Author: spectacletheater

RULE #1: BELIEVE THE AUTOCRAT – DOCS FROM MARXFILM

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RULE #1, BELIEVE THE AUTOCRAT: DOCS FROM MARXFILM


Rule #2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality.

Rule #3: Institutions will not save you.

 

So go the first of six rules of survival according to Masha Gessen from her article in the New York Review of Books two days after the election results in the US. Her experiences as a loud critic of Vladimir Putin grant her authority: she was a dissenting journalist through the rapid monopolization of the media and the subsequent erosion of the judiciary system. A decade out and still under Putin’s rule, the resistance leaders featured in these three documentaries continue to push against a rigid political reality. These are on-the-ground accounts of the 2012 protests after the re-election of Putin and the Euromaidan Revolution in Kiev. As documents of chaotic and dangerous moments, these films do not attempt to craft a primer for action but broadcast an ongoing experience that requires in-depth coverage.

 

 

MY FRIEND BORIS NEMTSOV
Dir. Zosya Rodkevich
2016, 71 min.
In Russian with English subs.

TUESDAY, APR 11 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, APR 18 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, APR 23 – 7:30 PM *WITH INTRO BY MAX TUULA OF MARXFILM*
THURSAY, APR 27 – 7:30 PM

GET YOUR TICKETS!

“An intimate portrait of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov—once Deputy Prime Minister and ‘an heir of President Yeltsin’, later an uncompromising adversary of Putin—that was assassinated near the Kremlin in February 2015. Election campaigns and hotel beds, protest rallies and office routine, train compartments and courtrooms, night walks and police vans –you have never seen any politician so close. This is a story how a journalist assignment turns into a genuine friendship.”

Very big thanks to Antipode Distribution.

KIEV/MOSCOW (PART 1 and 2)
dir. Elena Khoreva
2015, 60 min + 75 min (205 min total).
In Russian/Ukrainian with English subtitles.

THURSDAY APR 6 – 9:00 PM
MONDAY APR 24 – 9:00 PM **Q&A WITH MAX TUULA OF MARXFILM**
SUNDAY APRIL 30 – 7:00 PM

GET YOUR TICKETS!

This doc drops you directly into the 2014 Euromaidan uprising in Kyiv. It is cold January and the initial anti-corruption crowds have crystallized into an overall siege. Between new restrictions on assembly and the Berkut police force, protest faces deadly risks. Soon Russia annexes Crimea: Khoreva embeds with armed Russian units in Donetsk and then appears in the middle of nationalist protests in Moscow. The action jumps around a lot: this is a crash-course in history as it occurs.

The setting is very much KIEV/MOSCOW, but this film brings out the universal quality of attending a protest in any county with a highly militarized police force. Kiev looks like a war zone, heightened by building takeovers, constant explosions, and many tragic deaths. Poroshenko is helped onto a plow truck, where he pleads with protestors to stop thrashing around, unsuccessfully. Oleg Tsaryov (Yanukovych’s former top deputy) slides through the halls of power, shifting to his next phase of leading the separatist movement in Western Ukraine.

It is not only revolutionary young professionals who hold the banner of anti-corruption: nationalist groups in both Kiev and Moscow tap into popular support. Part 2 of KIEV/MOSCOW follows workers in various sectors in both cities, providing the context that creates democratic reformers, hardline nationalists and many shades in between.

THE TERM
Dirs. Alexey Pivovarov, Alexander Rastorguev, Pavel Kostomarov
2014, 83 min.
In Russian with English subtitles.

THURS APR 6 – 7:30 PM
TUES APR 18 – 10 PM
MON APR 24 – 7:00 PM **Q&A WITH MAX TUULA OF MARXFILM**
SUN APR 30 – 5 PM

GET YOUR TICKETS!

