Over the past 25 years, Los Angeles based Cult Epics has released nearly 150 videos of the most sought after, obscure, provocative and previously unknown films to the home video market. As the video distribution model continues to evolve, additional funds are required for transfers, restoration, production, replication and rights acquisitions. Now, Cult Epics is reaching out to our fans & film lovers to help support us in our efforts to continue bringing you new releases in definitive editions.

Click here to check out the Cult Epics Indiegogo campaign running through the end of December!

MONDO WEIRDO
aka Jungfrau am Abgrund
Dir. Carl Andersen, 1990.
Austria/West Germany, 55 min.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10 – 10:00PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Carl Andersen’s second film is in a similar style to his first film, yet manages to surpass it in terms of art, surrealism and obscenity, Dedicated to Jess Franco and Jean Luc-Godard and featuring Franco’s own daughter, MONDO WEIRDO wallows in sleaze, gore, splatter, and dark comedy and is set in an underground world where both vampires and punk rockers engage in straight, lesbian & gay hardcore sex to the highly addictive and hypnotic electro music of Model D’oo. Bonus features include newly produced Making of. “The Hard-core version of Eraserhead.” –Jan Doense (Weekend of Terror)

NEKROMANTIK
Dir. Jörg Buttgereit, 1987.
West Germany, 75 min.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20 – 07:30PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

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“Ground-breakingly gruesome, the first erotic film for necrophiles.” – John Waters

The controversial horror film that shocked the world in 1987, when it was banned in Germany, censored in Japan and simultaneously became a huge underground hit in the US (now long out of print.)

Nekromantik tells the story of Rob (Daktari Lorenz) who works at a street-cleaning Agency, and visits roadside accidents to clean up the scene. Incidentally Rob collects the body parts and shares them with his girlfriend Betty (Beatrice M.) When Rob presents a complete corpse taken out of a swamp, their undying love reaches its peak, but soon after Betty gets a more liking towards the corpse and leaves Rob, which takes him to the sick end of his destruction.

Cult Epics is proud to release Jorg Buttgereit’s underground horror classic in High Definition and with new extras, including Nekromantik’s predecessor short film Hot Love.

ANGST
Dir. Gerald Kargl, 1987.
Austria, 75 min.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20 – 10:00PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

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“The rarest masterpiece of cinema” – Gaspar Noé (director of Enter the Void & Irreversible)

ANGST (Gerald Kargl, 1983) from Spectacle Theater on Vimeo.

ANGST, photographed by legendary Oscar-winning Polish animator/experimentalist Zbig Rybczynski and scored by Krautrock synth god Klaus Schulze (Tangerine Dream), is one hell of a gorgeously stylized and shockingly visceral experience: a forgotten classic on the fringes of the slasher cycle. Erwin Leder (Das Boot, Schindler’s List) plays a maniacal killer based on the real-life serial murderer Werner Kniesek. As he stalks through the bland Viennese countryside, Schulze’s music pulses darkly, and Zbig’s innovative “first-person” camerawork grabs you by the throat, never letting go. Angst is one film that, without any empty hyperbole, we can guarantee you’ll never, ever forget.

Cult Epics presents for the first time since its original release, the Uncut, Uncensored (optically restored tunnel murder-scene) in HD, with painstaking bonus features; including a new Interview with Erwin Leder, and Audio Commentary and an Interview with director Gerald Kargl conducted by Jorg Buttgereit (Nekromantik) and an 2015 Introduction by Gasper Noé (director of Irreversible, Enter The Void, Love), who cited Angst as an influence, “one that I have watched more than 40 times.”

MONDAY, DECEMBER 12 – 7:30 PM – ONE NIGHT ONLY

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New York City exists as much in our collective imagination as it does in reality, and this imaginary conception of the city is due in no small part to its history of filmed representation. In this combination lecture and screening, New School for Social Research professor Zed Adams will discuss the role that the John Lindsay administration (1966-1973) played in bringing on-location filming back to NYC in the sixties and seventies. The effect of Lindsay’s administration was immediate and drastic: in the year before he took office, only 11 films were shot in NYC; in the year after, 223 were shot. Moreover, it was during this period that the “grittiness” of NYC came to be embraced on screen–think of MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969) and THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971).

