FRIDAY, JULY 20 – 7:30 PM:
with No Evil Eye creators Rooney Elmi and Ingrid Raphael in person for Q&A with Nuotama Bodomo and Sahal Hassan (THIS EVENT IS $10)
MONDAY, JULY 22 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 28 – 5 PM

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Frustrated by the lack of multicultural, leftist film spaces in Central Ohio, local political organizers and ‘zinesters Rooney Elmi and Ingrid Raphael decided to co-create NO EVIL EYE, a radical micro-cinema that aims to redefine the creative and social parameters of non-metropolitan film scenes. By curating an eclectic mix of films from up-and-coming and emerging filmmakers with a mission to represent their respective audiences and build a healthy counterculture.

No Evil Eye’s inaugural film program, Sequence 01, explores the theme of diasporic reckoning through landscapes, legacy, and memory. This curated edition forms a lyrical mediation on race, class, and migration that mirrors the growing immigrant community and changing landscape in New York City

NEE is actively spearheading a physical space that fosters the union between the personal and the political with the great hope of igniting a radical imagination around the moving image by promoting a realistic yet utopian vision of cinema as a space of socio-political possibilities.

LANDMARK
dir. Sahal Hassan, 2018
4 mins.

A meditation on public space and public memory in the shadow of chattel slavery.

CONFRONTATIONS
dir. Natasha Woods, 2018
11 mins.

Tracing a mother’s journey from Brazil to Iowa for a better life analogous to the makers’ return to Iowa after leaving for more opportunity. A documented attempt to understand relationships of personhood, memory, life, and death.

DISINTEGRATION 93-96
dir. Miko Revereza, 2017
5 mins.

The insecurities and pent-up emotions of an Filipino immigrant in the USA give way to political ruminations and critical commentaries on the colonization of the mind by the American Dream.

HOW DID HOME RECEIVE YOU?
dir. Claudia Owusu, 2018
3 mins.

A reflection on what’s like for the immigrant to finally return home, the weight of a dual identity, and lastly, how home receives the immigrant’s return.

HERAT IN MY HEAD IN MY HEART
dir. Weeda Azim, 2016
2 mins.

A long-distance telephone call from Canada to Afghanistan remedies misplaced cultural nostalgia and soothes the pain of war in this avant-garde short.

YOU WILL BE MY ALLY
dir. Rosine Mbakam, 2017
20 mins.

In our only narrative short of the program, Cameroonian-Belgian filmmaker, Rosine Mbakam profiles an African woman, played by Bwanga Pilipili, facing a grueling interrogation at a European airport.

AFRONAUTS
dir. Nuotama Bodomo, 2014
14 mins.

Zambians try to make it to the moon in the 1960s.

Design by Sarah Z. Mamo / Concept by No Evil Eye. 

CHICAGOLAND SHORTS VOL. 5
dir. Various. 78 minutes.

TUESDAY, JULY 2 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 10 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 21 – 5 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 30 – 7:30 PM w/Chicagoland programmer Raul Benitez in person for Q&A!
(This event is $10.)

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The fifth volume of Full Spectrum Features’ Chicagoland Shorts anthology offers a look into different worlds, with films spanning genres of narrative, experimental, and docu-fantasy, the collection will take you from an 8-year-old’s nightmares to the last remaining freed slave settlement. Artists in our collection include a Sundance Documentary Fellow, a Fulbright-García Robles Foundation Award recipient, and a Cannes award-winning director.

I MISS JAMIE WHEN SHE’S GONE
dir. Ashley Thompson
16 mins.

Two estranged sisters return to the suburbs of Chicago ten months after their father’s sudden death to clean out their childhood home.

SMART NIGHTMARES
dir. Marisa Tolomeo. 5 mins.

Hannah narrates her nightmares, while her family argues on who’s to blame for her creepy internet searches.

HALL OF FISHES
dir. Jennifer Boles. 9 mins.

An immersive archival film about the limits of visual knowledge and the webs of power and violence behind our desires to see, contain, and consume the ocean.

