-brunch experience you’re likely to have. So, get faded on Bloody Mary’s (leave the PCP at home) and come kick your feet up while we play fast and loose with the rules and witness people fight hopping vampires, ninjas, swordsmen and more. The movies won’t be announced, but trust us – on this one we wouldn’t steer you wrong.

A cinematic haymaker to the face on this day of rest. Well…every other day of rest.

THE KING OF THE CELTS

Posted on August 30, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

THE KING OF THE CELTS
Dir. Matt Bonner, 2013.
USA. 86 min.

ONE NIGHT ONLY!
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 – 7:30 PM and 10:00 PM

Director Matt Bonner in attendance!

PlasticMountainMajesty presents:

Inspired by visions starting at the age of 7 1/2, John Sweeney made it his life’s mission to right some of the wrongs done to Ireland throughout history; and reunite the 32 Counties of Ireland…with John as their king.

The King of the Celts is the feature-length documentary debut from Matt Bonner and tells the story of John Sweeney O’Neill: Irish immigrant to America, US Army paratrooper, former NYPD, and self-professed King of the Celts.

We travel with John as he returns to his home county of Cork, Ireland, with his Irish crown, heraldic swords, and no doubts regarding the mission at hand; to challenge the English landlords still in Ireland, whose ancestors obtained their lands during the “Troubles” (British colonial era) and under often extremely cruel or dubious conditions. John confronts and challenges descendents of Oliver Cromwell and others in his efforts to reunite Ireland under the Irish Crown.

John’s story is a reminder of where one man’s drive can take him despite near unanimous voices around him telling him to stop.

JOHN BUT NOT FORGOTTEN: A Tribute to Ritter and Cash

Posted on August 30, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

JOHN BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
The Day We Lost Ritter and Cash: A Screening Tribute

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 – ONE NIGHT ONLY!

One bitter fall evening, during a span of three hours caught in the space between September 11 and 12, 2003, we lost two great entertainers: Johnny Cash and John Ritter. One decade after this tragedy, Spectacle celebrates the only way it knows how: by showing an obscure movie in which Johnny Cash plays a psychotic guitar-slinging killer, and a hilarious made-for-TV cheesefest about John Ritter getting carjacked in front of a Starbucks and moving his family to a techno-totalitarian gated housing community.

THE COLONY
Dir: Rob Hedden, 1995.
84 min. USA.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 – 7:30 PM

In this probably-made-for-theaters, dumped-to-TV gem, John Ritter plays a loving father and electronic security consultant who grows concerned about the crime is spilling from the city into the WASP-y suburbs. After being carjacked in front of a Starbucks, he urgently packs up his family and moves to The Colony, an idyllic gated housing community owned by his employer where all needs are provided for — except, perhaps, freedom. It begins as Ritter is cited for improper jogging attire, and continues with the eerie reprogramming efforts of the local school, who make the kids in Village of the Damned look like undisciplined riff-raff. As Ritter moves up the corporate ladder, he becomes emboldened to speak up: but at what cost to his family’s true security?

An overlooked LOL-a-minute gem from the genius who brought you Friday the 13th Part VII: Jason Takes a Soundstage in Vancouver, THE COLONY is a total cheesefest that nevertheless spotlights John Ritter’s irrepressible World’s Greatest Dad appeal.

Advisement: THE COLONY is being presented uncut in its original aspect ratio with watermarks from the television station it was recorded off of.

FIVE MINUTES TO LIVE
Dir: Bill Karn, 1961.
75 min. USA.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 – 10:00 PM

The first and greatest of only two Johnny Cash acting roles finds the Man In Black playing up his badboy appeal to shocking extremes that must be seen to be believed. A forerunner of movies like The Sadist and the home invasion genre, FIVE MINUTES TO LIVE stars Cash as “Johnny,” a psychotic guitar-slinging bank robber who hides out in a suburban town to cool down after icing the fuzz during a botched job. There, after killing his girlfriend in cold blood, he gets roped into a new scheme: he’ll break into the home of a bank president and hold his wife hostage while his partners carry out the job, the condition being that if he doesn’t receive a phone call every five minutes to reassure him that the job is continuing as planned, the wife will be killed. The majority of this film details the shameless sadistic glee with which Johnny torments his victim, turning the screw ever tighter as the seconds tick by.

