At the dawn of the millennium, a time when it was likely far more fun and creatively stimulating to speculate on “the future,” the Digital Video (DV) format became the most accessible and inexpensive way to shoot and record footage. This new, scrappy, consumer-grade form of filmmaking resulted in celebrated directors like Spike Lee, Richard Linklater, Danny Boyle, and of course, David Lynch, providing some of their more experimental and chilling works. As our own future grows more incomprehensible by the day, Spectacle is proud to screen these three fuzzy, hypnagogic visions from the early 2000s: RED COCKROACHES, TRAGOS, and TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME KILLING MACHINE IN DAEHAKRO.
RED COCKROACHES
dir. Miguel Coyula, 2003
United States. 82 min.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13 – 7:30 PM WITH Q&A
SATURDAY, AUGUST 23 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 29 – MIDNIGHT
In what would be Miguel Coyula’s first feature production, RED COCKROACHES is a disturbing urban thriller made with a micro-modest budget of $2000. It’s the first in an auteurist trilogy stemming from Coyula’s transgressive approach to Cuban speculative fiction. Set in a near-future NYC plagued by acid rain and the invasive corporate rule of DNA21, Adam Zarrasky is just another awkward 20-something until his daily routine is upended by a lonely, beautiful woman on a subway platform. What begins like a scene out of a romantic comedy in this poisoned world quickly devolves, opening a hole of lost family secrets and unthinkable psychosexual horrors. Coyula develops a language of singular cinematic unease that must be seen to be believed – audiences will never look at ketchup the same way again. Featuring an in-person Q&A with director Miguel Coyula on August 13th!
CW: incest
Special Thanks to Alfredo Calvino, Miguel Coyula and Ross Snyder of Saturn’s Core
Undeniably inventive, visually stunning, a triumph of technology in the hands of a visionary
—Ronnie Scheib, Variety
TRAGOS
dir. Antero Alli, 2000
United States. 105 min.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 2 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, AUGUST 5 – 10:00 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 14 – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 18 – 10:00 PM
A CYBER NOIR WITCH HUNT
Following our retrospective on Antero Alli, we’re proud to screen another picture from his poetic imagination. TRAGOS continues in the footsteps of THE DRIVETIME and its anxious judgments towards the dial-up tech of the late 90s. Centered around a virtual reality server’s deadly potential after the mysterious death of technopagan Vivika (producer/art director/music composer Thia Alli), this shot-on-miniDV mystery was impressively produced in-house with a $7000 budget – further establishing Antero and Thia Alli as modest adepts in DIY narrative filmmaking.
One of the most “obscure FMV game” movies ever made!
–Evan Pincus, LB
an outsider art miracle
–erik reeds, LB
TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME KILLING MACHINE IN DAEHAKRO
dir. Nam Ki-woong, 2000
South Korea. 60 min.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 2 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, AUGUST 8 – MIDNIGHT
TUESDAY, AUGUST 19 – 10:00PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 23 – MIDNIGHT
With a translated title that’s as blunt and direct as it gets, TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME KILLING MACHINE IN DAEHAKRO is classic grindhouse sleaze distilled through a Y2K aesthetic. Lee So-woon stars in her first and only film role as a teenage girl given a second chance at life through brutal reconstruction. These new gifts propel her into a vengeful murder spree as she hunts for the perverse teacher (Kim Dae-tong) who killed her. Director Nam Ki-woong wore several hats when he made this picture, and his glowing DV cinematography paired with an entrancing trip-hop influenced score results in what might just be the coziest splatter movie in film history. Spectacle is proud to unleash one of the more operatic examples in extreme cinema to a new generation of tech-infused, bloodthirsty, sophisticated sickos.
The absolute garishness of early digital video pushed to its limit. I honestly kind of love this.
–COBRARocky, LB
One of those rare films who seems to be constant[ly] reinventing its forms, it remains one of the great found objects of the 00’s.
–Felipe Furtado, LB
Special Thanks to Youngin Lee and Kim Dohee of INDIESTORY INC.
