spectacletheater – Page 57 – Spectacle Theater

FEMME DOMME BABYLON, A TRIBUTE TO ILSA: THE KOMMANDANT, THE KADIN, AND THE WICKED WARDEN

Posted on March 5, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

The name Ilsa is synonymous with the image of a dominant female. Since her first appearance as the Kommandant of a “medical” camp in the controversial ILSA, SHE WOLF OF THE SS, Ilsa (Dyanne Thorne), has gained a major cult following as one of the most notorious characters of the nazi exploitation genre. Throughout the course of her “lifetime”, Ilsa has been everything from a harem keeper to a warden at a womens’ prison. Legions of her fans have plastered her image in everything from songs to S&M club flyers. The first film in the series was so popular that it won an AVN award and ushered in a series of sequels, one of which was directed by the legendary Jesus Franco. This midnight series brings together three of the greatest Ilsa films. All hail the Kommandant!

ILSA, SHE WOLF OF THE SS
Dir. Don Edmonds, 1975
USA, 96 min.

FRIDAY, APRIL 3 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, APRIL 17 – MIDNIGHT

“You are strong, stronger than HE”

The period between 1974-1978 was the golden age of Nazi exploitation. Films such as SALON KITTY, THE NIGHT PORTER, RED NIGHTS OF THE GESTAPO and more were very popular across Europe and North America. Nazi exploitation is a type of exploitation film that explores the subject of Nazi cruelty during WW2. These films were usually highly sexualized, highly fetishistic, and rampant with sadomasochistic themes. The majority of Nazi exploitation films were made in Italy, but some were made in France and the United States.

One of the most notorious Nazi exploitation films is ILSA, SHE WOLF OF THE SS. Whereas its other counterparts had story-lines that were considered to be more “historical accurate”, ILSA, SHE WOLF OF THE SS is considered to be rooted in pure fantasy. The film is said to be based on a combination of the life of Ilsa Koch, the wife of a concentration commander, and Stalag novels. Stalag novels were a popular type of pulp novel in Israel during the 50s and 60s that depicted sadomasochistic episodes between men and female members of the SS. Over the years the film has generated a lot of controversy due to its subject matter. Despite the controversy, the film has a huge cult following mainly due to the image of female dominance that Ilsa represents. To fetishist Ilsa is the ultimate goddess that they want to worship and worship they do in countless S&M clubs where Ilsa’s infamous uniform is popular attire with Dominatrixes. To feminists Ilsa is a symbol of a strong woman holding a typically male dominated role. Actually, the theme of “proving” herself to be just as good as any man at her job is a theme that is explored in several of the Ilsa films. Ilsa is a despicable villain to some, a hero to others, but one thing is for sure, she stands as a dominant, confident woman who is out to prove that not only can women easily hold typically male dominated roles, but they are in fact better than men. This is why the film is such a rarity in the Nazi exploitation genre and why some 40 years after its release it is still being talked about by such diverse groups of individuals.

Ilsa (Dyanne Thorne), is the Kommandant of Camp 9, a 3rd Reich “medical” camp tasked to sterilize women. During the day Ilsa works on various “experiments” to help with the German war effort. Her nights are spent with the company of male prisoners who she uses to try to satisfy her sexual desires. Ilsa seeks to advance her career and ranking in the 3rd Reich by working on a side “experiment”, an “experiment” that she believes will help Germany win the war. She wants to prove that “the carefully trained woman can withstand pain better than any man”. A theory which her male superiors take as a joke. All she needs is a subject to prove her theory, enter prisoner 332 aka Anna, the subject Ilsa has been looking for all along, a woman who does not fear pain. Will Ilsa break Anna? Will Anna prove Ilsa’s theory or will she bring about the downfall of the Kommandant?

ILSA, HAREM KEEPER OF THE OIL SHEIKS
Dir. Don Edmonds, 1976
United States, 87 min.

SATURDAY, APRIL 4 – MIDNIGHT

“Welcome to my company of eunuchs!”

Sheik El Sharif is a powerful man. What makes El Sharif so powerful you say? He owns land that is capable of producing millions of gallons of oil! Yet Sheik Sharif is only interested in extracting as little oil as he can. Enter Dr. Kaiser and Commander Adam Scott from the USA! They are looking to employ some “personal diplomacy” aka black mail to get El Sharif to produce more oil. What they didn’t count on was ILSA! After bidding farewell to the Fatherland, Ilsa fled to Arabia where she found a new job as a harem keeper and advisor aka Kadin to Sheik El Sharif. Ilsa along with her henchwomen Satin and Velvet, do everything from spying on foreign powers to training the women of the harem on how to use their tongues. What will Ilsa do to the Americans? Will she remain loyal to El Sharif or will she use this opportunity to usurp his kingdom?

ILSA, THE WICKED WARDEN
aka Greta, The Mad Butcher
Dir. Jesus Franco, 1977
United States, 90 min.

