Ken Brown, a New York filmmaker and illustrator, has been exuberantly documenting American pop culture, road side attractions, outsider art and all intersections thereof for over five decades. His documents of each decade fully embrace and embody the zeitgeist of their times, down to the medium on which his films were captured. Giving back to the wellspring from which he drew, his illustration and animation work permeated pop culture in the 1990s with work he and his partner Lisa Crafts created for MTV and Sesame Street. An evening with Ken Brown will goes on a breathless tour of Ken Brown’s work spanning the late 1960s to the present day.

Ken Brown attending for a Q&A!

THURSDAY MAY 23 – 7:30 PM: SELECTED SHORTS
(This event is $10)

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The shorts program forms a fabric of documentaries of road trip oddities, Ken Brown’s “Chika Chika” films with their frame by frame by frame captures of New York institutions such as Wigstock in 1990s Tompkins Square, shorts created for Sesame Street and MTV Idents, and recent work such as GIFs and films the artist shot on his phone. These films take us outside of time to view New York City and the artist’s work as a thematically linked continuum.

THURSDAY MAY 23 – 10:00 PM: PSYCHEDELIC CINEMA
(This event is $10)

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Ken Brown’s psychedelic films played regularly with the light show at the Boston Tea Party, and other music venues in New England, where they served as an accompaniment to some of the most notable musicians of the 1960s. In their original context these films were joined with slides, strobes and liquid projections. The version shown was filmed with a live score by Ken Winokur and the Psychedelic Orchestra.

NOT A DAY GOES BY
dir. Joe G.M. Chan, 2001
71 mins. United States.

SUNDAY, MAY 19 – 7:30 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY with director Joe G.M. Chan in person for Q&A
(This event is $10.)

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While Spectacle’s founding edict – to show “lost and forgotten” films – sometimes ruffles the feathers of world-traveled directors, we’re very happy to host this one-night-only screening of Joe G.M. Chan’s deep-cut NYC indie drama NOT A DAY GOES BY, rarely exhibited since it played the 2002 Asian-American Film Festival. Shot over three weekends at a cost of $20,000, Chan’s feature debut follows Wolfgang (Larry Chin), a self-hating 20something in Giuliani-era Chinatown recoiling from the death of his more traditional immigrant mother, as well as the recent departure of his girlfriend who (according to Wolfgang) left him for a white dude. Foul-mouthed and confrontational, film is essentially a series of conversations – at his mother’s magazine shop, out in the streets, at the pre-reupholstered version of Winnie’s Karaoke Bar – between Wolfgang and his friends about the hypocrisy he finds at ladder of Chinese-American upward mobility, matched by his own refusal to speak Cantonese or accept the gift of a chicken in his mother’s honor. Chan will join us for a Q&A after the film, including the lurid details of his featured turn as Alfred Molina’s long-suffering right hand man in 1997’s BOOGIE NIGHTS – a story Chan has refused multiple historians of the legendary porn drama.

“Some scenes work better than others, and Chan wisely makes no attempt to sew things up too tightly. Project was six years in the making, but any stop-and-start unevenness on view has been successfully integrated into the film’s overall desultory loose-ends feel. Lensing is superior, as are all tech credits and music. Hopefully the imaginative, skillfully synched rock-song samples can be cleared for final release: They counterpoint pic’s original scoring quite nicely.”– Variety

“I enjoyed it and found it very interesting and quite well made”. – Martin Scorsese

FRIDAY, MAY 17th – 7:30PM

FILMMAKERS IN ATTENDANCE!

The Psychedelic Film and Music Festival invites you to an evening of mind altering shorts featuring the best of sci-fi horror, and psychedelia.

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TRATAK-ANTARS THE ICE AROUND TIME – Ep. 1
dir. Davide Carlini, 2019
Italy, 8 min.

The first chapter of this experimental mid-footage introduces Edam’s experience; a man like everyone who is between the sky and the abyss, between doubt and faith and among the endless “Influences of the Dark.”

CHESS AND THE STRANGER
dir. Charles Ortiz, 2016
USA, 24 min.

A desperate man encounters a stranger eager to play a chess match but the game becomes a path to something more.

CROWNED AND CONQUERING
dir. Zareh Tjeknavorian, 2019
USA, 12 min.

Shot on 16mm film, “Crowned & Conquering” is inspired by the philosophy of the occultist, ceremonial magician, and writer, Aleister Crowley. The work visualizes the alchemical process of chrysopoeia, the transmutation of the spirit from lead into gold: a cinematic allegory of the gnostic path in sight and sound.

MUSICA DE ESFERAS
dir. by Logan Fry, 2019
USA, 7 min.

A brain scan sequence set to music.

PROPOLIS
dir. Pat Wells, 2018
USA, 3 min.

Monsters reside in all of us for a reason.

Liz and Beaux are a sister and brother, trapped in a closet as punishment by an alcoholic mother, but escape means they must face a far more nefarious world outside the doors of the closet.

IN A FOREIGN TOWN
dir. Michael Shlain, 2019
France, 11 min.

