THREE SIDES OF JEFF PREISS

Jeff Preiss is a filmmaker and cinematographer living in New York. His work has run the gamut from 8mm experimental cinema, television commercials, music videos, narrative filmmaking, documentary cinematography, and more! This program shows us three distinct sides of the filmmaker through three of his major works. Together, these films give us a unique perspective on fatherhood, music, and living a life as an artist. Preiss and guests will be appearing for Q&As over the course of the month. The series concludes with “An Evening With Jeff Preiss,” where the filmmaker will show a selection of rare and under-seen short films.

This series took place during April 2022.

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MATCHBOX CINECLUB PRESENTS: TALES FROM WINNIPEG

This series was a collaboration between Spectacle Theater and Matchbox Cineclub, debuted as an online-only program in 2020, celebrating the work of renegade Canadian film co-op the Winnipeg Film Group. John Paizs’ seminal CRIME WAVE (1985) in its TIFF 2K restoration, Guy Maddin’s COWARDS BEND THE KNEE (2003) with new, director-approved score by Ela Orleans and Dave Barber and Kevin Nikkels’ documentary on the WFG, from inception to present day.

This updated version of the program had us unearthing a 16mm print of CRIME WAVE (1985) with an alternate ending. The entire final 30 minutes of the film was different from anything available online.

COWARDS BEND THE KNEE (2003) was screened alongside shorts from Rhayne Vermette, Matthew Rankin & Mike Maryniuk. The first screening was followed by a virtual Q&A between Guy Maddin and Rhayne Vermette.

Matchbox Cine is an independent film exhibitor, specializing in the outcasts, orphans and outliers of cult cinema, and an award-winning subtitler, specializing in access provision for film exhibition & distribution. From Glasgow, Scotland, and currently based in Bristol, England, they program, curate and promote cult film events across the UK.

This series took place during December 2021

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JEFFREY LEWIS PRESENTS CHOPPING MALL (WHICH HE HAS NEVER SEEN)

A night of music, movies and mixed media with antifolk legend Jeffrey Lewis. Lewis performed a short acoustic set and then presented the film Chopping Mall which he has never seen! After the film he took questions from the audience.

Screened to a packed house at Spectacle Theater

Synopsis

A group of young shopping mall employees stay behind for a late night party in one of the stores. When the mall goes on lock-down before they can get out, the robot security system malfunctions, and goes on a killing spree.

This event took place October 1st, 2021.

LONG DISTANCE FILM FESTIVAL

Long Distance Film Festival is a new form of film festival for these unprecedented cultural moments, an entirely online global live-stream marathon of short films built to highlight new and exciting work from people all around the world. 

Long Distance Film Festival is a collaboration with Spectacle Theater. This past edition was sponsored by Final Draft, Mubi, Anthology Film Archives, Oscilloscope Laboratories and NoBudge. Learn more about the festival on our official website.

“[H]undreds of viewers were presented with was a festival that managed to avoid turning into a mere receptacle of COVID-themed shorts, but sought instead to showcase films that dealt with questions that long predated the health crisis, and which the forced isolation only made more pressing. The first of the three lineups, “Culture”, was arguably the most protean. It kicked off the festivities with 14 shorts that vowed to embody LDFF’s overall spirit – to interrogate our notions of selfhood – and the mix of confusion and wonderment I was left to grapple with is, I suspect, testament to its ability to stay close to that ethos.” —Leonardo Goi (Senses of Cinema)

This event took place July 2020 and May 2021.

A zine about the festival is currently in progress, to be released in the coming months.

WHO KILLED VINCENT CHIN?

Screened live at SectacleTheater.com followed by a Q&A with director Christine Choy moderated by Inney Prakesh. This screening was a collaboration with and fundraiser for AALDEF, the Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund.

The film was brought back for “Best of Spectacle 2021” followed by a Q&A with director Christine Choy moderated by The Exiles directors Ben Klein and Violet Columbus.