This documentary follows the 2012 protests in Moscow following the re-election of Vladimir Putin. It opens on doomed romance: that of Solidarnost activist Ilya Yashin and Putin’s goddaughter Ksenia Sobchak. THE TERM gets close to many of the major opposition leaders in the streets, spending the most time with 2018 presidential hopeful Alexey Navalny. We share a car cabin with anti-Putin politician Ilya Ponomarev debating with Sobchak on the urgency of Putin’s overthrow. Sergey Udaltsov rides the subway, confidently joking that he will be the new president by the next stop. At a rally, far-right nationalist Alexander Potkin explains that Navalny can be trusted to a skeptical member of Russkiye. These are snapshots of the landscape leads up to the Bolotnaya Square protest: an event that resulted in jail sentences and exiles for some of the activists featured here — and harsher penalties for many who are not.

THE TERM also features moments with Pussy Riot, Yoko Ono, and Madonna. For MarxFilm’s trailer, click here.

NOTE: If you have not watched Alexey Navalny’s Youtube Channel, or if you enjoy expert use of 3D title graphics, check it out. For deeper Navalny context see Masha Gessen’s thorough article for the New Yorker last year.

 

REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (2016)

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REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (2016)
dir. Taralyn Thomas & Jean-Luc Unger
2016, 93 min.

SUNDAY APRIL 2 – 7:30 PM
CO-DIRECTOR TARALYN THOMAS IN ATTENDANCE

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73QU13M 4 4 D734M is a ballz2thewall, no-budget, feature-length “remake” of REQUIEM FOR A DREAM; part crowd-pleasing avant-comedy, part vitriolic attack on hollywood & mainstream american “culture,” part mind-bending technical experiment in sound and image! Filmed in 3 days and edited over 2 years, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (2016) is a farcical, hard-hitting drug drama and genuine DIY meltdown.

REQUIEM has previously screened at Dynasty Center and Memphis Hotel in Los Angeles CA. It will screen at the Echo Park Film Center sometime in April.

Copies of the film will be available at the screening in a limited-run VHS edition published by Vingo Vongo Videos.

 

 

 

 

MATCH CUTS PRESENTS: PAUL CHAN’S TIN DRUM TRILOGY (PRESALES SOLD OUT)

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TIN DRUM TRILOGY
dir. Paul Chan, 2002-2005.
USA, 111 min.
English, Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

TUESDAY, APRIL 4 – 7:00 PM–PRESALE TICKETS SOLD OUT
ARTIST IN ATTENDANCE

Spectacle Theater is excited to collaborate with critical platform Match Cuts on a new series of screenings. Scroll down for more information on Match Cuts.

“Each video in the series was made utilizing different experimental traditions, but with one consistent theme: that to love your enemy is to know you enemy… The Bush administration (in RE:_THE OPERATION), Iraqis (in BAGHDAD…), and the religious right living in red-state America (in Now promise now threat) are all perceived, rightly or wrongly, as enemies. The task of all three videos has been to make the friend/enemy distinction more difficult while at the same time giving a time-based critique of the political tragedy/farce that is our first five years of the twenty-first Century.” – Paul Chan

The TIN DRUM TRILOGY is comprised of:

RE:_THE OPERATION
2002, 27 min.

“Based on a set of drawings that depict George W. Bush’s administration as wounded soldiers in the war against terrorism, RE:THE_OPERATION explores the sexual and philosophical dynamics of war through the lives of the members as they physically engage each other and the “enemy”. Letters, notes, and digital snapshots “produced” by the members on their tour of duty become the basis of video portraits that articulate the neuroses and obsessions compelling them toward an infinite war. Part M*A*S*H*, part Three’s Company, part philosophical meditation, with a dash of character assassination thrown in.”

BAGHDAD IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER
2003, 51 min.

“BAGHDAD IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER is an ambient video essay of life in Baghdad before the invasion and occupation. Men dance, women draw and sufis sing as they await the coming of another war. In seven languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian and Spanish).”

NOW PROMISE NOW THREAT
2005, 33 min.

“Now too late, he understood her. The heart that pumped out love, the mouth that spoke the Word, didn’t count.” – Toni Morrison, “Beloved”

“Part documentary, part visual manifesto, NOW PROMISE NOW THREAT uses Omaha, Nebraska (population 390,000, literally located in the middle of the U.S.) as a site and subject to follow the often unexpected lines connecting people, religion and politics in ‘red state’ America. An evangelical pastor opposes the mixing of church and state on religious grounds. An anti-abortion mother deplores the hypocrisy of the pro-life movement for being pro-war. A young man wants to die for his country so he can–at last–have a life worthy of living. Now promise now threat mixes interviews with locally produced footage and kidnapping videos from Iraq transformed into fields of undulating color to create a moving ‘apologia’ for the united red states of America.”

