TORMENTING THE HEN
Dir. Theodore Collatos
77 mins. USA
2017

NY Theatrical Premiere Run!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19 – 5 PM
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 21 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22 – 7:30 PM

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From the bucolic hinterlands of rural Massachusetts comes a disquieting new dramedy from “Dipso” director Teddy Collatos. Shot for a pittance in only six days, “Tormenting the Hen” is a caustic satire of city mice in the world of country mice, where well-meaning cosmopolites clash with strange townsfolk in country homes, black-box theaters, backyards, and local pubs.

Invited by a dippy, well-meaning curator type (Josephine Decker), playwright Claire (Dameka Hayes) is spirited away to an artists’ retreat to present her latest work, a political one-act about race, resentment, and masculinity. Accompanied by her fiance, Monica (Carolina Monnerat), the weekend begins in earnest as a welcome getaway for the harried pair, until an unexpected visit from town weirdo Mutty (Matt Shaw) casts a threatening pall on their romantic idyll.

While Claire plays babysitter to a duo of difficult performers – Joel (Brian H. Brooks) and Adam (David Malinsky) – Monica attempts to maintain her sanity despite her lover’s decreasing attentions and her neighbor’s increasing proximity. Each woman struggles to preserve her autonomy in an increasingly hostile milieu, building to a soul-shaking climax that offers no easy answers for character and viewer alike.

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THE GOODIEPAL EQUATION
Dir. Sami Sänpäkkilä, 2017.
71 min, Finland.
In Finnish and English, with subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12 – 5 PM
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 28 – 10 PM

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Goodiepal (real name Kristian Parl Bjørn Vester, b. 1974–76) is a Danish musician, performance artist, lecturer and activist operating on the fringes of society. Goodiepal rides thousands of kilometres on a self-built bicycle that he uses to power his shows. He has released a record with a genuine 500-krone banknote embedded in the vinyl – priced at 250 kroner. Goodiepal has put together an exhibition for the National Museum of Denmark comprising all his material possessions, and he creates his art outside of customary institutions and norms.

Goodiepal’s best friend, the former 1960s rock star Poul Erik, is another true eccentric, a hoarder living among things he has collected from skips. His dream is to own a piece of each item ever produced by human beings. Goodiepal considers Poul Erik his partner in crime, although his audience would prefer to see him without him.

Goodiepal’s life is shadowed by Huntington’s disease, an inherited degenerative disease of the brain that has driven men in his family to suicide. Doctors find odd tumours in his head and he begins to misplace and forget things. Many of his closest friends are likewise affected by illness.

Goodiepal’s activism turns increasingly radical and he drifts further and further away from social safety nets. Goodiepal challenges us to reflect on our view of the world. What remains of us if we only exist to serve the system? What is THE GOODIEPAL EQUATION?

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Words from the director:

The Goodiepal Equation documentary film reveals a small part of Goodiepal’s personality and mystery. It shows its protagonist as both an uncompromising artist and a loyal friend. Goodiepal explores the boundaries of society’s rules. He shatters the definitions of art in his works and actions. Goodiepal is by nature impenetrable, yet consistent. That is why people often either love him or hate him.

Goodiepal himself forms an essential part of his theories. Indeed, the Goodiepal Equation is as follows: “The longer and further a message travels over space and time, the more value it adds to its content.” One might think that this documentary has been made on the off-chance of Goodiepal later becoming an extremely famous artist and theorist. This, however, is a ready example of the paradox that is Goodiepal – it will never happen. If nothing else, it will be hindered by Goodiepal’s personality. For all his overbearingness, he is not merely a master manipulator; his actions reveal true altruism and empathy. He pays for rooms for the needy to work and live in, he helps refugees and donates large sums of money to charity.

Even though he is the self-proclaimed man for the new millennium, for most of us he is also beyond comprehension and imagination. You will feel like Alice in Wonderland having a conversation with the Cheshire Cat. That is why following Goodiepal must be done with a mind as open as Alice’s as she stepped through the looking glass.

The documentary portrays a man who is more than an artist or a theorist. It shows us someone who is battling – in his very personal way – his problems and illnesses. Goodiepal’s attitude in the face of adversity is the main reason why I chose to make this documentary. His loyalty towards his friends is demanding but also very rewarding. In the words of his best friend Poul Erik: “He is ready to die for his friends.”

