IMPERIAL GREEN
Dir. Zach Lacosse n’dizh-nikaaz, 2025
Canada. 64 min.
In English.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 1 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 10 – 5 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 12 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 15 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 23 – 10 PM
An auto-fiction drama about car trouble, metropolitanism, and Joseph: an emotionally reserved HVAC apprentice who harbors thinly veiled unrest with his relationships, namely his long-term partner Jen, and his father-figure boss, Daniel.
THE TOWN
A Play by Walker Rutter-Bowman
Directed by Reñazco.
Estimated run time 60 minutes.
FRIDAY, JULY 24 – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, JULY 25 – 7:30PM
SUNDAY, JULY 26 – 7:30PM
The Town is an original play that takes place in a diner in a town called Heist. Across the street a crowd of men has gathered outside the bank, possibly wearing masks and carrying what look like guns—at least to some of the diner’s customers. The play unfolds as a series of conversations between the pairs of diners—the Girl and the Mayor, the Robber and the Town, the Mark and the Adjuster—while the proprietors of the town’s local cinemas, Film Hut and Cinema Palace, comment from the wings. In fact these cineastes are in the movie theater, while the other characters are on the screen… until events unfold to collapse this distinction.
In the course of the play, minds are read, thoughts implanted, friendships formed, valuables brandished, claims denied, parents mourned, seats reclined, senses restored, dreams realized, symbols invented, motorbikes inherited, banks robbed.
The Town references a long lineage of heist cinema, from Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958) to Heat (1995) to Ben Affleck’s 2010 movie of the same title. The characters of the play span generations of the town’s culture and history, and The Town occurs at a moment of colossal change, not just for the theater owners but for the town’s young citizens, including the Robber and Girl, who must find ways to be initiated into a culture—of robbery, or of art—in a state of often violent transition.
It’s a play about robbery—the taking and making of something beyond oneself—in a town where fresh idealism coexists with weary cynicism, and the love of cinema threatens to prove as corrosive as it is redemptive.
Cast:
The Girl . . . . . . . . . . . Alina Jacobs
The Mayor . . . . . . . . . Vita Taurke
The Robber . . . . . . . . Jonathan Hull
The Town . . . . . . . . . . Madeline Friedman
The Mark . . . . . . . . . . Asha Futterman
The Adjuster . . . . . . . . Ryan Tully
The Waitress . . . . . . . . Brittany Dennison
Film Hut . . . . . . . . . . . Blake Robbins
Cinema Palace . . . . . . Jonathan Woolen
This event is $10.
JISOE
Dir. Eddie Martin, 2005
Australia, 55 min.
In English.
FRIDAY, JULY 3 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 15 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JULY 25 – 5 PM
“I’m 24, mate. All I wanna do is paint trains.”
Jisoe follows Australian graffiti artist Justin Hughes (aka Jisoe) over a tumultuous year of his life. Director Eddie Martin found in Justin a very reflective and open subject. He is hilariously candid about his upbringing, his inspirations and his opinions on the state of graffiti culture. 20 years after its release, Jisoe stands as an important documentation of Melbourne graffiti culture and as one of the only existing documents of an illegal street artist allowing themselves to be identified in the act. Justin allows the filmmakers to document him bombing trains, hopping turnstiles and stealing from shops. This unprecedented access results in a film that is unforgettable.
Somewhere in memory and time, it’s late afternoon. You’re on the playground when a friend stands up and shouts “let’s play POWER RANGERS!” What a good idea. After everyone finishes fighting over who gets to be Red, you count to three and hit the ground running, armed only with finger guns and your imagination. When we were young, we never wanted days like this to end. For those in the mysterious EIYU CLUB, they never did.
Along with the advent of VHS, Laserdisc, and later DVD, Japan would develop an unquenchable thirst for home video content from the early 80s well up until the end of the century, similar to the Straight to Video boom experienced in the US. This format, known locally as V-Cinema, would allow filmmakers to shed the restraints of studio oversight, often developing a more experimental edge.
