a highly-opinionated selection of things happening around town, and sometimes out of town. this month's page here.

sat. feb. 8

to live FREE 7 PM @ monterey park art + film lab @ east la college
the warlocks (11:30), drinking flowers (10:00) @ bootleg
trouble every day 7:30 10:00 PM @ new beverly
a night with jp sniadecki @ clockshop
shark toys FREE 6 PM @ permanent records
finding samuel lowe 3:55 PM @ pan african film festival
brothers hypnotic 6:15 PM @ pan african film festival
til infinity: the souls of mischief 8:45 PM @ pan african film festival
goldfinger, thunderball @ egyptian
gravity, y tu mama tambien @ aero
a field in england 10 PM @ silent movie theater
a field in england 11:30 PM @ downtown independent
stories we tell FREE 3 PM @ santa monica library main branch
generation war FREE (RSVP) 3 PM @  goethe-institut


sun. feb. 9

he walked by night 7 PM, the naked spur @ ucla film archive
people's park @ filmforum @ spielberg @ egyptian
a man called god 6:35 PM @ pan african film festival
go for sisters 7:05 PM @ pan african film festival
blue caprice 7:30 PM @ pan african film festival
let the fire burn 8:15 PM @ pan african film festival
of good report 9:15 PM @ pan african film festival
coonskin @ egyptian
double indemnity, the bitter tea of general yen @ aero
trouble every day @ new beverly
a field in england 8:00 10:15 PM @ silent movie theater
a field in england 10 PM @ downtown independent
my bloody valentine nite @ park time punks @ echoplex
before sunrise 5:30 PM, before sunset @ cinerama dome
casablanca 2:00 8:00 PM @ arclight pasadena
casablanca 3:00 6:00 PM @ arclight sherman oaks
colleen green, tomorrow's tulips @ detroit bar (costa mesa)
save music in chinatown ii 3 PM @ human resources


mon. feb. 10

the blank tapes FREE @ satellite
thrones, david scott stone, john wiese @ handbag factory
toussaint louverture 8:35 PM @ pan african film festival
the act of killing @ aero
a field in england 11 PM @ silent movie theater
a field in england 10:45 PM @ downtown independent
far from beijing: the state of independent chinese cinema 8:30 PM @ redcat
blackfish @ the crest
emily lacy & jonathan silberman @ pieter


tue. feb. 11

minnie and moskowitz 1 PM @ lacma
the great flood FREE (RSVP) @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges
big men 1:10 PM @ pan african film festival
the retrieval 1:20 PM @ pan african film festival
til infinity: the souls of mischief 9:15 PM @ pan african film festival
three kings, flirting with disaster @ aero
diamonds of the night @ silent movie theater
a field in england 9:50 PM @ silent movie theater
a tribute to les blank FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc ray stark
a field in england 7:10 PM @ downtown independent
laura 6:15 8:00 PM @ arclight hollywood
bobcat goldthwait, becky stark @ steve allen theater


wed. feb. 12

vote for henryk FREE 7 PM @ goethe-institut
thrones @ takeoff
blue caprice 3:45 PM @ pan african film festival
let the fire burn 7:35 PM @ pan african film festival
scrapper 8:05 PM @ pan african film festival
american hustle @ aero
diamonds of the night @ silent movie theater
a field in england 9:50 PM @ silent movie theater
the future of institutional critique FREE @ hammer
let the fire burn FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc ray stark
a field in england 9 PM @ downtown independent
throne of blood FREE 7 PM @ jfla
casablanca 8:30 PM @ cinerama dome


thu. feb. 13

the world of apu FREE 7 PM @ csun armer theater
colleen green @ troubadour
papilio buddha 1 PM @ pan african film festival
the price of memory 1:05 PM @ pan african film festival
scrapper 1:10 PM @ pan african film festival
for the cause 5:10 PM @ pan african film festival
the retrieval 5:35 PM @ pan african film festival
brothers hypnotic 6:05 PM @ pan african film festival
melvin & jean: an american story 10:05 PM @ pan african film festival
titus 10:30 PM @ pan african film festival
ninotchka, love affair @ egyptian
blackmail, psycho @ aero
a field in england 7:45 9:50 PM @ silent movie theater
wand @ church on york
a field in england 11 PM @ downtown independent
seven men from now FREE 5 PM @ the crank @ ucla james bridges
the warlocks FREE @ harvard & stone
die hard FREE (RSVP) @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges


fri. feb. 14

eternal sunshine of the spotless mind MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater
harold and maude MIDNIGHT @ nuart
spiritualized @ ace hotel
levitation room, l.a. witch, cherry glazerr @ the smell
finding samuel lowe 1 PM @ pan african film festival
audre lorde: the berlin years 1:15 PM @ pan african film festival
a man called god 3:25 PM @ pan african film festival
cuba: an african odyssey 8:20 PM @ pan african film festival
the great kilapy 8:35 PM @ pan african film festival
freedom summer 9 PM @ pan african film festival
casablanca @ egyptian
city lights @ silent movie theater
my mondo valentine 9:45 PM @ silent movie theater
cortaud and bobtail (9:15), smelveteen (11:30) @ pehrspace


sat. feb. 15

casablanca 7 PM @ electric dusk drive-in
warriors of the rainbow part i: sun flag 7 PM, warriors of the rainbow part ii: rainbow bridge @ ucla film archive
spiritualized @ ace hotel
american promise 1:30 PM @ pan african film festival
the great kilapy 7:25 PM @ pan african film festival
the assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford @ egyptian
city lights 5 PM @ silent movie theater
justin clifford rhody's vernacular visions 8 PM @ epfc
m. geddes gengras @ satellite
eternal sunshine of the spotless mind 9:30 PM @ silent movie theater


sun. feb. 16

diamonds are forever 5:10 PM, never say never again @ new beverly
l.a. zine fest (10 AM - 5 PM) @ helms bakery parking garage
endless bummer, mane @ the smell
we won't bow down 12:40 PM @ pan african film festival
reflections unheard: black women in civil rights 4:30 PM @ pan african film festival
papilio buddha 5:10 PM @ pan african film festival
sunrise: a song of two humans @ aero
ye-zai 7 PM, pinoy sunday @ ucla film archive
the festival of (in)appropriation #6: contemporary found footage filmmaking @ filmforum @ spielberg @ egyptian


mon. feb. 17

the blank tapes FREE @ satellite
diamonds are forever, never say never again @ new beverly
titus 1:40 PM @ pan african film festival
of good report 4:05 PM @ pan african film festival
let the fire burn 6:20 PM @ pan african film festival
freedom summer 8:30 PM @ pan african film festival
we won't bow down 8:40 PM @ pan african film festival
til infinity: the souls of mischief 9 PM @ pan african film festival
rushmore @ greg proops film club @ silent movie theater
jean painleve: the vampire the seahorse and the octopus in love 8:30 PM @ redcat
the square @ the crest


tue. feb. 18

inequality for all FREE @ hammer
to kill a mockingbird 1 PM @ lacma
diamonds are forever, never say never again @ new beverly
drinking flowers, froth FREE @ harvard & stone
the broken circle breakdown @ egyptian
valley of the dolls @ silent movie theater
casino 8 PM @ arclight sherman oaks


wed. feb. 19

the making of an avant-garde FREE @ hammer
willenbrock FREE 7 PM @ goethe-institut
the life aquatic with steve zissou @ new beverly
a report on the party and the guests 7:45 PM @ silent movie theater
keith & tex @ echoplex
ed wood (hosted by martin landau) @ cinerama dome


thu. feb. 20

devi FREE 7 PM @ csun armer theater
ringo deathstarr @ church on york
airport, airport 1975 @ egyptian
band of outsiders, vivre sa vie @ aero
stom sogo: sweet first seizure second 8 PM @ epfc
indiana jones and the temple of doom 8 PM @ arclight pasadena
blue velvet 8 PM @ arclight sherman oaks
bad words FREE @ indie focus @ sundance sunset
teen-age strangler, the incredibly strange creatures who stopped living and became mixed-up zombies @ grindhouse film fest @ new beverly


fri. feb. 21

strange impersonation, the last frontier @ ucla film archive
marissa nadler @ church on york
jackson: not just a name 6:30 PM @ yvonne b. burke senior and community center
titmouse 5-second animation night @ egyptian
billy budd @ aero
the rainbow thief 5 PM @ hriff @ belvarado cinemas
two for the road 7:20 PM @ silent movie theater
bad timing: a sensual obsession 10 PM @ silent movie theater
starship troopers MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater
shadow of a doubt @ lacma
heller keller (10:45), baus (10:00) @ pehrspace
daniel bachman, circuit rider @ velaslavasay panorama
synecdoche new york, love liza @ new beverly
rlyon: the limits of perception and the rectangular frame 9 PM @ human resources


sat. feb. 22

warriors of the rainbow part ii: rainbow bridge 3 PM @ ucla film archive
new works salon 8 PM @ epfc
umberto (10:00) @ private island gallery
breathless, le petit soldat @ aero
dropout 5 PM @ hriff @ belvarado cinemas
la vancaza 7 PM @ hriff @ belvarado cinemas
paganini 9 PM @ hriff @ belvarado cinemas
two for the road 8 PM @ silent movie theater
mother goose rock 'n rhyme 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater
colleen green, the thermals @ troubadour
daniel bachman @ modern rustic
synecdoche new york, love liza @ new beverly
stom sogo: sweet first seizure second 9 PM @ human resources


sun. feb. 23

weekend, la chinoise @ aero
our neighbors 7 PM, home sweet home @ ucla film archive
ali baba and the forty thieves 3:10 7:30 PM, jason and the argonauts 5:10 9:30 PM @ new beverly
two for the road 4:45 PM @ silent movie theater
tvtv: gonzo gods of the groove tube @ silent movie theater
song and dance: documentary exploration by tuni chatterji and satyajit ray @ filmforum @ spielberg @ egyptian
the royal tenenbaums 5 PM @ arclight pasadena
spokenest FREE @ permanent records
a field in england 11 PM @ silent movie theater


mon. feb. 24

the blank tapes FREE @ satellite
ali baba and the forty thieves, jason and the argonauts @ new beverly
the act of killing @ the crest
2001: a space odyssey 8 PM @ cinerama dome
bad timing: a sensual obsession @ silent movie theater
a field in england 10:15 PM @ silent movie theater


tue. feb. 25

the day of the jackal 1 PM @ lacma
exploding flowers, drinking flowers, giant drag FREE @ harvard & stone
the last movie (w/ live score by bell gardens) @ high bias
ali baba and the forty thieves, jason and the argonauts @ new beverly
bad timing: a sensual obsession 9:15 PM @ silent movie theater
lifeboat FREE 3 PM @ santa monica library main branch
harold and maude 8 PM @ arclight sherman oaks
the last time i saw macao FREE (RSVP) @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges


wed. feb. 26

kinski (9:00), bottomless pit (10:00) @ bootleg
summer in berlin FREE 7 PM @ goethe-institut
last call at the oasis @ aero
that's the way of the world, great world of sound @ new beverly
martyrs of love @ silent movie theater
bad timing: a sensual obsession 9:45 PM @ silent movie theater
cutie and the boxer FREE 7 PM @ jfla
indiana jones and the temple of doom 8 PM @ cinerama dome


thu. feb. 27

the postmaster FREE 7 PM @ csun armer theater
pierrot le fou, hail mary @ aero
that's the way of the world, great world of sound @ new beverly
negativland @ silent movie theater
bad timing: a sensual obsession 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater
too late blues @ lacma
la air: andrea marquez 8 PM @ epfc
la fog, sissy cobb @ the smell
cheatahs @ echo
little miss sunshine @ arclight hollywood
boogie nights 8 PM @ arclight sherman oaks
the act of killing FREE (RSVP) @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges
william onyeabor: fantastic man FREE 10 PM @ hyperion tavern


fri. feb. 28

jon brion @ largo
qui @ satellite
colleen green, the flytraps @ the smell
je t'aime je t'aime 7:30 9:45 PM @ silent movie theatre
surf ii MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater
bouquet @ echo country outpost


sat. mar. 1

the godfather 7 PM @ electric dusk drive-in
desperate, railroaded! @ ucla film archive
this is the la river @ clockshop
contempt, king lear @ aero
three women (1924) 4:45 PM @ the silent treatment @ silent movie theater
je t'aime je t'aime 7:00 9:15 PM @ silent movie theatre
i got my pride: the blues tales of leadbelly 3 PM @ william grant still arts center
cutie and the boxer FREE 12:10 PM @ paley center
20 feet from stardom FREE 3 PM @ paley center


sun. mar. 2

the act of killing FREE 12:10 PM @ paley center
the square FREE 3 PM @ paley center


mon. mar. 3

border incident, devil's doorway @ ucla film archive
a woman is a woman, masculine feminine @ aero
full metal jacket 8 PM @ cinerama dome
je t'aime je t'aime 7:30 9:45 PM @ silent movie theatre


tue. mar. 4

flirting with disaster @ arclight hollywood
je t'aime je t'aime 5:45 PM @ silent movie theatre


wed. mar. 5

pearls of the deep @ silent movie theater
peach kelli pop, cherry glazerr @ the smell
new bums @ church on york
je t'aime je t'aime 5:15 PM @ silent movie theatre
lost & found film club: how to be a woman 10 PM @ silent movie theater
blue is the warmest color 8 PM @ new beverly


thu. mar. 6

the big city FREE 7 PM @ csun armer theater
blouse, cold showers @ la cita
pearls of the deep @ silent movie theater
je t'aime je t'aime 8:45 PM @ silent movie theatre
from the bottom of a well looking up: ezra buchla; brian crabtree; kelli cain 8:00 10:00 PM @ machine
enemy FREE (RSVP) @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges
a woman is a woman, masculine feminine @ aero
blue is the warmest color 8 PM @ new beverly
the white balloon FREE 5 PM @ the crank @ ucla james bridges


fri. mar. 7

froth, meat market, cherry glazerr @ church on york
a man is ten feet tall, a hatful of rain @ an evening with don murray @ ucla film archive
little shop of horrors (1986) MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater
corners @ lot 1
mauvais sang 7:20 9:50 PM @ silent movie theater
cesar chavez: an american hero FREE (RSVP) 7:15 PM @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges
a thesaurus of horrors: a history of the fear of premature burial FREE 8 PM @ machine
blue is the warmest color 8 PM @ new beverly
moment trigger @ pehrspace
down by law, stranger than paradise @ lacma
the flytraps, catholic spit @ redwood
synecdoche new york @ the crest
the big lebowski 10:30 PM @ the crest


sat. mar. 8

the sandwich man, island etude @ ucla film archive
mauvais sang 6:45 PM @ silent movie theater
blue is the warmest color 4:00 8:00 PM @ new beverly
julie byrne, emily reo, labs @ pehrspace
eye am 2 PM @ la turkish film fest @ egyptian
thou gild'st the even 8 PM @ la turkish film fest @ egyptian
coachwhips @ the smell
2001: a space odyssey @ aero
animation breakdown roundup 9:30 PM @ silent movie theater
dead man 5 PM, mystery train @ lacma
race & space in los angeles: 16mm films from 1949-1973 8 PM @ epfc
the artist FREE 1 PM @ la central library


sun. mar. 9

soledad's shawl 7 PM @ ucla film archive
the straight story 5 PM @ arclight hollywood
gangrene gang, adult books @ church on york
mauvais sang 4:00 9:30 PM @ silent movie theater
shark toys @ cafe nela
becket @ aero


