Spectacle

THIS SATURDAY ‼️ A VERY SPECIAL PRESENTATION OF

FWENDS
Dir. Sophie Somerville. 2025.
Australia. 92 min.
In English.

SATURDAY, JUNE 20 – 7:30 (Virtual Q&A with Director/Co-writer Sophie Somerville!)
MONDAY, JUNE 22 – 10 PM

TICKETS AND FULL PROGRAM DETAILS AVAILABLE ON OUR WEBSITE

Spectacle is proud to announce the US premiere of Australian filmmaker Sophie Somerville’s feature debut FWENDS (2025). The film is a low budget, hang out style friendship comedy that follows 20-something long distance friends Em (Emmanuelle Mattana) and Jessie (Melissa Gan) as they spend a weekend walking about Melbourne. Em is struggling with harassment at her high powered “dream job” as a lawyer, and Jessie is a stagnant stoner, adrift after an ugly breakup. Their reunion takes an unexpected turn when the pair get locked out of Jessie’s apartment, so naturally they decide to take M**A, leading to some kaleidoscopic moments of confession and mutual understanding.

A dialogue-heavy exploration into the complexities of female friendship, the film’s personal tone naturally flows from comedic to serious, and back again. This is due in part to the collaborative nature of the script, which Somerville wrote alongside Mattana and Gan. Somerville once fittingly described the film as capturing “how being in your 20s means staring into a dark, deep, meaningless void,” though we promise the film is a comedy. Come alone or bring your fwends!

Winner of the Caligari Film Award at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival.

Preceded by:

LINDA 4EVA
Dir. Sophie Somerville. 2023.
Australia. 14 min.
In English.

This coming-of-age comedy short follows Linda (Shaelyn Connor) as she embarks on the worst nightmare of every self-deprecating, angsty young teenager: a day out to the beach. Wildly vivid art direction and a mix of animations bring Linda’s inner world to life. Winner of the Best Short Film Director Award at the 2023 Sydney Film Festival.

poster by noel 🦇💖

🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟
THIS FATHER'S DAY, A ONE-TIME SPECIAL 16MM PRESENTATION OF...

A BURNING STAR
(焼星)
Dir. Kenji Onishi, 1995.
Japan. 95 min.
16mm.

SUNDAY, JUNE 21 – 7:30 PM

TICKETS AVAILABLE ON OUR WEBSITE

Through the act of filming I recorded the distance between my father and myself. It is a primitive, simple and absolute film. In short, it is the possibility of my own self.

This Father’s Day at Spectacle, join us in memorializing the father figure with a special 16mm screening. In A BURNING STAR, Onishi confronts his father’s death through the camera, documenting the funeral rites, preparation of the body, and subsequent cremation through a window into the incinerator, presenting some of the most profoundly affecting and unearthly images ever put to film. Made when Onishi was only 22 years old, yet already radical in its Brakhage-ian filmmaking and undeniable emotionality, A BURNING STAR is a work of startling intimacy. Of the film, Onishi writes, “my inner conflicts find a cruel form.”

FINAL SCREENING! SEE THE GIRLS ON 16MM

FORBIDDEN LOVE: THE UNASHAMED STORIES OF LE***AN LIVES
dir. Aerlyn Weissman & Lynne Fernie, 1992.
Canada, 84 mins.
In English.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17 — 7:30 PM (16mm, $10)

2k restoration by the National Film Board of Canada, 16mm print provided by the New York Public Library.

Wryly following in the tradition of the 1965 exploitation “documentary” Chained Girls, Weissman and Fernie’s Forbidden Love is a sweet and tender oral history of mid-century Canadian le***anism dressed up in pulp trappings. Reveling in the aesthetics of verboten paperbacks and sleazy exposé, this style is merely an ironic wink of a framing encapsulating the true stories of openly gay women in the forties, fifties, and sixties, searching for community, rebellion and love. Nine women dramatize their own personal histories, and the filmmakers additionally interview le***an pulp novelist Ann Bannon. Along with the feature documentaries of Barbara Hammer and the fictional melodrama of Desert Hearts, Forbidden Love played a role in reclaiming the le***an narrative from tragedy to triumph, becoming a staple in many young queers’ first KG freeleech queues in the decades since. Lovingly restored by the National Film Board of Canada in 2022 from a 16mm interpositive (the film is shot on a mix of 16mm and 35mm), Spectacle is pleased to show the film both in its recently cleaned-up digital form as well as on a 16mm print, care of the NYPL.