Enter EIYU CLUB, a group of sentai-loving otaku hoping to leave an impression. After pooling their own personal funds to afford equipment and studio time, the Club would release their first film CYBER LADY SUZUKA in 1998 and relied on word-of-mouth to sell their films and CDs at fan conventions, hobby stores, and online. Almost 30 years on, their work is still finding a strong cult following amongst toku enthusiasts who appreciate their attitude and dedication to costuming, music, extended blooper reels, and improvised explosives.
This July at Spectacle, please enjoy these two hand-selected programs showcasing some of EIYU CLUB‘s finest moments in parking lot fantasy: CYBER LADY SUZUKA and the LILAC series.
PGM. 01: CYBER LADY SUZUKA
CYBER LADY SUZUKA
(サイバーレディ スズカ)
Dir. Nobuharu Kidokoro. 1998.
Japan. 59 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles.
MONDAY, JULY 06 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JULY 11 – 5:00 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 21 – 10:00 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 30 – 7:30 PM
After witnessing the death of his colleague’s daughter, Suzuka Minamoto, at the hands of the evil ZELDA organization, Dr. Todoroki returns to his lab and implants her with the “Ability Awakening Converter” which revives her into CYBER LADY SUZUKA, a robot maid with a bad habit of falling asleep on the job. When ZELDA returns, Suzuka must exact vengeance and rescue her little sister Haruka from a rogues’ gallery of the organization’s toughest monsters.
Seen as their flagship mascot, CYBER LADY SUZUKA is where it all started for EIYU CLUB!
Screening with:
CYBER LADY SUZUKA II
(サイバーレディ スズカII)
Dir. Nobuharu Kidokoro. 1998.
Japan. 29 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles.
The sequel! Duh!
PGM. 02: LILAC
WEDNESDAY, JULY 08 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JULY 11 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 22 – 10:00 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 30 – 10:00 PM
LILAC VERSION RED ～DREAM OF SHUDDER～
(リラ Ver.Red ドリーム オブ シャダー)
Dir. Yoshihiro Akase. 2001.
Japan. 26 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles.
A woman is stalked nightly by a mysterious stranger. Her only comforts: the glow of the television and her childhood doll Lila, a gift from her father. But Lila is more than a doll. When the stalker closes in, Lila comes to life—not just to protect her owner, but to also guard the whereabouts of a uniquely powerful weapon known as the Peerless Sword.
DREAM OF SHUDDER is pure somnambulance and acute denpa; perhaps EIYU CLUB’s creepiest creation.
LILAC VERSION BLUE ～PURE HEART～
(リラ Ver.Blue ～Pure Heart～)
Dir. Tetsuya Ozaki. 2001.
Japan. 25 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles.
LILA IS BACK!
Lonely otaku Daisuke gets lucky and wins an online bid for a life-sized Lila doll. He keeps her in his apartment and orders her around, until one day Lila is awakened by the magic of life. When Daisuke’s rented Idol girlfriend Honoka returns home, an intriguing feud breaks out, and Lila is forced to unlock her magical girl powers.
PURE HEART is a relatively more polished and cinematic experience from her Red sister, incorporating both the Pinocchio story and a pinch of Norse mythology. What a pairing!
DREAM MONSTER CHAO
(ドリームモンスター・チャオ)
Dir. Michihiko Ichio. 2007.
Japan. 21 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles.
One morning, an ass-slapping goofball called the Dream Monster Chao appears in slacker Haruka’s apartment and offers to help make his treasure hunting dreams come true. When Haruka’s evil landlord arrives to shut down their plans, Chao must kick into high gear and strike back against the forces of evil and property ownership.
Landing more within the bounds of an indie rock comedy, DREAM MONSTER CHAO is stylistically distinct from the LILAC series but thematically linked through its ideas of animacy and service.
