Category: Uncategorized

UNTOLD STORIES: CATEGORY III DEEP CUTS (PT. I)

Posted on by spectacletheater


In Hong Kong cinema, the “Category III” label is the rough equivalent of an “X” rating in the United States – no one under 18 admitted. More than identifying extreme content, however, the classification denotes a certain sensibility in HK cinema since the late 1980s – an impulse to not only repulse but also to do so in the most confounding, counter-logical manner possible (usually in quivering acres of latex and gallons of profuse goop). While Category III classics like Riki-Oh and Three Extremes are better known to American audiences, Spectacle is proud to plumb the depths of dubious morals and devil feti to present a selection of lesser-known features from the genre.

CORPSE MANIA
dir. Kuei Chih-Hung, 1981
Hong Kong. 82 min.

In Cantonese + Mandarin with English subtitles.

Content Warning: sexual assault, necrophilia

FRIDAY, MARCH 4 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, MARCH 18 – MIDNIGHT
THURSDAY, MARCH 24 – 7:30PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 27 – 7:30PM

TICKETS HERE

A nineteenth-century period piece with equal debts to giallo stagecraft and the excesses of Nekromantik, Corpse Mania consistently flouts expectations over the course of its runtime: you might first mistake the film for a restrained police procedural until director Kuei Chih-Hung reminds you, in the least restrained way possible, that the subject of his film is a serial necrophile with less-than-stellar housekeeping habits. In the true giallo fashion, however, things are not as simple as they seem, and the killer turns out to be only the center of a bizarre plot linking a constellation of figures from the Hong Kong underworld.

CENTIPEDE HORROR
dir. Keith Li, 1982.
Hong Kong. 93 min.
In Cantonese with English subtitles.


SATURDAY, MARCH 5 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, MARCH 12 – 10PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 18 – 10PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 25 – MIDNIGHT

TICKETS HERE

In the realm of family curses, none is less appetizing than that documented in Keith Li’s 1982 family drama Centipede Horror. A disgruntled wizard unleashes a plague of poisonous centipedes upon the descendants of his archenemy – the survivors are left to follow a trail of long-buried family secrets to a nightmarish realm of partially masticated insect legs and ambulatory chicken skeletons. For true bug fans only!

OUR DAY WILL COME: DSA EMERGE PRESENTS THE PATRIOT GAME

Posted on by spectacletheater


THE PATRIOT GAME
dir. Arthur MacCaig, 1979
France. 93 min.
In English

THURSDAY, MARCH 17 – 7:30pm
ONE NIGHT ONLY

TICKETS HERE

Skip the green pints of beer this year and instead partake in an antidote to St. Patrick’s Day: an evening of celebrating anti-colonialism and the struggle for Irish independence. Spectacle and NYC-DSA’s Emerge caucus are teaming up for a one-night-only presentation of Arthur MacCaig’s debut feature documentary THE PATRIOT GAME (1979).

The film will be introduced by Emerge members Brendan O’Connor and John White.

Rich in emotional images, often tender but more often terrifying, THE PATRIOT GAME documents the long and bitter battle for Northern Ireland. MacCaig, a leftist Irish-American, had been inspired by the stark disparity he perceived between the tribal, religious conflict he saw depicted in the media, and what he experienced on the ground as a struggle between “the colonizer and the colonized.” The end result was a searingly intense and poignant piece of political cinema.

The film tells the story of the Northern Irish conflict, covering Ireland’s history from British colonization to the territory’s division in 1922. It then depicts the events of the decade beginning in 1968, witnessing street riots, police violence and firebomb attacks. MacCaig shot much of the footage clandestinely, capturing in raw detail the spirit of Irish resistance, while also providing a lucid overview of the political struggle at hand, as well as the confusion and pain inside the Irish Republican Army itself.

Produced by Iskra, the radical French film collective founded by Chris Marker, THE PATRIOT GAME was one of the first films to portray the Northern Irish nationalist perspective, and the Troubles from an unapologetically socialist point of view. MacCaig would go on to make seven more films in Northern Ireland, earning unprecedented access to the underground IRA and charting the evolution of the struggle for a united Ireland over a 25-year period.

