DAY IS DONE
dir. Mike Kelley, 2006.
USA, 169 min.
English.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21st – 7:30 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

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DAY IS DONE is a carnivalesque opus, a genre-smashing epic in which vampires, dancing Goths, hillbillies, mimes and demons come together in a kind of subversive musical theater/variety revue. Running over two-and-a-half hours, this riotous theatrical spectacle unfolds as a series of episodes that form a loose, fractured narrative. The video comprises parts 2 through 32 of Kelley’s multi-faceted project Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstructions, in which trauma, abuse and repressed memory are refracted through personal and mass-cultural experience. The source material is a series of high school yearbook photographs of “extracurricular activities,” specifically those that represent what Kelley has termed “socially accepted rituals of deviance.” Kelley then stages video narratives around these found images.

In DAY IS DONE, these restagings take the form of “folk entertainments” that Kelley memorably subverts. Featuring characters such as Motivational Vampire, Morose Ghoul and Devil/Barber, much of the action—antic song-and-dance numbers and dramatic scenes, with Satan as emcee—takes place in a generic school gymnasium and a wooded landscape.

Writes Kelley: “For this project, I limited myself to specific iconographic motifs taken from the following files: Religious Performances, Thugs, Dance, Hick and Hillbilly, Halloween and Goth, Satanic, Mimes, and Equestrian Events. Many of the source photographs are of people in costume singing or dancing, so the resulting tapes are generally music videos. In fact, I consider Day Is Done to be a kind of fractured feature-length musical…. The experience of viewing it is somewhat akin to channel-surfing on television.”

The video reconstructions were originally seen within an ambitious, sprawling exhibition of video/sculpture installations, photographs, sets, props and drawings at the Gagosian Gallery in New York in 2005; the videos were incorporated into 25 sculptural viewing stations. Writes Kelley, “My intention was to create a kind of spatialized filmic montage: a feature-length film made up of multiple simultaneous and sequential scenes playing in architectural space.”

– text courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix

MATCH CUTS is a weekly podcast centered on video, film and the moving image. Match Cuts Presents is dedicated to presenting de-colonialized cinema, LGBTQI films, Marxist diatribes, video art, dance films, sex films, and activist documentaries with a rotating cast of presenters from all spectrums of the performing and plastic arts and surrounding humanities. Match Cuts is hosted by Nick Faust and Kachine Moore.

THE HOUSE WITH THE LAUGHING WINDOWS
(LA CASA DALLE FINESTRE CHE RIDONO)
dir. Pupi Avati, 1976
110 mins. Italy.
In Italian with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 3 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 8 – 10 PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 12 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, AUGUST 27 – 7:30 PM

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Stefano, a young painter, is sent to a rural town to restore a fresco depicting the execution of Saint Sebastian begun by a local artist who committed suicide before its completion. As Stefano dives into the work, he finds himself drawn deeper into the strange web of stories surrounding the original artist and his more sinister proclivities.

Regarded by some as one of the best giallos ever made (including, ugh, Eli Roth), THE HOUSE WITH THE LAUGHING WINDOWS has mood for days, favoring a long, slow burn and a more naturalistic approach over the lurid colors and psychedelic freakouts of genre masters like Argento and Bava.

What it lacks in standard bonkers giallo fare (the body count is relatively low, and the “sex scenes” are almost laughably chaste for the genre), it more than makes up for in pure dread, building a thick mood of uncertainty and paranoia, leading up to a shockingly strong ending.

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ZEDER (REVENGE OF THE DEAD)
Dir. Pupi Avati, 1983
100 mins. Italy.
In Italian with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 3 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 9 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, AUGUST 23 – MIDNIGHT
TUESDAY, AUGUST 27 – 10 PM

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The story follows a novelist (also named Stefano) who discovers the writings of a scientist named Zeder still legible in the ream of an old typewriter. He slowly becomes obsessed with the details of his research at the mention of something known as the ‘K-zone’, a specific area of land that has the power to return the dead to life.

Marketed in the US as REVENGE OF THE DEAD, ZEDER is a heady slow-burn freakout, grossly underseen given the number of things that have lifted from it (looking at you, Pet Semetary). Don’t expect your average schlocky zombie thriller, but a more unique blend of and riff on sci-fi zombie-mystery-and-giallo tropes.

PAYDAY
dir. Daryl Duke, 1973
100 mins. United States.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 2 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 15 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 18 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 31 – MIDNIGHT

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“If you can’t smoke it, drink it, spend it, or love it… Forget it.”

