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

thu. apr. 30

stray dog, thunderbolt and lightfoot @ new beverly theatre
target video presents: raw power @ silent movie theater
wye oak @ silverlake lounge
bob odenkirk @ largo little room
dino's drive-in: horror fest 8 PM @ echo park film center
lucky dragons @ the smell


fri. may 1

king kong (1933), metropolis @ new beverly theatre
black lips @ el rey
urgh! a music war MIDNIGHT @ nuart
fright night 8 PM @ steve allen theater
raiders of the lost ark MIDNIGHT @ regency fairfax
the americanization of emily, save the tiger @ egyptian theatre
jon brion @ largo
foot village @ pehrspace
dr. no, from russia with love @ aero theatre
morocco FREE, the garden of allah @ ucla film archive
dublab labrat matinee vi 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
wolfmother @ first fridays @ natural history museum


sat. may 2

king kong (1933), metropolis @ new beverly theatre
my bodyguard MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
ice station zebra @ egyptian theatre
goldfinger, thunderball @ aero theatre
it came from beneath the sea MIDNIGHT @ fine arts theatre
rosauro castro, la noche avanza @ ucla film archive
selections from orphans 1 & orphans 2 6 PM @ orphans west symposium @ silent movie theatre
selections from orphans 3 9:30 PM @ orphans west symposium @ silent movie theatre


sun. may 3

winchester '73, bend of the river @ new beverly theatre
jagged edge, the cincinnati kid @ egyptian theatre
the spy who loved me, live and let die @ aero theatre
the woman i stole FREE 7 PM, casbah @ ucla film archive
black lips @ detroit bar
selections from orphans 4 2 PM @ orphans west symposium @ silent movie theatre
selections from orphans 5 4:30 PM @ orphans west symposium @ silent movie theatre
selections from orphans 6 8 PM @ orphans west symposium @ silent movie theatre


mon. may 4

winchester '73, bend of the river @ new beverly theatre
la otra, the littlest outlaw @ ucla film archive


tue. may 5

winchester '73, bend of the river @ new beverly theatre
museum of jurassic technology's david wilson lecture 7 PM @ hammer museum
the outfit 1 PM @ lacma


wed. may 6

waltz with bashir, persepolis @ new beverly theatre
day of wrath FREE @ hammer museum
pandora's box 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
the producers 8 PM @ arclight hollywood
mika miko FREE 7 PM @ amoeba records


thu. may 7

waltz with bashir, persepolis @ new beverly theatre
the wild bunch (70mm) @ egyptian theatre
engagement party FREE 7-10 PM @ moca grand ave
her space holiday @ the echo


fri. may 8

sunset blvd., queen kelly @ new beverly theatre
it's alive 8 PM @ steve allen theater
spectrum @ the echo
lawrence of arabia (70mm) @ egyptian theatre
goonies MIDNIGHT @ regency fairfax
jon brion @ largo
imaad and beast, timonium @ pehrspace
boy @ lacma
death by hanging 9:25 PM @ lacma
driller killer 8 PM, ms. 45 @ silent movie theatre
the mack MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theatre


sat. may 9

mika miko, the soft pack @ the smell
sunset blvd., queen kelly @ new beverly theatre
rear window 7 PM @ angel city drive-in
the road warrior (70mm), lifeforce (70mm) @ egyptian theatre
beau geste FREE @ ucla film archive
merry christmas mr. lawrence 5, 7:30 PM @ lacma


sun. may 10

dr. zhivago 7 PM @ new beverly theatre
2001: a space odyssey (70mm) @ egyptian theatre
it's a mad mad mad mad world @ aero theatre
macario 7 PM @ ucla film archive
the shins @ palladium
a throw of dice (w/ live score by nishat khan & jimmy rip) 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


mon. may 11

dr. zhivago 8 PM @ new beverly theatre
cinemad's short film almanac 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
the antarcticans @ the smell
imaad wasif FREE @ silverlake lounge
meat puppets FREE 7 PM @ amoeba records


wed. may 13

shadows of forgotten ancestors, color of pomegranates @ new beverly theatre
haxan: witchcraft through the ages FREE @ hammer museum
vertigo (70mm) @ egyptian theatre
diary of a lost girl 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
the meditations @ dub club @ the echo & echoplex
meat puppets @ the mint


thu. may 14

shadows of forgotten ancestors, color of pomegranates @ new beverly theatre
bus stop, shake hands with the devil @ egyptian theatre
helmet @ detroit bar
lolita, odd man out @ aero theatre


fri. may 15

200 motels MIDNIGHT @ nuart
the naked city, never on sunday @ aero theatre
the day the earth stood still (1951) @ new beverly theatre
the car MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
royal tenenbaums MIDNIGHT @ regency fairfax
jon brion @ largo
aggrolites, boogaloo assassins @ el rey
the sun's burial @ lacma
night and fog in japan 9:10 PM @ lacma
the funeral 8 PM, bad lieutenant @ silent movie theatre
trick baby MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theatre


sat. may 16

danse macabre FREE @ hammer museum
rififi, topkapi @ aero theatre
the day the earth stood still (1951) @ new beverly theatre
freaked MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
giant drag @ troubadour
cool hand luke @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
nels cline @ the mint


sun. may 17

bombshell, red dust @ egyptian theatre
night and the city, thieves' highway @ aero theatre
the day the earth stood still (1951) @ new beverly theatre
teenagers from outer space 7 PM @ ucla film archive
a page of madness (w/ live score by in the nursery) 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


mon. may 18

the day the earth stood still (1951) @ new beverly theatre


tue. may 19

the day the earth stood still (1951) @ new beverly theatre
i confess 1 PM @ lacma


wed. may 20

the french connection @ aero theatre
the day the earth stood still (1951) @ new beverly theatre
movies moguls monkeys and murder @ ampas linwood dunn
it's the old army game 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
detroit cobras @ troubadour


thu. may 21

the day the earth stood still (1951) @ new beverly theatre
suddenly last summer @ ampas samuel goldwyn


fri. may 22

the texas chainsaw massacre 8 PM @ steve allen theater
gremlins, gremlins 2 @ aero theatre
the mechanic, mr. majestyk @ new beverly theatre
jon brion @ largo
pink floyd the wall MIDNIGHT @ regency fairfax
three resurrected drunkards @ lacma
bad lieutenant 8 PM, dangerous game @ silent movie theatre
willie dynamite MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theatre


sat. may 23

smash up: the story of a woman, the lost weekend @ starlight studio screenings
ferris bueller's day off 7 PM @ angel city drive-in
vertigo (70mm), the untouchables (70mm) @ aero theatre
thee makeout party @ pehrspace
the mechanic, mr. majestyk @ new beverly theatre
gleaming the cube MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
gohatto @ lacma
the catch 9:25 @ lacma
detroit cobras @ detroit bar
the red balloon, TBA @ silent movie theatre
TBA @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
chuck dukowski sextet @ echo curio


sun. may 24

flash gordon: rocketship, flash gordon @ egyptian theatre
lawrence of arabia (70mm) @ aero theatre
animal crackers, duck soup @ new beverly theatre
wholpin no. 8 dvd release party 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


mon. may 25

animal crackers, duck soup @ new beverly theatre
the 5 minutes game & cinefamily memorial day bbq 6 PM @ silent movie theatre


tue. may 26

school on fire, till death do we scare @ new beverly theatre


wed. may 27

the thermals @ troubadour
mia doi todd @ el rey
restoring the los angeles avant-garde: thom anderson and morgan fisher FREE @ hammer museum
the sting @ last remaining seats @ orpheum theatre
ruthless, edgar g. ulmer the man off-screen @ aero theatre
let the right one in, timecrimes @ new beverly theatre
beggars of life 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
ezra buchla @ echo curio
black apples @ silverlake lounge


thu. may 28

journey to the center of the earth (1959) @ aero theatre
let the right one in, timecrimes @ new beverly theatre
cave @ the smell


fri. may 29

city of lost children MIDNIGHT @ nuart
king khan and the shrines @ the echo
restoring the los angeles avant-garde: things are always going wrong FREE @ hammer museum
dark and stormy night @ egyptian theatre
aliens (70mm), the abyss (70mm) @ aero theatre
back to the future, back to the future part 2, back to the future part 3 @ new beverly theatre
jon brion @ largo
the fall MIDNIGHT @ regency fairfax
abel ferrara double feature TBA 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
super fly MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theatre
the happy hollows 7 PM @ silverlake lounge
brightblack morning light @ eagle rock center for arts


sat. may 30

son of frankenstein, ghost of frankenstein @ egyptian theatre
back to the future 5 PM, back to the future part 2, back to the future part 3 @ aero theatre
back to the future, back to the future part 2, back to the future part 3 @ new beverly theatre
patton oswalt @ largo
king khan and the shrines @ the echo
TBA @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
windy & carl, white rainbow MATINEE SHOW @ echo curio
earthless, black dice, richard bishop @ the escarpment (huntington park)


sun. may 31

dracula, house of dracula @ egyptian theatre
battle of algiers @ aero theatre
under two flags FREE 7 PM @ ucla film archive
neil hamburger @ spaceland
dialogues @ filmforum @ egyptian theatre


tue. jun. 2

class of 1984, 3:15 the moment of truth @ new beverly theatre


wed. jun. 3

buck privates @ last remaining seats @ million dollar theatre
witchboard, witchtrap @ new beverly theatre
laurel & hardy shorts 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


thu. jun. 4

under siege, the taking of beverly hills @ new beverly theatre
upsilon acrux, peter kolovos @ the smell


fri. jun. 5

the thing MIDNIGHT @ nuart
king of the ants 8 PM @ steve allen theater
rosa blanca @ ucla film archive
where's poppa? 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
watts ensemble @ fais do-do


sat. jun. 6

casablanca FREE, sahara @ ucla film archive
TBA @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
timonium @ pehrspace


sun. jun. 7

the wizard, joysticks @ new beverly theatre


tue. jun. 9

plague town, the sinful dwarf @ new beverly theatre


wed. jun. 10

michael winslow: man of 1000 noises 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


thu. jun. 11

vashti bunyan: from here to before 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


fri. jun. 12

remo williams: the adventure begins MIDNIGHT @ nuart
dinner at eight, grand hotel @ new beverly theatre
real life 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
jay reatard, thee oh sees @ the echo


sat. jun. 13

dinner at eight, grand hotel @ new beverly theatre
a tribute to marilyn chambers MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
abe vigoda @ the smell
TBA @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
houdini 2:30 PM @ million dollar theater
some like it hot 7:30 PM @ million dollar theater


sun. jun. 14

close encounters of the third kind, starman @ new beverly theatre


mon. jun. 15

a camp @ troubadour
close encounters of the third kind, starman @ new beverly theatre


