Presented in collaboration with Artists Space, this special one-night-only screening marks the end of their exhibition “Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Multiple Offerings,” on view at Artists Space through November 21st.
The feature film from Kidlat Tahimik will be accompanied by three short audio works by Cha: Monologue (1977), Other Things Seen, Other Things Heard (1978), and Pause Still (1979).
PERFUMED NIGHTMARE (Mababangong Bangungot)
Dir. Kidlat Tahimik, 1977
Phillipines, 95 min.
In Tagalog, English, French, and German
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21 – 7:30 PM
Liberté, égalité, fraternité, supermarché!
A Filipino jeepney driver dreams of a more glamorous life as an astronaut in the West. After a brief trip to Paris during which he takes a temporary job refilling gumball machines, he quickly discovers how fickle fantasies can be as his thoughts return to home.
Part autobiography, part satirical fiction, the genre-dissolving film PERFUMED NIGHTMARE offers a surreally personal and aesthetically rigorous contribution to decolonial ‘Third Cinema.’ Starring actor/director Kidlat Tahimik, the film takes aim at American duplicity and the long, seductive shadow of global capitalism. Rarely screened, PERFUMED NIGHTMARE was Tahimik’s first feature made shortly after tearing up his MBA from Wharton and committing himself to art.
From Artists Space:
A closing event for Multiple Offerings, this program pairs rare audio recordings by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha with Kidlat Tahimik’s 1977 feature film Perfumed Nightmare. Tahimik stars as a Filipino jeepney driver who dreams of emigrating to America to become an astronaut.
Drawing inspiration from films past and present from around the world, as well as ideas about cinema and its possibilities, Cha explored the often evolving and fluid relationship between a film, its maker, and its audience. During her three years as a student employee at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, she had nightly access to an extensive collection of international and experimental cinema. After moving from San Francisco to New York in 1980, she continued to frequent cinemas, drawing both pleasure and insight from the work of other filmmakers while refining her own practice through experiments with chance operations, permutations, fades, and dissolves. In a 1981 letter to theorist and scholar Bertrand Augst, Cha recalled seeing PERFUMED NIGHTMARE at Bleecker Street Cinema, an influential art-house venue and gathering place for filmmakers and cinephiles that closed in the early 1990s.
Artist’s Bio:
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (b. 1951, Busan, South Korea; d. 1982, New York City) emigrated to the United States in 1962, settling first in Hawaii and then moving to San Francisco in 1964. The Bay Area remained Cha’s home for most of her life. She attended the University of California, Berkeley, where she received four undergraduate and graduate degrees in comparative literature and art. In 1980, Cha moved to New York City, where she worked as an editor and writer for Tanam Press, producing two important works: Dictée, a book-form collage of poetry, found text, and images; and Apparatus, an anthology of writings on the film apparatus. In 1992, Cha’s family donated the entirety of her artworks and archives to BAMPFA, where they form the cornerstone of the museum’s Conceptual Art Study Center and continue to be accessible to researchers today.