————-

Emerge is a caucus of NYC-DSA that has come together under the banner of communism. For us, communism is the goal as well as the process of full self-emancipation from capitalism and its attendant effects, including imperialism, colonialism, racial and national oppression. Political education is an important part of our caucus life, and we believe that cinema is an important tool for leftist education, which can deepen our politics.

With thanks to Dónal Foreman and Icarus Films.

Tiocfaidh ár lá comrades!

MULHERES: UMA OUTRA HISTORIA: FIVE FILMS ON FEMALE LABOR

Posted on by spectacletheater


MULHERES: UMA OUTRA HISTORIA: Five Films on Female Labor highlights the essential contributions of women filmmakers to the documentary form in Brazil. These short-form feminist works, originally presented on television, in feminist film clubs, and at international film festivals address key labour challenges from the brothels of São Paulo’s Boca do Lixo to the economic revolution of the women of Santa Cruz do Capibaribe in Pernambuco.

In collaboration with Another Gaze and Cinelimite

SATURDAY, MARCH 5 – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 12 – 7:30PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 27 – 5PM

TICKETS HERE

Creche-Lar
dir. Maria Luiza d’Aboim, 1978
Brazil. 8min.
In Brazilian Portuguese with English Subtitles

During the seventies, filmmaker Maria Luiza d’Aboim was part of the Center for Brazilian Women (CMB), a feminist organization that advocated for elevating women’s positions in society. The lack of day care centers, and the urgent need to create conditions that would give mothers help in caring for their children, were recurring points of discussion. Creche-Lar (‘Home-Daycare’), D’Aboim’s first film, arises from this search for answers and documents an experimental community daycare project in Vila Kennedy, Rio de Janeiro, which employed resident mothers from the local community.

Trabalhadoras Metalúrgica
dir. Olga Futemma and Renato Tapajós, 1978
Brazil. 17min
In Brazilian Portuguese with English Subtitles

In the late seventies, a group of Brazilian documentary filmmakers traveled to São Paulo’s ABC Region in order to record a wave of worker strikes taking place in response to the increasingly powerful and abusive automotive industry. Olga Futemma and Renato Tapajós’ Trabalhadoras Metalúrgicas is a key title among films produced during this historical event, documenting striking women metallurgical workers. By doing so, Futemma and Tapajós reveal the harsh working conditions these workers were forced to operate in, intercut with scenes filmed during the first Congress of Metallurgical Women of São Bernardo and Diadema in 1978.

Mulheres da Boca
dir. Inês Castilho and Cida Aidar, 1982
Brazil. 22min
In Brazilian Portuguese with English Subtitles

Filmmakers Cida Aidar and Inês Castilho met as part of the feminist collective that edited the newspaper Nós Mulheres (We Women) between 1976 and 1979. They came together in 1981 to make Mulheres da Boca, a film about the Boca do Lixo region of São Paulo, famous for its porntheaters and brothels. Mulheres da Boca captures the daily life of prostitutes, revealing the corruption and abuse that exists around them.

Sulanca
dir. Katia Mesel, 1986
Brazil. 14min
In Brazilian Portuguese with English Subtitles

The Feira da Sulanca still exists as a famous market in Brazil’s Northeastern city of Pernambuco that sells and exports items for the national clothing industry. While markets like these were once an unfriendly place for women to make a living, Katia Mesel’s Sulanca documents the economic revolution of the Women of Santa Cruz do Capibaribe who, through sewing, collaboration and willpower, managed to make livings for themselves and change the socioeconomic panorama of Brazil’s entire Northeastern region.

Mulheres: uma outra história
dir. Eunice Gutman, 1988
Brazil. 35min
In Brazilian Portuguese with English Subtitles

Mulheres: uma outra história focuses on aspects of women’s participation in the Brazilian political scene, featuring interviews with women in the Constituent Assembly and leaders of the rising women’s rights political movement. Suffragist Carmen Portilho appears in the film to remind viewers about the long history of struggle for women to earn the right to vote in the country.