tue. jun. 16

close encounters of the third kind, starman @ new beverly theatre


wed. jun. 17

macunaima @ last remaining seats @ million dollar theatre
strangers on a train, suspicion @ new beverly theatre
mack sennett shorts 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


thu. jun. 18

strangers on a train, suspicion @ new beverly theatre


fri. jun. 19

a hard day's night MIDNIGHT @ nuart
the duellists, TBA @ new beverly theatre
god told me to 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


sat. jun. 20

foot village @ the smell
the mad genius, the mad doctor @ starlight studio screenings
mike watt @ redwood bar
the omens, davie allan & the arrows @ haunted house au go-go @ bordello
the duellists, TBA @ new beverly theatre
the fog (1980) MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
TBA @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
mae shi @ mr. t's bowl


sun. jun. 21

femi kuti @ hollywood bowl
once upon a time in the west @ new beverly theatre


mon. jun. 22

once upon a time in the west @ new beverly theatre
dinosaur jr., earthless @ troubadour
bipolar bear @ pehrspace


tue. jun. 23

the incredibly strange creatures, the thrill killers @ new beverly theatre
dinosaur jr. @ troubadour


wed. jun. 24

a streetcar named desire @ last remaining seats @ los angeles theatre
the tenant, the fearless vampire killers @ new beverly theatre
our gang shorts 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


thu. jun. 25

the tenant, the fearless vampire killers @ new beverly theatre


fri. jun. 26

brazil (uncut) MIDNIGHT @ nuart
true stories 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


sat. jun. 27

TBA @ cinespia @ hollywood forever


mon. jun. 29

lookin' to get out @ ucla film archive
mika miko, the strange boys @ the smell


wed. jul. 1

pandora's box @ last remaining seats @ orpheum theatre
scott walker 30 century man, TBA @ new beverly theatre


thu. jul. 2

scott walker 30 century man, TBA @ new beverly theatre


fri. jul. 3

ema & the ghosts @ mr. t's bowl


sat. jul. 4

the great gatsby, citizen kane @ starlight studio screenings
red dawn MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
TBA @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
timonium @ pehrspace


sun. jul. 5

bipolar bear @ the smell


sat. jul. 11

TBA @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
ema & the ghosts @ pehrspace


sun. jul. 12

sparrows 2 PM @ alex theatre


sat. jul. 18

TBA @ cinespia @ hollywood forever


sat. jul. 25

shanghai express, the bitter tea of general yen @ starlight studio screenings
TBA @ cinespia @ hollywood forever


sun. jul. 26

strange boys @ the smell


fri. jul. 31

upsilon acrux @ eagle rock center for arts




WHAT IT IS:



THE ABYSS, 1993, 20th Century Fox, 172 min. Deep-water expert Ed Harris and soon-to-be ex-wife Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio square off against Navy SEAL Michael Biehn and a crew of N.T.I.'s (Non-Terrestrial Intelligences), in James Cameron’s gripping undersea epic. The stunning underwater scenes -- shot in a flooded nuclear cooling tower, with camera and diving gear developed by Cameron - soon became the stuff of Hollywood legend; but the film’s real power comes from its brilliant ensemble work and Cameron’s claustrophobic sense of suspense. 70mm Print!  Discussion in between films with director James Cameron.


THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY, 1964, Warner Bros., 115 min. Director Arthur Hiller and screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky skewer the cynical marketing of heroics during wartime. A gung-ho military PR officer (James Coburn) takes seriously the order of an insane general (Melvyn Douglas) to chronicle the first sailor to die landing on D-Day’s Normandy Beach, all to create a "Tomb of the Unknown Sailor." Decidedly unheroic James Garner is stationed in Britain, has just started an affair with beautiful and opinionated Julie Andrews  and gets saddled with the job by Coburn. Producer Martin Ransohoff’s favorite from amongst his many films.


BAD LIEUTENANT
Abel Ferrara's portrait of a corrupt, self-destructive New York vice lieutenant. In a great performance, Harvey Keitel plays a drug-addicted rogue cop trying to settle his gambling debts while investigating the violent rape of a beautiful young nun. Despite sequences of wrenching horror, especially the cop's verbal humiliation of two New Jersey teenagers, Bad Lieutenant achieves a grace and poetic intensity. Cinematography by Ken Kelsch. Screenplay by Abel Ferrara and Zoe Lund. With Victor Argo, Paul Calderone, Leonard Thomas and Frankie Thorn.  Dir. Abel Ferrara, 1992, 98 mins.


BATTLE OF ALGIERS, 1966, Rialto Pictures, 121 min. The Algerian struggle for independence is presented in a compelling, ultra-realistic style by director Gillo Pontecorvo in this landmark 1965 docudrama. Refusing to make villains of either the colonialist French or the bomb-throwing rebels, Pontecorvo weaves a morally complex, dramatically riveting tapestry that presents a balanced yet passionate view of revolution. Frances Terpak, Senior Collections Curator of Getty Research Institute, will introduce the screening.


BEAU GESTE
(1939) Directed by William A. Wellman
William Wellman's adventure classic doubles as a highly emotional and sentimental paean to the supposed virtue and nobility of European empire. Cooper stars as the charismatic leader of three brothers in the French Foreign Legion in Algeria. Exiled from their stately British home on a point of honor, the brothers bravely face a host of threats in their remote desert fortress, including a despotic superior officer and relentless attacks by faceless Arab armies. Presented as a supposed threat to civilization, this enemy "Other" becomes, ironically, the necessary means through which the brothers play out their long-cherished fantasies of fraternal camaraderie.
Paramount. Based on the novel by Percival Christopher Wren. Producer: William A. Wellman. Screenplay: Robert Carson. Cinematographer: Theodor Sparkuhl, Archie Stout. Editor: Thomas Scott. Cast: Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, Robert Preston, Brian Donlevy, Susan Hayward. 35mm, B/W, 120 min.


Beggars Of Life
Brooks gave one of her strongest performances during her brief stint within the Hollywood system in Beggars of Life. William A. Wellman's 1928 portrait of transient life.  Brooks plays Nancy, who must go on the run with her friend Jim after killing her scumbag stepfather in self-defense.  A daring story with an outstanding supporting cast, Beggars of Life echoes the dark atmospherics of Brooks' other films, but it stands out for its markedly American narrative.  As Nancy, Brooks' fierce heroine disguises herself as a boy, and engages in train-hopping, hobo-fighting, and car-stealing, all while on the lam.  A rare, perfect blend of melodrama and naturalism in the storytelling enhances this performance, for which Brooks did all of her own stunts.
Dir. William Wellman, 1928, 16mm, 100 min. 


BEND OF THE RIVER
A compelling study of a man divided between his questionable, hidden past and his new life, set in 1840's Oregon. James Stewart stars as the former outlaw who now works as a wagon train scout. He comes into conflict with his one-time friend (Arthur Kennedy) who hijacks the settlers' supplies in order to turn a profit. Features beautiful Technicolor landscapes. With Julia Adams and Rock Hudson.  New 35mm print!


BOMBSHELL, 1933, Warner Bros., 96 min. Victor Fleming’s positively breakneck-paced satire of Hollywood. Jean Harlow is at her peak as harried Lola Burns, a movie matinee idol being driven crazy by relentless press agent Lee Tracy (who also has the hots for her). The movie she’s shooting with director heartthrob Pat O’Brien is modeled after RED DUST. Naughty double entendres fly fast and furious in this razor-sharp and unabashedly shameless screwball comedy. Co-starring Franchot Tone as a rich potential beau and Una Merkel. "An essential inside Hollywood comedy." – Classic Film Guide NOT ON DVD


Boy (Shonen)
1969/color/105 min./Scope | Scr: Tsutomu Tamura; dir: Nagisa Oshima; w/ Tetsuo Abe, Fumio Watanabe, Akiko Koyama.
Based on a true story that shocked Japan, this film is a double portrait of a desperate family and the grasping society in which they live. A ten-year-old child fakes being hit by cars so his parents can collect damages from the shaken drivers. With rigorous empathy, Oshima portrays the father, who was a soldier in the war and whose wounds are both real and symbolic, the hard-nosed stepmother, and their two children, the unblinking boy and his mercifully uncomprehending baby brother. Oshima called his film "a prayer." "Perfectly cast, Boy pivots on [Tetsuo] Abe's performance. A nonprofessional and an orphan, Abe exudes remarkable dignity… he has the resolute, restrained bearing of a soldier."—Megan Ratner, Film Comment.  New 35mm print 


Buck Privates
(Universal, 1941, 84 minutes, black/white)
Comedians Bud Abbott and Lou Costello rocketed to box-office stardom with this immensely popular slapstick comedy about a couple of con men who inadvertently join the Army while trying to hide from the police. The crowd-pleasing Andrews Sisters perform four musical numbers, including the Academy Award-nominated "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B."


BUS STOP, 1956, 20th Century Fox, 96 min. Dir. Joshua Logan. Marilyn Monroe stunned critics and fans alike with her heartbreakingly tender performance as a truck-stop singer who falls in love with naïve young cowpoke Don Murray, in this beautiful, bittersweet drama based on the William Inge play. With Betty Field, Arthur O’Connell.


THE CAR
Forget Christine--this is the original homicidal automobile. The residents of a small town are terrorized by a driverless black car, seemingly a vehicular tool of the devil. Owing more than a little to Steven Spielberg's Duel, this suspenseful B-movie provides plenty of tire-screeching terror. James Brolin stars.  Dir. Elliot Silverstein, 1977, 97 mins.


CASABLANCA
(1942) Directed by Michael Curtiz
Director Curtiz's classic romantic melodrama and his only film to win Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, Casablanca posits the titular Moroccan city under Vichy France as a sweltering, decadent last stop for émigrés desperate to escape the clutches of Nazi Europe. Enter Rick Blaine, a cool, white-cocktail-jacket-clad American café owner whose seemingly apathetic demeanor hides leftist sympathies--and a broken heart. When his former flame appears with her new beau–a Resistance fighter and concentration camp escapee, Rick is forced to choose between his only chance for true happiness and his ever-growing conscience.
Warner Bros.. Based on the play "Everybody Comes to Rick's" by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. Screenplay: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch. Cinematographer: Arthur Edeson. Editor: Owen Marks. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt. 35mm, B/W, 102 min. 


