Adored and abhorred in equal amounts, the dozens of pink films churned out by filmmaker Hisayasu Satô in the late 1980s and 90s frequently veer beyond any traditional notion of good taste in their examinations of voyeurism, obsession, and isolation in the waning days of Japan’s bubble era.

Rarely—if ever—screened outside of Japan until their recent restorations by Vinegar Syndrome, Spectacle is thrilled to present a sampler of three of Satô’s most acclaimed and notorious films this month.

2K restorations by Vinegar Syndrome, courtesy of Muscle Distribution.

AN ARIA ON GAZES (浮気妻 恥辱責め)
Dir. Hisayasu Satô, 1992.
Japan. 65 minutes.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

SUNDAY, JUNE 14 – 7:30PM
TUESDAY, JUNE 23 – 10PM
TUESDAY, JUNE 30 – 7:30PM

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Housewife Kyoko (Kiyomi Itō) begins moonlighting at a mysterious sex club as a means of rebelling against her boring salaryman husband Akihito (Mineo Sugiura). The Bedroom isn’t like any normal sex club, though: the female hostesses all take the powerful sedative Halcion to sleep through their perverse encounters with the male clientele, waking up at the end of their shifts with no memory of what’s been done to them. But when Kyoko decides to explore her fetish for voyeurism by not taking the drug, the lines between fantasy and reality quickly become increasingly blurred—and dangerous.

Loosely adapted from Yasunari Kawabata’s 1961 novella HOUSE OF THE SLEEPING BEAUTIES—and featuring a cameo from none other than real-life cannibal Issei Sagawa—AN ARIA ON GAZES (also known as THE BEDROOM) is one of  Satô’s most celebrated and visually stunning works.

LOVE – ZERO = INFINITY (いやらしい人妻 濡れる)
Dir. Hisayasu Satô, 1994.
Japan. 62 minutes.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, JUNE 6 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, JUNE 12 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, JUNE 27 – MIDNIGHT

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Tōru (Takeshi Itō) is a jobless drifter who spends his days following random strangers in a futile search for companionship. But when he’s hired by a doctor to track his mysterious wife’s (Kiyomi Itō) daily activities, he slowly begins to piece together the disturbing motive behind her movements. As the two grow increasingly aware of the other’s presence, violent desires that blur the lines between intimacy and blood ritual begin to erupt within them.

A modern-day vampire story filtered through Satô’s usual themes of urban malaise and voyeurism, LOVE – ZERO = INFINITY is as oddly romantic as it is unsettling.

RE-WIND (アブノーマル 陰虐)
Dir. Hisayasu Satô, 1988.
Japan. 64 minutes.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, JUNE 13 – MIDNIGHT
MONDAY, JUNE 15 – 10PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 20 – MIDNIGHT

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When a grisly, point-of-view snuff videotape is found in a refrigerator, a young man becomes obsessed with tracking down its creator and finding out whether or not the brutal murder depicted on it was real. As he delves deeper into Tokyo’s underground video scene with a female reporter who calls herself Crime Hunter (Kiyomi Itō), his own perversions come to the fore.

Fusing gruesome gore and raw sex while wryly playing tribute to Michael Powell’s seminal PEEPING TOM, Satô’s RE-WIND (also known as CELLULOID NIGHTMARES) is one of the filmmaker’s most powerful and impressive early works.

The husband-and-wife team of Mike Galinsky and Suki Hawley have been making films together since the early ‘90s, when they both agreed to drop out of film school and make their own work together. This June, Spectacle is proud to present a double bill of Hawley and Galinsky’s two fictional features, Half-Cocked (1994) and Radiation (1999).

Drawing on Galinsky’s experience as a photographer and Hawley’s as an assistant to the likes of Roger Corman and Todd Haynes, these films remain vital dispatches from the guts of the ‘90s indie rock scene. Despite being shot with a documentarian’s eye for detail and local color, both apply a loose crime-film framework to their episodic narratives, suggesting the risks and compromises inherent in living as an artist on the margins.