SATURDAY, APRIL 25 – MIDNIGHT

“You know her wound is like a kiss to her body.”

ILSA, THE WICKED WARDEN is the prodigal daughter of the Ilsa series. Originally, the film was not meant to be part of the series at all, but due to the popularity of the first three films, the producers took a film named GRETA, THE MAD BUTCHER and changed the title to ILSA, THE WICKED WARDEN. ILSA, THE WICKED WARDEN was directed by the legendary Jesus Franco and co-stars his wife and lifetime collaborator Lina Romay as Ilsa’s lover/informant/patient. WICKED WARDEN has a plot that is very similar to the other Ilsa films so it fits perfectly with the rest of the series. What makes it unique is that for the first time in the series Ilsa holds a position of absolute power. Ilsa’s “mental health clinic” is for women and run by a woman. Finally, Ilsa got the position she wanted and deserved.

Amy Phillips is desperately searching for answers in the death of her sister Rosa Phillips. Rosa was committed to Las Palomas, a clinic for the treatment of sexually deviant behavior in women, and died under mysterious circumstances. Amy enlists the help of her friend Dr. Arcos to get herself checked into the clinic under false pretenses so that she can investigate Rosa’s death. Unbeknownst to Amy the Las Palomas clinic is run by none other than Ilsa aka Dr. Greta! Dr. Greta is an expert at treating everything from sexual to political deviations. She uses a combination of electro-shock therapy, a leather whip, and the help of Juanna, her lover/patient, to keep her patients on the “right” path. Will Dr. Greta become wise to Amy’s plot? Will Amy ever find out what became of her sister?

RODRIGO D: NO FUTURO

Posted on March 4, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

RODRIGO D: NO FUTURO
Dir. Victor Gaviria, 1990
Colombia, 93 min.
In Spanish with English subtitles

FRIDAY, APRIL 3 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, APRIL 21 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, APRIL 25 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, APRIL 30 – 10 PM

Sort of like a South American SUBURBIA, Victor Gaviria’s debut feature RODRIGO D: NO FUTURO trades the relatively cush reality of Reagan-era America for the drug money-fueled inferno of Medellin in 1988.

Here we follow adolescent ne’er-do-well Rodrigo D as he tools around town with his ne’er-do-well punk friends romancing babes, playing in shitty bands, dealing drugs, dodging cops, bumming beer money, and/or brazenly robbing people on the street.

As Colombia’s first ever film accepted at Cannes, RODRIGO D: NO FUTURO gained international recognition for its gripping neorealist depiction of Escobar-era Colombia, a place that three years later would earn the ignominious distinction of “murder capital of the world.” Six of the film’s actors were killed after the film wrapped.

Featuring a soundtrack almost black metal in its gritty nihilism, RODRIGO D: NO FUTURO is at once charming (who doesn’t love punkers terrorizing the neighborhood) and disturbing as Gaviria’s embedded position allows us to witness a society on the verge of implosion.

NEVER RECORDS: YOU ARE NOT LISTENING

Posted on March 3, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

NEVER RECORDS: YOU ARE NOT LISTENING
Dir. Jason Wyche & artist, Ted Riederer, 2013
USA/UK, 76 min.

FRIDAY, MARCH 27 – 8 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

A discussion about Ted Riederer’s project, NEVER RECORDS will follow the screening. Join us with director, Jason Wyche, and artist, Ted Riederer. Also joining us from Derry, Ireland will be the Context Gallery’s curator, Theo Sims, who made the project in Derry possible.

NEVER RECORDS: YOU ARE NOT LISTENING is a documentary film by Jason Wyche on the artwork of Ted Riederer, featuring artists and musicians: Ted Riederer, Arturo Vega, Jason Farrell, Damon Locks, Mark Garry, John O’Neil, Conor O’kane, SJ Downes, Fighting With Wire, The Q and many more.

NEVER RECORDS: YOU ARE NOT LISTENING is a feature length documentary about artist/musician Ted Riederer and his Never Records project. Shot on location in Derry, Northern Ireland and London, the film features performances from some of the United Kingdom’s brightest artists and musicians. NEVER RECORDS: YOU ARE NOT LISTENING explores power of art and music to unite, educate, and uplift a community. In an era overwhelmed by virtual communities, Riederer is attempting to create actual communities.

Previous screenings include: CBGB Film Festival (2013), RxSM Underground Film Expo (2013), Never Records Festival in Derry, Ireland (2013) and Official Selection at the Victoria Texas Independent Film Festival where the film won the Best of Fest award (2013)

The Never Records project began in 2010 and continues to circle the globe, creating ‘storefronts’ that are a catalyst for creative collaboration. The mock shops consist of a vinyl lathe, which Riederer uses to record the musicians and artists who visit the ‘storefront’. The Never Records archives, totaling over 350 recordings, are taken to every ‘storefront’ site.

