Page 142 – Spectacle Theater

TIMELESS, BOTTOMLESS BAD MOVIE

Posted on August 27, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

TIMELESS, BOTTOMLESS BAD MOVIE
Dir. Jang Sun-woo, 1997
South Korea, 144 min.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10th – 8PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 15th – 8PM

The key is in the title, its praxis succinctly delineated in four words: Timeless, Bottomless Bad Movie (Nappeun Yeongwha) is exactly what it suggests it is, a film purportedly unaffected by time and utterly bad. In this rabbit hole excursion into the urban topography of Seoul (the skirmishes in dark alleyways, the hazing in the high-school restrooms, sexual liaisons in karaoke bars, morning hangovers in motel rooms, the wasted hours spent in the video arcades), where the teenage street urchins of Seoul run amok and the old bums sit defiantly on subway floors, the film operates, as Nicole Brenez has pointed out, between the representational regimes of fiction and documentary.

Timeless, Bottomless Bad Movie cares little for beginnings, ends, and all the particular concerns of a typical, narrative film; nor does it quite work as documentary, not when there are moments so patently contrived. The film was shot amongst three different camera operators working in several different formats (35mm, 16mm and digital video) and purports to bethe brainchild of the kids on screen. But don’t be fooled. The gaudy, ostentatious displays only belie the elaborate arrangement and direction behind it all. The ultimate “makeshift” film. Where are those kids now? Timeless, Bottomless Bad Movie promises to be nothing more than what it says it is, really, truly bad.

Poster by Kim Westfall

WREKMEISTER HARMONIES

Posted on August 27, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 1st

8PM! ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Chicago-based sound artist J.R. Robinson has been creating live, ambient tonefields in museums around the US and Europe over the past two years-including the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Pompidou Center in Paris, and The Art Center Berlin. His new record You’ve Always Meant So Much To Me (Thrill Jockey ) Came out June 11th.

Robinson has injected these recordings into collaborations with some like-minded heavy hitters from the noise, post-rock and jazz worlds such as David Yow (Jesus Lizard/Scratch Acid), Mark Shippy & Pat Samson (US Maple), Azita Youssefi, John Herndon & Jeff Parker (Tortoise), Keefe Jackson, Fred Lonberg-Holm and Ken Vandermark. The result (dubbed Wrekmeister Harmonies), is a distinctive hybrid of sound art and avant-garde musics, evoking the essences & influences of masterworks like Joe McPhee’s Nation Time, Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and the sound collages of Stockhausen.

“It’s an incredibly emotional and intelligent piece of work and one that fully deserves to be listened to in its entirety.” – Louder Than War

“Even though You’ve Always Meant So Much to Me begins quietly, it doesn’t stay that way. It builds until, a little over halfway through, it erupts into crashing, monumental doom, and you finally understand why Robinson brought in all those monsters of metal.” – Decibel Magazine

“A harrowing tableau of lonesome drones, hiss, degraded noise and moans that build to a towering schizm of thunder, earth, sky and guitar that feel just as destructively chaotic as the crest of any storm. The lines of classical nuance and metal combustion erode between the overlapping waves of guitar that build to the epic finale. Robinson proves that Wrekmeister are just as at home with the Sunn o))) crowd as they are with Johann Johannsson and the museum set. I can only imagine what a spectacle the piece is live but on record, it’s still a floor to ceiling house shaker and a good way to accompany any storm raging outside your windows.” – Raven Sings The Blues

“You’ve Always Meant So Much to Me is one of the most gorgeous and captivating single tracks we’ve ever heard.” – A Closer Listen

“If anything, it’s an anti-crescendo, a way for the sonic ugliness to get even uglier before we’re allowed to hear something pretty. Beneath all that darkness is beauty, and that too reveals itself more and more on subsequent listens…Like so many album-length songs by heavy acts… part of the charm is in never being satisfied with what you’ve just heard. Each listen unveils something new, and that something is different for each listener.” – Invisible Oranges

20 YEARS OF CUFF

Posted on August 26, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

20 YEARS OF CUFF
Chicago Underground Film Festival is the longest running underground film festival in the world. Founded the same year as the now defunct NYUFF, it remains a vibrant & evolving home for radically dissenting filmmaking, and the defining example for underground film events all over the world. This program brings together legendary shorts from the festival’s first twenty years.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 – 8:00 PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 – 8:00 PM

LINEUP & NOTES FROM FESTIVAL DIRECTOR BRYAN WENDORF:

LIGHT FUSE GET AWAY Dir. Ivan Lerner, 1994, 17 min.
When we began work on the first Chicago Underground Film Festival one of the first things we did was place a call for submissions ad in the Film Threat Video Guide which in those pre-internet years was THE source for info on contemporary underground film. We also sent submission info to every film reviewed in the magazine including this video by former Screw editor and current Spectacle programmer Ivan Lerner.