Apart from the lecture, clips will be played from two documentaries from this period: John Peer Nugent’s WHAT IS THE CITY BUT THE PEOPLE? (1969) and GEORGE PLIMPTON’S NEW YORK (1979), originally made for CBC.

Zed Adams is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research. He is the author of On the Genealogy of Color (Routledge, 2016) and the editor of Giving a Damn: Essays in Conversation with John Haugeland (MIT, 2016).

dir. Zacharias Kunuk, 2001.
USA, 174 min.
Inuktitut, with English subtitles

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14 – 8PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

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Spectacle Theater is excited to collaborate with critical platform Match Cuts on a new series of screenings.

Match Cuts Presents was established with the mission of programming underrepresented masterworks, with First Nations and Decolonial cinema, amongst others, at its heart. ATANARJUAT THE FAST RUNNER is not only the first feature film made by an Inuit filmmaker (entirely spoken in Inuktitut, and shot on location in Igloolik) but, it’s the first movie made by an indigenous filmmaker about an indigenous way of life that’s completely independent of non-indigenous people or references.

Evil in the form of an unknown shaman divides a small community of nomadic Inuit, upsetting its balance and spirit.

Twenty years pass. Two brothers emerge to challenge the evil order: Amaqjuaq, the Strong One, and Atanarjuat, the Fast Runner. Atanarjuat wins the hand of the lovely Atuat away from the boastful son of the camp leader, Oki, who vows to get even. Oki ambushes the brothers in their sleep, killing Amaqjuaq, as Atanarjuat miraculously escapes running naked over the spring sea ice.

But can he ever escape the cycle of vengeance left behind?

ATANARJUAT THE FAST RUNNER is based on an ancient Inuit legend, set in the Arctic at the dawn of the first millennium. For countless generations, Igloolik elders have kept the legend of Atanarjuat alive through oral history to teach young Inuit the dangers of setting personal desire above the needs of the group.

ATANARJUAT THE FAST RUNNER demystifies the exotic, otherworldly aboriginal stereotype by telling a powerful, universal story – a drama set in motion by conflicts and emotions that have surfaced in virtually every culture known to humankind.

“When missionaries came,” explains director Zacharias Kunuk, “they proclaimed shamanism was the devil’s work. But they didn’t look into what the shamans felt, or how they gave life to the dying, visited the dead, found trails over land and underground or took to flight through the air. When the missionaries forced their religion on us, storytelling and drum dancing were almost banned. Our film is one way of bringing back lost traditions. I have never witnessed shamanism. I have only heard about it. One way of making it visible is to film it.”

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, and produced by Meg Murnane.

VIDEOFILIA (And Other Viral Syndromes)
dir. Juan Daniel Molero, 2016
Peru, 103 mins.
In Spanish with English subtitles.

OFFICIAL PERUVIAN ENTRY, BEST FOREIGN LAUNGUAGE FILM ACADEMY AWARD 2017

Filmmaker Juan Daniel F. Molero and star Muki Sabogal will be at Spectacle for Q&As at all opening-weekend screenings.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2 – 7:00PM (US Theatrical Premiere!)
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3 – 5PM (with Cinema Tropical’s Carlos Gutiérrez)
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4 – 7:30PM
MONDAY, DECEMBER 5 – 7:30PM
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6 – 7:30PM
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7 – 7:30PM
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8 – 5PM

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A Factory 25 release. Special thanks to Cinema Tropical and Marca Perú.