In this film, Riederer sets up his record store in an art gallery overlooking the old city walls of Derry, a city which is a symbol of the Northern Ireland civil rights struggle. Over the course of month, he fills the mock shop with vinyl records recorded and cut, via vinyl lathe, on site. The shop becomes a locus of performance and community as musicians and performance artists alike perform around the clock, while visitors are encouraged to watch the performances and play records from the archive. Each artist and musician who records receives a record, and a record also stays with the archives. Nothing is for sale, as Riederer reminds artists and musicians what happens when money is taken out of art and music.

“It’s taken the city by storm. It’s been a cultural phenomenon here. Ted has been oversubscribed and the atmosphere it has created in the music scene and beyond is stunning. It has plugged people back into why music was important in the first place.”
-Stephen McCauley, Electric Mainline, BBC Radio Foyle

From the ruins of an abandoned Tower Records near Union Square in New York City to art galleries and store fronts around the world, Never Records has traveled from New York to Liverpool, Lisbon, Derry, Northern Ireland, London, and New Orleans. Future destinations include Mexico, Ecuador and Mongolia.

THEY ALL LIE (TODOS MIENTEN)

Posted on February 26, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

THEY ALL LIE
aka Todos Mienten
Dir. Matías Piñeiro, 2009
Argentina, 75 min.
In Spanish with English subtitles

FRIDAY, MARCH 13 – 8 PM (FILMMAKER IN PERSON!)
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 29 – 7:30 PM

To borrow the filmmaker’s own term: the delirium of Matías Piñeiro’s films is probably better experienced than read about, each title a whirligig construction equally distancing and mesmerizing. Todos Mienten, the Argentine prodigy’s second feature, was shot over the course of a few days in the former countryside home of Piñeiro’s aunt and uncle, where he spent summers as a child; in the film’s so-called narrative, a group of seven friends are convening to drink, smoke, play music, and exhume the ghost of Argentina’s seventh president, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. Riffing off of a book Sarmiento wrote of his travels around the world, Piñeiro’s listless 20-somethings engage in a kind of sociohistorical game of dress-up, interchanging roles (both within the film’s isolated milieu and outside of it) as if engaging in Feats of (Narrative) Strength.

While Todos Mienten makes a point of bewildering its audience (broken into dissonant chapters, arrayed without even an acknowledged chronology) the air swirls with romantic intrigue (and/or sexual tension) that goes beyond mere words – even if they originally belonged to a tongue as silver-tipped as Sarmiento’s. Piñeiro’s mastery of light and camera is unnerving, with cinematographer Fernando Lockett’s camera regularly creeping around the ramshackle house’s corners with the type of breathless, slo-mo anticipation that usually results in finding a dead body. Todos Mienten is brilliantly choreographed arthouse cinema, as rigorously obsessed with creating the present anew as it is, inevitably, laden with reminders of the past.

“Piñeiro is making movies that point to one of the original questions raised by cinema: How does the imposition of writing—of language or of a lens—alter the world? His carefully structured films—balanced like mobiles, as he says—describe with precision that slippage between words and reality.” – Clinton Krute, BOMB

Spectacle is proud to host Matías Piñeiro and screenwriter Paul Felten (FRANCOPHENIA OR: DON’T KILL ME, I KNOW WHERE THE BABY IS and the upcoming ZEROVILLE) for a discussion of TODOS MIENTEN, followed by a Q&A, on Friday March 13th.

MARCH MIDNIGHTS

Posted on February 6, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

FRIDAY, MARCH 6: SHE SHOULDA SAID NO
SATURDAY, MARCH 7: THE MASTER TOUCH
FRIDAY, MARCH 13: WITCHCRAFT 70
SATURDAY, MARCH 14: GOLDEN TEMPLE AMAZONS
FRIDAY, MARCH 20: THE MASTER TOUCH
SATURDAY, MARCH 21: SHE SHOULDA SAID NO
FRIDAY, MARCH 27: GOLDEN TEMPLE AMAZONS
FRIDAY, MARCH 28: WITCHCRAFT 70

SHE SHOULDA SAID NO!
Dir. Sam Newfield, 1949
USA, 70 min.

FRIDAY, MARCH 6 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, MARCH 21 – MIDNIGHT

How bad can a good girl get?