HALF-COCKED
Dir. Suki Hawley, 1994.
US. 81 min.
In English.

TUESDAY, JUNE 2 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, JUNE 9 – 10 PM 
FRIDAY, JUNE 19 – 7:30 PM (Q&A with director Suki Hawley)
SATURDAY, JUNE 27 – 10 PM (Q&A with director Suki Hawley)

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Hawley and Galinsky’s first feature follows bored Louisville teenager and aspiring rocker Tara (Tara Jane O’Neil), who spends her hours toiling away with her local indie rock band Truckstop and arguing with her pompous brother Otis (Nation of Ulysses frontman Ian Svenonious), leader of the slightly-more-popular Guilloteens.

When Tara and Truckstop decide to push their chips by stealing the Guilloteens’ van and equipment to go on tour, they find themselves struggling nightly to book shows and make ends meet, all while staying one step ahead of the law. Shot in striking black & white and set to an immaculate collection of obscure ‘90s indie jams, Half-Cocked is an essential portrait of the futility, boredom and occasional beauty of life on the road.

RADIATION
Dir. Suki Hawley & Michael Galinsky, 1999.
US. 90 min.
In Spanish and English with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, JUNE 2 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, JUNE 11 – 10 PM 
SATURDAY, JUNE 20 – 5 PM (Q&A with director Suki Hawley)
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24 – 10 PM

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Radiation follows Unai, a Spanish music promoter who supplements his income by selling speed while on the road. After he’s stiffed by a club owner, Unai finds himself unable to pay either his drug supplier or the band (real-life indie rockers Come) he’s supposed to be taking on tour. Accompanied by a gregarious performance artist (the unforgettable Katy Petty), Unai goes on the run, hoping to find some cash and, just maybe, a sense of purpose.

Filmed on location in Spain and featuring cameos by Will Oldham and Stereolab, Radiation expands upon the portrait of life on the edges of the music business found in Half-Cocked with wicked humor and deep yearning for something beyond its day-to-day grind.

ANALIFE
(アナライフ)
Dir. Kenji Goda. 2005.
Japan. 83 min.
In English and Japanese with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3 — 10 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 12 — 10 PM
TUESDAY, JUNE 16 — 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 26 — 10 PM

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A rapist, a murderer, and a dumpster diver all find themselves in the waiting room at the same proctologist…

What may sound like the setup for a cruel joke is in fact the premise of Kenji Goda’s groundbreaking and predictive hyperlink cinema masterpiece, ANALIFE, in which our three weaving heroes discover that a hole is never just a hole.

Developed between 1995 and 2005, filmmaker and game director Kenji Goda sought to express what he witnessed at the arrival of the Information Age: our global consciousness was starting to fracture and the guts of human emotion and identity had flipped inside out. Soon enough, our webs would become our cages, and our thirst for human connection would push us towards increasingly psychotic tactics. To Goda, it was clear: the fruit from our digital garden had already begun to rot.

Deploying a disembodied, corporate voiceover à la Chris Morris’ late-nite cult radio program BLUE JAM and infectiously scored by the late Rei Harakami (part of duo yanokami, alongside the legendary Akiko Yano), ANALIFE is an abjectly transcendent, WAX-like assault from a once-future world where “all morals are engulfed in the flood of images” and a hole in the heart is worth filling with something more sublime. Give your regards to the bear this June at Spectacle.

Join us after the feature to see where it all began with:

PERSPECTIVE OF POWER
Dir. Kenji Goda. 1995.
Japan. 21 min.
No spoken language.

Provided by the director, this extremely rare low-fidelity viewing opportunity provides essential context, examining many of the themes later explored in ANALIFE. Something best viewed on your Nokia at 4 AM, but Spectacle will do in a pinch.

WARNING: STROBE, SEXUAL VIOLENCE

This May 15, we honor pioneering lesbian experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer (1939-2019) with a special screening on what would have been her 87th birthday. Between 1968 and 2018, Hammer made 86 films. Her decades-spanning career moved across multiple genres and media formats; nevertheless, her work remained unified in its exploration of queer life and fiercely political perspective.

