The Machine That Kills Bad People
Monday, October 5, 2026 at 7pm
Light Industry, 361 Stagg Street, Suite 407, Brooklyn
Anybody's Woman, Bette Gordon, 1981, digital projection, 24 mins
Merrily We Go to Hell, Dorothy Arzner, 1932, digital projection, 83 mins
The Machine that Kills Bad People is, of course, the cinema—a medium that is so often and so visibly in service of a crushing status quo but which, in the right hands, is a fatal instrument of beauty, contestation, wonder, politics, poetry, new visions, testimonies, histories, dreams. It is also a film club devoted to showing work—“mainstream” and experimental, known and unknown, historical and contemporary—that takes up this task.
Programmed by Erika Balsom, Beatrice Gibson, Maria Palacios Cruz, and Ben Rivers, The Machine that Kills Bad People showed double bills at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts on a bimonthly basis between 2018 and 2026. June of this year brought an end to our regular slot but also marked the publication of a book assembling 39 of the essays commissioned to accompany our screenings.
To celebrate this collection, published by The Visible Press, we’re presenting Merrily We Go to Hell and Anybody’s Woman. The first is a pre-Code feature by Dorothy Arzner, full of marital woes, alcohol, and adultery. The second is Bette Gordon’s Super 8 precursor to Variety (1983), featuring Wooster Group members Spalding Gray and Nancy Reilly discussing pornography and fantasy against the backdrop of Arzner’s filmmaking and the Variety theater.
- MTKBP
Tickets - Pay what you can ($10 suggested donation), available at door.
Copies of the book will be available for sale at the snack bar.
Please note: seating is limited. First-come, first-served, except for members subscribed at $8/month or more, who may reserve a seat by emailing information@lightindustry.org at least two hours prior to showtime. Box office opens at 6:30pm. No entry 10 minutes after start of show.