RANDOM MAN PRESENTS: PSYCHOLOGY TODAY BY EXTREME ANIMALS

Posted on by spectacletheater


RANDOM MAN PRESENTS: PSYCHOLOGY TODAY by EXTREME ANIMALS
Dir. Jacob Ciocci  & David Wightman
30 min. USA.
In English.

Content Warning: STROBING LIGHTS

FRIDAY, MARCH 18 – 7:30 w Q+A (this event will be $10)
SATURDAY, MARCH 26 – 7:30 w Q+A (this event will be $10)

TICKETS HERE

In information theory, the repetition of messages tends towards the obliteration of meaning. This theorem is vitally demonstrated in Extreme Animals’ 2021 video Psychology Today, which traces the algorithmically accelerated decomposition of images from the post-millennial cultural imaginary: Shrek, the Joker, and other depressive icons of our interminable financial crisis inspire a legion of exhausted reenactments by children’s birthday party workers and freelance Blender artists. Interwoven with motivational programming staged at depreciating levels of conviction, the final assembly speaks not so much to the experience of overstimulation as to the unique combination of sensory hypertrophy and apathy characteristic of life post-2020.

This is presentation is the first of a collaboration between Spectacle and the Queens-based art publisher Random Man Editions, which specializes in broadcasting various genres of the indescribable and documenting fringe practices across analogue and digital media. More information available at randomman.net.

“Anarchy prevails—children covered in paint stand defiant against parental authority in suburban bathrooms, a decapitated snake, running on pure electrochemical reflex, bites its own twitching body, crows mass ominously over a McDonalds—but this found footage is culled from corners of the internet that still feel largely wholesome. They’re more verité cinema than viral capitalism.” – Claire Evans

“In Psychology Today, empathy and identification find a place next to schadenfreude. Plaintive wails mix with clarion calls, chirping electronics with heavy metal guitars. The abject and the inspirational are everywhere entwined. Found footage combines with stock images and animated gifs as well as artist-made drawings and Flash animations. Slow-motion video is subjected to stroboscopic cuts, building to purgative crescendos.” – BOMB Magazine

 

MILLENIUM FILM WORKSHOP PRESENTS: THE SPECIAL PEOPLE

Posted on by spectacletheater


THE SPECIAL PEOPLE
Dir. Erica Schreiner, 2021
USA. 120 min.
Silent w/ English subtitles.

THURSDAY, MARCH 10 – 7:30pm
ONE NIGHT ONLY

TICKETS HERE

The Special People is a darkly humorous consideration of the hypnotic state induced by smart technology and the human desire for freedom and authenticity. The audience goes through a journey while bathing in sparkling storybook sets, an eerie combination of VHS nostalgia and foreboding dilemmas.

The citizens of a pink forest stare into iridescent cubes and cannot look away. Apple, Bird and Violet manage to break their trance, and indulge in philosophical conversation. They question why they are free while the others are not. They had their voices removed when they were babies so they learn to communicate telepathically. They experience the sensuality of fruit and each other in The Forest, but soon feel it is not enough. The Special People decide to embark on a journey to bring the other citizens of The Forest back to consciousness by attempting to destroy the master cube, guarded by The Overlords. On this journey, the three get separated and Apple must continue the journey alone. She encounters many of The Obstacles along the way and learns if she is to free the citizens of The Forest, she’ll have to sacrifice her life.

Erica Schreiner wrote, directed, and stars in The Special People. She single handedly built elaborate, colorful and sparkling sets in her apartment where she filmed the feature on her VHS camera. This avant garde art film is reminiscent of 1960s experimental cinema like that of Kenneth Anger or Jack Smith. The other actors in this film are her friends. Local art stars like Matthew Silver, Chris Carr, Nick Walther, Lily Chambers and Oya Damla all have major roles in the film. The Special People was produced by Alex Norelli and is a silent film with a musical score by Johnny Dydo of The Johns.

