SUNDAY AUGUST 17th – 730 PM – ONE NIGHT ONLY! LIVE SCORE BY JAKE PEPPER AND ZACH KOEBER – PLAYED BACK TO BACK WITH A 10-MINUTE INTERMISSION. THIS WILL SELL OUT. 

SPECIAL EVENT TICKETS (8/17)

Following their debut as a duo in May, last month’s performance of improv music virtuosos Jack Pepper and Zach Koeber sold out at Spectacle. We are proud to give Jake and Zach a full deserved encore for their new live scores of two Spectacle silent classics, AFTER DEATH and THE DYING SWAN

AFTER DEATH
dir. Yevgeni Bauer, 1915
Russia, 46 min.
Silent with Russian intertitles and English Subtitles

Based on a novella by Ivan Turgenev, AFTER DEATH is arguably cinema’s first foray into gothic romance. The pitifully alienated Andrei (Vitold Polonsky) becomes infatuated with enigmatic actress Zoia (Vera Karalli), and then her sudden passing sends him into a pit of obsessive despair. Presented initially as a melodrama before distinctly veering into the supernatural and psychological, AFTER DEATH is an early testament to the ways film illustrates the complex feelings around loss and dwelling on what could have been.

THE DYING SWAN
dir. Yevgeni Bauer, 1917
Russia, 49 min.
Silent with Russian intertitles and English Subtitles

A few years later, Bauer, Polonsky, and Karalli reunited for another morbid tale of obsession and fame. Written by Russian actress Zoya Barantsevich, THE DYING SWAN follows the tragic trajectory of mute ballet dancer Gizella (Karalli) as she encounters heartbreak, breakthroughs in fame, and admirers with pernicious motives. Released in the twilight of Bauer’s career, THE DYING SWAN is also considered his most noteworthy achievement for its gaze into the darker side of inspiration and desire.
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Jake Pepper and Zach Koeber make up half of Ace Bandage, the jam-heavy rock band based in Brooklyn. Their fondness of improvisation and vast knowledge of timbral music allows them to shift seamlessly through varied sonic palettes. Pepper also performed in Brooklyn synth punk outfit Future Punx, while Koeber got his start in the local scene as one-third of Archie Pelago, and he currently collaborates with deep house producer Max in the World. Both Jake and Zach have also guest DJ’d on the prestigious independent station The Lot Radio.

Special thanks to George Schmalz and Kino Lorber.

At the dawn of the millennium, a time when it was likely far more fun and creatively stimulating to speculate on “the future,” the Digital Video (DV) format became the most accessible and inexpensive way to shoot and record footage. This new, scrappy, consumer-grade form of filmmaking resulted in celebrated directors like Spike Lee, Richard Linklater, Danny Boyle, and of course, David Lynch, providing some of their more experimental and chilling works. As our own future grows more incomprehensible by the day, Spectacle is proud to screen these three fuzzy, hypnagogic visions from the early 2000s: RED COCKROACHES, TRAGOS, and TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME KILLING MACHINE IN DAEHAKRO.

RED COCKROACHES
dir. Miguel Coyula, 2003
United States. 82 min.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13 – 7:30 PM WITH Q&A 
SATURDAY, AUGUST 23 – 7:30 PM 
FRIDAY, AUGUST 29 – MIDNIGHT

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In what would be Miguel Coyula’s first feature production, RED COCKROACHES is a disturbing urban thriller made with a micro-modest budget of $2000. It’s the first in an auteurist trilogy stemming from Coyula’s transgressive approach to Cuban speculative fiction. Set in a near-future NYC plagued by acid rain and the invasive corporate rule of DNA21, Adam Zarrasky is just another awkward 20-something until his daily routine is upended by a lonely, beautiful woman on a subway platform. What begins like a scene out of a romantic comedy in this poisoned world quickly devolves, opening a hole of lost family secrets and unthinkable psychosexual horrors. Coyula develops a language of singular cinematic unease that must be seen to be believed – audiences will never look at ketchup the same way again. Featuring an in-person Q&A with director Miguel Coyula on August 13th!

