Orgone Cineclub is a monthly screening series focused on making art house and experimental cinema more inclusive through an intimate screening followed by a family style dinner with a facilitated discussion to encourage curiosity among guests, raising engagement with the film and amongst strangers.

Held at Magick City is a multidisciplinary private venue hidden away at the very tip of Greenpoint. Its prime function is a small batch kombucha factory, however it is also equipped with a beautiful Klipshorn sound system, the original flooring of the old Roseland ballroom, and a custom designed portal at the entrance. It is a special space that rewards anyone who finds themselves there with a unique experience.

FILMS:

‘Lickerish Quartet’ by Radley Metzger

SYNOPSIS: ‘The Lickerish Quartet’ is Radley Metzger’s magnum opus, a delirious surreal erotic fantasy, stylish and elegant. An aristocratic family becomes obsessed with a striking young blond actress while watching her in what appears to be a crude, silent stag film. After a visit to a local carnival they meet the girl in person and invite her back to their lavish mansion, a castle in Italy’s Abruzzi Mountains. The blonde visitor takes turns seducing the family members, where she unlocks each of their fantasies, family secrets and hidden desires. 

‘Jubilee’ by Derek Jarman

SYNOPSIS: When Queen Elizabeth I asks her court alchemist to show her England in the future, she’s transported 400 years to a post-apocalyptic wasteland of roving girl gangs, an all-powerful media mogul, fascistic police, scattered filth, and twisted sex. With Jubilee, legendary British filmmaker Derek Jarman channeled political dissent and artistic daring into a revolutionary blend of history and fantasy, musical and cinematic experimentation, satire and anger, fashion and philosophy. With its uninhibited punk petulance and sloganeering, Jubilee brings together many cultural and musical icons of the time, including Jordan, Toyah Willcox, Adam Ant, and Brian Eno (with his first original film score), to create a genuinely unique, unforgettable vision. Ahead of its time and often frighteningly accurate in its predictions, it is a fascinating historical document and a gorgeous work of film art.

‘Nude Vampire’ by Jean Rollin

SYNOPSIS: A surreal blend of horror, espionage, erotica, and sci-fi, “The Nude Vampire” (“La Vampire Nue," France, 1970) follows Pierre the son of a wealthy industrialist who dreams of immortality, not through his own achievements, but by finding a way to share the biochemistry of a mute, orphaned vampire woman who has been raised in isolation by a hooded secret cult, deprived of exposure to human faces. The son falls for the mysterious woman while trying to infiltrate his father's private club. It is love at first, leading Pierre to become determined to liberate his beloved, a goal which attracts the companionship of other vampires.

‘Exterminating Angel’ by Luis Buñuel

SYNOPSIS: After a lavish dinner party, a group of high-society friends retire to the salon for an evening of music and conversation. A few hours later, they find they are mysteriously incapable of leaving the room. Days go by. Food and water run out. Panic and madness set in. The police and army come to the rescue, but are unable to enter the house. Full of eerie comic absurdity, the film continues Buñuel’s critique of the frivolous rituals and dependencies of the upper classes.

In light of recent events, I thought ‘The Exterminating Angel’ would set the perfect surrealist image to make us re-think our surroundings. It will in addition give new meaning to upcoming dinner parties and family gatherings surrounding the holidays. Luis Buñuel is one of the few filmmakers I found in the beginning of my artistic career that left his personal mark in how I view the world and how I want to make films. An early member of the surrealist movement, he spent a lifetime turning society on its head and inside out, exposing itself to itself, an image it may certainly not want to see.
- Mavi Phillips

‘Orlando’ by Sally Potter

SYNOPSIS: Sally Potter’s adaptation of the Virginia Woolf novel ‘Orlando: A Biography’ defies the constructs of gender and time. The Young nobleman Orlando, played by the enchanting Tilda Swinton, is commanded by Queen Elizabeth I to stay young forever. Miraculously, he does just that. The film follows him as he moves through several centuries of British history, experiencing a variety of lives and relationships along the way, and even transforms into a woman. One of the highlights is a young Billy Zane who plays a lover.  Tilda Swinton plays Orlando not only in this Award-Winning feature, but she believes ‘Orlando’ is the biography of her own life. 
 

“As a female director who writes stories about women, I believe that only when women are allowed to tell their own stories, only when they are allowed autonomy over their own unique voice, will they begin to be seen as equals in our society. That only then, women will have the right to choose what they do with their own lives and bodies. ‘Orlando’ by Sally Potter is one of the best examples of the power of the female voice and its ability to inspire, from Virginia Woolf, to Sally Potter, to Tilda Swinton. Its superiority comes from all three creators also revealing to us the breakable boundaries and fluidity of gender. Throughout the film, Orlando (Tilda) directly addresses the camera. This does not only break with the traditional masculine voyeurism of cinema, it invites the viewer in as an active participant to reveal that gender is a construct. As we join the divine Orlando on a journey through time and a fluid switching of gender, we are able to discover that ‘whether male or female’, this is not what defines our main character."
- Mavi Phillips