A terse, lurid thriller, FIVE MINUTES TO LIVE is a pat yarn enhanced by its low-budget appeal. It’s an at once surprisingly and understandably overlooked gem: you’ve never seen Cash this morally bankrupt before.

Advisement: This film contains non-graphic scenes of sadistic violence that may disturb some viewers.

WOMEN MAKE MOVIES PRESENT: MADAME X

Posted on August 27, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

Spectacle and Women Make Movies, the celebrated non-profit organization and distributor of independent film and video by and about women, are proud to host a new series of collaboratively programmed screenings that will delve widely and deeply into WMM’s diverse catalog, showcasing noted classics and underscreened gems, including both works of radical feminism and documentary journalism by established and emerging filmmakers.

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 26th – 8PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

MADAME X: EINE ABSOLUTE HERRSCHEIN
(Madame X: An Absolute Ruler)
Dir. Ulrike Ottinger, 1977

Madame X, the cruelest and most successful pirate of the Far Eastern seas, puts out a call to all women seeking a world full of gold, love, and adventure to join her crew and become marauders on the high seas. But even after their first pitiless attack on a yacht carrying hilarious caricatures of bourgeois male hegemony leaves them awash in plunder, the increasing assertion of the new pirates’ identities and desires leads an already chaotic journey into absolute bedlam.

This first feature effort by Ottinger – whose work in both fiction and documentary has since won wide acclaim – is an exhilarating experience both for its righteous appropriation of a genre often rife with casual misogyny and for the director’s irresistible invitation to revel in the visual beauty and surreal discontinuity of her film’s world. An opportunity to see this rarely-screened work is not to be missed!

TIMELESS, BOTTOMLESS BAD MOVIE

Posted on August 27, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

TIMELESS, BOTTOMLESS BAD MOVIE
Dir. Jang Sun-woo, 1997
South Korea, 144 min.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10th – 8PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 15th – 8PM

The key is in the title, its praxis succinctly delineated in four words: Timeless, Bottomless Bad Movie (Nappeun Yeongwha) is exactly what it suggests it is, a film purportedly unaffected by time and utterly bad. In this rabbit hole excursion into the urban topography of Seoul (the skirmishes in dark alleyways, the hazing in the high-school restrooms, sexual liaisons in karaoke bars, morning hangovers in motel rooms, the wasted hours spent in the video arcades), where the teenage street urchins of Seoul run amok and the old bums sit defiantly on subway floors, the film operates, as Nicole Brenez has pointed out, between the representational regimes of fiction and documentary.

Timeless, Bottomless Bad Movie cares little for beginnings, ends, and all the particular concerns of a typical, narrative film; nor does it quite work as documentary, not when there are moments so patently contrived. The film was shot amongst three different camera operators working in several different formats (35mm, 16mm and digital video) and purports to bethe brainchild of the kids on screen. But don’t be fooled. The gaudy, ostentatious displays only belie the elaborate arrangement and direction behind it all. The ultimate “makeshift” film. Where are those kids now? Timeless, Bottomless Bad Movie promises to be nothing more than what it says it is, really, truly bad.

Poster by Kim Westfall

WREKMEISTER HARMONIES

Posted on August 27, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 1st

8PM! ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Chicago-based sound artist J.R. Robinson has been creating live, ambient tonefields in museums around the US and Europe over the past two years-including the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Pompidou Center in Paris, and The Art Center Berlin. His new record You’ve Always Meant So Much To Me (Thrill Jockey ) Came out June 11th.

Robinson has injected these recordings into collaborations with some like-minded heavy hitters from the noise, post-rock and jazz worlds such as David Yow (Jesus Lizard/Scratch Acid), Mark Shippy & Pat Samson (US Maple), Azita Youssefi, John Herndon & Jeff Parker (Tortoise), Keefe Jackson, Fred Lonberg-Holm and Ken Vandermark. The result (dubbed Wrekmeister Harmonies), is a distinctive hybrid of sound art and avant-garde musics, evoking the essences & influences of masterworks like Joe McPhee’s Nation Time, Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and the sound collages of Stockhausen.

