This November, Spectacle is proud to present the first-ever U.S. survey of Danish-born experimental filmmaker and artist Jytte Rex.

While she is rightly regarded as a major living artist in Europe with a CV of important feminist artworks dating back to the 1970s and longstanding gallery representation, Rex’s films have never been available to see in the United States. In hopes of remedying this blind spot, Spectacle offers New Yorkers a first-ever chance to see her noted features ISOLDE (1989) and MIRRORS OF THE PLANET (1992, which played as a one-off at Spectacle in 2013) plus more recent works like THE RIVER (2003), SILK ROAD (2004), and the newly subtitled THE GIRL WITH THE PLAIT (2005), alongside her most recent video SEARCH – LIMBO (2022). Many of these have been scanned and/or subtitled under Rex’s supervision for the purposes of this series.

From her freewheeling dual adaptation of Borges in THE MEMORIOUS, the cosmically focused ghost-story MIRRORS OF THE PLANET to her updated retelling of classic tragedy in ISOLDE, Rex’s is a cinema that flirts with death. At once baroque and gothic while also clinical and exacting, her films invite audiences into the headspaces of characters who are near death, perhaps already taking their first steps into the afterlife or, likelier still, somewhere in between. Embracing mystery and eschewing narrative conventions, Rex’s work is imbued with a Tarkovskian sensibility, featuring quotidian video-diaries, unsettling found-footage, and private fears drawn from a lifetime of looking. Rex’s keen musical palette profoundly attunes the viewer’s attention in montages and tableaux equal parts impossible to describe and to forget.

​​The essence of the film (MIRRORS OF THE PLANET) can be expressed with Dante’s words:

In the middle of the path through life
I found myself in the pitch-darkness halls in a forest
Lost from the way that was given to me.
– Jytte Rex

Special thanks to Jytte Rex, the Danish Film Institute, Kong Gulerod Film and Wilson Saplana Gallery.

MIRRORS OF THE PLANET + THE MEMORIOUS

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 2 – 7:30PM
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 18 – 7:30PM
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 28 – 7:30PM

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MIRRORS OF THE PLANET
(PLANETENS SPELJE)
dir. Jytte Rex, 1992
75 min. Denmark.
In Danish with English subtitles.

Described by the filmmaker as “an endless phantasy about birth, time, language, love, nature, death”, MIRRORS OF THE PLANET is a probing battery of philosophical inquiries, with black holes and rock formations re-etched in the idiom of a dissolving (or not?) relationship between astronomer Adam Morgenstern (Ole Lemmeke) and his unnamed colleague (Cher Guetze). There is no scientific certainty to Morgenstern’s work; the infinite cosmos become mere projections of his individual fears and refracted half-memories. Aside from a bone-deep romantic earnestness, what makes MIRRORS OF THE PLANET one of a kind is Rex’s collaboration with cinematographer Manuel Sellner, writing a slow-morphing spectrum of spectacular locations and Borgesian fata morganas in long, mesmerizing Steadicam takes. Words don’t just fail MIRRORS OF THE PLANET; the movie renders them useless.

screening with

THE MEMORIOUS
(DEN ERINDRENDE)
dir. Jytte Rex, 1985
39 min. Denmark.
In Danish with English subtitles.

A Mayan sorcerer, imprisoned and tortured, seeks to harness the power of a jaguar to escape his fate, while a recently paralyzed boy discovers he possesses the uncanny ability to remember everything and anything. Drawing from two stories by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1942’s Funes the Memorious and 1949’s The Writing of the God), Rex entwines both narratives into a poetic meditation on memory and the human longing to transcend suffering.

ISOLDE
dir. Jytte Rex, 1989
92 min. Denmark.
In Danish with English subtitles.

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 8 – 5:00PM
WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 26 – 7:30PM
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 30 – 7:30PM

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Riffing on the classic tragedy of Tristan and Isolde, Rex takes what interests her and leaves what doesn’t, resituating the character of Isolde as a dissatisfied middle-aged spouse rediscovering her sexuality in 1980s Copenhagen. Rex’s omnivorous interest in literature, sculpture and dance means she takes what might have been a conventional “woman begins to mentally unravel” plotline and transforms it into a profoundly lyrical meditation on femininity, guilt and responsibility, as it’s revealed Isolde’s spurned husband has hired a young man to murder her. Rex’s use of achingly beautiful symmetry and ominously scored long camera takes anticipates the even more formally finessed MIRROR OF THE PLANETS that would come a few years later.