SHEEBOP! SHEEBOP! SHEEBOP!
dir. Jiayi Chen & Cameron Worden. 3 mins.

A trip to Florida spurs taxonomical speculation.

SCALING QUELCCAYA
dir. Meredeith Leich. 7 mins.

A surreal exploration of a melting glacier in Peru and an altered future in Chicago, weaving together 3D animation, satellite imagery, archival NASA footage, and speculative math about climate and snow.

EXODUS: SOUNDS OF THE GREAT MIGRATION
dir. Lonnie Edwards. 12 mins.

Told through live performance, dance and spoken word, Exodus looks into how the Great Migration gave birth to many artists that influenced and empowered black culture.

PALENQUE
dir. Sebastián Pinzón Silva. 25 mins.

Guided by motifs of life and death, PALENQUE is an ode to a small town that has greatly contributed to the collective memory of Colombia: San Basilio de Palenque, the first town in the Americas to have broken free from European domination.

Chicagoland Shorts Vol. 5 was curated by Raul Benitez (Comfort Station), Emily Eddy (Onion City) and Melika Bass (Creature Companion) and includes the latest films by acclaimed local filmmakers as well as debut works by emerging voices.

Full Spectrum Features is a Chicago-based 501(c)(3) nonprofitorganization committed to increasing diversity in themedia arts by producing, exhibiting, and supporting the work of women, LGBTQ, and minority filmmakers.

SATURDAY, JULY 13th – 7:30 PM w/discussion moderated by Sadie Benning & 10PM w/discussion moderated by Owen Kline
ONE NIGHT ONLY! NYC PREMIERE!
(These screenings are $10.)

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Spectacle is pleased to invite Uruguayan-born, NYC-based filmmaker and musician  Juan Wauters to the space for a one-night-only screening of recent short-form video works. ROMANE, JUIN 2016 builds a video portrait of the titular Romane, a 19-year-old postal service worker, living in a small village in France as she goes through her daily chores. BOLERO URUGUAY, DIC 2017 is a montage of images collected in Wauters’ homeland set to the tune of Maurice Ravel’s classic orchestral piece “Bolero”. Both videos portray life at its own pace; driven by curiosity, Wauters’ camera stares at people living their lives.

Having spent years in Jackson Heights, quotidian observation of people in their day-to-day environments has become central to Wauters’ life and artistic practice. This will be the first public screening of Wauters’ short films (which will include a few extra surprises) in New York, and Wauters will be in attendance for a discussion following the films.

Programmed in collaboration with Steve Holmgren and David Powell Steine. Special thanks to Captured Tracks, and Ivonne Sheen for Spanish translation.

SADIE BENNING is an American artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Benning’s work has been exhibited internationally since 1990. Over the last three decades, Benning’s work has taken the form of video, music, and more recently mixed-media works that trouble the distinctions between painting, photography, drawing and sculpture.

OWEN KLINE is a New York based film maker and cinema connoisseur. He is an actor, writer and director, known for THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (2005) and FOWL PLAY (2013), the later featuring Juan Wauters. Kline is currently in the final stages of completing his new film, TWO AGAINST NATURE.

JUAN WAUTERS has covered a lot of ground in the past few years, both artistically and geographically. The New York-based, Latin-American artist has been traveling Latin America extensively, taking time to pause and rethink his life, his art and his career after releasing two critically acclaimed albums on Captured Tracks: 2014’s N.A.P.: North American Poetry and 2015’s Who Me? Wauters originally planned to record his next album while traveling, seeking a break from his life in New York City, the city he has called home since moving from Montevideo in 2002. He settled in Mexico City in 2017 to focus on writing. However, shortly after, he was offered a role in an independent film being shot in Argentina. Never one to turn down a creative opportunity, Wauters packed up his 100 pound mobile recording studio into two suitcases and took off to Buenos Aires. When filming was complete, Wauters wound up writing and recording all over Latin America — from Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, and Chile to Mexico and Puerto Rico — seeking collaboration at every stop with local musicians who embody the traditions and energies specific to each region.

