BOY AND CROWS (1967) – Run Time: 5:19
“A black and white piece shot on 16mm negative. The soundtrack is a song written and performed by Spheeris’ brother Jimmie Spheeris who was killed by a drunk driver just as his music career was flourishing. Jimmie loved crows.” (Ripley Fox)
SYNTHESIS (1968) – Run Time 5:55
“Penelope Spheeris’s first film, made in 8mm Kodachrome at UCLA. In a seemingly near-future control room devoid of people, various readouts and calculations suggest that humankind is not altogether compatible with the grand scheme of the universe.” (Mark Toscano)
BATH (1969) – Run Time 5:25
“Made in an environment and at a time when frequent and gratuitous images of nude women permeated the work of her male counterparts, Spheeris produced this intimate and sensual observation of a woman bathing. The appearance of Spheeris’s credit at the beginning of the film seems to ask the question: how does voyeurism change when we know the voyeur is actually a voyeuse?” (Mark Toscano)
THE NATIONAL REHABILITATION CENTER (1969) – Run Time 12:08
“Two years before Peter Watkins’ Punishment Park, Spheeris takes the McCarran Act to its inevitable next step and shows us – via an early use of mockumentary – what the U.S. might be like if potential subversives were simply locked up en masse before they had a chance to subvert anything.” (Mark Toscano)
SHIT (1969) – Run Time 3:20
“Never completely finished during its original production, this snarky comic piece was rediscovered in Spheeris’s vaults in 2010 and preserved as-is. The titular substance plays a key role in determining an outmoded man’s role in a changing society.” (Mark Toscano)
I DON’T KNOW (1970) – Run Time 20:11
“A truly major work, I Don’t Know observes the relationship between a lesbian and a trans woman who prefers to identify somewhere in between male and female, in an expression of personal ambiguity suggested by the film’s title. This nonfiction film – an unusual, partly staged work of semi-verité – is the first of Spheeris’s films to fully embrace what would become her characteristic documentary style: probing, intimate, uncompromising, and deeply meaningful.” (Mark Toscano)
HATS OFF TO HOLLYWOOD (1971) – Run Time 24:33
“Picking up the story first presented in I Don’t Know, Hats Off to Hollywood brazenly and brilliantly mixes documentary reality with fully staged recreations/reimaginings of episodes in the lives of Jenifer and Dana, a loving, bickering couple who challenge the notion of homonormativity. Drugs, poverty, disease, bigotry, and prostitution all figure into this disarmingly candid and often hilarious film, a remarkable work that is the apotheosis of Spheeris’s early filmmaking, and a luminous signpost leading directly to The Decline of Western Civilization.” (Mark Toscano)
NO USE WALKIN’ WHEN YOU CAN STROLL (1993) – Run Time 11:21
“One-time carny, bartender, and married nine times, Penelope Spheeris’s mother was an uncommon woman. In this sweet, funny, and moving video portrait, Spheeris gives us a vivid glimpse into the richness of her mother’s life and character.” (Mark Toscano)