mon. mar. 10

back to the future 8 PM @ cinerama dome
scarface 8 PM @ arclight sherman oaks
mauvais sang 10 PM @ silent movie theater
only lovers left alive @ lacma
smelveteen @ pehrspace
3:10 to yuma (2007) @ aero


tue. mar. 11

wild at heart @ arclight hollywood
mauvais sang @ silent movie theater
breadcrumb trail 10 PM @ silent movie theater
the detective (1954) FREE 1:30 PM @ skirball


wed. mar. 12

cloud 9 FREE 7 PM @ goethe-institut
mauvais sang @ silent movie theater
breadcrumb trail 10 PM @ silent movie theater
16 acres 9:15 PM @ architecture & design film fest @ los angeles theatre center theater 1
requiem for a dream, jesus' son @ new beverly


thu. mar. 13

charulata FREE 7 PM @ csun armer theater
mauvais sang @ silent movie theater
breadcrumb trail 10 PM @ silent movie theater
sagrada: the mystery of creation 6:45 PM @ architecture & design film fest @ los angeles theatre center theater 2
brooklyn farmer 7:15 PM, telos: the fantastic world of eugene tssui @ architecture & design film fest @ los angeles theatre center theater 1
requiem for a dream, jesus' son @ new beverly


fri. mar. 14

what time is it there? @ ucla film archive
troll 2 MIDNIGHT @ nuart
no age @ center for the arts eagle rock
hider in the house MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater
lost rivers 6:45 PM @ architecture & design film fest @ los angeles theatre center theater 2
the oyler house 7 PM, chavez ravine: a los angeles story @ architecture & design film fest @ los angeles theatre center theater 1
paolo soleri: beyond form 8:45 PM @ architecture & design film fest @ los angeles theatre center theater 4
my brooklyn 9:15 PM @ architecture & design film fest @ los angeles theatre center theater 2
neglected cinema FREE 6 PM @ documental @ unurban


sat. mar. 15

side street, winchester '73 (1950) @ ucla film archive
madam satan 2 PM @ egyptian
dadaismus @ hm157
drinking flowers FREE (RSVP) @ r bar
archiculture 2 PM, coast modern @ architecture & design film fest @ los angeles theatre center theater 1
brooklyn farmer 2:15 PM, telos: the fantastic world of eugene tssui @ architecture & design film fest @ los angeles theatre center theater 2
built on narrow land 4:15 PM, fagus @ architecture & design film fest @ los angeles theatre center theater 2
sagrada: the mystery of creation 8 PM @ architecture & design film fest @ los angeles theatre center theater 1
16 acres 8:15 PM @ architecture & design film fest @ los angeles theatre center theater 2
lost rivers 8:30 PM @ architecture & design film fest @ los angeles theatre center theater 4
my brooklyn 10 PM @ architecture & design film fest @ los angeles theatre center theater 1
paolo soleri: beyond form 10:15 PM @ architecture & design film fest @ los angeles theatre center theater 2
roco jet, amps for christ, ezra buchla, etc FREE @ south by south west covina @ peter f. schabarum regional park (rowland heights)


sun. mar. 16

white fence @ church on york
stray dogs 7 PM @ ucla film archive
paper moon 5 PM @ arclight hollywood


mon. mar. 17

our vinyl weighs a ton @ arclight hollywood
fast times at ridgemont high 8 PM @ arclight sherman oaks


tue. mar. 18

kraftwerk: autobahn (7:30) @ disney hall
kraftwerk: radio-activity (10:30) @ disney hall
cul-de-sac FREE 6:30 PM @ santa monica library montana branch
y tu mama tambien @ arclight hollywood


wed. mar. 19

kraftwerk: trans europe express (7:30) @ disney hall
kraftwerk: the man-machine (10:30) @ disney hall
stopped on track FREE 7 PM @ goethe-institut
the terminator 8 PM @ cinerama dome


thu. mar. 20

kraftwerk: computer world (7:30) @ disney hall
kraftwerk: techno pop (10:30) @ disney hall
nayak FREE 7 PM @ csun armer theater


fri. mar. 21

kraftwerk: the mix (7:30) @ disney hall
kraftwerk: tour de france (10:30) @ disney hall


sat. mar. 22

bleached, black lips, nobunny, death, etc @ burgerama iii @ the observatory (santa ana)
the tennors @ los globos


sun. mar. 23

the tall target 7 PM, the far country @ ucla film archive
sleep, cosmonauts, allah-las, kool keith, together pangea, etc @ burgerama iii @ the observatory (santa ana)
pee-wee's big adventure 5 PM @ arclight hollywood


tue. mar. 25

sharon jones & the dap-kings @ wiltern


thu. mar. 27

the adversary FREE 7 PM @ csun armer theater
linda perhacs @ hollywood forever


fri. mar. 28

endless bummer, obnox @ redwood
jon brion @ largo


sat. mar. 29

obnox FREE 6 PM @ permanent records
ramona @ ucla film archive
the big lebowski 8 PM @ electric dusk drive-in


sun. mar. 30

man of the west 7 PM, the tin star @ ucla film archive
telecaves @ the smell
endless bummer, the shrills, bombon @ alex's bar (LB)


thu. apr. 3

distant thunder FREE 7 PM @ csun armer theater


mon. apr. 7

body and flesh: the tactile cinema of luther price 8:30 PM @ redcat
drinking flowers, froth, adult books, mystic braves @ echo


tue. apr. 8

mark mcguire @ church on york


sat. apr. 12

clueless 8 PM @ electric dusk drive-in


mon. apr. 14

shelly silver: intimate visions and public spaces 8:30 PM @ redcat


wed. apr. 16

om @ great american music hall (SF)


thu. apr. 17

the golden fortress FREE 7 PM @ csun armer theater
om @ center for the arts eagle rock


sat. apr. 19

rear window 8 PM @ alex theatre


mon. apr. 21

corners, cherry glazerr, mystic braves @ echo


tue. apr. 22

wand @ echo


thu. apr. 24

the chess players FREE 7 PM @ csun armer theater


fri. apr. 25

jon brion @ largo


sat. apr. 26

harold and maude 8 PM @ electric dusk drive-in


sun. apr. 27

thee silver mt. zion memorial orchestra @ echoplex


mon. apr. 28

levitation room, mystic braves, l'aura moire @ echo


thu. may 1

the home and the world FREE 7 PM @ csun armer theater


fri. may 2

philip glass ensemble: la belle et la bete 8 PM @ ucla royce hall


sat. may 3

philip glass ensemble: music in twelve parts 5 PM @ ucla royce hall


wed. may 7

loop, white fence @ church on york


thu. may 8

the stranger FREE 7 PM @ csun armer theater


sun. may 11

pentagram, saint vitus, kadavar, dead meadow, etc @ psycho de mayo @ the observatory (santa ana)


mon. may 12

kadavar @ roxy


fri. may 16

holly golightly & the brokeoffs @ satellite


sat. may 17

charles bradley @ fonda





WHAT IT IS:


The Adversary (Pratidwandi) (1970), 110 mins.
The first of three films collectively known as “The Calcutta Trilogy” that examine the city of Kolkata’s effect on youth and the high price it extracts from them. Stylistically daring and inventive, The Adversary is one of Ray’s most politically potent and provocative films.


AMERICAN PROMISE
American Promise spans 13 years as Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, middle-class African-American parents in Brooklyn, New York, turn their cameras on their son, Idris, and his best friend, Seun, who make their way through one of the most prestigious private schools in the country. Chronicling the boys’ divergent paths from kindergarten through high school graduation at Manhattan’s Dalton School, this provocative, intimate documentary presents complicated truths about America’s struggle to come of age on issues of race, class and opportunity. Winner, U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award, 2013 Sundance Film Festival.


AUDRE LORDE: THE BERLIN YEARS 1984 TO 1992
Audre Lorde’s incisive, often-angry, but always brilliant writings and speeches defined and inspired the US-American feminist, lesbian, African-American, and women of color movements of the 1970s and 1980s. Audre Lorde – the Berlin Years 1984 to 1992 documents an untold chapter of Lorde’s life: her influence on the German political and cultural scene before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a decade of profound social change. The film explores the importance of Lorde’s legacy, as she encouraged Afro-Germans – who at that time had no name or space for themselves – to make themselves visible within a culture that until then had kept them isolated and silent. It chronicles Lorde’s empowerment of Afro-German women to create community, to write and to publish, as she challenged white women to acknowledge the significance of their white privilege and to deal with difference in constructive ways. Previously unreleased archival material as well as present-day testimony from Lorde’s colleagues, students and friends explore the lasting influence of Lorde’s ideas on Germany and the impact of her work and personality. For the first time, Dagmar Schultz’s personal archival video-and audio-recordings reveal with stunning images a significant part of the private Audre Lorde as well as her agenda – to rouse Afro-Germans to recognize each other.


BAD TIMING: A SENSUAL OBSESSION
“One of [Nic] Roeg’s grandest achievements of bravado baroque.” — Museum of Modern Art
After coaxing strong turns from pop music personalities in Performance (Mick Jagger) and The Man Who Fell To Earth (David Bowie), Nic Roeg found his next leading man in the unlikely Art Garfunkel, who turns in one hell of an intense performance opposite Teresa Russell in Bad Timing: the notorious 1980 film which pushed all of its primary talent into dangerous personal and professional territory. Elliptically skipping back and forth through time, we open with a catatonic Russell undergoing a mysterious operation while Garfunkel looks on and recalls their stormy relationship in the city of Vienna, beginning with a chance meeting at a party and soon degenerating into a series of psychologically violent games that treat sex and power interchangeably. Not sparing the mutual immolation of its leads for one moment, the film culminates in a searing final act that takes a Possession-like wrecking ball to the audience. Reviled by its original distributor, critically lambasted, and so extreme that both of its leads were desperate to be released from their contracts, this off-the-cuff study in obsession pushes Roeg’s trademark time-fractured editing to extremes, creating a film still capable of wildly polarizing viewers. Archival 35mm print, courtesy of the British Film Institute! Dir. Nicolas Roeg, 1980, 35mm, 122 min.


The Big City (Mahanagar) (1963), 131 mins.
The Big City, Ray’s first portrayal of life in his native Kolkata, follows a young woman who decides to take a job to help support her family. A powerful human drama that is both hopeful morality tale and a commentary on the identity of the modern Indian woman.


BIG MEN
Big Men is a real-life Treasure of the Sierra Madre, an epic tale about ambitious people who uncover a massive and exquisitely rare pot of gold in one of the poorest places on earth. In 2007, US-based Kosmos Energy discovers the first oil in the history of the West African Republic of Ghana. What follows over the next five years is a twisting tale of greed and deception, which director Rachel Boynton films with razor-sharp journalistic skill. While in Ghana she makes side trips to nearby Nigeria, whose own oil reserves have been responsible for a vicious cycle of exploitation with little appreciable benefit to the country itself. Big Men travels from company meetings about oil deals worth billions to gatherings of heavily armed militants preparing to strike. And along the way it poses vital questions about what fundamentally motivates us: is unbridled greed an intrinsic part of human nature? And can what unites us ever be greater than what divides us? A remarkable suspense story about global capitalism with breathtaking access to everyone involved.


BILLY BUDD
1962, Warner Bros., 123 min, UK, Dir: Peter Ustinov
Herman Melville’s last novel was staged in 1951 as both a Benjamin Britten opera and a Broadway play; the latter served as the basis for this superb high-seas adventure. Peter Ustinov directs and co-stars as the captain of a British ship during the Napoleonic wars who gives his Master of Arms (an unforgettably cruel Robert Ryan) a free hand, leading to tragic consequences. In the title role as a young sailor pressed into service, Terence Stamp earned an Oscar nomination. Discussion preceding the film with Maestro James Conlon and actor Michael York.


BLACKMAIL
1929, Rialto, 75 min, UK, Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Shot as both a silent and a talkie (Britain’s first), this outstanding suspense thriller puts both Anny Ondra and police detective boyfriend John Longden to the test after a man is killed in self-defense and a blackmailer threatens to spin it as murder. BLACKMAIL is among the most involving of Hitchcock’s pre-war films. The climactic chase through the British Museum will leave you breathless. With live musical accompaniment by Cliff Retallick.


Body and Flesh: The Tactile Cinema of Luther Price
"Luther Price is Brakhage after Punk." —Light Industry
Luther Price's painstakingly handcrafted films and slides are truly one of a kind as the artist layers viscerally distressed found film strips with provocative images, anarchic visual patterns, dirt, mold and other detritus in a sensuous, even ecstatic, vision of entropy and mortality—inscribed directly onto the film medium. Price’s uncompromising work has been presented at storefront cinemas, underground performance venues and, in recent years, museums such as MoMA and the Whitney. The program features two slide projection pieces, including Light Fractures (2013), several Super 8 films, and a new 16mm film.


Border Incident (1949)
Directed by Anthony Mann
Acting in cooperation, an immigration investigator from Mexico (Ricardo Montalban) and his American counterpart (George Murphy) stage an undercover operation in which the Mexican official will pose as an illegal border-crosser, to monitor the experiences of braceros who enter the U.S. illegally, and sometimes in grave danger.  The plot exposes a number of ills and wrongdoers, and quickly enough places the agents themselves in harm’s way. 
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp.  Producer: Nicholas Nayfack.  Screenwriter: John C. Higgins, based on a story by George Zuckerman.  Cinematographer: John Alton.  Editor: Conrad A. Nervig.  Cast: Ricardo Montalban, George Murphy, Howard Da Silva, James Mitchell, Arnold Moss. 35mm, b/w, 92 min.


Charulata (The Lonely Wife) (1964), 117 mins.
Set in late nineteenth-century, pre-independence India, Ray’s Charulata is an exquisite story of a woman’s artistic and romantic yearning. A subtle and delicate tale of a marriage in jeopardy and a woman taking the first steps toward establishing her own voice.


The Chess Players (Shatranj Ke Khilari) (1977), 113 mins.
The Chess Players focuses on events surrounding Britain’s colonial involvement in India in the late nineteenth-century. Employing Western actors and stars from the Bombay cinema, the film was Ray’s most expensive production and one of his few to utilize English dialog.


CLOUD 9
Germany, 2008, 100 min., German with English subtitles.
Starring Ursula Werner, Horst Rehberg, Horst Westphal
Inge, a seamstress in her 60’s, returns a pair of mended trousers to Karl, a customer 10 years her senior. The two are immediately drawn to each other and, within a matter of moments, have consummated their new relationship. Inge then returns home to Werner, to whom she has been happily married for 30 years. Though she tries to resist, Inge can’t deny her feelings for Karl, and the two begin to see each other regularly. Even Inge’s daughter is supportive of the affair, although she urges her mother to keep it a secret. However, Inge refuses to live a lie, and her decision to tell Werner of her relationship with Karl changes both of their lives irrevocably.
With its explicit and honest love scenes, Cloud Nine rejects more mainstream depictions of the elderly in film. It is a rare late-in-life love story and Dresen is by turns fearless and tender in his handling of the material.


