While the written word has been a constant since its advent, the technology used to create and display it has been in almost constant flux. What started as a slow evolution through stone and pen, exploded into moveable type; and has only increased in speed and innovation for the past 100 years. The lifespan of each technology grows shorter and shorter with every subsequent generation. Setting metal type by hand gives way to the Linotype and Monotype machines, which give way to photo type which gives way to Postscript and IKARUS, which become OpenType, which evolves into Variable Fonts, which gives way to… Well, where do we find ourselves now? This June—with AI getting more and more capable of replacing designers every new day—Spectacle, with support from Order Type Foundry, takes a moment to pause and look back at films highlighting typeface designers and lettering artists, the technologies of the past, and how they dealt (or didn’t deal) with the innovations of their time.
FINAL MARKS: THE ART OF THE CARVED LETTER
Dirs. Frank Muhly Jr. & Peter O’Neill, 1979
United States. 49 min
In English
TUESDAY, JUNE 6 – 7:30 PM [ Buy Tickets ] THURSDAY, JUNE 15 – 7:30 PM with Filmmaker Q&A, this event is $10 [ Buy Tickets ] THURSDAY, JUNE 22 – 10 PM [ Buy Tickets ]
FINAL MARKS documents the work of the John Stevens Shop in Newport, Rhode Island. Founded in 1705 by the eponymous English immigrant, the shop was run by his family for over 220 years until it was purchased by calligrapher John Howard Benson in the 1920s. It remains within the Benson family to this day. By the time the documentary was filmed in the late 1970’s, Benson’s son John Everett Benson, or “Fud”, ran the shop with his associates: John Hegnauer and Brooke Roberts; all of whom appear notably young and hip in bell-bottom jeans and sneakers. It should be noted that even by this point, carving letters into stone was already considered a dying art; replaced on graves and buildings by industrial techniques such as sandblasting, and pneumatic chisels.
The filmmakers were given complete access to the shop for over two years, allowing them to film intimate moments with the artisans in their day-to-day lives. As the subjects correspond with clients, source stone for the shop, and travel to Washington D.C. for an on-site commission adorning the then incomplete I.M. Pei extension of the National Gallery, directors Muhly and O’Neill take a subtle and restrained approach to capturing the shop’s endeavors; creating a film that is as meditative and contemplative as its subjects. The poised restraint of the camera’s movements is an equal match to the elegance of Benson’s lettering.
Fud Benson and Hegnauer act as the primary narrators of the film, musing about their motivations, beliefs, and ideologies as they relate to the practice and vocation of carving letters. For Benson and his team, cutting the stone is only a small part of the endeavor; designing the letterforms and their collective layout is the real challenge. Benson visits the Common Burial Ground in Newport, located just up the street from the shop, to investigate the stonework of those who came before him. He comments on his father’s early carving, his influences, and his abilities as a letterer and letter cutter; primarily focusing on how he used the ancient roman brush style to inform, and give personality to his stone cutting.
Screening with: CONVERSATIONS WITH PAUL RAND
Dir. Preston McClanahan, 1997
United States. 26 min
In English
Director Preston McClanahan is joined by FINAL MARKS filmmaker Peter O’Neill—acting as cinematographer—to document this conversation with famed graphic designer Paul Rand. Shot on 16mm in the designer’s Weston, Connecticut home, the film finds Rand informally discussing such topics as design, art, modernism, and aesthetics. Rand is congenial but at times stiff and codgerly; old and set in his ways. O’Neill’s camera work is just as sharp as it was in FINAL MARKS, elevating this short film and Rand’s work. Fun fact: the film’s titles are co-credited to prolific type designer, and then student, Cyrus Highsmith.
An Evening with Doug Wilson and the PRINTING FILMS Archive
A look at the methods of type creation through the ages and the growing pains of an industry and its workers as the technology changes generationally. With the specter of AI looming over today’s designers, it is interesting to look back at how working class and union typographers dealt with the transition of metal type to photographic processes. A selection of three films from the Printing Films Archive will showcase the historical methods of creating movable type (TYPE SPEAKS), how these methods were radically transformed in the 60s and 70s as new technology displaced the old (FROM HOT METAL TO COLD TYPE), and how workers and union members were affected by and dealt with this transition (FAREWELL ETAOIN SHRDLU).
Spectacle will be joined by Printing Films’s purveyor, Doug Wilson, who will be in attendance to commentate, give context to the films and answer audience questions. Doug Wilson is a writer, product designer and filmmaker based in Denver, Colorado. Wilson directed the 2012 feature-length documentary LINOTYPE: THE FILM which centers around the eponymous typecasting machine, its history, and its demise.
SUNDAY, JUNE 18 – 7:30 PM, One night only, this event is $10 [ Buy Tickets ]
Run of show:
1. TYPE SPEAKS
Dir. Unknown, American Type Founders Company, 1949
United States. 25 min
In English
Narrated by NBC radio personality Ben Grauer, this ATF-produced film is an in-depth and accessible showcase of how type is made from start to finish. From the design & pattern making, to the punch & matrices, to—ultimately—moveable type and the printed word. This film features Warren Chapell’s calligraphic sans serif typeface design, Lydian.
2. FROM HOT METAL TO COLD TYPE
Dir. Unknown, International Typographic Union, c. 1965
United States. 24 min
In English
Created by the International Typographic Union in the mid sixties to cajole union members into learning the new photographic methods of typesetting, this film begins with an explanation of the hot-metal process, then goes on to showcase the many photographic techniques used in setting type; from typesetting via paste-ups, to making plates, to developing negatives. The film follows each new process to the ultimate/inevitable printed conclusion.
3. FAREWELL ETAOIN SHRDLU
Dir. David Loeb Weiss, 1978
United States. 29 min
In English
Narrated by Carl Schlesinger, and named after the keyboard arrangement of the Linotype machine (Etaoin Shrdlu being the Qwerty of the pre-desktop computer age), this film documents the final day of hot metal typesetting within the composing room of the New York Times (Sunday, July 1st, 1978). The Linotype and Ludlow machines being used will be “by morning, relics of the past”. The film gives a detailed account of how a Linotype machine operates, its components, and how it is used by a trained compositor. Followed by the rest of the newspaper making process, including layout, proofing, mold making, and printing; all seen only minutes before deadline. One older staff member decides to make the night his last, retiring alongside the Linotype machine so as to avoid having to learn any of the new computerized photographic methods, which are detailed in the latter part of the film.
