RED BONE GUERILLAS
dir. Pierre Bennu, 2003
100 mins. United States.
In English.

TUESDAY, MAY 6 - 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, MAY 21 - 10 PM
FRIDAY, MAY 30 - 7:30 PM

Spectacle is thrilled to invite interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker Pierre Bennu back to present his film RED BONE GUERILLAS, which the theater showed a handful of times in 2013.

Shot on miniDV, Bennu’s zero-budget feature debut follows a troupe of young acting students who seek revenge after being bullied by their teacher, an overhyped Broadway has-been named Magenta Bergenstein (“You clap for yourself, not me!”)

Led by aspiring filmmaker Bonita Evans, the Red Bone Guerillas initially set out to document Magenta’s downfall, but soon find themselves staging public interventions that combine Situationist philosophizing with revolutionary politics, striving for an “aesthetic towards freedom” even as their lives can’t help but pull them in other directions.

While Bennu's film begins like a Christopher Guest-style sendup of theater-kid narcissism and the eternal question of whether capital-A art can effect political change, it soon reveals itself as brilliant study of forms and clichés. Some scenes feel like gripping reality television, others like performance pieces ala Andrea Fraser. And while the film makes sure to entertain, its final act unravels like a political thriller, tackling the blurring of the private and public self in ways that recall both SUNSET BOULEVARD and any number of unfolding real-time celebrity meltdowns. Maybe the funniest thing about the RBGs is how easy it is for them to get to the top: while Bennu’s prescient vision of socially mediated paranoia mostly takes place offline, it's telling that a cell phone or a suite of computer monitors signals both distraction and power – a lurch forward in conspicuous consumption.