COME BACK TO THE FIVE AND DIME JIMMY DEAN, JIMMY DEAN

1982. 109 min. Directed by Robert Altman.

Inside a decrepit Woolworth’s five-and-dime store 90 miles outside Marfa, Texas, a group of women, formerly the “Disciples of James Dean” fan club, reunite on the 20th anniversary of the actor’s death. Alternating between the present 1975, and intermittent flashbacks to 1955, a dirge of secrets, confessions, and breakdowns unfurl in dazzling, phrenetic, drunken hysteria. Adapted from Ed Graczyk’s stage play, the film features a youthful Cher as the town slut, Kathy Bates as a blow-hard bully, and arguably Sandy Dennis’ most stunning (ie: unhinged) performance. Karen Black’s ‘shocking’ reveal that she was formerly Joe, now Joanne, adds to the frenzy of dated “welcome to the freak show” vibes. Our presenting artist, poet CAConrad, has seen this film over 110 times.

THE EXILES

1961. 72 min. Directed by Kent Mackenzie.

Multidisciplinary artist Jeffrey Gibson presents THE EXILES, a 1960s anti-social documentary about a group of young urban native Americans who have left reservation life to live in Bunker Hill, Los Angeles. Shot in black and white, the film fluctuates between social and solitude as we follow the characters in and out of the noisy, bustling city with pit stops to quieter domestic spaces. Vignettes of daily life and nighttime gallivanting are punctured by interior monologues of each character reflecting on their intertwined lives. Using the form of a fiction film, and writing collaboratively with the performers who play themselves on screen, dir. Kent Mackenzie wanted to challenge conventional documentary to capture a more complex depiction.

BELLY

1998. 96 min. Directed by Hype Williams.

Curator and writer Legacy Russell, with writer and multi-disciplinary artist Anaïs Duplan, present the controversial and visually riveting neo-noir, BELLY (1998). Childhood friends Sincere (Nas) and Buns (DMX) build an empire of drug trafficking and backstabbing. But Sincere grows weary of their lifestyle, while Buns sinks deeper and deeper into bigger, riskier deals. After an arrest, the cops offer him a deal - assassinate the head of a Muslim group or life in prison. Sincere imagines leaving the drug trade and moving to Africa. Though he’s never been, he is motivated by a fantasy of diasporic homecoming; the idea that escape is possible and there is a place to belong. At its release, the now cult classic was banned from being shown in basketball player Magic Johnson’s theater chain due to “negative and violent depictions of African Americans.”

CITY OF LOST SOULS

1983. 94 min. Directed by Rosa von Praunheim.

T Fleischmann, author of the book length essay Time is the Thing the Body Moves Through, presents the film CITY OF LOST SOULS (1983) starring Angie Stardust of the famous New York Club 82 who plays house mom to a group of raunchy and wildly eccentric outsiders living in Berlin. Amongst the cast is Glam Rock punk singer Jayne County (of Derek Jarman’s JUBILEE and the Warhol Factory films), and the late Tara O’Hara. The film funnels through a vortex of sets saturated with americana, devilish hellscapes, underground nightclubs, and a diner that serves up flesh of all varieties. We join the characters in a feverish state as they fuck, wax poetic about racism, transphobia, queerness, and political commentary on the east versus west. For these lurid exhibitionists, even the act of eating becomes a type of orgy, as the characters don’t just bite and chew as much as they devour disproportionately large servings of food in erotic, messy sploshing scenes. The film is unabashedly risqué, camp, and queer in a way much like american transplant and trapeze artist Tron summarizes it to the audience, “I am not gay, straight, bi nor trisexual; I’m simply sexual!”