In a monologue at the end of the film, Schlesinger takes solace in the fact that, while these new computer processes have replaced what he once knew, there are still human hands, eyes, and minds behind them. If he only knew what was to come.
SYSTEMATICALLY SLOPPY: BRAM DE DOES, TYPE DESIGNER AND TYPOGRAPHER (SYSTEMATISCH SLORDIG: BRAM DE DOES, LETTERONTWERPER EN TYPOGRAAF)
Dir. Coraline Korevaar, 2003
Netherlands. 53 min
In Dutch with English subtitles
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7 – 7:30 PM [ cancelled due to weather ] SUNDAY, JUNE 18 – 5 PM, featuring post-film discussion with Mathieu Lommen, Erik van Blokland, and Hannes Famira. This event is $10 [ Buy Tickets ] SATURDAY, JUNE 24 – 3 PM [ Buy Tickets ]
Amongst type designers, at least according to the writer, Bram de Does is legendary. A perfectionist obsessed with precision, his legacy and influence far outpace his production—creating only two typefaces in his lifetime. The quality of his types are so highly regarded that he is considered one of the greatest to ever do it. S-tier. SYSTEMATICALLY SLOPPY stars a large cast of Bram’s colleagues and contemporaries, as well as the man himself, in a discussion of his career, his work, his nature, and the nature of work itself. The film features interviews with prominent members of the Dutch type design community, like the late Gerard Unger, both Gerrit and Peter Matthias Noordzij, Mathieu Lommen, a few Enschedés, Jost Hochuli, and more.
The documentary, like Bram, is direct and workmanlike, and features a soundtrack of Bram’s own violin playing. It details Brams early life and career before type design: as an aspiring musician, and a graphic & a book designer for the Joh. Enschedé printing and foundry operation, where he grew to detest life in middle management. The second act of the film tells the origins of Bram’s two masterful typeface designs, Trinité and Lexicon. For a man so good at something, between both book design and type design, it’s wonderfully comforting to listen to him describe how much he loathed it. How much he would rather enjoy life, play music, and farm the land, than have to deal with bosses and Work with a capital W. Bram is mindnumblingly and unfuckwithably talented, but still feels tied to the job, because of a need for income, and is just as alienated as the rest of us.
Spectacle will be joined virtually by Mathieu Lommen and Erik van Blokland for a discussion with Hannes Famira following the film on Sunday June 18th. Lommen is a design historian and a curator of Graphic Design at the Allard Pierson museum of the University of Amsterdam. In addition to appearing on screen in the film, he initiated and edited “Bram de Does: typographer & type designer” in 2003, the first substantial publication devoted to De Does’s life and work. Erik van Blokland is a Dutch type designer, tool developer, and educator. He is the head of the TypeMedia masters program at the Royal Academy of Art, in The Hague, and sells original typefaces through his own LettError studio as well as through foundries like House Industries and Commercial Type. Hannes Famira is a type designer and filmmaker. He is the lead instructor at the Type@Cooper program at Cooper Union, and releases typefaces under his own name through Type Network.
Screening with: THE MAKING OF A RENAISSANCE BOOK
Pr. Dana Atchley, 1969
Belgium, United States. 21 min
In English
Shot entirely on location at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, this short film details the complete process of carving punches, striking and justifying matrices, casting type, and printing text, all of which is based on the writings of Christophe Plantin himself. Special thanks to Book Arts Press and the Rare Book School.
At its core the skate video is a marketing tool, the purpose of which is to increase sales of the industry’s hard and soft goods. Goods like skateboard decks, wheels, shoes, clothing, etc. The videos are usually produced and distributed by the companies who make these goods. They have a team of skateboarders who act as brand ambassadors, and are documented using the product they intend to sell. For this reason, Spectacle screening a skateboard video is rather unusual. In fact, up until now there had been only one to grace the space in the last 12 years, Alien Workshop’s incredible first audio/visual experience: MEMORY SCREEN. It should come as no surprise that the next video to appear would have to be of an artistic merit equal to or greater than the previous. Enter Colin Read’s SPIRIT QUEST, a video that a collective of film obsessives and video editors can only look at in awe. And unlike your usual branded marketing pieces, SPIRIT QUEST exists in a separate world: the independent skate video. The underground. Where the only products being sold are the video itself, and pure unadulterated stoke—which makes it all the more impressive.
With production spanning 4 years, and locations across multiple continents, SPIRIT QUEST is a manic feast of video editing. Undulating between skateboard action and archival animal documentary footage, weaving together the physical movements of both animal and skateboarder, and finding an abundance of similarities and metaphors between the two. Each chapter of the video references a different part of the animal and spirit kingdoms, correlating it with an aspect of skating or video making. Like the independently mobile eyes of a chameleon becoming two side-by-side VX1000 cameras, or bathing monkeys in a hot spring transforming into skaters in a New York City public fountain. Features an all-star cast including Quim Cardona, Bobby Worrest, Vincent Touzery, Taylor Nawrocki, Connor Kammerer, Hiroki Muraoka, and many more.
We acknowledge that while SPIRIT QUEST has a loyal following amongst practitioners, we hope to see many non-skaters in attendance, as this video has plenty to offer any audience.
Umberto Lenzi is one of Italy’s most prolific and under-appreciated filmmakers, having directed over sixty movies in four decades. Most genre fans may know of Umberto Lenzi from CANNIBAL FEROX (1981) and NIGHTMARE CITY (1980). Both films are solid gorefests, but their notoriety reflects only a fraction of Lenzi’s work. This series will focus on Lenzi’s pre-80s contributions to cinema and bring light to Lenzi’s more forgotten repertoire.
A QUIET PLACE TO KILL
(AKA PARANOIA)
Dir. Umberto Lenzi, 1970
Italy. 94 mins
In English
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1 – 7:30 PM TUESDAY, MARCH 7 – 10 PM FRIDAY, MARCH 24 – 7:30 PM THURSDAY, MARCH 30 – 7:30 PM
After a fiery crash, professional race car driver, Helen, is invited to recuperate at her ex-husband’s villa. Once there, she forms an unexpected bond with her ex’s new wife, and the two women plot his murder. When their plan goes awry, Helen relies on her wits to hide the truth of what happened at sea.
