SCUM IN THE SUN PART ONE: JON MORITSUGU

SCUM IN THE SUN PART ONE: JON MORITSUGU

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There’s only one way to prepare for the return of the maestro of low-fi culture clash and camp, and that is to throw ourselves at the altar of alterity and join what were once called degenerates. Jon Moritsugu will soon be releasing NUMBSKULL REVOLUTION with long-time collaborator Amy Davis, which promises to be a satire of art world antics in the desert. We can expect it to include themes of otherness in American dystopia, a messy avalanche of sound, and mutated forms of self-expression, all of which can be previewed in this summer series. Moritsugu’s early films take apart the postmodern moment with mutilated joy, expressing the senseless with style and dragging whatever constitutes punk culture straight to the trash bin.

All month we will also be selling special Jon Moritsugu merch. What kind of merch, you ask? We can’t explain online.



MY DEGENERATION
dir. Jon Moritsugu, 1990
70 mins. United States.

TUESDAY, JULY 2 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 7 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 16 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 19 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 24 – 10 PM

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Continuing the rich legacy of late-night Girl Group mondo pictures, MY DEGENERATION updates the hippie sleaze of BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS and the punk delirium of LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, THE FABULOUS STAINS with a dispatch from the late ‘80s art school wastoid pukescape. Just as ‘indie rock’ was about to cash its check with the meteoric ascent of Nirvana and company, the film follows teen band Bunny Love’s rise to the ambassadorship of the American Beef Institute. Replete with fuzzed-out regurgitations of the midnight movie semiosphere, it’s the cinematic equivalent of the sub-genre Robert Christgau once referred to as “pig-fuck.” Moritsugu’s future wife Amy Davis co-stars, plus a parade of top-notch tracks from Vomit Launch, The Fizzbombs, Halo of Flies, and Bongwater. So puerile, it caused American’s favorite film critic (and BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS scribe) Roger Ebert to walk out after 7 minutes. Two middle fingers all the way up!

*Preceded by the shorts MOMMY MOMMY WHERE’S MY BRAIN (1986) and L’IL DEBBIE SNACKWHORE OF NEW YORK CITY (1987).



MOD FUCK EXPLOSION
dir. Jon Moritsugu, 1994
67 mins. United States.

FRIDAY, JULY 5 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 11 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, JULY 15 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 26 – 7:30 PM **Q AND A WITH DESI DE VALLE (M16)!**

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The Nipponese bikers have leather jackets and London, a broken-family blonde, wants a leather jacket more than anything. Her sister Nasty has one, but she’s a post-Quaalude comic artist and won’t give it up. London’s brother is a dumb wannabe mod, clinging to a style that is just nativism with thick-framed glasses. Top Mod Madball sums up their situation with a joke:

“Why did Hitler kill himself?”

“To get to the other side!”

All London has to do is party with the bikers and tell Kazumi that he has a great bod, but instead she’s in love with death-obsessed M-16. Cleopatra, the supernatural succubus and queen of feces, tries to give London some T-R-U-T-H but she won’t hear it! Everything is leading in a fucked-up, not-knowing-how-to-fuck direction not to mention the ultimate showdown between the pale mods and a powerful biker gang.

Preceded by the shorts SLEAZY RIDER (1988) and CRACK (1999).



TERMINAL USA
dir. Jon Moritsugu, 1993
57 mins. United States.

THURSDAY, JULY 4 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, JULY 8 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JULY 20 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 26 – 10 PM  **PHONE CALL WITH JON MORITSUGU AND AMY DAVIS!**
WEDNESDAY, JULY 31 – 7:30 PM (ORIGINAL ROUGH CUT!)
**Q AND A WITH CINEMATOGRAPHER TODD VEROW!**

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Family comes first in this disaster portrait of a comically depraved Japanese-American household on the verge of Armageddon. Wholesome suburban sitcom sensibilities are rigorously contorted through a deliciously deranged cocktail of vices and filthy secrets all wedged under one roof. Any hopes of quality time deteriorate into a feverish shitstorm, before dinner ever has a chance to be served.

