Dairy Arts Center’s underground cinema showcase gets freaky in February

It’s been just over a decade since the lights first dimmed for a screening of the Friday Night Weird film series at the Boedecker Theater inside Boulder’s Dairy Arts Center. The years since have seen the program cement itself as a linchpin of local independent cinema, facilitating unforgettable theatergoing experiences anchored by movies you won’t find on Netflix or Hulu. 

“I think of it like an underground film festival that runs every single week,” says Shay Wescott of the nonprofit’s Cinema Programming Committee. “It’s not only transgressive in terms of the themes it explores and the styles on the screen, but also in the people whose stories are being represented. We’re trying to look beyond the surface level of ‘weird.’”

Wescott’s main job is overseeing fundraising efforts for the Dairy as the multidisciplinary culture hub’s development manager. But every Friday night, the 34-year-old cinephile and Lafayette resident steps into her unofficial role as the arts center’s resident “Queen of the Weird.” It’s been a befitting title over the years, but it has taken on a new valence as the eyes of the cinema world turn to Boulder in anticipation of the 2027 Sundance Film Festival. 

“We’re seeing it as an opportunity to remind everyone about our year-round presence and identity,” she says. “Not only are we Boulder’s only year-round independent cinema program, but our focus is always about making independent film accessible to the community.”

In the inaugural edition of our new monthly column, Caribou Current caught up with Wescott to talk about weird and wonderful offerings in store this month. 

The Plague
Friday, Feb. 6 | 8:30 PM
Charlie Polinger, 2025, Australia, R

If you ask Wescott to name an iconic duo, she’ll tell you “gender studies and horror go together like peanut butter and jelly.” So it goes in The Plague, the latest from New York-based filmmaker Charlie Polinger about a socially awkward teen (Everett Blunck) whose anxiety spirals into psychological turmoil amid the ruthless hierarchy of an all-boys water polo camp.

Citing the success of the psych-crime drama series Adolescence, Wescott says audiences are eager to explore the ways patriarchy and power leave a spiritual welt on the lives of young boys. But don’t expect a lecture on sexual politics from this 2025 Cannes Film Festival premiere: The Plague is a harrowing film that will burrow under your skin and stay there. 

“For fearful audience members, this isn’t an all-out horror film in the traditional genre sense, but the level of discomfort most viewers will experience is hard to describe as anything else,” Wescott says. “Aside from being a well-crafted film, The Plague is notably deft at portraying realistically brutal social dynamics, bringing these haunting shadows of adolescence to light and naming our justifiable fear of boys without stripping them of the empathy they deserve.”

“My hope with films like this is always to encourage people to lean into the things that make them squirm — especially in a theater, with an audience, there’s nothing more exhilarating,” she continues. “It sounds sadistic, but I think it’s its own type of healing.” 

King Baby
Friday, Feb. 13 | 8:30 p.m.
Kit Redstone and Arran Shearing, 2024, UK, 1h 28m, NR 

While The Plague traffics in what Wescott describes as “the everyday horrors of patriarchy,” the surreal comedy King Baby approaches the subject from a more absurdist lens. 

Set in a fucked-up fairytale “kingdom,” the 2024 International Film Festival Rotterdam world premiere from director-writer duo Kit Redstone and Arran Shearing tells the story of a monarch (Graham Dickson) and his servant (Neil Chinneck) whose worlds are turned upside down upon the arrival of a queen mannequin.  

“Kit and Arran explore depictions of stunted masculinity through a somewhat warped Monty Python meets Lars and the Real Girl framework,” Wescott says. “Stemming from Kit’s theater background, the film is a two-hander with not much set dressing to speak of — a bathtub, a bunny costume, and a mannequin do most of the heavy lifting in that regard — but the acting is of such quality and the world so full of intentional idiosyncrasy, that it’s never dull.” 

“The true genius comes from the depiction (or not) of women,” she continues. “In this world of only two men, no actual woman ever endures their unwanted advances, violence, or berating. Yet through the POV of a mannequin, that experience is always looming, doubling down on the audience that we all suffer under these systems. Also, I promise, it is a comedy.”

Arco
Friday, Feb. 20 | 8:30 PM
Ugo Bienvenu, 2025, France, 1h 29m, PG  

“What if rainbows were people from the future traveling in time?”

This question is at the heart of Arco, the Oscar-nominated animated French sci-fi fantasy adventure from director Ugo Bienvenu and creative partner Gilles Cazaux. The movie follows its 10-year-old title character (voiced in the English dub  by Juliano Valdi) who discovers a world in peril after traveling back in time to the year 2075. Joining forces with a young girl (Romy Fay) and her robot caretaker (Natalie Portman and Mark Ruffalo), he sets his sights on home. 

“Animation is often relegated to genre status because too many audiences see it as ‘unserious,’ meant for children or stoners — which are both audiences that deserve great art in their own right,” Wescott says. “Those people are seriously missing out, and Arco is for all of the above.” 

“It combines childhood optimism with Millennial-Gen X nostalgia through the lens of its very French worldview and Japanese visual influence,” she continues. “We’ve reached a point where it’s important to stress that it’s also very human: both beautifully drawn by hand and incredibly earnest in the way only humans can be.”

More this month 

February will also include film offerings from the Dairy’s suite of community education initiatives. That includes a screening of Michele Gondry’s classic 2004 sci-fi romance Eternal Sunshine as part of the  Science on Screen® grant program from the Alfred P. Sloan and Coolidge Corner Theatre foundations (Feb. 8), followed by an ’80s-themed presentation of  Ferris Bueller’s Day Off  presented by the newly formed Cinema Youth Advisory Board (Feb. 27). Find showtimes and more info on both programs at thedairy.org.