While it’s not possible to honor the passing of every fallen hero of ours at 124 South 3rd Street, we’re thrilled to salute the departed Elmore Rual “Rip Torn” Jr. (1931-2019) by shining a light on one of his absolute greatest performances, as Maury Dann – a hellraising honeydripper outrunning his past one 95-mile-per-hour at a time in the underrated 1973 drama PAYDAY, directed by Daryl Duke (who made the phenomenal THE SILENT PARTNER a few years later, with Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland.)

Having achieved a measure of fame with a minor hit single, Dann’s life is a string of saloon gigs and one-night stands, propelled by bourbon and propped up by pills; while he’s making arguable headway in the music business, his problems keep piling up on the margins. His manager McGinty (Michael C. Gwyne) and girlfriend Mayleen (Ahna Capri), both long-suffering, bear witness to his bouts of rage and capriciousness, yet stay the course from one Alabama tussle to the next. Dann is certainly a character the performatively woke film critics of 2019 would call “unsympathetic”, yet Torn’s signature tortured charisma makes it make sense: in this decrepit economy of also-rans, hangers-on and the earnestly pure of heart, Maury is the most exciting thing anybody’s got going on.

Not for the faint of stomach, PAYDAY spans 36 hours in the life of a man who can’t stop hurting others (or himself), a classic story rendered in unforgettable Alabama texture. Produced by pioneering rock critic Ralph Gleason, with songs written by Shel Silverstein and an endlessly quotable screenplay by the great novelist Don Carpenter (Hard Rain Falling), PAYDAY never got a proper national release despite widespread critical acclaim; it’s exactly the kind of offbeat 70s slice-of-life cinema that attracted the interest of restless, status-quo bucking artists like Rip Torn. “You only pass through life once… Might as well be in a Cadillac.

“PAYDAY holds you in fascination. The totality of Rip Torn’s inspiring portrait is overwhelming.” – Judith Crist, New York Magazine

“Brilliant. Impressive. Awesome. Extraordinary.” – The New York Times

“PAYDAY is a great fucking movie.” – Nick Tosches, Creem

Special thanks to the Saul Zaentz Company.

THIS MAGNIFICENT CAKE!
dir. Marc James Roels & Ema de Swaef, 2018
44 mins. Belgium.
In Dutch, French, Aka, and Malinke with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 16 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 29 – 10 PM

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An official selection at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, Toronto International Film Festival and Telluride Film Festival, THIS MAGNIFICENT CAKE! (CE MAGNIFIQUE GÂTEAU!) is an unforgettable work of stopmotion animation exploring the bitter milieu of Belgium-occupied Congo.

In the late 19th century, keen to compete with other European imperial powers on the continent, King Leopold II of Belgium proclaimed, “I do not want to miss a good chance of getting us a slice of this magnificent African cake.” The subsequent occupation of the Congo would come to attract a contingent of servants, merchants and miscellaneous bourgeois driven by everything from insatiable greed to existential fear. From the intimate stories of these characters — many of whom pass through a luxury hotel in the middle of the jungle – emerges a greater narrative concerning the imperialist mentality.

In a film by turns surreal, darkly comic and brutal, directors Marc James Roels and Emma de Swaef ultimately turn their critical gaze on the colonists themselves in a work of stunning, mysterious beauty.

Presented by GKIDS.

playing with:
THE BURDEN
Niki Lindroth von Bahr, 2017
14 min., Swedish w/ English subs

OH WILLY…
Marc James Roels & Emma de Swaef, 2012,
17 min., No dialogue

Festivals and Awards: Quinzaine des Réalisateurs – Cannes 2018, Telluride Film Festival – 2018, TIFF – Special Jury Mention, Annecy Animation Film Festival, Animafest Zagreb – Best Feature Film Grand Prix, Ottawa Animation Film Festival – Feature Grand Prix

THE TRIAL
(O PROCESSO)
dir. Maria Augusta Ramos, 2018
140 mins. Brazil/Germany/Netherlands.
In Brazilian Portuguese with English subtitles.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 4 – 5 PM followed by remote Q&A with filmmaker Maria Augusta Ramos
NEW YORK CITY PREMIERE – ONE NIGHT ONLY!
(This event is $10.)