By the end of the 60s, Lenzi directed the first of eight Gialli films, ORGASMO (1969), SO SWEET… SO PERVERSE (1969), A QUIET PLACE TO KILL (1970) and OASIS OF FEAR (1971). These four films represent Lenzi’s first cycle of Giallo, and three showcase his longtime collaboration with Oscar nominee Carroll Baker.
This film isn’t what audiences have come to expect from the Giallo genre, lacking excessive gore or a black-gloved killer. Instead, A QUIET PLACE TO KILL plays like a murder mystery featuring beautiful locations, double-crossing socialites, love triangles, and exciting plot twists.
EYEBALL
Dir. Umberto Lenzi, 1975
Italy. 92 mins
In English
SATURDAY, MARCH 4 – Midnight THURSDAY, MARCH 9 – 10 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 18 – Midnight FRIDAY, MARCH 24 – Midnight
A red-gloved murderer is gouging out the eyes of American tourists. It’s up to Inspector Tudela to discover the killer’s identity and stop them before their sick game is complete.
The international success of Argento’s THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (1970) ushered in the golden age of Giallo and enshrined the trope of the black-gloved killer. Lenzi directed four Gialli during this period: SEVEN BLOOD STAIND ORCHIDS (1971), KNIFE OF ICE (1972), SPASMO (1974) and EYEBALL (1975).
By 1975, the film market was oversaturated with subpar Gialli and the genre’s popularity waned. Lenzi reflected on this decline with his final Giallo, the satirical EYEBALL (1975), an intentionally low-brow film that never takes itself too seriously.
THE TOUGH ONES
(AKA ROME, ARMED TO THE TEETH)
Dir. Umberto Lenzi, 1976
Italy. 94 mins
In English
FRIDAY, MARCH 10 – Midnight TUESDAY, MARCH 14 – 10 PM FRIDAY, MARCH 24 – 10 PM TUESDAY, MARCH 28 – 10 PM
CONTENT WARNING: This film features depictions of sexual assault.
The anti-gang squad, led by the hot-headed Inspector Leo Tanzin, won’t let the rule of law stop their plans to bring down a criminal kingpin. After planting drugs on a suspect known as The Hunchback, Tanzin may have finally met his match.
The late 60s marked the beginning of a period of political violence and social unrest in Italy known as the Years of Lead. Italian filmmakers processed the movement by creating a wave of ultra-violent crime films known as Poliziottesch. These films not only showcase the criminals’ ferocity but also expose parallel brutality and corruption from within the police force.
For four years after EYEBALL, Lenzi turned his attention exclusively to Poliziotteschi films and directed ten movies in the genre between 1974 and 1979. Starring Poliziotteschi staples Maurizio Merli and Tomas Milian, THE TOUGH ONES (1976) is a white-knuckle roller coaster that takes no prisoners.
In case you missed them the first time around, need to see them again, or want to drag your friends to their next favorite flick: join us for our annual encore of the best films and programs that screened in 2022 as voted on by our volunteers and members.
Earth, present day. With human civilization facing ever-worsening climate calamities, the captains of industry set their sights on a new planet. Soon, a secret public-private partnership is selling tickets to Mars at a premium out of reach for the majority of the population, for whom the choice is either indentured servitude in the new offworld colony or perishing in the coming cataclysm. When the world’s governments decide to speed things up by declaring war on Earth and the rabble they’re leaving behind, the planet forges a strategic alliance with an unlikely partner: an underground luddite movement. Some will join the uprising, others will become fanatical defenders of entrenched power structures, while yet others will do everything in their power to continue living exactly the same way they always have. Its star-studded cast and astronomical production values — painstakingly purloined from some of the biggest blockbusters of the past three decades — make EARTH II the most expensive climate disaster epic to be produced for no money.
Starring Keanu Reeves, Will Smith, and Matt Damon, EARTH II reminds us that no matter how far into its final death spiral our species might be, life finds a way.
THE ANTI-BANALITY UNION is an anonymous collective who recut blockbusters to uncover their latent meaning, chiseling away at them to reveal Hollywood’s shameful, disavowed desires. The collective’s first compilation film was a reaction to the jingoism surrounding the tenth anniversary of September 11th, UNCLEAR HOLOCAUST (2011), which compiled every instance of New York City being destroyed in a Hollywood movie. They followed this up with POLICE MORTALITY (2013), which revealed the suicidal internal logic of the police apparatus by taking dozens of cop movies and cutting out the “bad guys,” leaving the cops free to massacre each other. STATE OF EMERGENCE (2014) was a zombie movie with no zombies, a distillation of the entire genre’s narcissistic immunopolitics into one gory feature. Now, the ABU has set its sights on climate collapse, scouring the past four decades of disaster movies and combining them into an action-packed analysis of Hollywood’s pathological climate grief in EARTH II.
Structured as if it were the final inhale and exhale of Mother Nature from her deathbed, the carefully assembled long takes and immersive soundscapes that make up Barley’s masterful debut feature transmute shadow-blanketed trees, waterfalls and sparse signs of wildlife into haunting alien figures. With one last breath, a decaying post-human world collapses into eternal abstraction. Shot on iPhone 6 Plus.
SCOTT BARLEY is an artist-filmmaker, drone musician, writer and lecturer working between Scotland and Wales whose films (much of which are generously accessible through his website) have been exhibited over the last decade at venues such as BFI Southbank, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Venice Biennale and Telluride Film Festival. In 2018, Barley co-founded the filmmaking collective Obscuritads, and in 2021, EYE Filmmuseum permanently inducted SLEEP HAS HER HOUSE into its archive. Since 2017, Barley has been making his ambitious second feature film, THE SEA BEHIND HER HEAD, with support from the BFI and DocSociety, along with two new shorts titled THE FLESH and WITHIN WITHOUT HORIZON.
John is just an average man working as a sound technician for a New York City news station, until one day his pregnant wife is brutally murdered after witnessing the kidnapping of a young woman in broad daylight. Turning to the police for help, John soon learns that the city is overrun with crime and the police are too busy to help. Dressing as a white ninja, John takes to the streets as a sword wielding vigilante hell bent on cleaning up the streets of the city he once loved by ridding it of muggers, pickpockets, rapists, and gang members. However, in John’s quest for justice, he soon finds himself the target of every criminal in the city, including a mysterious villain known only as the Plutonium Killer. Will John survive to become the hero that New York City so desperately needs?