On the eve of the supposed Mayan apocalypse, a sleepy-eyed teenager named Luz (Muki Sabogal) encounters a 20something slacker named Junior (Terom) in a webcam chat room – but the world appears to go on the next morning, and a curious (and ultimately nervewracking) courtship ensues. In VIDEOFILIA, Peruvian filmmaker Juan Daniel F. Molero represents the world not just as it appears “IRL”; the story takes as much place in the capitol city of Lima as it does online, an alterna-verse drawn as a gobsmacking labyrinth of possible selves, where no choice is permanent and everything is thrown up for ingestion – “content” for the fishes. Junior fancies himself a burgeoning porn connoisseur, while Luz begins to experiment with drugs and the odd internet rendezvous to stave off the crushing boredom of a lonely, latchkey day-to-day life. (Molero litters this story with extra-textural signifiers, not the least of which is the Dragonball Z-themed restaurant where Luz works, typically serving much older men.)

VIDEOFILIA doesn’t attempt a 1:1 ratio of tableaux to criticisms; instead, the film finds its aesthetic gripped in damnable present tense, the casual clarity of Molero’s HD camera (for off-computer sequences) ultimately no more reliable than the glitched-out cyberworld occupied by Luz and Junior. It would be too easy to call this a work of magic realism, as VIDEOFILIA’s loose-limbed depiction of day-to-day life evokes SLACKER as much as it does LOS OLVIDADOS. Molero indulges a 21st century beauty that’s goofy, antic and yet harshly sobering – enamored of the possibilities of online, and yet wary of the void staring back at us whenever we sign on. A great darkness is held barely at arm’s length, with datamoshed compression artifacts slowly encroaching on the film’s otherwise spacious wide-panel frames, threatening to swallow Luz and Junior whole and emboss them in pixels; is this the end times, or just a weak connection?

Juan Daniel F. Molero is a filmmaker born and based in Lima. He has also lived in Buenos Aires and New York where he earned his first experiences in film journalism, video blogging, experimental film and film programming. In 2010 he directed the documentary feature REMINISCENCIAS. His work has screened at many renowned international festivals such as New Horizons, BAFICI, FIDMarseille, Valdivia, Lima Independiente and La Habana, and venues such as The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Museum of Lima and La Casa Encendida in Madrid. His fiction debut film VIDEOFILIA (and Other Viral Syndromes), became the first Peruvian production to ever win the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival, and received the Hubert Bals Fund for Post-Production.

“Compared to other thrillers that treat webcams as a structural gimmick or visualize social media in ways that look corny even by the time credits roll, VIDEOFILIA casts a singular spell.” – John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter

“You probably haven’t seen anything like VIDEOFILIA, a feature-length and extremely low-budget experimental narrative from Peru that combines elements from science fiction, psychedelia, and glitch art. Rather than taking risks, so many micro-indies coast by on charm—Videofilia is a rare, and welcomed, exception.” – Michael Joshua Rowin, Brooklyn Magazine

AWARDS:

Post-production Grant from Hubert Bals Fund 2014
Tiger Award for Best Film of International Feature Competition at IFFR 2015
Best Film of International Competition at Lima Independiente Film Festival 2015
University of Lima Jury Award at Lima Independiente Film Festival 2015
Critics’ Award at Atlántida Film Festival 2015
Distribution National Grant from Peruvian National FIlm Board – DAFO 2015
Grand Prix of International Competition at Split FIlm Festival 2015
Special Mention, International Competition, Ayacucho Film Festival 2015
Nominated for Best First Film at the Cinema Tropical Awards 2016

THE RED LIGHT BANDIT
(aka O BANDIDO DA LUZ VERMELHA)
dir. Rogério Sganzerla, 1968
Brazil, 92 mins.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2 – 10:00 PM (with introduction by Juan Daniel F. Molero)

“Sganzerla’s cannibalization of the dominating pop culture and his subversion of the colonized/colonizer dynamics opened for me a whole  world of doors for an undomesticated approach to representing a hazardously mutant identity to which so many of us peripheral beings -aliens to some- are born and subject to. Inspired by the local TV news and tabloids’ headlines (as I also did cut-upping Peruvian chicha newspapers and printed weblogs), THE RED LIGHT BANDIT chaotically portrays the absurd rise and fall of the Brazilian anti-hero of mediated reality.” – Juan Daniel F. Molero

