Page 120 – Spectacle Theater

KINETIC CINEMA PRESENTS A SCREENING AND DISCUSSION WITH MIMI GARRARD

Posted on November 27, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

Dir. Mimi Garrard
USA, 90 min.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11 – 7:30 PM

Guest Artist, Mimi Garrard will show works in video from 1964 to 2014 spanning her prolific career as a dancer with the legendary Alwin Nikolais, as a choreographer, and later as a video artist. The program features the work of Mimi Garrard, Alwin Nikolais, James Seawright, and Bela Tarr. It includes work created outdoors and in the studio, in color and black and white, from pure movement to theater.

Mimi Garrard studied and danced with Alwin Nikolais and his colleagues at the Henry Street Playhouse. He produced her concerts from 1964 to 1971. In the early 1970’s she began touring under the National Endowment Touring Program, performing in colleges and universities throughout the United States as well as in South America. Her last concert for the stage was in 2001 at the Kitchen. September 11, 2001 she saw the twin towers fall from 155 Wooster Street where she was living at the time. This was a catalyst for change and she decided to create dance for video.

In 2002, she began to produce half-hour programs for Manhattan Neighborhood Network which gave the incentive to work consistently. She has created 148 programs to date. Her video work is also shown in festivals worldwide, and is in museums and galleries. In the Spring of this coming year she is looking forward to a new adventure showing her collaborative work with James Seawright on the dome of the planetarium in Jackson, Mississippi in a biennial program honoring Eudora Welty. She received a life-time achievement award from the Institute of Arts and Letters in Mississippi.

ABOUT KINETIC CINEMA

Kinetic Cinema is a regular screening series produced by Pentacle in conjunction with Spectacle and curated by invited guest artists who create evenings of films and videos that have been influential to their own work as artists. When artists are asked to reflect upon how the use of movement in film and media arts has influenced their own art, a plethora of new ideas, material, and avenues of exploration emerge. From cutting edge motion capture animation to Michael Jackson music videos, from Gene Kelly musicals to Kenneth Anger films, Kinetic Cinema is dedicated to the recognition and appreciation for “moving” pictures. We have presented these evenings at Collective: Unconscious, Chez Bushwick, IRT, Launchpad, Green Space, Uniondocs, CRS, 3rd Ward, Fort Useless and The Tank in New York City, as well as at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia.

For more info on the current Kinetic Cinema season please visit Pentacle’s website.

Kinetic Cinema is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

THE STIRRING OF A THOUSAND BELLS

Posted on November 27, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

THE STIRRING OF A THOUSAND BELLS
Dir. Matt Dunning, 2014
USA, 50 min.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12 – 8 PM
NY PREMIERE! ONE NIGHT ONLY!

With an intro and Q&A from director Matt Dunning!

Advance tickets available here.

Spectacle is thrilled to present this ONE NIGHT ONLY New York premiere of director Matt Dunning’s hypnotic two-part exploration of Indonesian gamelan in the modern world.

As one of the oldest musical forms in the world, gamelan remains a cultural touchstone on the islands of Java and Bali. Defined by the ringing of metallophones and drums, the music has exerted an outsized influence on Western ears for over a hundred years.

The first part of Dunning’s work takes us to the city of Solo during the annual festival of Sekaten, marking the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. Old and new collide in this cosmic carnival of sight and sound rarely witnessed outside of Indonesia.

The second part of the film documents the classical Javanese court dancers of Srimpi Muncar at Mangkunegaran Palace overlaid with images filmed throughout the island of Java.

Director Matt Dunning will be in attendance to intro the film and share “deleted scenes” and other ethnographic nuggets post-show!

Special thanks to Sublime Frequencies!

Negative Pleasure Publications Presents Jeans 3 Launch Party

Posted on November 17, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

Negative Pleasure Publications (Felony Comics, Night Burgers)
celebrate the release of their latest comics anthology, Jeans 3, with
a night of erotic dread at Spectacle, featuring screenings of Death
Game (1977) and The Pit (1981), two twisted tales pulsating with lust
and rage, drenched in blood and guaranteed to hurt your emotions.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21:
10:00 PM: DEATH GAME (1977)
MIDNIGHT: THE PIT (1981)
Separate $5 Admission for Each Screening

DEATH GAME
Peter S. Traynor, 1977

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21 – 10:00 PM

In Death Game (1977) (10:00 PM), a suburban family (Seymour Cassel) man finds two
free-spirited teenagers (Colleen Camp and Sondra Locke) on his doorstep one stormy night. What starts as a night of seduction turns into a morning of madness and murder.