CASBAH
(1948) Directed by John Berry
This second, and lesser-known, American remake of Pépé le Moko better displays the pulpy B-movie intrigue of its North African setting. Jewel thief Pépé (pop singer Martin) hides out in the famous, labyrinthine Casbah, evading police inspector Slimane (Lorre) with the aid of his sultry innkeeper girlfriend (De Carlo). When Pépé falls for a wealthy tourist who's slumming it in Algiers, his passion draws him out of his sanctuary and into the light, where his pursuers await. Directed by soon-to-be blacklisted filmmaker John Berry (who later emigrated to France), this semi-musical garnered an Academy Award nomination for the song "For Every Man, There's a Woman."
Universal Pictures. Based on the novel "Pépé le Moko" by Henri La Barthe. Screenplay: Leslie Bush-Fekete, Arnold Manoff. Cinematographer: Irving Glassberg. Editor: Edward Curtiss. Cast: Yvonne De Carlo, Tony Martin, Peter Lorre, Marta Torén. 16mm, B/W, 90 min. 


The Catch (Shiiku)
1961/b&w/97 min./Scope  | Scr/dir: Nagisa Oshima; w/ Rentaro Mikuni, Sadako Sawamura, Hugh Hurd.
A black GI, captured in a remote Japanese farming village, becomes a pawn in a power struggle as the villagers squabble over their "catch." Within this microcosm Oshima explores his favorite themes: the hypocrisy, xenophobia, and insularity of Japanese society.  New 35mm print


THE CINCINNATI KID, 1965, Warner Bros., 102 min. Dir. Norman Jewison. Steve McQueen is perfectly cast as an ambitious young gambler poised to triumph over master poker player Edward G. Robinson at a high stakes game in Depression-era New Orleans. Adapted from the Richard Jessup novel by Ring Lardner, Jr. and Terry Southern, this suspenseful character study features a rogues gallery of greats including Ann-Margret, Tuesday Weld, Rip Torn, Karl Malden, Joan Blondell and Cab Calloway.  Discussion in between films with producer Martin Ransohoff and actor Robert Loggia (JAGGED EDGE).


Cinemad's Short Film Almanac
Avant-garde. Cult. Experimental. Indie. Underground. Sticks and stones. Since 1998, Cinemad has been covering films thrown into the avant gutter, interviewing unusual filmmakers that don’t fit neatly into academics or preconceived genre terms.  First as a photocopied zine and now as a website, Cinemad tries to spread the word about great films that are ignored by traditional distribution and magazines.  And, out of all Cinemad covers,   shorts may be the most ignored.  This almanac of past Cinemad short subjects is a mix of wild styles and unusual atmospheres, from the frenetic lesson in heroic cinema in Virgil Widrich's animated wonder Fast Film, to a nuanced look at reality by Sam Green and the stark desolate worlds of Jake Mahaffy or Jennifer Reeves.  Watch first, think second. 


CLASS OF 1984
(from IMDB)
Andrew Norris arrives at a rundown high school to teach music.  The only problem is that there are a group of drug dealing thuggish students led by piano genius Peter Stegman who are determined to continue doing business in the school, and teach a lesson to anybody who thinks about getting in their way!  Dir. Mark L. Lester, 1982, 98 min.


THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES
Paradjanov's mosaic on the life, art and spiritual odyssey of the 18th-century Armenian poet Sayat Nova. The film is a collection of images and tableaux that interweaves landscapes, villages, costumes, props and music to form a metaphorical history of the Armenian nation. The film "achieves a sort of visionary para-surrealism through the most economical means of gesture, props and texture...A sublime and heartbreaking film" (J. Hoberman, The Village Voice).  With Sofico Chiaureli, M. Aleksanian and V. Galstian.  Dir. Sergei Paradjanov, 1969.


DANGEROUS GAME
Madonna is joined by James Russo and Harvey Keitel in this violent and intense psychodrama. Playing a film director, Keitel pushes his art to ever greater extremes until the violence he creates begins to seep into his real life. Madonna and Russo play the actors who come to embody his darkest visions.  Dir. Abel Ferrara, 1993, 108 mins.


DANSE MACABRE
This program features a compilation of short films focusing on the occult, sorcery, and the macabre, with works ranging from the silent era through the 1960s, including Carl Dreyer’s haunting road safety film, They Caught the Ferry (1943), and avant-garde master Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969), a mesmerizing brew of sex, Magick, and rock and roll. (Total running time: approximately 80 mins.)


DARK AND STORMY NIGHT. 2009, Bantam Street, 92 min. Dir. Larry Blamire. The crackpot geniuses behind the LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA franchise return again with their biggest and funniest film yet, a lovingly faithful re-creation of those 1930s old-dark-house thrillers, complete with a reading of the will, secret passageways, a hooded killer, wise-cracking reporters and a Brooklyn cabbie who just wants his "toity-five cents," all presented in glorious black-and-white. With Daniel Roebuck, Jennifer Blaire, Brian Howe, Fay Masterson and many others, plus a terrific new score by Christopher Caliendo (FORD AT FOX). NOT ON DVD Discussion following with cast and crew.


Day of Wrath
Returning to some of the themes of his earlier masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc, Dreyer made one of his strongest humanist statements with the controversial Day of Wrath. Set in a 17th-century village where allegedly wicked women are tortured and burned alive for witchcraft, Day of Wrath follows Anne, the beautiful young bride of an aging local pastor. By giving in to her passion for her husband’s grown son, she seemingly wills the death of her betrothed--a sin synonymous with witchcraft in the eyes of the brutal village elders. Produced at the height of Nazi Germany’s occupation of Denmark, the crystal-clear political parallels between fascism and witch-hunting were not lost on Danish society at the time. Despite the allegorical content, however, Dreyer’s subject is the frightening and uncontrollable power of human emotion; always a master of the close-up, Dreyer conducts his performers in an overwhelming symphony of conflicting sentiments.
Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1943, 35mm, 97 min.


THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL
Now completely restored and remastered, The Day the Earth Stood Still was one of the first films to portray aliens from space as advanced saviors rather than menacing monsters. An intense piece with high production values and an excellent cast of Patricia Neal, Sam Jaffe and Michael Rennie as Klaatu.  Dir. Robert Wise, 1951, 92 mins.


Death By Hanging (Koshikei)
1968/b&w/117 min./VistaVision | Scr: Tsutomu Tamura, Mamoru Sasaki, Michinori Fukao, Nagisa Oshima; dir: Nagisa Oshima; w/ Yun do-Yun, Kei Sato, Fumio Watanabe.
"R," a Korean student, is hanged for the rape and murder of two women, but his body will not cooperate with the state: it simply refuses to expire. Resuscitated, R. is found to be amnesiac, and after consulting the guidebook about this unimaginable situation, panicked prison officials are forced to "reconstruct" his identity and re-establish his guilt so they can hang him all over again. Oshima's most Brechtian film is a stinging black comedy drawn from the writings of the real-life R. "Entertaining, instructive, gripping, mind-boggling, often humorous, and very much alive.'—Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader.  New 35mm print 


DIALOGUES
On one level, DIALOGUES is a parody of Scorpio Rising, using era-specific hit records to locate scenes in time; on another level, it’s an interpretation of Plato’s dialogue ‘Phaedo‘, in which Socrates proves the doctrine of re-incarnation; on still another level, it is a polemic for the Tantric belief in the sacredness of male-female polarity in the form of thirty “Platonic Dialogues.”  Filmmaker Owen Land in person


Diary Of A Lost Girl
Brooks' second collaboration with German Expressionist auteur G.W. Pabst is in some ways an answer film to Pandora's Box--it builds on the tantalizing scandal of the latter, but instead of guiding its central character into a spiral of inevitable tragedy, it follows the sumptuous, troubled character of Thymiane through a similar tale of sexuality and brutality, to an ultimately inspiring conclusion. The film vacillates confidently between decorous high society and the destitute life of an innocent girl forced into a reformatory, then sold into a brothel. Pabst's escalating nightmares are heightened by Brooks' sensitive portrayal of a truly lost girl whose hard-earned redemption is as beautiful a vision as the star herself.
Dir. G.W. Pabst, 1929, 35mm


DINNER AT EIGHT
Based on George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber's Broadway hit, in which an elaborate dinner party reveals a web of intrigue and romance. A classic American comedy. With Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, an adorable Jean Harlow, Lionel Barrymore and Lee Tracy.  Dir. George Cukor, 1933, 111 mins.


DINO’S DRIVE-IN: HORROR FEST
Rock and roll archivist Dino Everett is back with an 80's Film On Film Horror Fest! Art house/cult director Gorman Bechard's (Psychos in Love, Galactic Gigolo) first feature was the slasher Disconnected (1983). It delivers twins, bad mullets, pumping new wave music and a respectable body count. Oh, and did I mention this is the only film print of this in existence? Preceded by a horrifically cheesy 80's educational Etiquette starring a pre-Hollywood Cuba Gooding Jr. and a silent German expressionist stab at Cinderella (1923) on the uber rare 9.5mm format backed by bad 80's music. Oh the horror!


DR. ZHIVAGO
Lavish Hollywood adaptation of the epic love story set against the Russian Revolution, winner of six Academy Awards. A Russian poet and physician, who wishes to live a quiet, normal life, bears witness to a society in chaos as it struggles to bring forth a new world free from stagnation and oppression. Based on the novel by Boris Pasternak. Sweeping, majestic cinematography on a grand scale.  Dir. David Lean, 1965, 176 mins.


DRACULA, 1931, Universal, 75 min. Director Tod Browning (FREAKS) and actor Bela Lugosi established the Transylvanian count as one of the archetypal movie vampires and a monster icon for Universal Studios’ golden era of classic horror films. This adaptation of Hamilton Deane’s then-popular stage play of Bram Stoker’s novel is quite different from Murnau’s silent NOSFERATU, or from later works coming from Hammer Studios in the 1950s-1970s and Francis Ford Coppola’s 1990s version. Real estate agent Renfield (played by everyone’s favorite madman Dwight Frye) goes insane after visiting Dracula at his Transylvanian castle and is thereafter confined to a London asylum, though he does the Count’s bidding as a hypnotized slave when Dracula comes to Britain and moves into the deserted Carfax Abbey. David Manners is Jonathan Harker and Helen Chandler is his lady love, who Dracula wants to make his bride. Edward Van Sloan, a fixture in early Universal horrors, is Professor Van Helsing.  Introduction to the film by Carla Laemmle.