ONCE THE TOOTHPASTE IS OUT OF THE TUBE – An Art Apart: Charles Gatewood
dir. Carl Abrahamson, 2015.
Sweden, 58 min.
English

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3 – 8PM (WITH DIRECTOR Q&A!)
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18 – 7:30PM

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American photographer Charles Gatewood started out in the 1960s as a young man with dreams of showing the world the radical cultural developments that were going on in his country. He met many of the iconic instigators of change and documented them for posterity. As the decades passed, Gatewood drifted more and more into a personal expression of sexual subcultures, both in America and abroad. His powerful photos of pioneers within the tattooing- and piercing scenes helped pave the way for the movement that was to be called “Modern Primitives”. It’s a classic example of when art, and in this example, specifically photography, merges with its general environment and takes on new forms that are impossible to stop. Or, as the San Francisco based photographer himself describes it: “Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, you can’t put it back”.

WHERE IS HERE?
dir. Gustaf Broms, Sweden, 2009
Sweden 42 mins.

MAHAPRALAYA
for. Gustaf Broms, Sweden, 2015
Sweden 22 mins

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3 – 10PM
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18 – 8:30PM

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Swedish artist Gustaf Broms has, since the early 1990s, developed a symbolic language in order to help him understand his own being. On an adventurous journey stretching over photography, filmmaking, sculpting, collaging, music making and on to performance art, his artworks and the process become pieces of a puzzle that constitute not only the human being called Gustaf Broms but also human life itself in general. The grand scale of Broms’ ambitions signals a willingness to share his highly experimental attitude and its findings with other people. Thus his persona as an artist grows into something more ambitious, yet at the same time more undefined. The multifaceted expressions of his work seem to contain the very same theme, the very same question: where exactly lies “self” in the human being? Who exactly are we and which tools do we need to find out?

Broms films Where is Here? and Mahapralaya describe the human condition in a most poetic and mind-expanding way. Are we taking part of a dream-state? An ultimate reality? Broms’ rich cinematic textures facilitate an extended in-depth journey. Where it ends, no-one knows. But the journey itself is cosmic, colourful and ecstatically exploratory. It will lead you far, far away from where you left off. And you will be grateful for the experience.

ALSO SHOWING WITH THIS PROGRAM:

THE SPIRITS OF A PLACE CALL
Dir. Katelan Foisy, 2016
USA, 20 min.

Katelan Foisy is a multimedia artist and writer. Katelan has been featured in NY Times, Elle magazine, Paper Magazine, GQ Italy, Time Out NY, and many others—for her work both as an artist and curator. She has written for Motherboard/VICE, Electric Literature, Luna Luna, ERIS magazine, and COILHOUSE, and has held events with Atlas Obscura and Morbid Anatomy. She was called a “Female Jack Kerouac” by Taylor Mead and a “Modern Day Francesca Woodman” by Cynthia von Buhler. Her film work was featured during the Romani Cinema festival in Paris.

“My films started as back and forth dialogue between a musician and myself. Inspired by “As I was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty” by Jonas Mekas; I began to explore the medium as not only documentation, but a magical working crossing time barriers of past, present, and future. They became love letters to cities, people, eras, and places I traveled to.” -Katelan Foisy

PUSHING THE CONSISTENT FAILURE
Dir. Vanessa Sinclair, 2016
USA, 21 min.

Vanessa Sinclair, PsyD, is a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist in private practice in New York City. She is a founding member of Das Unbehagen: A Free Association for Psychoanalysis, which facilitates psychoanalytic lectures, classes, and events in and around NYC. Together with artist Katelan Foisy, she explores the magic and artistic expression of the cut-up method and the third mind (www.chaosofthethirdmind.com). She contributes to a variety of publications, including the The Fenris Wolf, DIVISION/Review: A Quarterly Psychoanalytic Forum, ERIS Magazine, and The Brooklyn Rail.