Death Game, allegedly based on a true story, is sick a sleazy, but showcases a surprisingly prestige pedigree. Seymour Cassel was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in John Cassavete’s Minnie In Moskowitz in 1971 and would go on to work with the likes of Sam Peckinpah, Barry Levinson, Warren Beaty, Nicolas Roeg and Wes Anderson. Sondra Locke had appeared in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and Willard and would go on to become a frequent collaborator with Clint Eastwood (as well as the director of the bizarre “Ratboy”). Colleen Camp had roles in both mainstream (Smile, Funny Lady) and exploitation (The Swinging Cheerleaders) before Death Game, and would go on to appear in dozens of films, including Apocalypse Now, Clue, Wayne’s World and Election. Despite this aura of legitimacy, Death Game is pure trash in the best possible sense, a sweaty, feverish collision of sex, violence and outright insanity.

THE PIT
Dir. Lew Lehman, 1981.
97 min. USA.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21 – MIDNIGHT

Death Game is paired with another tale of desire and despair, and one of the most mind breakingly weird movies ever made, The Pit (1981) (Midnight), a huge influence on the Negative Pleasure ethos.

FORGET KILL BILL, DEATH WISH AND STRAW DOGS: here is a revenge fantasy you can actually relate to. At 12-years-old, Jamie Benjamin already has a CV of torture that would make Dawn Weiner blush: the hot librarian at elementary school tears up the erotic collages he makes with her photos; the cool kid at recess splits his lip open; Jamie’s nubile live-in babysitter only has eyes for an indifferent jock; and even the old woman down the street tries to mow him down with her motorized scooter (“he’ll probably grow into one of those hippies…”). It’s not clear exactly what’s wrong with the kid—he shows signs of autism, and a creepily over-affectionate mother might have something to do with it—but he finds solace in friendship with his teddy bear and the afternoons he spends visiting a pit in the woods full of bloodthirsty, primordial trolls. The youngster does his best to see that they’re looked after, but a kid can only steal so much meat from the butcher truck before another solution is in order—and if it can satisfy two problems at once, so much the better.

NOVEMBER MIDNIGHTS

Posted on October 28, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

SO SWEET SO DEAD
aka Rivelazioni di un maniaco sessuale al capo della squadra mobile
Dir. Roberto Bianchi Montero, 1972
Italy, 95 min.
In Italian with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1 — MIDNIGHT

Let’s not mince words: So Sweet So Dead is a giallo. A straight-up, black-gloved, straight-razored, nightgowns and scotch giallo. A series of high society wives are being killed by a mysterious stranger after being unfaithful to their husbands, and the police lieutenant (Farley Granger) attempts to find the killer without being allowed to interview the husbands, in fact being thwarted at every turn by his superiors. Directed by Roberto Bianchi Montero, it’s well worth watching for those of you who enjoyed last month’s Sergio Martino series.

HORROR EXPRESS
Dir. Eugenio Martin, 1972
Italy/UK, 90 m in.
In English

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7 – MIDNIGHT

In this essential Trans-Siberian classic, the great Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are rival anthropologists aboard a train en route from China to Moscow housing a crate with an amazing discovery: a primitive humanoid creature. The problem is, it houses a surprise of its own in the form of a shapeless, ancient alien entity hopping from body to body as hosts suck the memory, knowledge and brains from their victims. Lee and Cushing must combine their scientific expertise to understand and conqueror the otherworldly, demonic menace. In the meantime, Telly Savalas shows up as a domineering Cossack officer, and Argentinian spaghetti western star Alberto de Mendoza plays a nefarious, mad monk who renounces his faith and pledges his devotion to the ancient evil.

Like THE THING re-written by Paul Theroux aboard a bullet train to hell and featuring creepy, eye-bleeding make-up effects, freaky blazing-eyed zombies and top-notch performances by Lee and Cushing, HORROR EXPRESS is a total classic!

THE MONSTER AND THE STRIPPER
(aka The Exotic Ones)
Dir. Ron Ormond, 1968
USA, 91 min.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15 – MIDNIGHT

Any attempt at classing up this sleazy 60s gem stopped with its original title, THE EXOTIC ONES, and even that failed as it switched to the more accurate THE MONSTER AND THE STRIPPER on rerelease. With a lot more stripper than monster, this film is pure 60s trash GOLD, and the last made before director Ron Ormond turned toward moralizing Christian fare.