While pill-popping mom and homicidal-minded dad are busy reprimanding their nihilist junkie son, Kazumi (Moritsugu), his pregnant, nymphomaniacal cheerleader sister desperately tries to keep a blackmailing sex tape under wraps, and the protractor-wielding prodigy twin brother, Marvin (also Moritsugu), harbors a secret lust for skinheads. As Kazumi casually bleeds out from a gash dealt by debt-collecting drug dealers, his fashion-damaged girlfriend, Eight-Ball (Amy Davis), is of no help, as she may have an extraterrestrial agenda of her own.

Laying to utter waste the dignified image of the “model minority” in doubtlessly the most gnarly soap-opera to ever be funded by PBS and aired on televisions across America, TERMINAL USA gives wings to the term “dysfunctional” and lets it soar.

*Preceded by the shorts BRAINDEAD (1987) and DER ELVIS (1988).

**Brand new VHS re-release by Random Man Editions for sale!



HIPPY PORN
dir. Jon Moritsugu, 1991
97 mins. United States.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 3 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 12 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 14 – 5 PM
THURSDAY, JULY 18 – 10 PM
MONDAY, JULY 22 – 10 PM

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“Let’s face it, all we’ll be doing for the next 75 minutes is smoking, drinking wine, and complaining about not having anything to do.”

Frenetic disaffection holds reign in HIPPY PORN, Moritsugu’s demented portrait of 90s scum-punk, anti-existentialist youth life. Populated by Warhol Factory rejects who find themselves caught in the wrong time, Moritsugu’s film goes beyond holding nothing sacred, and takes all cultural markers, be they religious, political, or fashionable as equal opportunity material for degenerated profanation.

Starring Moritsugu regular Victor of Aquitaine as L, accompanied by fellow faux-punks M and Mick, HIPPY PORN sees these young college wastoids milling about in deserted lots, cheap-o sets meant to double as underground clubs that remind one of Jack Smith, and their bedrooms. The long stretches of indifferent conversation are broken up and energized by aggressive flashing interludes of disorienting montage that belie the filmmaker’s punk roots.

Soundtracked by an impressive Matador lineup including Superchunk, The Frogs, and Unsane, it’s no surprise that HIPPY PORN ran at the Action Christine Cinema in Paris for over year, where it was certainly appreciated for its indelible brand of American antipathy crossed with a familiar sense of chain-smoking philosophizing.

Preceded by the shorts L’IL DEBBIE SNACKWHORE OF NEW YORK CITY (1987), BRAINDEAD (1987) and CRACK (1999).

BURNING FRAME: A Monthly Anarchist Film Series

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CALLING ALL LEFTISTS! The past few years have been a whirlwind: exhausting, invigorating, and ripe with potential. It’s tremendously difficult, when in the thick of it, to pause, reflect, or even find a moment to catch a breath. Especially when “it” refers to the rise of fascism on a global scale, with any number of future cataclysms hovering just over the horizon. But we digress.

Join us, then, for a series that asks: if not now, when? Come for great works of radical political filmmaking, stay for the generative discussions, or even just to gossip and gripe. The hope isthat this forum for authentic representations of successes, defeats, and the messy work of political action, will be thrilling, edifying, and maybe even inspire your next organizing project. To butcher the title of a great film for the sake of a moderately applicable pun: “Throw away your dogma, rally in the cinema.”


I’LL BE YOUR EYES, YOU’LL BE MINE
dirs. Keja Kramer and Stephen Dwoskin, 2006
47 mins. France.
In French with English Subtitles.

THURSDAY, JUNE 13 – 7:30 PM (double feature with IT MAY BE THAT BEAUTY HAS STRENGTHENED OUR RESOLVE)

TUESDAY, JUNE 25 – 7:30 PM (double feature with IT MAY BE THAT BEAUTY HAS STRENGTHENED OUR RESOLVE)

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Stephen Dwoskin: I think [Robert Kramer] was getting worn out in his search a bit, finding a way through, in an abstract sort of way, not knowing any longer exactly how to handle the material without getting into a repetition. Not knowing how far to go! You need a lot of energy to do it, you need a lot of motivation, because making films is a bit like a drug – and if you OD on it, it’s pretty hard. You can get lost very easily in it, like being stoned, and then demobilised, don’t you agree? I don’t know where Robert was in his private life, you probably know better.