MONDAY 9:02 AM Dir. Tyler Hubby, 1995, 11 min.
Tyler Hubby was one of many graduates of George Kuchar’s Electro-graphic Sinema classes at the San Francisco Art Institute who was a regular fixture during the early years of CUFF. This 16mm film, comprised of a single unedited 11-minute take shot from inside a second-floor apartment is inspired by the idea Michael Snow’s avant-garde classic Wavelength. Although if my memory is correct Tyler didn’t actually actually see Wavelength until AFTER making this. Today Tyler lives in Los Angeles and has edited a number of great independent documentaries like The Devil and Daniel Johnson.

CLIT-O-MATIC: THE ADVENTURES OF WHITE TRASH GIRL
Dir. Jennifer Reeder, 1996, 8 min.
Chicagoan Jennifer Reeder made a name for herself in the 90s underground film scene with this Waters/Kuchar inspired feminist super-hero series she produced as a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She still lives in Chicago where she’s constantly inspiring new generations of image makers as Associate Professor Moving Image at the University of Illinois Chicago. She continues to screen her experimental narratives around the world including CUFF.

DANCE HABIBI DANCE Dir. Usama Alshaibi, 1998, 3 min.
Usama Alshaibi was a graduate of Columbia College Chicago when he produced this video inspired by Richard Kern’s Submit to Me series. His work has followed two distinct strains exploring his Iraqi heritage and his interest in transgressive sexuality. In 2006 he directed the feature length documentary Nice Bombs about his journey back to Iraq after the fall of the Hussein regime. He is currently pursuing his masters degree at Boulder Art Institute and is completing a new documentary feature American Arab produced with Kartemquin Films.

THE BATS Dir. Jim Trainor, 1998, 8 min.
Jim Trainor was a Manhattan bartender when he made his first amazing animated film The Fetishist which had its world premiere at CUFF in 1997. He followed up with The Bats which firmly established him as one the great contemporary underground filmmakers working in animation. He lives in Chicago now and teaches at the School of the Art Institute and is currently completing his first live action film using human actors to portray the mating habits of wasps.

MEAT FUCKER Dir. Shawn Durr, 1999, 32 min.
Shawn Durr had a brief but important place in the late 90s Chicago underground. Meat Fucker was his best known film. Following in the Kuchar tradition of over the top queer melodrama but upping the ante on the ridiculous. NYUFF’s Ed Halter once referred to his work as “Kuchar on crack” while Chicago experimental film critic Fred Camper compared Meat Fucker favorably to Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks. Shawn followed Meat Fucker with the features Fucked in the Face and The Last Fuck before retiring from filmmaking. He still lives in Chicago.

THE PSYCHOTIC ODYSSEY OF RICHARD CHASE Dir. Carey Burtt, 1999, 6 min.
Another New York filmmaker who was a regular at CUFF at the turn of the millennium. When we showed this film in 1999 to notoriously prickly Chicago Reader film critic Fred Camper at a press screening I remember him looking at me as the film ended and asking “Did you like THAT?” “yes” I nervously responded, “Good, because I think its GREAT!” replied Camper. Camper’s printed review said “The film’s antiliteralism is a wonderful rebuke to our glut of graphically violent movies… Burtt’s playful depiction of the gruesome story encourages us to think about it rather than wallow in it.”

