As we continue to begrudgingly drag ourselves through “unprecedented times,” Spectacle theater presents two films that meet the madness of our moment. Ian Bell’s WTO/99 (2025) and Soda Jerk’s HELLO DANKNESS (2022) bookend two decades of America’s self-cannibalization, from the streets of Seattle at the turn of the Millennium to paranoid suburbia during the first Trump administration.
Both films are masterpieces in editing and composition that immerse viewers not only in particular historical moments but in the psychological atmosphere that characterized them. The on-the-ground archival footage of WTO/99 captures the urgency felt among a broad coalition of protestors who recognized the significant precipice the U.S. (and the planet) was on due to globalization. HELLO DANKNESS‘ remixing and recontextualization of media/pop culture samples, meanwhile, expresses the chaotic, brainworm-added “reality” in which we currently find ourselves, where day-to-day life is mediated by corporate ads, surveillance, and conspiracy.
WTO/99
Dir. Ian Bell, 2025
United States. 102 min.
In English.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 9 – 7:30 PM (Q&A w/ Editor/Producer Alex Megaro moderated by critic Dan Schindel)
SUNDAY, JANUARY 11 – 5 PM (Q&A w/ Editor/Producer Alex Megaro and Special Guest Moderator)
TUESDAY, JANUARY 20 – 7:30 PM (Q&A w/ Editor/Producer Alex Megaro moderated by professor/author Whitney Strub)
SATURDAY, JANUARY 31 – 7:30 PM (Q&A w/ Editor/Producer Alex Megaro moderated by Sleazy Femme programmer/filmmaker Maren Moreno)
From November 30th to December 3rd 1999, tens of thousands of people occupied the streets of downtown Seattle to make known their concerns about the existence of the World Trade Organization and its impacts on the environment, human rights, and labor in the largest protests against economic globalization the US has ever seen.
The protests brought together people from divergent sections of society—anarchists, environmentalists, labor unions, consumer protection advocates, pro-democracy groups, and even religious organizations—who gathered in direct action hoping to dissuade world leadership from continued support of the WTO and strived to focus the public’s attention to the kind of future the WTO would bring forth.
Building from a roughly 1,000 hour archive, WTO/99 reanimates the ideological conflicts that drew thousands to the streets of Seattle in hopes for a better future. The film is an immersive visual artifact of a week that brought 40,000 people together to warn of environmental collapse, the vanishing middle class, and what the full inclusion of China in the World Trade Organization would mean for our collective future. The protesters—seen as a rabble-rousing nuisance at the time, yet appearing prophetic today—were met with extreme violence by a militarized police force, an all-too-fitting way to usher in a new century; one that is now defined by US failure to address climate change and increasing state aggression.
HELLO DANKNESS
Dir. Soda Jerk, 2022
Australia. 70 min.
In English.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 9 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, JANUARY 11 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, JANUARY 20 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, JANUARY 31 – 10 PM
HELLO DANKNESS is a political fable that bears witness to the psychotropic spectacle of American politics from 2016 to 2021, and the mythologies and lore that took root around it. Taking form as a suburban stoner musical, the film follows a neighborhood through these years as consensus reality disintegrates into conspiracy and other contagions. What unfolds is a rogue retelling of history in which hotdogs debate the culture wars, trash cans preach QAnon, zombies rally for revolution, and real events are refashioned as Broadway bangers from Cats, Les Miserables, Annie, and The Phantom of the Opera. There are songs and dancing, moments of menace and melancholy, shitposting and deep sincerity. Created with Soda Jerk’s signature methodology, HELLO DANKNESS is entirely composed of sampled media. Utilizing extensive rotoscoping and digital VFX, the feature length narrative has been grafted together from almost one thousand film, television and audio sources.
The cast of characters include Tom Hanks, Annette Bening, Bruce Dern, Ice Cube, Wayne and Garth, Maya and Ana, Rue and Jules, Seth Rogen and Reyn Doi. American politicians play themselves, with Jesse Eisenberg in the role of Mark Zuckerberg, and The Phantom of the Opera as Vladimir Putin.