“The Special People is a modern metaphorical battle. Will you wake up or sleep for the rest of your life? Shot in a nostalgic 70s video style; it’s a treat for the eyes!”  —Matthew Silver (performance artist, filmmaker)

“The many playful elements that comprise Erica Schriener’s The Special People coalesce to provide lucky audiences with beautiful and humorous up-close portraits of a society buckling under tech-induced hypnosis. Through a sugary glaze of VHS fuzz, a lush low-fi score that adds a stimulating dimension of whimsy, and a surplus of homemade heart to eclipse the Kuchar brothers’, the writer/director/lead actor Erica’s glitter-and-sequin-drenched Brooklyn apartment serves as the sprawling social tundra that the film’s heroes traverse. Telepathy and empathy both drive the narrative and serve as the character’s interpersonal currency as they meander but never waver from their fact-finding mission. I was left smiling, and would recommend this film to lovers of experiments and Marvel movie enthusiasts alike.”  —Toby Goodshank (musician, The Moldy Peaches)

THE SPECIAL PEOPLE is part of MEANS OF PRODUCTION: NEW ARTISTS’ CINEMA presented by MILLENNIUM FILM WORKSHOP, curated by Joe Wakeman.

This series will be devoted to showcasing works from overlooked and unknown American and International contemporary artists working in film and video, and pushing bounds beyond the limitations implied in those forms. Whether presenting intimate-scale epic by heretical artists re-interpreting the world as they see it on a no-string budget, or artists expanding vision via new tools of expression in the present and future age, Means of Production is about looking forward to a 21st century where economic and technological barriers are broken down, ushering in a new era of highly original cinematic handiwork.

The Millennium Film Workshop was founded in 1967 by a group of filmmakers with a vision to expand accessibility to the tools, ideas, and networks of filmmaking beyond the confines of institutions and corporate studios. Millennium has put on countless educational workshops, artist-hosted screenings, printed our renowned publication The Millennium Film Journal, served as a production hub kickstarting the careers of many prominent filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage, Todd Haynes, Yvonne Rainer, Carolee Schneeman, Michael Snow, Bruce Connor, Nick Zedd, Andy Warhol and Bruce Connor and has played a large role in dismantling the monetary and educational barriers separating the art and craft of filmmaking from the general public.

https://www.millenniumfilm.org
http://www.mfj-online.org/

STICE’S SATYRICON

Posted on by spectacletheater



STICE’S SATYRICON

dir. Stice, 2022
45 mins, United States.

STICE IN ATTENDANCE

FRIDAY, MARCH 4 – 7:30PM
(One night only!)

GET TICKETS!

One cold midnight in 2019, breakcore duo Stice debuted their first batch of demented video-poems. A mysterious pet project by two fresh-faced net-trawlers, Spectacle expected a meager showing, but much to the theater’s surprise, the house was packed by 11:45 and Ubers were still rolling up well past 1 AM for standing-room only tickets. Three-tenths of a decade later, Stice is back with glossed-up credentials—an honest-to-god label, three-and-a-half tours under their belt, and even a review in the “The Quietus”—but they’re still serving the same putrefied, ADHD-addled, banned-on-your-school’s-computer sludge. Their newest video-album effort, a 45-minute, built-in laptop camera remake of Fellini’s Satyricon, is among the darkest, rancidest, most nutso grab-bag of tunes that the duo has thus far cooked up. 

(DE)INSTITUTIONALIZED DOUBLE FEATURE AKA MARCH MADNESS

Posted on by spectacletheater



The gradual decline of state mental hospitals in the late twentieth century made them ripe territory for genre experiments. While many fell back on lazy cliches of flickering lights and vertiginous hospital corridors, others drew attention to the various indignities awaiting the former inhabitants of institutions upon their release – this March, Spectacle presents two curious takes on post-institutional living and its attendant horrors.