THE FABULOUS STAINS: BEHIND THE MOVIE
Dir. Sarah Jacobson & Sam Green, 2000, 11 min.
The importance of San Fransisco filmmaker Sarah Jacobson to CUFF in our early years can’t be overstated. After attending the festival’s inaugural year with her short I Was a Teenage Serial Killer, Sarah became a one woman word of mouth PR machine for the festival. Spreading the word about us everywhere she went and encouraging filmmakers she met to send us their work. In our third year we opened with the world premiere of her feature Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore and in 1998 she presented the first public screening in 15 year’s of Lou Adler’s proto-riot girl comedy Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains. Footage of that screening appears in this documentary co-directed by another SF based CUFF alumnus Sam Green (The Rainbow Man/John 3:16 and The Weather Underground) and originally produced for Jon Pierson’s IFC series Split Screen. Sadly, Sarah died of cancer in 2004 but her legacy lives on through a grant program for women filmmakers set up by Sam and Sarah’s mother.

WUSTENSPRINGMAUS Dir. Jim Finn, 2002, 3 min.
Jim Finn also studied at Columbia College where he was part of the same graduating class as Usama Alshaibi. Wustenspringmaus combines his love of animals and his interest in marxist political theory. Themes he continued to explore in his “Communist Trilogy” of features; Interkosmos, The Juche Idea and La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo. Today he lives in Boston and is an Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute in New York.

AMERICA’S BIGGEST DICK Dir. Bryan Boyce, 2005, 4 min.
San Francisco’s Bryan Boyce first attended CUFF in 1997 with a little seen comedic short called Lard but he soon became internationally known for his critiques of American culture using appropriation and found footage. He continues to screen his work at festivals like CUFF and Ann Arbor but also releases work directly through his YouTube channel in order to keep his satire timely and fresh.

HOLD ME NOW Dir. Michael Robinson 2008, 5 min.
This karaoke video by prolific experimental film and video artist Michael Robinson was originally produced for the sadly defunct Portland Documentary and Experimental Film Festival (better known as PDX). We showed it at CUFF soon after where it won an award for best music video. For best results sing along.

THE ETERNAL QUARTER INCH Dir. Jesse McLean, 2008, 9 min
Jesse McLean began screening her work at CUFF while she was a student in Pittsburgh. PA but I didn’t actually meet her until she moved to Chicago to pursue her master’s at UIC. Upon graduating she relocated to Iowa City where she continues to be a fixture on the international experimental and underground film and video scene. Her work looks at the intersection of culture, technology and human behavior using a combination of found footage and original material.

THIS IS MY SHOW Dir. Lori Felker, 2009, 15 min.
Chicago based media artist Lori Felker has worn many hats with CUFF over the years. Co-programming and coordinating the festival, serving as projectionist and technical director as well as participating as a filmmaker herself. This video is part of a series of works that celebrate and spoof cable access television. Lori had to leave the projection booth during the 2009 festival to participate in the Q&A after this piece screened. It also received an honorable mention from the jury that year. Lori recently scaled back her CUFF duties to focus on her new position as Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

THE STORY OF THE EYE Dir. Nicole Jefferson Asher, 2012, 12 min.
This feminist musical adaptation of the infamous transgressive novel by Georges Bataille screened at the 20th CUFF this past March. It stars and features music composed by performance artist Kevin Blechdom–Kristin Erickson, a member of the faculty of The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts and was directed by Nicole Jefferson Asher who has numerous credits in theater, film and television, creating projects for HBO, MTV, Nickelodeon Movies and Spike Lee’s 40 Acres and a Mule Film Works. She is currently writing and directing her first feature Betty, the story of funk singer Betty Davis, the second wife of jazz musician Miles Davis.

TRIGGER WARNING: STROBE EFFECTS

MOLODOST: Films on Soviet Youth

Posted on August 25, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

Molodost: Films on Soviet Youth

“What do you want from life? What do you want from life?” “I just want to contribute to society.” A prominent subject of late-perestroika cinema was the molodezh or the ‘youth’ generation. Similar to current discourse surrounding the “millennial” generation, Soviet youth were often portrayed as either a symbol for hope and reformation, or as lost and apathetic. Disenchantment with old Soviet ideologies led to a questioning of authority, both in the political arena and the home. As the Soviet Union’s cultural symbols lost power, Gorbachev’s implementation of glasnost in the late ’80s simultaneously opened up a floodgate of western music, fashion, and movies, widening the communication gap between youth and authority. The new cultural influences led to various forms of agitation and rebellion: rock music, drugs, and civil disobedience. At the same time, however, it fostered inaction, indifference, and apathy. While perestroika-era films explored a new openness in social and civil critique, they were also overwhelmingly pessimistic and cynical. Paradoxically, and despite such portrayals, Soviet Union’s mainstream culture publicly accepted its youth subculture, and turned it into a symbol, if not an actual catalyst, for radical change. Molodost—meaning the time of youth— explores three different coming of age stories taking place on the cusp of the perestroika era, before the ultimate disillusionment of the Soviet Union. Assa, credited with bringing underground rock music into the mainstream, follows an underground rocker and his relationship with a girl, her Mafioso lover, and the police. Igla often described as a precursor for late Soviet/Kazakh new wave, and also featuring underground rock stars, is a surreal, postmodern cacophony of social collapse and drug use. Lastly, and perhaps the most sobering of the three, Kuryer tells the story of a high school graduate trying to make sense of his life. With no prospect for a college education, a grim mandatory military service awaits in his future.