Based on the stories of acclaimed horror author, Thomas Ligotti.
A troubled man recounts a strange childhood journey to a town with no name.

EVE
dir. Marcelo Mottola, 2017
USA, 13 min.

Eve, a young teen, is abducted and hidden away in a new city. She becomes captivated with a foreboding house and a young girl that astonishingly is her spitting image. Seduced by the cryptic house and mysterious girl, Eve is infused with their supernatural powers and readied for battle against the very evil that enslaves her.

ARTIST BURLESQUE
dir. John Bickerton, 2018
USA, 7 min.

This film uses found footage, public domain footage and stock footage to create a surrealist tone poem extending the collage techniques pioneered by Cornell in works like “Rose Hobart.”

ALEPH
dir. Jonathan Sirtes-Sharon, 2018
Israel, 5 min.

A writer prolongs his life to write a perfect suicide letter. This is not about death. This is about perfectionism.

STORMS
dir. Joao Pedro Oliveira, 2018
Brazil, 8 min.

A moving meditation on storms. Storms are unpredictable. They move fast and change suddenly. There is rain, static energy, light, noise
and movement. Colors are grey, dark blue white.

A true outlier of the American cinema, Henry Jaglom came up as an alum of the famed Actors’ Studio, studying under Lee Strasberg. Jaglom soon settled in Hollywood as a bit part actor, getting work on GIDGET and THE FLYING NUN before landing a memorable role as a hippie on a bad trip in Richard Rush’s PSYCH-OUT. Falling in with the BBS Productions crowd, Jaglom’s directorial debut A SAFE PLACE became a part of their initial slate of game-changing independents alongside Peter Bogdanovich’s THE LAST PICTURE SHOW and Jack Nicholson’s DRIVE, HE SAID.

Armed with the influence of Method acting and the mentorship of late Orson Welles (whose conversations he taped and transcribed), Jaglom’s subsequent directorial trajectory polished an elliptical, improvisational, and emotional style that has earned gushing comparisons to John Cassavetes or quick write-offs as self-indulgence. Jaglom’s troupe of actors often feature former or current girlfriends/wives, family members such as brother Michael Emil, and friends such as Zach Norman, whose real-life relationships are stoked or pushed to emotional extremes. His career has been largely self-funded (and self-promoted on Los Angeles billboards à la Angelyne), and it shows—this is fiercely independent filmmaking whose pace and subject matter are unlike any of the usual California exports. His films have a whole other logic, pace, and timbre: it’s not just cinematic time, it’s emotional time.

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SITTING DUCKS
Dir. Henry Jaglom, 1980
USA, 90 mins

THURSDAY, MAY 16 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, MAY 30 – 7:30 PM

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Sparked by the success of EASY RIDER, the road movie came to be the essential American film genre of the ’70s, a pungent metaphor for “dropping out” and American self-searching. To his credit, Jaglom might have helped mount that throne, helping shape Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda’s cross-country melange in the cutting room as an assistant editor. The motel pools of SITTING DUCKS’ America look a lot different than the backwoods expanse of RIDER, but then again the country had just elected Ronald Reagan. Health-nut Michael Emil and smooth-talking Zach Norman are en route to Central America after stealing a gambling racket’s money, and end up in a relationship merry-go-round. They get in with a cast of characters that include Patrice Townsend, Irene Forrest, and Richard Romanus as a would-be singer-songwriter.

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CAN SHE BAKE A CHERRY PIE?
Dir. Henry Jaglom, 1983
USA, 90 mins

MONDAY, MAY 13 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, MAY 21 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, MAY 28 – 10 PM

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Filmed in a roughly 10-block radius in the Upper West Side, CAN SHE BAKE A CHERRY PIE? is Jaglom’s most unmistakably Manhattanite productions, a zany yet gentle comedy-of-manners in the mold of ‘70s Woody Allen and Peter Bodganovich’s They All Laughed. The crux of the film is the neurotic chemistry between Michael Emil, a pontificating nervous-wreck businessman, and Karen Black, an aspiring jazz singer in an unhappy relationship. The film also features Frances Fisher in her first feature role, Michael Ragotta as a pick-up artist birder, and a cameo from a fresh-from-Fridays Larry David.

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ALWAYS (BUT NOT FOREVER)
Dir. Henry Jaglom, 1985
USA, 105 mins

MONDAY, MAY 13 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, MAY 20 – 10 PM
MONDAY, MAY 27 – 7:30 PM

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Shot almost entirely in the house that Jaglom and Patrice Townsend once shared and featuring actual home-video footage from their wedding, ALWAYS (BUT NOT FOREVER) tells the story of Judy (Townsend) who drops by her soon-to-be ex-husband David (Jaglom) to celebrate their divorce over a home-cooked meal while they finalize their divorce papers. The film unravels over the course of a July 4th weekend which re-stages their emotionally devastating breakup just a couple years after Jaglom’s and Townsend’s actual real-life split. Co-Starring Melissa Leo (In her very first on-screen role) and featuring incredible cameos by Bob Rafelson, Andre Gregory, and Michael Emil, Always is autobiographical filmmaking of a high order and is as emotionally complex as it is laugh out loud funny.