CUBA: AN AFRICAN ODYSSEY
This exciting, enlightening and entertaining documentary focuses on a little-known aspect of the demise of apartheid and shows why President Fidel Castro was the first person outside the African continent to be visited by President Nelson Mandela upon his release from Robben Island. Cuba’s military engagement in Angola involved 450,000 Cuban troops sent to fight alongside Angolan and Namibian freedom fighters. They defeated the white apartheid South African army at the pivotal and decisive Battle of Cuito Carnavale. This military victory, along with the Black unions and student led people’s uprising inside South Africa, coupled with the world-wide anti-apartheid movement imposing sanctions against South Africa led to the freeing of President Mandela and the destruction of the apartheid system. The film traces the pivotal role played by Cuba’s international policy in helping independence struggles on the African continent beginning with Che Guevara’s mission into the Congo to avenge the death of Patrice Lumumba and then Cuba’s support of Amílcar Cabral’s uprising in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde.


Desperate (1947)
Directed by Anthony Mann
Seeking an honest living to support his pregnant wife, a returning veteran accepts a job that turns out to be illegal—trafficking stolen furs.  Attempting an exit, he becomes embroiled in a police incident, and soon has the mob and the cops on his tail, as he flees with his wife from pillar to post. This straightforward yarn is also a sobering tale of disillusionment. 
RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. Producer: Michael Kraike. Screenwriter: Harry Essex, from a story by Dorothy Atlas and Anthony Mann. Cinematographer: George E. Diskant. Editor: Marston Fay. Cast: Steve Brodie, Audrey Long, Raymond Burr, Douglas Fowley, Jason Robards.  35mm, b/w, 73 min.


Devi (The Goddess) (1960), 93 mins.
In Devi, Ray tells the story of a young woman who comes to believe that she is an incarnation of the goddess Kali. Here the filmmaker explores the idea of the modern Indian woman and sensitively shows the pressures and difficulties this new ideal created.


Devil's Doorway (1950)
Directed by Anthony Mann
An outright study of manifest destiny, Devil’s Doorway pits an upstanding citizen against his fellow townspeople, who resent his Native American heritage and social advancement.  Scheming to deprive Shoshone Civil War hero Lance Poole (Robert Taylor) of his justly owned lands through skullduggery or violence, the good people of Medicine Bow, Wyoming form a rueful picture of ruthless American expansionism. 
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp.  Producer: Nicholas Nayfack.  Screenwriter: Guy Trosper.  Cinematographer: John Alton.  Editor: Conrad A. Nervig.  Cast: Robert Taylor, Louis Calhern, Paula Raymond, Marshall Thompson, James Mitchell. 35mm, b/w, 84 min.


DIAMONDS OF THE NIGHT
“It’s a torrent of life—and cinema—in the face of death. Best known as one of the Czech New Wave’s earliest salvos, Jan Nemec’s debut stunner feels even more potent now that it’s been freed of the expectations and delineations of its original national movement. On a hillside in WWII-era Czechoslovakia, two young men duck gunfire and dash desperately for cover in the wintry woods. Starving and dangerously dehydrated, they take bread from a farmer’s wife and provoke another pursuit, this time by a community of rifle-toting geriatrics who treat the duo’s mortal scramble as sport. All the while, the younger of the two (Antonin Kumbera) flashes back to his life in Prague, to the train bound for a concentration camp, and to the jailbreak that he seems fated to endlessly repeat. We’re utterly and overwhelmingly immersed in a Jewish fugitive’s singular experience, from hunger pains to hallucinatory reveries. Nemec’s technique is as emotionally intuitive as it is masterful, purposefully scrambling past and present, handheld realism (a breathless opening tracking shot) and Buñuellian surrealism (fever-dreamed ants colonizing Kumbera’s angelic face).” — Eric Hynes, Time Out. Dir. Jan Nemec, 1964, 35mm, 68 min.   Feature preceded by the Jan Nemec short film “A Loaf of Bread”.


Distant Thunder (Ashani Sanket) (1973), 101 mins.
Set during World War II, Distant Thunder tells the story of the man-made famine that caused the deaths of five million inhabitants of Colonial Bengal. An emotionally charged film that contrasts the course of terrible events and the astonishing beauty of the world.


Dropout (ITALY)
Director TINTO BRASS
Dropout, which stars (then-and-now) real-life couple Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero who produced and financed the film themselves, tells the tale of a couple who meet in swinging London and run away together to have a series of adventures with societies dropouts.
This premiere restoration, has unseen material from the Tinto Brass archives, and was completed in cooperation with Tinto Brass and Alexander Tuschinski, to give viewers the most complete version of the directors original vision, in the highest quality available in the world.


Far From Beijing: The State of Independent Chinese Cinema
“Cha Fang challenges the bounds of documentation and critique, revealing how these can be one and the same in the hands of a skilled political artist.” —Senses of Cinema
Two startling new documentaries attest to the growing decentralization of Chinese independent film to the farther reaches of the country. In Cha Fang (The Questioning, 2013, digital video, 21 min.), producer, festival programmer and distributor Zhu Rikun expands the seminal role he has played in independent cinema by turning filmmaker; his camera records an absurd hotel room confrontation with police during a visit with human rights activists in southeastern Jiangxi Province. In Yumen (2013, 16mm transferred to HD, 65 min.), J.P. Sniadecki of the Sensory Ethnography Lab teams with artist-filmmakers Xu Ruotao and Huang Xiang for an uncanny expressionist portrait of a largely abandoned oil-drilling town in the highlands of northwestern Gansu Province. The directors describe the work as “a fragmented tale of hungry souls and restless youth, bringing together narrative gesture, performance art and socialist realism into a crude and radiant collage.” In person: J.P. Sniadecki


The Festival of (In)appropriation #6: Contemporary Found Footage Filmmaking
Founded in 2009, the Festival of (In)appropriation is a yearly showcase of contemporary short audiovisual works that appropriate film or video footage and repurpose it in “inappropriate” and inventive ways. Whether you call it collage, compilation, found footage, détournement, or recycled cinema, this kind of work generates novel juxtapositions of elements which produce new meanings and ideas unintended by the original makers – meanings and ideas that are, in other words “inappropriate.”


A FIELD IN ENGLAND
“Wheatley’s fourth feature is his most unclassifiable yet, blending historical drama, 1960s psychedelia and formal experimentation…this is that hyper-rare object, a genuinely strange British film.” — Jonathan Romney, The Independent
“A most original and stunning cinematic experience” — Martin Scorsese
Specializing in weirdos, whackos, wiccans and hatchet men, Ben Wheatley has become a truly vibrant film artist to watch in just a handful of years. His movies (Down Terrace, Kill List, Sightseers) are a mad buffet of the murderous and the mundane — and his latest, A Field In England, veers off in a totally different direction: a scrappy, heady brew of psychedelia, historical docudrama and all-out insanity. A Field In England takes on the heavy B&W atmosphere of an early Black Sabbath album, as it follows a quintet of 17th-century British Civil War refugees fighting, freaking out on wild ‘shrooms and fleeing into the countryside. Along the way, Wheatley takes startling cues from the dense time-spanning works of Peter Watkins (Culloden, Punishment Park), the occult-meets-Christianity overtones of The Wicker Man, the mud-smeared period detail of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the playful phantasmagoria of Alejandro Jodorowsky — all the while serving up devious Shakespearean wit and exquisitely mindfucked images. Open up, and let the devil in! Dir. Ben Wheatley, 2013, DCP, 91 min.


FINDING SAMUEL LOWE: FROM HARLEM TO CHINA
Former NBC broadcast executive and Afro-Jamaican entrepreneur Paula Madison recalls that her mother, Nell Vera Lowe, spoke of her sad childhood. Born in Jamaica in 1918 to a Chinese shopkeeper, Samuel Lowe, and a young Jamaican woman, Albertha Campbell, Nell at three was separated from her father and never saw him again. After Nell died in 2006, Paula determined she would find the other descendants of her Chinese grandfather in China. Having experienced poverty and hardship from growing up in a single-parent household in Harlem, Paula and her brother Elrick Williams built the family fortune, making them majority shareholders in The Africa Channel and owners of the WNBA Basketball Team the Los Angeles Sparks as well as other investments. Embarking on a journey that would take her and brothers Elrick and Howard first to Toronto where they would be introduced to the Chinese-Jamaican community and remember clues to their family’s history, which in turn would lead them to Jamaica. There, they discover Samuel Lowe’s humble beginnings in Mocho, Clarendon and then his successful store in St. Ann’s Bay. Having been told by their mother Nell that her father Samuel Lowe left Jamaica for China around 1934, never to return to Jamaica, through research and family connections, they trace their relatives to Shenzhen, China. A trip to China with their entire family culminates into an unforgettable family reunion. At its heart, this is a story about familial love and devotion that transcends race, space, and time.


Finyé (The Wind)
Mali, 1982, 100 minutes
Written and directed by Souleymane Cissé
Starring Fousseyni Sissoko, Goundo Guissé, and Balla Moussa Keita
Writer/director Souleymane Cissé’s 1982 drama starts with a deft intimacy—following high-school classmates from two disparate worlds as they traverse the tricky roads of family and friends while keeping an eye on their futures. Ba is a young man from the village, struggling to keep his grades up, and Batrou is the sensitive daughter of a no-nonsense military man. But then Cissé shifts the ground beneath the feet of his characters—and the audience—when a political stand becomes the center of the story. What seemed to be a tried and true story of the path to adulthood becomes another altogether different one. “The wind awakens the path of man,” a title informs at the beginning of Finyé, and Cissé is out to reveal what happens when a force of nature prods another such force into action.


FOR THE CAUSE
Upon her recent victory in winning the release of a wrongfully convicted man, Mirai Scott, a celebrated Chicago civil rights attorney, is contacted by her estranged father, a former Black Panther who went underground 30 years ago after an FBI raid during which a policeman was shot and wounded. He has been recently captured and extradited and is now being charged with the attempted murder of the policeman. At first Mirai refuses to take his case, but her curiosity about her parents’ relationship is aroused when her otherwise frank-speaking mother refuses to talk about what happened between her and Mirai’s father during their days in the Party. Believing this to be an opportunity to fill in some of the blanks in her past and perhaps help her overcome some of her own relationship and trust issues, Mirai changes her mind and decides to take her father’s case. Long-held hostilities and accusations explode, giving way to the unearthing of long-buried wrongs and deceptions as Mirai aggressively pursues her father’s defense. Stars Charlette Speigner, Shariba Rivers, Jerod Haynes and Eugene Parker.


FREEDOM SUMMER
During the summer of 1964 more than 700 student volunteers joined with organizers and local African Americans in an historic voter registration effort that would shatter the foundations of white supremacy in Mississippi, the nation’s most segregated state. Now known as “Freedom Summer,” this 10-week period was marked by sustained and deadly violence, including the notorious murders of three civil rights workers, countless beatings, the burning of thirty-five churches, and the bombing of seventy homes and community centers. In response to the unrelenting challenges to registering Black voters directly within hostile Mississippi, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was born. It registered its own voters outside of the discriminatory system, and ultimately sent a delegation of 68 members to attend the 1964 Democratic National Convention to confront and unseat the all-white delegation. The summer of 2014 will mark the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer and the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder decision, which struck down key protections afforded by the landmark civil rights legislation — The Voting Rights Act of 1965, borne of the political momentum generated by this historical movement. Directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Stanley Nelson (Freedom Riders, The Murder of Emmett Till), Freedom Summer highlights an overlooked but essential element of the Civil Rights Movement: the patient and long-term efforts by both outside activists and local citizens in Mississippi to organize communities and register black voters — even in the face of intimidation, physical violence and death. With archival footage, rare photographs and insightful interviews of participants, Nelson chronicles the struggles of a diverse coalition of Americans.


The Future of Institutional Critique
Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology artists Judith Barry, Dara Birnbaum, and Mary Kelly discuss how social, political, and artistic systems are addressed in their work and whether they envision the idiom of “institutional critique” remaining relevant in the future. Moderated by Take It or Leave It curators Johanna Burton, Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Engagement at the New Museum, and Anne Ellegood, Hammer senior curator.


GENERATION WAR
Dir. Philipp Kadelbach, Germany, 2013, 270 min. German with English subtitles, digital.
Starring Volker Bruch, Tom Schilling, Miriam Stein, Katherina Schüttler, and Ludwig Trepte
Billed as a German Band of Brothers, the blockbuster miniseries Generation War vividly depicts the lives of five young German friends forced to navigate the unconscionable moral compromises of life under Hitler.
Level-headed, highly decorated officer Wilhelm (Volker Bruch) goes off to the eastern front with his sensitive younger brother Friedhelm (Tom Schilling). Deeply in love with Wilhelm is Charlotte (Miriam Stein), a young nurse who looks forward to serving in the Red Cross. Greta (Katherina Schüttler) is a talented singer who longs to become another Marlene Dietrich, while her Jewish boyfriend Viktor (Ludwig Trepte) fights for his life while hiding among members of the Polish Resistance.
Through extraordinary performances, these five exceptional young German actors fill their archetypal characters with the certainty of youth, and then allow it to drain away slowly with each successive month of war.
Valor, courage, and betrayal come to the fore in this powerful German epic that shows the everyday realities of wartime life from a deeply personal perspective. This 270 minute feature is presented in two parts with an intermission between parts one and two. Part 1: 131 min. Intermission: 15 min. Part 2: 148 min. A discussion with John Connelly, Professor of History at UC Berkeley will follow part two.


GO FOR SISTERS
Bernice and Fontayne grew up so close people said they could “go for sisters”, but time sent them down different paths. Twenty years later, those paths cross: Fontayne is a recovering addict fresh out of jail, and Bernice is her new parole officer.
When Bernice’s son Rodney goes missing on the Mexican border, his shady associates all in hiding or brutally murdered, Bernice realizes she needs someone with the connections to navigate Rodney’s world without involving the police… and turns to her old friend. The pair enlist the services of disgraced ex-LAPD detective Freddy Suárez and plunge into the dim underbelly of Tijuana, forced to unravel a complex web of human traffickers, smugglers, and corrupt cops before Rodney meets the same fate as his partners. Stars LisaGay Hamilton, Yolonda Ross, Edward James Olmos. Directed by John Sayles


The Golden Fortress (Sonar Kella) (1974), 120 mins.
A young boy is haunted by memories of a previous life and is kidnapped by sinister scheming bandits. A bewitching comedy-thriller, The Golden Fortress shows Ray at his most playful and includes some of the most memorable performances in Bengali cinema.


THE GREAT FLOOD
"...a striking experiment in music and moviemaking." — The New York Times   
"[THE GREAT FLOOD] would be a memorable drama even played in total silence. In closeup, it shows trickling streams and rain on cotton plants swelling into torrents; cigar-toting politicians gesticulate reassuringly, and the wealthy making dignified retreats while the impoverished cling to the remains of shacks. Guitarist Bill Frisell's live soundtrack of howling blues chords, Thelonious Monk hooks, country-swing and Old Man River quotes would make a fine concert without a film, too. Put the two together [and] the result moves up another creative and emotional level." —The Guardian
The Mississippi River Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in American history. In the spring of 1927, the river broke out of its banks in 145 places and inundated 27,000 square miles to a depth of up to 30 feet. Part of it enduring legacy was the mass exodus of displaced sharecroppers. Musically, the “Great Migration” of rural southern blacks to Northern cities saw the Delta Blues electrified and reinterpreted as the Chicago Blues, Rhythm and Blues, and Rock and Roll.
Using minimal text and no spoken dialog, filmmaker Bill Morrison and composer/guitarist Bill Frisell have created a powerful portrait of a seminal moment in American history through a collection of silent images matched to a searing original soundtrack. - Icarus Films
80 MIN / USA / B&W / 2013 / ENGLISH / DIGITAL PROJECTION


THE GREAT KILAPY
Set in the period from the 1960s to the mid-1970s and on the eve of Angola’s independence from Portugal, Angolan João Fraga is a charming, good-hearted playboy and irresistible bon vivant, who appears to slip into a life of crime in order to support his affluent lifestyle. When he pulls off a massive swindle at the expense of the Portuguese colonial administration in Angola, he becomes a subversive political figure and is persecuted by the Portuguese dictatorship.  His persecution and subsequent imprisonment results in him becoming a legend amongst his people. The historical question remains–was he a real spy for the MPLA (the liberation movement) or was he a sophisticated hustler? Inspired by a real figure, acclaimed Angolan director Zézé Gamboa’s decade-spanning historical drama is a refreshing take on the national liberation story in southern Africa and turns its conventions upside down with elegance and humor. Shot in sepia tones, this film stars the number one African Brazilian actor Lázaro Ramos (Madame Sata), João Lagarto and Pedro Hossi.