CW: incest

Special Thanks to Alfredo Calvino, Miguel Coyula and Ross Snyder of Saturn’s Core

Undeniably inventive, visually stunning, a triumph of technology in the hands of a visionary
—Ronnie Scheib, Variety

TRAGOS
dir. Antero Alli, 2000
United States. 105 min.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 2 – 7:30 PM 
TUESDAY, AUGUST 5 – 10:00 PM 
THURSDAY, AUGUST 14 – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 18 – 10:00 PM

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A CYBER NOIR WITCH HUNT

Following our retrospective on Antero Alli, we’re proud to screen another picture from his poetic imagination. TRAGOS continues in the footsteps of THE DRIVETIME and its anxious judgments towards the dial-up tech of the late 90s. Centered around a virtual reality server’s deadly potential after the mysterious death of technopagan Vivika (producer/art director/music composer Thia Alli), this shot-on-miniDV mystery was impressively produced in-house with a $7000 budget – further establishing Antero and Thia Alli as modest adepts in DIY narrative filmmaking.

One of the most “obscure FMV game” movies ever made!
–Evan Pincus, LB

an outsider art miracle
–erik reeds, LB

TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME KILLING MACHINE IN DAEHAKRO
dir. Nam Ki-woong, 2000
South Korea. 60 min.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 2 – MIDNIGHT 
FRIDAY, AUGUST 8 – MIDNIGHT 
TUESDAY, AUGUST 19 – 10:00PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 23 – MIDNIGHT 

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With a translated title that’s as blunt and direct as it gets, TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME KILLING MACHINE IN DAEHAKRO is classic grindhouse sleaze distilled through a Y2K aesthetic. Lee So-woon stars in her first and only film role as a teenage girl given a second chance at life through brutal reconstruction. These new gifts propel her into a vengeful murder spree as she hunts for the perverse teacher (Kim Dae-tong) who killed her. Director Nam Ki-woong wore several hats when he made this picture, and his glowing DV cinematography paired with an entrancing trip-hop influenced score results in what might just be the coziest splatter movie in film history. Spectacle is proud to unleash one of the more operatic examples in extreme cinema to a new generation of tech-infused, bloodthirsty, sophisticated sickos.

The absolute garishness of early digital video pushed to its limit. I honestly kind of love this.
–COBRARocky, LB

One of those rare films who seems to be constant[ly] reinventing its forms, it remains one of the great found objects of the 00’s.
–Felipe Furtado, LB

Special Thanks to Youngin Lee and Kim Dohee of INDIESTORY INC.

Her father dies… her fiance dumps her… and she can’t find a job… so she covers the waterfront. And then one night…

French writer Guy de Maupassant’s short story “The Port” first landed on the Mexican silver-screen in 1934, courtesy of Russian exile Arkady Boytler and his directing buddy Raphael J. Sevilla. This classic tale of twisted faith has since been adapted thrice over — although, we’ll leave Luis Quintanilla’s TV-adaptation for another summer — and become a cornerstone of Mexican cinema, its tale of mixed identities reflecting the status of a nation confused about its own.

Now heralded as a classic of Latin American cinema, Boytler and Sevilla’s grim and pointed THE WOMAN OF THE PORT (1934) sets the standard high for all future filmmakers looking to adapt this powerful short story. Set in the docks of Veracruz, THE WOMAN OF THE PORT follows a woman frowned upon by fate, forced into squalor, and made to make a name for herself in infamy. In 1949, Emilio Gómez Muriel tried his hand at the story with an adaptation starring rumbera Maria Antonieta Pons. This version of THE WOMAN OF THE PORT (1949) flips the chronology of the first on its head, setting up a narrative parabola that moves from grime to good to ghastly. It’d take about 40 years for another filmmaker to throw his name in the hat and in 1991, former Luis Buñuel assistant director Arturo Ripstein put forth his own spin on the story: a Rashomon–style vision of despair anchored in a quartet of wonderful performances.

Content warning: These films contain depictions of physical violence, sexual assault, and self-harm.

MONDAY, AUGUST 4 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 29 – 5 PM

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Best known for co-directing the landmark REDES (1936) — about a fishermens’ revolt — with Fred Zinnemann, Emilio Gómez Muriel was a prolific studio director whose career started in the late ’30s and ran up until the ’70s. He directed everything from social realist dramas to swashbucklers and Blue Demon wrestling flicks, working with starlets like María Felix, Miroslava, and Maria Antonieta Pons. It’s the latter that takes on the role of the titular Woman, a night dancer and crooner who has developed a propensity for alcohol in light of the darts destiny has thrown her.

