Fragrance Swap
Find your new signature scent for the Fall 🍂
Be sure to bring all your unwanted perfumes and wishlisted to buy/sell/trade this Sept 17th 7-10pm! Free to attend // No RSVP needed
No perfumes? No problem! We have a show & tell table with raw materials alongside the buy/sell/trade table
Niche/designer/local/samples/full bottles? We want it all!
We'll be playing experimental shorts in the background to enhance your sniffing journey
Open Doom Crescendo
Following the screening will be a live virtual Q&A with the director Terry Chiu moderated by writer Erik Reeds.
Terry Chiu, 2022, Canada, 175 mins
An experimental Tokusatsu-flavored fantasy epic. The three-hour film follows a lo-fi storytelling aesthetic that pushes the boundaries of independent creation. Proceeds from this screening support director Terry Chiu’s crowdfunding campaign for his upcoming feature, A.A.A. LOVE WILL REIGN AGAIN.
In the destroyed present, the aggressively badass Keikei (Xinkun Dai) and her lackadaisical white-shirted pal Rev (Ging Yu Kei) wander the wasteland looking for their friend Spike (Matias Rittatore), in between running into the confrontational Lady Moondrift (Pei Yao Xu) and her Candy Ass Kickers (They kick candy ass!!!), or the deadly Psycho on The Radio - whose kill count is like into the 900s - with the promise that one day, they'll get all the answers to their problems from the Embodiment of Angst.
RIYL: End of Evangelion, 2000s Adult Swim, the Nostalgia Critic movies, Shaw Bros., Shunji Iwai's Swallowtail Butterfly
Phantom Beirut
Ghassan Salhab, 1998, Lebanon, 120 minutes
“A poem to a beloved city and its people” – Variety
Lebanon at the end of the 80s. Ghassan Salhab’s debut follows Khalil as he returns to Beirut under a new identity, forced to confront the old friends and comrades he left behind following his faked death a decade earlier. Phantom Beirut is a haunting exploration of the official silences and collective amnesias that stalk the lives of those who live through conflict.
The Spook Who Sat by the Door
FREE SCREENING! Co-presented with Oak Cliff Cultural Center
Ivan Dixon, 1973, USA, 102 min
One of the most radical, revolutionary statements in film history, Ivan Dixon’s explosive adaptation of the novel by Sam Greenlee follows the fictional first Black CIA agent (Cook), who uses his specialized training to build a guerrilla army intent on government overthrow. So potent is the film’s call to revolution that it was pulled from theaters within days of opening.
LAFFD Film Club Presents: Dias de Otoño (1963)
FREE SCREENING!
Roberto Gavaldón, 1963, Mexico, 93 min
Luisa is a small-town girl who works in the bakery of the widower Don Albino. Luisa dreams of marrying and loves children. Just as Don Albino shows interest in her, Luisa announces that she will marry soon with Carlos, the driver of a rich house whom she met recently
In The Land of Fish and Honey
Featuring a pre-recorded intro from directors John Ledingham & JP Meldrum!
John Ledingham, JP Meldrum, 2025, Canada, 102 mins
A mute man searches for fish and honey at the behest of a cynical carnivoran with the help of ultra-Canadian strangers against the backdrop of the vast and desolate forest-cityscape of Victoria, BC.
A unique alchemy of slow cinema, regional horror, colourful JRPGs, and Walden, In The Land of Fish and Honey is as sinister as it is hilarious. The landscapes engulf our hungry boy as he befriends local weirdoes, paws at the water, and confronts the creature in the woods telling him what to do. Co-writers/directors John Ledingham and JP Meldrum (who also stars in a fearless, mysterious performance) make the most of their $0 budget to conjure an idiosyncratic horror comedy atmosphere totally their delirious own. A studio movie could never reach these strange heights!
SIMILAR: Yakuza: Like A Dragon, the films of Matt Farley and Charles Roxburgh, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, James Benning
Nature of Things Presents: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Screening in collaboration with gallery Nature of Things for their current exhibit "Crying Is Just Wet Laughter" until September 27th located at 3002A Commerce St. Dallas, TX 75226
Mike Nichols, USA, 1966, 131 mins
Edward Albee’s astounding journey into the hell of a stormy marriage blazes with powerhouse performances by Oscar winners Elizabeth Taylor and Sandy Dennis, and Oscar nominees Richard Burton and George Segal. Nominated for 13 Academy Awards, this taut and explosive drama is filled with suspense and a searing tension that is as compelling and riveting as any film ever to hit the cinema.