-Sami Sänpäkkilä

 

This two film series is inspired by the possibilities of future life – from both myth and science. UNDERWATER LOVE is a story of a kappa dancing free among the cucumber fields of rural Japan, looking for love. ETH FURTUE SI LIWD is an in-house edit that condenses an 8-hour series on speculative evolution into the best 80 minutes of giant future-squid, freaky fish-birds, and spiny desert scavengers.

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UNDERWATER LOVE
dir. Shinji Imaoka
Japan, 2011

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – MIDNIGHT
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 14 – 10 PM
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20 – 10 PM

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Welcome to a dreary packaging plant in an underpopulated Japanese town, where a woman receives a visit from a creature out of ancient myth: a scaly, turtle-backed, freshwater kappa. Even more surprisingly, the magical creature is actually a sweet-natured incarnation of an old friend from her youth, who needs frequent watering and a steady diet of cucumbers. What could be a better conduit for love and myth than zany musical numbers with aquatic-inspired dancing, and answers to the age-old question “what does a kappa have hidden in his trousers?”

UNDERWATER LOVE is a film in the pink tradition, with cinematography by the acclaimed Wong Kar Wai collaborator Christopher Doyle. He certainly succeeded in making this movie steeped in muted green tones and extremely wet. Bring your own cute little kappa down to the Spectacle for a sexy Stereo-Total scored sing-along from Rapid Eye Pictures in Germany.

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TEH FURTUE SI LIWD
In-house edit, 2017
USA, 60 min

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – 10 PM
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13 – 10 PM

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It’s only the weirdest pockets of biological thinking that can remain hopeful for the future of life on this planet. But why can’t we all share in that joy, and cheer on the snout-nosed flying insects and flappy ocean predators that might truly inherit the earth? Humans are the quickest to change the environment, but probably the slowest to evolve to fit these changes.

The source material for this edit comes from an 8-hour BBC series that is an anagram of the program’s title. Using an approach that was part PLANET EARTH and part SPORE the video game, this series blended expert scientific speculation and the best creatures that Maya animators of the early 00’s could produce. Our in-house edit adds some leafy 70’s moog jams, such as Mort Garson’s Plantasia and Caldera’s A Moog Mass. We assure you that you can’t see this program in this form anywhere else, or possibly ever again.

 

 

 

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THE ENCLAVE (Fei Di)
Dir. Li Wei, 2016.
China. 105 min.
In Mandarin with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 7 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30 – 10 PM

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The Chinese word for enclave, fei di, is “flying land.” The sense of enclosure inherent in “enclave” was lost, poetically, in translation, but it is still an apt description for the Yi village where the film takes place. The village is a remote enclave of the Yi minority in the Daliang mountains of Sichuan. Few people speak Mandarin, and fewer ever leave the mountains. Like many other places that are too far and small for state investments in public goods, it bears a regular flow of volunteer teachers who come from universities in urban centers to teach the village children on a short term basis, for a few weeks, maybe a month. It’s not clear if the volunteers give more than they take from the mountains and its people, as it is clear that the village needs so much more than what they could ever bring.

Filmmaker Li Wei follows Yibu Sugan, a villager who left his hometown in his youth, but came back disabled from work injuries. Li finds Yibu Sugan when he desperately needs a local who speaks Mandarin to help him communicate with the villagers (Yibu Sugan was the only such person, due to his experience working outside), but soon he discovers that Yibu Sugan is a fascinating character that walks the fine line of madness and brilliance. While keenly aware of both his disability, physical as well as mental, and the history of the downfall of his family fortune and power that was a direct result of the rise of new China, he is nevertheless an avid consumer and supporter of state propaganda on TV, which only became available with the arrival of electrity in 2012. It is easy to reduce a village like this to stereotypes of poverty and underdevelopment, but people like Yibu Sugan defy these narrow frameworks of understanding.

THE ENCLAVE is a quiet witness to a small village’s response to broader transformations that swept China in the last few decades, and an essential film for those with interests in lives on the margins.

“Odie, let’s talk effort versus return here. You know, you can still lead a pointless life without all that running around.”