Keja Kramer [Robert’s daughter]: I don’t think there’s another life than the film when you are in it.

Dwoskin: Well, making a film is life!

Kramer: Exactly, so he wasn’t living at home; he was shooting every day.

Dwoskin: But it’s also about how one feels about a relationship to one’s self at that time. To keep the ball bouncing – sometimes it’s very easy to give up. Making films for many people … it’s really hard work. If you lose your motivation for a moment, the whole thing could fall apart; it’s very heavy, very intense, and that intensity can be very exhausting …

Kramer: I was laughing to myself about shooting I’ll Be Your Eyes, and the idea of all those situations of dragging the tripod on a bicycle because it was too heavy to carry, and all these cameras on my back, walking out to the middle of a field to change into that green suit and turning the camera on, having nobody behind the camera, wandering around … In those moments, when you’re working within such a lonely configuration, you have only your own motivation to go on, your own self …

Dwoskin: Yeah, it’s the same.

Kramer: … for acknowledgement. But, even working here, when it’s just the two of us, you feel like there’s no world – the whole world is just this world, these images that we’ve pulled in.

– Conversation between the directors recorded 2/11/ 06, published online in Rouge #9

IT MAY BE THAT BEAUTY HAS STRENGTHENED OUR RESOLVE
dirs. Nicole Brenez and Philippe Grandrieux, 2011
74 mins. France.
In French with English subtitles.

“Avant-garde cinema is not primarily defined by its economic origins, nor by a doctrinaire platform, nor a singular aesthetic: it diverts a technology born of military and industrial needs, reinscribes it within a dynamic of emancipation and therefore participates in a vast critical movement that culminates in the 18th century with the philosophy of Kant and the Enlightenment. If the work of art’s primary territory is that of the conscience or the work of faculties, its challenge consists of continuously reconfiguring the symbolic, to question the division between art and life, such as the humiliating division between the ideal and reality. For an avant-garde artist, art only has sense in its refusal, in its contesting, its pulverization of the limits of the symbolic; it exists as an end within itself or as a means of directly intervening in the real…

The portrait here is not a link, not a report, not a clarification, nor an unveiling. It gathers and gives itself the means (visual, stylistic) of reconstituting the unsounded, volumetric, immeasurable properties of a presence, a fortiori when it concerns the presence of a creator with an exceptional historical journey. A two-dimensional image provides us with an approximate figure; it cannot open us up to the being whose contours it adjusts like a skimpy outfit and, more often than not, falls back on an archetype or a cliché. Far from the usual portraits, that of Masao Adachi by Philippe Grandrieux resembles nothing aside from James Joyce’s Ulysses, an inverted Ulysses: a psychic odyssey that guides us from an internal monologue, through confidence, by the objectification of external witnesses, by spatial and temporal contextualization, by epiphanies born of the appearances of faces, by the constructivist revelation of the means of its production, and in its conclusion, describes to us the utter complexity of a being without having consigned him to an identity—as we are wont to do to those we love because, seen through a loving light, they flood us with an inexhaustible infinity.”

– From “Cultural Guerrillas,” Brenez and Grandreux’s manifesto on the substance of their collaboration, published 3/1/12 at Moving Image Source

UNHINGED

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UNHINGED
dir. Don Gronquist, 1982
79 mins. United States.
In English.

SATURDAY, JUNE 8 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, JUNE 14 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, JUNE 21 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, JUNE 29 – MIDNIGHT

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Shot in Oregon in the early 80’s, UNHINGED follows three college girls on a trip to a jazz festival ‘upstate’. They get stoned and crash into a ditch, only to wake up in an old mansion with a strange woman, her mother and a caretaker.

Trapped by a storm with no way to contact anyone (“the closest phone is 2 miles away!”), the girls hunker down to recuperate until the roads clear. It’s not long, however, before strange sounds and phenomena tip them off to something being very, very wrong at the Primrose Estate.

The performances range in tone from ‘on too many painkillers’ to ‘community theater Tennessee Williams’, only adding to the surreal-dreamlike feel of the whole thing.

