Monday, March 5 at 7pm
PERSEPOLIS
Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud (France 2007) 95 min. 35MM. In French, English, Persian and German with English subtitles.
The origins of this animated lm lie in Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novels, and “she is plainly the source for her heroine, also named Marjane, who is born in Tehran during the Shah’s regime and grows up to witness the revolution of 1979; the mood, at rst exultant, is soon darkened by a new sense of repression and threat. [The story unfolds in] sharply clipped and unshaded images; there is no denying their clarity and wit” (Anthony Lane, The New Yorker).
NETWORK
Sidney Lumet (U.S. 1976) 122 min. With Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall.
Network is among the best of the genre of media commentary films, scathing and startlingly prescient about the coming age of the 24-hour “news” cycle. It is also, more viewers will now recognize, undoubtedly inspired in part by Christine Chubbuck, a newscaster who committed suicide on live television in 1974, and was the subject of two films in 2016. In Network, Peter Finch’s veteran newscaster, informed by ratings-driven network executives that he will be dumped because he “skews old,” uses his next broadcast to announce that he will commit suicide on his final program.
THIS IS THE LIFE
Ava DuVernay (U.S. 2008) 97 min. With 2Mex, Chali 2na, Busdriver and more.
In 1989, a collective of young artists gathered at a storefront in South Central LA. Their mandate was to reject gang culture and expand the musical boundaries of hip hop. This is the Life chronicles “The Good Life” emcees, the alternative music movement they developed, and their worldwide influence on the art form.
FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH
Amy Heckerling (U.S. 1982) 90 min. 35MM. With Sean Penn, Phoebe Cates, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold.
A breakout debut for both director Amy Heckerling and screenwriter Cameron Crowe, this raunchy and awkwardly funny portrayal of Southern California teenagers was adapted from Crowe’s semi-autobiographical book – a chronicle of his time undercover as a high school student. Set in malls, revolving around part-time jobs and endless conversations about sex and dating, Fast Times is “that rarest of things, a comedy about teens, for teens with an R-rating” (Brattle Theatre).
KUNG FU HUSTLE
Stephen Chow (Hong Kong/China 2004) 99 min. 35MM. With Stephen Chow, Xiaogang Feng, Wah Yuen. Cantonese with English subtitles.
Superstar Stephen Chow’s zany comedy and boundless imagination may have found its apotheosis in Kung Fu Hustle, an homage to – and over-the-top parody of – the Hong Kong martial arts genre. “With gravity-defying kung fu fights created by famed choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, dance numbers with tuxedoed mobsters, and a comedic touch like no other, it’s no wonder that Kung Fu Hustle was the highest grossing foreign-language lm in 2005” (Gables Cinema).
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND
Michel Gondry (U.S. 2004) 108 min. 35MM. With Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ru alo.
Michel Gondry and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s fantastical fable imagines a love- stricken romance muddled by memory modi cation. The lm “works marvel after marvel in expressing the bewildering beauty and existential horror of being trapped inside one’s own addled mind, and in allegorizing the self-preserving amnesia of a broken but hopeful heart” (Time Out).
Playing with…
Monday, April 16 at 7pm
LEMON
Hollis Frampton (U.S. 1969) 7 min. 16MM.
As a voluptuous lemon is devoured by the same light that reveals it, its image passes from the spatial rhetoric of illusion into the spatial grammar of the graphic arts.
Monday, April 23 at 7pm
CACHE
Michael Haneke (France 2005) 117 min. 35MM. With Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Bénichou. French with English subtitles.
Winner of the Best Director prize at Cannes, Haneke’s thriller unearths France’s colonialist guilt and contemporary racism via its depiction of an a uent couple tormented by anonymous calls, disturbing drawings and surveillance tapes. Each clue points to an ugly secret, leading to the lm’s famously enigmatic nal shot (watch closely!).
BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM
Gurinder Chadha (UK/Germany/U.S. 2002) 112 min. 35MM. With Parminder Nagra,Keira Knightley, Jonathan Rhys Meyers. English, Panjabi, Hindi, German with English subtitles.
A semi-autobiographical story about an Anglo-Indian teenager torn between her parents’ Indian conservatism and her passion for soccer, Bend it Like Beckham’s optimistic message of multiculturalism and female empowerment charmed audiences around the world.
THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER
Charles Laughton (U.S. 1955) 93 min. DCP. With Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish.
A horror movie with qualities of a Grimm fairy tale, The Night of the Hunter stars a sublimely sinister Robert Mitchum as a traveling “preacher” (his knuckles tattooed with “love” and “hate”) whose nefarious motives for marrying a fragile widow (Winters) are uncovered by her terrified young children. Graced by images of eerie beauty and a sneaky sense of humor, this ethereal, expressionistic American classic is cinema’s most eccentric rendering of the battle between good and evil.
THIS IS CINERAMA – Restoration!
Merian C. Cooper & Robert L. Bendick (U.S. 1952) 127 min. DCP.
On the evening of September 30, 1952, the shape and sound of movies changed forever with the introduction of Cinerama, in This is Cinerama. Travel around the world from Venice to Madrid, from Edinburgh Castle to the La Scala opera house in Milan, and conclude with a fight across America in the nose of a B-25 bomber. Presented in a unique “Smilebox” curved screen simulation!
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND
Steven Spielberg (U.S. 1977) 137 min. DCP. With Melinda Dillon, Richard Dreyfuss, Teri Garr, Francois Tru aut.
