Spectacle is proud to bring its own variation on the second-ever complete Will Hindle retrospective, functioning as both the first in New York City and the first opportunity to watch all 11 of his films in chronological order. This retrospective encompasses nearly 30 years of filmmaking, with all his films shown on 16mm prints and several being presented via the sole distributable prints in good condition. Gene Youngblood declared Hindle as possessing “an uncanny ability for transforming unstylized reality into unearthly poetic visions,” and “[an] ability to invest a technical device with emotional or metaphysical content [that] is truly impressive.” NYC audiences will now be able to appreciate the technical assurance and beauty behind these poetic visions.

Sunday, July 27 – 5 PM
Program 1: Merci Pour La Musique
Tickets For Program 1 

Three of the first four Will Hindle films were a sort of unofficial trilogy centered on synchronizing classical music to images; early reflections of his lifelong interest in the cinematic union of image and sound, along with wanting to avoid overstatement of ideas. (“I don’t see why someone’s first film shouldn’t be a little jewel.”) While Pastorale d’été and Non Catholicam are relatively straightforward documentations, FFFTCM found Hindle seeming to discover the technical fluidity and seamless shapeshifter qualities that would characterize his subsequent films and their union with music. This newfound filmmaking facility was partially the result of the extensive workout he got while making the sprawling change of pace that was 29: Merci, Merci, a work of greater structural complexity that marks the first (but not last) deliberately funny Hindle film.

• Pastoral D’été (1958)
• Non Catholicam (1963)
• 29: Merci, Merci (1966)
• FFFTCM (1967)

Sunday, July 27 – 6:30 PM
Program 2: Champion Filmer
Tickets For Program 2 

Around the same time as he brought out his once-gone Louisiana accent for the voiceover in Merci, Hindle also conceived his sound design for his breakout psychodrama Chinese Firedrill when he began rambling in a Hungarian accent to parody Jonas Mekas (who was reportedly offended). A self-portrait of Hindle’s frustrations at having to sort IBM cards and feeling creatively entrapped, it delves further into the recesses of his psyche than he’d ever gone. He followed it up with the brief ethereality of Billabong, which would go on to frequently be paired with FFFTCM and Watersmith as part of his studies in homoeroticism. Watersmith, the apex of Hindle’s technical abilities, would combine every visual trick in the book with musique concrete samples from Bach, Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia, and Carmen Miranda. It’s an experimental film blockbuster, and it brought Hindle offers from Hollywood to show it as a pre-feature short…as long as he cut the film down to 15 minutes. (He declined.)

• Chinese Firedrill (1968)
• Billabong (1968)
• Watersmith (1969)

Sunday, July 27 – 8 PM
Program 3: Things That Poison You
Tickets For Program 3 

Hindle’s work began to take a darker turn in the 1970s. Saint Flournoy was conceived and filmed before the details of the Manson murders were known to the public, suggesting Hindle was more than a little sensitive to the sense of increasing tensions in the air, and the oddity of so many parties in a desert town. It also marked his farewell to California, after which he moved to Alabama (making Later That Same Night) and then Florida (where he made his final two films eleven years apart). Later That Same Night starts to signal a sense of displacement and solitude, but Pasteur³ is the film that finds Hindle telling the story of his life the only way he knew in a self-conscious finale: a return to his Louisiana roots via jokey French, a tour through his filmography, and a reckoning with both his surmounting health problems and the need to take care of his aging mother in spite of this (she’d live past age 100). He badly wanted to make more, but it took 11 years and many false starts to just barely finish Trekkerriff before passing away; a strange coda about highway roads that resembles no other Hindle film except via its quality as a self-portrait.

• Saint Flournoy Lobos-Logos And The Eastern Europe Fetus Taxing Japan Brides In West Coast Places Sucking Alabama Air (1970)
• Later That Same Night (1971)
• Pasteur³ (1976)
• Trekkerriff (1987)