Many, many thanks to Gossamer Fansubs for keeping EIYU CLUB alive through their subbing, asset scanning, and video rescue.
dir. Mike Jacobs, 2007.
United States. 88 min.
In English.
THURSDAY, JULY 2 — 7:30 PM ($10)
“In 1994, at age 40 Pastor Richard Gazowsky saw his first movie. Later that year he received a vision from God.”
So begins Audience of One, the stunning 2007 documentary story of a Pentacostal congregation’s decade-plus Quixotic cinematic odyssey conjuring tens of millions of dollars from churchgoers and international investors.
The church’s film, Gravity: Shadow of Joseph, is modestly pitched as “Star Wars meets The Ten Commandments” and the 65mm 60 frames-per-second epic takes its first-time filmmakers from San Francisco to Italy putting their homes, livelihoods, reputations, and the church’s future on the line in the name of Christian Science fiction. Despite a successful and prize-winning festival run, Audience of One is wildly under-seen, currently un-rentable, and has never been available to stream.
Winner of the 2007 South by Southwest Special Jury Award, come see the strange and true documentary Zoe Ligon called “The Room, Windy City Heat, and Jesus Camp rolled into one” and the New York Times said ‘illustrates how smoothly delusions of show business grandeur can dovetail with religious zealotry.”
THE BIRDS TELL ME ALL THERE IS TO KNOW
Dir. Aidan Cronin, 2026.
United States, 123 minutes.
In English.
FRIDAY, JULY 17 – 7:30 PM (w/Q&A)
WEDNESDAY, JULY 22 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 23 – 7:30 PM (w/Q&A)
MONDAY, JULY 27 – 7:30 PM
As the Summer comes to a close in upstate New York, Paul, a widowed painter with dementia crosses paths with Sam, a young woman reconciling with the death of her father.
Despite their brief meeting, both Paul and Sam connect over a shared melancholic sameness, finding themselves drawn in and out of each other’s orbit by the vessel of a birdhouse as they individually go about their daily lives: Paul tending to the maintenance of lonely rural backyard life, and Sam who navigates a relationship on the brink of uncertainty.
Shot on Video8 the precursor format to Hi8 video, the film stylistically positions itself as a cross between an existentially fraught lofi David Attenbourough nature doc, with the frantic improvised dramatic looseness of early Joe Swanberg movies. Set to the ambient sonic pattern of birds, peepers, crickets and moving rivers, which do battle with the reoccuring cacophony of landscapers and lawn mowers that challenge their world– “Birds” invites viewers into its hypnotic rhythm, allowing space to consider one’s owns problems in juxtaposition to the natural world.
This July, Spectacle presents three midnight flicks united by a shared frequency: dronecore, the microbudget mode where genre scaffolding quietly collapses into texture and trance. Separated by decade and continent — French suburban gore, American experimental horror, and acid-house sci-fi — Folies Meurtriéres, Lost Prophet, and Suroh: Alien Hitchhiker arrive at the same destination through different doors: a cinema of dead air and degraded image, where obsessions and budget limitations fuse into something genuinely hypnotic.
FOLIES MEURTRIÈRES
dir. Antoine Pellissier, 1984
France. 48 min.
In French with English subtitles.
SATURDAY, JULY 11 – MIDNIGHT
MONDAY, JULY 13 – 7:30PM
FRIDAY, JULY 17 – 10PM
SUNDAY, JULY 26 – 5PM
A crazed killer wanders around killing several young women with various weapons. Is there a motive for these crimes or is it purely for the joy of killing?
A masked killer stalks and murders women in a French suburb. That’s it — no motive, no dialogue, no relief. What Pellissier delivers instead is a slasher boiled down to pure signal: forty-eight minutes of blown-out Super 8, warped synth, and gore effects that feel less like horror movie craft than evidence of something that maybe actually happened. Beautiful, cursed dead air, vibe cinema of the highest order.
