As a gesture of goodwill towards our new Axis of Evil partners, Spectacle will be screening a handful of works from North Korea’s towering cinema canon.

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. 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.

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

MONDAY, MAY 7 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, MAY 17 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, MAY 25 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, MAY 31 – 7:30 PM

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

“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?

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

SATURDAY, MAY 5 – MIDNIGHT
WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, MAY 18 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, MAY 23 – 10 PM
MONDAY, MAY 28 – 7:30 PM

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

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!

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

SATURDAY, MAY 5 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, MAY 15 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MAY 21 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, MAY 29 – 7:30 PM

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

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”.

Mondo Magneto: An uncertain eulogy for the Cassette Tape and the never-ending hunt for the media we want (in the form we want it in).

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CASSETTE: A DOCUMENTARY MIXTAPE
dir Zack Taylor, 2017
90 min, USA

WEDNESDAY, MAY 2 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MAY 14 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, MAY 26 – 10 PM (Q and A WITH DIRECTOR!)

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

FB EVENT

“In 2011, I read that the term cassette tape was being removed from The Oxford English Dictionary. As a child of the ’80’s I was completely bummed out by this; it was as if one of my favorite rock stars had died.

I decided that someone ought to give the cassette a proper eulogy.It’s difficult to say goodbye to a format that a new generation picked up on, either out of irony, nostalgia, or sheer tangibility. But whatever the reason, audiotapes refused to be killed. Cassette is an investigation into this strange resurgence, led by the medium’s inventor, Lou Ottens.”

Director Zack Taylor is a commercial videographer living in New York City. He studied film at the Newport Film School in Wales. Cassette is his first feature film.Zack began making mixtapes for friends as a teenager. Cassette grew out of a nostalgia not only for the medium, but for the process of compiling music for other people.

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SO WRONG THEY’RE RIGHT
dir. Russ Forster, 1995
92 min, USA

MONDAY, MAY 7 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, MAY 17 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, MAY 20 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, MAY 25 – 10:00 PM

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

SO WRONG THEY’RE RIGHT chronicles a 10,000 mile journey around the US in search of “trackers”—fanatical collectors of 8-Track tapes, those funky clunky pre-recorded plastic cartridges from the ’70s.

Russ Forster and Dan Sutherland capture over 20 interviews, brimming with reminiscences, rants, political diatribes, fantasies, fix-it tips, sales pitches, and everything else that defines the skeptical yet inquisitive mind of the 8-Track enthusiast.

More than a film about pop-music nostalgia, it serves as a statement of outrage from a population of consumers who are tired of being told what to consume.

“A deadpan tribute to people who refuse to consider the past as passed.” —Wired Magazine

“A forum to celebrate 8-track culture: the candy-colored Panasonic players, the KACHUNK sound of putting the tape into the player, hunting down a treasured copy of the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks…” —Boston Herald

THE MISSING SUN
dir. Brennan Vance, 2017
79 mins. USA.

FRIDAY MAY 4- 7:30 PM
FILMMAKER IN PERSON!

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

THE MISSING SUN is a metaphysical drama surrounding characters experiencing various out-of-body states. At the heart of the film is Alma – a no-nonsense, weather-worn ex-addict with failing health. Her world is thrown out of orbit when her husband Terry falls into a mysterious coma shortly after a solar flare powers down her remote community. When she finds a clue amongst Terry’s belongings – an instructional audio cassette on how to astral travel – she becomes convinced that Terry is using this esoteric technique to reunite with the spirit of his deceased ex-wife, Joy.

In hopes to bring Terry back to reality, Alma seeks some astral knowledge of her own by finding the audio tape’s author – the leader of a new-age community called Bhu’JanTi. Unable to find immediate answers there, Alma tracks down Terry’s estranged son, ad, who is found hiding out at Joy’s house. Surrounded by a group of philosophically curious but drug-addled friends, ad suffers his mother’s recent death in a state of disabling grief, the effects of which he drowns out with heavy quaaludes. With ad appearing as unresponsive as his father, Alma realizes she must reckon with these increasingly absurd circumstances alone. And as her health continues to fail and she begins to have visions of a hallucinatory doppelganger, Alma begins to wonder if she is still inside of herself – or if she has been in the process of leaving her body the whole time.