SILK ROAD
(SILKEVEJEN)
dir. Jytte Rex, 2004
75 min. Denmark.
In Danish with English subtitles.

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 14 – 5:00PM
MONDAY NOVEMBER 24 – 7:30PM
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 29 – 5:00PM

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One of Rex’s most celebrated and enigmatic 21st century films, SILK ROAD is preoccupied with the threshold between life and death. Christine, a renaissance-era painting restorer with a deep connection to the work of Sofonisba Anguissola, is seriously ill. Lying in a sterile hospital bed, drifting in and out of consciousness, a lifetime of memories jolts Christine through afterlife-adjacent visions, and confronts her with spectres of her past. In dialogue with her dead husband, and under the watchful eye of her father, Rex’s heroine flows through the in-between, and among images of biblical proportions.

screening with

SEARCH-LIMBO
dir. Jytte Rex, 2022
8 min. Denmark.
No dialogue.

THE RIVER + THE GIRL WITH THE PLAIT

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 9 – 5:00PM
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 25 – 7:30PM
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 28 – 5:00PM

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THE RIVER
(FLODEN)
dir. Jytte Rex, 2003
23 min. Denmark.
In Danish with English subtitles.

Making free use of voiceover narration and overlaid images, Rex turns the travelogue format inside out in THE RIVER, which teases out and taxonomizes various potential meanings of the titular “river image” (as described by Rex.) There are cracks to blind areas of loss and oblivion, world fires and floods – and to an oasis of dreams, fantasies and myths. As in all of Rex’s work (whether moving-image based or otherwise), images materialize in the borderlands between mind and world.

screening with

THE GIRL WITH THE PLAIT
(PIGEN NED FLETNINGEN)
dir. Jytte Rex, 2005
40 min. Denmark.
In Danish with English subtitles.

THE GIRL WITH THE PLAIT is a memory film about Copenhagen, in which a six-year-old girl — the director’s alter ego — revisits some of the magical places of her childhood and speaks with the people she meets along the way.

JYTTE REX is an accomplished Danish artist, writer and film director. Rex studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in the early 70ties and was at the forefront of the Scandinavian feminist arts movement. Throughout her extensive career she has worked with various media, performances, videowork, sculptures and photography. Often her images appear in multiple collages and settings, changing their narrative and agency. Jytte Rex has a unique position in Danish film, literature, and art history. Her works are avant-garde and poetic with stories often carried by a feminist commitment. For decades she focused on her international career as a film director, receiving both the Eckersbergs Medal and the same year the Danish Arts Foundation’s lifetime honor. She received the Skovgaard Medal in 2004 and the Thorvaldsen Medal in 2005. In recent decades museums around the world have rediscovered her great feminist artistic practice and her works are represented in the collections of The National Gallery of Denmark, Aros – Museum of Contemporary Art, KUNSTEN – Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, Ny Carlsbergfondet, Vejle Art Museum, Art Museum Brandts, the National Photography Museum.

For 35 years, Olaf Ittenbach has been one of Germany’s most resourceful filmmakers and a pioneer in shot-on-video horror and splatter. He used funds from his work as a dental technician for his debut feature, the Spectacle classic BLACK PAST.

Ittenbach has always had an eye/ear for relentless, shrieking pain. He takes clear influence from canon classics like THE EVIL DEAD, HELLRAISER, and DEAD ALIVE while adapting entirely new ways of seeing through the most primitive of camera tech, juxtaposed with detailed phantasmaGORical violence. His morbidly meticulous gore effects are made with clear passion—and as a direct response to the German government’s historically draconian views on violent movies. The man has even lent his SFX talents to fellow German directors like Timo Rose and cinema bad boy Uwe Boll.

This Spectober, Spectacle is proud to showcase three utterly depraved and infernal works from one of underground horror’s most prolific voices: THE BURNING MOON, PREMUTOS: THE FALLEN ANGEL, and NO REASON.

THE BURNING MOON
Dir. Olaf Ittenbach, 1992
Germany, 98 min.
In German with English Subtitles

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4 – 5PM
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 12 – 7:30PM
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22 – 10PM
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31 – 10PM

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WHEN THE MOON IS FULL, THE BLOOD TIDE RISES

Widely regarded as Ittenbach’s masterpiece, this is one of the strangest horror anthologies ever made. Produced not long after BLACK PAST, Ittenbach writes, directs, and co-stars, playing an ultra-dirtbag fictionalized version of himself, the delinquent Peter. When he isn’t flunking classes or taking part in ultra-violent teenage gang wars, he’s stuck babysitting his little sister. He decides to torment her with two twisted tales: one about a woman on a blind date from hell, the other about a serial killer priest who hopes to literally raise Hell. The picture is infamous for its deranged maximalist finale, a Dante’s Inferno-like descent into the putrid. THE BURNING MOON is a must-see for folks who yearn for homemade gore in their horror.

