As a prelude to Valentine’s Day, on Saturday, February 11, Exhumed Films and PhilaMOCA are presenting a double-bill featuring some our favorite ass-kicking sweethearts of Hong Kong action cinema! Prepare yourselves for a knockout night of flying fists and spitting bullets with Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima in the super-slick HK take on CHARLIE’S ANGELS, ANGEL (aka. FIGHTING MADAM) (1987), and stay for the early Michelle Yeoh Indiana Jones-inspired adventure, MAGNIFICENT WARRIORS (1987) — both on 35mm! The show will begin with an epic reel of HK girls ‘n’ girls trailers! If you love HK action, you DO NOT WANT TO MISS THIS ONE!

All ages

Hong Kong Action 35mm Double-Feature

film

Film

Philadelphia

PhilaMOCA

Celestial music has a vastly unknown history, the phrase first being coined in the early 70s by Iasos, Greek-American musician who began studying Bossa Nova & Jazz, before he became enraptured by an ambient radio station that began playing in his head. Alan Watts, a friend of Iasos, was quoted in stating “Iasos makes the classical music of the new age” – which gave rise to the musical genre. Music pioneers like Laraaji have found their own center in expressing celestial music, emanating his own aspects of Eastern mysticism & unique forms of meditation, proven to make you bliss out f’days.

In the last few decades we’ve seen celestial music work its way into pop. Vinyl Williams is an LA-based artist that has a history of combining these subtle aspects into harmonious pop music & visionary artwork. Collaborating with like-minded self-producers such as Chaz Bear of Toro Y Moi, Morgan Delt, and Ruban Nielsen of UMO, he’s built a universe of palatial 3D environments, and recorded 5 albums to date. Now onto his 6th, Cosmopolis, Vinyl Williams leads those through his most detailed exoplanet experience thus far.

Coming from a long line of LA-based musicians, Williams follows the feelings of Love, Brian Wilson, Strawberry Alarm Clock, and producer/arrangers like Curt Boettcher and Burt Bacharach to create his own lush sunshine pop paradise. One can also easily notice the many inspirations of Brazilian masterminds such as Arthur Verocai, Lo Borges, Nelson Angelo, as well as British dream pop / shoegaze production of Robin Guthrie and A.R. Kane. The many-riveted layers create a rainbow arch of pure imagination.

Since 2014, Williams has recorded his albums at Non Plus Ultra, one of LA’s last underground music strongholds. You’ll probably see him on a Friday or Saturday night running sound & visuals. His studio’s filled with a barrage of communal music gear, loaned tape machines and synths, making a funky-yet-simple recording setup. The sound he gets is definitely his own distinct textural landscape, turning Casio’s into orchestras and guitars into full choirs, the simple boundaries create the sonic complexities.

https://vinylwilliams.com

http://vinylwilliams.bandcamp.com

Mahogany incorporates elements of postpunk, shoegaze, disco + classical into futuristic, architectural, symphonic dreampop. The band, consisting of co-collaborators Andrew Prinz and Jaclyn Slimm, combines vocals, dual 12-string guitars, massive bass, melodica, sequencers, synthesizers and samplers along with video projections for a cumulative effect that the band refers to as the "Hypercube."

Mahogany have released two critically acclaimed full-length albums, The Dream of the Modern Day, and Connectivity!, as well as numerous singles, EPs and compilation tracks collected on Memory Column: Early Works and Rarities 1996-2004. They have performed live with Vampire Weekend, Spoon, Chairlift, Clinic, Bloc Party, Serena Maneesh, Interpol, Luna, Broadcast, and others, in addition to being featured in international publications such as The New York Times, NME, Guardian, Pitchfork, ZOO Magazine, NYLON Japan, MOJO, Time Out, ArtRocker, Chicago Sun-Times and more.

https://www.mahogany.nu

Flanafi : The music of Simon Martinez

https://flanafi.bandcamp.com

https://www.instagram.com/flanafi

All ages

Vinyl Williams w/ Mahogany and Flanafi

Gigs

PhilaMOCA continues its tradition of counter-programming on Valentine's Day with the Philly Premiere of Gaspar Noé’s IRREVERSIBLE: STRAIGHT CUT!