Puerto Rico was one of his first destinations. At a restaurant on the way to Charco Azul in Guavate – a natural swimming hole – Wauters heard a duo playing boleros, music he has been familiar with since his early childhood, but had never experienced in its original context. Those boleros would inspire the repeating melody that makes up the infectious love song, “Guapa.” Later, Mexico City was to become the home of “A Volar,” a beautiful, buoyant track about dreaming wildly that features multiple musicians that Wauters met in Garibaldi, a popular square in Mexico City where musicians for hire gather. Later, he would trek to Buenos Aires, Santiago and Montevideo, creating music and incorporating local traditions into his idiosyncratic, captivating yarns.

Until this point in his career, most of his songs had been sung in English, but revisiting his Latin roots inspired him to record songs in his native tongue. Thus, Wauters gives us the wonderful La Onda de Juan Pablo, the world of Juan Pablo Wauters. Wauters now calls Far Rockaway home, when he is not on the road making music or movies.

Juan Wauters: la vida a través de los ojos de Juan

SÁBADO, 13 DE JULIO – 7:30 pm con discusión moderada por Sadie Benning & 10PM con discusión moderada por Owen Kline
¡SOLO POR UNA NOCHE! NYC PREMIERE!
(Estas proyecciones cuestan $10).

Spectacle se complace en invitar al cineasta y músico uruguayo, establecido en la Ciudad de Nueva York, Juan Wauters, para una única proyección de sus últimos trabajos en video de formato corto .

ROMANE, JUIN 2016 – construye un retrato en video de Romane, una trabajadora de 19 años de edad del servicio postal, quien vive en un pequeño pueblo de Francia mientras realiza sus tareas diarias.

BOLERO URUGUAY, DIC 2017 es un montaje de imágenes recopiladas en la tierra natal de Wauters, acompañadas de la melodía de la clásica pieza orquestal “Bolero” de Maurice Ravel. Ambos videos retratan la vida a su propio ritmo; conducido por la curiosidad, la cámara de Wauters mira a las personas que viven sus vidas.

El haber pasado años en Jackson Heights y la observación cotidiana de personas en sus entornos cotidianos, se han convertido en un aspecto central de la vida y la práctica artística de Wauters. Esta será la primera proyección pública de los cortometrajes de Wauters en Nueva York, y Wauters estará presente para una discusión posterior a las películas.

Programado en colaboración con Steve Holmgren y David Powell Steine. Agradecimientos especiales a Captured Tracks.

SADIE BENNING es una artista estadounidense que vive en Brooklyn, Nueva York. El trabajo de Benning ha sido exhibido internacionalmente desde 1990. Durante las últimas tres décadas, el trabajo de Benning ha tomado la forma de video, música y, más recientemente, trabajos en medios mixtos que complican las distinciones entre pintura, fotografía, dibujo y escultura.

OWEN KLINE es un cineasta y conocedor del cine con sede en Nueva York. Es un actor, escritor y director, conocido por THE SQUID AND WHALE (2005) y FOWL PLAY (2013), el último con la participación de Juan Wauters. Kline se encuentra actualmente en las etapas finales de completar su nueva película, TWO AGAINST NATURE.

JUAN WAUTERS ha cubierto mucho territorio en los últimos años, tanto artística como geográficamente. El artista latinoamericano con base en Nueva York ha viajado extensivamente por América Latina, tomándose su tiempo para pausar y reconsiderar su vida después de lanzar dos álbumes aclamados por la crítica en Captured Tracks: 2014’s N.A.P.: North American Poetry and 2015’s Who Me? Wauters originalmente planeó grabar su próximo álbum mientras viajaba por la ciudad de Nueva York, la ciudad a la que llama su hogar después de mudarse de Montevideo en 2002. Se estableció en la Ciudad de México en 2017, para concentrarse en la escritura. Sin embargo, poco después, se le ofreció un papel en una película independiente que se filmó en Argentina. No pudo rechazar una oportunidad creativa, así Wauters empacó su estudio móvil de 100 libras en dos maletas y se fue a Buenos Aires. Cuando el rodaje terminó, Wauters continuó escribiendo y grabando a lo largo de Latinoamérica — desde Argentina, Uruguay, Perú y Chile hasta México y Puerto Rico — buscando en cada parada, colaboración con músicos locales que encarnan las tradiciones y la energía específica de cada región.