The shorts selected below, guest-picked by Andrea Torres, offer a generous sample of Hammer’s one-of-a-kind approach to filmmaking: personal, ebullient, erotic, dreamy, and always radical. Hammer’s early 1970s works foreground a sustained investment in collective queer worldmaking. Instead of positioning eroticism as private or purely phenomenological, these films mobilize it as a social force inseparable from emergent forms of lesbian visibility and activist formation. Together, they gesture toward a liberatory horizon grounded in the radical socialities of the moment. Across these works, Hammer’s early explorations of intimacy, aging, futurity, and the natural and imagined worlds come into focus.

Theatrical premiere of new 4K scans of SCHIZY, Hammer’s first film, and TRAVELING from the preservation print at the Academy Film Archive.

Silent films with live musical accompaniment by Lea Jaffe.

FRIDAY, MAY 15 – 10 PM

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Total runtime: 102 minutes

SCHIZY
dir. Barbara Hammer, 1968.
USA. 4 min.

New 4k scan from the preservation print at the Academy Film Archive.

With live musical accompaniment by Lea Jaffe.

“My first film was Schizy and was about learning to see double. What was the reality I saw? And what was expected of me? And how did other people see me.” – Barbara Hammer

Prior to filmmaking, Hammer studied Psychology and English Literature. Her interest in interrogating the inner-self and finding ways to visualize it recurs in her films. It’s there from the start, when Hammer picked up a pair of bifocal lenses and shot through them, offering up a split vision of the world that reflected her own belief that there was more than one way to look at one’s surroundings and more than one way to live one’s life.

DYKETACTICS
dir. Barbara Hammer, 1974.
USA. 4 min.

A landmark short film, Hammer’s Dyketactics consists of images of naked women laying about in the countryside. To quote her: “A popular lesbian ‘commercial,’ 110 images of sensual touching montages in A, B, C, D rolls of ‘kinaesthetic’ editing.”

DOUBLE STRENGTH
dir. Barbara Hammer, 1978.
USA. 20 min.

For Double Strength, Hammer collaborated with performance artist Terry Sendgraff to visualize the different stages of woman-to-woman relationships. A study in endurance, Hammer’s short embodies each and every blissful and painful step in a relationship: from the honeymoon stage, to the break-up, to the eventual friendship.

MULTIPLE ORGASM
dir. Barbara Hammer, 1976.
USA. 6 min.

With live musical accompaniment by Lea Jaffe.

Clitoral close ups as scenes of masturbation drift into a sea of erotic rock formations towards ecstatic rupture.

DREAM AGE
dir. Barbara Hammer, 1979.
USA. 11 min.

Aptly titled, Hammer’s Dream Age is one of her dreamiest films: a surreal odyssey about a septuagenarian lesbian feminist who sends her 40-year-old self out on a journey across San Francisco. A lesbian fable if there ever was one.

SUPERDYKE
dir. Barbara Hammer, 1975.
USA. 18 min.

Superdyke sees Hammer stage a comedy across San Francisco. The film’s premise revolves around a squad of Amazonian warriors hellbent on overthrowing the foggy Californian outpost.

SISTERS!
dir. Barbara Hammer, 1974.
USA. 8 min.

Hammer’s experimental documentary returns to the idea of lesbians taking over the world. Here, she edits together footage of Women’s International Day march in San Francisco alongside scenes from the Second Lesbian Conference and images of women doing traditional “men’s” work. It’s a wonderful ode to the spirit of lesbianism, alive and in action.

“It’s about women taking over the world: women driving trucks, changing Volkswagen engines, and leading the police in new revolutions! It also has footage of women topless, dancing, sweating – with babies on their shoulders! – to the music of the Family of Woman band at the second National Lesbian Conference that took place at UCLA, where Audre Lorde and Kate Millett spoke.” — Barbara Hammer

I WAS/I AM
dir. Barbara Hammer, 1973.
USA. 6 min.