Take Care of My Cat
Sept 9th 7:30pm
Sept 25th 8pm
Jeong Jae-eun, 2001, South Korea, 112 min
A sleeper hit at the time of its release, Jeong Jae-eun’s perceptive debut Take Care of My Cat chronicles the lives of five graduating friends whose bonds begin to fracture as they contend with their share of squashed dreams and unequal opportunities. Director Jeong sets the lives of her protagonists (among them Bae Doona and Lee Yo-won in breakout roles) against the industrial backdrop of Incheon, a port city adjacent to Seoul and bearing the brunt of South Korea’s ruthless globalization efforts. In the doing, her film expands to accommodate notions of class, solidarity and privilege – in what is now a timeless snapshot of a rapidly evolving society. Alternately bleak and sunny, realistic and effortlessly cool, suffused with the joys of girlhood yet clear-eyed about the uneasy transition into adulthood, Take Care of My Cat offers a tender and a multi-faceted portrait of young women at the turn of the new millennium.
Queer Poetry Night
Are you queer and/or trans? Do you have a poem or short story you're working on?
Come to our free queer reading starting at 7pm for folks to share original poetry, stories, etc
(Every participant will have a five minute time limit on their work just to be respectful of everyone else who wants to share their work)
Macho Dancer
Lino Brocka, 1998, Philippines, 136 mins
Upon losing a reliable American client, 18-year-old gigolo Pol (Allan Paule) leaves the provinces to try his luck in the soapy gay clubs of Metro Manila. Pol learns the ropes alongside fellow stripper Noel (Daniel Fernando) and savvy prostitute Bambi (Jaclyn Jose), discovering an underbelly of protection rackets, human trafficking and rampant political corruption.
One of Lino Brocka’s lasting successes, 1988’s MACHO DANCER combines a flair for socially conscious melodrama with pulp provocation, setting the template for what would become Viva Films’ erotic niche to this day. Underlying the film’s astute, cynical outlook on systemic, class-based exploitation in the Philippines is a neon-lit tale of self-discovery gyrating between queer desire and heteronormativity, sensuality and street-level grit, tenderness and violence. Heavily censored upon release and hugely successful overseas, MACHO DANCER follows the recent re-discovery of Brocka’s Bona and is presented here in a new 4K restoration from Viva Film’s original film elements.
Mayabazar Presents: Gol Maal (1979)
Hrishikesh Mukherjee, 1979, India,
When circumstances at work compel Ram to pretend to have a twin, his lie works -- until the boss wants his daughter to marry Ram’s fictitious brother.
From the Other Side
Co-partnering with Party for Socialism and Liberation DFW & Latin American Film Festival of Dallas and will feature a post-screening discussion.
Chantal Akerman, 2002, France, Spanish and French with English subtitles, 99 min.
Following her study of the crumbling Soviet Union landscape in 1993’s D’est, De l’autre côté (From the other side) finds Akerman shifting her focus to the border that divides the US and Mexico. Here, Akerman’s compassionate and curious gaze generously listens to the story of Mexicans journeying to cross the border. Shot nearly 25 years ago, this chilling portrait of migration remains an insightful rumination on the borders that divide us.
Alipato at Muog
JL Burgos , 2024, Philippines, 96 min
The abduction of Jonas Burgos in 2007 was brazen—carried out at noon in a crowded mall. As his family launched their search, a car plate brought them face-to-face with powerful forces. Thus began their fight for justice.
Despite insurmountable barriers, anonymous informants have provided leads and even the last known photo of Jonas in captivity. At the forefront of this battle is Edita, his 80-year-old mother, and her other son, filmmaker JL Burgos.
Presented through testimonials from their lawyer, a reporter, a former Justice Secretary and Human Rights Commission Chair, and witnesses who agreed to appear on condition of anonymity, combined with animation and never-before-seen footage of the family’s relentless search, JL pieces the stories together to uncover the painful truths about his brother’s disappearance.