Preceded by a screening of
THE CHOSEN ONE OF HELL
dir. Antoine Pellissier, 1985
France. 35 min.
In French with English subtitles.
Two year old little Cindy has been chosen by the devil to become the antichrist.
A short offering from Antoine Pellissier from the year after FOLIES – plays like a cross between a home-video recording of a satanic ritual and a no-budget remake of THE EXORCIST (Friedkin is actually name-checked in the opening credits) featuring a very unbothered toddler. As one Letterboxd user excellently describes it, “Cindy is the chosen one, Satan has a fit, and a priest takes a nap. It’s like discovering Chaucer while inhaling fumes at a gas pump.”
Restorations courtesy of Bleeding Skull.
LOST PROPHET
dir. Michael De Avila, 1992
USA. 74 min.
In English.
TUESDAY, JULY 7 – 10PM
SUNDAY, JULY 12 – 5PM
SATURDAY, JULY 18 – MIDNIGHT
WEDNESDAY, JULY 29 – 10PM
Unstable man spends the summer in an empty mansion, where he meets punks, serial killers and witches.
‘Lynchian’ is a term that gets thrown around ad nauseam, and frequently incorrectly, but this scrappy thesis film earns it, while carving out its own specific territory – what might be best described as American gothic filtered through the lens of a film student who’s seen too much Maya Deren (complimentary).
Shot on 16mm, edited, and scored by De Avila himself, and it shows (also complimentary). Part experimental horror, part fever dream journal, Lost Prophet is a singularly strange artifact of the early 90s DIY horror boom, the kind of film that could only be made by one person answering to no one.
Restoration courtesy of VHShitfest.
SUROH: ALIEN HITCHHIKER
dir. Patrick McGuinn, 1996
USA. 74 min.
In English.
MONDAY, JULY 6 – 10PM
FRIDAY, JULY 10 – 7:30PM ft Q&A with director Patrick McGuinn
TUESDAY, JULY 14 – 7:30PM
FRIDAY, JULY 24 – MIDNIGHT
BUY TICKETS FOR 7/10 Q&A
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Why must you kill all the heroes?
Paul, a non-believer in life on other planets, late one night discovers a crash-landed and wounded alien. He rescues the being and is initiated into a psycho-sexual metamorphosis.
What starts out feeling like a familiar regional SOV sci-fi flick quickly morphs into something much stranger and more interesting than your average no-budget genre affair. Awash in acid-house pulse and LSD-smeared video, Suroh is queer, strange, and genuinely beautiful — less interested in alien contact as sci-fi premise than as a vehicle for transformation. One of the most unique SOV artifacts of the ’90s underground.
Restoration courtesy of Bleeding Skull. .
Over five decades, the French artist Jean-Louis Costes has constructed an immense body of work. A prolific songwriter, musician, performance artist, writer and filmmaker, he is perhaps best known, if he is known at all, for his music, especially his synth-driven industrial noise, though his musical output, like his film work, is impressively and deceptively varied. The comparison “the French GG Allin” comes from the bodily confrontation and audience provocation in their respective live performances. It can offer a rough orientation for viewers unfamiliar with Costes, but does nothing to explain his artistic project. Inside of France, his books are respected, while his incendiary satirical lyrics have made him the target of lawsuits and criminal investigations.
Abroad, some will know his collaborations with Lisa Carver (Suckdog, Rollerderby), his former wife. Film viewers may recognize him from Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi’s BAISE-MOI (2000) and Gaspar Noé’s IRREVERSIBLE (2002). Yet his own film work is rarely screened, sitting at the bottom of his public reception, as unhinged as it is underseen. In fact, this program is the first serious retrospective of his films in the United States. The majority of the subtitles in English were created specifically for this program.
