MIX NYC Presents: FRIENDS OF THE DEVIL: QUEER OCCULT DEPRAVITY
dir. various, 1969-1994
US. 80 mins.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 6 - 7:30 PM - $10 SPECIAL EVENT

Amidst the latest techno-religious paranoia-fueled surge in evergreen fears of satanism, queers have – as always – found ourselves at the center of the fray. In the right-wing imagination, queer sexuality, gender nonconformity, devil worship, and a sordid lust for violence and carnage have long been inextricable. In this wide-ranging program, experimental film and video works at the intersections of these ideas offer self-reflection and humor as well as pure abject jouissance. 
 
Featuring:
Stray Dogs
dir. Richard Kern, 1985
US. 10 mins.
 
Part of his anthology The Manhattan Love Suicides (1984), Richard Kern’s Stray Dogs is a transgressive tale of obsession and stalking inspired by the filmmaker’s life. Propelled by a grinding industrial score, this playfully garish work explores Kern’s belief that, “people that are so in love that their love kills them. They just can’t handle it. Because that was how all my relationships were.”

Sleeping with the Devil
dir. Reza Abdoh, 1990
US. 12 mins.
 
The first work playwright and artist Reza Abdoh made after his HIV diagnosis in 1990, Sleeping With the Devil uses Geraldo Rivera’s 1988 prison interview with Charles Manson as a visually absent animating specter. Monologues by a diverse cast of performers are fractured and fragmented, interrupted by video effects and linguistic division that metaphysically slice and dice them like an unseen killer – whether cult leader or virus.
 
Invocation of My Demon Brother
dir. Kenneth Anger, 1969
US. 12 mins.
 
Kenneth Anger’s most infamously cursed film takes on the demonic zeitgeist of the 1960s in his signature frenetic, kinky style. Flashes of The Rolling Stones, Anton LaVey and Bobby Beausoliel of the Manson Family fight for dominance under a hazy, blood red miasma of psychedelic vibrations and bad karma.
 
Cattle Mutilations
dir. George Kuchar, 1983
US. 25 mins.

In the surreal B-movie style peculiar to his and his brother’s work, George Kuchar presents the noirishly-narrated tale of a man unsettled by news of cattle mutilations. Also featured in the anarchic para-melodrama are a lecherous documentarian, extensive discussion of enemas, and an environmentalist group called FARTS (Friends Against Renegade Terror Squadrons).
 
A Lot of Fun for the Evil One
dir. M.M. Serra, 1984
US. 20 mins.
 
Co-directed by Maria Beatty and featuring an unsettling soundscape designed by John Zorn, A Lot of Fun for the Evil One is a series of vignettes of female domination. A gleeful dominatrix shears, beats, burns, fucks, and force-femmes her victims in the gothic environs of a candlelit dungeon.