One night. An unforgivable act. A tale told in reverse.

Acclaimed filmmaker Gaspar Noé’s unflinching exploration of human savagery and the uncompromising nature of time, IRREVERSIBLE was met with a groundswell of acclaim and uproar upon its premiere at the opening night of Cannes in 2002. Stylish, sexually frank, and brutal, the film’s conceit of exploring the events of one terrible night on the streets of Paris in reverse chronological order was celebrated and derided in equal measure, helping to further cement Noé’s legacy as a cinematic enfant terrible.

Nearly 20 years later, Noé brought Irreversible back, presenting the “Straight Cut” to the Venice Film Festival. This reconfigured vision allowed audiences to see the events of the film unfold in the order in which they occur, providing new context for pivotal scenes of brutality and the subsequent quest for revenge. Now available are both cuts of the film, providing the viewer the opportunity to see Noé’s potent account of humanity at its worst from multiple angles, and the unshakable understanding that time, indeed, reveals all things.

Not for the faint of heart, easily offended, or anyone with photosensitivity, this is Noé's dark masterpiece.

WARNING: this film contains scenes of graphic sexual content and violence

This is an 18+ event

IRREVERSIBLE: STRAIGHT CUT - Philadephia Premiere

A feature-length crowd-pleasing compilation of clips from classic gay adult films from the 1960s-80s followed by a secret 16mm feature film screening!

Long before Hollywood films like CALL ME BY YOUR NAME and LOVE, SIMON became common fare at the multiplex, the only place gay men could see their lives and lusts depicted on screen with any degree of honesty was at their local all-male adult cinema. From coming-out stories to romances, horror to camp comedy, the hundreds of features churned out by the gay adult film industry throughout the 1960s-80s were a driving force behind the spread of gay culture and constitute a largely forgotten cinematic document of the era. These films were often shot in actual queer spaces, starred the people who frequented them, and were then screened in movie theaters that doubled as safe communal spaces for members of the community.

The video component of a multimedia project that also encompasses an acclaimed podcast and Instagram feed, Elizabeth Purchell’s ASK ANY BUDDY compiles fragments from over 120 feature films to create a kaleidoscopic, dreamlike snapshot of the era. An official selection of nearly two-dozen international film festivals including BFI Flare and Outfest, ASK ANY BUDDY is a funny, sexy portrait of gay life in the years following the Stonewall Riots–or at least how it looked in the movies.

Adults only, doors 7:30, show 8:00 followed by a surprise gay adult film from the era projected on 16mm!

This is an 17+ event

ASK ANY BUDDY Philly Premiere + surprise 16mm film!

Everyone dies but no one talks about it, not really.

A comedy show about grief from Michael Cruz Kayne.

Michael Cruz Kayne is a WGA and Peabody Award winner and two-time Emmy nominee. He is currently a writer for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and has been seen on HBO, Comedy Central, HBO Max, and elsewhere. He is a dad and a husband and a Filipino and a Jew.

All ages

SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS WITH MICHAEL CRUZ KAYNE

comedy

Comedy

Over the last half decade, the music collective Constant Smiles has produced a prolific output of acclaimed music, culminating in their forthcoming record Kenneth Anger, masterfully brought to life by engineer Jonathan Schenke (Parquet Courts, Liars, Dougie Pool). The group is known most recently for their much-praised debut album for Sacred Bones records, Paragons, an emotionally resonant offering of indie folk masterpieces that all confront the internal ways we process our struggles with intimacies, addiction and humanity - produced by Ben Greenberg.  