Endless Summer Syndrome
Kaveh Daneshmand, 2023, France, 98 min
The mother of two adopted children's sense of duty takes a macabre turn when she learns that her husband may be having an affair with one of their kids.
Castration Movie Anthology III: Junior Ghosts—Premorphic Drift; a fragmentary passage
Louise Weard, Canada, 2026, 126 min (with built-in intermission)
Castration Movie is a multi-part postmodern epic by visionary auteur Louise Weard. In Chapter iii. Junior Ghosts—Premorphic Drift, Izzy (Avalon Fast) seeks out everything in her power to stop her partner (Henri Gillespi) from transitioning.
Selected Reviews for Castration Movie Anthology i. and ii.:
"Rejects conventional wisdom around representational politics, form or even what a movie is." - Sight and Sound
“As daring and revolutionary an indie film as any crafted this decade.” - William Bibbiani, The Wrap
“Castration Movie mixes Cassavetes-level rawness, a dazed Warholian languor and quotable banter worthy of Kevin Smith… With its scenes of unsimulated sex, water-sports, self-harm and the graphic aftermath of surgery, Castration Movie’s list of trigger warnings is longer than some films’ scripts.” - Ryan Gilbey, The Guardian
“Castration Movie holds the shimmering promise of what cinema can be now, when multiplex fare has entered its moribund final act and fascism is tightening its grip on dissent, free expression, and the rights of the vulnerable. Great films about real things made on the margins are evermore essential, and this is a great film.” - Chris Shields, Screen Slate
“It's so painful and good that I can only bear to watch it in like, fifteen minute increments while pacing around the room in psychic discomfort” - Torrey Peters (author, Detransition, Baby)
“A landmark in trans cinema, from its blisteringly uncomfortable first act to its bottomlessly miserable last.” - Gretchen Felker-Martin (author, Manhunt)
“May very well upend our notions of how trans film imagery can look and feel… and taste.” - Willow Catelyn Maclay and Caden Gardner (authors, Corpses, Fools, and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness on Film)
“Watching Castration Movie got me so hyped for the future of film.” - Morgan M. Page (writer, Framing Agnes)
“Castration Movie is cinema, everything else is mere filmmaking!” - Theda Hammel (filmmaker, Stress Positions)
Winner of the 2025 Frameline Audience Award
Castration Movie Anthology II: The Best of Both Worlds
Louise Weard, Canada, 2025, 300 min (with built-in intermission)
Castration Movie is a multi-part postmodern epic by visionary auteur Louise Weard.The second part of Castration Movie (running 300 minutes with an intermission) contains one chapter:
In Chapter iii. Polygon!!!! Heartmoder, Circle (Lex Walton) tries to leave a trans separatist cult in New York.
Selected Reviews for Castration Movie Anthology i.:
“As daring and revolutionary an indie film as any crafted this decade.” - William Bibbiani, The Wrap
“Castration Movie mixes Cassavetes-level rawness, a dazed Warholian languor and quotable banter worthy of Kevin Smith… With its scenes of unsimulated sex, water-sports, self-harm and the graphic aftermath of surgery, Castration Movie’s list of trigger warnings is longer than some films’ scripts.” - Ryan Gilbey, The Guardian
“Castration Movie holds the shimmering promise of what cinema can be now, when multiplex fare has entered its moribund final act and fascism is tightening its grip on dissent, free expression, and the rights of the vulnerable. Great films about real things made on the margins are evermore essential, and this is a great film.” - Chris Sheilds, Screen Slate
“It's so painful and good that I can only bear to watch it in like, fifteen minute increments while pacing around the room in psychic discomfort” - Torrey Peters (author, Detransition, Baby)
“A landmark in trans cinema, from its blisteringly uncomfortable first act to its bottomlessly miserable last.” - Gretchen Felker-Martin (author, Manhunt)
“May very well upend our notions of how trans film imagery can look and feel… and taste.” - Willow Catelyn Maclay and Caden Gardner (authors, Corpses, Fools, and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness on Film)
“Watching Castration Movie got me so hyped for the future of film.” - Morgan M. Page (writer, Framing Agnes)
“Castration Movie is cinema, everything else is mere filmmaking!” - Theda Hammel (filmmaker, Stress Positions)
Castration Movie Anthology I: Traps
Louise Weard, Canada, 2024, 275 min (with built-in intermission)
Castration Movie is a multi-part postmodern epic by visionary auteur Louise Weard. Anthology i. Traps contains two chapters. In Chapter i. Incel Superman, a production assistant named Turner Stewart (Noah Baker) sees his world spiral out of control as he uncompromisingly attempts to shape his life into the one he feels he deserves. In Chapter ii. Traps Swan Princess, a trans sex worker named Michaela “Traps” Sinclair (Louise Weard) finds her relationships becoming increasingly strained as she decides to pursue motherhood.