ASSA
Dir: Sergei Solovyov, 1987
Soviet Union, 153 min.
Russian with English subtitles

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 – 8:00 PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 – 8:00 PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 – 10:00 PM

Assa came to recognition and cult status as one of the first films to bring underground rock culture into the Soviet mainstream, featuring songs by bands such as Aquarium, Soyuz Kompozitorov, Bravo, and Kino (whose lead singer Viktor Tsoi, also featured in Igla, plays himself in the film). Assa reflected a time of change in the USSR, as emphasized in Tsoi’s song “We Wait for Change,” consequently adopted by the real-life Russian opposition movement Solidarnost as its anthem. Set in Crimea during the late 1980s, Assa follows the story of Alika, a young nurse who is romantically involved with Krymov, her much older patient and the leader of an organized crime group. Despite her relationship with Krymov, Alika starts falling for a young rock musician named Bananan (played by the avant-garde artist Afrika). Bananan introduces Alika to his countercultural world of music and art. When the jealous Krymov begins to notice a change in Alika’s emotions toward him, he stages a plan to eliminate Bananan from Alika’s life forever. Assa has a playful, absurdist touch, combining sober moments with dreamlike sequences. Experimental scenes of hand-painted abstract patterns and inter-titles explaining youth slang are interspersed throughout the film. One amusing subplot that develops follows Krymov reading a book of the assassination attempt on Russia’s Tsar Paul I—the “Mad Tsar”. As he reads, a fantasy reenactment plays parallel to the main story. Perhaps this text foreshadows the inevitable fate of the Union: according to the assassins, they were only abolishing a power from Russia that had gone mad.

IGLA (aka The Needle)
Dir: Rashid Nugmanov, 1988
Soviet Union, 81 min.
Russian with English subtitles

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 – 10:00 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 – 7:30 PM

Igla is a disjointed, narratively unconventional film, and a precursor to the Kazakh new wave. Its beautifully austere and surreal scenes are set in the collapsing, virtually lawless Soviet Union. While Igla touches upon taboos and political subjects such as drug use and organized crime—two of perestroika’s biggest social afflictions—Rashid Nugmanov, Igla’s young Kazakh director, described the film as just a fun project made by a few friends, and more of an homage to “Soviet television” than a social critique. Viktor Tsoi, (Kino’s front man) plays Moro, a stoic and nonchalant young man. Moro travels to Almaty to collect an unpaid debt, getting into trouble with a local gang on the way. Eventually, he finds himself helping Dina, his morphine-addicted ex-girlfriend, and rescuing her from a drug ring led by an insidious doctor (played by Peter Mamonov, front man of the band Zvuki Mu). In an attempt to get Dina clean, Moro takes her to the dry Aral Sea in the Kazakh desert, where she suffers through withdrawal. When they return, however, Dina relapses and Moro confronts the doctor. In the end, Dina’s fate remains ambiguous, as does the direction of Moro’s own future. Igla launched Viktor Tsoi into the mainstream, and many of his songs used in the film became huge hits. His own untimely death in 1990 marked him as a cult icon and symbol for freedom and romance during the end times of the USSR.