GREAT WORLD OF SOUND
Filmmaker Craig Zobel explores the shortcuts that some folks are willing to take to become famous while simultaneously exposing the unscrupulous manner in which others take advantage of these desperate souls with this story of two men who set out to train as record producers. Excited about the prospect of helping to sign undiscovered artists, Martin (Pat Healy) answers an ad to train as a record producer. Over the course of his apprenticeship, Martin is paired with like-minded trainee Clarence (Kene Holliday) -- a middle-aged man seeking out a new career path. Upon graduating from the program, Martin and Clarence are assigned the task of traveling to towns where the company has placed newspaper ads searching for untapped talent. For a fee, these emerging talents can have their music heard by an increasingly larger audience. Though at first everything seems to be going great with their new jobs, a few unsettling developments soon lead Martin and Clarence to suspect that the company may not always have the artists' best interests in mind... 2007, USA, 35mm, 106 minutes. Directed by Craig Zobel; written by George Smith, Craig Zobel; starring Pat Healy, Kene Holliday, John Baker, Robert Longstreet.  Star Pat Healy IN PERSON at Wednesday's screening!


HAIL MARY
JE VOUS SALUE, MARIE
1985, Cohen Film, 107 min, France, Dir: Jean-Luc Godard
This contemporary take on the Christian Nativity envisions Mary as a teen basketball player and Joseph as a dropout cabbie. Highly controversial on original release, this beautifully shot meditation on sexuality and divinity is one of Godard’s best films of the 1980s. With Juliette Binoche. “It’s my favorite foreign film since THE MOON IN THE GUTTER (the BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS of ‘art’ pictures).” – John Waters, Crackpot. In French with English subtitles.


A Hatful of Rain (1957)
Directed by Fred Zinnemann (High Noon, 1952) and featuring a harrowing score by Bernard Herrmann, this pioneering, realistic examination of drug addiction stars Don Murray as a returning Korean War veteran dependent on morphine due to a battle injury. In perhaps the defining role of his career, Murray’s riveting, unsettling performance twitches with the palpable anxiety and desperation of a soul in free fall.
Twentieth Century-Fox. Producer: Buddy Adler. Screenwriter: Michael V. Gazzo, Alfred Hayes. Cinematographer: Joseph MacDonald.  Editor: Dorothy Spencer. Cast: Don Murray, Eva Marie Saint, Anthony Franciosa, Lloyd Nolan, Henry Silva.  35mm, b/w, 109 min.


He Walked by Night (1948)
Directed by Alfred L. Werker, Anthony Mann
This story following the cat-and-mouse pursuit of a cop-killing, black marketeer is the quintessential “police procedural,” featuring a degree of technical detail heretofore unknown.  An un-credited Anthony Mann (who assumed directorial duties from Alfred Werker) is generally acknowledged as the creative force behind this innovative noir, featuring cutting-edge location shooting by cinematographer John Alton, and climaxing in a gripping chase through the Los Angeles sewer system.
Eagle-Lion Films, Inc.  Producer: Robert T. Kane. Screenwriter: John C. Higgins, Crane Wilbur, from a story by Crane Wilbur.  Cinematographer: John Alton.  Editor: Alfred De Gaetano.  Cast: Richard Basehart, Scott Brady, Roy Roberts, Whit Bissell, James Cardwell. 35mm, b/w, 80 min.


The Home and the World (Ghare-Baire) (1984), 140 mins. 
Ray’s The Home and the World concerns an aristocratic but progressive man, who insisting on broadening his more traditional wife’s political horizons, drives her into the arms of a friend. An elegant, profound, and meditative work from the late-career of a master.


Home Sweet Home (Taiwan, 1970)
"Pai lends striking visual innovation to the stories of Taiwan students returning...for the holidays.” —Film Society of Lincoln Center
Directed by Pai Ching-jui
Going abroad has its own allures. But what happens when people come back home? This rediscovered classic combines an all-star ensemble cast, colorful clashes of rural nostalgia and sixties pop style, and film techniques that director Pai Ching-jui himself learned while studying filmmaking in Italy.
Producer: Henry Kung. Screenwriter: Chang Yung-hsiang, based on a story by Meng Yao. Cinematographer: Lin Tsan-ting. Editor: Wang Jin-chen. Cast: Chang Hsiao-yen, Chen Kuo Chun, Chen Hui Mei, Li Chang, Chu Bo-lin. HDCAM, color, 108 min. 


Island Etude (Taiwan, 2006)
Directed by Chen Huai-en
A young man embarks upon a bicycle tour around the periphery of the island of Taiwan. Along the way he encounters many fellow travelers: a graffiti artist, a lovely traveling student from Lithuania, allowing each to affect him in some way. In this moving valentine to Taiwanese civil society, “Ming’s” experiences suggest the negotiations and transformations taking place everywhere in the country… for those open to experience. 
Producer: Yang Lai-yin. Screenwriter/Cinematographer: Chen Huai-en. Editor: Chen Bo-wen. Cast: Tung Ming-hsiang, Teng An-ning, Ruta Palionyte, Danny Deng, Darren. 35mm, color, in Mandarin and Lithuanian with English subtitles, 109 min. 


It’s A Frame-Up!
(2013, 29 min. Dir. Michael Schlesinger). In this faux 1938 short, the vaudeville team of Biffle and Shooster wangle jobs in an art gallery - on the very day a priceless painting has been delivered. With Nick Santa Maria, Will Ryan, Robert Picardo and Daniel Roebuck. “I can't think of any other intentional comedies of recent years that have given me so many, or so many varied, big laughs in the space of 30 minutes. It makes what has basically been a dead art form for the past 50 years feel vital once again.” - Tim Lucas, Video Watchdog.


IT’S A GIFT
1934, Universal, 73 min, USA, Dir: Norman Z. McLeod
Considered by some to be the Great Man’s greatest film, this short, sweet W.C. Fields vehicle is little more than a series of zany sketches loosely tied to his desire to move to California and grow oranges. Includes the legendary "Mr. Muckle" and "Carl LaFong" scenes, as well as the hanging mirror and sleeping porch routines. Jean Rouverol, who co-wrote THE FIRST TIME, plays Fields’ daughter.


JACKSON: NOT JUST A NAME
These exceptional youngsters wanted to continue organizing for Revolutionary Black Liberation in the community where they were raised;
Avalon Gardens Housing Projects. "The PROUDjects." This is their story of resistance.
Directed by Black Panther and founding member of the Jonathan Jackson Educational Cadre, Harold Welton. 75 minutes. Q&A moderated by the author of 'The Murder(s) of Oscar Grant,' Thandisizwe Chimurenga.


Jean Painleve: The Vampire, The Seahorse and the Octopus in Love
"Painleve had a taste for beauty, researched it, and re-staged it in front of the camera—an undiscovered universe all the more fascinating because we know it is the one we live in." —Cahiers du cinema
Twenty-five years after the death of nature film maverick Jean Painleve, REDCAT gives a rare presentation—in glorious 35mm—of his most daring and exquisite achievements, including several of the legendary underwater films. Spanning decades, this program features The Seahorse (1934), The Vampire (1939), Shrimp Stories (1964) and The Love Life of the Octopus (1965), among others. Painlevé possessed an inquisitive eye, unerring in its view of nature’s subtle poetry. In more than 200 documentary shorts, he delivered serious scientific investigation as well as breathtaking beauty and dream-like drama, linking research, art, even anti-fascist politics. In the process, Painleve scandalized the hidebound scientific community but also won over surrealists and avant-gardists—friends and collaborators such as Artaud, Eisenstein, Vigo, Bunuel, Calder, Rouch and Godard.


Je T'Aime, Je T'Aime
1968/color/91 min. | Scr: Jacques Sternberg; dir: Alain Resnais; w/ Claude Rich, Van Doude, Olga Georges-Picot.
After a failed attempt at suicide, Rich is chosen as the first guinea pig for a time-travelling experiment. But a technical malfunction lands him in a maze of his own fractured memories. He re-experiences his seduction of a beautiful, rebellious Picot, their idyllic vacation on the Riviera, and a fateful sojourn in Glasgow. Little seen in the U.S. and featuring cameos by such Resnais collaborators as Robbe-Grillet and Semprún, Je t'aime, je t'aime is perhaps Resnais's most underrated work. "With Marker's La Jetée and Tarkovsky's Solaris, it constitutes a holy trinity of meditation on the horrors of eternal life."—Raymond Durgnat. 


JUSTIN CLIFFORD RHODY’S VERNACULAR VISIONS
Vernacular Visions is a curated private collection of vernacular 20th Century color photo slides presented via 35mm projections. An exploration and celebration of the medium, and its subjects, spoken and coded in the visual dialect of the amateur practitioner. Justin Clifford Rhody has presented a series of these slide shows over the past year at different venues in the Bay Area. For this program he will be presenting a sort of “best of”, culled from previous presentations.


KING LEAR
1987, Park Circus, 90 min, USA, Dir: Jean-Luc Godard
Shakespeare’s tragedy serves as a jumping-off point for this strange deconstruction of film and storytelling. Noted theater director Peter Sellars stars as a descendant of the Bard of Avon working to restore his ancestor’s plays in a postapocalyptic world; he finds inspiration in gangster Don Learo (Burgess Meredith) and his daughter (Molly Ringwald). Norman Mailer and Woody Allen appear in bizarre cameos.


LA AIR: ANDREA MÁRQUEZ
Andrea Márquez (born 1983, Argentina) is a writer, photographer and filmmaker. She studied Literature (Universidad de Buenos Aires) and Film Studies (Université Paris Diderot). As a writer she has won several prizes, amongst them the 30th Félix Francisco Casanova for her collection of poems Posesiones. Her first short film, El balcón, has been screened in several festivals around the world. She now lives in Los Angeles, where she works on independent film and artistic projects. Drawing on ideas of public spaces in Mike Davis’ City of Quartz, and the concept of the “trace” as developed by Derrida, and Blanchot, she will make an audiovisual exploration on the tracks of different social organization and the concept of community in Los Angeles. 


LAST CALL AT THE OASIS
2011, ATO Pictures, 105 min, USA, Dir: Jessica Yu
It’s said you don’t miss your water until the well runs dry; this new documentary argues that this time is now at hand, with droughts and contamination an increasing fact of life in America and around the world. Filmmaker Jessica Yu has marshaled a group of scientists and activists (including famed environmental crusader Erin Brockovich) to distill the flood of facts about our impending water crisis into possible solutions. Discussion following with the City of Santa Monica's Water Resources Specialist Kimberly O'Cain and Josh Rubenstein (Chief Meteorologist for CBS 2 and KCAL 9).


The Last Frontier (1956)
Directed by Anthony Mann
Two rugged trappers (Victor Mature, James Whitmore) and their Indian guide (Pat Hogan) become scouts at a remote frontier fort, tenuously defended by a young officer (Guy Madison) and an Indian-hating Colonel, at a time when tensions with local tribes are running high. Cool heads and high principles take a back seat to jingoism and passion in director Anthony Mann’s decidedly unromantic portrait of a frontier community. 
Columbia Pictures Corp.  Producer: William Fadiman.  Screenwriter: Philip Yordan, Russell S. Hughes.  Cinematographer: William Mellor.  Editor: Al Clark.  Cast: Victor Mature, Guy Madison, Robert Preston, James Whitmore, Pat Hogan. 35mm, color, 98 min.


THE LAST TIME I SAW MACAO
"A meditation on movies, myths and memory that greatly rewards your patience." -Manohla Dargis, New York Times
"A meticulous, poetic paean to a vanished time and place that is never less than spellbinding." -Elizabeth Kerr, Hollywood Reporter
"Endlessly inventive... has the power to make you laugh and the power to break your heart in half." -Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York
A wonderfully mysterious, shape-shifting feature from celebrated filmmakers Joro Pedro Rodrigues and Joro Rui Guerra da Mata, The Last Time I Saw Macao is a detective tale that blends film noir, documentary footage and personal travelogue to intoxicating effect. 
Following a spectacular opening number, a lip-synched rendition of Jane Russell's sultry "You Kill Me," the film's hero, in voiceover, sets the tale in motion. He has come to Macao in search of Candy, an old friend, who he fears has been kidnapped by a shadowy criminal syndicate. He searches the city streets and back alleys, gambling dens and music halls, but Candy's whereabouts continue to elude him, until a larger, more sinister plot comes into focus. - Cinema Guild. 85 MIN / Portugal/France. Portuguese with English Subtitles / DCP


La Vancaza (ITALY)
Director TINTO BRASS
The second film to team the real-life couple of Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero with director Tinto Brass, is perhaps their greatest collaboration; a story about women in society, and the very nature of sanity, with mediations on the absurd corruption inherent in power.
New english subtitles created by HRIFF specifically for our rare HRIFF translated and Tinto Brass approved print of this hard-to-find masterpiece.  


LET THE FIRE BURN
A masterfully crafted throw back into a time when mutual fear, suspicion and misunderstanding combusted in a grievous, fatal explosion. On May 13, 1985, three city blocks in West Philadelphia were engulfed in flames after police bombed the residence of MOVE, a radical organization that for years had antagonized city officials and neighbors. Eleven MOVE members were killed, with two inhabitants of MOVE’s home escaping. MOVE’s history in Philadelphia, its escalating confrontations with law enforcement, the city’s increasingly militarized police force and its shockingly ineffective political leadership are all examined producing a powerful story with emotional wallop.
Unchecked aggression, incoherent ideology and appallingly faulty logic are seen to run both ways. Dispensing with the usual retrospective accounts and present-day analytics, the film uses only archival images that include 1970s documentary footage about MOVE, the videotaped deposition of young Birdie Africa, who survived the 1985 fire, testimony at commission hearings convened after the event and news reports as the disaster unfolded, allowing viewers watch and listen as a tragedy intensifies.
The precise philosophical tenets of MOVE are never quite understood: The group rejected technology, reared children on a diet of raw food and eventually built a bunker on top of their townhouse, from which a loudspeaker spewed profanity throughout their working-class, mostly black neighborhood. But as troubling as MOVE’s actions were, the behavior of Philadelphia mayors Frank Rizzo and Wilson Goode, as well as district attorney Ed Rendell and the police and fire commissioners, are just as confounding, with arguably more calamitous results. What is clearly understood by films end is MOVE members were imprisoned and killed for their misdeeds over the years, but no one who ordered or condoned the bombing in 1985 was ever held to account.