Featuring a synth score by John Newton that’s been described as sounding like “a black mass that’s being sabotaged by an all-skeleton Soft cell cover band”, UNHINGED is way more fun and moody than your average video nasty.

CONTENT WARNING: While the body-count and gore are relatively tame for a Video Nasty, the ending features a problematic twist, so be prepared for a decidedly Not Woke climax.

MONDO MANHATTAN

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MONDO MANHATTAN
Dir. the Chain Gang
1987-2007, USA

SATURDAY, JUNE 15 – 7:30 PM
CAST IN ATTENDANCE + Q&A! (This event is $10.)

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Known for being 20+ years in the making and screening but twice before in Manhattan, this rare screening of Chain Gang’s MONDO MANHATTAN is a dispatch from an all-but-gone New York, with cast in attendance. Its Brooklyn debut…

“The Publisher, awestruck, can barely get the words out: They said it couldn’t be done. They said it shouldn’t be done. And yet here we were, in the side room of an Avenue A bar to bear two hours witness to the fact that, indeed, it had finally been done: MONDO MANHATTAN… the movie, twenty years since most of the world first learned of the film-in-progress in the pages of Forced Exposure #13. This classic interview of Chain Gang singer Ricky Luanda, conducted by Jimmy Johnson & Byron Coley, made some sense of 1987’s amazing & mysterious MONDO MANHATTAN “soundtrack” lp on Lost Records, although it must be said, many questions remained. The Music Director– holed up in the iron-rich hills of northwest Jersey at the time– remembers clearly the cold, snowy day he walked from the Port Authority Bus Terminal down 8th Avenue to Midnight Records on 23rd Street to purchase the album. Those who didn’t know the city then can’t begin to imagine the fun that even such a simple trip as that entailed. Others will tell ya’ll about 14th St, Cooper Square, the Bowery, etc: today, with each strip more denatured than the next (or vice-versa), who gives a shit, really? It happened once & memories (“I remember the worry– would I have enough money left over for Show World tokens?” the Music Director recalls) & some artifacts remain. One of which, we can now declare, is MONDO MANHATTAN, the bastard spawn of Andre de Toth & Herschell Gordon Lewis adopted by Sam Peckinpah. Indeed, as much as we love BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA & TWO-LANE BLACKTOP, THE WILD BUNCH & COCKFIGHTER, if Warren Oates had to die so that Ricky Luanda’s Mr. Mondo could be born… it was probably worth it.

I can only ask, is this the best punk rock “documentary” since Raymond Pettibon’s SIR DRONE? Without question but it’s a lot more than that too. Stay tuned.” – Brian Berger, Who Walk In Brooklyn, 2007

JACK YA’ BODY

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In collaboration with Alfreda’s Cinema, Spectacle is proud to present JACK YA’ BODY, an odyssey into the gritty world of underground disco and house-music dance culture through a selection of features, shorts, and found footage spanning NY-Chicago-Detroit in the 80/90s. Opening with Nicky Siano’s LOVE IS THE MESSAGE introduced by Melissa Lyde, this program features talks with DJs Joey Llanos (Paradise Garage), Douglas Sherman (The Loft/Joy), and Tabu (Soul Summit Music). Film critic and 4Columns film editor Melissa Anderson will introduce Derek Jarman’s recently rediscovered WILL YOU DANCE WITH ME?, and we will be joined by award-winning broadcast journalist Mark Riley to close out the program following the final night of MAESTRO.

Programmed by Melissa Lyde and Jimmy Weaver. Special thanks to Electronic Arts Intermix, Nicky Siano, Jeffrey Arsenault, American Genre Film Archive and Vinegar Syndrome.



PUMP UP THE VOLUME
dir. Carl Hindmarch, 2014
147 mins. US/UK.

SUNDAY, JUNE 2 – 5 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 7 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, JUNE 18 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, JUNE 27 – 7:30 PM

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From its humble beginnings in the underground clubs of Chicago, house music has since blossomed into the biggest cultural phenomenon since rock and roll. Fifteen years since its birth in America’s heartland, house has come to dominate pop music the world over: from Madonna to U2, no one has escaped its restless beat. It has turned DJs into superstars and transformed night clubs into global grounds for cross-cultural pollination. In short: house music is a way of life. This is the guiding principle behind the BBC’s PUMP UP THE VOLUME a documentary about house culture from Chicago to the UK.