KURYER (Courier)
Dir: Karen Shakhazarov, 1987
Soviet Union, 88 min.
Russian with English subtitles

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 – 7:30 PM

Largely ignored on release, Kuryer eventually came to critical acclaim over the years. Stylistically and narratively more straightforward than the other films in this series, Kuryer explores the frustration of being young and at a crossroads in life—especially if the roads lead to nowhere. It follows Ivan Miroshinokov, a clever young magazine courier struggling to find himself after his parent’s divorce and his rejection from University. Ivan’s admiration for his father begins to wane after he leaves his mother for a younger woman and goes off to Africa to pursue his dreams. Ivan is left to live with his mother, who has a difficult time dealing with the divorce. Through one of his deliveries, Ivan meets Katya, the daughter of an authoritarian professor. Ivan is forced to confront the expectations of Katya’s father and measure up to her elite group of friends, leading him to entirely re-evaluate his prospects in life. Grappling between unattainable dreams and a bleak reality, Ivan’s choices echo the rebellious lost generation, plagued by both their parents’ and their own disappointments with the collapsing Soviet existence.

IMPACT

Posted on August 25, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

IMPACT
Dir. Arthur Lubin, 1949
USA, 111 min

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3 – 10:00 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – 7:30 PM

“Hell hath no fury like a [man] scorned.”

Noir-staple Brian Donlevy stars in Arthur Lubin’s subtle, melodramatic 1949 sleeper IMPACT. Typically relegated to tough-guy supporting roles more suited to his threatening scowl, Donlevy plays very successfully against type as love-struck automotive mogul Walter Williams, a sensitive man who unfortunately puts far too much faith in the wrong sort of gal.

Anything but a strict urban film-noir, Lubin’s sunny, meandering picture progresses from tense romantic thriller to on-the-road action flick, moving through thick swamps of melodrama before landing in courtroom theatrics, ultimately proving to be surprisingly cohesive and affecting.

Despite its B-grade production and modest return, Impact also features an unusual number of on-screen brand/product placements for an era in which the practice remained very uncommon. Pioneering trade journal Harrison’s Reports –a rag that focused on independent theaters long before the independent film movement (and was also notable for an ahead-of-its-time criticism of film advertising)– notes upon its release that in Impact there are “advertising plugs worked in for such products as Blue Ribbon beer, Raleigh cigarettes, Coca Cola, Mission Orange soda pop, Mobiloil gasoline, oil and tires, Gruen watches, and the trade name, Rexall.” Curiously overlooking a Bekins moving van that plays an integral role in one key scene, the review provides evidence that brand exposure was just as offensive to contemporary audiences in its early-stages 65 years ago as it is (to some) in today’s Hollywood™. Interestingly, this aspect of Impact merely enhances the film; more than half-a-century’s distance lends the practice a paradoxical value, illuminating an authentic aspect of late-1940s America not usually seen on the silver screen.

Finally, keep an eye out for a key location also used prominently in a little film called Vertigo…

THE EAST IS RED – A SONG AND DANCE EPIC

Posted on August 25, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

THE EAST IS RED
Dir. Wang Ping, 1965.
PRC. 117 min.
Mandarin.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – 10:00 PM

What can we say? We’re damn surprised this hasn’t yet screened in the peeling walls of Spectacle, everyone’s favorite “lost and forgotten” community screening space; our cozy creaking frame around the questionable and curious. Is it low-hanging fruit? Maybe just a bit back and to the left? Is it a glorious paean romanticizing radical resistance role-play amongst ravenous refurbishing and reselling of riverside residency? Here’s an “r” word – RED.

Sisters and brothers, presenting the biggest, loudest, most glorious Mao-sical ever – THE EAST IS RED: A SONG AND DANCE EPIC. Produced and released by the real BIG RED MACHINE on the eve of the mid-60’s Cultural Revolution, THE EAST IS RED trumpets the trials and tribulations of the Communist Party in China – from its birth in proletarian imperialist resistance, through the final boWW of the Japanese, all the way to the last steps of the Kuomin-tango. The massive cast is studded with beautiful voices and movement, clad in costumes of a time long crushed. Think of Diane Warren if Michael Bay was Chairperson. Been jonesing for a bit of that 2008 Summer Olympics ceremony jazz, minus the Budweiser food trucks and brown M&Ms with the UPS logo? Throw out your Adidas, put this on your social list and invite your comrades to take a proper gander at this propaganda.

BANDIDO’S GOLD: Unearthed Spaghetti Western Treasures

Posted on August 25, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

This quartet of lesser known, yet truly great spaghetti westerns is chocked full of gripping action, relentless violence, and brooding intensity with gritty style to spare.