Driller Killer
Ferrara's first feature has risen to infamy based almost entirely on its title alone, but offers out-of-left-field stylish moments and Ferrara's developing quirky sense of humor in addition to its gritty, despairing Taxi Driver-like portrayal of gritty NYC life in the late '70s.  Starving, irritated artist Reno (played by Ferrara himself) lives in a squalid tenement surrounded by drunken derelicts, one of whom happens to be his father. Plagued with nightmarish visions, Reno tenuously clings to sanity thanks to his girlfriend (Carolyn Marz), currently separated from her husband and also with a live-in lesbian lover.  Reno works desperately on a huge painting of a buffalo which he hopes will earn some money, but his concentration is shattered when a punk band moves next door and plays around the clock.  Reno soon snaps, and darts around the nocturnal city streets, picking off bums with his electric hand drill.  Driller Killer strikes a terrific balance between atmosphere and shock, and features some of the most repulsive on-screen pizza eating ever.   Dir. Abel Ferrara, 1979, Digibeta, 96 min.


Dublab Labrat Matinee VI: Selections From An Astral Projectionist
This matinee has transcended the afternoon and traveled to nighttime. Leave your body behind and join us for rarely seen music videos (Animal Collective, Daedelus, Flying Lotus, Lucky Dragons, Nite Jewel, Rainbow Arabia...), new dublab VisionVersion films (Adventure, Busdriver, Rio en Medio, Erlend Oye...), comedy clips (Bob Odenkirk, Tim & Eric, Zach Galifianakis...), out-there animation and other eye melting magic. After the films, stick around for a Friday night party featuring a live performance from one of dublab's favorite bands, plus Labrat DJs playing soundtrack selections on the Cinefamily Spanish patio. Oh yeah, there will be some free beer too! Don't miss these visions burning bright!!!


EDGAR G. ULMER - THE MAN OFF-SCREEN, 2004, Kino International, 77 min. Dir. Michael Palm. On his own and in collaboration with movie legends F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder, from Berlin’s legendary UFA Studios to poverty-row purgatory in Hollywood (where he was blackballed for stealing a studio exec's daughter-in-law), Edgar Ulmer created a unique and heady blend of old-world culture and 20th century pulp pizzazz. This "well wrought investigation of the often mysterious life of Edgar G. Ulmer," (Village Voice) that ambitiously blends film clips, interviews, audiotapes and vintage music cues into a fascinating documentary, the homage to the filmmaking genius behind THE BLACK CAT, DETOUR and THE MAN FROM PLANET X, features testimonials from Roger Corman, John Landis, Joe Dante, Wim Wenders and DETOUR’s ultimate femme fatale Ann Savage. The documentary paints a vividly impressionistic portrait of a no-budget auteur stylistically able to "take a rat and make Thanksgiving dinner out of it."  Arianne Ulmer Cipes, daughter of Edgar G. Ulmer, and author Bernd Herzogenrath will introduce the screening.


The 5 Minutes Game & Cinefamily Memorial Day BBQ
Summer's around the corner, and you know how we here at the Cinefamily love two things in tandem: busting out the patio grill, and The Five Minutes Game. What's all this about a game, you ask?  We're firm believers in "Every movie is interesting for at least its first five minutes", those fascinating moments when you're still entering the new world a film presents you, and trying to figure out what the hell's going on.  What we're gonna do is choose fifteen movies you've likely never seen before (with most, if not all the films unavailable on DVD), line 'em up, and only show you the first five minutes of each, not counting their opening credits.  After all that, you, the audience, gets to vote on which film out of the fifteen we all then watch in its entirety.  So, bring something to cook on our grill, and let's get started!


FLASH GORDON, 1980, Universal, 111 min. Dir. Mike Hodges (the original GET CARTER). Like the early 1930s serial, director Hodges’ FLASH is surprisingly faithful to Alex Raymond’s original comic strip, with just the right balance of action, tongue-in-cheek humor and mindblowing production design (here courtesy of wizard Danilo Donati), with a score by none other than Queen! Relative unknowns Sam Jones and Melody Anderson play Flash and Dale, but the supporting cast is full of heavyweights, including Max Von Sydow (as Ming), Topol (as Dr. Zarkov), Ornella Muti (as Aura), as well Lina Wertmuller favorite Mariangela Melato (SWEPT AWAY) and future James Bond, Timothy Dalton.


FLASH GORDON: ROCKETSHIP, 1936, Holland Releasing, 72 min. Dir. Frederick Stephani. Condensed from the original four hours plus serial, ROCKETSHIP hurtles along like, well, a rocketship! Flash (Buster Crabbe), faithful female sidekick Dale Arden (Jean Rogers) and Dr. Zarkov (Frank Shannon) do battle with interplanetary tyrant Ming the Merciless (Charles Middleton) while Flash tries not to succumb to the wiles of smitten, seductive Princess Aura (Priscilla Lawson), Ming’s daughter.


FREAKED
At the center of this black comedy is a child with unusually large ears. Branded a freak, he manages to get the best of all the kids and adults who would make fun of his unfortunate looks. With a face like his, laughing proves to be the only option. With Randy Quaid, Alex Winter and an uncredited appearance by Keanu Reeves.  Dir. Tom Stern/Alex Winter, 1993, 90 mins.


FRIGHT NIGHT
This horrific howl stars Chris Sarandon as a seductive vampire named Jerry and William Ragsdale as Charlie, his frantic teenage neighbor trying to keep Jerry's deadly fangs out of his neck. Only Charlie knows his bloodcurdling secret, but he can't get anyone to believe him. He turns to TV-horror host Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall), who used to be the "Great Vampire Killer" of the movies. Can these mortals save Charley and his sweetheart, Amy (Amanda Bearse, Married with Children), from the wrathful bloodsucker's toothy embrace?  WRITER/DIRECTOR TOM HOLLAND IN PERSON!


THE FUNERAL
Abel Ferrara's (Bad Lieutenant) "hot-blooded, broodingly well-acted" (New York Times) film of underworld betrayal and explosive retribution set in 1930s New York stars Christopher Walken, Chris Penn, Isabella Rossellini and Annabella Sciorra. A powerful crime family's three street-hardened brothers and the women they love are about to be plunged into a deadly confrontation with their enemies, with each other and with their own dark heritage of violence, madness and murder.  Dir. Abel Ferrara, 1996, 101 mins.


THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
(1936) Directed by Richard Boleslawski
Dietrich shines in this Technicolor fantasy as Domini, a former Catholic schoolgirl who, on the advice of her Mother Superior, leaves for the Sahara to find her destiny. What she finds is Boris (Boyer), a tormented, renegade monk on the run from his monastery. But Boris' lust for life, and love for Domini, cannot mitigate the guilt he feels for breaking his vows. The breathtakingly artificial depiction of the desert sky, particularly at night, illuminates the unlikely couple and their forbidden desire, offering up the Sahara as an exotic frontier where the film's characters--and its audiences--can escape the "civilized" bonds of their cloistered lives.
Selznick International Pictures. Based on the novel by Robert Smythe Hichens. Producer: David O. Selznick. Screenplay: W. P. Lipscomb, Lynn Riggs. Cinematographer: Virgil Miller. Editor: Hal C. Kern. Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Charles Boyer, Basil Rathbone, C. Aubrey Smith, Joseph Schildkraut. 35mm, Technicolor, 79 min. 


GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN,  1942, Universal, 67 min. Universal’s horrors became much more formulaic and by-the-numbers in the 1940s, but the creative juices were still amply flowing in this fourth time out with the Frankenstein monster. Director Erle C. Kenton (ISLAND OF LOST SOULS) helms this fast-moving tale of Wolf Frankenstein’s brother Ludwig (Cedric Hardwicke) trying to live down the ignominy of the family name. Too bad for him that Ygor (Bela Lugosi) and the monster (now played by Lon Chaney, Jr.) survived somehow at the end of SON OF… Now they’re back knocking on his door for help in reviving the ailing monster, hoping to restore him to his former glory. Adding to Ludwig’s headaches are an envious, formerly illustrious doctor (Lionel Atwill) and Ludwig’s beautiful daughter Elsa (Evelyn Ankers).  Introduction to the film by Janet Ann Gallow.


God Told Me To
presented by Patton Oswalt
Filmmaker Larry Cohen's written a lot of movies based around gonzo satirical high concepts, from killer babies to killer Aztec dragon gods, to killer creamy desserts--heck, he probably wrote another one, dictated loudly into a microcassette recorder while stuck in L.A. traffic, before I could finish this sentence.   But even by Mr. Cohen's high standards, God Told Me To is quite a feat of convoluted daring-do. Starting with a Charles Whitmore-style sniper, people all around New York are killing off strangers, calmly admitting their guilt, and offering only one explanation, "God told me to".  From there, any possible attempt to say what happens in this wildly unpredictable mystery would easily qualify as a spoiler, but let me tempt you with a glowing, hermaphroditic yellow hippy with dreadful powers, played by a scar-faced Richard Lynch.  Patton says: "“I picked God Told Me To because I’ve never seen it — and I’ve always wanted to see Andy Kaufman go on a shooting rampage.” That does happen, by the way.
Dir. Larry Cohen, 1976, 35mm, 91 min.


Gohatto (Taboo)
2000/color/101 min. | Scr/dir: Nagisa Oshima; w/ Takeshi Kitano, Ryuhei Matsuda; Tadanobu Asano.
A complex drama of honor, revenge, and (taboo) homosexual desire amongst samurai, Oshima's most recent film, after a hiatus of fourteen years, is set in Kyoto in 1865 during the tumultuous last days of the Shogunate. With its gorgeous production design and cinematography, Gohatto evokes the golden age of Japanese cinema. "A period film of rapacious beauty."—Chuck Stephens, Film Comment. 


Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages
Benjamin Christensen’s notorious pseudo-documentary about the history of witchcraft is a beguiling blend of animation, fiction, fantasy, and “re-enactments,” with satanic rituals, witch trials, and medieval torture devices.  (1922, 77 min., Dir. Benjamin Christensen) 


HOUSE OF DRACULA, 1945, Universal, 67 min. Dir. Erle C. Kenton. To maximize returns and balking at continuing to grant their monsters a perpetual string of individual sequels, Universal decided to give audiences more bang for their buck. Monster rallies FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN and HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN had already come and gone, and by the time of HOUSE OF DRACULA, the only original star to appear was Lon Chaney, Jr., reprising his role yet again as Lawrence Talbot, the Wolf Man. Both Talbot and Count Dracula (John Carradine) desire a cure for their afflictions, and secure the help of renowned scientist Dr. Edelman (Onslow Stevens) and his hunchbacked nurse (Jane Adams). Complicating matters are the suspicions of beautiful nurse Martha O’Driscoll and police inspector Lionel Atwill, and the discovery of the dormant Frankenstein monster (Glenn Strange) in a sea cave! Extremely entertaining.  Introduction to the film by Jane Adams.