MADAM SATAN
Co-presented by the American Cinematheque and the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles with support from the Cecil B. DeMille Foundation.
Dance critic Debra Levine brings new insight to Art Deco favorite MADAM SATAN (MGM, 1930, dir. Cecil B. DeMille), zeroing in on the early talkie's bizarre and exceptional "ballet mecaniqué" that takes place in a zeppelin. Levine has researched the director's 40-year friendship with Theodore Kosloff, a Ballets Russes dancer who acted in more than thirty silent movies, most directed by DeMille. DeMille's consultations with Kosloff concerning MADAM SATAN, on the cusp of the Depression, resulted in the dancer's appearance as “The Spirit of Electricity.” Levine will share the back story of the development of MADAM SATAN's inimitable movie-musical sequence. Following is a screening of MADAM SATAN. Part of Hollywood Heritage's Centennial Celebration of the Lasky-DeMille partnership.  Illustrated presentation by dance critic Debra Levine.
MADAM SATAN
1930, Warner Bros., 116 min, USA, Dir: Cecil B. DeMille
This delightfully bizarre mélange of song, dance, bedroom farce and airship disaster - director Cecil B. DeMille’s only movie musical – must be seen to be believed. Angela Brooks (Kay Johnson) endures her husband Bob’s (Reginald Denny) infidelity until a masquerade ball offers her the opportunity to win back her straying spouse and put the man’s mistress (Lillian Roth) in her place. A pre-Code gem whose sets, production numbers and costumes (by designer Adrian) will leave you slack-jawed!


The Making of an Avant-Garde
Co-presented with the MAK Center for Art and Architecture
The Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS) began as a core group of young architects including Diana Agrest, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Philip Johnson, Rem Koolhaas, Richard Meier, and Anthony Vidler, seeking alternatives to traditional forms of education and practice. IAUS has since redefined architectural discourse and practice in the United States and abroad. (2013, Dir. Diana Agrest, 64 min.)
A Q&A with director Diana Agrest follows the screening.


A MAN CALLED GOD
A MAN CALLED GOD is a full length documentary from the visionary mind of Emmy award-winning Producer, Writer, Actor, Kristoff St. John (The Young and the Restless), and directed by Blaxpoitation Icon, Christopher St John. In this unique, compelling documentary which commenced filming over thirty years ago in 1980, the St. John family embarks on a spiritual journey from Los Angeles, California to Southern India to search for God. They find “God” living in a remote village, surrounded by thousands of mesmerized followers. Heralded as an Avatar or a God Man, Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba is one of India’s most prolific gurus in India today. With a fan base of 50 million people worldwide, Sai Baba performs modern day miracles; healing the sick and diseased, materializing solid objects out of the air. The St. John family, Christopher, Maria (a British actress) and their son Kristoff, are slowly swallowed up by Sai Baba and his cult as they participate in the spiritual daily ‘Ashram’ routine, documenting on film their treacherous visit. The cult eventually overwhelms the family, with Sai Baba revealing his demonic thirst for pedophilia and other evils. A lair of lies, deceit, secrecy, sexual deviancy and murder, all under the unsuspecting banner of A MAN CALLED GOD. A family deceived and destroyed by the largest modern day cult thriving globally today.


A Man is Ten Feet Tall
NBC, 10/2/55
Directed by Robert Mulligan  
In this powerful early television anthology directed by Robert Mulligan (To Kill A Mockingbird, 1962), Don Murray stars alongside future cinema legend Sidney Poitier as an AWOL soldier that forms an unexpected deep friendship with an African American dockworker. As racial tensions on the waterfront escalate to unbridled brutality, the fates of the two men become intractably intertwined. 
Producer: Gordon Duff. Screenwriter: Robert Alan Aurthur. Cast: Don Murray, Sidney Poitier, Martin Balsam, Michael Strong, Hilda Simms. Digital betacam, b/w, 60 min.


Man of the West (1958)
Directed by Anthony Mann
Representing his small town, Link Jones (Gary Cooper) travels to Fort Worth with a bagful of money, aiming to hire a schoolteacher.  Waylaid by bandits, Link must retrieve his money to maintain his town’s trust, though this may involve acknowledging dark truths about his own past.  Director Anthony Mann frames a fair question in this drama: whether the most virtuous man is always the most effective. 
Ashton Productions, Inc. Screenwriter: Reginald Rose, based on the novel by Will C. Brown. Cinematographer: Ernest Hall. Editor: Richard V. Heermance. Cast: Gary Cooper, Julie London, Lee J. Cobb, Arthur O’Connell, Jack Lord.  35mm, color, 100 min.


MARTYRS OF LOVE
Jan Nemec's "Martyrs of Love," the three-part Czech fantasy, is a movie buff's movie. It is a clever, cinematic double-crosstic whose individual parts ultimately aren't as important as the complete quotation, which is a lyrical testimonial to movies—to Sennett, Chaplin, Keaton, Griffith, Renoir, Truffaut, Antonioni, and to just about everybody else who has ever made a movie of any importance.  "Martyrs of Love" does eventually become somewhat abrasive in its pretentiousness, but Mr. Nemec, like François Truffaut in his hommage à Hitchcock ("The Bride Wore Black"), simply cannot help being his own man, which means he is never commonplace. Dir. Jan Nemec, 1967, 35mm, 71 min.  shown with Oratorio For Prague Dir. Jan Nemec, 1968, Digibeta, 26 min., and Mother & Son Dir. Jan Nemec, 1960, Digibeta, 11 min.


MELVIN & JEAN: AN AMERICAN STORY
“Melvin & Jean: An American Story” traces the journey of Melvin and Jean McNair from their childhood growing up poor in North Carolina to their lives as valued members of their community in France. Along the way, it tells the poignant tale of two people of the radical Sixties, crime in the name of a cause—and second chances. In their early 20’s in 1972, the McNairs made news when they hijacked a plane from Detroit to Algeria to join Eldridge Cleaver and the International Section of the Black Panther Party. Simultaneously an act of political resistance to racism and the Vietnam War, the hijacking was also an act of desperation committed by two young people who saw no other way to escape the constant state of racial oppression in the United States. This dramatic hijacking, previewed in the film’s opening, marked a beginning of a long journey for the McNairs, transforming them into fugitives from American justice and a cause célèbre in France where they sought political asylum. Granted asylum but not after serving several years in prison in France for the hijacking, the McNairs remained in France and, for 35 years, have lived as model citizens in their adopted country. Now, over forty years after the fact, the two are still coming to terms with their act and its lifelong consequences as they try to gain the ability to return to the United States without spending the rest of their lives behind bars. The Director, Maia Wechsler, will be here on Friday, February 7 for a Q&A session after the screening.


MOTHER GOOSE ROCK 'N RHYME
In case you thought things couldn’t get any more bonkers around Video Nights’ hallowed halls, our latest pick is 96 resplendently shocking minutes of straight-to-video detritus that’ll leave you with a lunch lost and a song in your heart — all populated with an incredible, everyone-but-the-kitchen-sink cast of Hollywood homies. You might ask “What’s the big deal about this benign-looking kids’ TV movie?”, but once you witness this brainbomb, you’ll have many more important questions to ask: how did the makeup artists manage to make the Grinch look pretty? Why does the set look like it was constructed out of old food and misshapen Post-It Notes? Why is everything dizzyingly shot, LSD-style, through a fisheye lens? And who held the gun to the heads of Shelley Duvall, Simon and Garfunkel, ZZ Top, Woody Harrelson, Little Richard, Howie Mandel, Cyndi Lauper, Cheech Marin, Debbie Harry, Bobby Brown, Garry Shandling, The Stray Cats, Katey Sagal, Dweezil Zappa and Pia Zadora to make them all do this?!?! If you saw this as a child, you’re no doubt reading this from a mental institution, because after experiencing this you’ll have nowhere else to go. Dir. Jeff Stein, 1990, analog presentation, 96 min.


MY MONDO VALENTINE
Anyone hoping to melt faces instead of hearts this Valentine’s day, take note — you’ve found your mutant soulmate in The Cinefamily. Come watch us give love a bad name in another signature Cinefamily Mondo night, in which we plumb the depths of impossibly rare film and video vaults for the craziest love-themed clips on the planet– from misguided educational sex ed to weirdly romantic ads, from homemade atrocities to our favorite skeezy “how to score” films. Impress your date with a night like no other, or bring a raincoat and impress yourself!


The Naked Spur (1953)
Directed by Anthony Mann
Actor James Stewart portrays relentless bounty hunter Howard Kemp, who together with a drifter and morally dubious ex-soldier pursues outlaw Ben Vandergroat (played to perfection by Robert Ryan) for the $5,000 reward on his head.  Stewart delivers a morally complex performance as he struggles to resist killing and violence, only to finally give in to his primal urges. 
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp.  Producer: William H. Wright.  Screenwriter: Sam Rolfe, Harold Jack Bloom.  Cinematographer: William Mellor.  Editor: George White.  Cast: James Stewart, Robert Ryan, Janet Leigh, Ralph Meeker, Millard Mitchell. 35mm, color, 93 min.


Nayak (The Hero) (1966), 120 mins.
From his second original screenplay, Ray’s Nayak tells the story of a Bengali matinee idol, who while on a cross-country train journey, ends up revealing all of his personal secrets to a young journalist. A compelling meditation on fame and the fragility of public personas.


NEW WORKS SALON
Thom Andersen will show his new work Hey, Asshole! : “While re-mastering Los Angles Plays Itself, I re-edited a number of clips, including The Takeover (Troy Cook, 1995), a grungy, sordid straight-to-video film remarkable only because executive producer Michael Woods and star David Amos had in 1990 planned and carried out the murder of Horace McKenna, Woods's partner in the operation of a chain of strip clubs around Los Angeles—a crime echoed in the movie. After repeated viewings, I noticed a miniature tragedy (or black comedy) spread out over the first sixty minutes. Its protagonist is Waldo the bouncer, the victim of ruses and sucker punches, whose multiple failures lead him to one final heroic attempt to make amends. This is his story." –Thom Andersen.
Kate Lain will show two short video works: Rhyolite Spiral was shot at Goldwell Open Air Museum near Rhyolite ghost town, Nevada; and Michigan State shows the Michigan State football float touring the San Gabriel Valley on the way to the 2014 Rose Parade in Pasadena.
Marilyn Hernandez will show a new Super 8 film Derramo: “bright lights that never turn off, sterile, care without caring. The most important person in a place and situation they hate. Heartache that knows no bound.”
Kelsey Brain, our LA AIR resident from December 2013, will show two works she completed as part of her residency: Mark is an unrefined description of an old apartment building, and The World Is Hard is the story of a man who could be straight out of a Hollywood film, but he's not driving a fast car—he's waiting for the bus.
Ellie Parker will show three short videos: Lake of Two Mountains, in which two friends uncover a box of treasure they buried years ago near the Lake of Two Mountains, Little Room, a portrait of a little room she lived in for three months during her first winter in Montreal, and La Canción de la Herradura, a film-poem for Mari and Jorge Arteta.
Mark Toscano shows his newest video The Stone Breakers, in which a potentially valuable lesson in history and authenticity is sabotaged by poor supplementary materials.


A NIGHT WITH JP SNIADECKI
Demolition, 2008, 62 min and Songhua, 2007, 29 min
Demolition is a portrait of urban space, migrant labor, and ephemeral relationships in the center of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in western China. Attending first to the formal dimensions of the transforming worksite - including the demands of physical labor and the relationship between human and machine - the film shifts focus to the social dynamics of a group of thirty men and women who have come from the countryside to work in this ever-changing urban landscape. In exploring the various banal yet striking interactions between these members of China's "floating population," the city's residents, and the filmmaker, Demolition simultaneously expresses and resists the fleeting nature of urban experience.
Songhua depicts the intimate and complex relationship between Harbin residents and their "mother river," the Songhua in northeastern China. By attending to the everyday activities of leisure and labor unfolding along the banks and promenade, this nonfiction video also explores the interface between aesthetics and ethnography as it addresses environmental crisis within a major waterway of China.
JP Sniadecki was born on a goat farm in Michigan, grew up in the industrial rustbelt of Northern Indiana, and has lived and worked for several years in China. A filmmaker and Assistant Professor of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University, he produces work at the intersection of cinema and ethnography. His films screen at festivals such as the Berlinale, the New York Film Festival, and Edinburgh International Film Festival. His filmography includes: Yumen (2013), People’s Park (2012), Foreign Parts (2010), The Yellow Bank (2010), Chaiqian/Demolition (2008), and Songhua (2007). He is also founder of Emergent Visions, a film series that screens new independent cinema from China.


OF GOOD REPORT
Parker, a shy and mysterious high school teacher, arrives at his new assignment in a rural school. While he is earnest in his passion for teaching, his extra-curricular attentions are drawn to a gorgeous young girl. When he realizes she is a student at his very school – and forbidden fruit – he grows increasingly obsessed. When the girl goes missing, a female detective comes snooping around, fueling Parker’s unstable, even dangerous, behavior. A modern-day classic film noir that will in time prove to be a milestone in Pan African film. Stars Mothusi Magano, Petronella Tshuma, Thobi Mkhwanazi, Nomhlé Nkyonyeni and Tshamano Sebe.


Our Neighbors (Taiwan, 1963)
“Slum life gets a gritty portrait and a glamorization in the form of a community coming together to help an orphaned little girl.” —Time Out  
Directed by Lee Hsing
An orphaned girl in a poverty-stricken neighborhood is adopted by a kindly neighbor.  He struggles to support her honestly, despite opportunities to participate in a neighbor’s scurrilous get-rich-quick schemes. Invoking the pain of Chinese exiles living in Taiwan, or missing relatives still in China, the touching film posits an in-between historical period during which it is crucial for displaced residents to maintain virtue as a bedrock of identity. Screenwriter: Yao Feng-pang. Cinematographer: Lai Cheng-ying. Editor: Chang Yung-chia. Cast: Ho Yu-hua, Lei Ming, Li Kuan-chang, Li Yu-chen, Lo Wan-lin. HDCAM, b/w, in Mandarin and Taiwanese with English subtitles, 90 min. 


Paganini (GERMANY)
Director KLAUS KINSKI
Klaus Kinski believed that he lived through the same experiences as the legendary "devil violinist" Niccolò Paganini, who set all of nineteenth-century Europe into a frenzy and through whose personality Kinski offers an incredibly profound and honest insight into his own life; a life of extremities. The last film Kinski made before his death, saw the unique actor writing the screenplay, directing the film, and casting his wife and son, in what is his most personal project. HRIFF restoration of the director's "Version Originale".


