It’s October!!!! Which means Scarecrow is running its annual Psychotronic Challenge, daring you to watch one fucked-up, low-budget, gritty movie every day. But if you’re in need of a little relief, this month we’re focusing on unstreamable documentaries, should you wish to watch something a little less spooky.
Got a recommendation? Give us the scoop at unstreamablemovies@gmail.com.
YAYOI KUSAMA: I LOVE ME
Japan, 2008, 102 minutes, Dir. Takako Matsumoto
The already famous Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama became certified Instafamous after her touring exhibit Infinity Mirrors broke the internet in 2017. Selfie-takers lined up outside museums from Seattle to DC to take pics inside her glittering traps. Seattle Art Museum’s showing was so busy that someone told me they saw someone crying outside the museum because they couldn’t get a ticket to the sold-out exhibition. When have you ever seen a person sob because they couldn’t see contemporary art? Seattle was the first city Kusama moved to in the US, in 1957, before leaving for NYC. The late curator Zoë Dusanne was the first to exhibit her work, at the Zoë Dusanne Gallery in Seattle. What would the two of them think, seeing people bartering for Kusama’s exhibition tickets in downtown Seattle 60 years after she moved here?
Infinity Mirrors had the pull of a cult, but did Instagrammers care about its leader? What about her? The first Google search query related to Kusama is “Why is she so famous?” And according to Google, its “her ability to create repetitive patterns.” You can see Kusama create a lot of repetitive patterns in this hard-to-find 2008 doc available at Scarecrow, directed by the color designer for Cowboy Bebop: The Movie. It follows Kusama as she creates a series of 50 humongous, monochrome drawings, and it’s more colorful and thoughtful than a search result. It’s a good introduction to Kusama as an artist—and a good introduction to Scarecrow’s thick collection of art docs. Go explore! CHASE BURNS
Find it in the Arts section under Art. Available in-store only.
THE WORLD OF TOMORROW
United States, 1984, 83 minutes, Dir. Lance Bird, Tom Johnson
The World of Tomorrow is a weary ode to the 1939 New York World’s Fair and the brief blip in time between the Great Depression and World War II. Narrated by Jason Robards Jr. (of All the President’s Men and Once Upon a Time in the West fame) who attended the fair as a young boy, the documentary is composed of newsreel footage, his home videos, and films from the fair itself. Constructed on a Queens dumping ground in the late ‘30s, a group of New York businessmen orchestrated the giant metropolis that promised a future of fast trains, democracy, home appliances, and a better life — although World War II would break out before the fair’s end.
Even watching this footage from the vantage point of 2023, I was filled with a sense of awe of what we imagined the future could look like. At the fair’s center was Wallace Harrison and J. Andre Fouilhoux’s Trylon and Perisphere, which whisked visitors on a long moving walkway through the giant dome projecting slides of an imagined future to come. General Motors’ Futurama exhibition was an urbanist’s worst nightmare featuring a diorama of highways across American cities (though that did become real). The World of Tomorrow draws on the sense of wonder inherent to a World’s Fair. That the future, though unknowable, would be nothing to fear. It’s a sentiment that wouldn’t even make it out of the fair unscathed. JAS KEIMIG
Find it in the Documentary section under American Culture. Available in-store only.
Looking for more? Browse our big list of 350+ hard-to-find movies over on The Stranger.
*The fine print: Unstreamable means we couldn’t find it on Netflix, Hulu, Shudder, Disney+, or any of the other hundreds of streaming services available in the United States. We also couldn’t find it available for rent or purchase through platforms like Prime Video or iTunes. Yes, we know you can find many things online illegally, but we don’t consider user-generated videos, like unauthorized YouTube uploads, to be streamable.