ICE STATION ZEBRA, 1968, Warner Bros., 148 min. Reportedly Howard Hughes’ favorite film, action auteur John Sturges (THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, THE GREAT ESCAPE) and producer Martin Ransohoff adapt Alistair MacLean’s Cold War suspense novel into an all-star epic. Rock Hudson is the captain of a U.S. submarine transporting mysterious British agent Patrick McGoohan and Soviet defector Ernest Borgnine to the Arctic weather station Zebra. Having received a distress call from the station after a Russian spy satellite landed in the area, both the Americans and Soviets are in a race to find it. But unbeknownst to Hudson and his crew, there is a traitor on board who will stop at nothing to sabotage the mission.


I Confess
1953/b&w /95 min. | Scr: George Tabori, William Archibald; dir: Alfred Hitchcok; w/ Montgomery Clift, Anne Baxter, Brian Aherne.  
A priest suspected of murder can only clear himself by violating the sanctity of the confessional.


THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED UP ZOMBIES
A funky horror movie set in a sleazy roadside carnival about a deranged fortune teller who creates a series of grotesque monsters and imprisons them in the back of her tent. Problems ensue when a string of unsolved murders plague the carny. "Truly bizarre film features gorgeously saturated color, awful acting, hideous dialogue, haunting atmosphere and little plot" (Leonard Maltin). With Cash Flagg, Brett O'Hara, Atlas King, Sharon Walsh and Madison Clarke.  Dir. Ray Dennis Steckler, 1963, 87 mins.


IT'S ALIVE
Cult director Larry Cohen delivers the ultimate parental nightmare. John Ryan and Sharon Farrell find that not only is their newborn a physical monstrosity, it is also capable of catching and killing its own lunch. With Michael Ansara, Andrew Duggan, and Guy Stockwell. This one is creepy.


It's The Old Army Game
It's The Old Army Game is a rare chance to see Brooks doing madcap comedy, cast opposite a hilariously screwy W. C. Fields in an adventure set during the Florida land boom.  It's wonderful to see the darkly ravishing Brooks appear in such an unlikely vehicle. She lights up the screen as young Mildred Marshall, the assistant to Fields' small-town apothecary. Director Edward Sutherland, who married Brooks around the time this film was made, was as enamored with her as audiences were, as evidenced by a va-va-voom gratuitous tableau of the star leaning languidly in a bathing suit.  According to an avid fan, "There's a memorable tracking shot of Louise striding down a country lane towards the camera that's worth the price of admission!"
Dir. A. Edward Sutherland, 1926, 16mm, 70 min.


JAGGED EDGE, 1985, Sony Repertory, 108 min. Director Richard Marquand (EYE OF THE NEEDLE) and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas (BASIC INSTINCT) create a well-oiled, complex engine of suspense that keeps us guessing till the very last shot. Did Jeff Bridges murder his heiress wife in their San Francisco beach house? Or was it someone else? Bridges convinces attorney Glenn Close, who no longer takes criminal cases, to defend him, and Close finds herself gradually falling in love with her client. Making matters more contentious, there is evidence to support both Bridges’ guilt and  innocence, and Close is afraid D.A. Peter Coyote may be suppressing exculpatory evidence. Robert Loggia was Oscar-nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role as investigator Sam Ransom. "Supremely effective." – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times 


JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, 1959, 20th Century Fox, 132 min. Dir. Henry Levin. Along with Richard Fleischer’s 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, this is one of the finest versions of a Jules Verne novel ever filmed, with James Mason beautifully cast as an obsessive Scottish geology professor who descends into the depths of the Earth with eager student Pat Boone, alluring widow Arlene Dahl and sinister nemesis Thayer David. The dazzling underground crystal caves and mushroom forests are among the most delightful Hollywood creations of the 1950s. Co-starring a very young Diane Baker. Produced and co-written by Charles Brackett (Billy Wilder’s longtime partner), with a terrific stereo score by the maestro Bernard Herrmann. Rarely revived since its original release, this screening features an ultra-rare 4-track mag stereo print from England! 50th Anniversary Screening.  Discussion following with actor Pat Boone.


JOYSTICKS
(from IMDB)
When a top local businessman and his two bumbling nephews try to shut down the town's only video arcade, arcade employees and patrons fight back.  Dir. Greydon Clark, 1983, 88 min.


KING OF THE ANTS
Ray needs somebody dead. Sean will do anything for money. A double-cross was never part of the deal. Bent on keeping Sean quiet after the killing. Ray's thugs hold him prisoner in the desert, ruthlessly beating him to destroy his memory. But with each blow, Sean is becoming a killing machine hell-bent on payback. The game is about to change. From Stuart Gordon, the director of Re-Animator. Starring Daniel Baldwin, Kari Wuhrer, and a film-stealing George Wendt (Norm from TV's Cheers).  DIRECTOR STUART GORDON IN PERSON!


LA NOCHE AVANZA
(Night Falls)
(1952, Mexico) Directed by Roberto Gavaldón
Mexico City's famed jai alai arena, the Frontón México, becomes ground zero for greed and betrayal in this seething film noir starring Armendáriz as Marcos, an arrogant womanizer headed for "The Big Fall." A legend on the jai alai court, Marcos struts from locker room to nightclub to penthouse, pushing around "the weak" and wracking up romantic affairs with a jaw-dropping sense of entitlement. However, when one of his conquests--a young girl from a respectable family--becomes pregnant, Marcos is caught between his ego and a hard place after her debt-ridden brother blackmails him into throwing a match for the mob. From there, twists and turns start piling up at a dizzying rate as Gavaldón drives a stake into the heart of machismo.
Based on a story by Luis Spota. Producer: Óscar J. Brooks, Felipe Mier. Screenplay: Jesús Cárdenas, Roberto Gavaldón, José Revueltas. Cinematographer: Jack Draper. Editor: Charles L. Kimball. Cast: Pedro Armendáriz, Anita Blanch, Julio Villareal, Eva Martino, José María Linares-Rivas. Presented in Spanish dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, B/W, 85 min.


LA OTRA
(The Other One)
(1946, Mexico) Directed by Roberto Gavaldón
This twisted film noir stars Dolores del Río in a dual role as rival twins. Maria is a poor manicurist while Magdalena is the recently widowed wife of a millionaire. Always the "bad girl," Maria hatches a murderous plan to take her sister's place,only to discover--upon assuming her sister's identity--that Magdalena wasn't quite the "good girl" she made herself out to be. As a woman tormented by inner demons and grappling with the unimaginable truth of her sister's secrets, del Río turns in a riveting performance on par with Joan Crawford at her melodramatic finest. Assisted by cinematographer Alex Phillips and production designer Gunther Gerszo, Gavaldón transforms the sophisticated spaces of Mexico City's upper classes into a world of baroque shadows and foreboding. La otra was remade by Hollywood in 1964 as the Bette Davis vehicle Dead Ringers.
Based on the short story "The Dead Dove" by Rian James. Producer: Mauricio de la Serna, Jack Wagner. Screenplay: Roberto Gavaldón, José Revueltas. Cinematographer: Alex Phillips. Editor: Charles L. Kimball. Cast: Dolores del Río, Agustin Irusta, Victor Junco, José Baviera, Manuel Dondé. Presented in Spanish dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, B/W, 104 min.  


Laurel & Hardy Shorts
Can you believe that the Cinefamily has never done a Laurel and Hardy program before?  Neither can we, so let's fix that.  The most instantly recognizable, iconic and uproarious duo in silent film, this comic pair actually made only a few dozen shorts together for Hal Roach before they seamlessly transitioned into the talkie era, but virtually all of them are sparkling golden.  One can point to the universality of their foibles as the root of their massive appeal, their birdbrained, dimwitted antics being a mirror of our own travails--but it was also the pace of their timing, a steady, patient waltz as opposed to the manic ragtime of most other slapstick, that elevated Laurel and Hardy's already powerful comedy to genius level.  This program is not only a total joy, but is your chance to witness the lightning-fast stylistic evolution of whom J.D. Salinger described as "two heaven-sent artists and men".


LIFEFORCE, 1985, Sony Repertory, 101 min. Sex-starved space vampire Mathilda May terrorizes the world while looking for something to wear, in director Tobe Hooper’s gleeful, over-the-top sci-fi flick – one of the great pulp movies of the 1980s. Steve Railsback co-stars as the lovestruck astronaut dazzled by May’s charms, with help from Peter Firth as a government agent and "Star Trek’s" Patrick Stewart as the head of an asylum. Co-starring Frank Finlay, Michael Gothard (THE DEVILS).


LOLITA, 1962, Warner Bros, 152 min. Stanley Kubrick’s hilariously bleak and twisted portrait of sexual obsession (based on Vladimir Nabokov’s infamous novel) stars James Mason as ultra-fussy college professor Humbert Humbert, whose life is upended when he sets eyes on Sue Lyon’s blasé blonde nymphet. Watch for Peter Sellers’ scene-stealing performance as Humbert’s nemesis.


LOOKIN' TO GET OUT
(1982) Directed by Hal Ashby
The storied and tragic trajectory of Hal Ashby's career turns sharply from the phenomenal promise and success of the 1970s--The Landlord, Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Coming Home, Being There--to the self-destruction and decline of the 1980s. Rarely screened and long difficult to find on home video, however, Ashby's 1982 film Lookin' to Get Out adds a wrinkle to this neat divide between decades. Starring Jon Voight, who co-wrote the script with Alan Schwartz, Lookin' to Get Out follows the travails of "beautiful losers," Alex (Voight) and Jerry (Young), who flee New York for Las Vegas with a pair of loan sharks on their tale. After Alex scams their way into a penthouse at the MGM Grand and a stack of chips on credit--with the unwitting help of Alex's ex girlfriend (Margret)--the hapless pair set their sights on the "big score" but fate comes calling to cash them both out. On his fourth outing with cinematographer Haskell Wexler, Ashby revels in exposing the glittering facades of Vegas in 1980s but where his most celebrated films engage the larger zeitgeist through irony and humor, here, Ashby narrows focus to burrow deep into the nature of personal loyalty and friendship. As the obsessive-compulsive gambler, Alex, Voight delivers a frenzied, high-wire performance set against Young's compellingly understated turn as the long-suffering Jerry. It's a dazzling balancing act that Ashby handles as adroitly as when he was at his peak. Met with harsh reviews and harsher box office on its initial release, Lookin' to Get Out is ripe for reconsideration as it makes its Warner Home Video DVD debut on Tuesday, June 30.
The Lookin' to Get Out DVD will feature the director's cut version being screened tonight. This version of the film was recently discovered twenty-seven years after it was first released. As Voight -- who was instrumental in the film's development and the writing of screenplay (as a co-writer) -- tells it, "For various reasons, the film we released didn't really represent Hal's best work. I knew every version of the script and every cut, so I was understandably excited when I heard about this, yet I also didn't want to be disappointed. But when I saw it, I knew instantly it had Hal's touch. The way he took all the elements and made it his own, it was almost like we were working together again. When Hal Ashby [an Oscar® winning editor] cut his films himself, it was magic."
Lorimar Productions. Producer: Robert Schaffel, Edward Teets. Screenplay: Al Schwartz, Jon Voight. Cinematographer: Haskell Wexler. Cast: Jon Voight, Ann-Margret , Burt Young, Bert Remsen, Jude Farese. HDcam, 105 min.
IN PERSON: Actor Jon Voight and screenwriter-director Curtis Hanson.