Constant Smiles’ primary singer/songwriter Ben Jones uses the creative process as a tool for working through a deeply transformative period in his life. The band’s indie folk music lays bare this internal process, but on Kenneth Anger, the music shifts to synth pop and looks externally, examining creativity, community, ritual, and their place in the healing process. Ritual takes a primary role in the eponymous Kenneth Anger. Not only is auteur Kenneth Anger himself known for his sensorial depictions of ritual, Jones often used the films as a silent visual back drop during his song writing sessions, a ritual that grounded the creation of the album. And while the director's use of saturated color inspired the warm 80s synth style production, the director's trailblazing spirit of authenticity also pushed Jones through his most vulnerable expression to date.  

Kenneth Anger is a collage of inspirations all funneled through the depths of reckoning into a distinctly unique synth pop tableau. Album opener "Finding Ways" uses a spiraling bass line, shimmering guitars and soft repetitive mantra-style vocals to bring the listener under the album's spell. It leads into stand-out track "In My Heart", where haunting background vocals by guitarist Lena Fjortoft and the propulsive drums of Ryan Jewell help to craft an anthem you haven't heard until you have heard it with the volume up and the wind in your hair. The album's most overtly pop song "Gold Like Water" was written about the intense feelings of panic attacks, spirals and spin outs, but also about feeling grateful for the people in your life who can help pull you out. The soothing double vocal performance by Jones and Taia and the rich cello accompaniment by Nicky Wetherall, become their own medicine.  

This illustrates one of the foundational accomplishments of the album: while the narrative undertones of the songs deal with fear and isolation and anxiety, the songs themselves were created through the healing process of ritual, and enriched with collaboration, community and trust. The resulting music produces a balm that can genuinely recalibrate the nervous system. The listener journeys through the depths of every track while being lifted and guided by the music’s transformative hypnotic power. Just as a Kenneth Anger film explores the underbelly of the unconscious through proto-ASMR visuals, Kenneth Anger the album conjures the underworld into a series of synth pop classics.  

https://www.sacredbonesrecords.com/collections/constant-smiles

https://constantsmiles.bandcamp.com/

https://constantsmilesmusic.com/

All ages

Constant Smiles (Sacred Bones) w/ Pine Barons + Jeff Zeigler

Highnoon : https://highnoon.bandcamp.com/

Bleary Eyed : https://blearyeyed.bandcamp.com/album/guise

Fib

Halloween:

All ages

Highnoon / Bleary Eyed / Fib / Halloween at PhilamOCA

Drummer Zach Danziger and bassist Kevin Scott are two of the baddest musicians on the global music scene. Wednesday Night Titans is their baby, a multimedia, Championship Wrestling-fueled extravaganza that’s one-part NASA-like brain challenge (Google “Zach Danziger TED Talk”), two parts interactive video shock treatment, and three parts future-music language lesson.

Utilizing the zany antics of such 1980s-era wrestling icons as Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, and Randy “Macho Man” Savage as their video-projected inspirations, Wednesday Night Titans create a unique, proto-cosmic barrage, manipulating speech, video, music, and lights from their instruments in real time. It’s an over-the-top mind-gasm of roid-warrior madness, and performance art profundity.

Breaking ground is nothing new for Zach Danziger. As a fifteen-year-old at New York City’s Drummers’ Collective, he could often be heard jamming with the likes of Dave Weckl and Dennis Chambers, leaving these legendary drummers dumbfounded. At age seventeen, Danziger joined Latin pianist Michel Camilo’s groundbreaking trio before stoking guitarist Wayne Krantz’s blitzkrieg band for two pioneering albums. Danziger currently mans the drum chair with saxophonist Donny McCaslin’s (of David Bowie’s Blackstar) genre-busting band, and has written music and performed on over one hundred movie soundtracks including David Holmes’ popular Oceans’ series, and co-designed Zildjian cymbals Re-Mix, Kerope, and Avedis lines.