Dateline, August 1948: Actors Robert Mitchum and Lila Leeds busted for drug possession (Leeds had three joints and eight Benzedrine tablets — STARS BUSTED IN POT ORGY! read the tabloids — and while Mitchum was knocked down to conspiracy while Leeds spent two months in prison. Mitchum’s career may have been over were he not fast friends with Howard Hughes, but Leeds had only been working in Hollywood for a few years and no high-powered friends, so upon her release in ’49 the first job offered her: Wild Weed, a Reefer Madness-style shock film directed by Sam Newfield (just one of the 277 films he directed: MST3K fans know him from JUNGLE GODDESS and I ACCUSE MY PARENTS). The film went nowhere and was quickly snapped up by master roadshow producer and Forty Thieves member Kroger Babb, who changed the name to SHE SHOULDA SAID NO!, put a salty picture of Leeds undressing on the poster, Babb fabricating a story that the film was made with the assistance of the United States Treasury and ran the film as a midnight in as many theaters as he could book, promising the true story of Leeds’ licentious liaisons.

As always with roadshow films, the truth is a bit different than the promise: Leeds plays Anne Lester, struggling to pay for her brother’s college costs, when she meets Markey (Alan Baxter), a dope dealer who invites her to a “pot party”. As expected, things quickly go from bad to worse as Anne loses her inhibitions, starts selling drugs, becoming estranged from her brother and trying to steer clear of the law. With a small role by character actor Jack Elam, some excellent montages, all the stoned giggling you can handle and a total bummer ending, SHE SHOULDA SAID NO! will hopefully steer young people back onto the straight and narrow. As Babb himself would say, WHY STAY DUMB?

THE MASTER TOUCH
aka Un uomo da rispettare
Dir. Michele Lupo, 1972
Italy/West Germany, 112 min.

SATURDAY, MARCH 7 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, MARCH 20 – MIDNIGHT

There’s a reason why standards are standards, just as there’s a reason there’s so many “one last job” heist films — it’s the perfect recipe for car chases, double crosses, showdowns and schemes, and THE MASTER TOUCH offers not only all of the above, but some big-time actors. Steve Wallace (Kirk Douglas) is our genius safecracker, home from prison after three years, who wants only to settle in with his wife Florinda Bolkan (who could blame him), but is immediately offered a job — a heist involving an alarm system so sensitive the slightest sound can set it off. Douglas and Giulino Gemma (The Leopard, Tenebre, A Pistol For Ringo) know they have all of Hamburg’s police watching them, so they devise a clever alibi before taking down the biggest score of their lives — but we wouldn’t want to give away too much now, would we? With one of Ennio Morricone’s most brooding scores, THE MASTER TOUCH is a film not to miss.

WITCHCRAFT 70
Dir. Luigi Scattini/Lee Frost, 1970
Italy/United States, 95 min.
Mostly in English with Italian in English subtitles (sometimes)

If you’ve read anything on the internet about this film not written by Tenebrous Kate, it’s wrong, wrong, wrong (Shame on you, IMDB hacks! SHAAAAAAME!) so let’s try to stick to the facts: In 1969 director Luigi Scattini released Angeli Bianchi Angeli Neri (White Angel, Black Angel), a documentary about various occult practices around the world. This film was recut into two versions for English speaking audiences: The Satanists UK (for the British set) and our feature presentation WITCHCRAFT 70 for American audiences. These three films are not simply different dubs, but nearly different films altogether,. each not only containing exclusive material but entirely different narration. Of the three, WITCHCRAFT 70 is certainly the most Mondo, and for that we have our old pal Lee Frost to thank. If Luigi Scattini’s original film brings a wiggy mod sensibility (and copious nudity) to Satanic weddings and grave robbing, and The Satanists UK brings a cynical bent to the proceedings, WITCHCRAFT 70 brings us material more in line with other Lee Frost films like Mondo Bizzaro, Mondo Freudo, and the US version of The Forbidden. Plenty of everything you’d expect — Anton Lavey makes an entirely-suspected appearance, various black masses, voodoo practices, Baal worship, hippie cults, witches of all stripes and and more, much much more. With narration by Edmund Purdom (Pieces, Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas) and a good chunk of the original Piero Umiliani score, WITCHCRAFT 70 combines its source material with a post-Manson California vibe and a real/staged/who even knows aesthetic sure to please anyone who ever binge-watched In Search Of… episodes while incapacitated on Quaaludes. Those of you looking for a fact-checked detailed overview of the supernatural get exactly what you deserve. Those of you in the know on the whole Spectacle Midnights scene, however, are in for a deeply weird, nudetastic freakout you’re not likely to soon forget.

