A local creative is inviting the desert to discuss the magic of film.
Founded by artist Venus Martinez, the Filmland Cinema Club offers screenings of artsy movies that you may have never heard of—and invites of deep conversations to unpack these cinematic gems. It’s a simple combination of a projector, a speaker and the community.
The next edition of the Filmland Cinema Club will take place on Friday, July 3, with a screening of John Waters’ Female Trouble at Damaged Goods Punk Shop.
During a recent phone interview with Martinez, she said she started the club to honor her best friend and bandmate James Montenegro, who was killed in January 2025.
“Due to the amount of grief of losing a best friend, music has been kind of overwhelming for me right now,” Martinez said. “James and I have played music together since 2012, and we were most known for Venus and the Traps and Celluloid Humanoid, but other than that, we also bonded over a love of John Waters, David Lynch, Jean-Luc Godard and a bunch of cinema in general.”
Martinez and Montenegro were absorbing cinema before they started crafting songs and winning local music awards.
“I remember some of the earliest memories with our friendship. James and I would watch films at the Palme d’Or, back when the Palm Desert mall was kind of popping, and in between classes, we’d cruise the Criterion section at Barnes & Noble, and then we’d dig for gold at Record Alley,” she said. “When we first got our set of wheels, we started to book it to L.A., and just started watching movies at the New Beverly or any theater around there. Years back, he had his own cinema club that we ran out of the Indio Arts Center in Old Town Indio for a couple years, and that was kind of fun.”
Martinez is trying to heal by passing along the tradition of building a community through film—and “showing people some cool movies.”
“There’s a lot of great film out there,” she said. “There are so many film bros who are only telling me to watch The Godfather and Star Trek and Star Wars. They’re great movies and all, but cinema is so vast that there are a lot of art pieces that I think would shake up people’s paradigms and lead them in a whole different direction.”
The club’s first events both featured two movies united by a common theme.
“The first one I did was Lisa Frankenstein and Poor Things, and the whole theme was artificial life, with Frankenstein being one of the first fiction (pieces) that talked about artificial life,” Martinez said. “I want to do something that’s currently going on right now. The second one, we showed Tank Girl and Daisies, which are a little bit more feminist in a couple aspects, but we also showed how movie and politics, fascism versus nihilism, came into play.”
The upcoming event will eschew the double-feature format and focus on one masterful film from John Waters. There will even be a best-dressed contest—so show up as your favorite John Waters character for a chance to win a prize!
“Female Trouble is a tale of being a fame monster, and the trials and tribulations of (working) to achieve that,” Martinez said. “This character, Dawn Davenport, will stop at nothing to become famous, and I thought, ‘What better venue to show that at than Damaged Goods?’ … I always found John Waters to be a punk icon in general, and he’s also a great lover of films.”
After each screening, Martinez leads a conversation with the audience, and helps them unpack the messaging behind the art.
“I will talk about the film beforehand, a little bit about the director, when it was made, and then at the end, I invite people to ask questions,” she said. “I ask a couple of simple questions like, ‘What was their favorite part?’ Then I’ll kind of intersect and be like, ‘What do you think of the theme of Fame Monster? Would you stop at anything for fame? What are your limitations?’
“I think film is one of those mediums that is interpreted in many different ways, especially if you watch (a movie) more than once. … When I rewatch some of these films with a group of people, I’ll find them bringing up different questions or things that I’m like, “Oh, I didn’t even notice that,’ or, ‘I didn’t even take it that way.’ I start getting people to talk. There’s literally so much film out there, and there’s some really, really cool stuff that people have never seen.”
Martinez hopes that by avoiding mainstream films, and by including some movies not available via streaming services, Filmland Cinema Club will attract people to enjoy movies in a unique way.
“Part of the reason I collect film is because streaming sites take things down,” she said. “We’ve seen the battles between buying different production companies, and who’s going to get which company, and then they take off entire film catalogs and series that you can’t find anymore. You really have to find a physical copy.”
Martinez hopes the Filmland Cinema Club will foster an appreciation for movies across the valley.
“Part of the reason I collect film is because streaming sites take things down. … You really have to find a physical copy.”
VENUS Martinez
“It’s really cool to see people’s reaction to cinema,” Martinez said. “… Hopefully in the future, we can get more of a cinema club going, and get people to meet up in different areas. Right now, I’m just doing this because I want to do it. It’s a free event. I want to show movies and get people to think a little differently, and maybe encourage them to go out and see weird movies with their people and their friends.”
Martinez is happy to be providing free screenings during these times of hostility and rising costs.
“Some people don’t have a living room and a couch, and they’re probably living with multiple relatives or roommates, and they might not have that space to have people to come over and watch a movie and inquire,” Martinez said. “I go to L.A. a lot to watch weird movies, and some of these movies will pack houses, and there’s a big cinema community out there. I’m just trying to save some people some gas money and (let them) see some of these movies here locally, and for free.”
Right now, Martinez is putting on a Filmland Cinema Club event every other month or so.
“I’m working fulltime myself, so I try to see whatever opportunities I can get,” she said. “If there’s anybody willing to let me set up my projector and little amp to show a movie at their place, it’d be great—or even in the future, if any of these cinema techs would let me host one of these nights at their theaters, that would be a dream. I’m just doing this because people need free shit to go to, and life’s expensive out here, and there’s more to life than just profit. Hopefully that builds a different mindset with the community.”
Filmland Cinema Club will hold a screening of Female Trouble at 8:30 p.m., Friday, July 3, at Damaged Goods Punk Shop, at 73540 Highway 111, Suite No. 2, in Palm Desert. The event is free. Learn more and watch for future events at instagram.com/filmlandcinemaclub.
