Hello from Monoform Cinema, a new pop-up micro-cinema in Kalamazoo!

To kick off our new season (and our Summer of Camp series), you can't beat this certified queer cult classic! Director Jamie Babbit said that she set out to make “a gay Clueless,” and what she delivered is a campy satire, a sweet romantic comedy, and a sharp dismantling of gender stereotypes and the obscene practice of conversion therapy. Megan (Natasha Lyonne) is an all-American girl who daydreams about her fellow cheerleaders while kissing her football player boyfriend. She is left bewildered when her conservative parents send her to a conversion therapy camp called True Directions, staffed by “formerly gay” camp counselors Mike (RuPaul) and Mary (Cathy Moriarty). Surrounded by other queer kids for the first time, including the rebellious but intriguing Graham (Clea Duvall), Megan learns who she is and what it means to be a lesbian… even if it isn't what her parents and True Directions had in mind!

Starship Troopers is one of the most misunderstood films of the 1990s, perhaps of all time. Under the guise of a patriotic sci-fi action story, director Paul Verhoeven indicts American culture as not just neo-colonial, but as neo-fascist. The film satirizes the problematic pro-war sentiment of Robert Heinlein's novel and fully leans into camp, while slyly depicting fascism's transmission through information control and propaganda. Set in the 23rd century, the story follows a young soldier named Johnny Rico and his exploits in the military of the United Citizen Federation, a worldwide government. Rico's military career progresses from recruit to non-commissioned officer and finally to officer against the backdrop of an interstellar war between mankind and an arachnoid species known only as “the Bugs.” The only good movie is a Monoform movie! We need you all!

A love story in the city of dreams… blonde Betty Elms (Naomi Watts) has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia (Laura Harring). Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the mystery of the second woman's identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux) runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project. David Lynch's seductive and scary vision of Los Angeles' dream factory is one of the true masterpieces of the new millennium. A tale of love, jealousy, and revenge like no other. This heavily surrealist mystery/neo-noir is not easily rationalized, and impossible to forget. It is a wide-open invitation to its audience to interpret its meaning, symbols, and even its sequence of events. That's why we think this is a film best enjoyed in a theatre with others - this is one you'll want to discuss immediately afterwards!

How to describe Nobuhiko Obayashi's indescribable 1977 movie House? As a psychedelic ghost tale? A stream-of-consciousness bedtime story? An episode of Scooby-Doo as directed by Mario Bava? Any of the above will do for this hallucinatory head trip. Tasked by the studio with making a family horror film as Japan's answer to Jaws, Obayashi asked his 10-year-old daughter about her nightmares, and began bringing them to life! House follows a schoolgirl, archetypically named Gorgeous, who travels with six classmates (Prof, Melody, Kung Fu, Mac, Fantasy, and Sweet) to her ailing aunt's creaky country home and comes face-to-face with evil spirits, a demonic house cat, a bloodthirsty piano, and other surreal childhood visions of horror, all realized via mattes, animation, and collage effects. Surrounding these wild and spooky images, Obayashi wove in themes of generational divide, gender roles, and fallout from war. Equally absurd and nightmarish, House might have been beamed to Earth from some other planet.

It's Devil's Night at Monoform Cinema, and we are celebrating with a devilish mystery movie. We won't be announcing the title until just before we start the film! The mystery movie has been described as: controversial, provocative, persuasive, stylish, grotesque, explicit, disturbing, and historical. It was publicly condemned by the Vatican upon its release, and banned in several countries. We think it's likely that this could be your only chance to see this film in a theatre (and certainly your only opportunity in a church) - and it is not currently available for streaming either!