This early Hammer short sees the filmmaker transform before the audience. Once a damsel in distress, she emerges a bike dyke.

TRAVELING
dir. Barbara Hammer, 1970.
USA. 25 min.

New 4k scan from the preservation print at the Academy Film Archive.

With live musical accompaniment by Lea Jaffe.

Much of Hammer’s life involved travel: from New York to San Francisco, Montreal to London, New Mexico to Guatemala. Here are some glimpses of those trips.

Special thanks to Andrea Torres for making this program possible. Extra special thanks to the Estate of Barbara Hammer, Louky Keijsers Koning and Florrie Burke, Mark Toscano and the Academy Film Archive, Electronic Arts Intermix, and Brydie O’Connor.

 

Born in 1929 and a graduate of the University of Manitoba School of Art, naturalist, author, and artist Bill Mason left behind a legacy showcasing the artistry of the North American wilderness like few others. Long regarded as “the patron saint of canoeing”, Mason would eventually bring extensive camera equipment on his expeditions through the Great Lakes in hopes of instructing the public on canoe techniques and eventually addressing growing ecological concerns.

His rigorous documenting resulted in some of the purest examples of environmental filmmaking and an unintentional antidote to the slop-produced overconsumption of today’s media landscape. With the weather brightening up and summer approaching, we at Spectacle invite you to touch grass with us (albeit metaphorically)

WEDNESDAY, MAY 6 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, MAY 21 – 7:30 PM (Virtual Q&A w/ Becky Mason)
SUNDAY, MAY 24 – 5 PM

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PADDLE TO THE SEA
Dir. Bill Mason, 1966
Canada, 28 min.
In English

Based on Holling C. Holling’s Caldecott award-winning children’s picture book, PADDLE TO THE SEA tells the quaint tale of a wood-carved model’s human-assisted journey through the Great Lakes. Narrated by NFB affiliate Stanley Jackson, Mason modernizes this classic family tale to educate on the negative effects of water pollution.

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE GREAT LAKES
Dir. Bill Mason, 1968
Canada, 17 min.
In English

Accompanied by playful bluegrass and accentuated by match cuts and slapstick gags, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE GREAT LAKES subverts the film travelogues of the time and showcases man’s harm to the natural world through a quirky geography lesson.

SONG OF THE PADDLE
Dir. Bill Mason, 1978.
Canada, 41 min.
In English

The wholesome family vacation is brought to full cinematic scope in SONG OF THE PADDLE. Bill Mason brings his wife and kids along for a camping excursion through Lake Superior, providing insightful and warm anecdotes along the way.

CRY OF THE WILD
Dir. Bill Mason, 1972
Canada, 88 min.
In English

WEDNESDAY, MAY 12 – 7:30PM
WEDNESDAY, MAY 27 – 10PM
FRIDAY, MAY 29 – 7:30PM

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Bill Mason’s first foray into feature length documentary filmmaking, he sought to destigmatize wolves and their vicious public perception with this project. Observing them both in their natural habitat and on his own property in the Gatineau Hills, the film also chronicles Mason and his family’s attempt to raise wolf cubs on their own.

Note: this film contains brief scenes of animal death

WATERWALKER
Dir. Bill Mason, 1984
Canada, 87 min.
In English

SATURDAY, MAY 2 – 3PM
MONDAY, MAY 11 – 7:30PM
SUNDAY, MAY 31 – 7:30PM

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In what would be Mason’s final film project before his passing in 1988, WATERWALKER follows him through a solitary journey down rapids along Lake Superior. Interspersed with quiet, pensive moments of painting landscapes that would put even Bob Ross to shame, Mason’s swan song also incidentally manages to be his most spiritual work. Accompanied by a lush theme song penned by Canadian folk singer icon Bruce Cockburn.

Special Thanks to Frédéric Savard, the National Film Board of Canada, The Canadian Canoe Museum and Becky Mason