James Cathcart and Ben Swank over at the Third Man Records / Belcourt Theatre monthly avant garde film series Light and Sound Machine are on a roll. I’m still thinking about last month’s Nam June Paik retrospective.

This month, they outdo themselves with the first of the series to be screened on glorious 16mm film: Kidlat Tahimik’s Perfumed Nightmare.

This is a RARE opportunity to see this film projected. Do not miss!

Why? This description on the Belcourt and Third Man sites is far better than anything I could write:

Perhaps cinema’s most humorous and poignant essay on the cultural chasm between the First and Third worlds, PERFUMED NIGHTMARE is the quasi-autobiographical account of an acute case of cultural dementia. Kidlat Tahimik, the Pilipino-born, American-educated, German-based filmmaker and global citizen casts himself as Kidlat Tahimik, the primitive naif with an awe-struck enchantment with the wonders of the developed world. The semi fictional Tahimik is a taxi (or “jeepney”) driver by day who clutches his transistor radio by night, religiously tuned-in to Voice of America and forever dreaming of the heavens – he’s the president of a fan club for Werner von Braun, the defected Nazi rocket scientist who pioneered the American space program. His filmic diary is a collage of village anecdotes and imagery, presented with varying degrees of ethnographic exoticism and short wave radio chatter. However, his document is interrupted by the appearance of a comically sinister American businessman, offering Tahimik a new life in France, refilling his company’s gumball machines which conspicuously adorn the Parisian city streets. It is here that Perfumed Nightmare evokes a turn towards magical realism, and the illusion-shattering truths of the technology age transform Tahimik into something new – a once “sleeping typhoon”, now awakened and poised to literally blow away the symbols of Western domination, and himself back to his homeland.

Also check out the wonderful video excerpt below. Tickets will be available at the Third Man door, but I recommend you buy in advance via the Belcourt website.

The Light And Sound Machine
Co-presented by Third Man Records and the Belcourt Theatre
Kidlat Tahimik’s Perfumed Nightmare
7pm, June 20th, 2013, $10  ($8 Belcourt members)
Third Man Records
623 7th Ave S – Nashville, TN 37203