Alabama native bassist / producer Kevin Scott has an equally impressive resume, including longtime collaborations with Colonel Bruce Hampton, Bernard Purdie, Jimmy Herring, John McLaughlin, and Wayne Krantz; the mighty Matador Soul Sounds and FORQ currently benefit from Scott’s dynamic bass and extreme presence. 

Staking visionary turf in today’s decentralized music business is tough. The trials are enormous, the gamble real, the obstacles daunting. As Jake “the Snake” Roberts proclaims in one massive Wednesday Night Titans track, “Some people are imitators and some people are innovators, and I am an innovator!”  Join Wednesday Night Titans as they step into the ring and drive their innovative, audiovisual battle-royale deep into your brain.

www.wednesdaynighttitans.com

All ages

Wednesday Night Titans

An evening of decrepit media from the never-ending archive of the notorious 1-800-HOT-DUCK.

The vast found footage library is culled from the depths of the internet, abandoned youtube channels, strange downloads on the darkest parts of the web, videos shared and stolen and reproduced within an inch of their life. Some of the hottest 1-800-HOT-DUCK finds include 1980’s homemade horror films from deranged teenagers, lost TV from around the globe, and rare experimental video by everyone from Johanna Went to Cecelia Condit.

1-800-HOT-DUCK is the brainchild of Chrissy Marie Jones, a native Philadelphian and video artist. Catch her collaborations with Everything is Terrible! and occasional curation and hosting duties with Cathode Tv.

Adults only!

This is a 17+ event

1-800-HOT-DUCK

Tina Friml is a NY based standup comedian. Using animated optimism on her own physical disability, yet fearless honesty about the social assumptions that come with living with cerebral palsy, Tina has cultivated a strong following with 127K followers on Instagram and over 92.5K on Tiktok. She was a 2019 New Face in the acclaimed Just For Laughs Festival, has performed in the Limestone Comedy Festival in Bloomington, Indiana and appeared in the 2018 NBC Comedy Spotlight Series at Boston's Women in Comedy Festival. In her home state, she was crowned the 2018 winner of ‘Vermont’s Funniest Comedian’ at the Vermont Comedy Club and has since begun infiltrating stages in Boston, New York, Montreal, and London.

All ages

Tina Friml

Xiu Xiu w/ Jakob Battick at PhilaMOCA!

This is a record of halves.

Angela Seo sings on half of the record. Jamie Stewart sings on half of the record.

Half of the songs are experimental industrial. Half of the songs are experimental modern classical. Half of it is real. Half of it is imaginary.

The real songs attempt to turn the worst life has offered to five people the band is connected with into some kind of desperate shape that does something, anything, other than grind and brutalize their hearts and memory within these stunningly horrendous experiences.

The imaginary songs are an expansion and abstract exploration of the early rock and roll “Teen Tragedy” genre as jumping off point to decontaminate the band’s own overwhelming emotions in knowing and living with what has happened to these five people.

What none of this record does and despite the oft repeated assertion, what Xiu Xiu has never done, is attempt to superficially shock the listener. Instead, Xiu Xiu has spent twenty years grappling with how to process, to be empathetic towards, to disobey and to reorganize horror; there is no other word for it other than horror.

The motivation for writing Ignore Grief to be about a child who was sold into prostitution by his mother, a junior high student who was kidnapped and murdered, incessantly choosing alcohol and cocaine over one’s family, becoming lost in the bleakest, darkest aspects of cultish spirituality and committing suicide as means to escape and protest a life of violent sex work is because the members of Xiu Xiu themselves are deeply shocked.

Old friend and new member David Kendrick (Sparks, Devo, Gleaming Spires) joins Angela Seo and Jamie Stewart through whatever this may be and whatever it may mean and why ever it may have occurred. The point of aesthetic examination is to see if there is any way to come out the other side or if there is even any reason. In either case there may not be but to simply turn away would be yet a further act of destruction.