Originally directed by and starring martial arts actor John Liu (The Secret Rivals, Invincible Armor) in his only American production, New York Ninja was filmed entirely on 35mm in 1984, but the project was abandoned during production resulting in all original sound materials, scripts, and treatments going missing. 35 years later, Vinegar Syndrome acquired the original unedited camera negative and painstakingly constructed and completed the film. Enlisting the voice talents of genre favorites: Don “The Dragon” Wilson (Bloodfist, Whatever it Takes), Linnea Quigley (Return of the Living Dead, Nightmare Sisters), Michael Berryman (The Hills have Eyes, Auntie Lee’s Meat Pies), Vince Murdocco (Night Hunter, LA Wars), Matt Mitler (The Mutilator, Battle for the Lost Planet), Leon Isaac Kennedy (Lone Wolf McQuade, Penitentiary), Ginger Lynn Allen (The Devil’s Rejects, Vice Academy), and Cynthia Rothrock (China O’Brien, Martial Law) Vinegar Syndrome is extremely proud to present this truly one of kind film experience. Restored in 4K from the original camera elements, New York Ninja is finally available in all of its ridiculous over-the-top glory for the first time ever after spending nearly four decades in film obscurity.
After the conniving understudy of an avant-garde theater group knocks off the star actor, he finds himself in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse with Inspector Ike, New York City’s Greatest Police Detective.
A lost “TV movie” from the 1970’s, INSPECTOR IKE is a warm-hearted satire, a celebration of detective serials, mixing visual gags, slapstick, gross food, and heartfelt emotion, featuring a rogue’s gallery of NYC’s best comedians carried out with a deadpan absurdist sensibility inspired by COLUMBO and THE NAKED GUN.
“I do no penance in order to reach Heaven. I am not very pious either. But I am here, doing the only work I can offer to God, without shame: my poetry.”
Adapted from Octavio Paz’s The Traps of Faith, I, THE WORST OF ALL stars Assumpta Serna as Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz, a real-life nun in 17th century Mexico who, having been a poet, a playwright, a philosopher and a composer, is still widely considered the most prolific author of the colonial era. Bemberg’s film details Sister Juana’s persecution at the hands of the Archbishop of Mexico (Lautaro Murua), using the Spanish Inquisition as a lens by which too indict more contemporary misogyny and homophobia within Latin America.
Bemberg’s final work was misrepresented by distributors at the time of its release; vintage VHS packaging quotes the Boston Globe as follows: “Lesbian passion SEETHING behind convent walls… Engrossing, Enriching & Elegant!” Nevertheless, I, THE WORST OF ALL was Argentina’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Film of 1991. Ripe for rediscovery, it is a lovingly detailed and introspective historical drama that rewards patient viewing in its analysis of against-the-wall feminism.
“A biopic that apprehends there is no unriddling how genius is made, only observing with delight a mind that receives all of the world’s pleasures and pains through the screen of an animating knowledge. to write is a fervid, inexplicable compulsion that need find its outlet and languishes without” —Film critic Kit Duckworth
“An erotically charged, impassioned work. Assumpta Serna is luminous!” —The Village Voice
“Charged with an ambiguity and an irony that is electrifying… Bristles with a spirit of feminism and has us pondering its inescapable implications for the Roman Catholic Church today: what of the status of its women, of freedom of expression and intellectual pursuit?” —Los Angeles Times
In 13th century France, a Dominican Friar descends upon an Edenic village on orders from the Vatican to root out heretics in the countryside. There is little evidence of such heresy to motivate the hunt, but so sayeth the good book, seek and ye shall find. News of a “healing woman” practicing homeopathic medicine (and her practice’s provenance in the local legend of a saintly greyhound) disturbs the friar, and his subsequent confrontations with the healer begin a gentle philosophical march into the nature of faith and its many means of expression. Brooding on the peripheries are struggles of power, secular and otherwise, which are dissected for their tendencies to contradict and align when convenient.
SORCERESS is the collaboration of two filmmakers; Pamela Berger and Suzanne Schiffman. Pamela Berger is a medievalist specializing in iconography. She teaches film and medieval art at Boston College, and has directed two other films, The Imported Bridegroom and Killian’s Chronicles. Suzanne Schiffman was a behind-the-scenes powerhouse of the French New Wave, serving as a script-supervisor for Godard, writing numerous films for Truffaut (Day for Night, The Last Metro, among others) and collaborating closely with Rivette throughout his career, providing the scenario for many of his films and co-directing Out 1.
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
A family’s flat tire on a barren stretch of road, with only a diner dotting the landscape, leads them to Granny, the seemingly nice old woman who runs the establishment.
Released in 2004, SKINNED DEEP plays like a surreal riff on THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE from an alternate dimension. It follows a family on a cross country road trip who stumbes into a hellish diner run by ‘the Surgeon General’ and his nightmare family, including ‘Brian’ (who has a massive cranium) and ‘Plates’ – a maniac who throws….plates – played by Warwick Davis.
Clearly crafted with a lot of love and care, SKINNED DEEP is mandatory midnight viewing for slasher fans.
A secret organization of ruthless criminals known as The Vampires haunts the streets and ballrooms of Paris. Journalist Philippe Guérande seeks to unravel their nefarious plot. At the center of it all stands the mysterious and elusive muse to the criminals, Irma Vep, brought to life with a dangerously seductive glamour by the legendary Musidora.
Released in its day as 10 “episodes” over the course of 7 months, Les Vampires is now typically shown in marathon format—a drawn-out affair clocking in at 7 hours, by turns tedious and exhilarating. Its plotting is byzantine, consisting of reversals of identity and double- and triple-crosses, straining logic in deference to the theatricality of a given scenario.
Olivier Assayas has once again renewed interest in this classic of serialized cinema with the enormously entertaining mini-series revamp of his 1996 film Irma Vep. If cinema is truly in crisis, as Assayas enthusiastically proclaims (he promises this is good news), then perhaps a means of diagnosing its illness can be found in searching the images and modes of its past that still haunt us today. Though Irma Vep’s series run is now complete, those uninitiated to Feuillade’s vision are likely eager to spend more time within this fantastical world. With this in mind, Spectacle is pleased to present a marathon screening of Les Vampires, with a soundtrack composed of original works from local artists and friends of the theater.
