Wednesday August 18

5:00

DESTINATION DAMNATION

REVELATION SMX

U.S.A., Experimental, Super-8 , 2 min., 1998

The biblical Book of Revelation, in one minute and twenty-six seconds. God is in the emulsion.

CRAWLEY Lisa Hammer and Ben Edlund

U.S.A., Short, Super-8, 7 min., 1999

From the directors of last year’s gem EMPIRE OF ACHE comes this delightfully creepy romance about a young man who steps on a crack, breaks his mother’s back and refuses to ever walk again…and the bipedal object of his affections. Co-director Edlund is the creator of “The Tick.”

DANCE OF DEATH Lisa Hammer (aka Blessed Elysium)

U.S.A., Short., Video. 3 min., 1998

Dame Darcy, creator of Meatcake and star of EMPIRE OF ACHE (CUFF ’97) stars in this POF PAULINE style silent melodrama. With Eric Hammer as Death.

TOM THUMB IN THE LAND OF THE GIANTS Nick Zedd

U.S.A., Short, Video, 5 min., 1999

The founder of The Cinema of Transgression pays tribute to exploitation film trailers of the 1960s and the desire to return to the womb. Shot in Copenhagen, Denmark and starring the filmmaker’s son.

TATTU Terry Rothstein

U.S.A., Short, Video, 14 min., 1998

A Jack Smith-like colorful world inhabited by Radical Faeries, where painted waif-men dance, cavort, and perform ancient rituals. Give it up for the Goddess!

DEBBIE DOES DAMNATION Eric Brummer

U.S.A., Short, Video, 45 min., 1999, U.S. Premiere

Political turmoil in hell. No, hell really, not Washington D.C. The slaves have overthrown the Devil and cut off his horns, which are where his power resides. Soon hell is a battlefield with warring armies fighting to claim the horns. Enter Debbie, a porn star who committed suicide and is now doomed to cart around the severed head of the Devil as it frantically tries to regain its horns and lost power. Intense and transgressive in style, featuring lots of naked lost souls, torture, bondage, violence and gore. Hey, it’s hell…what did you expect?

5:30

THE EDEN MYTH

Repeat Screening – See Tuesday 9:30

6:00

RED, WHITE, AND YELLOW

Repeat Screening – See Saturday 9:00

7:00

THE TROUBLE WITH PERPETUAL DEJA VU Todd Verow

U.S.A., Feature, Video, 90 min., 1999, Chicago Premiere

Danielle is not the girl you think about when you think “New England”. Wandering along the deserted seacoast in a short leopard print coat and high black boots, she’s about as far from Fair Isle sweaters and sensible shoes as you can be. And yet, living year-round in Cape Cod with her lottery-ticket obsessed mom, she seem to be trying to cultivate a fractured fin-de-siecle American dream.

Sadly, this weird living arrangement has splintered her marriage to Vincent, who amazingly morphed from surly punk to high-powered real estate agent in a few short years. What the two of them had been, what Danielle had hoped they’d be, is now shattered into a million irritating reflections of the past. So maybe marrying the high school Goth god is not a sure path to matrimonial bliss

Another grey Cape Cod winter sets in and Danielle copes with it the only way she knows how…partying in Boston, getting drunk with her psychic friend Vanessa and finally slipping into an affair with an old high school friend. Tense, funny and immediate, THE TROUBLE WITH PERPETUAL DÉJÀ VU culminates Verow’s “Addiction Trilogy”, having been preceded by LITTLE SHOTS OF HAPPINESS and SHUCKING THE CURVE. Working in a pioneering moviemaking style, with minimal crew and scripting, Todd Verow is one of a growing group of directors who hail digital video as a true breakthrough in independent filmmaking. He vows to complete ten features by the year 2000.