La mujer del puerto

(The Woman of the Port)

dir. Arturo Ripstein 1991

In Spanish with english subtitles

MONDAY, AUGUST 18 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 30 – 7:30 PM

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Leave it to Arturo Ripstein, enfant terrible of Mexican cinema for fifty years and counting, to make one of its most tawdry tales even more depraved. Split into four chapters, each chronicling the film’s doomed romance from a different perspective, Ripstein’s THE WOMAN OF THE PORT extends his source material’s central wickedness to its extreme, as though taunting viewers with an embodied vision of the Mexico they fear from morbid and shocking news reports worldwide. An incendiary film, as only Ripstein can make them, this most recent adaptation of Mexican cinema’s most intriguing and unpleasant myth foreshadows the squalor Ripstein would continue to burrow himself as a filmmaker while making an opus of what was once a simple expat’s attempt at adapting de Maupassant.

Special thanks to ACERVO-FILMOTECA UNAM, Alebrije Cine y Video, Jesse Trussell, Mónica Lozano, Chloe Roddick, and IMCINE.

Are acts of violence viable and warranted solutions to political oppression? To fascism? Should individuals take it upon themselves to affect political change by going as far as murder or assassination? Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? The Spectacle as a screening space has no official stance or answers for such trivial questions, but we do have a wholly unconnected and unrelated series of films about the DIY ethos that we are calling: NUDGE NUDGE WINK WINK. Apropos of nothing else going on in the world, we suggest you see the following films:

FAREWELL, MR. PRESIDENT
(JÄÄHYVÄISET PRESIDENTILLE)
Dir. Matti Kassila, 1987.
Finland. 87 min.
In Finnish with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 1 – 7:30 PM – [TICKETS]
SATURDAY, AUGUST 9 – 10 PM – [TICKETS]
TUESDAY, AUGUST 12 – 10 PM – [TICKETS]
SATURDAY, AUGUST 16 – 10 PM – [TICKETS]

Asko Mertanen is a working waiter who is obsessed with two things: the corrupt government’s unfair treatment of the country, and guns. Mertanen’s obsessions combine into a deadly self-assigned edict: to kill the President of Finland. Like any well engineered plan, Mertanen builds to his ultimate act by testing his weapons, his accuracy, and his ability to take a life. A confluence of Mertanen’s savviness as well as a serendipitously timed murder of another waitress lead police detectives Hanhivaara and Kairamo on a confused chase to stop him before he achieves his final goal.

A late work for one of Finland’s most prominent filmmakers of the 1950s and 60s, Matti Kassila. With a screenplay written with his son, Taavi Kassila, and based on the novel of the same name by Pentti Kirstilä. The film’s president, played by accomplished Finnish actor Tarmo Manni, is never mentioned by name but bears a striking resemblance to politician, and Finland’s longest serving president, Urho Kekkonen. Who during his extensive term consolidated government power to the presidency and developed a cult of personality. How about that?

PASSPORT TO DESTINY
Dir. Ray McCarey, 1944.
United States. 65 min.
In English.
16mm.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 05 – 7:30 PM – [TICKETS]
FRIDAY, AUGUST 15 – 5 PM – [TICKETS]
SATURDAY, AUGUST 23 – 5 PM – [TICKETS]
SUNDAY, AUGUST 31 – 5 PM – [TICKETS]

“If you had a charmed life, what would you do?”
“I’d find my way to Germany, and I’d give that Mr. bloomin’ Hitler what for!”

Elsa Lanchester (the BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN) stars as Ella Muggins, a Cockney cleaning lady who feels proud and empowered in her work attending to the office of the head of the firm. But with the 2nd World War hitting its heights, her working class life in London is soon to be interrupted. After her regimental sergeant major husband perishes (lost not to the war, but underneath a motor truck in Piccadilly Circus) Ella inherits from him a magical amulet. According to her husband who was known for spinning yarns, the amulet—or magic eye—carries with it powers of protection. After a close encounter with a bomb care of the Germans’ air raids, Ella is convinced of her husband’s tall tales, and with a new lease on her ‘charmed’ life, she makes her way to Germany to do what the British military seemingly can’t: kill Hitler.