After obliterating a fighter jet and its pilot, a mysterious flying object stalks a nearby island and its inhabitants: a young couple manning the lighthouse, and two visiting scuba divers. The craft jams all communications, making the nearby military installation unable to offer any help or deduce the intentions of this uninvited guest. The ship interacts with these poor trapped souls like a child wielding a magnifying glass over ants, possibly not realizing the violent effects of its own actions, making escape from the island a nightmare.
Released the same year as Spielberg’s CLOSE ENCOUNTERS and another movie about wars in stars (or something like that), FOES was written and directed by a young John Coats. Coats also did the special effects and appears on screen as Larry, the lighthouse operator. While this would be his only directorial credit, Coats went on to have a prolific career as a visual effects artist with credits including: RAMBO III, AUSTIN POWERS: THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME, UHF, and WHITE CHICKS. With that career in mind, one can look at FOES as the auteur triumph that it is: the creation of a young artist working with what they had at their disposal. An incredible achievement for such a low budget. It’s a shame that Coats did not go on to direct more features, as this is a rather remarkable freshmen effort.
Shot around the Anacapa island off the coast of southern California, the location is one of the biggest stars in this film. Coats combines stunning helicopter shots with dazzling special effects to create a vibe that is solely FOES.
“The Tricontinental cinema must infiltrate the conventional cinema and blow it up.” – Glauber Rocha
Shot on location in a highly stylized high-contrast black & white, Glauber Rocha’s debut film, BARRAVENTO (1962) tells the tragic tale of a man who tries to liberate his people from the mystical Candomblé religion, which he recognizes an oppressive tool of social and political control.
Screening in a new restoration. Special thanks to Kino Lorber.
Screening with: ENTRE O MAR E O TENDAL
Dir. Alexandre Robatto Filho, 1953
21 mins. Brazil.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.
Dental surgeon Alexandre Robatto Filho had been filming documentary shorts in Salvador since the 1930s, but it was with ENTRE O MAR E O TENDAL that he refined and developed his authentic style. Shot in the Chega Nego and Carimbamba beaches, this short portrays the daily work of a fishing community as they catch xaréu fish (Caranx hippos).
“It’s better than sex. It’s better than love.” It’s cinema! Or CINEMANIA, to be exact. Stephen Kijak and Angela Christlieb’s documentary follows five film-obsessed New Yorkers in their daily trevails as they struggle to fit as many films as possible into a single day (3-6 is the average number). From spending their unemployment checks on movie tickets to surviving off meat-heavy, constipating diets (it reduces mid-screening bathroom visits), to hoarding stacks of old program notes, CINEMANIA is as vivid a portrait of what it means to be a film-lover as you can find on screen. As the film celebrates its 20th anniversary, we’re happy to host two of the film’s subjects on 10/23 to give their differing, and sometimes contentious, opinions on the film.
“I don’t go to weddings; I don’t go to funerals; I don’t visit people in the hospital if I have a screening to go to.”
“These are not crazy people. Maladjusted and obsessed, yes, but who’s to say what normal is? I think it makes more sense to see movies all day than to golf, play video games or gamble” – Roger Ebert
“There is not sufficient evidence for the non-existence of the city of Chronopolis. On the contrary, dreams and manuscripts similarly conclude that the history of this city is a history of eternity and desire. Despite the monotony of immortality, they live in expectation; a turning point will occur during a momentary encounter with a human being. This moment is, in fact, being prepared for.”
SURVIVAL RESEARCH LABS: SELECTED VIDEO WORKS
Founded in 1978 by inventor and engineer Mark Pauline, Survival Research Laboratories bring the concept of Industrial Performance Art to its most logical and extreme end. The bodies in a typical SRL happening are not breathing, but they’re certainly alive. Weapons-grade robotics and fresh carcasses find themselves engaged in a dangerous, cacophonous marriage of flesh, fire, steel, blood, oil, and electrocution. Tonight the field is filled with smoke, cannonballs, shattered glass, and hypnotized excruciating screams. The only institution that does mechano-mortal combat better is the U.S. Military.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 10 – 7:30 PM SATURDAY, JANUARY 14 – 7:30 PM MONDAY, JANUARY 23 – 7:30 PM
This fascinating political look at a little-known chapter in women’s history tells the story of “Jane,” the Chicago-based women’s health group who performed nearly 12,000 safe illegal abortions between 1969 and 1973 with no formal medical training.
Screening with: WITH A VENGEANCE: THE FIGHT FOR REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM
dir. Lori Hiris, 1989
40 min, United States.
In English.
This urgent and timely film is a history of the struggle for reproductive freedom since the 1960s, reflecting the wider history of the contemporary women’s movement. WITH A VENGEANCE is an empowering look at the strength and breadth of the current women’s movement which asks why current battles resemble those of the 60s. Rare archival footage and interviews with early abortion rights activists, including members of Redstockings and the JANE Collective, are intercut with young women who testify to the need for multi-racial grassroots coalitions. Flo Kennedy and Byllye Avery exemplify African American women’s roles as leaders, making connections between racism, reproductive freedom and healthcare for the poor.
A deliberately-paced dark comedy/murder mystery whodunit which begins as a tale of class struggle when a group of three wealthy land-developers try pressuring a young postman and his handicapped mother (played by Chabrol’s real-life wife) to sell their family home. Filled with conspiracy, blackmail and pranks gone too far, POULET AU VINAIGRE is an indictment of the wealthy starring an eccentric ensemble cast, each with their own duplicitous intentions.
Jumping between Paris and London as it traces the lives of two young women (Pascal Ogier and Leonie Mellinger) as they muse about ghosts and memories, Ken McMullen’s Ghost Dance falls somewhere between Celine and Julie Go Boating and San Soleil in its investigation into Jacques Derrida’s phantasmagoric philosophy. Though intellectually rigorous, the film maintains a humorous tone, balancing heady ideas alongside entrancing visuals and witty dialogue.
On a dark and stormy night, while his family are away, two strangers ring George Manning’s doorbell. He probably shouldn’t have answered it, he really shouldn’t have invited them in, and he definitely shouldn’t have slept with them. Now George must fight for his life and escape their DEATH GAME…
Staring academy award-nominated actors Sondra Locke and Seymour Cassel, DEATH GAME is a home invasion fever dream about a man’s poor decision-making.