BANDIDOS
Dir. Massimo Dallamano 1967.
Italy. 91 min.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 – 10:00 PM

Outlaw Billy Kane holds up a train only to find his former mentor-of-arms, renowned gunman Richard Martin, is one of the passengers. Kane shoots Martin’s hands before letting him escape. Years later Martin meets Ricky Shot (!), an escaped convict who was falsely accused for the robbery. He takes Shot under his wing and together they head on the trail of vengeance.

This standout spaghetti western was the directorial debut of A Fistful of Dollars cinematographer Massimo Dallamano. It was also his last western, though he went on to make other excellent films, including the infamous giallo What Have they Done to Solange? and the poliziotteschi Colt .38 Special Squad. Though uncredited, it is reported that Dallamano also shot Bandidos, which would explain its incredibly accomplished and distinct look, featuring brilliant panoramas and deep focus. A tight, compelling, highly revered, and ESSENTIAL spaghetti western.

Read more about BANDIDOS on the Spaghetti Western Database, whose reviewer states that “Dallamano probably comes closer to Leone than any other director of spaghetti westerns.”

$10,000 BLOOD MONEY
Dir. Romolo Guerrieri 1967.
Italy. 94 min.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 – 10:00 PM

Rogue bounty hunter Django mockingly taunts low-life bandit Manuel, who only has a measly $3,000 price on his head. Inspired by spite, hatred and villainous pride, Manuel ups the stakes, first with murder, and then by kidnapping a land baron’s daughter, finally netting Django’s $10,000 bounty minimum. But when Manuel ruthlessly targets Django’s saloon girl lover Mijanou (Loredana Nusciak from Django), vengeance becomes the main incentive, transforming the hunt into an ornery blood feud.

The first in a pair of inspired bounty hunter films from the crafty production team of Mino Loy and the late Luciano Martino (brother of Sergio), and the pen of prolific screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi. Featuring spaghetti western stalwart Gianni Garko (Sartana) as the ‘good’ and Claudio Camaso as ‘the bad.’ Its high style, surreal touches, fully loaded tropes, extreme anti-heroics, amorality and existentialism all add up to an exemplary spaghetti western. NOT TO BE MISSED!

Read more about $10,000 BLOOD MONEY on the Spaghetti Western Database, which calls it “one of the best unofficial Django films … beautiful, almost surreal” and “one of the finest Italian Westerns ever made.”

VENGEANCE IS MINE
Dir. Gianni Fago 1967.
Italy. 91 min.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 – 10:00 PM

Gianni Garko and Claudio Camaso breathe more life into their anti-hero and villain roles from $10,000 Blood Money, here with an added Cain-and-Abel-like classicism. This time it’s John the bounty hunter (Garko) versus army deserter-turned-outlaw Clint (Camaso), half-brothers, embittered with extreme mutual hatred. John just served time, falsely accused of his father’s murder by none other than Cint. Can John keep his promise to his mother to bring Clint in alive?

Vengeance is Mine (aka $100,000 Per Killing) further explores morality via bounty hunters and bandits strongly linked by their existential attitudes towards money, life, and death; provocative ideas thrillingly played out against a satisfyingly gritty landscape. High production values, surprising plot twists, violent set pieces, and a hint towards profundity prove both films top entries in the genre.

Read more about VENGEANCE IS MINE on the Spaghetti Western Database, whose reviewer states that it is “probably as close as an Italian genre movie from the sixties … could get to Greek and Victorian drama.”

CEMETERY WITHOUT CROSSES
Dir. Robert Hossein 1969.
Italy. 85 min.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – 10:00 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 – 7:30 PM

CEMETERY WITHOUT CROSSES (Robert Hossein, 1969) from Spectacle Theater on Vimeo.

After her husband is mercilessly hanged by a ruthless land baron, Maria implores Manuel, an old flame, to infiltrate the killer’s ranch and wreak vengeance. Manuel reluctantly leaves the ghost town where he lives to embark on the mission, but is ever haunted by his unrequited affection for Maria

Prolific French actor Robert Hossein directed and starred in this inspired homage to his friend Sergio Leone. As sharpshooter Manuel, he dons one black glove (channeling the cool of garage rock band The Music Machine?) and imbues the whole production with laconic ennui. A visually striking and brooding picture, the requisite gritty and violent tropes are delivered with an artistic fervor ahead of its time. A MUST SEE!