What a film to go out on though – beginning with a gloriously overlong open call for “talent” at a “New Orleans” burlesque joint (actually a claustrophobically-shot Methodist Church), we’re treated to a bevy of beauties featuring star dancer Titania (I couldn’t make this up) and her famous Fire Dance strutting their stuff to the running Dada commentary of the film’s co-producer and wife of Ron Ormond, June Carr.

Ormond himself plays demented Tony Clifton doppleganger/club owner Nemo, first seen torturing a man foolish enough to steal his money with the contents of a spittoon. Word reaches Nemo a monster’s been murdering hillbillies in the swamps of Louisiana, and Titania suggests a Beauty and The Beast act with the beast ripping off all her clothes. NO OTHER ACT will do, and Nemo finds himself in the monster-hunting business. With a team led by son Tim Ormond (a trifecta of Nashville’s First Family of Film!) they wander into the swamps and capture the beast, played by rockabilly also-ran Sleepy LaBeef (dare I say the Meatloaf of rockabilly?).

Back at the club, Little Timmy befriends the monster, who in turn falls for one of Titania’s new dance rivals. The whole town is abuzz and eager to see the Monster and the Stripper, but will the show go off without a hitch? Of course not.

For all the supposed sleaze, this exploitation film doesn’t feel exploitive – it’s a bizarro family affair where nothing makes a lick of sense, but everyone’s having a damn fine time onscreen. SEE a man get beaten with his own arm! WATCH a couple play dueling oversized harmonicas! MARVEL at hair and eye makeup that would make Divine puke with jealousy! HEAR dialogue that sounds like it was written with Noir Cliché refrigerator magnets! WITNESS – THE MONSTER AND THE STRIPPER! (and a lot of other strippers too)

BLOODY PIT OF HORROR
aka Il boia scarlatto
Dir. Massimo Pupillo, 1965
Italy, 87 min.
In Italian with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14 – MIDNIGHT

“The Crimson Executioner thirsts for blood!”

There’s only one place to start with talking about this film, and that’s the late great Mickey Hargitay. Mr. Universe, Mr. Jayne Mansfield, Mariska Hargitay’s dad, and an actor at some strange point between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Klaus Kinski, Mickey dives into all of his roles with a bulging intensity that never fails to deliver. He’s at his best here as a one-time actor named Travis who spends his days in seclusion…when not calling himself The Crimson Executioner, practicing self-worship, abusing body oil and subjecting trespassers to medieval torture in his castle compound. Along comes a breezy Italian gaggle of models and photographers who want to use his compound to do some horror paperback cover shoots. You can probably guess what’s coming next, but trust me, we up the stakes considerably here, with some crazy set pieces (there’s a scene with a mechanical spider that I can’t even explain), a beautiful score and plenty of Mickey talking about his perfect body! Also claims to be based on the writings of the Marquis de Sade! We’ll be showing the international cut with all nudity and tempra-paint gore intact!

NAKED MASSACRE
aka Born For Hell
aka Die Hinrichtung
Dir. Denis Héroux, 1976
West Germany/Canada/France/Italy, 86 min.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22 – MIDNIGHT

Based on the infamous case of nurse-butcher Richard Speck—also portrayed in Kōji Wakamatsu’s VIOLATED ANGELS (1967), B-movies from 2002, 2007 and 2012, the original US poster for Fernando Di Leo’s SLAUGHTER HOTEL (1971), a Wesley Willis song, self-appointed ‘murder metal’ band Macabre’s 1993 tune “What The Heck Richard Speck?: Eight Nurses You Wrecked,” and, uh, master painter Gerhard Richter’s 1966 work “Eight Student Nurses”—this unusually sadistic international co-production is indeed the only version that grafts his story onto The Troubles in Belfast, Northern Ireland and re-casts Speck as a Vietnam vet, all while depicting a sexual perversity that allegedly outpaces that of the real-life killer.