 

PAUL CHAN is an American artist, writer and publisher. His single channel videos, projections, animations and multimedia projects are influenced by outsider artists, playwrights, and philosophers such as Henry Darger, Samuel Beckett, Theodor W. Adorno, and Marquis de Sade. Paul Chan’s work concerns topics including geopolitics, globalization, and their responding political climates, war documentation, violence, deviance, and pornography, language, and new media.

Chan has exhibited his work at the Venice Biennale, the Whitney Biennial, documenta, the Serpentine Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum, and other institutions. Chan has also engaged in a variety of publishing projects, and, in 2010, founded the art and ebook publishing company Badlands Unlimited, based in New York. Chan’s essays and interviews have appeared in Artforum, Frieze, Flash Art, October, Tate, Parkett, Texte Zur Kunst, Bomb, and other magazines and journals.

MATCH CUTS is a weekly podcast centered on video, film and the moving image. Match Cuts Presents is dedicated to presenting de-colonialized cinema, LGBTQI films, Marxist diatribes, video art, dance films, sex films, and activist documentaries with a rotating cast of presenters from all spectrums of the performing and plastic arts and surrounding humanities. Match Cuts is hosted by Nick Faust and Kachine Moore, and produced by Meg Murnane.

MARCH MIDNIGHTS

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PART OF THE SPRING MIDNIGHT SERIES:
NASCHY AS II WANNA BE: RETURN OF NASCHY

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HORROR RISES FROM THE TOMB
Dir. Carlos Aured, 1975
Spain, 95 min. (original cut)
In Spanish with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, MARCH 4 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, MARCH 10 – MIDNIGHT
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 25 – MIDNIGHT

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“Bastards! I curse you all!”
It’s been exactly four years since the great Jacinto Molina Álvarez, aka Paul Naschy, last graced a midnight here at Spectacle. The time has never been better for the Spanish Lon Chaney to haunt the twee streets of Williamsburg, his bare-chested bravado and wry wit a perfect balance to gallons of Tempra-red blood and unspeakable black magic. The lord of the night returns for midnights through 2017! It’s time to get…
AS NASCHY AS II WANNA BE!

The year is 1454, and the diabolical warlock Alaric de Marnac (Naschy, natch) and his mistress Mabille De Lancré (Emma Cohen, from CUT-THROATS NINE and Jess Franco’s AL OTRO LADO DEL ESPEJO) are accused of witchcraft, vampirism and lycanthropy before being tortured and killed (and Marnac gets his head cut off!), but not before cursing the offspring of their killers. Now it’s the 1970s, and a group of friends led by Hugo de Marnac (Naschy in a second role!) and Maurice Roland (Naschy regular Victor “Vic Morror” Alcazar) attend a seance, asking tongue-in-cheek about the location of Marnac’s head. Spoiler hint: they find it, and a whole lot more…Directed by Carlos Aured (BLUE EYES OF THE BROKEN DOLL, THE MUMMY’S REVENGE, contrasting beautiful French landscapes with gruesome murders (don’t worry, our cut’s the original Spanish version with all gore/nudity intact), it’s an excellent introduction to Naschy’s non-werewolf roles, with everything you’d want from a midnight: gallows revenge speeches, nightgowns aplenty, and Naschy’s talking head in a box! Be sure to join us this March as HORROR RISES FROM THE TOMB!


 

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RETOURNEMENT A RIVERDELL
Dir. Various, 1989/1991
America, 100 min.
In English.