“The people who come to my shows are the outsiders of their own groups. It will be punks who are no longer totally satisfied with punk, goths although those won’t admit it. So they’re people who break away from their groups. It’s the anti-social people from everywhere.” – Jean-Louis Costes
“Costes is the ultimate French absurdist, and he and Lisa Carver wrote operas together and performed them at punk clubs. The mixture of personality and identity was fierce and mind-boggling and far more complex and intelligent than just accidental genius.” – Thurston Moore
Costes did not set out to make films, just as he did not set out to make music alone. He tried to play in bands, but nobody would take him. He set up a reel-to-reel in his flat and started alone. Piano on one track, vocals on the other. The one-second delay between the record and playback heads produced a chaotic style. He refused to choose between melody and noise, between pop and weird sounds, between lyric and texture, and he refused to give up making the unlikely thing of all of those at once. He wrote his own songs, recorded them himself, dubbed his own cassettes, and invented his own label. By 1984 the synthesis held. The home studio he built in his Saint-Denis basement gave him the freedom to produce music on his own terms.
The camcorder was bought to archive performances for VHS sales. He turned it on himself in his ruined loft. The first film, ONLY GOD SEES ME (DIEU SEUL ME VOIT), featured in Program 3, was a solo recording with no crew and no editing experience. The films in this retrospective come out of that lineage. The films were made because the camcorder, the basement, and the body were already there, and because he could take the camcorder on the road. No audience was presumed in advance. The result is a body of films that moves from Saint-Denis to Tokyo, New York, and the Amazonian jungle, and remains outside traditional circuits of exhibition, with no label, no distributor, and no institutional support.
This retrospective gathers a representative selection of short- and medium-length films from 1990 to 2006.
This is a retrospective for viewers willing to meet explicit, confrontational underground work directly. The films are formally and emotionally unhinged, and the lower register is fully present, staged through fiction and performance. Scatological content recurs. Often in revolting detail. Sexual content is unembarrassed and frequently violent. Sexual frustration runs through. But none of this exists, Costes claims, without dramaturgical necessity. The films remove the usual aesthetic protections. A romantic and playful streak runs through the work, although usually against all evidence. The slapstick humor, beauty, tenderness, frailty, weakness, and failure are part of the mechanism.
Program 1 is the clearest entry point, built around travel, media panic, and street romance. Program 2 turns inward: DEADLY GAS IN TOKYO is lonely and stylized, and I LOVE STUFF is the joyous, deranged pressure point. Program 3 is the wildcard, built around solitude, private ritual, and mystical collapse.
PROGRAM 1: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
THURSDAY, JULY 16 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, JULY 20 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 24 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 28 – 7:30 PM
“You’re in a kind of niche where nobody wants to touch anything related to failure. You know, everything about shame, failure in a person. That’s something that’s not show business at all… I deal with everything that is the hidden side of humanity.” – Jean-Louis Costes
MORPHO
Dir. Jean-Louis Costes, 1998
In French with English subtitles, 26 min.
A female scientist ventures into the Amazonian jungle in search of a legendary butterfly. A hunter offers to guide her to a remote spot where the creature is said to appear. But the hunter, played by Costes himself, turns out to be a dangerous sexual maniac. Pulp jungle exploitation shot almost entirely at remote locations in French Guiana. Reedited for DVD in 2007.
THE HEZBOLLAH VIRUS
Dir. Jean-Louis Costes, 2001
In French with English subtitles, 8 min.
Put in perspective by the September 11 events, a critique of the desensitization at work in media exposure, and the numbness produced by repeated exposure.
CRACK KISS
Dir. Jean-Louis Costes, 1991
In French with English subtitles, 23 min.
Costes in New York, hooked on crack because of a woman (Lydia Zamm). Shot on location in New York City, with an eclectic cast. Early-90s New York City sleaze in loose camcorder form: hotel rooms, street romance, and a ravaged downtown that refuses to stay in the background.
