Iron Rail April Events!!!
-"Creative Disruptions" Radical Art Presentation
-April Movies
April 17, 2008
Creative Disruptions
8pm at Iron Rail
Creative Disruptions: A talk and screening of radical art
and media with Josh MacPhee and Dara Greenwald.
Josh will present a talk and slide show about radical art
past and present.
Dara will make you laugh and cry with her revolving and
evolving collection of short videos.
Josh MacPhee is founder of JustSeeds and the author of
Stencil Pirates.
He coedited Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority
with Erik Rueland.
Dara Greenwald is a media artist.
They are collaboratively organizing an exhibition and book
entitled Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960's to
Present (Ak Press/Exit Art).
THIS IS GOING TO BE AWESOME! And they will probably have a
ton of great art to sell too, like the incredible Celebrate
People's History poster series.
IRON RAIL APRIL FILMS
April is for queers – and dirty, dirty movies!
All films Tuesdays at 8:00PM
511 Marigny St
April 1: A Date With John Waters / Shortbus (2006)
Director John Cameron Mitchell delivers an unbridled look at the New York City
underground, focusing on a group of hipsters who frequent a downtown club
renowned for its lascivious ways. Through graphic polymorphous sexual couplings
-- and using an ensemble cast composed largely of first-time actors -- the film
chronicles a trio of sex workers journey of self-discovery in a raw and riveting
fashion. John Waters opens the month with an amusing little short, addressing
the camera as if you were his date.
April 8: La Montaña Sagrada (Holy Mountain) (1973)
How can anyone describe HOLY MOUNTAIN? They can't, It's one of those films
that is so bizarre that one has to witness it at least 5 times to fully appreciate it.
Alejandro Jodorowsky commandeers every symbol of religion and mysticism and
places it into his own cinematic context, churning it into a two hour mind trip. The
film is not thrown together - each scene is full of bizarre imagery, yet each image
has a particular meaning. The 'plot' concerns the thief, who appears to be
representational of Christ in modern times. The thief awakens in the desert, almost
crucified by children, he is then rescued by an amputee dwarf. After him and the
dwarf share a joint, they travel through scene after scene of surreal situations. In
one scene a police state has taken over downtown Mexico; people are massacred,
and birds fly out of their bullet wounds. The conquest of Mexico is reenacted by
frogs and iguanas. The Christ character gets drunk with Roman soldiers, and they
make a mold of him to produce statues for profit. And this is all in the first twenty
minutes.
April 15: Un chant d'amour (1950) / Rasberry Reich (2004)
UN CHANT d'AMOUR is a remarkable short by French writer Jean Genet (and his
only venture into cinema): sordid, brutal, provocative; yet as poetic and lyrical as its
title suggests. Indeed, there are no words in this film at all, or music, or any kind of
sound. Just complete silence. This is thematically vital: set in a prison, with inmates
in solitary cells, the film explores the idea of the voice - who has the power to speak,
and hence represent themselves, in our society. The film begins with the figure
symbolic of this power - authority - in this case a police warden. Robbed of a voice,
he is reduced to the role of a voyeur, becoming OUR representative. The complicity
between authority and criminality is a favorite Genet theme and is well represented
here. Our second feature, RASBERRY REICH, is an audacious film about modern
Germans adopting the culture of extreme left-wing movements of the 1970's, a la
Bader-Meinhof. Gudrun - the Raspberry Reich's doyenne - forces her straight male
comrades to have sex with each other to prove their mettle as revolutionaries.
Directed by Canadian provocateur Bruce La Bruce, the movie costars Andreas
Rupprecht as the kidnapped son of a rich industrialist. A landmark of queer cinema.
April 22: Scorpio Rising (1964) / La Mala educación (2004)
We open this Tuesday with Kenneth Anger's short SCORPIO RISING - in his own
words, the "closest he ever came to a documentary." Consisting of mixed footage of
initiation rites of motorcycle gangs and theater, this quasi-documentary, with inter-cuts
of Dean, Brando and Jesus, explores the daily routine of Scorpio and his motorcycle
gang, while they're checking jewelry and reading comic books in their garage/hideout.
To the tunes of various 50's/60's pop songs, the guys buckle their leather, rev their
engines and go through their pre-battle rituals, in scenes that pre-date both the more
commercial biker movies which would come later. The homo-erotic nature of the society
is accentuated in a violent showdown, where Scorpio lives out the image as the
Jesus/Hitler idol for his gang. A deeply haunting underground feature that is pure art for
arts sake. Our feature, BAD EDUCATION, has film director Enrique visited by his
childhood Catholic school friend and lover, Ignacio. Ignacio gives Enrique a short story
he's written that's a factual account of the molestation he sustained at the hands of
their teacher, Father Manolo . But as Enrique adapts the story, he uncovers a dangerous
web of deceit and revenge in this stark, beautiful film from Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar.
April 29: Boys Beware (1961) / A Dirty Shame (2004)
Acclaimed filmmaker John Waters returns to his favorite city, Baltimore, for this
side-splitting film starring Tracey Ullman as Sylvia Stickles, a convenience-store
worker who becomes a raging sexaholic after a minor accident. But her newfound lust
is more a hassle than a gift, igniting class warfare on her street, Harford Road.
Reminiscent of zombie apocalypse films – but with sex addicts in place of zombies.
Hilarious! Our opening short is a film produced by an Illinois police department in the
1950's warning young boys about the dangers of homosexuals.
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