From Ballroom Marfa
MARFA — Ballroom Marfa’s exhibition Elemental Currents, on view March to June 8, expands with the film program Space Sightings. Over seven Sunday evenings at 6 p.m. new and classic films focused on outer, inner and cyber space will screen free at the Crowley Theater — 98 S. Austin Street — in Marfa. Included will be a singular live performance by visiting artist Jeanne Liotta.
“Movies about Space pinpoint something about being distant, like Marfa,” said Ralph McKay, Ballroom Marfa film programmer. “Let’s see it on the big screen at full volume.”
The full schedule includes:
9 March 2025 | Sunday 6 p.m.
Empty Rider | 2025 | Switzerland/UK | Lawrence Lek | 15 minutes
Lawrence Lek (1982, Frankfurt) is a London-based Malaysian Chinese artist and filmmaker known for advancing the concept of Sinofuturism with immersive installations that explore existential dilemmas through the lens of science fiction. In Empty Rider sentient self-driving car Vanguard-3181 stands trial for attempting to murder their parent company’s CEO.
For All Mankind | 1989 | USA | Al Reinert | 80 minutes
Simply the most radical, dazzling work of cinema made about the earthshaking first landing on the moon in July 1969. Narrated in the drawling Texas accents of the early astronauts and covered in a blanket of sonic vibrations by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois the film features original NASA footage.
16 March 2025 | Sunday 6 p.m.
Flash Gordon | 1980 | USA/UK/NL/Italy | Mike Hodges | 110 minutes
A Dino De Laurentiis production, made for 22 million Earth dollars, finds Emperor Ming (Max von Sydow) bored with life in the universe. He decides to pick on Earth by sending the moon spinning down toward the planet. Cheerfully pop and phony with music by Queen and a lot of energy, it is totally devoid of the pseudo-meaningful baggage of the Force and Trekkie Power.
13 April 2025 | Sunday 6 p.m.
Space is the Place | 1974 | USA | John Coney | 85 minutes
A self-proclaimed alien from space on a mission to promote peace, and a pioneer of Afrofuturism, Sun Ra, led the musical collective The Arkestra for 40 soul-expanding years. When the Arkestra mothership lands in San Francisco it is just the moment when hippies, Oakland activists, psychedelia, funk and glam rock swirled together. It all comes to a head and just maybe the mystery of the Marfa Lights is solved.
27 April 2025 | Sunday 6 p.m.
Path of Totality | JEANNE LIOTTA | Selected shorts & live performance
Midstream in Space Sightings the appropriately pivotal artist JEANNE LIOTTA revisits Marfa after two residencies at McDonald Observatory. For over three decades Liotta has made films, moving image installations, projector performances and other lens-based works. Operating at the lively intersection of art, science and natural philosophy her work has earned prestigious international awards and best-of lists. Images made under our Dark Skies will come home for the first time. The evening concludes with Path of Totality, a live projector performance restaging the August 2017 solar eclipse and bringing the cosmic into the confines of a projection Space.
11 May 2025 | Sunday 6 JEANNE LIOTTA | *encore matinee May 25 at 3 p.m.*
We Are Aliens | 2024 | Japan | Kenichi Ugana | 93 minutes
A rising star of Japanese genre film for 10 years, the prolific Kenichi Ugana arrives with We Are Aliens (2024) which is currently burning up the international festivals. One day, Seiya is calling strangers on the phone to tell them “It’s me, thank you” when a creature with emerald-blue fur, something he had never seen before, descends from the sky. This wise little furry, along with his companions, has come to exterminate the human race. A surprisingly sweet alien apocalypse movie with a subversive attitude that embraces otherness and strangeness. No to extermination!
18 May 2025 | Sunday 6 p.m.
IKARIE XB 1 | 1963 | Czechoslovakia | Jindřich Polák | 83 minutes
A stellar space epic came rushing in from behind the Iron Curtain in 1963. Pioneering and much-imitated, IKARIE XB 1 is one of the cornerstones of contemporary sci-fi cinema. This Czech gem predates Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was clearly an influence on both and remains one of the few sci-fi films of unsanctioned optimism.
25 May 2025 | Sunday 6 PM | *WE ARE ALIENS encore matinee at 3 PM*
Visitors Complete Edition | 2023 | Japan | Kenichi Ugana | 61 minutes
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and the monsters are clearly having a blast. Zombie alien apocalypse is seldom this fun. A trio of friends have driven in search of their incommunicado
For more information, visit ballroommarfa.org.
About Ballroom Marfa
Founded in 2003 by Virginia Lebermann and Fairfax Dorn, Ballroom Marfa is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and a dynamic, contemporary cultural arts space housed in a converted dance hall that dates to 1927. Ballroom Marfa’s mission is to serve international, national, regional, and local arts communities and support the work of both emerging and recognized artists working across all media: visual arts, film, music, and performance.