You can practically smell the pheromones wafting off this kaleidoscopic odyssey, which finds director Gregg Araki crossing soap-operatic elements with blasts of science fiction, indie-kid cool, and shiny pop-art subversion. On the day when the world is foretold to end, a group of terminally horny, disillusioned, zonked-out teens in Los Angeles see their lives explode in a glitter bomb of drugs, sex, death, and alien abduction. Bisexual lust, vaporizing Valley girls, sinister televangelists, nipple-ring S&M, murder by Campbell's-soup can — Araki folds it all into an anarchic orgy that brings his Teen Apocalypse Trilogy to an explosively caustic close. To be preceded by Henry Hanson's Araki-influenced short film Bros Before: Billy and Elijah are two trans bros who just happen to enjoy jerking off together - in a straight way! But when Billy starts dating Grace, Elijah must come to terms with his feelings for Billy and his own burgeoning homosexuality.

Chicago-based filmmaker and programmer Henry Hanson will be here for a double feature screening of his debut feature film, Dog Movie, and brand-new follow up Puppygirl. Henry has described Dog Movie as “an improvised cringe comedy that's kinda Dogme95 with it but kinda not. Inspired by Hong Sang-Soo but came out more like Larry David.” About Dog Movie: A passive-aggressive tenderqueer couple sends their household into a quiet tailspin when they adopt an elderly dog with the same name as the unemployed couch surfer they just can't seem to confront. About Puppygirl: In this gonzo documentary, a semi-delusional trans woman (Milo Talwani) embarks on a shocking, bizarre, and oddly touching personal odyssey to undo years of sexual repression by performing in puppygirl fetish porn. Henry Hanson is a Chicago-based filmmaker and programmer working in the tradition of the queer underground. His self-produced, self-distributed debut short Bros Before screened at dozens of venues internationally while gaining notoriety as an online cult hit. His first feature Dog Movie premiered to a sold-out crowd at the Gene Siskel Film Center and went on to take home the Best Achievement in Filmmaking award from Kansas City Underground Film Festival and the Audience Choice Award from the Trans Image/Trans Experience Film Festival in Dublin. Henry also programs short films, queer pornography, and expanded cinema independently and through his job as Curator & Programs Manager at Chicago-based nonprofit Full Spectrum Features. He is an active community member in the global network of trans filmmakers and film exhibitors.

Released just one year after Roe V. Wade, and often cited as the very first slasher film, it might surprise you to learn that Bob Clark's 1974 holiday horror film Black Christmas is overtly feminist, and explores themes of abortion, misogyny and female sexuality. Surrounded by cheery decorations and cozy Christmas lights, a phone is ringing. A small group of sorority girls have been receiving increasingly threatening and obscene phone calls. When one of the girls goes missing, both fear and frustrations arise as their concerns are not taken seriously by police. As the situation becomes more complicated, the girls must question the motives of even the men closest to them. With standout performances by Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder, a chilling soundscape, scenes that are still shocking and themes that are still relevant 50 years later, Black Christmas is a truly scary Christmas classic!

Join us for a cold weather classic! When an alien being begins killing off and assuming the identities of Antarctic scientists, it's up to rough and rugged R.J. MacReady (Kurt Russell) to battle the creature as well as his paranoid colleagues. Featuring mind-boggling practical special effects from Rob Bottin and tension that can only be cut with a flame-thrower, The Thing is best viewed on the big screen with a crowd. Who knows, the person sitting next to you in the dark may not be who they seem…

An iconic film that seamlessly blends romance, comedy, and political themes of Black queer oppression. The wry, incisive debut feature by Cheryl Dunye gave cinema something bracingly new and groundbreaking: a vibrant representation of Black lesbian identity by a Black lesbian filmmaker. Dunye stars as Cheryl, a video-store clerk and aspiring director with an interest in forgotten Black actresses. This leads her to investigate a 1930s performer known as The Watermelon Woman, whose story proves to have parallels with Cheryl's own life as she navigates a new relationship with a white girlfriend (Guinevere Turner). Balancing breezy romantic comedy with a serious inquiry into the history of Black and queer women in Hollywood, The Watermelon Woman slyly rewrites long-standing constructions of race and sexuality on-screen, introducing an important voice in American cinema.