Off-screen tension between neophyte director Peter Traynor and actors Locke and Cassel added organic chaos to the scripted mania. Producer Larry Spiegel agreed, saying that “the onscreen madness of DEATH GAME was fueled by the behind-the-scenes volatility.” Traynor’s inexperience as a director frustrated the cast, with Locke writing, “whenever the director didn’t know exactly what he was doing, which was all the time, he would suggest that either Colleen or I eat something or break something.” This sentiment was likely shared with actor, Seymour Cassel, who refused to loop his lines in post-production after filming a particularly brutal food-based scene. Cinematographer David Worth ultimately lent his voice to the film by painstakingly dubbing all of Cassel’s lines himself.
Eli Roth later remade the film, KNOCK KNOCK (2015), which was executive produced by DEATH GAME director Peter Traynor and lead actors Sondra Lock and Colleen Camp.
In the miserable Northeastern Brazil, a ruthless land Baron wants to throw a poor farming community out of their land. They unite in an attempt to overthrow the Baron and win back their freedom.
One of the zaniest Brazilian musicals is directed by one of the greatest film composers of Brazilian cinema. The film played the NYFF in 1974, but has since received little attention outside Brazil, where it has become a kind of cult hit over the last 20 years. The music is wonderful, and the campy aesthetics feel like nothing out of Brazilian cinema from this period.
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.
A mythic portrait of Elvis Presley (Jacob Snovel) and those in his orbit—particularly his wife Priscilla (Cate Jones)—during the weeks that led to his television comeback special in 1968. Haunted by surreal visions and ridden with self-doubt, the listless King of Rock ‘n Roll quarrels with his management, friends and family on the Graceland estate before a sudden tabloid claim of a bastard son sends him on an existential road trip.
From there, writer/director Mickey Reece conjures an entrancing journey that ruminates on the enigma of celebrity, the profundity of progeny, and the anxieties of art, while Joe Cappa’s stark black and white cinematography envelops the outstanding ensemble cast in a dreamlike glow that is unlike any Elvis flick you’ve ever encountered.
A CASE OF MIMICRY: SHORTS BY ANAHITA RAZMI
Anahita Razmi, 2004–2020
Germany, England, Iran. 55 min
In EnglishSUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 – 7:30 PM SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 – 5 PM WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 – 7:30 PM
GET YOUR TICKETS!
Anahita Razmi is a video and performance artist based between Berlin, Germany, and London UK. Her films generate cognitive dissonance and question mainstream assumptions about culture, identity, and spirituality. Razmi uses tropes, the collective unconscious, and objects of national and cultural importance in a rather tongue-in-cheek way to elicit laughter and insight. In these films, she removes the traditional meaning of cultural symbols and instead employs new ideas, contexts, and situations onto them. This video series provides an overview of her works from the last two decades which have been shown across the world at galleries and institutions such as: Carbon 12, Dubai, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Museo Jumex, Mexico, The National Art Center, Tokyo, and Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Germany.
This program of shorts by Anahita Razmi will feature the following pieces from 2004 to 2020, spanning the last twenty years of her career:
How your Veil can help you in the Case of an Earthquake (Lesson 1-8) is a video about a big earthquake in the region of Bam, Iran in December 2003. In the video, the Islamic veil – in this case, a “chador” – is used as a functional object. Shot in high contrast black and white, the video shows a rigorous instruction in eight steps on how to use your veil as a lifesaver in the case of an earthquake: a dry run, that is reminiscent of stewardess instructions.
AAAAAAAAAAAH merges a selection of different audio “AAAAAAAAAH”-extracts taken from pop songs and Islamic “azans” (call to prayer).
Here Scripts dives into representational values, equations and statements are dropped into uncertainty: as a video mashup, the work is juggling with notions of place and context, onsite vs offsite, narration vs construction, here vs elsewhere.
Scroll stock, pluck stock, click stock, drum stock, tap stock, rattle stock focuses on hand movements and technological devices, composing a choreography using online stock footage videos of scrolling hands and fingers.
White Wall Tehran is a very short video shot In January 2007 where Ramzi was stopped by the Iranian revolution guard on the streets in Tehran, because she had apparently been filming them with her video camera. They took her in and erased 27 seconds of her video by filming the white inner wall of their headquarters. The erasure is now the production of the artwork.
PARTIES uses black-and-white versions of logos and banners belonging to past and current Iranian political parties and groups, set to a snapping/clapping beat.
Middle East Coast West Coast is re-enacting the video “East Coast West Coast” (1969) by Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. In the original video, Holt and Smithson improvise a conversation based on stereotypical and opposing positions of US East Coast and West Coast lifestyle, art, and artists. Holt assumes the role of an intellectual, conceptual artist from New York, while Smithson plays the laid-back Californian driven by feelings and instinct.
Founded in 1978 by inventor and engineer Mark Pauline, Survival Research Laboratories bring the concept of Industrial Performance Art to its most logical and extreme end. The bodies in a typical SRL happening are not breathing, but they’re certainly alive. Weapons-grade robotics and fresh carcasses find themselves engaged in a dangerous, cacophonous marriage of flesh, fire, steel, blood, oil, and electrocution. Tonight the field is filled with smoke, cannonballs, shattered glass, and hypnotized excruciating screams. The only institution that does mechano-mortal combat better is the U.S. Military.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 – 10 PM SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 – 5 PM SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 – 7:30 PM FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – 10 PM
“One of underground digital cinema’s best-kept secrets: a prankster punk, an ass-kicking rebel priest.”
—Olaf Moeller, Film Comment
“Very likely the world’s most prolific major filmmaker, tethered to no genre or tradition except his own commitment to radical cinema’s capacity to change audiences.”
—Robert Koehler, Variety
With 52 features and 150+ shorts to his name, some of which were shot in a single day, the work of poet/musician/filmmaker Khavn De La Cruz is so voluminous and eclectic as to defy classification. From families that eat soil to kids that smoke cigarettes and fuck geese to innocent orphans caught up in historical massacres, the only guarantee that comes when you watch a movie by Khavn is that you’re going to get your senses rocked and your world turned upside down. These are films that embrace their own abrasive edges, delighting in imperfection as a symbol of artistic freedom and an iconoclastic struggle against the stifling order of things. More than characters or plots, Khavn builds his films on music, color, and grotesque non sequiturs, taking any and every opportunity to deviate from the expected and indulge in whatever odd detail or sequence strikes his fancy. With the Mad Max production design of ALIPATO and the aggressive transgressiveness of his lo-fi digital cinematography, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that his films have often been labeled as punk. Yet there’s a sensitivity and patience in these films, a contemplative openness to portraying the world in all its documentary messiness, that goes beyond any labels.