Written and directed by Louise Weard, Castration Movie Anthology i. Traps features a cast headlined by Louise Weard (Computer Hearts), Vera Drew (The People's Joker), Alice Maio Mackay (The Serpent’s Skin), Avalon Fast (Camp), John Paizs (Crime Wave), Lea Rose Sebastianis (In a Violent Nature), and Nate Wilson (The All Golden), amongst a mix of other emerging talent and weird and wonderful cameos.
Niu Lai (SOLD OUT)
Free screening presented by Haters Cafe!
Xin Yumeng, 2026, China, 86 mins
The naive calf Niu Lai loves exploring the grasslands, but struggles to live up to his family’s expectations as future leader of the herd. With migration fast approaching, Niu Lai finds unlikely allies on his journey to learn the meaning of courage as they prepare for a dangerous trek across the desert.
Take Care of My Cat
Sept 9th 7:30pm
Sept 25th 8pm
Jeong Jae-eun, 2001, South Korea, 112 min
A sleeper hit at the time of its release, Jeong Jae-eun’s perceptive debut Take Care of My Cat chronicles the lives of five graduating friends whose bonds begin to fracture as they contend with their share of squashed dreams and unequal opportunities. Director Jeong sets the lives of her protagonists (among them Bae Doona and Lee Yo-won in breakout roles) against the industrial backdrop of Incheon, a port city adjacent to Seoul and bearing the brunt of South Korea’s ruthless globalization efforts. In the doing, her film expands to accommodate notions of class, solidarity and privilege – in what is now a timeless snapshot of a rapidly evolving society. Alternately bleak and sunny, realistic and effortlessly cool, suffused with the joys of girlhood yet clear-eyed about the uneasy transition into adulthood, Take Care of My Cat offers a tender and a multi-faceted portrait of young women at the turn of the new millennium.
Partners
Free Labor Day screening!
Chris Sessions, 2025, USA, 39 min
When a group of baristas in Buffalo, New York announce their intention to start a labor union, Starbucks responds with an elaborate, illegal anti-union attack. Featuring on-the-ground footage from workers and organizers, Partners takes us to the front lines of the historic union campaign that catalyzed America’s Gen Z labor revival.
partnersthefilm.com
Absent Silhouette
Free screening! Followed by a post-screening Q&A with director and cast.
Byron Neal, 2026, USA, 10 min
Some shadows belong to us, where sorrow becomes the only companion left a dreamlike portrait of akhira unraveling beneath the weight of her own reflection. A meditation on loneliness, transformation, and the haunting spaces between memory and identity. As she descends into the depths of her own solitude, akhira is forced to confront the ghost within herself, a reflection of forgotten memories, buried desires, and the eternal struggle to find meaning in one's own existence.
Dreams in Nightmares
Post-screening mixer and DJ set featuring the folks of FEM N NEM! 9-10:30pm
Shatara Michelle Ford, USA, 2024, 120 min
Three Black queer femmes hit the road in search of a missing friend, unraveling truths and tensions along the way. Director Shatara Michelle Ford (TEST PATTERN) centers joy in a world in this defiant treatise for living.
“Shatara Michelle Ford borrows from and remixes the road movie to construct a vision of Black femmes finding peace.”