SATURDAY, MARCH 11 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, MARCH 24 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, MARCH 31 – MIDNIGHT

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Somewhere deep within everybody, there’s a town as American as apple pie – a place where a ginger-headed princox and his next door neighbor’s daughter might share a malt fizz at the corner medicine shop, where a weathered jalopy still bolts down the street quicker than those new automobiles from Korea or Japan. A lifetime away from the time a certain weekly program helpfully venn-diagrammed America’s favorite happy fool with the garish intrigue of David Lynch’s TWIN PEAKS, there was RETOURNEMENT A RIVERDELL: a foreign film in English, assembled by elite power structures to emboss postwar nostalgia in magnetic tape, kicking around the loneliest late-night airwaves of television before a slow death (and shameful rebirth) on VHS under a different name.

The film offers a glimpse into the disappointments of growing up that can be called Lacanian: Archiie comes home to find Riverdell has changed, but not nearly enough. While Regggie has assumed the position of a cutthroat AMERICAN PSYCHO-style businessman, Archiie must wrestle with his own suburban privilege a priori the evaporating mirage of his childhood home… And in the same mirror he witnesses not just the crestfallen zeitgeist of a generation, but a deeper contraction within his own morals – having spent his entire adult life avoiding that old predicament with Bettty and Veronika.

RETOURNEMENT is not entirely unlike Laurence Kasdan’s THE BIG CHILL: in essence, a documentary of curdled Boomer expectations smuggled like candy contraband into a TV dinner narrative template. When Jughead and his idiot son bob their way through a New Jack Swing cover of “Honey Honey” in front of pretty much everybody in town, the real lesson of RETOURNAMENT A RIVERDELL reveals itself thus: time’s passage makes fools of us all.

PRIDE OF PLACE

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PRIDE OF PLACE
Dir. Dorothea Gazidis and Kim Longinotto, 1976
UK, 60 mins.

MONDAY, MARCH 1 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 6 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 19 – 5:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 31 – 10 PM

GET YOUR TICKETS!

If you caught last month’s SCRUBBERS (Zetterling, 1982), don’t miss PRIDE OF PLACE, the documentary by and for revolutionary teen boarding school prisoners.

Director Kim Longinotto was banished to a Buckinghamshire boarding school at the tender age of 10. Seven years later, she flew the coop and – after a few down-and-out years – landed at England’s National Film and Television School.

The time came for Longinotto to pick up a camera, and she wielded it like a hammer against her punitive alma mater. The resulting film, made with co-director Dorothea Gazidis, blew the lid off England’s august propensity for stiff upper lips and institutional child abuse.

PRIDE OF PLACE is an observational documentary that refuses to hear both sides. Shot from the students’ point of view, Longinotto and Gazidis regard their setting as a junior police state. They leave no room for finger-wagging. You won’t hear morning talk show bromides about “sparing the rod.”

One year after PRIDE OF PLACE was released, the aforementioned boarding school was closed by the state. After seven years in this brutal borstal, a spell on the streets, and a return to the scene of the crime, Longinotto got the last word.

Special thanks to Women Make Movies.

IN GIRUM IMUS NOCTE ET CONSUMIMUR IGNI

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(aka WE TURN IN THE NIGHT, CONSUMED BY FIRE)
dir. Guy Debord, 1978
France, 96 mins.
In French with English subtitles.
SATURDAY, MARCH 4 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 13 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 19 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 24 – 7:30 PM

GET YOUR TICKETS!

“I will make no concessions to the public in this film… Since the cinema public needs more than anything to face these bitter truths, which concern it so intimately but which are so widely repressed, it cannot be denied that a film that for once renders it the harsh service of revealing that its problems are not so mysterious as it imagines, nor even perhaps so incurable if we ever manage to abolish classes and the state — it cannot be denied that such a film has at least that one virtue. It will have no other.” – Guy Debord

Everyone’s favorite Situationist returns to Spectacle for the first time with IN GIRUM IMUS NOCTE ET CONSUMIMUR IGNI, the notorious magnum opus of “anti-cinema” that closed out the filmmaking career of French philosopher and writer Guy Debord.

If THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE has been proven beyond-relevant in the interceding years (as is so often the case, relevant beyond the confines of its actual self as a piece of text), IN GIRUM IMUS NOCTE ET CONSUMIMUR IGNI is a “repudiation of legends”, a densely layered film essay that slavishly interrogates (and rationalizes) its author’s defiance. Here Debord is reflexively caustic, littering the film with subtweets of his then-contemporaries and the myths surrounding his own legend – taking particular umbrage at the notion that he was a theorist (as opposed to practitioner), and, albeit in veiled terms, the New Left’s inability to subvert the grand lines of mass exploitation outside major city struggles.