THE LOST WEEKEND
(from IMDB)
Don Birnam, long-time alcoholic, has been "on the wagon" for ten days and seems to be over the worst; but his craving has just become more insidious. Evading a country weekend planned by his brother Wick and girlfriend Helen, he begins a four-day bender. In flashbacks we see past events, all gone wrong because of the bottle. But this bout looks like being his last...one way or the other.  Billy Wilder drama w/ Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Philip Terry, Howard da Silva.  1945-Paramount


MACARIO
(1960, Mexico) Directed by Roberto Gavaldón
Nominated for an Oscar for best foreign language film, Macario was so effective in its cinematic rendering of magical realism that the story, written by Bruno Traven, was often mistaken for an ancient Mexican folk tale. Set in 18th century colonial Mexico, the film follows Macario, a poor woodsman who vows to his family that he will eat nothing until he can have an entire turkey to himself. Afraid for her husband's well-being, his wife steals a turkey for his feast, which Macario spirits into the forest to consume in solitude. His meal is repeatedly interrupted before the first bite, however, by a series of mysterious and ghostly strangers who ask Macario to share his prize with them. He refuses the first two but strikes a Faustian bargain with the third, who turns out to be Death himself. Like Faust, Macario gains wealth and power, all the while slowly losing control of his destiny until Death comes calling one final time. In the film's stunning climax, the world of the dead, so prevalent in the imagery of Mexico, is hauntingly visualized through Gabriel Figueroa's dramatic photography.
Based on the short story "El tercer invitado" by Bruno Traven. Producer: Armando Orine Alba. Screenplay: Roberto Gavaldón, Emilio Carballido. Cinematographer: Gabriel Figueroa. Editor: Gloria Schoemann. Cast: Ignacio López Tarso, Pina Pellicer, Enrique Lucero, José Gálvez. Presented in Spanish dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, B/W, 90 min. 


THE MACK
One of the most popular (and one of the most violent) blaxploitation films made, The Mack is the story of a pimp in Oakland who faces off against drug dealers, corrupt cops and rivals in the flesh trade upon his release from prison. Max Julien stars, with a wardrobe that must be seen to be believed. Also starring Richard Pryor, Carol Speed, Don Gordon and Roger E. Mosley.  Dir. Michael Campus, 1973, 110 mins.


Mack Sennett Shorts
Banana peels, car pileups, dangling damsels, oh my!  For fans of silents, the name of writer/director/everything-elser Mack Sennett instantly conjures up images of his infamous Keystone Kops, the oafish, incompetent boobs in blue--but Sennett was equally responsible for bringing about the film debuts of Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle, Harry Langdon, Gloria Swanson and the awesome cross-eyed no-necked Ben Turpin!  With the help of this coterie of statrs, Sennett laid down the early rules for American slapstick comedy, with his films' sharp comic timing and heaping doses of infectious silliness.  Often playing by their own completely loopy rules of logic and casting disapproving nods to authority figures, Sennett's shorts awaken the kid in us all, and tonight we delve into Sennett's ocean of material (he directed over 300 shorts and produced at least twice as many) to bring you a night of guffawing, giggling, tittering and cackling.


Macunaíma
(Brazil, 1969, 105 minutes, color, in Portuguese with English subtitles, MPAA rating: R)
Celebrate the 40th anniversary of the award-winning Brazilian classic based on the famous novel by Mario de Andrade. This farcical, irreverent satire follows anti-hero Macunaíma from the jungle to the city and back again. Not for the young or the faint of heart, the film uses mature themes, and sometimes graphic visuals, to poke fun at certain myths of Brazilian identity while critiquing the military regime in power at the time. 


THE MAD DOCTOR
(from IMDB)
A crazed physician marries a wealthy women and, with the help of his demented assistant, murders them for their money.  Tim Whelan thriller w/ Basil Rathbone, Ellen Drew, Martin Kosleck.  1941-Paramount


THE MECHANIC
One of Charles Bronson's better '70s tough-guy films casts him as a mob hit-man ready to step down from his dirty profession. Jan-Michael Vincent is the young apprentice learning his deadly trade from the master. "A hymn to technological violence, efficiently and convincingly made" (George Melly, The Observer). With Jill Ireland and Keenan Wynn.  Dir. Michael Winner, 1972, 99 mins.


Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (Senjo No Meri Kurismasu)
1983/ color/122 min./VistaVision | Scr: Nagisa Oshima, Paul Mayersberg; dir: Nagisa Oshima; w/ David Bowie, Ryuchi Sakamoto, Tom Conti, Takeshi Kitano.
In a POW camp in 1942 Java, an androgynous, guilt-ridden Anglo soldier (David Bowie) becomes an object of obsession for a fanatical camp commander (Ryuichi Sakamoto) whose tastes run to hara-kiri, Shakespeare, and East-West cultural debates over tea. When a series of incidents in the camp strips away the civility, the two men are propelled into deadly conflict. The film garnered rave reviews for Tom Conti's brilliant performance as Mr. Lawrence, a humane Japanophile who mediates the opposing sides; and Sakamoto's spare, haunting music, ranks among the greatest modern film scores.  New 35mm print


Michael Winslow: Man of 1000 Noises
You know him best as Officer Larvell Jones, the irrepressible burbling, beep-borping human Foley machine that was a mainstay character in the Police Academy repertory company.  Be it helicopters, electric guitars, cop sirens, the inner workings of robots, barking dogs, squishing soggy sneakers, roaring jets, spine-tingling scratches on a chalkboard, screaming guitars, cell phones, kung fu dubbing--he is truly the man of a thousand noises, at the very least.  He captured the juvenile fascinations of a generation with his uncanny talent for imitation, and tonight, Winslow takes the Cinefamily stage to embark on a new venture: a never-before attempted challenge that only he could possibly fulfill.  Yes, Winslow will be providing a live music-and-effects track to a varied sampling of classic and not-so-classic shorts from the silent era.  Not so silent anymore!


MS. 45
Ferrara displays an amazing command of the film medium in this, only his second legit feature. Pitched as a kind of Death Wish vigilante/rape-revenge flick, Ms. 45 far exceeds the limitations of any genre--it is an endlessly transforming piece of art, evolving past any simple exploitation satisfaction model, going from potentially uncomfortable misogyny up through feminist vengeance fable, and finally ending up in a nihilistic world in which no one's fantasies are satisfied. Thana (the late, great Zoë Tamerlis), a mute garment district worker, has the ultimate bad day (one night, two rapes). After killing her second attacker in self-defense, she finds herself wandering the streets at night, looking to "defend" herself against any upright creature with a penis. It is an incredibly orchestrated mixture of tones and tropes, from black comedy to nihilist theatre, stylized central park shootouts and unforced low-key surrealism. Increasingly dreamy until its incredible Halloween party massacre climax, Ms. 45 is Ferrara's finest example of scuzzy 42nd Street fare with a poetic soul.  Dir. Abel Ferrara, 1981, 35mm, 80 min. 


MR. MAJESTYK
(from IMDB)
Vietnam veteran Vince Majestyk just wants to grow his watermelons and live in peace on his farm. But the local mob boss has different ideas. When his workers are threatened Mr. Majestyk decides to lend them a hand but then the wrath of the mob is turned onto Mr. Majestyk himself. The poor mobsters don't stand a chance.  Dir. Richard Fleischer, 1974, 103 mins.


MOROCCO
(1930) Directed by Josef von Sternberg
The erotic tension is palpable in this love triangle about a disillusioned cabaret singer (Dietrich), a wealthy, expatriate Frenchman (Menjou) and an American-born Legionnaire (Cooper). Conceived as Dietrich's Hollywood debut, Morocco is largely a vehicle for her distinctive talent and gift for glamorous melodrama. Her co-star Cooper more than holds his own as a quietly confident French Legionnaire, doomed like Dietrich by their impossible love for each other. Awash in smoky Orientalist ambience, von Sternberg and his cameraman, Lee Garmes, created a visually striking, atmospheric mood piece. The film was a box office smash that reportedly saved Paramount from bankruptcy.
Paramount. Based on the play "Amy Jolly" by Benno Vigny. Producer: Louis D. Lighton. Screenplay: Jules Furthman. Cinematographer: Lee Garmes. Editor: Sam Winston. Choreographer: Lucien Ballard. Cast: Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Adolphe Menjou, Ullrich Haupt, Eve Southern. 35mm, B/W, 91 min. 


Movies! Moguls! Monkeys! and Murder!
This screening of early motion pictures shot in Los Angeles from 1909–1914 will highlight the various studios, filmmakers and locations that quickly made filmmaking in Los Angeles such a boom industry.
After shooting some location footage at a Los Angeles area beach to insert into an otherwise stage-bound version of “Monte Cristo” (1908), producer William Selig and director Frances Boggs realized the potential of filming in Los Angeles and opened the first permanent film studio in the Los Angeles suburb of Edendale in 1909. Their early works, along with those of several other companies that moved westward shortly thereafter, would culminate in the 1914 releases of Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Squaw Man” and Selig’s “The Spoilers,” early feature-length productions which would launch the “Hollywood” legend.
This unique evening features archival prints representing the earliest surviving glimpses of Los Angeles as a filming location. Check back for updated information on film titles.


MY BODYGUARD
An enormously appealing youth film that overcomes its cliches with the empathic performances of its talented young cast. A small, smart student (Chris Makepeace) has trouble fitting in at his new school and becomes the victim of a bully (Matt Dillon) who extorts the lunch money of the kids who fear him. The newcomer looks to a tall, strong misfit (Adam Baldwin) with a troubled past for help. Soon, an unlikely friendship forms between the two. Ruth Gordon, Martin Mull and Joan Cusack (in her film debut) co-star in this popular feature.  Dir. Tony Bill, 1980, 96 mins.


THE NAKED CITY, 1948, Mark Hellinger Productions, 96 min. Dir. Jules Dassin. A landmark crime movie, producer Mark Hellinger's hardboiled tribute to his beloved Big Apple peels away all the stylistic melodramatics of noir to present Hollywood's first true policier. The scrupulously researched script by Malvin Wald and vivid location photography by William Daniels (an Oscar winner) combined to make this one of the most influential Hollywood films of the 1940s. With Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Don Taylor, Dorothy Hart and a very scary Ted de Corsia.