PAPILIO BUDDHA
Originally banned in its native country, Jayan Cherian’s Papilio Buddha is a fierce attack on caste oppression, mainstream Gandhism and environmental degradation in the Western Ghats of India. The indigenous but landless Dalit peoples (known as ‘untouchables’ for their ostracised status), have embraced Buddhism in order to escape from caste oppression and taken over government land resulting in an ongoing land struggle with the local authorities.
The film begins poetically with protagonist Shankaran, an educated but politically apathetic Dalit, hunting for rare Papilio Buddha butterflies among the mountains of a government reserve, with Jack, an American lepidopterist. Shankaran’s father Kariyan, an Dalit activist and former communist, who leads the struggle against the discrimination against the Dalits and agitates to lay claim to the land on which the Dalits “squat”.
Unhappy with the presence of an American among the Dalits, the Indian authorities arrest Shankaran and Jack for illegally catching butterflies. They tell Jack that the Dalits are terrorists and squatters and he is forced to leave. Shankaran is imprisoned and tortured. Shankaran finally understands that he can no longer continue to turn a blind eye to the discrimination leveled against the Dalits joins the movement supporting the causes of the oppressed class. He begins a sexual relationship with Manju, a strong-minded female schoolteacher, Buddhist and auto rickshaw driver, a male-dominated occupation. In retaliation for her rejection of the sexual advances of a lecherous union leader, Manju is brutally raped and her rickshaw burned. Outraged, the Dalit community revolts vehemently rejecting Ghandian calls for peace. A bold and provocative probe of ethnic and gender discrimination in Indian society. Stars Kallen Pokkudan, Saritha and Prakash Bare.


PEARLS OF THE DEEP
Jiri Menzel (Closely Watched Trains), Jaromil Jires (Valerie and Her Week of Wonders), and three other directors from the 1960's Czech New Wave contribute witty, entertaining shorts, each based on a different story by legendary writer Bohumil Hrabal. The anthology showcases the groundbreaking styles and bold new themes of a new cinematic era. These young directors took advantage of a more liberal political climate to make films that were daring in both content and style. Includes Mr. Baltazar (Jiri Menzel), The Swindlers (Jan Nemec), House of Joy (Evald Schorm), The Globe Buffet (Vera Chytilova), and Romance (Jaromil Jires). Dirs. Jan Nemec, Vera Chytilová, Jaromil Jires, Jirí Menzel & Evald Schorm, 1966, 35mm, 105 min.


PEOPLE'S PARK
A mesmerizing, one-of-a-kind window into modern China, People’s Park is a single-shot documentary that immerses viewers in an unbroken journey through a famous urban park in Chengdu, Sichuan Province.  Filmforum is delighted to host the Los Angeles premiere of this provocative and absorbing film, and to host one of its directors, J.P. Sniadecki.
“A walk through the park like no other, this brilliantly joyous conceptual documentary takes the vivid reality of an urban park: People’s Park in Chengdu, Sichuan, and, with a pure kind of cinema magic, makes it more real than real. Directors Libbie Cohn and J.P. Sniadecki use an utterly unique and perfectly apposite method of filming: they shoot their tour of the park in one continuous 75-minute long tracking shot. No cuts, no edits: the film starts, it rolls, it stops. Sounds simple, but in the completely uncontrolled context of a crowded Chinese public space, their work required meticulous preparation and rigorous execution to achieve what looks like a spontaneous result. Their camera, as it pans side to side and glides relentlessly forward, catches hundreds of Chinese urbanites out for fun, relaxation, socializing and freedom: eating, strolling, singing, practicing calligraphy, dancing (to various, surprising beats) and watching each other. And being watched (by us) in a way that, though it may start out with what feels like unadorned observation, slowly gathers a kind of ecstatic, trance-like groove, building to a rapturous climax, as people, movement, music, image and sound dance together: this is as close to pure pleasure as cinema can provide.
“The soundscape is rich, complex and carefully manufactured, as is the preternaturally smooth movement of the camera, again the result of painstaking preparation and post-production. The result is something extraordinary: a documentary re-creation of reality, or rather a production of something super-real, that activates our sympathetic gaze and ecstatic participation.” -- Shelly Kracier, Vancouver International Film Festival
“For sheer aesthetic brio, little in the ND/NF program can rival People's Park, in which directors Libbie D. Cohn and J.P. Sniadecki bring the Russian Ark approach—a single, continuous, 78-minute steadicam shot—to a public park in Chengdu, China. The shoot took place on a July afternoon in 2011, as children and parents, students and seniors strolled, exercised, sipped tea, danced—oh, how they dance. Some engage with Cohn and Sniadecki's camera as it winds its sinuous way through plazas, footpaths, and overlapping spheres of activity. Others blithely ignore it; still others seem not to even notice. At every turn People's Park captures something ineffable—everyday life transformed into cinema.” – Scott Foundas, Village Voice, March 20, 2013. (2012, USA/China, digital, color, sound, 78 min.)


Philip Glass Ensemble: La Belle et la Bête
One of the most celebrated and unique works in Philip Glass’ recent career, his live interpretation of Jean Cocteau’s masterpiece La Belle et la Bête is also his most challenging experiment in synchronizing music with film. 
For this production, Glass removed the film’s original dialogue track and score by Georges Auric and replaced it with his own musical score played live by the Philip Glass Ensemble. The dialogue is performed live by the vocalists who are synchronized with the actors in the film. 
“Jean Cocteau’s work was central to the modern art movement of the 20th century. More than any other artist of his time, he again and again addressed questions of art, immortality and the creative process as subjects of his work. La Belle et la Bête is an extremely thoughtful and subtle reflection on the life of an artist. Presented as a simple fairy tale, it soon becomes clear that the film takes on a deeper subject-the very nature of the creative process.” —Philip Glass


Philip Glass Ensemble: Music in Twelve Parts
“A full-body immersion into the early compositional world of Philip Glass… To hear a composer lay out his palette in such richly evocative detail is a rare and rewarding delight.” —San Francisco Chronicle
One of the most revolutionary works of composer Philip Glass’ oeuvre comes to Los Angeles for the first time. Music in Twelve Parts, an epic performance work composed by Glass for his acclaimed ensemble between 1971-1974, is simultaneously a massive theoretical exercise and a deeply engrossing work of art. 
The score is the culmination of Glass’s explorations and theories on repetition and is widely considered to be both a masterpiece of minimalism and a seminal work of 20th-century music. 
Music in Twelve Parts is a not-to-be-missed evening for Glass fans and new-music enthusiasts. The performance is comprised of four approximately 50-minute segments plus two short intermissions and an hour-long dinner break, with an on-site meal option available for advance purchase.


Pinoy Sunday (Taiwan/Philippines, 2009)
Directed by Ho Wi Ding
Taipei-based Malaysian filmmaker Ho Wi Ding’s comedy introduces two disadvantaged, Taipei-based Filipino migrant factory workers who see their fortunes possibly changing when they encounter a new, expensive sofa abandoned on a city sidewalk. Hoping the almost mythical find will change their lives (it certainly changes their day), they carry the sofa homeward; facing obstructions both logistical and cultural in the churning, polyglot metropolis. 
Producer: Natacha Devillers, Morihisa Matsudaira, Mark Meily, Kenichiro Takiguchi.  Screenwriter: Ajay Balakrishnan, Ho Wi Ding. Cast: Bayani Agbayani, Epy Quizon, Meryll Soriano, Nor Domingo, Dave Ronald Cheng. 35mm, color, Tagalog, Mandarin and English w/ English s/t, 84 min. 


The Postmaster (1961), 56 mins.; and Kanchenjungha (1962), 102 mins.
Ray’s first original screenplay and his first film to be shot in color, Kanchenjungha followsthe shifting and evolving relationships of an upper-class vacationing Bengali family. Together with The Postmaster, an excerpt from the multi-part film, Three Daughters.


THE PRICE OF MEMORY
“The Price of Memory” is a poetic documentary exploring the legacy of slavery in Jamaica and the movement for slavery reparations. In the 1960s, a group of Rastas petitioned the Queen Elizabeth II for reparations, starting an ongoing demand that spans decades. When the Queen visited Jamaica in 2002 to celebrate her Golden Jubilee celebrations, she was again petitioned by a small group of Rastafarians for reparations for her family’s participation in slavery. Having received no response from the Queen, another group files a lawsuit against her. While these actions unfold, there is a growing movement for slavery reparations internationally. Eventually, the debate for reparations reaches the Jamaican parliament where it spurs further government action. Interwoven between these actions are the filmmaker’s own memories of first consciously encountering the legacy of slavery while growing up in Jamaica. She visits the ruins of former plantations scattered across the island and travels to England, where great profits were made from Caribbean slavery, and finds official forgetfulness. Featured are activists Ras Lion, a mystic Rasta farmer whose great-grandmother told him stories about slavery and Michael Lorne, the attorney who brought the lawsuit.


Railroaded! (1947)
Directed by Anthony Mann
An innocent man is framed for the murder of a policeman, and police corruption works against the innocent victim of the system, after a crooked nightclub owner and his girlfriend botch the robbery of her own bookie joint. Mann’s low budget treatment features high key lighting and John Ireland and Sheila Ryan as the despicable villains, while police detective Chubb is portrayed as a vicious sadist. 
Eagle-Lion Films Inc. Producer: Charles F. Riesner. Screenwriter: John C. Higgins, based on a story by Gertrude Walker. Cinematographer: Guy Roe. Editor: Louis H. Sackin. Cast: John Ireland, Sheila Ryan, Hugh Beaumont, Jane Randolph, Ed Kelly. 35mm, b/w, 72 min.


The Rainbow Thief (UK)
Director ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY
Surrealist master filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky's attempt at a studio film, stars Omar Sharif as a crook in search of the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, hoping to cash in by befriending the heir to a huge fortune, played by Peter O'Toole. The two men wait for the rich Uncle Rudolph (played by Christopher Lee) to die as they take from the townsfolk in the village below.
Lacking creative control over the production, the general insanity and imagination of Jodorowsky lurks beneath the surface in this film, but bubbles through in the crafty performances of these acting giants. HRIFF chose this under-appreciated gem to honor the passing of one of the most daring and independent actors of all time: the legendary Peter O'Toole, our HRIFF Award of Excellece honoree.


Ramona (1928)
In-person:  Phil Brigandi, Dydia DeLyser, Linda B. Hall, Joanna Hearne, Hugh Munro Neely.
Restoration World Premiere!
Edwin Carewe directed the 1928 version of what had by then proven a durable story, filmed twice previously (and at least once subsequently). Adapted from Helen Hunt Jackson’s hugely popular 1884 novel, and further disseminated in a wildly successful stage version presented at Hemet, California annually since 1923, the Ramona narrative tells of a mixed-race (Scots-Native American) woman, sympathetically detailing her persecution for reasons of race. Carewe, himself of Chickasaw descent (a very rare thing in Hollywood), represented a felicitous match for the material and a sensitive interpreter of the action. Also inspired was the choice of Dolores Del Rio as the star of the 1928 version, being herself a proud Mexican actress who famously declined to be identified as “Spanish” during her career. Wearing a theme of cultural diversity on its sleeve, the Ramona story has become a touchstone to generations of Californians, and an indispensable part of the state’s imaginative cultural heritage.
Ramona, the young ward of oppressive California sheep rancher Señora Moreno, realizes that her indigenous blood will impede her life’s happiness, and sacrifices her love for her guardian’s son to save him from the taint of her sadness.  She endures much suffering before love and affirmation emerge as possibilities for her. Inspiration Pictures, Inc. Screenwriter: Finis Fox, based on the novel by Helen Hunt Jackson. Cinematographer: Robert Kurrle. Editor: Jeanne Spencer. Cast: Dolores Del Rio, Warner Baxter, Roland Drew, Vera Lewis. Michael Visaroff. 35mm, b/w, silent, approx. 80 min.


REFLECTIONS UNHEARD: BLACK WOMEN IN CIVIL RIGHTS
Many of us know the civil rights movement to represent an era of uprisings, a struggle for universal liberation and equality. We know about black male activists, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X, who served as figureheads of civil rights. Similarly, we know of the many middle-class white feminists who fought for the right to enter and succeed in the white, male-dominated workforce. But where do the masses of black women activists fit into this narrative? Struggling with the intertwined issues of racism and sexism, neither Black Power nor feminist ideologies completely addressed issues concerning African American Women, who were often the backbone of these political movements. To this day, the stories of black female activists who were abused or silenced at the hands of their male counterparts in the movement and encountered racism from white feminists have been largely unheard. Equality and justice cannot be served when one group is still oppressed. Through the stories of several former black female civil rights activists, Reflections Unheard unearths the lesser-known story of black women’s political marginalization between the male-dominated Black Power movement and the predominantly white and middle-class Feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s, as well as the resulting mobilization of black and other women of color into a united feminist movement.


A REPORT ON THE PARTY AND THE GUESTS
Nowhere near as clinical as its title suggests, A Report on the Party and the Guests is instead a surreal, playfully subversive allegory by one of the greatest filmic rebels from the Czech New Wave’s insurrectionist posse. Depicting the curious submission of a group of picnicking citizens to a clan of wandering authority figures, Jan Nemec’s most notorious work laces its parable of communist command with biting humor and a fantastical sense of cinematic foreplay, shifting moment by moment from absurdist comedy to stark realism, and back again. “All you care about is having fun,” one character ironically declares as a pastoral luncheon turns into a grotesque celebration of totalitarianism run amok — and yet this dark comedy never fully submits to pessimism, nor abandons its critique of the society from which it emanated. Filmed starkly in black­-and-­white with an invigoratingly free approach to editing and narrative, A Report on the Party and the Guests is all at once audacious and approachable, consummate and uproarious. Dir. Jan Nemec, 1966, 35mm, 71 min.


THE RETRIEVAL
A deeply stirring and nuanced Civil War–era drama about two former slaves on the run from a band of steel-hearted bounty hunters. Thirteen-year-old Will is an African American freedman in Texas who has fallen in with the bounty hunters after his father’s death. When gang leader Burrell orders Will and his uncle Marcus (also a freedman, at least nominally) to journey north and “retrieve” a fugitive slave, Will knows the price of failure will be his life. Featuring unforgettable performances, and shot on location amid beautiful and barren wintertime landscapes, the film is both a poignant chronicle of the evolution of a father-son bond and an indelible portrait of the anguish and hopefulness of African Americans caught in the upheaval of the Civil War. Stars Tishuan Scott, Ashton Sanders, Keston John and Bill Oberst, Jr.


The Sandwich Man (Taiwan, 1983)
Directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien, Wan Jen, Jong Cheung-Tsang
Based on short stories by the nativist writer Huang Chunming, the three episodes in this film explore the local and everyday effects of distant modernizing forces in Taiwan during the 1960s. One of the seminal films of the Taiwan New Cinema, The Sandwich Man launched the careers of its three young directors and shaped Taiwan’s onscreen image for years. 
Producer: Ming Ji. Screenwriter: Wu Nien-chen. Cinematographer: Chen Kun Hao. Editor: Liao Ching-song. Cast: Chen Bo Jeng, Cho Sheng-li, Chiang Hsia, Jing Ding, Yang Li-Yin. Digital video, color, in Mandarin and Taiwanese with English subtitles, 102 min.


SCAVENGER HUNT
After our own years-long search, we’ve finally located a 35mm print of this rollicking not-on-DVD, not-to-be-missed rarity! It’s a rib-tickling shot to the funny bone, as a mind-boggling, all-star cast competes against each other in a $200 million race against time. The will of the dearly-departed eccentric game inventor Milton Parker (Vincent Price) is specific: his fifteen would-be heirs are to participate in a highly unusual scavenger hunt, winner take all. Filled to the brim with that-guys and what’s-’er-names, Scavenger Hunt is a veritable clown car of crazed character actors, legendary stars and those long forgotten — all in a barrage of kooky cameos: Richard Benjamin, Scatman Crothers, Ruth Gordon, Cloris Leachman, Cleavon Little, Roddy McDowall, Tony Randall, a young Arnold Schwarzenegger and many, many more. Plus, it’s a wild dash through the San Diego Zoo, the streets of Hollywood and the mad, mad, mad, mad world of Southern California, as the film highlights an amazing batch of our own Southland locales. Did we mention that it’s also from Michael Schultz — the director of Car Wash, The Last Dragon and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band?! Dir. Michael Schultz, 1979, 35mm, 116 min.