PUMP UP THE VOLUME follows the evolution of house music from its birth in Chicago to the myriad of diverse music it has since spawned. Born from the ashes of disco, house music arrived pre-destined to change the world. From the underground to the mainstream through countless interviews from the people who made it all happen, Pump includes the birth of all of the major genres that sprang from its fertile shores; acid, techno, trance, drum and bass, UK garage, and more.

WILL YOU DANCE WITH ME?
dir. Derek Jarman, 1984/2014
78 mins. US/UK.

FRIDAY, JUNE 21 – 7:30 PM with introduction from film critic Melissa E. Anderson
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SATURDAY, JUNE 29 – 7:30 PM

Twenty years after his untimely death, a heretofore unknown Derek Jarman film has come to light: discovered by friend Ron Peck, Jarman’s scrappy documentary was shot on location inside Benjy’s, a now closed gay nightclub in East London. Originally shot as experimental B-roll for Peck’s EMPIRE STATE (1987), this uncut 78 minutes includes hot cuts from Frankie Goes to Hollywood, among others.

NIGHT OWL
dir. Jeffrey Arsenault, 1993
77 mins. United States.

SATURDAY, JUNE 8 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 15 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 22 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 28 – MIDNIGHT

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Set in 1984 on the streets of Manhattan’s lower east side, Jeffrey Arsenault’s gritty, guerrilla-style debut feature is a nightmarish tale of urban vampires. In one of his earliest screen appearances, John Leguizamo stars as Angel, a young man on a desperate search for his missing sister. Alongside incredible glimpses of long-gone Lower East Side clubs, NIGHT OWL also features cameos from local nightlight personalities Michael Musto, house music pioneer Screamin’ Rachel, and Warhol superstar Holly Woodlawn.

MAESTRO
dir. Josell Ramos, 2003
89 mins. United States.

FRIDAY, JUNE 7 – 7:30 PM with Douglas Sherman and Joey Llanos in person for Q&A
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FRIDAY, JUNE 28 – 7:30 PM with Mark Riley in person for Q&A
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MAESTRO tells the story of a group of people finding refuge and reason for living outside the mainstream. New York City’s club scene laid the groundwork for what was to come in global dance culture, and Ramos’ turn-of-the-century portrait gives us a rare insight into this secret underground world. Featuring interviews with pioneering dance music DJs, producers and “founding fathers”, and centering on groundbreaking Paradise Garage DJ Larry Levan, MAESTRO devotes equal screen time to past legends and contemporary acolytes of house. Opting for a more personal and candid approach, Maestro shows the true history of its people through a realistic creative aesthetic. Tracing the origins of underground dance culture, Ramos’ documentary is an honest portrayal of these sonic rebels, and the lives they lived and died for.

LOVE IS THE MESSAGE: A NIGHT AT THE GALLERY
dir. Nicky Siano, 2011
80 mins. United States.

SATURDAY, JUNE 1 – 7:30 PM w/introduction from series programmer Melissa Lyde
ONE NIGHT ONLY!
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Directed by Nicky Siano, LOVE IS THE MESSAGE takes the viewer back to the heyday of dance music for one night at New York’s famed club, The Gallery. Opened in 1972 by Siano and his brother, The Gallery’s profound effect on the dance music scene reverberates today in clubs around the world. Before Studio 54, Paradise Garage, and The Warehouse, there was The Gallery, where Nicky Siano could be found in the DJ booth every Saturday night. Grace Jones and Loleatta Holloway both made their first appearances at The Gallery – even Chicago house pioneer Frankie Knuckles used to blow up balloons for the club, often in the company of future Paradise Garage resident Larry Levan. This was a time before disco was capital-D Disco, and before the imposing velvet ropes of the high-society discotheques. In Siano’s own words: “the absolute honesty of the film, not hiding the bad stuff, but putting it in your face, is the only kind of film I could relate to. To see these legends on film is a priceless peek at the reality of being a dance music super star. Please take a look and remember, love will always be the message.”