Puerto Rico fue uno de sus primeros destinos. En un restaurante de camino al Charco Azul en Guavate — un agujero natural para nadar — Wauters escuchó a un dúo tocando boleros, música con la que está familiarizado desde su infancia, pero que nunca había experimentado en su contexto original. Esos boleros inspirarían la melodía repetitiva que conforma la canción de amor infecciosa, “Guapa”. Más tarde, la Ciudad de México se convertirá en el hogar de “A Volar”, una pista hermosa y boyante, sobre soñar salvajemente, la cual cuenta con la participación de múltiples músicos que Wuaters conoció en Garibaldi, una plaza popular en la Ciudad de México donde se reúnen músicos de contrato. Luego, viajaría a Buenos Aires, Santiago y Montevideo, creando música e incorporando las tradiciones locales en sus idiosincrásicas y cautivadoras creaciones.

Hasta este punto en su carrera, la mayoría de sus canciones se interpretaron en inglés, pero el revisitar sus raíces latinas, lo inspiró para grabar canciones en su lengua materna. Así, Wauters nos regala la maravillosa La Onda de Juan Pablo, el mundo de Juan Pablo Wauters. Wauters ahora llama a Far Rockaway su hogar, cuando no está haciendo música o películas en el camino.

“It’s hard being a human, but being a common person in China is even more difficult.” – UP THE YANGTZE

Who gets left behind in the name of progress? In these two documentaries, low-income people struggle to stay afloat in the midst of China’s rapid economic growth and bold technological endeavors. In STREET LIFE, director Zhao Dayong offers a vérité portrait of migrants from rural China living in Shanghai who occupy Nanjing Street, an upscale shopping district, collecting and selling recyclables. In UP THE YANGTZE, directed by Yung Chang, a teenaged girl whose home will soon be flooded by the impending Three Gorges Dam finds herself working on a cruise ship offering tours of the river that will soon swallow all she knows. With these two films, the directors offer portraits of people who have no other option but to make way for progress- to bend to its will and hope that the future will be kinder.

STREET LIFE (南京路)
Dir. Zhao Dayong, 2006
China, 98 mins.
In Mandarin with English subtitles.

MONDAY, JULY 1 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 7 – 5 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 18 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 21 – 7:30 PM

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Zhao Dayong’s first nonfiction film is a colorful and honest portrait of a group of migrants who live and work on Nanjing Road, an upscale shopping district in Shanghai, collecting and selling recyclables. There’s “Big Fatty,” the wise fool who sings poems and rhymes referencing Chinese literature and politics; Ah Qiao, the dishonest entrepreneur who purchases cans off the other migrants; and “Black Skin”- the anti-hero of the story, whose innocence and hard-working nature leaves him susceptible to attack. After Ah Qiao betrays him, Black Skin spirals into apathy and insanity.

“These beggars and litter-collectors exist as invisible and forgotten shadows of Shanghai, moving in a sort of parallel reality but strictly linked to the same boom that excites the city. It is just the other side of the capitalist coin, the extreme poverty of the periphery juxtaposed with the growing wealth of the center, adopting the same capitalist strategies for surviving in a dramatic, grotesque fashion.” – Sara Beretta, “A Mad Dance on Shanghai Streets: Zhao Dayong’s Street Life”

After graduating from China’s Lu Xun Art Academy in 1992, Zhao Dayong worked for a number of years as a professional artist and advertising director, first in Beijing and later in Guangzhou. In 1997, he founded Guangzhou Dake, a design company. He was also founding editor of Culture & Morals, a now deceased journal for the contemporary arts in China. Zhao began exploring the medium of digital video in 2002. His first documentary film, STREET LIFE, premiered at Austria’s Viennale in October 2006. Zhao’s second documentary film, GHOST TOWN, a collage of stories that take place in the former government seat of Zhiziluo in remote northwestern Yunnan province, premiered at the New York Film Festival in 2009. His first fiction feature, THE HIGH LIFE, premiered at the Hong Kong International Film Festival in 2010, winning both the FIPRESCI Award and the Silver Digital Award. THE HIGH LIFE made its European premiere in the main competition at the Mannheim-Heidelberg International Film Festival in November 2010, where it won both the Werner Fassbinder Prize and the FIPRESCI Jury Prize.