“It’s an incredibly emotional and intelligent piece of work and one that fully deserves to be listened to in its entirety.” – Louder Than War

“Even though You’ve Always Meant So Much to Me begins quietly, it doesn’t stay that way. It builds until, a little over halfway through, it erupts into crashing, monumental doom, and you finally understand why Robinson brought in all those monsters of metal.” – Decibel Magazine

“A harrowing tableau of lonesome drones, hiss, degraded noise and moans that build to a towering schizm of thunder, earth, sky and guitar that feel just as destructively chaotic as the crest of any storm. The lines of classical nuance and metal combustion erode between the overlapping waves of guitar that build to the epic finale. Robinson proves that Wrekmeister are just as at home with the Sunn o))) crowd as they are with Johann Johannsson and the museum set. I can only imagine what a spectacle the piece is live but on record, it’s still a floor to ceiling house shaker and a good way to accompany any storm raging outside your windows.” – Raven Sings The Blues

“You’ve Always Meant So Much to Me is one of the most gorgeous and captivating single tracks we’ve ever heard.” – A Closer Listen

“If anything, it’s an anti-crescendo, a way for the sonic ugliness to get even uglier before we’re allowed to hear something pretty. Beneath all that darkness is beauty, and that too reveals itself more and more on subsequent listens…Like so many album-length songs by heavy acts… part of the charm is in never being satisfied with what you’ve just heard. Each listen unveils something new, and that something is different for each listener.” – Invisible Oranges

20 YEARS OF CUFF

Posted on August 26, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

20 YEARS OF CUFF
Chicago Underground Film Festival is the longest running underground film festival in the world. Founded the same year as the now defunct NYUFF, it remains a vibrant & evolving home for radically dissenting filmmaking, and the defining example for underground film events all over the world. This program brings together legendary shorts from the festival’s first twenty years.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 – 8:00 PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 – 8:00 PM

LINEUP & NOTES FROM FESTIVAL DIRECTOR BRYAN WENDORF:

LIGHT FUSE GET AWAY Dir. Ivan Lerner, 1994, 17 min.
When we began work on the first Chicago Underground Film Festival one of the first things we did was place a call for submissions ad in the Film Threat Video Guide which in those pre-internet years was THE source for info on contemporary underground film. We also sent submission info to every film reviewed in the magazine including this video by former Screw editor and current Spectacle programmer Ivan Lerner.

MONDAY 9:02 AM Dir. Tyler Hubby, 1995, 11 min.
Tyler Hubby was one of many graduates of George Kuchar’s Electro-graphic Sinema classes at the San Francisco Art Institute who was a regular fixture during the early years of CUFF. This 16mm film, comprised of a single unedited 11-minute take shot from inside a second-floor apartment is inspired by the idea Michael Snow’s avant-garde classic Wavelength. Although if my memory is correct Tyler didn’t actually actually see Wavelength until AFTER making this. Today Tyler lives in Los Angeles and has edited a number of great independent documentaries like The Devil and Daniel Johnson.

CLIT-O-MATIC: THE ADVENTURES OF WHITE TRASH GIRL
Dir. Jennifer Reeder, 1996, 8 min.
Chicagoan Jennifer Reeder made a name for herself in the 90s underground film scene with this Waters/Kuchar inspired feminist super-hero series she produced as a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She still lives in Chicago where she’s constantly inspiring new generations of image makers as Associate Professor Moving Image at the University of Illinois Chicago. She continues to screen her experimental narratives around the world including CUFF.

DANCE HABIBI DANCE Dir. Usama Alshaibi, 1998, 3 min.
Usama Alshaibi was a graduate of Columbia College Chicago when he produced this video inspired by Richard Kern’s Submit to Me series. His work has followed two distinct strains exploring his Iraqi heritage and his interest in transgressive sexuality. In 2006 he directed the feature length documentary Nice Bombs about his journey back to Iraq after the fall of the Hussein regime. He is currently pursuing his masters degree at Boulder Art Institute and is completing a new documentary feature American Arab produced with Kartemquin Films.

THE BATS Dir. Jim Trainor, 1998, 8 min.
Jim Trainor was a Manhattan bartender when he made his first amazing animated film The Fetishist which had its world premiere at CUFF in 1997. He followed up with The Bats which firmly established him as one the great contemporary underground filmmakers working in animation. He lives in Chicago now and teaches at the School of the Art Institute and is currently completing his first live action film using human actors to portray the mating habits of wasps.