Read more about CEMETERY WITHOUT CROSSES on the Spaghetti Western Database, whose reviewers call it “not your average spaghetti,” and “a truly moving classic of the genre.”

THE FUTURE WEIRD: THE BLACK ATLANTIS

Posted on August 22, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

MONDAY, AUGUST 26 – 8:00 PM

The Future Weird is a bimonthly series exploring contemporary film from the global south – with an African bias. Our title, “the future weird”, is inspired by The State’s ongoing documentation of non-western futurisms: http://www.thestate.ae/

According to Afrofuturist legend, Drexciya is a sunken land inhabited by the children of African women who were drowned during the Middle Passage. Since they were never born, these children continued to breath underwater: first through amniotic fluid, then through lungs better suited to the new world. Join us as we go in search of the “Black Atlantis”.

Water is a cleansing force through which our bodies may be reborn, but it is also a site of memory where disappeared and suppressed things resurface, wash up, or return to us as detritus. Through myths that traverse the Black diaspora we meet a beautiful and dangerous sea goddess named mama wata. Following tourists and then refugees fleeing Europe, we consider stories concerning identity, slavery and commerce, high seas adventure, and the joint appeal and terror of being visited by ancestors or haunted by an unknown past.

& OTHER WORKS: MELANIE GILLIGAN

Posted on August 16, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18TH

CRISIS IN THE CREDIT SYSTEM and SELF-CAPITAL at 8 PM
POPULAR UNREST at 10 PM

ARTIST IN ATTENDANCE
ONE NIGHT ONLY

“& Other Works” is a series of screenings focusing on film and video from contemporary artists organized by C. Spencer Yeh. “& Other Works” is an informal communal viewing experience, away from the white walls and passwords.

For September we welcome artist Melanie Gilligan, writer and director (and editor and etc). Originally deployed online in episodic form, &OW brings you these three tales of crisis, self, and unrest – uninterrupted. We’ll take care of clicking “play next” – you just sit back and enjoy. Gilligan will be present this evening and available for questions, should you have any.

In case you couldn’t tell from the titles, the primary inspiration and subject matter of these works is our contemporary capitalist economic system. Choosing to dramatize instead of document inserts subjective loops within that vast and obtuse tangle of snakes and ladders – when we receive information, we process with all our defenses and criticality; when we see stories, we can’t help but search for a niche or foothold. Gilligan borrows frames and devices from popular media to build an accessibility, but retains license to break free from the expectations binding more commercial attempts basted with similar info-sauce (neither Margin Call nor Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps depicts a floating computer graphics cube speckled with disembodied limbs).

SELF-CAPITAL
Dir. Melanie Gilligan, 2009.
UK. 24 min.
English.

No more is this evident than with Self-Capital, in which an individual named “Global Economy” undergoes extensive psychological evaluation and experimental therapy. Having recently experienced a traumatic breakdown, we follow Global Economy from her initial diagnosis, through sessions and body-actualizing exercise, to the final prognosis (for now). The same actor portrays all roles, flattening any figurative reading of casting decision and gender portrayal, not to mention a certain, uhhh, economy in filmmaking ;-).

CRISIS IN THE CREDIT SYSTEM
Dir. Melanie Gilligan, 2008.
UK. 38 min.
English.

“A major investment bank runs a brainstorming and role-playing session for its employees, asking them to come up with strategies for coping with today’s dangerous financial climate. Role-playing their way into increasingly bizarre scenarios, they find themselves drawing disturbing conclusions about the deeper significance of the crisis and its effects beyond the world of finance. Crisis is the result of extensive research and conversation with major hedge fund managers, key financial journalists, economists, bankers and debt activists.” – courtesy of the artist

You could call Crisis in the Credit System a dark comedy, except that the scenarios and lingo are expressly presented intact – there is no need to embellish or satirize to elicit the type of nervous laughter in the face of total madness. With alarming prescience, Crisis was in production during, and released shortly after the collapse of financial services firm Lehman Brothers in 2008.

POPULAR UNREST
Dir. Melanie Gilligan, 2010.
UK. 71 min.
English.