We’re proud to present a retrospective of his work, even if it is just a smattering of his total output, and will be showing five films throughout the month: THE FAMILY THAT EATS SOIL; RUINED HEART: ANOTHER LOVE STORY BETWEEN A CRIMINAL AND A WHORE; ALIPATO: THE VERY BRIEF LIFE OF AN EMBER; BAMBOO DOGS; and BALANGIGA, along with a handful of shorts selected to accompany every feature. Wazak!
THE FAMILY THAT EATS SOIL
Dir. Khavn, 2005
The Philippines. 75 min
In Tagalog and Spanish with English subtitles
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 – 7:30 PM MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 – 7:30 PM SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 – 7:30 PM SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 – 10 PM
“Soil again? Soil for breakfast, soil for lunch, soil for dinner. Even for snacks. Don’t tell me we’ll be having soil on my first birthday.”
An iconoclastic take-down of the Filipino family unit delivered in a spasm of manic gonzo energy, THE FAMILY THAT EATS SOIL is so vicious in its satire that at one point even the subtitles stop translating what characters are saying and start making fun of them instead. Based on Khavn’s prose poem of the same name, the titular family is just your average middle class five person unit – Dad sneaks into the hospital and turns cancerous children into vegetables, Mom hosts a reality show where she tours brothels and drug dens, Sis can’t stop thinking of rape, Bro tortures immigrants, and Baby smokes cigarettes and frequents cock fights.
“A hyper-condensed punk-trash take on Phillipine family politics. At times it plays like a de-Pasoliniized version of Takashi Miike’s Visitor Q, at others like an absurdist experimental Bomba flick. Yet it always feels like cinema is about to end and only no-holds-barred videomaking can save the world.”
—Olaf Moeller, Film Comment
Screening with:
GREASEMAN
Dir. Khavn, 2002
The Philippines. 13 min
In Tagalog with English subtitles
PORNOMAN
Dir. Khavn
The Philippines. 3 min
In Tagalog with English subtitles
THE PUSHCART FAMILY
Dir. Khavn
The Philippines. 4 min
In Tagalog with English subtitles
RUINED HEART: ANOTHER LOVE STORY BETWEEN A CRIMINAL AND A WHORE
Dir. Khavn, 2014
The Philippines. 73 min
In Tagalog with English subtitles
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 – 7:30 PM SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 – 7:30 PM THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 – 7:30 PM WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 – 10 PM TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 – 10 PM
A punk noir opera lensed by Christopher Doyle, starring Tadanobu Asano, and set to the music of Stereo Total, RUINED HEART manages to be one of Khavn’s most ambitious and high-profile works without sacrificing any of his gonzo, free-form, DIY energy. As the title suggests, the set-up is purely archetypical, a gangster and his moll piss off the boss and have to hit the road, so much so that the characters are even introduced simply by generic monikers instead of names. Yet you don’t go watch a film by Khavn for the plot, you go for the visual poetry and upbeat spirit of rebellion and this generic template is an apt structure for a series of wild music numbers shot in a woozy, drunken camera-style and adorned with all sorts of decadent, punk-ish production design.
Screening with:
BARONG BROTHERS
Dir. Khavn
The Philippines. 10 min
In Tagalog with English subtitles
SMALL ALI
Dir. Khavn
The Philippines. 8 min
In Tagalog with English subtitles
ALIPATO: THE VERY BRIEF LIFE OF AN EMBER
Dir. Khavn, 2016
The Philippines. 88 min
In Tagalog with English subtitles
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 – 5 PM THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 – 10 PM MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 – 10 PM SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 – 10 PM MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 – 7:30 PM
Long live children. Fucking hope of the country and other bullshit. We are the priests. We are the fucking castrators. We are the fucking blood of rats. We are the fucking sweat of roaches. Here classrooms are wasted if they aren’t turned into whorehouses and drug dens.
Mondomanila, 2025. A landscape dominated by tombstones and trash heaps. A gang of child criminals are out for a big score. When they get their chance, the job goes wrong of course and the boss ends up in jail. 30 years later and he’s on the streets again, but everything seems to be exactly as it is. Nothing ever changes in Mondomanila, the kids still spend their days smoking cigarettes and beating each other up while the cops still hang out in the back of a pig slaughterhouse-cum-brothel, stuffing their faces and taking graft. Khavn colors this all with a vibrant, kaleidoscopic production design that combines a documentary eye for real places and people with punk apocalyptic costumes that would feel at home in a Mad Max movie.
Screening with:
CAN & SLIPPERS
Dir. Khavn, 2005
The Philippines. 2 min
In Tagalog with English subtitles
A used can and a foot. A whole world and a garbage heap. All this and less in 2 minutes.
“It might be Khavn’s entire oeuvre’s symbolic focal point. Viewers might swoon over the bravura opening montage, be stunned by the realization that the film’s badass soccer player is actually a one-legged kid hobbling on crutches, and then be blown away when he bends it like Beckham, but there’s always a feeling that, for all it’s joy and playfulness, this is much closer to the ugly truth of the Pinoy condition then one would like to admit.”
—Olaf Moeller, Film Comment
RUGBY BOYZ
Dir. Khavn, 2006
The Philippines. 8 min
In Tagalog with English subtitles
BAMBOO DOGS
Dir. Khavn, 2018
The Philippines. 81 min
In Tagalog with English subtitles
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7 – 10 PM SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 – Midnight WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 – 10 PM MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 – 10 PM
Based on a real life 1995 execution of a group of prisoners at the hands of the police, BAMBOO DOGS crafts a sharp character study of the victims of this incident, shying away from the abrasive tone common to many of Khavn’s other works without blunting his ability to continually surprise. Set over the course of one long night, the film follows the prisoners as they are shuttled around Quezon City in the back of a police van while under the impression that their release is imminent. Khavn’s real masterstroke comes in the decision to depict this one fateful night as something rather ordinary and mundane, deflating most of the drama in favor of endless banter between criminals and cops about how great it is to be a gangster and the merits of circumcision. This is (not) a film by Khavn though, so expect some hypnagogic dream sequences and one hell of a musical number.