VIRTUAL Q&A ON SATURDAY, JUNE 20 @ 7:30! With Director/Co-writer Sophie Somerville 👯

FWENDS
Dir. Sophie Somerville. 2025.
Australia. 92 min.
English.

ALSO SCREENING ON MONDAY, JUNE 22 – 10 PM

Spectacle is proud to announce the US premiere of Australian filmmaker Sophie Somerville’s feature debut FWENDS (2025). The film is a low budget, hang out style friendship comedy that follows 20-something long distance friends Em (Emmanuelle Mattana) and Jessie (Melissa Gan) as they spend a weekend walking about Melbourne. Em is struggling with harassment at her high powered “dream job” as a lawyer, and Jessie is a stagnant stoner, adrift after an ugly breakup. Their reunion takes an unexpected turn when the pair get locked out of Jessie’s apartment, so naturally they decide to take M**A, leading to some kaleidoscopic moments of confession and mutual understanding.
A dialogue-heavy exploration into the complexities of female friendship, the film’s personal tone naturally flows from comedic to serious, and back again. This is due in part to the collaborative nature of the script, which Somerville wrote alongside Mattana and Gan. Somerville once fittingly described the film as capturing “how being in your 20s means staring into a dark, deep, meaningless void,” though we promise the film is a comedy. Come alone or bring your fwends!
Winner of the Caligari Film Award at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival.

Preceded by:

LINDA 4EVA
Dir. Sophie Somerville. 2023.
Australia. 14 min.
English.

This coming-of-age comedy short follows Linda (Shaelyn Connor) as she embarks on the worst nightmare of every self-deprecating, angsty young teenager: a day out to the beach. Wildly vivid art direction and a mix of animations bring Linda’s inner world to life. Winner of the Best Short Film Director Award at the 2023 Sydney Film Festival.

MALIGNO
Dir. Joe Zaso, 1986
United States, 93 min.
In English

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24 – 7:30PM (IN PERSON Q&A)

There is something only Susan can see. And it’s murder…

While far from the first made-for-video send off to the style of Argento, MALIGNO brings the giallo aesthetic to the loud, thick accents of Lawn Guyland. We follow Susan Gilligan as she arrives at a new school and begins to notice her classmates start disappearing one by one.

Shot on location at the St. Agnes Cathedral in Rockville Center, MALIGNO is just as much a document of turn of the century east coast suburbia as it is a teen directed horror movie.

On June 24th, we’ll be joined by director Joe Zaso for a Q&A.

FWENDS 
Dir. Sophie Somerville. 2025. 
Australia. 92 min. 
English. 

LINDA 4EVA 
Dir. Sophie Somerville. 2023. 
Australia. 14 min.
English. 
 
SATURDAY, JUNE 20 – 7:30 (Virtual Q&A with Director/Co-writer Sophie Somerville)
MONDAY, JUNE 22 – 10 PM

| TICKETS AVAILABLE ON OUR WEBSITE |

Join us for the US premiere of Australian filmmaker Sophie Somerville’s feature debut FWENDS (2025). The film is a low budget, hang out style friendship comedy that follows 20-something long distance friends Em (Emmanuelle Mattana) and Jessie (Melissa Gan) as they spend a weekend walking about Melbourne. Em is struggling with harassment at her high powered “dream job” as a lawyer, and Jessie is a stagnant stoner, adrift after an ugly breakup. Their reunion takes an unexpected turn when the pair get locked out of Jessie’s apartment, so naturally they decide to take M**A, leading to some kaleidoscopic moments of confession and mutual understanding. 

A dialogue-heavy exploration into the complexities of female friendship, the film’s personal tone naturally flows from comedic to serious, and back again. This is due in part to the collaborative nature of the script, which Somerville wrote alongside Mattana and Gan. Somerville once fittingly described the film as capturing “how being in your 20s means staring into a dark, deep, meaningless void,” though we promise the film is a comedy. Come alone or bring your fwends!