NEVER ON SUNDAY, 1960, MGM Repertory, 97 min. Dir. Jules Dassin. The formerly blacklisted expatriate also wrote, produced and starred as Homer Thrace, the philosophizing Connecticut. Yankee who finds himself in the court of the Greek siren, the ancients here embodied in the shapely form of prostitute Ilya, played by Melina Mercouri. Her vivacious performance as a headstrong Galatea who remains undaunted by the local males won her Best Actress at Cannes. She and Dassin would later marry. With Giorgos Foundas, gorgeous Greek locales and an Oscar-winning title song by Manos Hadjidakis.


Night and Fog in Japan (Nihon No Yoru To Kiri)
1960/color /107 min./Scope | Scr/dir: Nagisa Oshima; w/ Fumio Watanabe, Miyuki Kuwano.
The wedding of two leftist "comrades" quickly turns into a bitter round of denunciations, ferocious accusations, and self-recrimination. With its provocative title invoking the Holocaust and audacious style (it's entirely comprised of only forty-seven long takes), Oshima's film was deemed inflammatory and withdrawn days after its release.  New 35mm print


NIGHT AND THE CITY, 1950, 20th Century Fox, 96 min. Dir. Jules Dassin. A stunning print of the most baroque and bleak film noir of them all. The greatness of this film -- besides Richard Widmark's  devastating portrayal of the maniacal, pathetic con man and small-time promoter Harry Fabian -- is its stubborn refusal to allow even the tiniest ray of light into Harry's headlong descent into hell. Featuring an unforgettable supporting rogue's gallery, including Googie Withers, Herbert Lom, Francis L. Sullivan, Mike Mazurki, Stanislaus Zbyszko -- and the gorgeous Gene Tierney (LAURA) as Widmark’s heartbroken sweetheart.. With a screenplay by Jo Eisinger from the novel by Gerald Kersh.


ODD MAN OUT, 1947, MGM Repertory, 115 min. Directed by Carol Reed and starring James Mason as an IRA gunman who gets wounded and lost on a raid. His last hours in the city are as beautiful and hallucinatory as they are tragic. Is Johnny dogged by bad luck? Is fate pursuing him? Or is he actually staggering toward the light? The power of this extraordinary film has lasted, along with the insolubility of its political problem. The film was written by R.C. Sherriff and F.L. Green from the latter's novel. The cast includes Robert Newton, Fay Compton, Robert Beatty, Cyril Cusack, F.J. McCormick and Kathleen Ryan, but just as important is cameraman Robert Krasker, who would get an Oscar two years later for his work on Reed’s THE THIRD MAN.


Orphans West Symposium
This early May, The Cinefamily is the proud host of a best-of presentation of orphaned films, co-curated by L.A.'s own Filmforum! “Orphan” works are those which are outside of the mainstream and often have no known origin or copyright, or were at one point considered “lost” and without a formal repository to preserve it. These include home movies, amateur and educational films, industrial and sponsored films, experimental films, and newsreels. The Orphan Film Symposium has had six incarnations since its start in 1999 at the University of South Carolina, and founder Dan Streible has since developed it into a favorite of AMIA members, filmmakers, and historians. The event is now held at NYU as a project of their Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program, and draws sold out crowds from around the world (18 nations were represented at the last symposium). Our Cinefamily presentation will consist of films hand-picked from all six symposiums! 


Our Gang Shorts
We all remember the beloved set of Our Gang characters--Spanky, Alfalfa, Buckwheat and the rest--from frequent airings of shorts on local TV, but did you know that there were also 88 silent shorts produced in the 1920s featuring those Little Rascals? Created by film pioneer Hal Roach, the Our Gang shorts make for endlessly fun viewing, as we watch these scraggly, streetwise, mischievous kids do their thing: tussling with snotty rich kids, making trouble, and having a good time. Noted for the naturalism and surprising comedic agility of the children’s performances (Roach started the series with the offspring of his various employees at the studio) and their multi-racial cast, the Our Gang films continue to charm both kids and their parents.


The Outfit
1973/color /90 min. | Scr:/dir: John Flynn; w/ Robert Duvall, Karen Black, Robert Ryan. 
An ex-con takes on the mob to avenge his brother's death.


A Page Of Madness (w/ live score by In The Nursery)
The U.K.-based group In The Nursery returns to the Cinefamily to score another silent classic, Teinosuke Kinugasa's A Page Of Madness.  The most modern, challenging Japanese silent to survive the WWII firebombings, Madness throws the viewer into a maelstrom of hallucinations and obsession, and easily stands way out amongst its kabuki and jidai-geki contemporaries. A haunted man takes a job as a janitor in an insane asylum where his wife is committed; his fantasies of liberating her blend into the mad, confounding visions of the inmates. Told without intertitles, the narrative takes a back seat to pure visual expression.  Kinugasa synthesizes every available experimental technique known at the time: his use of superimpositions, flashbacks, rapid montage and complex subjective camerawork rival the innovations of Murnau and Gance for sheer audacity. Lost for half a century after its completion and rediscovered in the early ’70s by Kinugasa himself in his own garden shed, A Page of Madness is a stunning, singular work, and the live score provided by In The Nursery's twin brothers Klive and Nigel Humberstone is equally as captivating, incorporating the latest music technology with traditional Japanese instrumentation and percussion.
Dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926, 35mm, 60 min. 


Pandora's Box
Louise Brooks took naturally to the life of an ex-pat actress, after breaking her Hollywood ties after a salary dispute with Paramount and linking up with Bohemian director G. W. Pabst for a film as beautiful and haunting as the actress herself.  Brooks cemented her legendary status as the willful, silent muse of German Expressionist cinema with 1929's Pandora's Box.  As conflicted femme fatale Lulu, the girl whose luscious sexuality is fraught with a ruin beyond her control, Brooks makes increasingly twisted, tragic plot turns (shooting her lover, fleeing the country with her lover's son, becoming a "lady of the evening" and having everyone around her perish) seem totally inevitable, for a beauty that burns that brightly cannot burn for too long.  As Brooks' outrageous autobiography Lulu in Hollywood attests, the movie's effect was so powerful on audiences that the character's name stuck with her for life.
Dir. G.W. Pabst, 1929, 35mm


PLAGUE TOWN
After years spent making documentaries about genre movies, British filmmaker David Gregory (Scathed) stepped back into the B-spotlight with this creature feature of his own. When an American family gets lost while on vacation in Ireland, they end up in a remote town. If the title is any indication, the inhabitants aren't exactly friendly. This is especially true for the mutant children. "A boundary-pushing, taboo-breaking experience...Plague Town goes where most mainstream horror films fear to tread" (Fangoria).  Dir. David Gregory, 2008, 88 mins.


QUEEN KELLY
With its restoration in 1985, Erich von Stroheim's eighth and final silent film emerged from over 50 years of obscurity to its first official release and worldwide acclaim. As such, it now ranks as one of the great treasures of film history. The collaboration of Gloria Swanson, then Hollywood's greatest star, and financier Joseph Kennedy, the film was near completion when, after three months of production, Swanson closed it down enraged by von Stroheim's excesses. The story, a gothic romance in which a convent girl is seduced by a Prince and inherits a brothel in Africa, is told with stunning visual effect.


Real Life
presented by Bob Odenkirk
Albert Brooks' highly underrated film about a documentary filmmaker (Brooks) whose invasion of a "typically American family" to record their lives tears apart the nuclear family, exposing deeper and darker truths about contemporary America and even darker truths about the filmmaker. Brooks' film is raw in its visual patterns, yet the long, uninterrupted takes established him as a director with a unique comic style. Brooks wrote the screenplay with Monica Johnson and Harry Shearer, who also appears (though his face is never seen) as a cameraman--part of one of the funniest running gags in the film.  Dir. Albert Brooks, 1979, 99 mins.


RED DUST, 1932, Warner Bros., 83 min. Dir. Victor Fleming. Hot-blooded he-man Clark Gable, the manager of a Malaysian rubber plantation, falls hard for Jean Harlow, a wayfaring sexpot of questionable morals (to say the least – it’s implied she’s a prostitute) in this steamy, tropical soap opera. Mary Astor is the other lady in competition for Gable’s charms. MGM bosses were stepping way over the line with suggestive innuendoes and off-color hijinks in this big box office hit. NOT ON DVD


REMO WILLIAMS: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS
(from IMDB)
An NYPD cop is 'killed' in an accident. The death is faked, and he is inducted into the organization CURE, dedicated to preserving the constitution by working outside of it. Remo is to become the enforcement wing (assassin) of CURE, and learns an ancient Korean martial art from Chiun, the Master of Sinanju. Based on the popular pulp series "The Destroyer," by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy.  Dir. Guy Hamilton, 1985, 121 min.


RESTORING THE LOS ANGELES AVANT-GARDE: Things are Always Going Wrong
This screening will showcase a broad range of work made between 1963 and 1980 by key L.A. artists. Featured works include two of Gary Beydler’s moving recompositions of local landscapes, David Wilson’s rarely seen Stasis, and Bruce Lane’s masterwork unc. Including films by Fred Worden, Chris Langdon, Roberta Friedman & Grahame Weinbren, Diana Wilson, and Pat O’Neill. All films will be shown in their original 16mm format.


RESTORING THE LOS ANGELES AVANT-GARDE: Thom Andersen and Morgan Fisher
Perhaps best known for his acclaimed Los Angeles Plays Itself, Thom Andersen also produced a vital body of work in the 1960s. His longtime friend, filmmaker and painter Morgan Fisher, has explored many facets of the film medium. Both filmmakers will be in attendance for a discussion.