In an eerily measured voiceover narration, Debord takes shots at unions (‘“always ready to prolong the grievances of the proletariat for another thousand years in order to preserve their own role as its defender”), culture critics (“amazingly enough, despite all the obvious evidence to the contrary, there are still some cretins, among the specialized spectators hired to edify their fellow viewers, who claim that it is ‘dogmatic’ to state some truth in a film unless it is also proved by images”), establishment intellectuals (“they have wasted their time at college, bargain shopping for worn-out fragments of secondhand knowledge”), and the spectating audience itself – or rather, what Debord calls “the complete vacuity of mediatized society”.

IN GIRUM IMUS NOCTE ET CONSUMIMUR IGNI is thus a political coming-of-age tale in its own way. Many of its images were culled from the ostensibly benign bourgeois French and American movies Debord so hated; more than an enigmatic few would appear to have been shot by Debord himself, or collected over the years. The montagery is genteel by 2017 standards, but there is real power to Debord’s insistence – albeit despairing – that “avant-gardes only have one time”. The fleeting, clean-limned nature of this assemblage speaks for itself: while THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE diagnosed a half-awake system of power, Debord here holds both image and consumer equally culpable for the broader distraction – a still-terrifying idea today.

Special thanks to Ken Knabb, Konrad Steiner and NOT BORED!.

“Has the time come to challenge this unscathed interlocutor? I could do so, inasmuch as his nostalgia blinds Debord, in spite of himself, to the current context of what all his perseverance derives from. You can’t just have thirty years of history end on a shot of the high waters of the Venice lagoon and expect to get away with it….

But we also need to understand poetry’s protective function. Why was it in the resource of art that twice – first with the Surrealists after October 1917 and then with the Situationists in the early 1960s – new historical circumstances produced, in France, a true break, unprecedented intensity, tremendous repercussions with regard to an ossified political Marxism? Marxism should learn from such amazing cunning! We won’t miss the opportunity this time.

This Marxism – of which Debord, in terms of the ethics of the subject, would be the interlocutor and, in his own way, the equal – I could call a living Marxism.” – Alain Badiou, Le Perroquet, 1981

TRICKS OF THE TRADE: TRUE/FALSE PORTRAITS OF SEX WORK

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“The representation of female prostitution in the movies takes place in a complex, dynamic field in which the forces of male fantasy and patriarchal ideology…merge or collide….”
– Russell Campbell, Marked Women: Prostitutes and Prostitution in the Cinema

The films in this series attempt to eschew the usual trappings of sex work as portrayed in cinema (especially narrative cinema) by a adopting a neutral documentary-style approach, even as they all contain staged elements. Each film is, to varying extents, a hybrid of the two forms. The filmmakers adopt a non-judgmental (or sympathetic) view of sex workers even as they may define sex work itself as a symptom of larger forces of inequality within patriarchy, capitalism or communism. Each film is the result of active collaboration with their subjects (and, in some cases, their clients), and are predicated on an extraordinary level of access. While some of the films contain scenes of graphic sexuality, they are either neutral or aggressively anti-erotic, although the extent to which they may or may not be considered exploitative is a complex question which must ultimately be left to the viewer.

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K (A FILM ABOUT PROSTITUTION)
Dir. György Dobray, 1989
Hungary, 85 min.
In Hungarian with English subtitles

THURSDAY, MARCH 2 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 14 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29 – 7:30 PM

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“This is the the most dangerous place in the country. I grew up here, and I can’t break out. I get up and my first thought is Rákóczi Square.” The Square is Budapest’s red light district, a place where “anything can happen in the criminal code.” Director Dobray spent months documenting the denizens of the square, including a group of cross-dressing sex workers, a woman whose face was slashed by a client, and the off-and-on (and, to some extent, staged) relationship between young sex worker Andrea and her “boyfriend” Tarzan, a pimp and lifelong resident of the Square. Made in 1989, the year Communism fell in Hungary, K (A FILM ABOUT PROSTITUTION) was banned for decades, and is rarely, if ever, screened in the US.