MEAT FUCKER Dir. Shawn Durr, 1999, 32 min.
Shawn Durr had a brief but important place in the late 90s Chicago underground. Meat Fucker was his best known film. Following in the Kuchar tradition of over the top queer melodrama but upping the ante on the ridiculous. NYUFF’s Ed Halter once referred to his work as “Kuchar on crack” while Chicago experimental film critic Fred Camper compared Meat Fucker favorably to Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks. Shawn followed Meat Fucker with the features Fucked in the Face and The Last Fuck before retiring from filmmaking. He still lives in Chicago.

THE PSYCHOTIC ODYSSEY OF RICHARD CHASE Dir. Carey Burtt, 1999, 6 min.
Another New York filmmaker who was a regular at CUFF at the turn of the millennium. When we showed this film in 1999 to notoriously prickly Chicago Reader film critic Fred Camper at a press screening I remember him looking at me as the film ended and asking “Did you like THAT?” “yes” I nervously responded, “Good, because I think its GREAT!” replied Camper. Camper’s printed review said “The film’s antiliteralism is a wonderful rebuke to our glut of graphically violent movies… Burtt’s playful depiction of the gruesome story encourages us to think about it rather than wallow in it.”

THE FABULOUS STAINS: BEHIND THE MOVIE
Dir. Sarah Jacobson & Sam Green, 2000, 11 min.
The importance of San Fransisco filmmaker Sarah Jacobson to CUFF in our early years can’t be overstated. After attending the festival’s inaugural year with her short I Was a Teenage Serial Killer, Sarah became a one woman word of mouth PR machine for the festival. Spreading the word about us everywhere she went and encouraging filmmakers she met to send us their work. In our third year we opened with the world premiere of her feature Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore and in 1998 she presented the first public screening in 15 year’s of Lou Adler’s proto-riot girl comedy Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains. Footage of that screening appears in this documentary co-directed by another SF based CUFF alumnus Sam Green (The Rainbow Man/John 3:16 and The Weather Underground) and originally produced for Jon Pierson’s IFC series Split Screen. Sadly, Sarah died of cancer in 2004 but her legacy lives on through a grant program for women filmmakers set up by Sam and Sarah’s mother.

WUSTENSPRINGMAUS Dir. Jim Finn, 2002, 3 min.
Jim Finn also studied at Columbia College where he was part of the same graduating class as Usama Alshaibi. Wustenspringmaus combines his love of animals and his interest in marxist political theory. Themes he continued to explore in his “Communist Trilogy” of features; Interkosmos, The Juche Idea and La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo. Today he lives in Boston and is an Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute in New York.

AMERICA’S BIGGEST DICK Dir. Bryan Boyce, 2005, 4 min.
San Francisco’s Bryan Boyce first attended CUFF in 1997 with a little seen comedic short called Lard but he soon became internationally known for his critiques of American culture using appropriation and found footage. He continues to screen his work at festivals like CUFF and Ann Arbor but also releases work directly through his YouTube channel in order to keep his satire timely and fresh.

HOLD ME NOW Dir. Michael Robinson 2008, 5 min.
This karaoke video by prolific experimental film and video artist Michael Robinson was originally produced for the sadly defunct Portland Documentary and Experimental Film Festival (better known as PDX). We showed it at CUFF soon after where it won an award for best music video. For best results sing along.

THE ETERNAL QUARTER INCH Dir. Jesse McLean, 2008, 9 min
Jesse McLean began screening her work at CUFF while she was a student in Pittsburgh. PA but I didn’t actually meet her until she moved to Chicago to pursue her master’s at UIC. Upon graduating she relocated to Iowa City where she continues to be a fixture on the international experimental and underground film and video scene. Her work looks at the intersection of culture, technology and human behavior using a combination of found footage and original material.