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In August 2016, Dilma Rousseff – survivor of torture at the hands of the Brazilian dictatorship, the first female head of state in the country’s history, and hand-picked successor to the wildly popular (later imprisoned) president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – came under scrutiny from Brazil’s lower house of Congress after being accused of corruption and nepotism. Led by her longtime rival Michel Temer and the speaker of Brazil’s lower house of congress, Eduardo Cunha, the subsequent impeachment trial became a “parliamentary coup”, whereby right-wing factions sought to discredit the Rousseff administration to consolidate power in the Senate and refract media attention from their own conflicts of interest. (In his own right, Temer would be accused of corruption by Brazil’s Attorney General in 2017; Cunha himself had already been indicted for laundering millions for personal gain in concert with Petrobras, the country’s semi-public oil powerhouse, and would be imprisoned the same year.) Among the politicians who came out against Rousseff was Brazil’s current president Jair Bolsonaro, who dedicated his vote to Carlos Brilhante Ustra, the dictatorship-era colonel who supervised the unit where Rousseff had been imprisoned and tortured.

A veteran documentarian with a keen eye for the machinations of law, Maria Augusta Ramos embedded herself within Rousseff’s legal team to capture her country’s still-young democratic institutions shaken daily by obstructionism and revanchism. Was the Truth and Reconciliation process a sham? Did Rousseff really have the following she claimed among feminists? Would it all have been different if her reelection in 2014 hadn’t been contested by her enemies? How did anti-corruption become the focus of right-wing populists? Assembled from 450 hours of material shot during the impeachment proceedings, THE TRIAL is a dizzying, Kafkaesque and nailbiting portrayal of power politics by any means necessary.

“Undermining the power of democratic institutions—that’s what Trump is trying to do now. In Brazil, when you impeach a president who hasn’t committed a crime, that is unconstitutional. You make this process appear pseudolegitimate when it is in fact a farce playing out in a theater of politics. The trial was a sham that has caused a certain crisis of legitimacy. They weakened democratic institutions in ways that have had unintended consequences; to eliminate an opponent, they undermined the very institutions that were legitimizing them. The recent elections in Brazil are a sign of how these institutions have stopped working. When they talk about upholding the Constitution . . . it’s empty performance. It’s an emotional, sensationalist gesture that feeds a nationalist and pseudopatriotic feeling, which is fascist. The trial was not about justice, it was not a search for truth. It was designed to make everything confusing and distorted. It’s just a downright lie. It’s exactly what Bolsonaro does, it’s what Trump does.” – Maria Augusta Ramos, interviewed by Nilo Couret in Film Quarterly

“Remarkable. Riveting. A crucial record of the travesty behind the impeachment hearings of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.” – Variety

“THE TRIAL is horrifyingly prescient. It is a film about power, corruption and reality, one that captures the atmosphere of unease and chaos that seems to dominate our 24/7 news cycle…. Ramos, who mentions the traditions of Dutch documentary filmmaking as a major influence, similarly draws on the works some of the great Dutch painters. There’s the casual grandeur of Rembrandt, the focused order of Vermeer and the chaotic lines of Van Gogh in her work… The Trial is a perfect articulation for the current political climate around the world.” – Little White Lies

“Under a veneer of legality and constitutionality, the process was one of bribery, blackmail and violence. Car Wash (Lava Jato), the biggest anti-corruption operation in history, somehow brought the country’s most corrupt individuals to power, as did its blueprint, Operation Clean Hands (Mani Pulite) in 1990s Italy… [THE TRIAL] manages to convey that despite Dilma not being implicated or charged in Lava Jato, it provided a pretext for her impeachment as if she was. Enabled by Rousseff-endorsed changes to the law intended to facilitate the pursuit of corruption, Lava Jato in turn damaged the economy so sharply that it provided another pretext, with the exacerbated recession and resulting unemployment used as auxiliary by supporters and corporate PR whenever doubt was cast upon the impeachment case itself.” – Brasil Wire

MARIA AUGUSTA RAMOS studied documentary film in Amsterdam and has been a guest at festivals worldwide since the start of her career. Her films have received multiple awards. Her film Justice (2004) won the Grand Prix at the Swiss festival Visions du Réel and the Amnesty Award at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, among other prizes. In 2007, her film Behave premiered at the Locarno Film Festival and was honoured with the FIPRESCI Award at DOK Leipzig and the Grand Prix at One World Int. Doc Festival in Prague. Her most recent film The Trial celebrated its world premiere in Panorama at the 2018 Berlinale, and also received the Grand Prix at Visions du Réel, Best Film at DocumentaMadrid, Best film by the Silvestre jury and the Audience Award at IndieLisboa and Best film at Buenos Aires Int. Doc Festival. In 2013, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights honoured Maria Ramos with the Marek Nowicki Prize for her examination of the subject human rights in film.

Special thanks to Grasshopper Film and Rodrigo Brandão (The Intercept).