16MM RUN continues, the experimental film programme in collaboration with Villa Lontana where the physicality of film and cinema can be relived in the true sense of the word. A selection of feature and short films will be screened in their original 16mm format.

The third event presents a screening of Jose Rodriguez Soltero’s Lupe (1966), an underground classic of the stature of Flaming Creatures, Scorpio Rising, Hold me While I’m Naked, or The Chelsea Girls. 

Strangely neglected for way too long, the film is ostensibly a biopic of Lupe Velez inspired by Kenneth Anger’s sketch of the “Mexican spitfire” in Hollywood Babylon and, stylistically, by Von Sternberg’s Marlene Dietrich vehicles.

Rodriguez Soltero takes some liberties with the facts and produces a color-saturated, gorgeous dime-store baroque that tells of Lupe’s rise from whoredom to stardom, her fall into fractured romance and suicide, and her ascension into the spirit world. It is consistently inventive and surprising, and wrapped in a dense soundtrack that combines, Elvis, Cuban boleros, Spanish flamenco, The Supremes, and Vivaldi. It features some of the main players of the Ridiculous Theatrical Playhouse (Charles Ludlam plays a keen lesbian seducer and Lola Pashalinsky, Lupe’s maid). Mario Montez never looked better; no wonder this was his favorite film. Whether they know it or not, Pedro Almodavar, Vivienne Dick, and Bruce LaBruce have a grandfather in Jose Rodriguez Soltero. –Juan Suarez.