GOLDEN TEMPLE AMAZONS
aka Les amazones du temple d’or
Dir. Jess Franco¹, 1986
France, 86 min.
Dubbed in English

SATURDAY, MARCH 14 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, MARCH 27 – MIDNIGHT

For many fans, the truly great works of Jess Franco took place in the sixties and early seventies, and everything he did since then doesn’t measure up. Fuck those dudes. This isn’t so say a film like GOLDEN TEMPLE AMAZONS stands next to Venus In Furs, Nightmares Come at Night or Female Vampire — this is Franco at his jungle pulpiest, far more H. Rider Haggard than Bram Stoker. Thirty seconds into GOLDEN TEMPLE AMAZONS and it’s an army of topless women on horseback galloping in slow-motion to synth-pop, which should give you a good idea of what you’re in for. Said amazons keep a fortress deep in the jungle, sitting atop a huge gold mine. A family of explorers set out to investigate the mine and were slaughtered by the Amazons, leaving only young Liana (Analia Ivars) alive. The tribe raised her as one of their own, never telling her the fate of her parents. Time passes, and Liana, now fully grown, learns the truth, and in order to get revenge on the Amazon tribe joins forces Imagine a role-reversed Greystoke and you’re on the right path, but add a healthy dollop of Franco-style humor (think Robinson and his Wild Slavegirls — there’s even a hilarious monkey named Rocky!), all the questionable sadism you’d expect from late 80s Eurocine Franco, the drum machine wizardry of Norbert Verrone and a few truly problematic performances and it’s almost like a role-reversed Greystoke, only, well, *not*. Welcome to the return of The Franco Files!

¹ To what extent this film was directed by Jess Franco (who we guarantee wrote the screenplay) or Alain Payet (director of Nathalie: Escape From Hell among a ton of French porn) is a matter of some dispute. If there are any film scholars who wanna get into this, please let us know, but for everybody else: if it walks like a Franco, and talks like a Franco…

81 / 83 WITH RAÚL RUIZ

Posted on February 6, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

THE TERRITORY
Dir. Raúl Ruiz, 1981
Portugal, 104 min.
In English and French with English subtitles

TUESDAY, MARCH 3 – 7:30
MONDAY, MARCH 9 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 20 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 22 – 5 PM

Madness in excess but with a snowballing narrative effect, Raúl Ruiz’s THE TERRITORY takes peculiar people and surrounds them in a more peculiar setting and eventually plunges us into their inevitable lunacy. Ruiz’s hidden gem follows a group who embark on a hiking trip and get lost after ditching their guide. The situation turns vastly surreal with bright pops of color in photography but never turns into psychedelia. While the film is littered with non-sequitur jokes, it is more faithful to being an intellectual fantasy horror than a comedy. Compared to the bulk of his output during his eccentric 1980s era, THE TERRITORY can be considered one of Ruiz’s more accessible films of this time.

THREE CROWNS OF THE SAILOR
Dir. Raúl Ruiz, 1983
France, 117 min.
In French with English subtitles

THURSDAY, MARCH 5 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 16 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 20 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 22 – 7:30 PM

One of the 1980s’ art house masterpieces, Raúl Ruiz’s THREE CROWNS OF THE SAILOR is an absolutely absurd if not profound ghost ship tall tale that sails on a existential nonsense map to nowhere. Spoken in strange code, most of the cryptic language answers questions that were never asked and revels in its fractured fake histories. It is a story that is on another realm with multiverses being pulled through a singular and revelations of alternate characters that may have not existed. The film comes as a strategic stream of conscience that tries to shoe lace faded memories to the fragmented damaged stories. THREE CROWNS OF THE SAILOR is filled to the brim with over complicated ideas and none of them would work if humor and a grain of salt wasn’t included.

3 RUIZ SHORTS: VOYAGE OF THE HAND / ZIG ZAG / DOG’S DIALOGUE
Dir. Raúl Ruiz, 1985, 1980, and 1977
France, 25 min. / 31 min. / 22 min.
In French and English with English subtitles

TUESDAY, MARCH 3 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 8 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 16 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 19 – 10 PM

As a special supplemental collection to the two full lengths featured this month, these three shorts from Ruiz are perhaps his most notable and clever of this era. Presented in reverse chronological order, the program begins with VOYAGE OF THE HAND, one of his more successful impromptu nonsense nightmares. It focuses on the story of a man’s left hand, but in true Ruiz nature, many elements begin to blur. The second short ZIG ZAG is about a man reluctantly joining in a grand scale cartography game of conundrums where the rules constantly change and the scope grows infinitely. The final short in this collection is the landmark DOG’S DIALOGUE which set the off-center tone for the oncoming decades for Ruiz. Presented in the superior English language version, DOG’S DIALOGUE is an act of tomfoolery employing only stock footage and stills. By using clever repetition, what begins as a melodrama of a lovelorn woman breaks into other people’s narratives and eventually dissolves into an endless loop.

I LOVE A MAN IN UNIFORM

Posted on February 6, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

I LOVE A MAN IN UNIFORM
aka A Man in Uniform
Dir. David Wellington, 1993
Canada, 97 min.