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KARAOKE GIRL
Dir. Visra Vichit-Vadakan, 2013
Thailand/USA, 77 min.
In Thai with English subtitles

THURSDAY, MARCH 2 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 11 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 21 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 26 – 5 PM

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KARAOKE GIRL follows a young sex worker in Bangkok through portraits of her daily life, introducing us to the nuances of a vocation borne out of a simple necessity: supporting a family in rural Thailand. The film threads memoirs of her countryside childhood with the complicated reality of her urban life. Cast as herself, 23-year-old Sa is revealed to us through both documentary and fiction as she navigates both the city and the country, family and romance. Through the lens of one woman’s real-life experience, KARAOKE GIRL humanizes and complicates the depiction of a social class which is usually painted as flat caricature. Rather than presenting a traditional narrative, KARAOKE GIRL offers a personal landscape of a woman who is thoughtful and optimistic despite her difficult past. “This film is Sa’s anthem—her way of sharing with me (and you) her fears, hopes, and dreams.” — Director Visra Vichit Vadakan

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PROSTITUTE
Dir. Tony Garnett, 1981
UK, 94 min.
English

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 10 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 16 – 10 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 20 – 10 PM

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Sandra, a “street girl” of Birmingham, moves to London’s West End hoping that a job at a high-class escort service will improve her financial situation. Her flatmate Louise, a social worker, tirelessly campaigns to reform the country’s severe prostitution laws which keep their sex worker friends in and out of jail. Both women will be stymied by the prejudices and hypocrisies of mostly male authorities. Though it is a fictional narrative, director Garnett (a celebrated producer of social-realist dramas, including Ken Loach’s KES) spent years researching PROSTITUTE, his directorial debut, befriending both “street girls” and “more expensive call girls” (some of whom appear in the film), listening to their stories, and shaping their experiences into this naturalistic docudrama. Garnett intended to make “a film from the girls’ point of view, not the clients…Just an insight into their daily lives. No judgements. A film about work.”

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WHORES’ GLORY
Dir. Michael Glawogger, 2011
Germany/Austria, 115 min.
In German/French/English/Thai/Japanese/Spanish/Bengali with English subtitles

TUESDAY, MARCH 7 – 10 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 13 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 17 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 23 – 10 PM

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WHORES’ GLORY is a cinematic triptych on prostitution: three countries, three languages, three religions. In Thailand, women wait for clients behind glass panes, staring at reflections of themselves. In Bangladesh, men go to a ghetto of love to satisfy their unfulfilled desires on indentured girls. And in Mexico, women pray to a female death to avoid facing their own reality. WHORES’ GLORY was the last film in Glawogger’s “Globalization Trilogy” following MEGACITIES and WORKINGMAN’S DEATH, and his final completed feature before his death at 54. In writing about the film, Glawogger said “Prostitution is not to be condemned or defended. Prostitution simply is. It is like war. War is.” This is indicative of his general approach to the film, in which he uneasily balances an assumed vérité neutrality (though several scenes are completely staged) while operating on the foundation that sex work is fundamentally destructive. Despite this, Glawogger’s scope and ambition make WHORES’ GLORY an essential document of sex work around the globe.

 

 

SWASTIKA

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SWASTIKA
Dir. Philippe Mora, 1974.
UK. 95 min.
In German with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, MARCH 3 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 9 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 21 – 10 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 27 – 10 PM

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“If Hitler is dehumanized and shown only as a devil, any future Hitler may not be recognized, simply because he is a human being.”

So reads the opening titles of Philippe Mora’s SWASTIKA, a statement that perhaps has never been more pertinent than in the world of 2017.  Released in 1974, the documentary has only recently been freed from a ban in Germany that lasted until 2010. Artfully pieced together from COLOR home movies (shot by Eva Braun & her sister), propaganda reels, footage of massive rallies, and german newsreels, SWASTIKA provides a never-before-seen glimpse into the private and public life of Hitler, his cohorts, and the willing country they led into the deepest fires of hell.