“I had now lost all confidence in myself, doubted all men immeasurably, and abandoned all hopes for the things of this world, all joy, all sympathy, eternally. This was the truly decisive incident of my life. I had been split through the forehead between the eyebrows, a wound that was to throb with pain whenever I came into contact with a human being.” -Osamu Dazai

https://www.xiuxiu.org/

Jakob Battick is a Philadelphia-based musician and visual artist. Their musical work combines elements of death, doom, and black metal with hypnotic drone and folk forms to create a shadowy, occult-fixated body of songs that’s at once disturbing and hauntingly melodic. Jakob’s songwriting burrows into the boundaries between the familiar and the phantasmic, casting a unique sonic landscape that could exist comfortably within the realms of both outsider horror cinema and the most anti-orthodox fringe of experimental metal today. Jakob’s latest album, Raise the Dead, is a full-length collaboration with the Connecticut drone duo Tongue Depressor, released in October of 2022 via the Czech label Stoned to Death. It finds Jakob channeling the furthest, most ritualistic, necromantic impulses at the heart of the songs themselves, faithfully and with less mediation than ever before.

https://jakobbattick.bandcamp.com

https://www.jakobbattick.com

https://www.instagram.com/jakobbattick/

All ages

Xiu Xiu

I Luv the Valley OH!

Acid Dad is an American alternative-rock band composed of singer-guitarists, Vaughn Hunt and Sean Fahey, and drummer, Trevor Mustoe. Vaughn first started recording the band in his Bushwick, NY basement releasing singles “Brain Body” and their first EP “Let’s Plan a Robbery.” Appearing live in the New York City rock scene in 2016, Acid Dad quickly moved to a world stage with their self-titled debut album, released by Greenway Records in 2018. During 2020, the band spent their time building a new studio space in Queens, NY, while continuing to independently produce all their own music, art and even building their own guitars. With a new space and vision, the band produced their second LP, “Take It From The Dead,” set to be co-released in June 2021 by Brooklyn’s Greenway Records and psych powerhouse LEVITATION’s label, The Reverberation Appreciation Society.

“Take It From The Dead” features an array of different influences ranging from 90’s neo-psych, modern post-punk and 70’s rock-n-roll. Acid Dad has crafted a record that sounds new, yet feels nostalgic. In contrast to their earlier work, they make use of slower tempos and expand their sound to include songs that are both more intricate and more hypnotic. To accompany the new record, the band spent the last year collaborating with video artist Webb Hunt, producing psych and glitch art videos that form a visual counterpart to the dreamy distortions of their sound.

Acid Dad is Vaughn Hunt (guitars and vocals), Sean Fahey (guitars and vocals) and Trevor Mustoe (drums).

Toronto based garage punk psych rockers, Wine Lips hit the stage for the first time in the fall of 2015. Initially a part time project between songwriter/guitar player, Cam Hilborn and drummer Aurora Evans, the band began playing clubs in Toronto, stretching organically to surrounding Ontario cities, and then Quebec. Wine Lips released their self-titled debut LP on indie label Fried Records in 2017 and set out on their first 5-province tour east to Halifax, and haven’t looked back since. After an appearance in Quebec City, the band was approached with regard to touring overseas. That chance meeting resulted in an April 2018 tour of Hong Kong and China, where they were received by enthusiastic audiences.

Never letting the dust settle, the band released their follow up LP “Stressor” in March 2019 and toured North America relentlessly until early 2020. The release of Stressor along with endless tour dates earned the band a new following and saw some of the albums tracks featured on television and Netflix.

The band spent most of their free time in 2020 writing and recording their third full length record “Mushroom Death Sex Bummer Party” at The Sugar Shack in London, Ontario with Simon Larochette.