—The Hollywood Reporter
Shades of Silk (Ombres de soie)
Mary Stephen, 1978, Canada/France, 62 minutes
Mary Stephen, perhaps best known as Eric Rohmer’s editor, made her feature debut in 1978 with the alluring Ombres de soie [Shades of Silk], which traces the relationship between two Chinese women in Shanghai in the 1930s.
“An astounding low-budget achievement (in which 1970s Paris passes for 1930s Shanghai), this entrancing film evokes the Marguerite Duras of India Song, which is no accident: Stephen explicitly wished for Ombres de soie to be a counterpoint to India Song, from an Asian woman’s point of view. ” – New York Film Festival
Chaser (2026)
Live post-screening virtual Q&A with director Jesse Williams! Moderated by programmer Athenna Jey
North American premiere!
Jesse Williams, United Kingdom, 2026, 10 min
A trans woman on a night out crosses paths with a charming stranger, but he may not have her best interest at heart.
Mayabazar Presents: Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi
FREE SCREENING!
Co-presented with Mayabazar
Aditya Chopra, 2008, India, 167 mins
A lonely 40-ish man, likely to remain a bachelor, has a chance to find the love of his life when he falls for a vivacious young woman.
Black Chariot
Robert Goodwin, 1971, USA, 90 mins
Robert Goodwin wrote, produced and directed this lost gem of American independent cinema. Opening during a tense meeting between members of an underground Black Power group that leads to a stunning foot chase, Goodwin’s film weaves past and present to tell the story of the social awakening of a character only referred to as “the drifter” (screen legend Bernie Casey in his first starring role!). Shot on both 35mm and video and boasting a fierce, early performance from L.A. Rebellion icon Barbara O. Jones, BLACK CHARIOT is a fascinatingly iconoclastic revelation. Though world-premiered at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in 1971, BLACK CHARIOT has remained under-screened for decades — until now.
The Show About The Show
SCREENING SEASON ONE IN ITS ENTIRETY // Nature of Things art show
Independent filmmaker Caveh Zahedi is trying to make a television show. He persuades BRIC TV, a Brooklyn non-profit Arts organization, to finance a television show whose premise is that every episode will be about the making of the previous episode. In the process of creating the show, everything can-and does-go wrong.
“Holy shit…This is groundbreaking and scary as fuck.” - Jay Duplass
“I love you, Caveh. Thanks for being the worst of us.” - Matt Johnson
“Caveh is his own genre.” - Andrew Bujalski
Caveh Zahedi | 2017 | USA | 104 min
Spacy Selects
A new monthly curated short film program, one film from the collection will be shown before each screening during the designated month.
Lonesome Phantom (dir. Oscar Renova, Dallas)
Headshot (dir. Kate Saltel, Los Angeles)
Faces (dir. Rafael Elorza, Houston)
Not Nice (dir. Luke Morgan, Australia)
Not Nice directed by Alex Kirwan
Music Videos: "Pause Song" by Vail and "Hazard" by Team Effort
LAFFD Presents: Aventurera (1950)
FREE SCREENING!
Co-presented with Latin American Film Festival of Dallas (LAFFD)
Alberto Gout, 1950, Mexico, 101 min
Widely considered the greatest film in Mexico’s singular rumbera genre, Aventurera is a pitch-black film noir punctuated by Afro-Caribbean musical numbers. Cuban-born dancer-singer Ninón Sevilla stars as a proper young lady who, within ten minutes, witnesses a parent’s suicide, is sold into prostitution, and transformed into a nightclub sensation. Through these hairpin turns; the rules of female portrayal are rewritten. Elegantly rendered in inky black-and-white by legendary Golden Age of Mexican Cinema cinematographer Alex Phillips, Aventurera is a razor-sharp indictment of bourgeois society.
Divine Intervention (2002)
Programmed and presented by Palestinian artist Alkhatib.
Elia Suleiman, Palestine & France, 2002, 92min, in Arabic, English, and Arabic, Hebrew, and English with English subtitles)
A love story takes place between a Palestinian man living in Jerusalem and a Palestinian woman from Ramallah. The man – E.S. – shifts between his ailing father and his love life, trying to keep both alive. A dark comedy in the style of Jacques Tati or Buster Keaton, Suleiman’s Divine Intervention pokes fun at tragic situations and encourages the audience to do the same in ironic, imaginative scenes about garbage, neighbors, and dating.