FRIDAY, MARCH 6 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 17 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 26 – 7:30 PM

Some ideas deserve more than one film, and more than one author. They deserve some time to knock around the cinematic zeitgeist awhile in work that is not so much derivative as conversational. In this Canadian film from 1993, Tom McCamus plays Henry Addler, a bank clerk trying to make it as a full time actor while caring for his ailing father. Henry has just landed a reoccurring role on a TV police drama. To get into the part he takes his police uniform home and begins to walk the streets of Toronto looking for real life at its worst – and the goodness that only authority can sustain. Eventually, he also acquires a gun. I LOVE A MAN IN UNIFORM makes no secret of its debt to TAXI DRIVER. The similarities to the latter film marks one of many self-referentially cinematic elements. The emotional core of the film remains hidden just beneath the surface of a series of film tropes, common imagery, and stock characters. It’s a deeply personal and unique film, but every step of the way it struggles with cliche like an actor might struggle to give something real to a bit part. This is exactly the point, this is a film about pain that’s so hard to explain because it’s been explained so many times before, and about the roles common tragedies force us to play.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: ALBERTO CAVALLONE

Posted on February 6, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

BLOW JOB
aka Soffio Erotico
Dir. Alberto Cavallone, 1980
Italy, 78 min.
In Italian with English subtitles

SATURDAY, MARCH 7 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 10 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 15 – 5 PM
WEDNESDAY, 18 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 26 – 10 PM

Reportedly inspired by Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception, BLOW JOB is a full blown out of body experience. What begins as a romantic retreat quickly heads south when a young couple, Diana and Stéfano, are evicted from their hotel room. Capitalizing on the conveniently timed suicide of their upstairs neighbor, the two sneak off to the races, intent on gambling away the last of their funds. There, Stéfano meets a mysterious, one-eyed woman who enlists his aid in exchange for the name of the winning pony. Fulfilling his end of the bargain, Stéfano and Diana drive the woman to her compound, where voodoo, mind-swapping and naked dance parties unwittingly await them. Building to its explosive, surrealist third act, BLOW JOB displays unexpectedly layered yet winking nuance — nevermind the title.

BLUE MOVIE
Dir. Alberto Cavallone, 1978
Italy, 84 min.
In Italian with English subtitles

MONDAY, MARCH 2 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 6 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 10 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 24 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 31 – 7:30 PM

“Cavallone made his masterpiece with this 1978 film, a sort of BLOW-UP as written by George Bataille and directed by Guy Debord…Much more than just a curiosity for compulsive Italian B-movie fans, BLUE MOVIE is a singular mixture of Situationist polemic, genre deconstruction, and zero budget auteurism.” – Film Comment

Not to be confused with the claustrophobic Warhol film of the same name, BLUE MOVIE is an almost unplaceable genre exercise in trauma and perverse affection. Perhaps the most visually distinctive of the three films in this series, BLUE MOVIE pairs Silvia, grief stricken after an attempted rape, with her rescuer, a mysterious photographer by the name of Claudio, who has some skeletons of his own. What emerges is a bizarre love affair along two parallel tracks of madness.

[Trigger Warning: Repeated scenes of attempted rape.]

Special thanks to Raro Video.

MAN, WOMAN AND BEAST
aka Spell – Dolce mattatoio
Dir. Alberto Cavallone, 1977
Italy, 100 min.
In Italian with English subtitles

MONDAY, MARCH 2 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 7 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 12 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 17 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 29 – 5 PM

A man too concerned with collages to confront his mute wife’s psychosexual mania; a daughter impregnated by her father at her grandfather’s funeral; a butcher a little too devoted to his products — that’s just the tip of the very bizarre iceberg in Alberto Cavallone’s anti-pastoral pastiche, MAN, WOMAN AND BEAST. Elemental though the title may be, this hallucinatory jaunt through an Italian village on the eve of an annual Catholic festival rewards repeat viewings thanks to its rhythmic cuts and roving narrative. By the ecstatic, percussive, feces-covered close, you can no longer be certain if the beast is man, meat, or what the film’s women must become in order to survive.

JUCHE YOUR ILLUSION I: CINEMA OF NORTH KOREA

Posted on February 6, 2015December 25, 2019 by spectacletheater

North Korea’s late Kim Jong-Il was, by all accounts, a legendary cinephile who aimed to surpass the technical and artistic standards of Moscow. He weeded out potential counter-revolutionaries, organized workshops for the studies of Kim Il Sung’s theories of culture and did in fact author the volumes of film criticism published under his byline. The films produced under his leadership engage directly with the concept of juche, a particularly North Korean form of Marxism-Leninism generally revolving around the idea of total, homegrown self-reliance; in the senior Kim Il Sung’s words: “having the attitude of master toward revolution and construction in one’s own country…using your own brains, believing your own strength and displaying the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance, and thus solving your own problems for yourself on your own responsibility under all circumstances.”

Initially working as department director of propaganda and agitation, the young Kim Jong Il instituted wide-sweeping reforms in the North Korean film industry, mandating that artists avoid both art-for-art’s sake on one extreme and stiff, dogmatic films that neglect form and artistry on the other. He then actively encouraged people to emulate the heroes from films: “Day after day, leading characters in the works of art become real in each factory and each workshop,” he wrote.