BRENNAN VANCE is a Minneapolis-based filmmaker and 2017 McKnight Media Arts Fellow. Vance’s feature directorial debut THE MISSING SUN received a Jerome Foundation fellowship, was selected as part of the 2016 IFP Filmmaker Narrative Labs and recently premiered at the Wisconsin Film Festival and Ashland Independent Film Festival, where it was awarded a special jury prize. His work as a Director of Photography for Twin Cities PBS has earned him three Emmy Awards.

Alyce Wittenstein has been called the “Queen of the New York Underground” and this May, Spectacle is pleased to play host to her and the films making up her MULTIPLE FUTURES trilogy. These films are filled to the brim with familiar faces, exquisite set pieces, snappy dialogue, and dazzling costumes. Hard to believe it’s been almost 3 years since we first showed these incredible works but here we are. Join us all month for these remarkable films in a celebration of science fiction, hilarity, character actors, and ghastly view of a not-too-distant world.

TUESDAY, MAY 2 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, MAY 13 – 5 PM
SATURDAY, MAY 19 – 7:30 PM (Q&A)
TUESDAY, MAY 22 – 10 PM

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

FB EVENT

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BETAVILLE
1986, 20 min.

The first in what would come to be known as the MULTIPLE FUTURES trilogy, BETAVILLE – a post-modern nightmare – finds a down and out detective Coman Gettme (played by Wittenstein mainstay Steve Ostringer) returning to his hometown after a chance meeting with The Girl (Holly Adams). Once the two arrive in Gettme’s Cadillac things immediately go from bad to worse for this gumshoe when he learns, over a slice at Stromboli’s, that High Fashion is the new law in town. Gettme becomes obsessed with The Girl and is determined to meet back up with her and “save” her from the these fashionable fascists.

BETAVILLE kicks off the trilogy in a pitch perfect send up of the French New Wave and science fiction, and turns noir on it’s ear while (literally) running through some familiar parts of NYC. Holly Adams is nothing short of dynamite and Ostringer’s distinctive production design would lay the groundwork for the look of the films to come. Years before becoming Brewmaster at the Brooklyn Brewery, Garrett Oliver was co-producer on the film. The short would go on to be nominated for a number of awards at festivals and play all over the world – often (unsurprisingly) alongside Godard’s ALPHAVILLE.

“Most of the detective narrator dialogue is clever, the cinematography is excellent, and I liked the (sort of) industrial music and the song by the Singing Squirrels.” – Michael J. Weldon, Psychotronic Magazine #2, 1989.

NO SUCH THING AS GRAVITY
1989, 40 min.

In the not too distant future the LaFont corporation has all but taken over Earth. The company has revolutionized all elements of style, beauty, education, and housing but in the process (progress?!) has shipped many of Earth’s more “useless” inhabitants to the mysterious man made planet – and the largest scale experiment in human history – known as Nova Terra. Two scientists – Kay Zorn (Holly Adams) and Albert Leenhardt (Steve Robinson) are about to receive a prestigious award for their work on the LaFont Facelifter when they learn that Nova Terra is disrupting the Earth’s gravitational pull and will soon collide if it’s not destroyed. A headstrong lawyer and Kay’s boyfriend – Adam Malkonian (a scenery chewing Nick Zedd) – mouths off to a judge (the incomparable Taylor Mead – RIP) while defending a human teacher and is ordered to be relocated to the doomed planet. After meeting with the ambassador of Nova Terra (Emmanuelle Chaulet of Eric Rohmer’s BOYFRIENDS AND GIRLFRIENDS), Malkonian learns that perhaps the LaFont Corporation hasn’t been entirely truthful about what really happens on Nova Terra and vows to stop the destruction.