Blood Simple
Midnight screening following Spacy’s 3-year anniversary! // $15 screening
The Coen Brothers’ debut feature follows the owner of a seedy small-town Texas bar discovers that one of his employees is having an affair with his wife. A chaotic chain of misunderstandings, lies, and mischief ensues after he devises a plot to have them murdered.
Joel and Ethan Coen | 1984 | USA | 99 min
3 Year Anniversary Party
We turn three this year but never had an anniversary party? We’re changing that this year! Swing by for free food & drinks, a celebratory cake, fun tunes, and we’re ending the night with a special edition of MIDNIGHT MASS with a midnight screening of the iconic Blood Simple (1984). We’ll also celebrating a launch of our new membership program that day (more info coming soon!) and one final mystery announcement….
VHS Swap + Near Dark (1987) at Tractorbeam
Free VHS screening of Near Dark (1987) and pre-show VHS swap with @dallasvhsswap.
VHS swap @ 6, Near Dark screening at 7. All happening at Tractorbeam HQ (1526 S Good Latimer Expy Suite 130, Dallas, TX 75226)
Pizza from Zalat and beer will be provided.
Space is very limited, so rsvp at rsvp@tractorbeam.com to save your spot. 🧛
Pray for daylight, 🙏 come for fun. See you there.
Athena Jey's Weird Girl Movie Club Presents: Puppygirl
Featuring an exclusive pre-recorded intro from director Henry Hanson.
Henry Hanson, 2026, USA, 55 min
A semi-delusional trans woman (Milo Talwani) embarks on a shocking, bizarre, and oddly touching personal odyssey to undo years of sexual repression by performing in puppygirl fetish porn in Henry Hanson's new gonzo documentary.
Nature of Things Presents: Morvern Callar
Lynne Ramsay, 2002, USA, 97 mins
This screening is in collaboration with Nature of Things with their current exhibit Earthlicker, featuring paintings by LA-based Ellen Khansefid and sculptural wall works by Dallas-area-based Clint Bargers, on view from June 27 – August 15, 2026, located at 3002A Commerce St. Dallas, TX 75226. Watch both Fantastic Planet & Morvern Callar for a discounted bundle of $15!
This exhibition explores a fetishistic gaze through Khansefid’s interest in celebrity, erotica, and internet sub-cultures, while Bargers’ sculptures engage with body modification—through use of ear gauge eyelets, tribal tattoo design, and hollowed-out forms—they can be seen through or only from the sides.
On Christmas morning, Morvern Callar (Samatha Morton) wakes up to discover that her boyfriend, a troubled writer, has taken his own life in the apartment they share, leaving behind an assortment of lovingly wrapped presents: a leather jacket, a Walkman with a carefully curated mixtape, and instructions on what to do with the completed manuscript of his final novel.
Rosa de Areia
António Reis & Margarida Cordeiro, 1989, Portugal 88 min
António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro’s final film, Rosa de Areia, is their most unclassifiable endeavor. The film is a work of sensuous abstraction performed in the open air of Trás-os-Montes, the remote region in Portugal’s Northeast which was a site of lifelong inspiration for the duo. In a series of ritualistic, highly elaborate sequence shots, as elusive and exquisite as the “desert rose” of the film’s title, Reis and Cordeiro spin a cosmic tale of nature and the human condition, drawing on a diverse range of texts ranging from Michel de Montaigne to Carl Sagan. In Cordeiro’s words, ‘Rosa de Areia is a film for those who can see and listen as if for the first time; as if it was the first film that came from the earth and spoke about it
Ana
António Reis & Margarida Cordeiro, 1982, Portugal, 115 min
Largely unknown outside Portugal, filmmakers António Reis (1927-1991) and Margarida Cordeiro (b. 1939) are legendary figures in their native country. Reis was a poet, a folklorist, and an ethnographer; Cordeiro, a psychiatrist by trade. Across the four films they made together, the duo forged a cinema of profound commitment, deeply rooted in the language, labors, myths, dreams, and material realities of a land and a people: namely, the peasants of Trás-os-Montes in Portugal’s remote Northeast. With one foot firmly anchored in the earth and the other in the cosmos, Reis and Cordeiro conjure up the deep, cyclical time of folk tradition. Their films are a collision of the forces of documentary and poetry, fact and fabulation, the ancient and the avant-garde, a vertigo of contradictions at once harmonious and sharply unreconciled. Employing simple and direct means, their work is all the more mystical for being so concrete. ‘Here and nowhere else. Here and anywhere else’—this is the paradoxical space-time of their films, in the words of Serge Daney