Being at once proudly insular and aspiring to the artistic achievements of great Russian filmmakers and the magic of Hollywood, North Korean film is singularly baffling, enrapturing, inspiring and unsettling. This month, Spectacle presents the series JUCHE YOUR ILLUSION I, featuring feature films and propaganda made in North Korea, including CENTRE FORWARD, PULGASARI, FLOWER GIRL and URBAN GIRL COMES TO GET MARRIED. In April, JUCHE YOUR ILLUSION II will feature films made outside of North Korea that take the country as a subject.

CENTRE FORWARD
Dir. Pak Chong Song, 1978
North Korea, 77 min.
In Korean with English subtitles

MONDAY, MARCH 9 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 21 – 10 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 23 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 31 – 10 PM

“Oh, we are sportspersons of the Leader!” In CENTRE FORWARD, the DPRK’s first soccer movie, overzealous benchwarmer In Son botches his first match for the previously-undefeated Taesongan team. Their shameful loss is followed by a harrowing post-game self-recrimination session in which various team members take turns chastising themselves for In Son’s incompetence. Ultimately, the coach blames his team’s complacency and, remembering that “the Father Leader taught us to make this country a great Kingdom of Sports,” decides to “break from the old training program” in favor of a more merciless regimen. The players become resentful and lazy, drinking beer instead of training, while the party functionary Vice-Chairman implores the coach to go easier on them. Only In Son, inspired by his sister’s relentless dedication to the practice of dancing for “the collective spirit”, pushes himself to master the new program and his own self-doubt, recognizing that “when we beat the foreign teams, the entire Nation will share the joy.” But as the final game winds down with the unpromising score of 0-2, will this humble underdog get the chance to redeem himself – and the entire nation?

THE FLOWER GIRL
Ik Kyu Choe & Hak Pak, 1972
North Korea, 121 min.
In Korean with English subtitles

SUNDAY, MARCH 1 – 5 PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 5 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 15 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 28 – 7:30 PM

On the petals dewdrops glisten.
Is it there that my tears flow?
The moon is bright but in this dim,
Dark world I know not where to go.

The opening titles proudly proclaim that The Flower Girl is the film version of a revolutionary play first staged in 1930 — or the “13th anniversary of the October Revolution,” as Kim Il-sung describes it in his eight-volume memoir, having personally authoring the libretto after forming an art troupe in a utopian village in Jilin. Curiously, however, the play went unseen for over four decades, until it reappeared, rewritten and “improved” by Organizing Secretary Kim Jong Il as an opera, novel, and film in the 1970s.

Day after day, Ggot-bun faces indifference as she travels to town to sell flowers to earn money for her ailing mother. She, her mother, and her blind sister live in poverty after a shady landlord has impressed them into what is effectively a life of indentured servitude. Ggot-bun keeps her chin up; nevertheless, her fortunes go from bad to worse as she’s abused by Japanese colonialists and sold to work in a horrendous textile mill while her family suffers worse. Is it possible that guerrillas may arrive to slaughter her oppressors and lift the poor flower girl’s spirits?

You’re going to have to sit through some completely awe-inspiring and tearjerking musical numbers staged in front of twilit hillside vistas to find out.

As author Bradley K. Martin has noted, The Flower Girl is North Korea’s Les miserables, supplanting the French Revolution with Kim Il-sung’s regime, with the the sweeping melodrama and embitter class hatred intact. As DKRP cinema goes, this is a AAA production: as representative of the juche concept as The Godfather is of capitalism. How can 25 million people’s sympathies be so drawn to a despotic regime? Because they made The Flower Girl.

“When I saw The Flower Girl, if there was a dry eye in the house, it did not belong to me.” -Bradley K. Martin, author, In the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader

PULGASARI
aka Bulgasari
Dir. Sang-ok Shin, 1985
North Korea, 95 min.
In Korean with English subtitles

SUNDAY, MARCH 1 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 21 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 24 – 7:30 PM

Over the span of 20 years, Sang-ok Shin – sometimes called “the Orson Wells of South Korea” – made upwards of 60 films but all that changed in 1978 when the studio closed. Things would go from bad to worse when in what should be an unbelievable turn of events, Shin and his wife (actress Choi Eun-Hee) were kidnapped by Kim Jong-il. Kim’s intent was to have Shin create films showcasing the power and might of the Korea Workers Party for all the world to see, with Choi Eun-Hee as their star. Before their escape to Vienna in 1986, and after years in prison camps, they would make 7 films – PULGASARI being a crown jewel among them.

While seemingly an obvious Godzilla rip-off, the film is about an evil king in feudal Korea who learns of a coming peasant rebellion. The king gathers all the metal he can find – farming tools, cooking pots, etc – to make into weapons to squash the small army. A dying blacksmith uses the last of his strength to create a monster made of rice – Pulgasari. When his daughters blood hits it, the monster comes to life and traverses the countryside, eating iron – as monsters are wont to do.