This November we’re teaming up with Pet Cinematary to bring you a series tribute to America’s favorite lasagna-loving feline (name withheld to avoid potential lawsuits). So ubiquitous it’s the ‘World’s Most Syndicated Comic’, yet so void of significance he* exists more as iconography than body of work, this obese, coffee-loving cat has imprinted deeply on the country’s psyche, yet by design slips off the brain fast enough to avoid the loathing usually accompanying such popularity. Truly: does anyone hate the diet-averse feline?

The films herein include grabs for cat-related family-friendliness so hard they faceplant into the bizarre, meditations on the claustrophobically small world of Davis’ creation, and loving tributes using the strip’s blandness as launching pad for actual absurdity. Disturbing, strange, and often featuring indifferent cats and/or goofy humans, these films echo and explore Jim Davis’ weirdly inoffensive world of sassy mice, awkward dates, dumb dogs, and nary a trace of politics to be found. To quote the bard, “If you are patient…and wait long enough…Nothing will happen!”

*After a short, heated debate, it was determined G*rf*eld is canonically male.

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LAO MAO
Dir. Ngai Choi Lam, 1992.
Hong Kong, 89 min.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – 5 PM
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 27 – 7:30 PM

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From director Lam Ngai Kai (RIKI-OH: THE STORY OF RICKY), comes LAO MAO (THE CAT), a film with a magical mix of science fiction, horror, comedy and action. Wisely, the Indiana Jones of Hong Kong, discovers three aliens (one of which is a cat) whose mission on Earth is to destroy the ‘star-killer’, a gelatinous blob who has the ability to reanimate its human victims. Will the old man, his young companion, and her cat get enough ‘octagons’ to destroy their enemy, and return to their former glitter selves? A combination of HAUSU, THE THING, and THE BLOB, this film is full of crazy. Crazy plot, crazy special effects, crazy action, crazy sound effects that might make you gag, crazy exploding people and monsters, and a crazy dog/cat fight that is the end all in the battle of cat vs. dog.

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AN EVENING WITH LASAGNA CAT aka ‘100 DAYS OF G*RF*ELD’
Dir. FatalFarm, 2008-2017
USA. 63 min.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 26 – 7:30 PM

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“One man lives with the burden of making the entire world laugh every day…it’s time we showed him just how much we care.”

LASAGNA CAT was born when Zach Johnson and Jeffrey Max, the folks behind FatalFarm, found a “really gnarly looking Garf**ld costume” at a shop in Compton pre-2008. Quickly realizing their original plan to churn out a video a day was madness, and that straightforward live-action Garfield reenactments only prolonged the banality, they began using the comic strips as springboards for associative tributes. The resulting shorts are perfectly awkward, so ‘funny’ they actually become funny. Combining Dadaist rejection of capitalism via appropriation of its iconography with the dogged persistence of bored 13-year-olds with a video camera, the duo’s sizeable output nearly matches Davis at his own game. The shorts hold up an unblinking mirror to their source’s grotesque inoffensiveness, matching it with affection and beautifully executed gross-out effects. The series went strong through 2008 before going on extended hiatus, relaunching just this year with a sweetly invasive social experiment-turned-4-hour-knock-knock joke. Join us for an evening of meditation on a form as we watch Jim Davis’ deformed children pay loving tribute.

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TIME PASSES
Dir. Wendy Mays, 2017.
USA. [X] min.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25 – 10 PM

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What do we really know about Jon Arbuckle? Well, he’s a single man on the cusp of 30, trying to figure out his place in the world. His best friends are an orange cat and a yellow dog. But what if those two creatures had never come into his life? What would Jon’s daily existence be like? A video take on ‘Garfield Minus Garfield’, ‘Time Passes’ is a series of vignettes that show Jon alone within the world of Garfield. Come watch the daily life of a lone man living in generic America. He dates, he diets, he struggles with existential crisis.

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ULTIMATE ORANGE: EXAMINING GARFIELD FAN ART
Dir. Various.
USA. approx 75 min.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19 – 7:30 PM

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An evening of discussion about Garfield’s loyal fans. Come for the bad fan art and interviews with intense collectors, stay for the possibility of Garfield porn. And what about that time Jon drank dog semen?

/Ultimate Orange.