7:30

PERFECT BLUE Satoshi Kon

Japan, Feature, 35mm, 75 min., 1997, U.S. Premiere

Perfect Blue may be the latest feature length anime to hit these shores, but don’t expect the usual big robots, demon rapists and gun-toting Lolitas in the 23rd century. Instead the film is a psychological thriller firmly grounded in the present which owes more to Hitchcock and Argento than to AKIRA or BLADERUNNER. Mima Kirigoe is the lead vocalist for Cham, a Spice Girls type pop group. But the group’s career seems to have stalled, so Mima takes a part in a soap opera. The role is that of an emotionally scarred woman, and Mima begins to incorporate her character into her own stressful personal life. One day, she goes on line and discovers a MIMA KIRIGOE home page with WAY too much personal information. The creepy, anonymous attention gets worse. Soon she’s receiving odd, then dngerously threatening letters. When episodes from her TV show begin appearing in her real life, she despairs as she sees the line between illusion and reality grows ever thinner.

“PERFECT BLUE downright frightened me! At once introspective, ferocious, surreal, sexy, sadistic, eerily calm and deafeningly loud, the film just blew me apart in ways I never thought possible from an animated film.”
    -Mitch Davis, FAB Press UK

8:00

MY FRIEND PAUL Jonathan Berman

U.S.A., Documentary, 16mm, 58 min., 1999 Chicago Premiere

Two childhood friends grow up making home movies and playing cops & robbers. One becomes a filmmaker, the other a bank robber. Paul eventually lands in prison where his old friend Jonathan decides to make a movie about him. As Paul finishes his jail sentence and enters a psychiatric hospital, he jumps his parole and seeks out Jonathan, now living in Manhattan. As his friend’s saga unfolds, Jonathan is drawn into a web of madness. Is it too late for either of them to change? Can Paul handle life on the outside? An accomplished documentary that walks a fine line between the humorous and the terrifyingly surreal, MY FRIEND PAUL is an intensely intimate look at issues of criminality, mental illness, creativity, and ultimately the nature of friendship.

Shown With:

KEYS TO KINGDOMS Nathaniel Geary

Canada, Short, 16mm, 23 min., 1998

KEYS TO KINGDOMS is a film adaptation of Vancouver poet Bud Osbourne’s gritty autobiographical poem of the same name. Filmed on location in Vancouver’s troubled downtown east side, the story is one of poverty, desperation and violence, stemming from the poet’s turbulent experiences while staying in a run down transient-style hotel . One day, a metaphysical experience and a kind act occur, and his heart begins to open. Winner of the Telefilm Canada Award at the Vancouver International Film Festival, 1998.

9:00

SUMMER LOVE-THE DOCUMENTARY Mike Andaluz, Joely Collins and Al Flett

Canada, Documentary, Video, 51 min., 1999, World Premiere

Sex, drugs and rock & roll…move over! Now it’s all about love, drugs and electronics. Experience a rave like never before through the eyes of four experienced, enthusiastic ravers in Canada. The festival’s hostess, the promoter, a performer and an all-around partier are your casual guides through the course of the intense 24-hour festival-cum-tribal gathering. Tough questions, honest answers and a lot of time spent during the delicious, delirious hours of the rave itself lead toward an understanding of why raving is making such a big impact on a generation.

Shown With:

LIQUIDS Jimmy Mazzulla

U.S.A, Experimental, Video, 17mins., 1999

A radio-active, hallucinogenic documentary about the East Coast’s rave and party scene from the director of HEAVY BLACK SMOKESTACK. Originally conceived as a bargaining tool to get into raves for free (Mazzulo offered tapes of the parties to promoters in exchange for tickets) LIQUIDS is a blissed-out rave romance and one hell of a party.

WEEKEND IN SAREJEVO Michael Lee

Czech Republic, Documentary, 14 min., 1998

In the Spring of 1998 artists and travelers made their way from Prague to Sarejevo to have a rave-style party. Using a bombed out school ridden with bullet holes for their bash, they created murals on the walls and threw paint over the blood stains on the floor. After cleaning up the ugliness as best they can, the revelers are ready for a night involving a full out fashion show and techno soiree.

9:30

RADIATION

Repeat Screening – See Tuesday 7:30

10:00

THE LOVE MACHINE

Repeat screening- See Saturday 5:00

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