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One can only watch with a fascination that is laced with dread, a feeling that finally gives way to the crushing weight of history. What emerges from underneath the rubble of disbelief, is perhaps the greatest lesson we can hope to learn from history: That evil is not so easily recognized, that it can rise to unimaginable heights with the polite and orderly cooperation of ordinary people, that it lurks behind the banality of the everyday.

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THE EXCLUDED

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THE EXCLUDED
Dir. Franz Novotny, 1982.
Austria, 93 min.
In German with English subtitles.

SUNDAY, MARCH 5 – 5 PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 11 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 17 – 10 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 20 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 25 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 30 – 7:30 PM

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A forgotten gem of Austrian miserablist cinema, THE EXCLUDED is a prime example of agit-prop farce, the same strange brew stewed by Godard in LA CHINOIS and Fassbinder in THE THIRD GENERATION. This is the story of four bourgois would-be revolutionaries, attempting to smash the 1950s Austrian state—if they can overcome their own egos long enough to pull it off. The lead, Peter, is played with smarmy, wet-mouthed pretension by the great Paulus Manker, a regular collaborator with Michael Haneke. We’ve all met someone like Peter before: that poetry-writing, Camus-spouting punk, peeking above a black turtleneck long enough to spew half-baked Maoist homilies about the kind of violent political action he’s a teensy bit too scared to carry out himself. Surprisingly, Peter manages to form his own private fraktion of bored teenagers, and the cell happily engages in beatings, bombings, and shock tactics against “slaves of social convention.”

That is how post-war Austria looked to then-33-year-old director Franz Novotny—an urban underclass, politically at odds with the values of Austria’s hypocritical “Second Republic,” unable to share its wealth, and eager to enforce violent punishment for its fascist past. His film, based on the 1980 novel by Nobel winner Elfriede Jelinek, is a cynical portrait of Austria’s doomed, post-war youth, whose undirected political energy ultimately finds a conclusion with an explosion of meaningless violence.

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MATCH CUTS PRESENTS: ALEX MAR’S AMERICAN MYSTIC

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MATCHCUTS_banner_Mar2017AMERICAN MYSTIC
dir. Alex Mar, 2010.
USA, 80 min.
English.

TUESDAY, MARCH 28 – 7:30 PM
DIRECTOR ALEX MAR IN ATTENDANCE! *ONE NIGHT ONLY!*

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Spectacle Theater is excited to collaborate with critical platform Match Cuts on a new series of screenings.  Scroll down for more information on Match Cuts.

“Set against the rich, color-soaked backdrop of America’s rural landscapes, Alex Mar’s lyrical documentary braids together the stories of three young Americans who have chosen to sacrifice comforts in order to embrace the fringes of alternative religion. The subjects include Chuck, a Lakota Sioux sundancer in the badlands of South Dakota; Morpheus, a Pagan priestess living off the grid in northern California’s old mining country; and Kublai, a Spiritualist medium in the former revivalist district of upstate New York.

In the radical, separatist spirit of early America, each has extracted themselves from the mainstream in order to live immersed in their faith and to seize a different way of life. Mar takes a personal, visually lush approach, enveloping the viewer in the subjects’ experience of their controversial faiths through their own words, their rituals, and the sprawling, majestic imagery that makes up each of their worlds.

Director Alex Mar is also the author of Witches of America, which was inspired by and features some of the subjects of this film. Signed paperbacks will be available at the screening.

The movie was produced by Mar and Nicholas Shumaker, and edited by Andy Grieve (Errol Morris’s Standard Operating Procedure, Alex Gibney’s Going Clear). It features cinematography by Gregory Mitnick and a score by composer Nathan Larson (formerly of the band Shudder to Think).”

Match Cuts is a weekly podcast centered on video, film and the moving image. Match Cuts Presents is dedicated to presenting de-colonialized cinema, LGBTQI films, Marxist diatribes, video art, dance films, sex films, and activist documentaries with a rotating cast of presenters from all spectrums of the performing and plastic arts and surrounding humanities. Match Cuts is hosted by Nick Faust and Kachine Moore.