UP THE YANGTZE (沿江而上)
Dir. Yung Chang, 2008
China, 94 mins.
In Mandarin with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 3 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 9 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 14 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 24 – 7:30 PM

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“Everywhere there are reminders of progress and sacrifice.”

The Three Gorges Dam, the largest power station in the world in terms of installed capacity, spans the Yangtze River, the largest and most revered river in Asia. It’s named for the three gorges it flooded, the Qutang, Wu Xia, and Xiling, which stretch for 124 miles and were renowned for their scenic beauty. Reportedly 1.3 million people (and up to 2 million) living in 1,500 cities, towns, and villages along the river were displaced as a result of its implementation.

In 2007, before the waters rose completely, 16 year old Yu Shui sets off from her impoverished family and their riverside home to work on a Yangtze river cruise called Farewell Cruises, offering a final glimpse of the Yangtze to wealthy tourists before the waters rise. Her parents, illiterate farmers, are saddened by having to send their daughter off to work instead of allowing her to continue her studies. Yu Shui suddenly has a new English name, Cindy, and is thrust into a whole new world where she must cater to wealthy foreigners on their vacations. Along with Yu Shui is Chen Bo Yu, or “Jerry,” an only child from a middle-class family who, with far less to lose, takes his job far less seriously. As Yu Shui struggles to navigate the modern world, her family seeks higher ground.

“It’s a tender and profound portrait of unwieldy, mass-scale modernization at work, a process multifaceted enough to include Yu Shui’s dawning optimism, Chen Bo Yu’s dispiriting setbacks, and a cheery tourist rendition of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” that also serves as a lament for tradition’s demise.” -Nick Schager, Slant

Yung Chang is the director of UP THE YANGTZE (沿江而上), CHINA HEAVYWEIGHT (千錘百鍊), and THE FRUIT HUNTERS. He is currently completing a screenplay for his first dramatic feature, Eggplant (茄子), and in post-production for a feature documentary about Robert Fisk, the controversial Middle East correspondent, co-produced by the National Film Board of Canada. His latest, Gatekeeper, is on the festival circuit and streaming on Field of Vision, Laura Poitras’ curated online film unit. Chang is the recipient of the Don Haig Award, the Yolande and Pierre Perrault Award, and the Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award. He is a member of the Directors Guild of Canada. In 2013, he was invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Academy Awards / Oscars®.

FINGERILLA
dir. Micah Vassau, 2017
90 mins. United States.

THURSDAY, JULY 25 – 7:30 PM (with cast & crew in person for Q&A)
ONE NIGHT ONLY! (This event is $10)

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In a far away, fucked up land, there lives a broke country-fried blonde who isn’t so bright… Consuming raw chicken and collecting beer cans out of the river to make ends meet, she spends her ditzy days caring for her decrepit grandmother in their dilapidated abode. But after a sinister demon of static steals an egg that she believes to be her baby, she is flung unto a seriously perverse quest to be reunited with said egg.

Rummaging through her shabby woodland town by jet ski, inhaling all the drugs that cross her path, she encounters a myriad of total nutjobs. Some try to turn her on to God, some let her suck on their toes, while others pour 40s over her head, or seek to demolish her innocent soul.

No childhood imagination is safe from this disturbingly depraved fable of nooky, dope, and degeneracy. Savvily shot on VHS, edited by cerebrums of relentless corruption, and scored with pretty much any genre of music you can think of, FINGERILLA is a fairy tale trauma you’ll certainly want to spare your children of.

CONTENT WARNING: Seriously… leave your kids at home.