SEVEN MEN FROM NOW
Budd Boetticher’s Seven Men from Now (1956) follows the story of former sheriff Ben Stride (Randolph Scott) as he seeks revenge for the seven men responsible for the murder of his wife. Along the way he meets Annie (Gail Russell) and John Greer (Walter Reed), two Easterners who want to make a life in California, as well as Masters, an ex-convict, and his friend Clete. Together they must travel across Arizona towards the city of Flora Vista, where each must meet their destiny. Please come and join us February 13th pm for the beautifully restored Seven Men from Now, courtesy of the UCLA Film and Television Archive!


Shelly Silver: Intimate Visions and Public Spaces
"By staking her right to documentary material as well as fictional writing, Shelly Silver sizes up the likelihood of an imaginary point of view reaching a truth more subtle than autobiographical truth." —Cinema du Reel
This screening of two works by Shelly Silver begins with What I'm Looking For (2004, digital video, 15 min.), the second in her trilogy of fictional essay films shot in public spaces, which explores the relationship between a female photographer and subjects met on the Internet. The program continues with Touch (2013, digital video, 68 min.), in which a gay man recounts, mostly in Mandarin, his return to New York’s Chinatown after 50 years in order to care for his dying mother. Like the narrator—a librarian, cataloguer and recorder—the city has changed and yet the past still haunts familiar streets. The character is an invention of the filmmaker, but as her narrator confides, “words make the impossible imaginable, therefore possible.” Currently chair of Columbia’s Visual Arts Program, Silver has utilized video, film and still photography to investigate contested territories between public and private, narrative and documentary, the watcher and the watched.


Side Street (1950)
Directed by Anthony Mann
A hard-up postman with a baby on the way impulsively steals an envelope of cash, but his ill-considered moment of weakness leads him on a fatalistic descent into a seamy underworld of gangsters, call girls, and unlucky corpses. The starkly photographed architectural jungle of director Anthony Mann’s isolating, imposing Manhattan presages the forbidding mountain ranges of his later Westerns.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. Producer: Sam Zimbalist. Screenwriter: Sydney Boehm. Cinematographer: Joseph Ruttenberg. Editor: Conrad A. Nervig. Cast: Farley Granger, Cathy O’Donnell, James Craig, Paul Kelly, Jean Hagen. 35mm, b/w, 83 min.


Soledad's Shawl (El Rebozo de Soledad) (Mexico, 1952)
Directed by Roberto Gavaldón.  
Alberto Robles (Arturo de Córdova) is a doctor serving an impoverished rural community.  Mindful of the brilliant career he could be enjoying in Mexico City, his resulting ambivalence is complicated by his attraction to poor Soledad (Stella Inda), who has also caught the attention of an exploitative local political boss.  De Córdova’s understanding of warring, internal impulses is perfectly modulated for this stirring portrayal of conscience in action. Producer: Eduardo Fernández, Rodolfo Landa. Screenwriter: Javier López Ferrer, José Revueltas, Roberto Gavaldón. Cinematographer: Gabriel Figueroa. Editor: Charles L. Kimball. Cast: Arturo de Córdova, Stella Inda, Pedro Armendáriz, Carlos López Moctezuma, Domingo Soler. 35mm, b/w, in Spanish with English subtitles, 108 min.


Song and Dance: Documentary Explorations by Tuni Chatterji and Satyajit Ray
Filmforum is thrilled to welcome Los Angeles-based filmmaker Tuni Chatterji in person with the Los Angeles premiere of her short feature Okul Nodi (Endless River), paired with the very rarely screened short documentary Bala, by Bengali auteur Satyajit Ray.


STOM SOGO: SWEET FIRST, SEIZURE SECOND
“[A] movie’s reality should be as nasty and fucked up as possible, so we want to get fuck out of the theater and hope for something better in life…. I try not to have a message or even word in my movie. But I usually have some sick stories behind each of the movies. Those are just mental eye candy that it taste sweet first, seizure second.” – Stom Sogo. A dynamo whose thunderous potential was cut short by his premature death, Japanese moving-image artist Stom Sogo (1975–2012) remains a romantic rebel if ever there was one. For over two decades he created a hair-raising body of aggressively beautiful films and videos. His distinctive, psychically charged work revels in optic and aural jolts just as much as it attempts a sincere connection with the viewer. While he mastered numerous approaches, his primary technique involved heavy amounts of re-photography, a process that allowed him to fashion multiple electrified layers of strobing imagery. Other pieces demonstrate his uncanny editing prowess in their startling juxtaposition of home movies with materials taken from an expansive array of unlikely sources.
Sogo was a standout in MoMA’s landmark 8mm BIG AS LIFE survey, the 2002 Whitney Biennial, multiple editions of the New York Underground Film Festival and many other exhibitions. Born and raised in Osaka, he attended high school in the United States and eventually landed in New York City where he began working at Anthology Film Archives. Truly a catalyst in every sense of the word, Sogo’s inexhaustible energy and inspiration helped kick open the doors of this staid institution to a younger generation of artists and fellow travelers. He moved to San Francisco in the early 2000s before returning to Brooklyn, and eventually Japan where he remained until his death in July 2012.
A prolific creator and a devoted experimentalist, Sogo often began with Super 8 or mini-dv and constantly renewed his works with hybrid electronic remixes. With each step the material achieved a higher level of intensity, sometimes to the point of self-destruction. As overtly poetic and autobiographical as they are often fiercely abstract, Sogo’s works do not shy away from exploring visual and sonic extremes. Program: GUIDED BY VOICES (2000, 10:30 minutes, video); SILVER PLAY (2002 minutes, 16 minutes, video); SLOW DEATH (2000, 15:30 minutes, Super 8mm); CARRIE AT STILL (1998, 27 minutes, Super 8mm). Also included will be a reel from Sogo’s 9-part Diary film series I HAVEN’T DONE ANYTHING YET (dated 1995, likely shot sometime earlier).


STOPPED ON TRACK
Germany, 2011, 110 min., German with English subtitles.
Starring Milan Peschel, Steffi Kühnert, Inka Friedrich
This intelligent and startlingly raw drama portrays a German postal worker's small window of time between the diagnosis of a terminal brain tumor and death. After Frank learns of his suddenly truncated future, he and wife Simone must wrestle with breaking the news to their children, and with Frank's increasingly erratic - even hostile - behavior. Trenchant observations and true-ringing moments emerge from the cast's entirely improvised dialogue 


Strange Impersonation (1946)
Directed by Anthony Mann
Medical researcher Nora Goodrich is inventing a new form of anesthesia.  Her female lab assistant has designs on her fiancé and stages an accident, which disfigures the heroine.  Thanks to another accident, Nora assumes the identity of a dead woman and exacts her revenge.  The wacky and frenzied plot mirrors the heroine, whose film noir character conforms to director Anthony Mann’s typically overreaching and morally ambiguous hero. 
Republic Pictures Corp.  Producer: William Wilder.  Screenwriter: Mindret Lord, from a story by Anne Wigton and Lewis Herman.  Cinematographer: Robert W. Pittack.  Editor: John F. Link.  Cast: Brenda Marshall, William Gargan, Hillary Brooke, George Chandler, Ruth Ford. 35mm, b/w, 68 min.


The Stranger (Aguntuk) (1991), 120 mins.
In his final film, Ray tells the story of a bourgeois couple who receive news that a man claiming to be the wife’s long-lost uncle will be staying with them after years of travel. The Stranger is a complex and humane portrait of a world both corrupt and sadly beautiful.


Stray Dogs (Taiwan/France, 2013)
Los Angeles Premiere!
Tsai Ming-liang searingly renders the situational and emotional experiences of a homeless family in remote, indifferent Taipei, with a pendant beauty that suggests memory and dream more than actual presence. Highly figurative and enigmatic, the film shuttles its characters between alienating atmospheres where the filmmaker’s languorous treatment of duration, and performances qualifying as almost pure pantomime, hauntingly pose the question: what is next for these human souls? 
Producer: Jacques Bidou, Marianne Dumoulin. Screenwriter: Tung Cheng Yu, Song Peng Fei, Tsai Ming-liang. Cinematographer: Liao Pen Jung, Sun Wen Jong. Editor: Lei Chen Ching. Cast: Lee Kang-sheng, Lee Yi-chieh, Lee Yi-cheng, Lu Yi-ching, Chen Shiang-chyi. Digital video, color, in Mandarin with English subtitles, 138 min.


SUMMER IN BERLIN
Germany, 2005, 98 min., German with English subtitles.
Starring Nadja Uhl, Inka Friedrich, Andreas Schmidt
Summer in Berlin is a portrait of the resilient bond between best friends Nike, a home-care nurse, and Katrin, an unemployed single mother. Neighbors in Berlin, the two often meet for drinks on Nike’s balcony to discuss their daily frustrations. It’s not long before truck driver Ronald enters the scene, threatening the women‘s intimate friendship. Ronald and Nike begin an unhealthy relationship that is defined by his need to control her.
Fragile Katrin, on her way to becoming an alcoholic, starts to unravel. When condescending Ronald makes a pass at Katrin just to start trouble, her pent up anger over his relationship with her friend can no longer be contained. Aided immeasurably by the actresses’ seamless performances, Dresen’s film offers an unflinching look into these women’s lives.


SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS
1927, 20th Century Fox, 95 min, USA, Dir: F.W. Murnau
Director F.W. Murnau’s first American film stars George O’Brien and Janet Gaynor as a farmer and his loving wife, whose marriage is rocked by the appearance of an alluring "Woman From the City" (Margaret Livingston). An Academy Award winner for lead actress Gaynor, cinematography, and for "artistic quality of production." With live musical accompaniment by Cliff Retallick. Rare Archival 35mm Print!


SURF II
Calling all cola freaks, buzzbombs, bleepies and weirdos: we’ve found the movie for you. Surf II is madness, mayhem, music and generally gross stupidity — all the things that make life and movies worthwhile. And the summary on the back of the original VHS box describes it best: “Menlo Schwartzer — the geekiest mad scientist of all — wants to rid the world of surfers by transforming them into garbage-ingesting zombie punks! But no way dude can he stop their most awesome party.” Featuring four-eyed ’80s icon Eddie Deezen, a young Eric Stoltz and the greatest split-screen gag this side of De Palma, plus a cast full of stoned surfers, hot babes and Reagan-era sorta-punks/new wavers. But the real jaw dropper is that this comedy meltdown of the decade is still unavailable on DVD, Blu-ray or streaming. Oh yeah, and did we mention there’s no Surf I? Dir. Randall M. Badat, 1984, 35mm, 91 min.


The Tall Target (1951)
Directed by Anthony Mann
A terse historical thriller in which hard-boiled New York City cop Dick Powell operates outside the law to thwart a plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln as he travels to his inauguration.  Paranoia and suspicion permeate the shadowy confines of the train as the broodingly relentless Powell strives to identify the conspirators and expose their machinations.  
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. Producer: Richard Goldstone. Screenwriter: George Worthing Yates, Art Cohn. Cinematographer: Paul C. Vogel. Editor: Newell P. Kimlin. Cast: Dick Powell, Paula Raymond, Adolphe Menjou, Marshall Thompson, Ruby Dee.  35mm, b/w, 78 min.


THAT'S THE WAY OF THE WORLD
Record executives want a highly-regarded record producer to focus on a white pop act who they feel has the sound America wants. To keep his creative integrity, Buckmaster carefully begins to fight the system that has made him the respected producer he has become.  1975, USA, 35mm, 100 minutes. Directed by Sig Shore; written by Robert Lipsyte; starring Harvey Keitel, Ed Nelson, Cynthia Bostick, Bert Parks, Jimmy Boyd, Michael Dante, Maurice White, Earth Wind & Fire.


THIS IS THE LA RIVER
An evening with the Echo Park Film Center 
THIS IS THE LA RIVER: Without the Los Angeles River there would be no Los Angeles. A historical and geographical reference point, a place of industry and recreation, the home of herons and toxic trash dumps, flooded and paved over, the subject of poems, art, derision, and protests, the story of the LA River is a long and winding one, open to endless interpretation. "This is the LA River" invited 21 neighborhood youth between the ages of 14 and 19 to explore the River through the medium of 16mm film. The result is a captivating collaborative documentary that examines the complex past, present, and future of the great waterway of Los Angeles.
also screening:
THE SOUND WE SEE: A Los Angeles City Symphony: In the fall of 2010, youth from across Los Angeles, ages 11–19, banded together to document the life, rhythm, and movement of the city from their unique perspectives, joining their visions to create a complete 24-hour city symphony. The filmmakers divvied up the day into its two-dozen hours, working in pairs to select and shoot locations that best represented each hour of the day (and night) as one minute of film. The result is a spectacular 24-minute trip through the City of Angels as most have never seen it before...


TIL INFINITY: THE SOULS OF MISCHIEF
Having had the opportunity to grow up with the Souls of Mischief and seeing the impact that their “93 Til Infinity” had on the hip-hop community, filmmaker Shomari Smith says he felt compelled to tell the story of their journey from the perspective of a fan, filmmaker and lover of Hip-Hop. The film sets a stage from which members of the group share childhood stories; look into their early creative process while making their legendary demo tape; reflect on personal stories about each track on the landmark “93 Til Infinity” debut album and discuss it’s longevity. As part of this important retrospective, Smith spent two years traveling the country, conducting interviews with the entire Hieroglyphics collective and capturing intimate dialogues with hip hop notables such as A Tribe Called Quest’s Phife Dawg, Dilated Peoples’ Rakaa Iriscience, Talib Kweli, Yaslin Bey (Mos Def), Robert Bobbito Garcia, Award Winning Writer Thembisa S. Mshaka, Snoop Lion (Snoop Dogg), highly respected A&R rep Dante Ross and Radio/Television Icon Sway Calloway, to name a few. What results is not only an intimate and compelling portrait of one of Hip-Hop’s most critically acclaimed groups but also an in-depth look at how the group’s anti-record label approach helped to create a successful business model that has become part of the norm 20 years later.


The Tin Star (1957)
Directed by Anthony Mann
A bounty hunter (Henry Fonda), once a lawman, finds it necessary to don the “tin star” once again, to support a local sheriff (Anthony Perkins) in keeping civic order and tamping down mob rule.  Hardly more lawful than the murderous outlaws they pursue, the townspeople figure here as the real narrative problem: manifesting the threat of violence as a danger that lurks not without, but within. 
Pearlsea Co., Paramount Pictures Corp. Producer: William Perlberg, George Seaton. Screenwriter: Dudley Nichols, based on a story by Barney Slater. Cinematographer: Loyal Griggs. Editor: Alma Macrorie. Cast: Henry Fonda, Anthony Perkins, Betsy Palmer, Michel Ray, Neville Brand. 35mm, b/w, 93 min.