One of the best films ever made about alien visitation to Earth, Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind gives recurring visions to a power repairman (Dreyfuss) who encounters a strange spacecraft while out on a call. Desperate to understand what he has experienced, he finds an ally in a single mother (Dillon) who believes her son has been abducted by the aliens. Meanwhile, an international group of scientists search for a breakthrough in human-alien communication.
STRANGER THAN PARADISE
Jim Jarmusch (U.S./West Germany 1984) 89 min. 35MM. With John Lurie, Eszter Balint, Richard Edson.
Jim Jarmusch’s one-of-a-kind minimalist masterpiece forever transformed the landscape of American independent cinema. With deadpan humor and dramatic nonchalance, Stranger Than Paradise follows rootless Hungarian émigré Willie (Lurie), his pal Eddie (Edson) and visiting sixteen-year-old cousin Eva (Balint), as they aimlessly traverse the drab interiors and environs of New York City, Cleveland and an anonymous Florida suburb.
“While Stranger Than Paradise may be a comedy, an experiment in cinematic story- telling, and a deeply ironic fable, it’s also a lm about America and the people who live there. It’s about those people’s relationships to one another, and their relationships to the rooms they inhabit, the city streets, the suburbs, diners and highways. And it’s made by someone who knows there may be truth in poetry…” — Geo Andrew for the Criterion Collection
Tuesday, March 6 at 1:15pm
MOULIN ROUGE!
Baz Luhrmann (Australia/US 2001) 127 min. 35MM. With Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, John Leguizamo.
Baz Luhrmann’s phantasmagorical musical has been hailed as one of the most visually inventive and wildly kinetic films in recent memory for its mixture of turn-of-the-century Parisian nightlife, late-20th-century pop music and astonishingly ornate production and costume design (American Cinematheque program notes).
Tuesday, March 20 at 1:15pm
CLUELESS
Amy Heckerling (U.S. 1995) 97 min. 35MM. With Alicia Silverstone, Paul Rudd, Brittany Murphy.
This beloved teen comedy was a sleeper hit anchored by Alicia Silverstone’s plucky, Beverly Hills high school embodiment of a privileged young woman who manipulates and schemes, using her wealth, beauty and popularity to make matches and earn good grades. But, like the protagonist in Jane Austen’s 19th century novel Emma, Cher has a good soul, and at the root of her escapades and relationships are feminist undertones; Clueless is also a liberating look at women and their friendships with one another.
Tuesday, March 27 at 1:15pm
EDGE OF TOMORROW AKA LIVE DIE REPEAT
Doug Liman (U.S. 2014) 113 min. With Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Brendan Gleeson.
This huge summer blockbuster blends science- fiction alien warfare with Groundhog’s Day’s repeating plot structure. The addition of a stupendous visual-effects budget and a “metaphorical overlay of fantasy and history” (the landing at Normandy) whips up a “well-wrought yarn [with] a shiver of curious power” (Richard Brody, The New Yorker).
Tuesday, April 3 at 1:15pm
JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES
Chantal Akerman (Belgium, France 1975) 201 min. 35MM. With Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte, Henri Storck. In French with English subtitles.
A singular work in lm history, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman meticulously details, with a sense of impending doom, the daily routine of a middle-aged widow whose chores include making the beds, cooking dinner for her son and turning the occasional trick. Made when the artist was only 25 years old, the movie can be seen as an exacting character study, as one of cinema’s most hypnotic and complete depictions of space and time and – as it was hailed by feminist critics when it came out – as an impressive alternative to well-intentioned but conventional political documentaries and features.
Tuesday, April 10 at 1:15pm
HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR – Restoration!
Alain Resnais (France/Japan 1959) 92 min. DCP. With Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada, Bernard Fresson. French and Japanese with English subtitles.
One of the classics of cinema and a pillar of the French New Wave, Hiroshima Mon Amour depicts a brief a air between a French actress (Riva) and a Japanese architect (Okada) in the rebuilt and thriving Hiroshima of 1959. The couple’s bliss is slowly eroded by the unavoidable memories of the war and atomic mass destruction. Due to its harrowing anti-nuclear stance Hiroshima was kept out of the main competition at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, to avoid o ending the U.S. It was nevertheless awarded the International Critics’ prize.
Tuesday, April 17 at 1:15pm
SURNAME VIET, GIVEN NAME NAM
Trinh T. Mihn-ha (U.S. 1989) 108 min. 16MM.
Vietnamese-born Trinh T. Minh-ha’s profoundly personal documentary explores the role of Vietnamese women historically and in contemporary society. Using dance, printed texts, folk poetry and the words and experiences of Vietnamese women in Vietnam and the United States, Trinh’s lm explores the difficulty of translation, and themes of dislocation and exile.
Tuesday, April 24 at 1:15pm
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
David Fincher (U.S./Sweden/Norway 2011) 155 min. 35MM. With Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer.
A disgraced journalist (Craig) accepts an invitation to investigate a 40-year-old unsolved murder on behalf of the victim’s uncle (Plummer), while a tattooed hacker (Mara) looks into the reporter’s fall from grace. Their discovery of a secret history of murder and sexual abuse festering beneath the veneer of Sweden’s industrial past is darkly and sleekly told, in David Fincher’s first installment of the American remake of Steig Larsson’s hit Millennium series.