Taking a trip into hell on a skateboard that’s rolling over shattered glass and broken bones.
–Bob McCully, creator/host of the Split Your Head podcast

This movie will purify you.
–Annie Choi, Bleeding Skull

Special thanks to AGFA.

PREMUTOS: THE FALLEN ANGEL
Dir. Olaf Ittenbach, 1997
Germany, 115 min.
In German with English Subtitles

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8 – 10PM
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18 – 10PM
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23 – 730PM
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31 – 730PM

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Before Lucifer… there was PREMUTOS

For his third film, Ittenbach and team were given the prestigious opportunity to film on 16mm. The results are the kind of nasty, lush spectacle that would make even g enre legends like Peter Jackson and Clive Barker blush. Ittenbach directs, writes, and stars, playing yet another German boy who accidentally unleashes satanic horrors. This time around, however, the humans attempt to fight back, creating a gleeful bloodbath that rivals the likes of DEAD ALIVE. PREMUTOS is the closest thing Ittenbach’s made to an epic.

139 Dead Bodies; 75 Zombies; 17 Exploding Heads; 6 Decapitations; 2 Breasts; 6 Crucifixions; 3 Burning Houses; 1 Exploding Car
–Brewce Longo, Bloodsick Productions

NO REASON
Dir. Olaf Ittenbach, 2010
Germany, 74 min.
In German with English Subtitles

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10 – MIDNIGHT
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16 – 10PM
MONDAY, OCTOBER 20 – 10PM
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31 – MIDNIGHT

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After experimenting in English-language productions for two films, Olaf Ittenbach returned to Germany to make the strangest movie of his career. NO REASON stars Irene Holzfurtner as the tormented Jennifer, an ordinary housewife living an ordinary day until mid-bath, she mysteriously descends into a bloodsoaked, sadistic underworld, guided by a Cthulhu-masked individual. What begins as a series of morbid tests devolves into a dive into Jennifer’s unreliable psyche. A blast of psychological “woman in trouble” pulp and cosmic horror, NO REASON takes Ittenbach’s usual narrative intrigue of damaged characters seeking truth through dismemberment and pushes it to its limit.

Special Thanks to Stephen Biro and Suzie from Unearthed Films

SUNDAY AUGUST 17th – 730 PM – ONE NIGHT ONLY! LIVE SCORE BY JAKE PEPPER AND ZACH KOEBER – PLAYED BACK TO BACK WITH A 10-MINUTE INTERMISSION. THIS WILL SELL OUT. 

SPECIAL EVENT TICKETS (8/17)

Following their debut as a duo in May, last month’s performance of improv music virtuosos Jack Pepper and Zach Koeber sold out at Spectacle. We are proud to give Jake and Zach a full deserved encore for their new live scores of two Spectacle silent classics, AFTER DEATH and THE DYING SWAN

AFTER DEATH
dir. Yevgeni Bauer, 1915
Russia, 46 min.
Silent with Russian intertitles and English Subtitles

Based on a novella by Ivan Turgenev, AFTER DEATH is arguably cinema’s first foray into gothic romance. The pitifully alienated Andrei (Vitold Polonsky) becomes infatuated with enigmatic actress Zoia (Vera Karalli), and then her sudden passing sends him into a pit of obsessive despair. Presented initially as a melodrama before distinctly veering into the supernatural and psychological, AFTER DEATH is an early testament to the ways film illustrates the complex feelings around loss and dwelling on what could have been.

THE DYING SWAN
dir. Yevgeni Bauer, 1917
Russia, 49 min.
Silent with Russian intertitles and English Subtitles

A few years later, Bauer, Polonsky, and Karalli reunited for another morbid tale of obsession and fame. Written by Russian actress Zoya Barantsevich, THE DYING SWAN follows the tragic trajectory of mute ballet dancer Gizella (Karalli) as she encounters heartbreak, breakthroughs in fame, and admirers with pernicious motives. Released in the twilight of Bauer’s career, THE DYING SWAN is also considered his most noteworthy achievement for its gaze into the darker side of inspiration and desire.
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Jake Pepper and Zach Koeber make up half of Ace Bandage, the jam-heavy rock band based in Brooklyn. Their fondness of improvisation and vast knowledge of timbral music allows them to shift seamlessly through varied sonic palettes. Pepper also performed in Brooklyn synth punk outfit Future Punx, while Koeber got his start in the local scene as one-third of Archie Pelago, and he currently collaborates with deep house producer Max in the World. Both Jake and Zach have also guest DJ’d on the prestigious independent station The Lot Radio.