'Absolutely no men in sight. Just people vibing.' - Letterboxd review Passion quietly brews between an artist and her subject until together they create a space in which it can briefly flourish, in this sumptuous 18th century romance from one of contemporary French cinema's most acclaimed auteurs. Summoned to an isolated seaside estate on a secret assignment, Marianne must find a way to furtively paint a wedding portrait of Héloïse, who is resisting chattel marriage. What unfolds is an exchange of sustained gazes in which the two women come to know each other's gestures, expressions, and bodies with rapturous intimacy, ultimately forging a subversive creative collaboration as well as a delirious romance. Charged with a yearning that almost transcends time and space, Portrait of a Lady on Fire mines the emotional and artistic possibilities that emerge when women can freely live together and see one another in a world without men.

Join us for a celebration of following your passion and making your art! American Movie is the story of filmmaker Mark Borchardt, his mission, and his dream. Spanning over two years of intense struggle with his film, his family, financial decline, and spiritual crisis, American Movie is a portrayal of ambition, obsession, excess, and one man's quest for the American Dream. Mark Borchardt's Coven will follow American Movie as a double feature! Roger Ebert wrote: I saw Coven at the 1999 Sundance film festival—not because it was invited there, but because after the midnight premiere of American Movie, there wasn't a person in the theater who didn't want to stay and see Mark's 35-minute horror film, which we see him making during the course of the documentary.

Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta, has been fighting his community's mass expulsion by the Israeli occupation since childhood. Basel documents the gradual erasure of Masafer Yatta, as soldiers destroy the homes of families - the largest single act of forced transfer ever carried out in the occupied West Bank. He crosses paths with Yuval, an Israeli journalist who joins his struggle, and for over half a decade they fight against the expulsion while growing closer. Their complex bond is haunted by the extreme inequality between them: Basel, living under a brutal military occupation, and Yuval, unrestricted and free. This film, by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four young activists, was co-created during the darkest, most terrifying times in the region, as an act of creative resistance to Apartheid and a search for a path towards equality and justice. DIRECTORS' STATEMENT We're making this film together, a Palestinian-Israeli group of activists and filmmakers, because we want to stop the ongoing expulsion of the community of Masafer Yatta, and resist the reality of Apartheid we were born into - from opposite, unequal sides. Reality around us is becoming scarier, more violent, more oppressive, every day - and we are very weak in front of it. We can only shout out something radically different, this film - which at its core, is a proposal for an alternate way Israelis and Palestinians can live in this land - not as oppressor and oppressed, but in full equality.

“And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, 'Come and see.'” This legendary film from Soviet director Elem Klimov is a senses-shattering plunge into the dehumanizing horrors of war. As Nazi forces encroach on his small village in what is now known as Belarus, teenage Flyora (Alexei Kravchenko, in a searing depiction of anguish) eagerly joins the Soviet resistance. Rather than the adventure and glory he envisioned, what he finds is a waking nightmare of unimaginable carnage and cruelty—rendered with a feverish, otherworldly intensity by Klimov's subjective camera work and expressionistic sound design. Nearly blocked from being made by Soviet censors, who took seven years to approve its script, Come and See is perhaps the most visceral, impossible-to-forget antiwar film ever made.

Welcome to an unapologetically queer and dizzying pop-art fantasia that evades categorization. Through a rapid-fire combination of melodrama, comedy, horror, documentary and experimental film, director Toshio Matsumoto's freewheeling approach to both genre and form results in a film that gleefully disorientates without ever feeling disjointed. Made at a point in cinema history when radically-minded filmmakers were testing, breaking and redefining the limits of good filmmaking and taste, Matsumoto's movie attacks on both fronts with an irrepressible fervor, creating a film that has retained its power to surprise, delight and shock 55 years later. An unknown club dancer at the time, trans actor Peter (from Kurosawa's Ran) gives an astonishing Edie Sedgwick/Warhol superstar-like performance as Eddie, hostess at Bar Genet—where she's ignited a violent love triangle with reigning drag queen Leda (Osamu Ogasawara) for the attentions of club owner Gonda (Yoshio Tsuchiya, from Seven Samurai and Yojimbo). Director Toshio Matsumoto's shattering, kaleidoscopic masterpiece is a key work of the Japanese New Wave and of queer cinema, and one of the most subversive and intoxicating films of the late 1960s.