PROGRAM 2: THE MAD MASTER OF SAINT-DENIS
THURSDAY, JULY 16 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 21 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JULY 25 – 10:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 29 – 7:30 PM
“Yes, I think I make operas. Well, in my head, they are operas, because there is a script. People think it is performance art, that we do whatever… work with the body, roll around in filth. But no: in my head, it is a romantic narrative. I couldn’t act like an idiot, or even drop my pants, without a narrative justification.” – Jean-Louis Costes
DEADLY GAS IN TOKYO
Dir. Jean-Louis Costes, 1995
Silent, 17 min.
A short film about loneliness and lost love. Costes in a shady Tokyo hotel room, surrounded by bars and love hotels. The woman he met won’t return his calls, so he fills the time playing with himself, his keyboard, and a plastic bag.
I LOVE STUFF
Dir. Jean-Louis Costes, 1996
In French with English subtitles, 51 min.
A couple struggling to pay the bills kidnaps their impotent neighbor’s wife and mails torture videos to her husband as ransom to get out of their financial hole! Costes plays the couple’s sadistic transvestite half, while his partner plays its dominatrix other half. Instead of paying the ransom, the impotent husband finds the ransom tapes arousing and asks for more videos, and from there things get a little more slippery.
PROGRAM 3: I LIVE ALONE
FRIDAY, JULY 17 – 11:55 PM
SATURDAY, JULY 25 – 11:55 PM
“I live alone deep in the countryside. Three hens and a rooster are my only friends. I’m out of money and will have to eat my hens. Then I’ll commit suicide.” Jean-Louis Costes
KILL & FUCK (excerpts from SEVEN DEADLY SINS AND A GRACE)
Dir. Jean-Louis Costes, 2005
In French unsubtitled, 4 min
From the SEVEN DEADLY SINS AND A GRACE collection.
NOOKY
Dir. Jean-Louis Costes, 1990
In French with English subtitles, 13 min.
Left alone, a man reverts to infancy: diapers, toys, and a deposit on the carpet. Every adult hides a child who just wants to be held. With Lisa Suckdog Carver.
DISCO COW
Dir. Jean-Louis Costes, 2025
Silent, 1 min.
In the Pyrenees Mountains, cows dance in the pastures and ring bells night and day.
ONLY GOD SEES ME (DIEU SEUL ME VOIT)
Dir. Jean-Louis Costes, 1990
Silent, 30 min.
Solitary home performance. The title is a Haitian expression for what one does in private when no one but God is watching.
SAUL AND THE SORCERESS
Dir. Jean-Louis Costes, 1997
In French with English subtitles, 22 min.
After yet another fight with his girlfriend, a man obsessed with the biblical story of Saul flees halfway across the world to Saül, a town in the Amazonian jungle of French Guiana, gets drunk, and walks into the night with a machete. His wife follows and finds him too late. One of the director’s strangest and most mystical films. Domestic collapse becomes biblical fatalism: a man mistakes escape for destiny, and discovers love only as regret after repair proves impossible.
Special Thanks to Jean-Louis Costes
Translation and Subtitles by Benjamin Pequet
During his 22 years teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago, the legendary experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage helped many filmmakers find their own voice. The best of them would produce work that would thankfully avoid being too closely linked to his inescapable influence on the American avant-garde, including such important filmmakers as Bill Brand, Louis Hock, Marjorie Keller, and Saul Levine. One of the lesser-known names to emerge from the Chicago scene was Bruce Wood, a Massachusetts-based painter whose love of Brakhage’s classic Window Water Baby Moving and the animated films of Robert Breer had him specifically coming to the Institute to study under Brakhage. After a five-year period of prolific filmmaking in the 1970s that led to greater recognition in Europe than in the United States, he largely returned to painting and subsequent work as an art dealer.
Wood’s almost entirely black-and-white body of cinematic work both predates the B&W works of the better-known Andrew Noren, and suggests an alternative route for monochromatic abstraction that is closer to Franz Kline’s paintings and a private form of calligraphy than conventional photography. His use of multiple exposures and superimpositions, rescaling images, and single-frame manipulations turn initially realistic imagery into sensual shadow motions. Spectacle is pleased to announce the first-ever complete retrospective of Bruce Wood’s 16mm short films, with all titles projected on 16mm, and with Wood in attendance for introductions and Q&As.