THIS IS MY SHOW Dir. Lori Felker, 2009, 15 min.
Chicago based media artist Lori Felker has worn many hats with CUFF over the years. Co-programming and coordinating the festival, serving as projectionist and technical director as well as participating as a filmmaker herself. This video is part of a series of works that celebrate and spoof cable access television. Lori had to leave the projection booth during the 2009 festival to participate in the Q&A after this piece screened. It also received an honorable mention from the jury that year. Lori recently scaled back her CUFF duties to focus on her new position as Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

THE STORY OF THE EYE Dir. Nicole Jefferson Asher, 2012, 12 min.
This feminist musical adaptation of the infamous transgressive novel by Georges Bataille screened at the 20th CUFF this past March. It stars and features music composed by performance artist Kevin Blechdom–Kristin Erickson, a member of the faculty of The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts and was directed by Nicole Jefferson Asher who has numerous credits in theater, film and television, creating projects for HBO, MTV, Nickelodeon Movies and Spike Lee’s 40 Acres and a Mule Film Works. She is currently writing and directing her first feature Betty, the story of funk singer Betty Davis, the second wife of jazz musician Miles Davis.

TRIGGER WARNING: STROBE EFFECTS

MOLODOST: Films on Soviet Youth

Posted on August 25, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

Molodost: Films on Soviet Youth

“What do you want from life? What do you want from life?” “I just want to contribute to society.” A prominent subject of late-perestroika cinema was the molodezh or the ‘youth’ generation. Similar to current discourse surrounding the “millennial” generation, Soviet youth were often portrayed as either a symbol for hope and reformation, or as lost and apathetic. Disenchantment with old Soviet ideologies led to a questioning of authority, both in the political arena and the home. As the Soviet Union’s cultural symbols lost power, Gorbachev’s implementation of glasnost in the late ’80s simultaneously opened up a floodgate of western music, fashion, and movies, widening the communication gap between youth and authority. The new cultural influences led to various forms of agitation and rebellion: rock music, drugs, and civil disobedience. At the same time, however, it fostered inaction, indifference, and apathy. While perestroika-era films explored a new openness in social and civil critique, they were also overwhelmingly pessimistic and cynical. Paradoxically, and despite such portrayals, Soviet Union’s mainstream culture publicly accepted its youth subculture, and turned it into a symbol, if not an actual catalyst, for radical change. Molodost—meaning the time of youth— explores three different coming of age stories taking place on the cusp of the perestroika era, before the ultimate disillusionment of the Soviet Union. Assa, credited with bringing underground rock music into the mainstream, follows an underground rocker and his relationship with a girl, her Mafioso lover, and the police. Igla often described as a precursor for late Soviet/Kazakh new wave, and also featuring underground rock stars, is a surreal, postmodern cacophony of social collapse and drug use. Lastly, and perhaps the most sobering of the three, Kuryer tells the story of a high school graduate trying to make sense of his life. With no prospect for a college education, a grim mandatory military service awaits in his future.

ASSA
Dir: Sergei Solovyov, 1987
Soviet Union, 153 min.
Russian with English subtitles

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 – 8:00 PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 – 8:00 PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 – 10:00 PM

Assa came to recognition and cult status as one of the first films to bring underground rock culture into the Soviet mainstream, featuring songs by bands such as Aquarium, Soyuz Kompozitorov, Bravo, and Kino (whose lead singer Viktor Tsoi, also featured in Igla, plays himself in the film). Assa reflected a time of change in the USSR, as emphasized in Tsoi’s song “We Wait for Change,” consequently adopted by the real-life Russian opposition movement Solidarnost as its anthem. Set in Crimea during the late 1980s, Assa follows the story of Alika, a young nurse who is romantically involved with Krymov, her much older patient and the leader of an organized crime group. Despite her relationship with Krymov, Alika starts falling for a young rock musician named Bananan (played by the avant-garde artist Afrika). Bananan introduces Alika to his countercultural world of music and art. When the jealous Krymov begins to notice a change in Alika’s emotions toward him, he stages a plan to eliminate Bananan from Alika’s life forever. Assa has a playful, absurdist touch, combining sober moments with dreamlike sequences. Experimental scenes of hand-painted abstract patterns and inter-titles explaining youth slang are interspersed throughout the film. One amusing subplot that develops follows Krymov reading a book of the assassination attempt on Russia’s Tsar Paul I—the “Mad Tsar”. As he reads, a fantasy reenactment plays parallel to the main story. Perhaps this text foreshadows the inevitable fate of the Union: according to the assassins, they were only abolishing a power from Russia that had gone mad.