TITMOUSE 5-SECOND ANIMATION NIGHT
Animation studio Titmouse Inc. produces such programs as Disney XD’s “Motorcity” and “Randy Cunningham 9th Grade Ninja,” and Adult Swim’s “The Venture Bros.,” “Superjail,” “China, IL,” “Metalocalypse” and “Black Dynamite.” They recently collaborated on the video game depicted in HER.
90 min. 5-Second Day is an annual tradition that gives Titmouse animators the chance to bring to life whatever strange/beautiful/disturbing/funny ideas they've had all year as a short-format cartoon. Tonight the studio opens up the screening of these masterpieces to friends, neighbors and fans, along with a selection of rarities from the studio’s vaults.
Introduction by Titmouse founder Chris Prynoski.


TITUS
Titus is the story of a virtuoso African-American jazz musician whose damaged soul has brought him to the status of a nobody. Living in London, far from home, he’s wasting away, estranged from his one true love, his vintage alto sax. All hope looks lost until a visitor arrives, Jessica, the daughter he abandoned as a baby. Over the course of a day and night together, old demons are laid to rest and new ones are stirred, and for one last time the future is back in Titus’ hands. The poetic and soulful story of one man’s final shot at redemption – when all he’s ever known is hell. Stars Ron Cephas Jones, Ann Mitchell and Jasmine Cephas Jones.


To Live
1994, 125 minutes, Not Rated, Mandarin, with English subtitles
Dir: Zhang Yimou; with Gong Li, Ge You, and Ben Niu
“All I ask is a quiet life together.” These are lines spoken by wife Jiazhen, who, with her husband Fugui, survive the sweep of history in the decades before and during the Cultural Revolution. Embodying both hero and heroine, the couple adapt to ever-changing political realities and reversals of fortune, all while holding down a family. Told with wit and tenderness, this epic melodrama features a powerhouse cast and is directed by one of China’s greatest living directors.


Too Late Blues
1961, 103 min, black and white, 35MM
Written by Richard Carr and John Cassavetes; directed by John Cassavetes; with Bobby Darin, Stella Stevens, and Everett Chambers
Includes a conversation with 2014 Film Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award Nominees
For Too Late Blues, writer/director John Cassavetes pulled together one of the most unusual casts he ever assembled, despite the presence of Seymour Cassel, making his debut with the director in an appearance that marked his status as part of the Cassavetes repertory company. Picking up on the New York jazz world that was part of the backdrop of Cassavetes directorial debut (Shadows), Too Late Blues, presented by Film Independent at LACMA, moves the action to Los Angeles and stars pop singer Bobby Darin as the ornery iconoclast Ghost Wakefield, a snob who eschews any work that he deems is the stuff of sellouts. Once he starts chasing Jess (Stella Stevens), he has to also start chasing money. He falls under the thrall—and merciless heel—of a socialite-turned-jazz groupie who treats the musicians she hires as playthings. Cassavetes gets great performances from Stevens and Everett Chambers as Ghost’s manager, and a peculiarly watchable one from Darin as Ghost, whose romance with masochism is as heady as his relationship with Jess. Too Late Blues also features a lovely score by David Raksin. 
Even in 1961, Cassavetes was dramatizing his struggles of following his heart versus submitting to studio financing. Ironically, Too Late Blues, with its beautifully depicted downward spiral, was subsidized by a studio, Paramount, which cut its losses and let Blues die relatively unheard. Only in the past few years did it see home-video release. Until then, it was a sought-out prize on its rare appearances on cable. Indeed, the film’s title could almost refer to its status as a classic, discovered decades after its release. 
Prior to the screening, this year’s nominees for the Film Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award—a prize given to a film completed for $500,000 or less—are invited to speak about the work behind getting their films made.


TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE
By popular demand, PAFF reprises this two-part action epic film of the life of Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture who led the first and only successful slave revolt in the history of the world. His army singlehandedly defeated the imperialist armies of France, England and Spain. Toussaint’s victory forced Napoleon Bonaparte to sell the North American land controlled by France to the US, known as the Louisiana Purchase. Known for his military genius and political acumen, Louverture established Haiti as the first free black modern nation in the world. The success of Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution shook the worldwide institution of slavery and dealt a major blow to the doctrine of white supremacy. Do not miss this entertaining, exciting and enriching film. Stars Jimmy Jean-Louis (Heroes, Phat Girlz) Aïssa Maïga (Bamako), Sonia Rolland (Midnight In Paris), and Hubert Koundé (The Constant Gardener). Best Feature Narrative, 2012 PAFF; Audience Award Narrative Feature, 2012 PAFF.


A Tribute to Les Blank
Featuring three short documentary screenings and a moderated panel discussion about Les Blank, his work, and his legacy, featuring Harrod Blank and Beau Blank, hosted by Dr. Michael Renov, SCA Vice Dean of Academic Affairs.
Film screenings will include:
Running Around Like A Chicken With Its Head Cut Off (1960), 4 minutes
The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins (1968), 31 minutes
Spend it All (1971), 41 minutes


TROUBLE EVERY DAY
Two strangers share a strange and terrible bond in this stylish horror tale that juggles sex and graphic bloodshed. Shane Brown (Vincent Gallo) is a strange man with a forbidding nature who has just married lovely but nervous June (Tricia Vessey), and they've decided to go to Paris for their honeymoon. In the City of Lights, a beautiful but dangerous woman named Core (Beatrice Dalle) has been leaving a trail of dead bodies in her wake when she's captured by Leo Semeneau (Alex Descas), a mysterious scientist who spirits her away to his estate. As Core is placed under guard, Semeneau leaves to return to the city for an unnamed assignment; we soon learn that one of Shane's reasons for coming to Paris was to find him and retrieve some important information. In time, we also discover that Shane and Core have something rather unusual in common -- both are murderous cannibals who regularly feast on the flesh of their victims, and Semeneau's information may hold the key to the secret behind their deadly appetite.  2001, France/Germany/Japan, 101 minutes. New 35mm print! Directed by Claire Denis; written by Jean-Pol Fargeau and Claire Denis; starring Vincent Gallo, Tricia Vessey, Béatrice Dalle; original music composed by Tindersticks; in French with English subtitles.


TVTV: GONZO GODS OF THE GROOVE TUBE
Before “The Daily Show” sent their “reporters” out into the world for satirical news coverage — before Christopher Guest and This is Spinal Tap utilized cinema verité’s natural deadpan to devastating comic effect — and before American Movie and Heavy Metal Parking Lot popularized the comic documentary form — there was TVTV. Radical, hilarious and influential, “Top Value Television” was a cathode-ray collective who pioneered the use of portable, low-tech video gear, the small size and unusual nature of which allowed them unprecedented access to crash everything from presidential conventions, to the Oscars and the Super Bowl. Their philosophy was to use their entertaining, eye-opening work as a means to break free from the stranglehold mainstream broadcasting had on American culture — and, as tonight’s survey proves, they accomplished that goal with every single production they ever created. We celebrate the hearty TVTV spirit, and the top-notch docs they produced, with a panel discussion/reunion of TVTV members and a video primer of past wonderful works (featuring TVTV collaborators like Bill Murray, Lily Tomlin, Chris Guest and Howard Hesseman!)


TWO FOR THE ROAD
In preparing his romantic comedy Two For the Road, director Stanley Donen decided to utilize many of the cinematic techniques popularized by the French "nouvelle vague" filmmakers. Jump cutting back and forth in time with seeming abandon, Donen and scriptwriter Frederic Raphael chronicle the 12-year relationship between architect Wallace (Albert Finney) and his wife (Audrey Hepburn). While backpacking through Europe, student Finney falls for lovely music student Jacqueline Bisset, but later settles for Hepburn, another aspiring musician (this vignette served as the launching pad for the film-within-a-film in Francois Truffaut's 1973 classic Day for Night). Once married, Finney and Hepburn go on a desultory honeymoon, travelling in the company of insufferable American tourists William Daniels and Eleanor Bron and their equally odious daughter Gabrielle Middleton. Later on, during yet another road trip, Finney is offered an irresistible job opportunity by Claude Dauphin, which ultimately distances Finney from his now-pregnant wife. Still remaining on the road, the film then details Finney and Hepburn's separate infidelities. The film ends where it begins, with Finney and Hepburn taking still another road vacation, hoping to sew up their unraveling marriage. While critics did nip-ups over Stanley Donen's "revolutionary" nonlinear story-telling techniques, audiences responded to the chemistry between Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney, not to mention the unforgettable musical score by Henry Mancini.  Dir. Stanley Donen, 1967, 1 hr 42 mins.


VOTE FOR HENRYK
Germany, 2003, 78 min., German with English subtitles, digital.
Starring Henryk Wichmann
In a region dominated by Social Democrats (SPD), the idealistic 25 year old Henryk Wichmann, a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Party (CDU) is on the election trail, campaigning in the rural eastern German district of Uckermark/Oberbarnim. Armed with an arsenal of ballpoint pens, postcards, matchboxes, posters and the slogan “a fresh breeze will give politics new impetus,” Wichmann’s goal is to defeat the SPD incumbent Markus Meckel. Though he has a rough road ahead, Mr. Wichmann is ready to fight for his political vision.
Andreas Dresen spent one month accompanying this Bundestag candidate on his tour through the constituency. The result is a film about the absurd, sometimes wearying nature of a political campaign fought in Germany’s small towns and villages, but also a film about the difficulties politicians have in facing up to the realities of a disillusioned society. 


WARRIORS OF THE RAINBOW: SEEDIQ BALE: PART I: SUN FLAG
Directed by Wei Te-sheng
Taiwan’s highest-grossing domestic film ever tells of the indigenous Seediq people, split into rival clans, who must find a way to overcome history and fight as one people against occupying Japan, during that nation’s colonial rule. Mona Rudao, one of the Seediq clan chiefs, finally launches an armed rebellion at Wushe in 1930. Based on a true story and richly detailed. 
Producer: John Woo, Terence Chang, Huang Chih-ming. Screenwriter: Wei Te-sheng. Cinematographer: Chin Ting-chang. Editor: Chen Po-wen, Milk Su. Cast: Lin Ching-tai, Umin Boya, Masanobu Andô. Digital video, color, in Seediq, Japanese and Taiwanese with English subtitles, 144 min. 


WARRIORS OF THE RAINBOW: SEEDIQ BALE: PART II: RAINBOW BRIDGE
Directed by Wei Te-sheng
After the initial uprising at Wushe, Mona Rudao faces an unwinnable guerrilla war against the militarily superior Japanese plus fierce rival Seediq clans. He and his followers must fight not just for their lives but for their dignity and honor—so that they can truly be “Seediq Bale” or “real men.”
Producer: John Woo, Terence Chang, Jimmy Huang. Screenwriter: Wei Te-sheng. Cinematographer: Chin Ting-chang. Editor: Chen Po-wen, Milk Su. Cast: Lin Ching-tai, Umin Boya, Masanobu Andô. Digital video, color, Seediq, Japanese and Taiwanese with English subtitles, 131 min.


WE WON'T BOW DOWN
We Won’t Bow Down explores a secret society of African Americans in inner city New Orleans as they devote their time and skills to create hand-beaded Indian costumes that embody a cultural, spiritual and ancient power that has kept Africa alive in the new world despite slavery and it’s legacy.


WHAT TIME IS IT THERE?
Directed by Tsai Ming-liang
For two decades the Malaysian-Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang has explored spatial, temporal, and psychological displacement in the global city. Here Tsai’s perennial leading man Hsiao-Kang sells his dual time wristwatch to a young woman about to leave Taipei for Paris. Despite the earthly time zones that separate them, they find a connection via memory, ghosts, and—thanks to Truffaut alter ego Jean-Pierre Léaud—the cinema itself.
Producer: Bruno Pesery. Screenwriter: Tsai Ming-liang, Yang Pi-ying. Cinematographer: Benoît Delhomme. Editor: Chen Sheng-chang. Cast: Lee Kang-sheng, Chen Shiang-chyi, Lu Yi-ching, Miao Tien, Jean-Pierre Léaud.  35mm, color, in Mandarin, Taiwanese and French with English subtitles, 116 min. 


WILLENBROCK
Germany, 2005, 115 min., German with English subtitles.
Starring Axel Prahl, Inka Friedrich
Bernd Willenbrock is a successful used car salesman with a devoted wife, an accommodating mistress, a house in the suburbs, and a cottage in the country. One day, seemingly out of nowhere, several cars are stolen from the lot. Bernd hires a night watchman, Fritz, partly to protect his business, and partly to get closer to Fritz’s attractive daughter, Anna. Bernd’s situation continues to get worse, however, when he and his wife are robbed in their cottage in the middle of the night. Soon after, Bernd’s life begins to fall apart as the women in his life decide to leave him.
Willenbrock marks Dresen’s first time directing adapted material, leading to a more formally constructed narrative compared to his usual improvised scripts. He also sets aside his customary hand-held digital camera work in favor of nicely framed shots done on 35mm. The result is an engaging film, part thriller, and part character study, with superb performances from all. 


WILLIAM ONYEABOR: FANTASTIC MAN
“Who is William Onyeabor?” is a question worth asking. The oft-overlooked Nigerian musician—who played an integral role in the [seminal] funk scene of 70’s Nigeria—is, however, finally taking his turn in the spotlight and gaining latent recognition for his polyrhythmic lo-fi synth-funk. While he’s made multiple appearances on compilations coveted by music sleuths hunting down obscure releases and rare recordings, his SugarMan-esque story remains shrouded in mystery. After self-releasing eight albums between 1978 and 1985, Onyeabor sacrificed music for religion, becoming a Born-Again Christian who apparently refused to speak about himself or his music again. Rumors still circulate about the retired musician: It is said he was crowned a High Chief in Enugu, where he now lives as a businessman who works on government contracts and runs his own flour mill. "Fantastic Man" probes the myths and mysteries surrounding the elusive, enigmatic character while examining the part he played in a musical era that’s receiving a great deal of attention these days by DJs (including French electro-whiz, Joakim) and musicophiles worldwide, 70’s Nigerian funk.


Winchester '73 (1950)
Directed by Anthony Mann
Cowboy Lin McAdam wins a prized Winchester rifle in a contest, only to have it stolen by a rival. Unbeknownst to McAdam, the rival is actually a long lost brother who had murdered their father, setting off an epic, Cain-and-Abel struggle between good and evil. Winchester ’73 helped kick off a tidal wave of complex, adult Westerns in the 1950s that eschewed the genre’s previously black and white morality.
Universal-International Pictures Co., Inc. Producer: Aaron Rosenberg. Screenwriter: Robert L. Richards, Borden Chase. Cinematographer: William Daniels. Editor: Edward Curtiss. Cast: James Stewart, Shelley Winters, Dan Duryea, Stephen McNally, Rock Hudson. 35mm, b/w, 92 min.


Ye-Zai (Taiwan, 2012)
Los Angeles Premiere!
“Scrappy and taut, this film infiltrates the underworld of illegal immigration and those who exploit it.” —Examiner.com
Directed by Tseng Ying-ting
Taiwan’s economic development has made it a regional magnet for new immigrants along with new social problems and new stories about them. A new local profession has emerged as well: bounty hunters who catch illegal and runaway foreign workers. But when one bounty hunter, Ye-Zai, is sent to catch his own family’s runaway Thai maid, who is he really chasing? Screenwriter: Chen Yuli, Tseng Ying-ting. Cinematographer: Hsu Fu-hsiang. Editor: Li Chun-hung.  Cast: Shih Ming-Shuai, Sajee Apiwong, Phanet Phongsai, Wu Pong-fong, Huang Caiyi. Digital video, color, in Mandarin and Thai w/ English s/t, 81 min.