Close Encounters: Nightmare City Presents: Mas Sterpiece Theatre Presents: Daisies

MASS: Close Encounters is pleased to present MASSterpiece Theater, a film night with Nightmare City. Doing their best Alistair Cooke, Nightmare City will introduce and present, via video, the film that was the source and inspiration for their own video piece, DAISIES, currently on view in the group exhibition Friendship and Freedom. The screening will take place at 7PM on Thursday, February 26th, as MASS, 507 Calles St. ABOUT THEM SCREENING MASSterpiece Theatre is a one-off movie-night showcasing the 1966 Czech New Wave film, Daisies. Directed by Věra Chytilová, Daisies was co-authored by Ester Krumbachová and marked the beginning of an ongoing collaboration between the two women. Featuring innovative cinematography, editing strategies, art design and a decidedly non-linear narrative, the film follows two young women, Marie I and Marie II, who conclude that the only response to a world gone bad is to go bad as well. Alternatively interpreted as a feminist political statement and a flippant puerile farce, Daisies has served as a generative and perennial influence in the development of Nightmare City’s collaborative practice. Operating as a two-way mirror with both the protagonists of the original film and the collaborative relationship of Krumbachová and Chytilová, the repeated reenactment of the film’s opening sequence in Nightmare City’s DAISIES sought to reactivate the transgressive and antagonistic personas the two women created as Big Nightmare and Little Nightmare.