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SOMEONE TO LOVE
Dir. Henry Jaglom, 1987
USA, 111 mins

TUESDAY, MAY 14 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, MAY 16 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, MAY 22 – 7:30 PM

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Filmed in a loosely-scripted, quasi-documentary style, Henry Jaglom’s 1987 film is a meandering study of generational loneliness highlighted by musical numbers and intimate direct-to-camera confessionals that increasingly blur the line between reality and fiction. Set in an abandoned old theatre set to be demolished and transformed into a shopping mall, Jaglom plays Danny, a filmmaker, who throws a Valentines Day party to discover why he and his friends are middle-aged and alone. Starring cabaret singer Andrea Marcovicci (Jaglom’s then-girlfriend), Oja Kodar, Sally Kellerman, Michael Emil, and the legendary Orson Welles, in his very last screen role.

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NEW YEAR’S DAY
Dir. Henry Jaglom, 1989
USA, 89 mins

SATURDAY, MAY 11 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, MAY 12 – 7:30 PM
SUNDay, MAY 26 – 5 PM

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The final of Henry Jaglom’s autobiographical trilogy, NEW YEAR’S DAY features Jaglom as a wayward recent divorcé who, through miscommunication, spends a long January 1st in a soon-to-be-vacated Central Park apartment with three young women each at a crossroads in their personal lives. He takes a special shine to Maggie Wheeler (later known for memorable stints on Friends and Seinfeld), a cartoon voice-over artist and former animal trainer debating her relationship with her brooding (and then-real-life) boyfriend David Duchovny in his silver screen debut. Over the course of a drunken evening gathering, featuring appearances by Milos Forman, Michael Emil, and Rodger Parsons (the voice of the narrator in Pokemon), all three women come to terms with their apprehensions, anxieties, and desires.

TRAIN TO ZAKOPANE
Dir. Henry Jaglom, 2016
USA, 104 mins

SUNDAY, MAY 12 – 5 PM
SATURDAY, MAY 25 – 10 PM

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A rare period piece for Jaglom, TRAIN TO ZAKOPANÉ is based on the real-life experience of his father, centered around a Jewish man who falls in love with an anti-Semitic Polish nurse on a train in 1928. An adaptation of a long-running play by Jaglom.

SATURDAY, APRIL 27 – 8 PM 
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

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Spectacle is thrilled to host Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist and “film alchemist” Amir George for an evolving program of works he likes to call CONTORTING METAPHYSICAL HIJINKS.

Like George’s own short film OPTIMUM CONTINUUM, the evening promises “an ongoing barrage of Blackness always in progress”; George’s work draws from a wide berth of inspiration, including archival material from the Chicago Film Archive (who have also commissioned “meditations” from George), psychedelic soul and funk, the defiantly idiosyncratic films of Sankofa Collective and the “LA Rebellion” and beyond. Even while acknowledging full stop that there’s nothing wrong with “pretty pictures”, George uses cinema to tackle the fetishization of memory and interrogate his own nostalgia towards certain types of images, fragmenting narrative to explore desire and ecstasy beyond the typical tried-and-trues of Black suffering endemic to so much 20th century visual media. Here’s a taste of what the program will include:

DECADENT ASYLUM
2017. 17 mins.

George describes DECADENT ASYLUM as a journey to a higher realm of consciousness, an “experimental fairy tale” in eight parts. A mundane doorman is transported through a broken door that leads him to metaphysical dimensions where he his put through practices of self-alchemy.

THE ENCOMPASSED WISDOM OF THE INEVITABLE MANIFESTATION
2017. 2 mins.

A spell-casting of images, guided by a voice in the light – recollections from Black Jesus.

BLACK CHAINS
2017. 4 mins.

A meditation on how oppression exacerbates interpersonal relations and mental health, connecting chain link fences, colorful street murals, black and white neighborhood defense footage from Chicago communities.

PASSAGES OF EXCESS
2017. 15 mins.

Ethereal movement and its relation to the physical world. Mundane gestures, ideas and images generated over time.

MUM
2016. 3 MINS.

MOMENTS OF INTENTION
2016. 8 mins.

The movement is the voice in the mirror. MOMENTS OF INTENTION is a vibration migrating from winter, spirits working in tandem as a force of creativity.

SHADES OF SHADOWS
2015. 6 mins.

Commissioned by Chicago Film Archives, this film is a collaboration with psychedelic soul band The O’Mys that delves into spiritual mysticism and ritual sacrifice. Created with all-archival footage, the characters in SHADES OF SHADOWS seek to manifest a better self.

AMIR GEORGE is a filmmaker and curator, based in Chicago. ​George is the founder of The Cinema Culture, a grassroots film programming organization, and co-founder, with Curator Erin Christovale, of Black Radical Imagination, a touring experimental short film series. As an artist, George’s films have screened at institutions and film festivals including Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, Anthology Film Archives, Glasgow School of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Arts Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Arts Chicago, MoMa PS1, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Trinidad and Tobago International Film Festival, BlackStar Film Festival, Afrikana Film Festival, and Chicago Underground Film Festival, among others.