“The record is crazy, I really spent a lot of time getting the songs to sound the way I was hearing it in my head. I think this is the best stuff we’ve recorded and I couldn’t be happier with the end result!” - Cam

Wine Lips consists of Cam Hilborn on Guitar and Vocals with Aurora Evans on Drums and Charlie Weare on Bass.

“Fuzzy, loud and fast, Wine Lips are a garage/ punk/ psychedelic band whose music feels like a shot of adrenaline to the heart. A no holds barred kind of rock n roll that’ll make you want to buy a motorcycle, just to crash it.” – Sled Island

All ages

Acid Dad / Wine Lips

Put on your Powerglove, have a colorful cocktail and enjoy the view. Stones Throw is excited to introduce Pearl & The Oysters, the duo of Juliette Pearl Davis and Joachim Polack. Their new song “Pacific Ave,” written about their move from Florida to Los Angeles, features Alex Brettin of Mild High Club on guitar. The “Pacific Ave” video directed by Sean McGuirk, an ’80s-style live TV performance, was inspired by Japanese Jazz Fusion artists like Casiopea and Yellow Magic Orchestra’s embrace of both analog and digital in their music and visuals.

Pearl & The Oysters met at high school in Paris and immediately bonded over their mutual love for ’70s jazz and ‘90s space age pop. They have been writing and performing together ever since, and moved across the Atlantic together in 2015. Pearl & The Oysters say: “‘In January 2020, we settled in L.A. full of hope for the future of the band. ‘Pacific Ave’ was a cryptic attempt to allude to our first steps in this new environment being a little alienating, as we were discovering a megalopolis turned ghost town. Because we were physically confined, it really felt like the only avenue to escape was a mental one. For us, it meant a lot of daydreaming and fantasizing about L.A. itself or what it could represent. The song is inspired sonically by AOR and jazz-pop records of the late 1970s.”

Look out for more new music from Pearl & The Oysters coming soon.

All ages

Pearl & The Oysters (Stones Throw)

Pearl & The Oysters

TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY SCREENING

*Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye*

Directed by Andrew Repasky McElhinney

2003, 81 minutes

Starring Melissa Elizabeth Forgione, Querelle Haynes, Courtney Shea, Sean Timothy Sexton, Claude Barrington White

DUE TO THE GRAPHIC NATURE OF THIS FILM, NO ONE UNDER 18 ADMITTED

One of the most provocative and enigmatic works of 21st century American independent cinema, freely appropriated from one of the 20th centuries' most notorious pornographic books, writer/director Andrew Repasky McElhinney's 2003 movie, *Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye* takes place in a seemingly abandoned house where a group of people engage in wordless acts of passion. The movie showcases a complex, remarkable soundscape by avant-garde musicians City of Horns, as the action covers a period from evening to morning, and the sexual couplings among the members of the house become increasingly harrowing as daylight arrives.

In its initial theatrical run, *Variety* declared *Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye* “a punk-pornocopia equivalent to *Last Year at Marienbad*,” while *The San Francisco Bay Guardian* wrote, “*Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye* is a provocation that hypnotizes, a hallucinatory narcotic.”

*The New York Times* called *Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye* "transgression in a literal sense, an act of aggression that Bataille would no doubt have appreciated. This is not a movie for passive consumption, but a film that bites back."

Museum of Modern Art artist Andrew Repasky McElhinney is an independent filmmaker and experimental theater director best known for his 2000 gothic horror film *A Chronicle of Corpses*, an audacious blend of Vermeer lighting and genre plotting, praised by Dennis Lim in *The Village Voice* for its “rancid opulence and humid religiosity.” McElhinney's other movies include *A Maggot Tango* (1995), *Magdalen* (1998), *Animal Husbandry* (2008) and *Christmas Dreams* (2015). McElhinney is currently completing work on *Casual Encounters: Philadelphia True Crime Confessions*, a history of the city from 1960 to 2010 as seen through five different neighborhoods, each shot in a different film format.

This is an 18+ event

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