Special thanks to George Schmalz and Kino Lorber.

This July, in the heart of Brooklyn, we here at Spectacle are celebrating the region’s great on-the-go meal: the pizza pie. The recent release of Tate Hoffmaster’s tromadjacent horror comedy riot PIZZA GUY 8 gives us as good an excuse as any to unearth other films dedicated to our beloved slice. Delivered hot and ready to your favorite goth bodega microcinema are PIZZA GUY 8, the ‘90s hangout comedy TELLING YOU, and the revival of the Spectacle classic PIZZA, BIRA, FASSO.

PIZZA GUY 8
Dir. Tate Hoffmaster, 2025
United States. 93 min.
In English.

THURSDAY, JULY 10 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 18 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 22 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JULY 26 – 5 PM (w/Q&A)

SPECIAL EVENT TICKETS (7/26)

GENERAL ADMISSION TICKETS

The incompetence of a zit-festooned, cannabis-obsessed pizza delivery guy (writer/director Tate Hoffmaster) quickly turns into a delirious meta-heavy bloodbath.

Grotesquely shot on video by Dylan Mars Greenberg (director of last year’s Spectacle smash SPIRIT RISER) and co-edited by Brewce Longo of Bloodsick Productions, PIZZA GUY 8 is this year’s genre-bending, gut-busting contribution to the Northeast’s recent boom in DIY lo-fi horror filmmaking madness. Featuring an in-person Q&A with Hoffmaster and Greenberg!

PIZZA, BIRRA, FASO
Dir. Adrián Caetano and Bruno Stagnaro, 1997
Argentina. 92 min.
Spanish with English Subtitles.

THURSDAY, JULY 3 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JULY 12 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 31 – 10 PM

GENERAL ADMISSION TICKETS

FOUR FRIENDS. ONE CITY. ONLY ONE WAY OUT.

Making a triumphant return to Spectacle after screening back in 2017, PIZZA, BIRRA, FASO evokes the brutal realism of the Spanish Cine Quinqui movement through the lens of impoverished youths on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. As picturesque as it is tragic, on top of being one of Argentina’s crime gems, it contains one of cinema’s purest depictions of catching up with your homie over a plain slice.

Special Thanks to Bruno Stagnaro.

TELLING YOU
Dir. Robert DeFranco, 1998
United States. 94 min.
In English.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 2 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 9 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 18 – 5 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 25 – 7:30 PM

GENERAL ADMISSION TICKETS

THEY’VE GOT CHARM. THEY’VE GOT STYLE. THEY’VE GOT ONE-TRACK MINDS!

Peter Facinelli and Dash Mihok play two nice Long Island boys who watch the world go by from behind a pizza counter with a varied cast of weirdo customers (featuring a stunning highlight from legendary character actor Richard Libertini as the quirky vagabond Mr. P) and neglectful tough guy Italian bosses. While the film never got a true distribution chance, the independently funded TELLING YOU contains the slice-of-life wit that reflects the work of Richard Linklater and Kevin Smith at their funniest and most insightful. Also assisted by Jennifer Love Hewitt and Matthew Lillard in expressively comedic roles, TELLING YOU is another ‘90s gem deserving of a cult revaluation.

Special Thanks to Robert DeFranco and Tiffany Greenwood of SWANK.

Every month is Pride month at Spectacle, but in June 2025 we are nonetheless honored to screen two films by novelist and director Abdellah Taïa, the first openly gay filmmaker from Morocco. This series includes a limited engagement of Taïa’s (as of yet undistributed) new feature CABO NEGRO, plus screenings of his notorious – and still underappreciated – autobiographical drama SALVATION ARMY, made a decade earlier. Taïa will join us for remote Q+As on June 8 (SALVATION ARMY) and June 13 (CABO NEGRO).