PICTURE MOMMY DEAD
dir. Bert I. Gordon, 1966.
USA. 83 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, MARCH 4 – 10PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 10 – 10PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 13 – 5PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 25 – 10PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 31 – 7:30PM

TICKETS HERE

A unique mid-career effort by Bert I. Gordon (EMPIRE OF THE ANTS, FOOD OF THE GODS) that sees the director wading uncharacteristically into gothic-horror territory to tell the story of Susan Shelley, a young heiress who must evade the machinations of her incompetent, conniving guardians to solve the mystery behind her mother’s (Zsa Zsa Gabor) death. Fresh out of the asylum, Susan struggles to distinguish between hallucination, supernatural phenomena and the trickery of her spendthrift father and his covetous partner, who wish for nothing more than to see her recommitted and to lay claim to her inheritance. Gordon cleverly keeps things ambiguous until the fiery finale.

 

CRIMINALLY INSANE
dir. Nick Millard, 1975
USA. 62 min.
In English.

SUNDAY, MARCH 6 – 5PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 12 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, MARCH 19 – 5PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 26 – 5PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 31 – 10PM

TICKETS HERE

Released from the state institution into the care of her overweening grandmother, Ethel Janowski embarks upon a murderous crusade against electroshock sessions and forced dietary restrictions in this charming discount thriller from 1975. An unsung anti-hero of late twentieth-century cinema, Ethel embarks upon a murderous spree to preserve her life of leisure against the irksome attentions of annoying family members with unwanted advice and numerous agents of the state medico-legal complex.

IT CAME FROM CONNEMARA!

Posted on by spectacletheater



IT CAME FROM CONNEMARA!
dir. Brian Reddin, 2014
Ireland. 59 min.
In English

THURSDAY, MARCH 3 – 7:30PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 11 – 10PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 20 – 5PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 25 – 7:30PM

TICKETS HERE

Spectacle audiences are undoubtedly at least somewhat familiar with legendary independent film producer, the “King of B Movies,” the inimitable Roger Corman. However, his time spent making his brand of notoriously fun, low-budget pictures over on the Emerald Isle is an era that has been lost to cult cinema history. IT CAME FROM CONNEMARA! tells the story of Concorde Anois, Corman’s short-lived production company that operated out of Connemara, County Galway in the late 1990s. Invited by the Irish government to help develop filmmaking in the west of the country, Concorde Anois employed hundreds of people (most of whom were brand new to filmmaking and film production) in its few years and released around 20 features,  all shot in Connemara with Irish crews and Irish actors.

 Featuring interviews with cast and crew members at Concorde Anois (including Roger Corman himself), as well as behind-the-scenes footage from the action, horror, and sci-fi films produced during the studio’s run,  IT CAME FROM CONNEMARA! tells the story of the thrills, chills, local controversies, and movie-making mayhem of Corman’s five gloriously gruesome years in Ireland.

IRISH MIDNIGHTS

Posted on by spectacletheater

In honor of St Patrick’s Day, Spectacle is proud to present this smattering of midnight features from the Emerald Isles.

RAWHEAD REX
dir. George Pavlou, 1986
UK / Ireland. 89 min.
In English

THURSDAY, MARCH 3 – 10PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 12 – 5PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 20 – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 26 – MIDNIGHT

TICKETS HERE

He’s pure evil, pure power, pure terror.

A demon in the Irish countryside goes on a rampage after being resurrected by a bolt of lightning, while a U.S. historian on vacation with his wife and son tries to stop it.

Written and disowned by Clive Barker (he wrote the monster as a giant phallus, which the filmmakers chose to turn into a giant ape-like creature), Rawhead Rex maintains just enough of his signature weirdness, along with above average practical effects, to make this a creature feature worth your while.

IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE
dir. Riccardo Freda, 1971
Ireland. 92 min.
In English

SUNDAY, MARCH 6 – 7:30PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 11 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, MARCH 19 – MIDNIGHT
THURSDAY, MARCH 24 – 10PM

TICKETS HERE

“One of the more entertaining exercises in post-Argento giallo.” — Flickering Myth

The most cruel and unpredictable crimes that you will ever see again on the screen!