Trás-os-Montes
António Reis, Margarida Cordeiro 1976, Portugal, 111m
A film of long shadows and smoke in twilight, Trás-os-Montes is an intensive labor of recollection, an epic of a land and a way of life on the edge of oblivion, and a major turning point in the history of Portuguese cinema. In 1974, filmmakers António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro traveled ten thousand kilometers across the isolated, near-mythical region in the Northeast of Portugal known as Trás-os-Montes. They recruited a cast of inhabitants old and young from local villages to materialize their histories, legends, dreams, and nightmares for the camera. The philosophy of the peasants, their rebellion, their everyday existence far from the laws of church and state, and their closeness to ancient things—these encounters informed the dialectical approach of the film, where fiction and reality, past and future swell in an immediate present. The result is a work of deep and threatened lyricism. In voiceover, Reis and Cordeiro adapt passages from Kafka and the Chinese poet Po Chü-i, translated to the guttural subdialect of the Northeast. As an act of solidarity with a people facing extinction, Trás-os-Montes echoes through time.
Dance Freak + The Patron Saint Of Roadkill (double feature)
Spacy and $5flesh present a double feature evening of The Patron Saint Of Roadkill (dir. Arin Spence) and Dance Freak (dir. Robby Rackleff and Alan Resnick) plus an open bar and live music after party
Dance Freak: A dangerous experiment goes awry resulting in a Dance Freak running wild.
The Patron Saint Of Roadkill: Andy's bogus job search comes to an end when they get hired by a mysterious company to give funerals to roadkill.
6:30 - The Patron Saint Of Roadkill (dir. Arin Spence)
7:20 - intermission/$5FLESH bar opens
7:30 - Dance Freak (dir. Robby Rackleff, Alan Resnick)
9:15 - TPSORK original score performance from Jordan Glazer + $5FLESH after party
With Hasan in Gaza
Kamal Aljafari 2025, Palestine, 112 minutes
Constructed from three MiniDV tapes shot in Gaza in 2001 and rediscovered years later, the film transforms recovered footage into a profound cinematic meditation on memory, loss, and the passage of time.
Originally conceived as a search for a former prison mate from 1989, the film unfolds into an unexpected road trip from the north to the south of Gaza with Hasan, a local guide whose fate remains unknown. As the camera moves through Gaza’s streets and landscapes, it records fleeting moments of everyday life—fragments of a reality now irreversibly altered. With Hasan in Gaza throws mainstream images of a people displaced into relief through the traces of absence bygone time evokes.
Bouchra
Wrestling with writer’s block for her first film, Bouchra, a queer Moroccan jackal living in NYC, starts having difficult yet overdue phone calls with her mother in Casablanca that begin influencing the project. Balancing the precarity of working as an artist in New York, the rift in her identity between her two homes and an array of friendships and romantic interests, Bouchra’s emotional reckoning with her mother and herself becomes her path to expression.
With a lived-in granularity and unmistakable visual style, BOUCHRA, the feature debut from acclaimed visual artists Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki (best known together from their 2020 web series 2 LIZARDS), is a singular portrait effortlessly towing the line between documentary, visual art and resonant family drama. Deeply felt, surprisingly sexy and formally adventurous, Bennani and Barki’s distinctive debut forges new ground that “will make it a classic of queer cinema for years to come” (Next Best Picture).
RiYL: Ryan Trecartin, early 2000s video games, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the visuals of Chungking Express
Open Disc Nite
May 31 - Hosted by $5Flesh.
Let’s get weird. Like an open mic but for video. Screen anything you want in front of a small audience at Spacy.
Must be under 15 minutes
Discs, links, USB, hard drive accepted
Send to simon@spacydtx.com prior to event