IGLA (aka The Needle)
Dir: Rashid Nugmanov, 1988
Soviet Union, 81 min.
Russian with English subtitles

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 – 10:00 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 – 7:30 PM

Igla is a disjointed, narratively unconventional film, and a precursor to the Kazakh new wave. Its beautifully austere and surreal scenes are set in the collapsing, virtually lawless Soviet Union. While Igla touches upon taboos and political subjects such as drug use and organized crime—two of perestroika’s biggest social afflictions—Rashid Nugmanov, Igla’s young Kazakh director, described the film as just a fun project made by a few friends, and more of an homage to “Soviet television” than a social critique. Viktor Tsoi, (Kino’s front man) plays Moro, a stoic and nonchalant young man. Moro travels to Almaty to collect an unpaid debt, getting into trouble with a local gang on the way. Eventually, he finds himself helping Dina, his morphine-addicted ex-girlfriend, and rescuing her from a drug ring led by an insidious doctor (played by Peter Mamonov, front man of the band Zvuki Mu). In an attempt to get Dina clean, Moro takes her to the dry Aral Sea in the Kazakh desert, where she suffers through withdrawal. When they return, however, Dina relapses and Moro confronts the doctor. In the end, Dina’s fate remains ambiguous, as does the direction of Moro’s own future. Igla launched Viktor Tsoi into the mainstream, and many of his songs used in the film became huge hits. His own untimely death in 1990 marked him as a cult icon and symbol for freedom and romance during the end times of the USSR.

KURYER (Courier)
Dir: Karen Shakhazarov, 1987
Soviet Union, 88 min.
Russian with English subtitles

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 – 7:30 PM

Largely ignored on release, Kuryer eventually came to critical acclaim over the years. Stylistically and narratively more straightforward than the other films in this series, Kuryer explores the frustration of being young and at a crossroads in life—especially if the roads lead to nowhere. It follows Ivan Miroshinokov, a clever young magazine courier struggling to find himself after his parent’s divorce and his rejection from University. Ivan’s admiration for his father begins to wane after he leaves his mother for a younger woman and goes off to Africa to pursue his dreams. Ivan is left to live with his mother, who has a difficult time dealing with the divorce. Through one of his deliveries, Ivan meets Katya, the daughter of an authoritarian professor. Ivan is forced to confront the expectations of Katya’s father and measure up to her elite group of friends, leading him to entirely re-evaluate his prospects in life. Grappling between unattainable dreams and a bleak reality, Ivan’s choices echo the rebellious lost generation, plagued by both their parents’ and their own disappointments with the collapsing Soviet existence.

IMPACT

Posted on August 25, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

IMPACT
Dir. Arthur Lubin, 1949
USA, 111 min

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3 – 10:00 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – 7:30 PM

“Hell hath no fury like a [man] scorned.”

Noir-staple Brian Donlevy stars in Arthur Lubin’s subtle, melodramatic 1949 sleeper IMPACT. Typically relegated to tough-guy supporting roles more suited to his threatening scowl, Donlevy plays very successfully against type as love-struck automotive mogul Walter Williams, a sensitive man who unfortunately puts far too much faith in the wrong sort of gal.

Anything but a strict urban film-noir, Lubin’s sunny, meandering picture progresses from tense romantic thriller to on-the-road action flick, moving through thick swamps of melodrama before landing in courtroom theatrics, ultimately proving to be surprisingly cohesive and affecting.

Despite its B-grade production and modest return, Impact also features an unusual number of on-screen brand/product placements for an era in which the practice remained very uncommon. Pioneering trade journal Harrison’s Reports –a rag that focused on independent theaters long before the independent film movement (and was also notable for an ahead-of-its-time criticism of film advertising)– notes upon its release that in Impact there are “advertising plugs worked in for such products as Blue Ribbon beer, Raleigh cigarettes, Coca Cola, Mission Orange soda pop, Mobiloil gasoline, oil and tires, Gruen watches, and the trade name, Rexall.” Curiously overlooking a Bekins moving van that plays an integral role in one key scene, the review provides evidence that brand exposure was just as offensive to contemporary audiences in its early-stages 65 years ago as it is (to some) in today’s Hollywood™. Interestingly, this aspect of Impact merely enhances the film; more than half-a-century’s distance lends the practice a paradoxical value, illuminating an authentic aspect of late-1940s America not usually seen on the silver screen.

Finally, keep an eye out for a key location also used prominently in a little film called Vertigo…