Screening with:
FILIPINIANA
Dir. Khavn, 2016
The Philippines, 13 minutes
In Tagalog with English subtitles
“history is a dead cow in a funnel pretending to be a detuned bassoon serenading the moon halved by expectations not so great that new emperors bow their decapitated heads but 3 cakes are always better than 3 cents in this madly turning world peeking pecking ducktards for a midnight snack on the run.”
—Khavn’s description of the film.
BALANGIGA: HOWLING WILDERNESS
Dir. Khavn, 2017
The Philippines. 112 min
In Tagalog with English subtitles
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – 7:30 PM WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 – 7:30 PM FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 – 7:30 PM SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 – 5 PM FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – 7:30 PM
Set in 1901 during the American occupation of the Philippines, BALANGIGA: HOWLING WILDERNESS, is a hallucinogenic western road trip through a violent landscape. Fleeing the town of Balangiga, the site of a real massacre by the Americans, 8 year old Kulas, his grandfather, their ox, and the orphaned toddler whom they rescued, encounter all sorts of surreal figures in the wilderness. From chronically masturbating shamans (experimental Filipino animator Roxlee in a cameo) to desperate Americans lost in the forest to swooping drone shots over-saturated colors, Khavn crafts a unique blend of brutality, absurdity, childish reverie, and desperation.
Screening with:
ULTIMO: DIFFERENT WAYS OF KILLING A NATIONAL HERO
Dir. Khavn, 2006
The Philippines. 6 min
In Tagalog with English subtitles
“Khavn’s poignant, black-and-white riff on Filipino national hero Jose Rizal is reflective of the director’s restless experimentation and unmistakable energy. Shot in Spain (the Philippines’ former colonizer) in about a week, the abstract string of scenes of play and contemplation has a thrown-together feel but deepens with the intricate flamenco guitar score (the movie’s is otherwise silent) and the intertitles of Rizal’s proud-martyr verse.”
—Nicolas Rapold, Film Comment
Miami, 1984. At the scene of a grizzly murder, news reporter Fran Hudson discovers a connection between a Jonestown survivor and a TV executive’s missing son. The lead sends her deep into the madness of the jungle and face-to-face with Colonel Brian Horn’s cult-like cannibal army.
CUT AND RUN serves as the final film in Ruggero Deodato’s cannibal trilogy following LAST CANNIBAL WORLD (1977) and CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST(1980). After his first two films were condemned for their depictions of genuine animal cruelty, Deodato appears to have taken pity on his audience (which is to say that no animals were harmed in the making of this film). However, CUT AND RUN is hardly a ride on Disney’s Jungle Cruise; this film is the coked-up loved child of APOCALYPSE NOW (1979) and ZOMBI 2 (1979).
The film began its life as a script written by Wes Craven, but his version never saw the light of day. Deodato eventually picked up the project and cast longtime Craven collaborator Michael Berryman, hot off the set of HILLS HAVE EYES PART 2 (1984). Berryman is joined by genre all-stars Richard Lynch, Lisa Blout, Barbara Magnolfi, and Karen Black.
THE WASHING MACHINE
(Vortice Mortale)
Dir. Ruggero Deodato, 1993.
Italy. 86 min
In English
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3 – Midnight MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 – 10 PM FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – Midnight FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 – 7:30 PM
Detective Stacev is called to investigate after three sisters discover a dismembered pimp in their washing machine. However, when the body goes missing, everyone’s a suspect. The detective puts it all on the line to untangle a web of secrets, seduction, and subterfuge or risks being left out to dry.
Don’t let the title fool you, THE WASHING MACHINE is not a killer appliance movie. Produced during the height of the erotic thriller boom of the late 80s and early 90s, THE WASHING MACHINE applies a typical giallo story to an erotic thriller framework. The result is a bizarre masterpiece dripping in questionable motivations, immoral characters, and insane twists. Accompanying the on-screen madness is an electrifying soundtrack by Goblin keyboardist, and longtime Deodato collaborator, Claudio Simonetti.
DIAL: HELP
Dir. Ruggero Deodato, 1988.
Italy. 94 min
In English
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 – Midnight SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 – Midnight SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 – Midnight FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 – 10 PM
A psychic finds herself tapping into the “energy” of a deceased phone operator. She also finds that her friends soon begin dying mysteriously. An investigator determines to track down the cause.
Rounding out our trio of Deodato films is this extremely wacky English language supernatural thriller, based on a story by frequent Argento collaborator Franco Ferrini (PHENOMENA, OPERA, DEMONS, DEMONS 2). It follows a British model (Charlotte Lewis) after her recent arrival in Rome. A psychic presence begins to stalk her as a series of grisly and increasingly bizarre telephone related murders occur. Bursting with over the top 80’s absurdity, creative FX, and a perfectly dated ‘funky’ soundtrack.
Peter Maguire (Ron Lea) is a white lawyer from Toronto, representing an unspecified indigenous tribe in rural Canada against an encroaching paper mill’s thirst for profit. Maguire is unsuccessful in keeping the company from building a road and clear-cutting their way through the tribe’s land, but his frustrations only manifest as platitudes and fantasies of revenge. That is, until the arrival of Arthur (Graham Greene), a mysterious native, who kidnaps the mill’s owner and drags both him and Maguire into the forest to enact the lawyer’s once empty threats. As the Wisakedjak—a trickster of indigenous folklore—Arthur’s unrelenting violence is doled out with a sardonic stoicism. His actions upon the mill’s owner mimicking the treatment of the trees and land by the loggers and paper mill.
With a screenplay based on the novel A Dream Like Mine by M.T. Kelly, Bugajski’s film places white liberal pacifism in the cross hairs, and questions if violence is necessary and moral in the face of capitalism, the state, and environmental destruction. The answers, and the difference between right and wrong, may not be so… CLEARCUT.
UR-MUSIG
Dir. Cyrill Schläpfer, 1993
Switzerland. 107 min
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 29 – 7:30 PM
Meaning “Primitive Music”, UR-MUSIG is a journey into the world of traditional Swiss folk music. Presented without comment or narration, the film focuses on the sounds of Central Switzerland and Appenzellerland; such as yodeling, the alpine blessing, the ringing of cowbells, and more. Visually augmented by the lush, gorgeous landscapes of the Alps as seen in every season of the year, each more staggeringly beautiful than then the next. Showcasing the inherent relationship between the film’s subjects’ musical expression and the land in which it inhabits. The film has gained a cult reputation after screening as a continuous Sunday matinee for 2 years in Zurich.