WAR OF THE ROBOTS
aka La guerra dei robot
Dir. Alfonso Brescia, 1978
Italy, 100 min.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28 – MIDNIGHT

“Here’s a science fiction movie what will blow your mind.” -Marco Talvitie (Youtube via Google+)

“I’m not sure why anyone has compared this movie to Star Wars, other than some fighting with, “light swords”. This movie reminded me more of a militarized version of the classic Star Trek TV series. It’s actually not bad at all, cheesy, yes, but not bad. […] I didn’t think I’d make it through the whole 100 minutes, but I did and don’t regret that time!” -Forcemaster2000 (Internet Archive)

“One of the funniest things, even though it didn’t really have much to do with the acting, was the footsteps. Anytime there were people running around or even just walking around, there were these really loud and pronounced footsteps dubbed in. It’s one of those things that once you notice it the first time, you notice it every time.” –B-Movie Central

“It’s good. 9.5/10.” -stevesaad3150 (TV.com)

SONG AT MIDNIGHT
aka Ye ban ge sheng
Dir. Weibang Ma-Xu, 1937
China, 118 min.
In Chinese with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29 – MIDNIGHT

Widely considered the first Chinese horror film ever made, SONG AT MIDNIGHT is a deft and frightening adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s 1910 cultural juggernaut “The Phantom of the Opera,” infusing the classic story with revolutionary propaganda reflecting the anti-feudal fervor of China at the outset of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45).

Very influenced by Hollywood genre standards—as well as some moments indicating a German Expressionist influence—SONG AT MIDNIGHT allegedly played poorly to 1930s Chinese audiences. Its stature has grown considerably since, however, frequently appearing on lists of all-time best Chinese films and spawning two remakes: Chiu Feng Yuan’s two-part THE MID-NIGHTMARE (1962) and Ronnie Yu’s THE PHANTOM LOVER (1995).

EBOLA SYNDROME

Posted on October 27, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

EBOLA SYNDROME
Dir. Herman Yau, 1996
Hong Kong, 98 min.
In Cantonese with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 26 – 10 PM

Trigger Warning: Rape, cannibalism, torture, racism, gore, borderline necrophilia.

Ebola? Everybody FREAK OUT!!!

An assault on all things decent, if ever a movie needed—nay, demanded a TRIGGER WARNING, it’s 1996’s EBOLA SYNDROME: Rape, cannibalism, torture, mayhem, autopsies, racism, borderline necrophilia, children in extreme danger, gore and dismemberment—it’s all here! Even wild animals! If you are sensitive and caring soul, you should avoid this film, well, like the plague…

Protagonist Kai (expertly played by Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, oozing sweat and vileness) is a miserable and awful piece of shit. After murdering three people in Hong Kong, he’s on the run and hiding in South Africa, working a low-paying job in a restaurant.

After raping a dying Zulu woman, Kai contracts Ebola—but he’s that “lucky” one-in-a-billion who is immune: the disease doesn’t kill him, and he becomes a sort of “Typhoid Mary.”

But how does a Typhoid Kai spread the dreaded E-disease when the only way to contract it is through the exchange of bodily fluids? By not only having LOTS of unprotected sex (both consensus and not), but by grinding up some of his victims and serving them as “Africa Buns” to the hapless patrons of the restaurant, speading doom across Johanessburg.

Soon Kai is on the run again, but back to Hong Kong with a suitcase full of cash, scattering viral hell across two continents. Public safety and civic concern mean nothing to the gross Kai, he cannot think past the end of his penis—and in many ways, you could say that he is the human embodiment of a virus, cruel and thoughtless, only concerned with his own pleasures. Maybe the nasty disease doesn’t kill him because it recognizes a kindred spirit…

Not quite artless, the film really doesn’t try to have a style—except for maximum transgression. But you know what? This movie is SO over-the-top that many will find it hilarious—and others will be shocked into silence by how damn WRONG this flick is—and others will more than likely be outside the Spectacle protesting its even being shown….

But the really funny thing is that this movie, as outrageous as it is and as much of a public health danger that Kai is, never even begins to come close to the unthinking, blind hysteria that we have actually been experiencing in the U.S., and especially in New York City, where now even the bowling balls must be given hazmat suits…

Whether you come to laugh in the face of death, or to get a glimpse of our possible germ apocalypse, EBOLA SYNDROME is unlike any movie you’ve ever seen. Dude, SALO is boring compared to this!

THE CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH on 16mm

Posted on October 27, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

THE CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH
Dir. Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, 1968
Federal Republic of Germany, 93 min.
In German with English subtitles.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7 – 7:30 PM

This fall, Spectacle is proud to present married director-duo Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub’s rigorous first feature, THE CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH, in a special 16mm screening. Made up of thirty-two scenes and only about a hundred shots, CHRONICLE is a memoir of the last two decades of the life of J.S. Bach as told by his second wife. The famous complexity of Bach’s compositions finds a counterpoint in Straub-Huillet’s restrained style, constructing the story from a series of tableaux and allowing Bach’s music to come forth in all its majesty.