DEEP IN VOGUE SHORTS PROGRAM
Dir. Various, 1980-1990.
70 mins.

SATURDAY, JUNE 1 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, JUNE 6 – 10 PM
MONDAY, JUNE 24 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, JUNE 30 – 5PM

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DEEP IN VOGUE is a curated selection of shorts and clips that exemplify the intrinsic energy of the gaudy dance style known as Voguing. HOUSE OF TRES (from Diane Martel, now an iconic music video diector) explores dance styles in 90s NYC nightlife; Charles Atlas’ WHAT I DID LAST SUMMER (aka BUTCHER’S VOGUE) is set in a Meat Market restaurant after hours, starring voguing waitstaff, two sex workers on the run, and a thirsty cop. In DJ PIONEERS LARRY LEVAN, various friends and DJs give firsthand accounts of Paradise Garage DJ Larry Levan; HAPPY BIRTHDAY LARRY features a rare interview with Levan discussing his inspirations. Among other clips, CHICAGO HIP-HOUSE measures the impact of house music on Chicago hiphop during the Eighties and Nineties.

Melissa Anderson is the film editor of 4Columns and a regular contributor to Artforum and Bookforum.

Joey Llanos has DJed for 30+ years, beginning his career at the Paradise Garage, made famous by Larry Levan, and continues to keep the ethos of the Garage alive through annual events and as its key historian and archivist.

Douglas Sherman is the musical host for Adventures in Flight, beginning his career assisting David Mancuso and his seminal Loft parties in a variety of roles including musical host since 1985.

Mark Riley is an award-winning broadcast journalist with 40+ years of experience hosting and directing radio programs and pioneering media strategies that attract a loyal, diverse audience.

Tabu is one of the founders of Soul Summit Music, a Brooklyn-based outdoor disco/house-music festival and has DJ’ed globally for over 25 years.

Alfreda’s Cinema screens films that tell Black/POC stories that resonate with depth and love, the richness and culture of our history, our dynamics, our shapes, our colors, and our truth. Programmed by Melissa Lyde, Alfreda’s Cinema continues as a bi-monthly series at Metrograph with programs, talks and special appearances that aspire to bridge communities.

MANGOSHAKE

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MANGOSHAKE
dir. Terry Chiu, 2015
104 mins. Canada.
In English.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, JUNE 9 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 14 – 10 PM
MONDAY, JUNE 17 -7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 22 – 7:30 PM

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Bummer in the summer! What happens with a pack of listless teens stop being polite, and start getting real serious about making money with their competing DIY fruit drink stands?

A special treat from our neighbors to the north, Terry Chiu’s coming-of-age send-up left audiences in stitches from Austin to Buenos Aires. Scrappy, honest, but hardly saccharine, Chiu’s improvisatory style and keen eye for interpersonal pettiness goes toe-to-toe with the more polished debuts of his better-heeled colleagues. See the film birth.movies.death called “the heart inside the roughest cinematic outsider art,” when MANGOSHAKE lands at Brooklyn’s outsiders-only cinema.

MATCH CUTS PRESENTS: HANGIN’ WITH LEO!

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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19th – 7:30 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

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HANGIN’ WITH LEO!
prod. Doug Waterman, 1998.
32 mins. United States.
In English.

Hangin’ With Leo!! – Leonardo DiCaprio: The Unauthorized Documentary VHS

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.

REYNOLS “SINTI BOTUVA TAPES”

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SUNDAY, JUNE 16 – 7:30 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!
Acourtis from Reynols in person for Q&A! (This event is $10.)

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REYNOLS “SINTI BOTUVA TAPES”
dir. Various, 2018.
Various, 81 min.

Screening to celebrate the release of the boxset REYNOLS “MINECXIO EMANATIONS 1993-2018” on Picadisk.

“SINTI BOTUVA TAPES” compiles videos of Argentine cult band REYNOLS. The band started in Buenos Aires in 1993 and it integrates Down Syndrome drummer Miguel Tomasín along with guitarists Roberto Conlazo and Alan Courtis, The film shows a diversity of live concerts and various activities over a period more than 25 years.