“Popular Unrest is a multi-episode drama set in a future not so different from the present, that is shaped by the convergence of capital, biopolitics and ‘big data’. The film explores a world in which the self is reduced to physical biology, directly subject to the needs of capital. Shot in London with a cast of twelve main actors, the film’s form is partly inspired by David Cronenberg’s ‘body horror’ and American television dramas CSI, Dexter and Bones, where reality is perceived through a pornographic forensics of empirical and visceral phenomena.” – courtesy of the artist

The vision of futuristic society in Popular Unrest doesn’t front as allegory or parody, as other dystopian media visions are often served; the results are intentionally literal and stifling. Detaching the caustic docudrama that drives Crisis in the Credit System, Popular Unrest foregrounds Gilligan’s own speculations on the issues and themes her work is concerned with; she carves the players and the pieces, and fixes the game played. We realize that as fantastical as the teams and rules are, they are no more unreasonable than the working myths constructed to parse the overwhelming systems of economic exchange in our actual times. On top of that,

Here’s the checkboard and pawns of Popular Unrest – “The Spirit” is the ruling belief system, the force by which people are divined. “The Spirit” is a cloud, the inevitable accumulation and deification of society’s collective material and economic aspiration. People work, and any extracurricular activity is regulated to support the ability to work. The individual has no choice but to become mercenary, as individual worth is increasingly defined in isolation. However, eco-systemic chaos despises status quo, so the see-saw is seated with two inexplicable phenomena. There’s “groupings,” in which strangers congregate and bond due to an unidentifiable urge to meet with one another. Then, as counterbalance to these mysterious love-ins, there’s a mysterious floating knife that murders people without warning or apparent reason.

Melanie Gilligan is an artist and writer born in Toronto in 1979. She currently lives in London and New York and works in a variety of media including video, performance, text, installation and music. Gilligan completed a BA (Hons) Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in 2002 and was a Fellow with the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Programme in 2004/5. She has presented solo exhibitions at institutions including Chisenhale Gallery (London), Kölnischer Kunstverein (Cologne), Transmission Gallery (Glasgow), The Banff Centre, (Banff), Franco Soffiantino Gallery (Turin), Justina M. Barnicke Gallery (Toronto), and VOX centre de l’image contemporaine (Montreal). In 2008, commissioned by Artangel Interaction, Gilligan released Crisis in the Credit System, a four-part fictional mini drama about the recent financial crisis. Gilligan has taught widely in Europe and North America, and has appeared in numerous group exhibitions worldwide, including Manifesta 8 (Murcia, Spain) in 2010. Her writings on art, politics and finance have appeared in magazines such as Artforum, Texte zur Kunst and Grey Room and in recent volumes such as Canvases and Careers Today(Sternberg Press) and Intangible Economies (Fillip).

SAMUEL FULLER AND THE BIG RED ONE

Posted on August 3, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

SAMUEL FULLER AND THE BIG RED ONE
Thys Ockersen, 1979.
Netherlands. 75 min. (+ 50 min. Secret Screening!)
In English.

Presented by Screen Slate and programmed by Cullen Gallagher.

Visit Screen Slate for an exclusive interview with Thys Ockersen!

MONDAY, AUGUST 12 – 8:00 PM

New York Premiere in Celebration of Samuel Fuller’s 101st Birthday! Followed by another mind-blowing Samuel Fuller rarity from 1990 (50 min.)

Originally made for Dutch television and never commercially released in the United States either theatrically or on video, Thys Ockersen’s SAMUEL FULLER AND THE BIG RED ONE (1979) will be makes its New York Premiere here at Spectacle.

Ockersen’s documentary is an invaluable record of one of cinema’s greatest figures at work on his magnum opus—a unique and deeply personal WWII epic grounded in Fuller’s own wartime experience landing on D-Day. On the beach, behind the scenes, and on the front lines, Ockersen’s film is a gritty and enlightening portrait of an artist at work at the peak of his career. As electric, charismatic, poetic, and tough as any of the characters from his films, Fuller is his own best leading man. Also featuring interviews with Lee Marvin and Mark Hamill, SAMUEL FULLER AND THE BIG RED ONE is a fond tribute to the director, and a perfect way to celebrate the memory of Fuller, who would be turning 101 this August 12th.

Afterwards, we’ll screen one of Samuel Fuller’s final works — an insane rarity you won’t want to miss.

Special thanks to Thys Ockersen.