Co-programmed by Andrew Reichel & Forrest Sprague. Special thanks to Bruce Wood and The Film-Makers’ Cooperative.
PROGRAM 1: EMERGING FROM THE SHADOWS
SATURDAY, JULY 18 – 5 PM (w/ Intro by Bruce Wood)
ACE NUMBER 5 (RED VERSION)
1974, United States.
8 min, 16mm.
Silent.
This program of Bruce Wood’s earliest works consists of a rare (and deliberately) red copy of his debut film ACE Number 5. “The breakthrough which led to the rest of them.” – Bruce Wood
LATEX SKY
1975, United States.
8 min, 16mm.
Silent.
“Throughout the sequence of films, a certain tension is maintained by oscillating around the border between what is abstract and what can be referred back to its source – a concern which is reflected in Wood’s choice of [titles:] ‘Latex Sky,’ for example.” – Jeremy Spencer
RIVER OF STARS
1975, United States.
10 min, 16mm.
Silent.
“…as if one were participating in the physical act of painting itself…one feels the sensation of the applying of strokes in black and white, of various feathery textural layers…There is tremendous variety of patterns. They blend effortlessly one into the other through a constant variety of means.” – Bob Cowan
ARCTIC DESIRE
1976, United States.
7 min, 16mm.
Silent.
“Almost without exception both hard vibrating abstract images and softer, slower, sustained images exist within the one film but one may well overcome the other as, for instance, in ‘Arctic Desire’ where the latter predominate.” – Jeremy Spencer
SILVER TRACES
1976, United States.
6 min, 16mm.
Silent.
AIRLESS PASSAGE
1976, United States.
13 min, 16mm.
Silent.
“[Films such as] ‘Silver Traces’ and ‘Airless Passage’ in particular deal more with the assembling of images within time and the resultant superimpositions, some lattice-like, others which tease the eye from one layer to another: but most interesting are those which, especially in ‘Silver Traces,’ appear to interact with the film surface itself.” – Jeremy Spencer
TRT: 52 min + reel changes
PROGRAM 2: BRIDGES AND PASSAGES
SATURDAY, JULY 18 – 7:30 PM (w/ Intro by Bruce Wood)
ISLAND DESIGN
1976, United States.
6 min, 16mm.
Silent.
“In the later films, ‘Island Design’ and ‘Molten Shadow,’ it is the assemblage [of images] over time which has become more important.” – Jeremy Spencer
EDGE FORCES
1976, United States.
11 min, 16mm.
Silent.
“EDGE FORCES is an abstract collage of rapid nebulous forms and calligraphic lines. The frame is used as a “canvas” for thousands of fleeting images that try to expand beyond its confines. Viewers are compelled either to comprehend the dynamic flow of the images, or to make free subjective associations with them.” – Bruce Wood
MOLTEN SHADOW
1976, United States.
8 min, 16mm.
Silent.
THE BRIDGE OF HEAVEN
1977, United States.
32 min, 16mm.
Silent.
“THE BRIDGE OF HEAVEN features elements both starkly structural (frames in frames, grids, x’s, A-frames) and sensually dancing (swirling clouds of grain, creeping white suggestive blobs).” – Josh Mabe
TRT: 57 min + reel changes
PROGRAM 3: FLYING INTO THE VOID
SUNDAY, JULY 19 – 5 PM (w/ Bruce Wood Q&A following screening)
THE SMELL OF DEATH
1977, United States.
16 min, 16mm.
Silent.