PASSPORT TO DESTINY is a charmingly hilarious comedic romp, and a lovely piece of anti-Nazi do-it-yourself regime change propaganda care of RKO. With Lanchester turning a brilliant performance as the naively headstrong Muggins, whose fortuitous actions through Germany resemble that of the Mr. Magoo character, who himself would not be created for another 5 years. Released in early 1944 only a handful of months before the Allied forces’ invasion at Normandy, and over a year before Hitler would eventually blow his own brains out.

We are pleased to present the film on 16mm for all engagements.

THE EDGE
Dir. Robert Kramer, 1968.
United States. 100 min.
In English.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 2 – 5 PM – [TICKETS]
THURSDAY, AUGUST 7 – 10 PM – [TICKETS]
FRIDAY, AUGUST 22 – 7:30 PM – [TICKETS]
MONDAY, AUGUST 25 – 7:30 PM – [TICKETS]

THE EDGE follows Danial Rainer, a disillusioned political activist, over the course of six days as he navigates the inner politics of his organizing group as they struggle to have any effect on the actions of their government and its war on Vietnam. Dan is tired of theory, and wants to take decisive action, but the rest of his similarly white and middle class cohort are going to be difficult to get out of their comfort and on board. The plan? Assassinate the President of the United States.

Robert Kramer presents the events unfolding like an intelligence outfit surveilling and gathering evidence. The cast of characters; introduced like that of a police debriefing or dossier; names, ages, and political histories. The camera; at times a lingering distant voyeuristic point of view like that of an observing agent gathering intel. The audio of conversations; as if they were being picked up by planted bugs.

Kramer deftly showcases that feeling of despair as one hears the numbers of deaths grow daily as war wages on the other side of the globe. The cognitive dissonance of the comfort of your bohemian day to day not lining up with the horrors being perpetrated by your own government. Do you want to affect change with a single violent revolutionary action? Or are you comfortable to play activist while talking shit about the president over a bottle of wine at your friend’s flat? When Dan is driven to the brink, but left high and dry by his comrades, does the plan have any chance of success?

“What interests me is this: How do you understand cinema? How do I understand cinema? Why has nobody seen my films here in the United States, etc.? Most of the time, my films don’t relate to what people believe. Without a doubt this is a flaw in the films. They all deal with such questions as: how people fulfill themselves and assume a role in history, how do or don’t they rejoin the principal current of history. All this, …, in the context of the United States and of the specific kind of isolation that we’ve made for ourselves here—we, the subjects of films. There is this rhythm between political engagement where we lose a lot of things—relations between people, families, children, nature—not as ideas but as bodily experiences. In The Edge, we can see the two very clearly.”
—Robert Kramer, December 1978 Cahiers du Cinéma interview

In the wake of Bruce Lee’s passing in 1973, the Hong Kong film industry found itself at a crossroads. How was the industry supposed to sustain the newfound global popularity of kung fu movies in the absence of the country’s most bankable and recognizable star?

Though the “Bruceploitation” trend that followed saw some moderate success, the “Lee-alikes” that populated the genre— mostly marketed on their resemblance or adjacency to Lee himself, by definition incapable of reaching the same heights of fame as their predecessor— could only placate and/or dupe audiences for so long. For studios not named Shaw Brothers or Golden Harvest, the need for an alternative path forward soon emerged.

This July, we look at three radically different approaches Hong Kong studios took towards moving the industry out from under the long shadow cast by Lee’s legacy. Whether falling back on the old masters of the genre, pushing to coin another star of the same caliber, or allowing his very same clones the creative freedom to establish themselves apart from their namesake, each of these films is its own reflection of an industry’s need to reinvent itself following a world-shattering shake-up.

THE CHINESE STUNTMAN (龍的影子)
aka COUNTER ATTACK
Dir. Ho Tsung-tao, 1981
Taiwan. 94 min.
In English (dubbed)

WEDNESDAY, JULY 2 – 10 PM
MONDAY, JULY 7 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 16 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 25 – 10 PM

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An insurance salesman (who also happens to be a martial arts master) becomes a stunt double for a popular Hong Kong action star, unwittingly throwing himself into a murderous plot by the film’s producers and director to cash in on the star’s insurance policy.