The film includes:

1. Saludo Vincher Vinchas (Dir. Miguel Mitlag)
2. Colegio Cristoforo Colombo, 1994 (Dir. A.Ruiz and unknown)
3. No Music Festival, The Tonic, New York 2001 (Dir. Mike Shiflet)
4. Flesh Sound Bs. As.,1999 (Reynols selected archives)
5. Somewhere near Kingston, New York, 2001 (Dir. Mike Shiflet)
6. Papagayos en la luz, Flesh Sound, Bs.As., 2001 (Reynols selected archives)
7. O’Hara Mansion, Ohio, 2001 (Dir. Reynols)
8. Fusa, Bs.As., 2001 (Reynols selected archives)
9. Lo Pawe Recy Plays Norway (Dir. Tom Løberg)
10. Camio Flatdas (Dir. Reynols)
11. Lor Nindio Pepelacho in Brussels (Dir. Christophe Piette)

THE PROSTITUTES OF LYON SPEAK

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THE PROSTITUTES OF LYON SPEAK
(LES PROSTITUEES DE LYON PARLENT)
dir. Carole Roussopoulos, 1975
46 minutes. France.
In French with English subtitles.

SUNDAY, JUNE 2 – 7:30 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!
(This event is $10.)

ONLINE TICKETS          FACEBOOK EVENT

The state is a pimp. The greatest one!

In 1975, escalating tensions between the local government and sex workers in Lyon, France came to a head. Following a scandal linking the vice squad with area brothels, the police made a show of cracking down on sex workers, dramatically increasing fines for soliciting, and retroactively retrieving an old law which condemned repeat offenders to prison. Dozens of women suddenly faced jail time and the loss of custody of their children.

Pushed to the edge, on June 2nd, about a hundred women took over the church of St. Nizier in the center of Lyon. They set up a dormitory inside the church, as well as a monitor on the street outside to broadcast their message to onlookers and passersby. Their protest action itself was short lived, but it captured national attention, and sparked a wave of similar church occupations throughout France. Today it is commonly regarded as the birth of the modern sex workers rights movement.

Pioneering feminist documentary filmmaker Carole Roussopoulos visited St. Nizier during the occupation to speak with activists about their lives, their work, and the repression they faced as sex workers. She recorded these interviews with the utmost simplicity, forgoing artifice to bear witness to their stories. In this vital document, she invites us to do the same.

This program is part of SEX WORK IS WORK, an ongoing benefit series exploring sex work in film, programmed in protest of the SESTA/FOSTA law. All proceeds from this event will go to Lysistrata Mutual Care Collective and Fund.

Poster by Henri de Corinth 

GOLDSTEIN

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GOLDSTEIN
dirs. Philip Kaufman and Benjamin Manaster, 1964
85 mins. United States.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, JUNE 9 – 5 PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 15 – MIDNIGHT
MONDAY, JUNE 17 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, JUNE 23 – 5 PM
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26 – 7:30 PM

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A curious document of mid-’60s low-budget filmmaking, GOLDSTEIN is the directorial debut of Philip Kaufman (THE RIGHT STUFF, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS remake, and co-creator of Indiana Jones, etc). Initially conceived as a novel inspired by Martin Buber and Yiddish folklore, Kaufman was urged by Anais Nïn to turn it into a mystical screwball film. Enlisting many of the major players of the Second City Troupe (Del Close, Viola Spolin, Severn Darden), plus comedian Jack Burns, author Nelson Algren, and a pre-SHADOWS Ben Carruthers (did you know his son was the original drummer of Megadeth?), it’s a free-wheeling parade of mid-century improvisational acting and a tour of ’60s Chicago. Most impressively, the film was photographed by Aldofas Mekas, whose ingenuous camera-sense shows with some very adhoc tracking shots and creative use of widescreen. It debuted at Cannes in May 1964, where it was lauded by the likes of Jean Renoir and Francois Truffaut and took home the Prix de Nouvelle Critique — though viewers expecting magisterial arthouse should look elsewhere, because GOLDSTEIN is pure American scrap.