“The probable masterpiece of the night is THE SMELL OF DEATH. The film alternates between three modes. First, the slowly fading image of an “X”–suggestive of a failing system (medical equipment? the body?). Then skeletal fingers caressing the surface of the film (from the viewpoint of the dying’s last sense of this world? or of the dying’s reaching out onto the next?). Finally, stuttering torn pulses of light–something like flesh being destroyed. It’s a great film–and perfectly encapsulates Wood’s talent for giving a fully formed world born of simply Black and White.” – Josh Mabe
FROZEN FLIGHT
1977, United States.
33 min, 16mm.
Silent.
“Many of Wood’s individual frames also involve several different overlays of separate exposures. He really is most crucially involved with producing the virtuoso ‘moment.’ It’s an understatement to say that his [film Frozen Flight], whose…33 minutes’ running time juxtapose[s] hundreds of these complex, hinged-together compositions, [is] overloaded with startling, intense, undeveloped information.” – C.L. Morrison
BETWEEN GLANCES
1978, United States.
14 min, 16mm.
Silent.
“Brakhage’s influence can be felt most keenly in BETWEEN GLANCES which (only half-jokingly) seems like an expression of “closed-eye vision” from inside of one of Warhol’s Silver Clouds.” – Josh Mabe
TRT: 63 min + reel changes
In the early Aughts, two filmmakers from the South made the groundbreaking, campy queer films, FRATERNITY MASSACRE AT HELL ISLAND and HELLBENT. These films subverted how gay men and their relationships were portrayed at the time, exploring their identities, friendships, coming out and finding love. From a pledge night event on a cursed island in Memphis to a wild Halloween night out in West Hollywood, these friends and lovers fight to survive until morning as they battle homophobia and crazed, masked murderers.
Fraternity Massacre was filmed 20 years ago by Memphis-based filmmaker Mark Jones. He previously wrote the screwball comedy ELI PARKER IS GETTING MARRIED? (2000) and later directed TENNESSEE QUEER (2014), plus a series of short films from 2016-2025. Two of the shorts will screen before the main attraction which hasn’t been screened in New York since 2007.
HELLBENT celebrated its 20th anniversary last year. Originally from Fort Worth, Paul Etheredge filmed this over a two-year period in West Hollywood and marked his directorial debut. It was one of the first queer slasher films, and influenced a wave of stylistic, queer horror films in the 2000s. Etheredge went on to release THE OTHER in 2025.
FRATERNITY MASSACRE AT HELL ISLAND
Dir. Mark Jones, 2007.
United States. 80 min.
In English.
FRIDAY, JULY 3 – 10:00 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 9 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 14 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 31 – MIDNIGHT
Coming out is hard enough, especially when there is a maniacal killer clown on the loose! New pledge Jack Jones and his secret boyfriend struggle with coming out to their fraternity brothers. Before dawn, he realizes he is not alone and seeks acceptance in the harsh environment of a southern fraternity in the early 2000s. Meanwhile, students start being brutally murdered and everyone seems to have a motive. As the pledges are locked on a cursed island overnight, can Jack survive the homophobia and deranged killer running rampant on Hell Island?
Preceded by a screening of:
HENRY
Dir. Mark Jones, 2018.
United States. 7 min.
In English.
A grieving man in the deep south is told by a sibling that he cannot bring a loved one to his father’s funeral.
THE COACH, THE PRINCIPAL AND THE COMPROMISE
Dir. Mark Jones, 2018.
United States. 6 min.
In English.
In order to stem increased homophobic violence at a high school, a Principal presents an unusual solution to the heads of the theater and football departments.
HELLBENT
Dir. Paul Etheredge, 2004.
United States. 85 min.
In English.
SUNDAY, JUNE 28 – 5:30 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 3 – MIDNIGHT
MONDAY, JULY 13 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 31 – 10 PM
It’s Halloween night in West Hollywood and everyone is dressed to kill hoping to take home costume prizes and more. A group of twenty-something friends plan a big night out as they pursue their crushes, until a brooding maniac clad in leather stalks the gay bars and hook-up spots on Santa Monica Boulevard. Who will go home alone…or even worse, who will never make it home again?