Straub-Huillet’s compositions are not austere in the manner of Dreyer, but sumptuous. The rooms and costumes in which Bach (played by the Dutch harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt) plays extracts from dozens of his pieces—in chronological order—are filled with baroque ornament, and for all its supposed minimalism, the film draws a tense energy from the period’s nervous detail. There is hardly a review of the film that doesn’t use the phrase “less is more,” the anti-baroque slogan par excellence, which points a fruitful contradiction in the pairing of Straub-Huillet’s reductive modernism with the age of Bach.

Many critics wonder whether the film is a biopic or a documentary, while others think it’s something else entirely. The Village Voice’s Michael Atkinson says that CHRONICLE is the closest that any European art film has come to being a “non-movie,” and Sight and Sound’s Richard Roud goes as far as to claim that it is not a film but music. Whatever it is, THE CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH is an opportunity to train one’s cinematic attention and submit oneself to something sublime.

Special thanks to David Callahan from the New York Public Library for the 16mm print and to Barbara Ulrich at BELVA Film GmbH.

JOHN’S OF 12TH STREET (Premiere!)

Posted on October 21, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

JOHN’S OF 12TH STREET
Dir. Vanessa McDonnell, 2014
USA, 68 min.

WORLD PREMIERE!

Advance tickets available HERE.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12 – 10 PM (with Filmmaker Q&A)
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 16 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22 – 10 PM (with Filmmaker Q&A)
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 30 – 5 PM

JOHN’S OF 12TH STREET is a portrait of a century-old Italian-American restaurant in New York City, one of the last of its kind in a rapidly changing East Village. This observational documentary loosely follows the rhythm of the restaurant’s day, which swings between boredom and frenzy as the old rooms empty and fill. No one who works at John’s is actually Italian, but some have been here for 40 years, including two pairs of brothers and a father and son. JOHN’S OF 12TH STREET catalogues the overlooked details of working life and a vanishing facet of New York City.

“Warm, affectionate, contagious” – Danny King, Village Voice

“At a little over an hour, it left me craving a full-shift version.” – Cosmo Bjorkenheim, Screen Slate

John's Poster — Poster design by Zachary Hewitt

PIERRE PERRAULT: THE ISLE-AUX-COUDRES TRILOGY

Posted on October 20, 2014July 23, 2015 by spectacletheater

“A man who was equal parts poet and cinéaste, nationalist and naturalist, intellectual and laborer.” –D. Totaro

Although Pierre Perrault is a hugely important figure for Québécois cinema, he has remained largely unknown outside of his home province. Developing a unique style of documentary cinema while making use of ever lighter and smaller equipment, Perrault explored Québec and its inhabitants from up close. Shot throughout rural French Canada, his films speak of a time when Québec was still in search of its own identity and voice

Born in 1927, Perrault grew up in Montréal where he repeatedly got kicked out of private schools until he finally graduated as a lawyer from Université de Montréal. He practiced for two years in the 1950s, then started working for Radio Canada and spent several years traveling along the Saint Lawrence River, recording traditional folk songs, interviewing the residents, and meeting many of the people who would later appear in his films. His first radio series Au Pays de Neufve-France (In the Land of New France) was one such exploration of traditional music, which later became a television series. It was through this assignment that Perrault first met the inhabitants of Isle-aux-Coudres.

Exploring the language and culture of the island’s inhabitants, which have remained nearly unchanged for three centuries, the Isle-aux-Coudres trilogy follows in the tradition of ethnographic films like Flaherty’s Nanook of the North. Sometimes called “cinema of the spoken word,” Perrault’s films emphasize the role of language and vernacular in passing knowledge and customs between generations. By looking at tradition and history, at Québec’s roots in France, and at urban influences on rural societies, Perrault positioned himself politically through his films at a time when separatism was a subject of intense debate. Some called his anthropological films reactionary; some believed they helped the separatists’ cause.

After The Isle-aux-Coudres trilogy, Perrault distanced himself from direct cinema and started making films about Québécois nationalism, documenting protests and questioning the feasibility of separatism. He returned to the people of rural Québec in the mid 1970s in his Abitibi cycle, which centered around farmer Hauris Lalancette.

He finally turned to aboriginal issues and topics of wilderness and hunting. LA BÊTE LUMINEUSE (1982), a film about nine Québécois urbanites on a moose hunting trip in the wilderness, was screened at the Cannes Film Festival and ignited a firestorm of debate in France and Canada.