Wittenstein’s first sync sound film is overflowing with amazing set pieces and incredible performances. Some scenes were shot at the New York Hall of Science – including an Ames room and a number of other dazzling optical illusions. Look out for cameos from Michael J. Anderson (TWIN PEAKS), Wittenstein’s father as the insidious Andreas LaFont, and the director herself on Nova Terra.

THE DEFLOWERING
1994, 40 min.

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old are dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” – Antonio Gramsci, PRISON NOTEBOOKS.

The quote above opens Wittenstein’s third and final film – THE DEFLOWERING. Again featuring some of Wittenstein’s tried and true players – Holly Adams, Emmanuelle Chaulet, Taylor Mead, and more – the film concerns yet another evil corporation this time HUXLEY BIO-TECH and their means to sanitize/beautify this world of ours. This time Wittenstein (with Ostringer back on production design) takes the costuming helm as well.

The TIB (Total Immune Breakdown) virus has left the planet reeling and lethal allergic reaction are at an all time high. Huxley’s efforts to produce perfect, designer children that are immune to viruses have had the side effect of hyper-allergic reactions. Why isn’t anything being done about allergies? No one wants to fund it! With the mortality rate skyrocketing, can mankind bounce back and feel the soft caress of skin against skin ever again or will the line at the Holo-Memorial Funeral Home grow ever longer?

SATURDAY, MAY 5TH – 7:30 PM
BEN MOREA IN ATTENDANCE
(This event is $10)

ONLINE TICKETS HERE

In October 1966, a group calling itself Black Mask appeared in New York City with the vitriolic statement: “DESTROY THE MUSEUMS — our struggle cannot be hung on walls… Goddamn your culture, your science, your art… The industrialist, the banker, the bourgeoisie, with their unlimited pretense and vulgarity, continue to stockpile art while they slaughter humanity.”

Accompanying this statement was a press release, explaining the group’s intentions: “On Monday, October 10 at 12:30 p.m. we will close the Museum of Modern Art. This symbolic action is taken at a time when America is on a path of total destruction, and signals the opening of another front in the world-wide struggle against suppression. We seek a total revolution, cultural as well as social and political — LET THE STRUGGLE BEGIN.”

This was the first appearance of the Black Mask group, a small collective who sought “to turn art into an instrument of revolution.” Founded by artists Ben Morea and Ron Hahne, Black Mask centered around the publication of a broadsheet, Black Mask, and a series of increasingly radical politico-artistic actions, directed primarily against cultural institutions in New York City. The group shut down the MoMA, picketed Wall Street, occupied Columbia University, dumped garbage on Lincoln Center as part of a “culture exchange,” and successfully broke into the Pentagon.

By 1968, the group was moving in away from symbolic actions and moving towards more direct political action. In May 1968, after 10 issues, Black Mask ceased publication of its broadsheet and reconstituted itself as a dedicated revolutionary group, Up Against the Wall Motherfucker. UAW-MF disbanded and went underground in 1969.

Despite their short combined existence, the groups’ writings and aesthetics echoed out into the wider radical political sphere. The English radical group King Mob dedicated the third issue of its self-titled publication to Black Mask and UAW-MF, and two of the group’s co-founders, David and Stuart Wise, were contributors to Black Mask. One of the few American members of the Situationist International, Tony Verlaan, was also a contributor to Black Mask. Additionally, the Strasbourg AFGES who played a significant role in the events of May ‘68 in France, republished Black Mask’s writings in 1966. The Black Mask / UAW-MF group even had some influence on The Weathermen, whose co-founders had intermingled with its members and borrowed from their “militant style and attitude.”

In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of May ‘68, Spectacle will be welcoming artist & revolutionary Ben Morea to introduce three films that captured the radical political gestures of the Black Mask / UAW-MF crew.

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THE CASE AGAINST LINCOLN CENTER
Dir. Newsreel, 1968
USA, 12 min.
Spanish with English Subtitles.

GARBAGE
Dir. Newsreel, 1968
USA, 10 min.
English.

THE SIXTH SIDE OF THE PENTAGON
Dir. Chris Marker & François Reichenbach, 1968
USA, 26 min.
English.

Special thanks to Ben Morea, Third World Newsreel, & Icarus Films.