Not seen outside of Korea for over a decade after its release, the film has gained a cult following for its special effects – with Kenpachiro Satsuma who was Godzilla for over a decade in the Pulgasari costume!

TRIUMPH OF THE IL: A SURVEY OF NORTH KOREAN PROPAGANDA
Dir. Various, compiled 2015
North Korea, 70 min.
In English and Korean with English subtitles

SUNDAY, MARCH 8 – 5 PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 19 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 30 – 10 PM

North Korea’s secrecy and isolation make it especially mysterious to outsiders, and some of our most sustained glimpses into the country are via its tenacious and dedicated propaganda department. Obscuring rather than enlightening, the films feature relentless assurances, bizarre Pollyanna qualities and extreme levels of repetition. The Juche philosophy of self-reliance, both for individuals and the North Korean state, takes on a sinister, disturbing quality despite the passionate optimism in the films, lending them a particular sense of despair.

Spectacle rounds out its Juche Your Illusion I: Cinema of North Korea series with TRIUMPH OF THE IL, selections from various North Korean propaganda films, including several which extol the virtues and philosophy of Kim Il-Sung and show the former North Korean leader in less isolated times, shaking hands with dozens of world leaders in the 1970s; a film designed to smooth the transition from Il-Sung to Kim Jong-il; karaoke-style military music videos meant to incite and inspire; and the “Arirang Mass Games”, a pageant of synchronized humanity so massive that it puts Busby Berkeley to shame.

URBAN GIRL COMES TO GET MARRIED
Dir. by Kim Il-Sung University students, 1993
North Korea, 73 min.
In Korean with English subtitles

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 23 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 28 – 10 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 30 – 7:30 PM

In URBAN GIRL COMES TO GET MARRIED, Ri Hyang, the best fabric cutter at an urban clothing factory, joins her all-female coworkers on a trip to the countryside as part of a “Peasant-Worker Alliance” program, where they “must work as demanded by Juche farming method”. Amid montages of joyous rice planting and flowing grain, Ri Hyang encounters the visionary young man behind the collective farm’s duck breeding project, Song Sik. She turns up her nose at first, but his commitment to the fatherly leader’s agricultural innovation protocol and rock ‘n roll drumming skills begin to win her over. When he tells her, “It’s time to feed duck dung to the gas furnace,” she says, “I can help you.” Together, they realize that this duck dung is just the beginning, for it will “contribute to agricultural development,” including “mechanization and chemicalization”.

Featuring a musical interlude where the principal characters perform the film’s titular theme song for assembled workers and peasants, URBAN GIRL COMES TO GET MARRIED claims that “a modern farm village is good to live in,” encouraging the best and brightest young urban women to marry men in the countryside so they can apply their worldly intelligence to the execution of “socialist rural theses”.

DIRTY DIARIES

Posted on February 1, 2015December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

DIRTY DIARIES
Various Directors, 2009
Sweden, 98 min.
Silent/In Swedish with English subtitles

SATURDAY, MARCH 14 – 8 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Tired of airbrushed, male gaze porn with no personality, no panache, no pizzazz? Spectacle’s got you covered. For one night only, Spectacle presents DIRTY DIARIES, a collection of Swedish feminist porn shorts sure to put the vim and vigor back into your love life!

Put together by director Mia Engberg, DIRTY DIARIES is a collection of 12 short films, each directed by a woman, and each dealing with a different aspect of sexuality. These shorts are raw, with every day people as performers, and nearly every proclivity and orientation represented. From an exploration of online sexuality, to lovers cutting each other out of body suits, to an animated short, DIRTY DIARIES likely has something you’re looking for — and just as likely, will make you reconsider what porn is, and what porn can be. Joining us for the night is Rachel Kramer Bussel, sex columnist, editor, and expert on sex and pop culture, to discuss the films and the issues they raise. With a manifesto that includes such points as “Fight for your right to be horny” and “Smash capitalism and patriarchy,” DIRTY DIARIES is porn with a message (don’t be scared away, it’s still hot, too).

Rachel Kramer Bussel is the author of Sex & Cupcakes: A Juicy Collection of Essays and the editor of over 50 anthologies, including Come Again: Sex Toy Erotica, Best Bondage Erotica 2015, The Big Book of Orgasms, The Big Book of Submission, Fast Girls, Gotta Have It and Cheeky Spanking Stories. She is a sex columnist for Philadelphia City Paper and DAME, teaches erotic writing workshops, writes widely about sex, dating, books and pop culture and Tweets @raquelita.

[Trigger Warning: This is hardcore pornography, including bondage, exhibitionism, fisting, and pretty much everything else you can think of.]

Special thanks to Njutafilms and Rachel Kramer Bussel.