Synopsis

On June 9 1982, at the height of anti-Japanese fervor in the US, Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat by two autoworkers, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz. Chin had been celebrating the last days of his bachelorhood in a Detroit bar when he got into an altercation with Ebens and Nitz. When Ebens and Nitz were sentenced to pay a fine and put on probation without having to serve jail sentences, the Asian American community rallied to bring the case to federal court, claiming that Ebens and Nitz violated Chin’s civil rights.

Christine Choy’s documentary explores the Vincent Chin story, raising questions about the complexity of race relations, immigrant life, and labor hostilities during a period of US auto industry recession and a "trade war" with Japan. The filmmakers offer no conclusions of their own, but through a combination of news footage and interviews with witnesses, Chin’s family, and Ebens and Nitz and their families, they weave a nuanced and thought-provoking story.

Screened April 10th 2021 & January 28th 2022.

NEVER GET TIRED: THE BOMB THE MUSIC INDUSTRY! STORY

Screened live to more than 350 concurrent viewers at SpectacleTheater.com followed by a Q&A with director Sara Crow, editor Amy Glickman Brown, band members Jeff Rosenstock, John DeDomenici, Mike Costa, Tom Malinowska and Rick Johnson. Q&A was moderated by Twitch streamer HCJustin.

Synopsis

Embodying the DIY ethos, New York punk band Bomb the Music Industry! managed to sustain ten years of recording, touring, and building a worldwide fan base, all without a record label, album sales, or traditional commerce of any kind.

Jeff Rosenstock founded Bomb the Music Industry! on the belief that music should be accessible to everyone, so the band gives away their albums for free and caps ticket prices at ten dollars. It’s not often that a band gets to hold onto its principles in the music industry, so the solution, for Rosenstock, was to avoid the industry completely. So far he’s been successful, but how does one sustain a band, let alone a life, while categorically rejecting conventional notions of success?

Screened February 19th & 26th 2021.

REVERIES + REVERIES: GOING DEEPER

Screened live at SpectacleTheater.com followed by a Q&A with director Graham Mason, actors/writers Anthony Oberbeck & Matt Barats and moderated by Joe Pera.

Synopsis

Reveries, and its follow-up Reveries: Going Deeper, are comedy tone poems/visual albums revolving around two mysterious drifters who never speak, but whose inner monologues carry us across a landscape of absurdist one-liners, surreal stories, and stream-of-consciousness musings. Backed by a dreamy original score and hallucinogenic montages created from camcorder footage shot over the course of years all around the world, Reveries is a singular, unclassifiable experience at the intersection of alt comedy, internet video art, and underground weirdo cinema.

Reveries tracks the drifters as they travel across the American landscape in what reveals itself as a journey into their own unravelling minds and psyches. The more narrative-driven, Reveries: Going Deeper, takes place in a dystopian future where the drifters broadcast their “reveries” from an underground, pirate radio station, attempting to save the world by diving deeper into their own minds than they’ve ever been before.

Screened January 2021.

SKUNKPASTE: A RETROSPECTIVE

Screened live on Twitch with a rerun on SpectacleTheater.com, Skunkpaste appeared in the chat for both screenings.

Synopsis

Skunkpaste has been posting on YouTube since Nov 21, 2012. Best known for "fuck you all fedoras own hard," his videos are bizarre, subversive, and often hard to watch. Many of these ‘tapes’ are parodies of the banal content found on YouTube—they feature characters living with delusions of fame, drinking shampoo to “get a hundred million views.” This retrospective follows Skunkpaste’s videos from 112 subscribers to his 10k subscriber special, in which he "gulped 10,000 mL of windshield wiper fluid.” This retrospective celebrates the career of one of the most singular creators on the worldwide web. After being fired from his job due to the Covid-19 lockdown, Skunkpaste has focused on streaming on Twitch. He can be found on the platform 5 days a week.

Screened January 2021.

First Run FILMS AT SPECTACLE