A severely unusual Euro proto-slasher which places its requisite black-gloved killer on the mean streets of Dublin, where he (or she?) delights in tossing disfiguring acid in victims’ faces before the straight razor finishes the job. THE IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE is notorious for being one of the more reckless and inventive giallos, absolutely packed with a multitude of wingnuts, red herrings, and indescribably eccentric characters — and kills! — made at the misanthropic apex of Italian cinema’s murdermania.

Restoration courtesy of Arrow Films and the American Genre Film Archive.



 

 

ROTTEN LOVE REDUX

Posted on by Zach Fleming

Banner image from REMOVED (Naomi Uman, 1999)

Rotten Love Redux tips its hat to the days of theatrical porn-going with a celebration of tactility, eroticism and utter decay. The program features 16mm porn and erotic films, each which incorporates decomposed or manipulated film stock in its depiction of erotic femme bodies. Working with both found and original footage, the filmmakers in this program employ a wide range of analog techniques—soaking, solarization, painting, scratching, burning—to alter celluloid’s chemical make-up and add a material element to the onlooker’s gaze. Treating film stock as continuous with the human body, Rotten Love Redux revels in the entangled acts of sex, fetish, and image-making.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11 – 7:30PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

GET YOUR TICKETS!

TRT: 69 mins.
Full program listed below.

ENDURING ORNAMENT
dir. MM Serra & Josh Lewis, 2015
14 mins. USA.
Digital file courtesy of The Film-Makers’ Cooperative.

Sourced from five 16mm filmstrips found outside of a closing adult bookstore on New York’s former 42nd Street sex district. Making use of a salvaged contact printer and chemical alterations applied directly to the subsequent prints, these storied images transform into a primordial celebration of bodily spectacle. Threaded throughout the film is the exuberant compound word poetry of Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven, giving voice to an immediate and transgressive consciousness.

FUSES
dir. Carolee Schneemann, 1965
30 mins. USA.
*brand new* 16mm print courtesy of Canyon Cinema.

“Pornography is an anti-emotional medium, in content and intent, and its lack of emotion renders it wholly ineffective for women. This absence of sensuality is so contrary to female eroticism that pornography becomes, in fact, anti-sexual. Schneemann’s film, by contrast, is devastatingly erotic, transcending the surfaces of sex to communicate its true spirit, its meaning as an activity for herself and, quite accurately, women in general. Significantly, Schneemann conceives the film as shot through the eyes of her cat – the impassive observer whose view of human sexuality is free of voyeurism and ignorant of morality.” —B. Ruby Rich, Chicago Art Institute

REMOVED
dir. Naomi Uman, 1999
7 mins. USA.
16mm print courtesy of Canyon Cinema.

Using a piece of found European porn from the 1970s, nail polish and bleach, this film creates a new pornography, one in which the woman exists only as a hole, an empty, animated space.

SOLITARY ACTS #4
dir. Nazlı Dinçel, 2015
8 mins. USA.
*brand new* 16mm print courtesy of Canyon Cinema and the artist.

Wittnerchrome, Exacto Knife, Typewriter

The filmmaker films herself masturbating the object of debate. She hears others claim her body, her habits: those in her conservative surroundings as a child.

THE COLOR OF LOVE
dir. Peggy Ahwesh, 1994
10 mins. USA.
16mm print courtesy of The Film-Makers’ Cooperative.

Ahwesh subjects an apparently found pornographic film to coloring, optical printing and general fragmentation; the source material threatens to virtually collapse under the beautiful violence of her filmic treatment. What emerges is a portrait at once nostalgic and horrible: the degraded image, locked in symbiotic relation with an image of degradation.

Rotten Love Redux is curated by Emily Apter. The first iteration of this program took place at the Film-Makers’ Cooperative on February 13, 2019.

Prismatic Ground is a film festival centered on experimental documentary. Its inaugural edition was hosted virtually from April 8-18, 2021, in partnership with Maysles Documentary Center and Screen Slate, and presented with support from Canyon Cinema, Icarus Films, Video Data Bank, and Microscope Gallery. Over 6,700 unique visitors logged on from around the world to watch work by 70 filmmakers across a period of 11 days. Prismatic Ground was founded by Inney Prakash.