For his final film as both a director and star, Ho Tsung-tao crafted a meta-masterpiece largely drawing from his own experiences as the former Lee-alike “Bruce Li”. By the late-1970s, Ho had made no bones about his displeasure with being pigeonholed as a Bruce Lee clone, all of which is poured into this cathartic, biting satire of the Hong Kong film industry. The film is as cynical as it is action-packed, with Ho pulling no punches in his depiction of the disposability with which the business treats its below-the-line physical performers who have devoted their entire lives to their martial artistry.

MAGNIFICENT BODYGUARDS (飛渡捲雲山)
Dir. Lo Wei, 1978
Hong Kong. 103 min.
In Cantonese & Mandarin with English subtitles

WEDNESDAY, JULY 9 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, JULY 14 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, JULY 26 – 10 PM

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A wealthy noblewoman assembles a team of fierce bodyguards to escort her ailing brother to a specific doctor who holds the cure to his illness. Together they must traverse dangerous wild country infested with roving gangs of bandits, savages, and demonic monks intent on his capture.

While much of the industry was preoccupied with maintaining Bruce Lee’s presence via the Bruceploitation trend, Lo Wei, the very filmmaker who directed Lee in his breakout roles in THE BIG BOSS (1971) and FIST OF FURY (1972), turned his sights towards finding the Next Big Thing. Within a few years, Lo would find his new leading man in a fresh-faced stunt choreographer and background performer named Jackie Chan, providing him with his very first starring roles in NEW FIST OF FURY (1976) and MAGNIFICENT BODYGUARDS.

Though not quite Chan’s breakout role (those would come later in the same year via Yuen Woo-ping’s DRUNKEN MASTER and SNAKE IN THE EAGLE’S SHADOW), it’s easy to see why Lo viewed Chan as the heir apparent to Lee’s stardom. Even as a smarmy, hot-headed bodyguard— a far cry from the comedic roles for which he became known— the same charisma, finesse, and obsessive detail that Chan would bring to his later work are still undeniably present.

If Chan’s born stardom weren’t enough to carry the film, MAGNIFICENT BODYGUARDS was also marketed as the first kung fu movie to be presented in 3D, replete with multiple shots of fists, feet, spears, swords, and arrows flying directly towards the camera (alas, though, Spectacle will only be presenting this one in 2D).

RETURN OF THE CHINESE BOXER (神拳大戰快鎗手)
Dir. Wang Yu, 1977
Hong Kong/Taiwan. 99 min.
In English (dubbed)

SATURDAY, JULY 5 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 11 – 5 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 16 – 10 PM
MONDAY, JULY 21 – 10 PM

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In the wake of the First Sino-Japanese War, a cabal of Japanese ninja warlords contemplate their takeover of China using an array of exotic weaponry and supernatural forces at their disposal. The only thing standing in their way: A master martial artist whose studio was decimated by those same warlords and who’s hellbent on getting his revenge..

Prior to Bruce Lee’s ascension, arguably the only Hong Kong action star that had achieved a shade of the same recognition abroad was Jimmy Wang Yu, star of Shaw Brothers Studio’s international breakout, THE ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN (1967). As Lee’s stardom began to eclipse his own, Wang turned to roles behind the camera as the director of seminal kung fu classics like ONE-ARMED BOXER (1971), BEACH OF THE WAR GODS (1973), and MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE (1976).

After Lee’s passing, some studios fell back on Wang’s legacy as the one-time undisputed king of kung fu cinema, marketing the releases of FLYING GUILLOTINE and RETURN OF THE CHINESE BOXER around the tagline, “Before there was Bruce Lee…”. Unfortunately, dogged by alleged ties to organized crime and legal troubles involving his broken contract with Shaw Bros. (eventually resulting in Wang being banned from making films in Hong Kong), RETURN ended up being Wang’s final film as director, though his legacy as a one-man New Wave who brought a unique cinematic flair to otherwise standard wuxia proceedings has made him as vital a figure in the history of kung fu cinema as Lee.