Perrault made feature-length documentaries while continuing to work in radio and television throughout his life, and from 1965 onwards he acted as director of the National Film Board of Canada. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of the Quiet Revolution from the Government of Québec for his contributions to Québecois culture in the 1960s.

Special thanks to the National Film Board of Canada.

POUR LA SUITE DU MONDE
Dir. Michel Brault and Pierre Perrault, 1963
Canada, 105 min.
In French with English subtitles.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2 – 5 PM
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22 – 7:30 PM

Directed in co-operation with Michel Brault (who was later to become another big name of Québécois cinema), POUR LA SUITE DU MONDE follows the lives of the inhabitants of Isle-aux-Coudres, where Perrault had met Alexis Tremblay and Louis Harvey—two of the trilogy’s protagonists—while working for Radio Canada.

Alexis’s son, Léopold, is trying to get a team together to reinvigorate the island’s abandoned tradition of beluga whale trapping. When his father—the only man with any knowledge of the ancient trapping techniques—stubbornly withholds his support for the endeavor, “Grand-Louis” Harvey steps up to offer his help. Ultimately, the film’s subject is not the whale that gets caught and sold to an aquarium in New York, but rather the islanders’ way of working together to reestablish a custom that has only been transmitted orally.

LA RÈGNE DU JOUR
Dir. Pierre Perrault, 1967
Canada, 118 min.
In French with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25 – 10 PM

Four years after POUR LA SUITE DU MONDE, Pierre Perrault invites the Tremblay family to Perche, Normandy, the region in Western France from which the people of Québec are said to originate.

On the way to France, the Tremblay family visits an old friend—the beluga whale they shipped off to New York years ago. By cutting back and forth between documentation of the Tremblay family’s experiences in France and the verbal accounts of the trip they give to their friends and neighbors upon their return, Perrault comments on his characters, often refuting them when the camera proves to have a “better memory” than they do.

LES VOITURES D’EAU
Dir. Pierre Perrault, 1968
Canada, 110 min.
In French with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29 – 10 PM

The first half of LES VOITURES D’EAU alternates between workers building a wooden schooner and shipmen fixing their weather-beaten ships. Like the beluga whale hunt, the building of the boat brings the community together. The men debate the craft of shipbuilding while townsfolk stop by to gossip. The ships, which are used to transport wood to the pulp mills, are an important part of the island’s economy. In the second half of the film a longshoremen’s strike in the city of Trois-Rivières maroons a handful of Isle-aux-Coudres ships for 39 days, leaving the men with nothing to do—a rare condition for them. They complain about the march toward automation, the inequality between union and non-union workers, the government’s bias toward big shipping companies, the competition from off-shore ships, but ultimately they accept their fate with a philosophical attitude.

The film culminates in the burning of a ship no longer deemed sea-worthy. An aesthetic spectacle, for Alexis and Laurent Tremblay it is a painful reminder of a lost tradition.

HOW TO PURPOSEFULLY FORGET THINGS.

Posted on October 20, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

HOW TO PURPOSEFULLY FORGET THINGS.
Performance by artist Stephen Sewell, 2014
USA, approx. 90 min.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10 – 8 PM
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12 – 8 PM

How to Purposefully Forget Things. is a performance lecture/self-help seminar intended to empower individuals with the knowledge required to willfully forget. Taking a cue from a WikiHow article of the same name, the performance combines multi-media presentation, audience participation, and humor to consider the role that absence plays in our everyday lives, memory as a form of architecture, and the function of images and technology in constructing and reinforcing memory. Documentation of the performance will be used for the production and release of an instructional DVD and web series.

HAWK JONES

Posted on October 20, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

HAWK JONES
Dir. Richard Lowry, 1986
USA, 88 min.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8 – 8:00 PM
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 16 – 5:00 PM
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17 – 10:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 26 – 7:30 PM

Minitropolis is under siege by gangster Antonio Coppola, whose reach extends throughout the city, all the way to the police department, where the Chief of Police does everything in his power to aid Coppola and thwart the one person who can rid the city of this scourge once and for all — HAWK JONES! Against all odds, Hawk uses an arsenal of weapons to take down Coppola’s army of thugs and anyone who stands in the way of justice.

We should mention the average age of the cast is eight years old.

Those of you expecting Disneyfied goofs should beware — this is a film well in line with shoot-em-all 80s action. There’s no mugging to the camera, no soapy morality lessons, no relentless merchandising. What you do get is Uzi-toting shootouts, crooked cops, milk-slinging speakeasies and a hero more in line with Fred Williamson than Fred Rogers. In other words, perfect for Spectacle!