“My neuroses are, at some level, what we might call my creativity. But what I produce artistically does not help me in any way in my real life. Nothing is resolved. Everything is complex, complicated. I sincerely believe that there is only love to heal and soothe troubled souls… To me, (books and films) have the same source: the wonderful Egyptian films that I discovered with my family on Moroccan television during my childhood. Everything comes from images. For years, my brain has been structured from images of films I thought and rethought, in a manner at once naïve and serious. I will continue to write books inspired by images — and by my neuroses, of course.” – Abdellah Taïa, The New York Times

SALVATION ARMY
(L’ARMEE DE SALUT)
dir. Abdellah Taïa, 2014
France/Morocco. 80 min.
In French and Arabic with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, JUNE 2 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, JUNE 8 – 5 PM followed by Q+A with Abdellah Taïa
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 27 – 5 PM

TICKETS / Q+A TICKETS

Abdellah is a young gay man navigating the sexual, racial and political climate of Morocco. Growing up in a large family in a working-class neighborhood, Abdellah is caught between a distant father, an authoritarian mother, an older brother whom he adores and a handful of predatory older men, in a society that denies his homosexuality. As a college student, Abdellah moves to Geneva and while faced with the new possibilities of freedom, he grapples with the loss of his homeland.

Adapted directly from Taïa’s eponymous 2009 novel, SALVATION ARMY is a quietly confrontational debut that draws explicitly from the novelist-filmmaker’s experience as trauma survivor and closeted gay man in Morocco. Shot by legendary cinematographer Agnès Godard (with whom Taïa determined to collaborate after seeing her work on Claire Denis’ NENETTE AND BONI), it also measures the consequences of abuse – whether from family or from once-trusted elder role model figures – with a surprisingly restrained style. Taïa’s refusal to sentimentalize or sensationalize makes SALVATION ARMY all the more searing in its muted depiction of a young man’s forbidden coming of age.

“When I was a teenager, any signs of a well-accepted homosexuality were absent from real life and from Arab movies… Homosexuality was constantly associated with mental illness, social shame, a sin. To survive I had to make up my own cultural codes. I had to convince myself I had that right. The exclusion and the solitude were not always easy to bear. Much later, at the age of twenty, I discovered secondary characters who bore some signs of homosexuality in movies by Youssef Chahine, Salah Abou Seif or Yousry Nassrallah. But they were not totally in the light. Something was missing… In the collective Arab mind, there is no homosexual hero.” – Abdellah Taïa

CABO NEGRO
dir. Abdellah Taïa, 2024
France/Morocco. 74 min.
In French and Arabic with English subtitles.

THURSDAY, JUNE 5 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 13 – 5 PM followed by Q+A with Abdellah Taïa
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 28 – 5 PM

TICKETS / Q+A TICKETS

Ten years and several novels after SALVATION ARMY, Taïa stepped behind the camera again to create a slow-burning drama that similarly engages spectatorship and desire, this time vis-a-vis the tourism industry of the filmmaker’s home country of Morocco. Two queer friends seek refuge at a villa rented by an American academic named Jonathan. After he fails to arrive, the young Moroccans must figure out how to survive without returning home, and Taïa’s sophomore feature enters uneasy thriller territory (while continuing to display the unique combination of tenderness and asceticism that made SALVATION ARMY so startling.) Indeed, Taïa introduced a festival screening of the film by saying “Queer people in Morocco living (or trying to live) a ‘normal’ life is revolutionary, with their food, their cities, and their rituals.”

“The body in Taïa’s work is there to be bartered, but it also has a knack for finding affection even in the most pragmatic, or abusive, of transactions. A sequence in SALVATION ARMY of the child protagonist embracing his so-called abuser, desperate for emotional reciprocity, finds its correlative in CABO NEGRO when Jafaar caresses his client’s salt-and-pepper hair, post-coitus, not unlike one would rub a lamp in order to make a farfetched wish. The encounter is meant to simply guarantee the maintenance of Jaffar and Soundouss’s getaway, but Taïa captures the yearning of the sexual aftermath as an inevitable, and inevitably futile, queer wish for continuity, reciprocity, or recognition.” – Diego Semerene, Slant

“This film was inspired by two young gay Moroccans I follow on Instagram. They carry within them the powerful signs of a new, vibrant generation, who live each moment—at all costs—with crazy, inspiring intensity. Incendiary. From the stories they told me, I wrote the script for CABO NEGRO so I might capture that energy, that fire. That urgency. Soundouss and Jaâfar are heroes who no longer wait for change to come; instead, they live life to the fullest and create strong bonds of solidarity between themselves, outside the rules. The film will show these bonds and reveal the mechanisms of the social and political violence that is in process around them. Despite the end of innocence they experience in Cabo Negro, they will be able to rebel. Despite the extreme violence of the world, they will manage to live a love like a river that overflows.” – Abdellah Taïa

Special thanks to Marcus Hu and Andrea Picard.