RIFIFI, 1955, Rialto Pictures, 122 min. Dir. Jules Dassin. Back from the pen, tough guy Jean Servais rejoins his cronies and freshly imported safecracker César the Milanese (Dassin himself, billed as Perlo Vita) for a little jewel store smash-and-grab job -- but Servais wants the whole works! The central heist is an edge-of-your-seat 30-minute sequence without dialogue or music, so detailed that it provided a feasible blueprint for real-life pros. "A vivid exercise that more or less invented the idea of French Film Noir... For the French, RIFIFI  had Hollywood pizzazz; for Americans, it had continental sophistication. For both, it seemed to possess an authoritative naturalism." – J. Hoberman; "The best film noir I have ever seen. A marvel of skill and inventiveness." – François Truffaut


ROSA BLANCA
(The White Rose)
(1961, Mexico) Directed by Roberto Gavaldón
Certain topics in Mexican history have not tolerated criticism and consequently have been considered taboo by filmmakers. Among them is the period during the 1930s when vast tracks of agricultural land were appropriated by powerful oil interests. Based on a story by Bruno Traven, Rosa Blanca broached that issue and was banned in Mexico until 1972 and is still one of the country's most noted cases of censorship, in part because of Gavaldón's status as an established commercial director. The film centers on a proud farmer, Jacinto Yanez, and his battle with an American-owned oil company. When Yanez refuses to sell the rich, fertile land his family has tilled for generations, the company hatches a plot to lure Yanez to Los Angeles where he mysteriously disappears. Once the defiant patriarch is out of the way, the bulldozers start rolling in. The highly romanticized imagery that Gavaldón uses to represent the Yanez farm makes its destruction all the more poignant and pointed as an idealized Mexico gives way to a harsh, modern reality.
Based on the novel by Bruno Traven. Producer: Felipe Subervielle. Screenplay: Emilio Carballido, Roberto Gavaldón, Phil Stevenson. Cinematographer: Gabriel Figueroa. Editor: Gloria Schoemann. Cast: Ignacio López Tarso, Christiane Martell, Reinhold Olszewski, Rita Macedo, Begoña Palacios. Presented in Spanish dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 100 min. 


ROSAURO CASTRO
(1950, Mexico) Directed by Roberto Gavaldón
Once thought of as a lost film after its negative was reportedly destroyed in a fire in the early 1980s, Rosauro Castro has re-emerged to take its rightful place as a major work in both Gavaldón's oeuvre and Mexican cinema as a whole. Pedro Armendáriz stars as the title character, a strong man, or cacique, who rules over the inhabitants of a rural town with an iron fist. Change is in the air and tragedy in the offing, however, when a federal agent arrives to reassert law and order at the same time a defiant farmer, banished from the town by Castro, returns to find his family. Gavaldón masterfully orchestrates the tensions between the characters and the social institutions they represent--church, government, school, home--until violence explodes in the town's dusty, shadow-washed streets.
Producer: Pedro Armendáriz, Roberto Gavaldón. Screenplay: Roberto Gavaldón, Robert Quigley, Jose Revueltas. Cinematographer: Raul Martinez Solares. Cast: Pedro Armendáriz, Carlos López Moctezuma, María Douglas, Arturo Martinez, Carlos Navarro. Presented in Spanish dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, B/W, 90 min. 


RUTHLESS, 1948, 104 min. "I’m going far, fast and alone," snarls grade-A heel Zachary Scott, taking revenge on the world for being abandoned by his mother. Diana Lynn co-stars as the unlucky girl who falls for Scott’s charms, poisonous Sydney Greenstreet as the snake who finally stops him cold, in Ulmer’s brilliant noir, an over-the-top variation on Welles’ CITIZEN KANE. Co-starring Louis Hayward as Scott’s decent and very disillusioned best friend. 35mm print restoration by UCLA Film and Television Archive. NOT ON DVD


SAHARA
(1943) Directed by Zoltan Korda
This gripping WWII war drama stars Bogart as the gruff Sgt. Joe Gunn, commander of a rag-tag group of Allied soldiers (with two POWS in tow) sweating it out in the Libyan desert and outnumbered by advancing Nazi soldiers. When the dwindling group of men finds a dried up well, Gunn plots to use it as a fort (while camouflaging their tiny number), and as a bargaining tool to negotiate with the parched Nazis who are desperate for water. This riveting, thoroughly engaging film is a masterful portrayal of honor, ingenuity and compassion during war.
Columbia. Screenplay: Philip MacDonald, John Howard Lawson, Zoltan Korda. Cinematographer: Rudolph Maté. Editor: Charles Nelson. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Bruce Bennett, J. Carrol Naish, Lloyd Bridges, Rex Ingram. 35mm, 97 min. 


SAVE THE TIGER, 1973, Paramount, 100 min. Dir. John G. Avildsen (ROCKY). Los Angeles garment businessman Jack Lemmon suffers a devastating intersection of midlife crisis and disillusionment with what he sees as moral decline in changing times. His deepening trauma pushes him to the edge as he considers desperate and illegal measures to salvage his tanking fashion enterprise. Lemmon won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance. Co-starring Jack Gilford, Patricia Smith. "…a virtuoso piece of movie acting. Jack Lemmon holds the movie together by the sheer force of his performance as Harry; he makes this character so convincing that we're fascinated…" – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times.  Discussion in between films with producer Martin Ransohoff and director Arthur Hiller.


SCHOOL ON FIRE
(from IMDB)
School On Fire is a dark, brutal and shocking film from Hong Kong's "docu-drama" director Ringo Lam. This film was meant to be damning expose of the Hong Kong school system and what the future consequences might be if it doesn't get it's act straight. But the censor board whittled away most of the school scenes and kept most of the violent and exploitive subject matter. Even though the film was heavily cut, it's impact is strong. Ching-Ying Lam (MR. Vampire) and Leung Kwong Wong (Ringo Lam regular) play cops that try to topple a local triad boss Roy Cheung (another Ringo Lam regular) with the help of a victimized school girl (Fennie Yuen) and 70's H.K. kung-fu star Damian Lau co-stars as a teacher with morals who risks his job and life to defend his students from the triads and themselves. The direction and style is raw and gritty, it fits perfectly with the subject matter. You can find Ringo Lam's trademark bloody,bone crunching fights and action set pieces along with the usual fine performances from all of the actors. It's a truly depressing and heart wrenching film.  Dir. Ringo Lam, 1988, 98 min.


SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS
Sergei Paradjanov's masterpiece, a brilliant, operatic story of starcrossed lovers set against the ethnographic panorama of the Carpathian Mountains. The film is a visual tour-de-force of symbols, metaphor, lyrical photography and active camera, interweaving myth and narrative into an elliptical, seamless work of art. "...a deeply psychological film...one whose sophistication makes the Pavlovian tactics of Eisenstein's montage seem almost primitive by comparison" (David Cook, A History of Narrative Film). With Ivan Nikolaichuk and Larisa Kadochnikova.  Dir. Sergei Paradjanov, 1964.


SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL, 1959, MGM Repertory, 111 min. Dir. Michael Anderson. In this phenomenally hard-hitting, action-packed saga, Irish American medical student Don Murray becomes accidentally and inextricably involved with the IRA during "the Troubles" in 1921 Dublin. Professor-surgeon James Cagney is the hardboiled commandant leading a squad of insurrectionists, Glynis Johns is a feisty barmaid who refuses to kowtow to either macho British soldiers or brash Irish rebels, and Dana Wynter plays a beautiful British widow held hostage when elderly freedom fighter Lady Fitzhugh (Sybil Thorndike) is imprisoned by the Black and Tans in Dublin Castle. With a superb supporting cast including Richard Harris, Cyril Cusack and Michael Redgrave as the IRA head, the General. NOT ON DVD Discussion in between films with actor Don Murray.


SHANGHAI EXPRESS
(from IMDB)
Many passengers on the Shanghai Express are more concerned that the notorious Shanghai Lil is on board than the fact that a civil war is going on that may make the trip take more than three days. The British Army doctor, Donald Harvey, knew Lil before she became a famous "coaster." A fellow passenger defines a coaster as "a woman who lives by her wits along the China coast." When Chinese guerillas stop the train, Dr. Harvey is selected as the hostage. Lil saves him, but can she make him believe that she really hasn't changed from the woman he loved five years before?  Josef von Sternberg drama w/ Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook.  1932-Paramount


THE SINFUL DWARF
A most psychotropic, perverted British horror flick. A little piano player named Olaf (Torben Bille) uses his ivory-tickling to lure young girls back to his mother's boarding house, where he drugs them, tortures them, gets them addicted to heroin, and forces them into prostitution. "Repulsive...Torben leers and lurches like a demented Bette Davis" (Variety).  Dir. Vidal Raski, 1974, 95 mins.


SMASH UP: THE STORY OF A WOMAN
(from IMDB)
Angie Evans, fast-rising nightclub singer, interrupts her career to marry struggling songwriter Ken Conway. When Ken lucks into a career as chart-topping radio crooner, Angie is forced into idle luxury which proves her downfall. Her potential alcoholism burgeons and Ken remains clueless concerning his responsibility for her problems.  Stuart Heisler drama w/ Susan Hayward, Lee Bowman, Eddie Albert, Marsha Hunt.  1947-Universal-Intl.


SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, 1939, Universal, 99 min. Dir. Rowland V. Lee. The third atmospheric installment in Universal’s FRANKENSTEIN franchise finds Henry Frankenstein’s grown-up son Wolf (Basil Rathbone) returning to the family estate with his wife and son (Josephine Hutchinson and Donnie Dunagan) after many years. The laboratory is in ruins – nevertheless Wolf soon becomes enmeshed in his family’s nefarious legacy when he finds the dormant monster (Boris Karloff) being looked after by a vengeful gallows’ survivor, the crook necked Ygor (a very creepy Bela Lugosi). Universal was firing on all cylinders with their bolt-necked creature when they released this exceptionally entertaining tall tale. Watch for Lionel Atwill as the one-armed police chief (he lost his missing appendage to a previous encounter with the monster).  Introduction to the film by Sara Karloff.


SPARROWS
(1926) United Artists
The Library of Congress, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, and Glendale Arts join the Alex Film Society to present
Mary Pickford in SPARROWS
In association with the Library of Congress, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and Glendale Arts, AFS presents a screening of the restored silent classic, Sparrows, Mary Pickford’s 1926 dramatic story of abused orphans.
The 35mm print will be accompanied by a live organ performance featuring famed silent film organist Robert (Bob) Mitchell and is the only Los Angeles screening scheduled. 


STRAY DOG
A first-rate thriller in which Kurosawa has acknowledged his debt to Georges Simenon. Toshiro Mifune plays rookie Detective Murakami, who loses his gun only to discover that it has fallen into the hands of a killer. Terrified of losing his job, his search takes him into the Tokyo underworld, full of postwar shortages, "divinely hellish under Kurosawa's odd-angled lensing and staccato editing...Stray Dog is a Dostoevskian saga of guilt, and expiation, by association" (Pacific Film Archive).  Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1949.


The Sun's Burial (Taiyo No Hakaba)
1960/ color/87 min./Scope | Scr: Nagisa Oshima, Toshiro Ishido; dir: Nagisa Oshima; w/ Kayoko Honoo, Isao Sasaki.
A resourceful prostitute in a slum outside Osaka is forced to compete for black-market profits with a devious militarist known as "the Agitator." Tawdry and gaudy, this notorious film has been called "a fireball of hopeless destruction" and "a scroll painting of Hell." New 35mm print


SUPER FLY
One of the best and most controversial of the "blaxploitation" films, with Ron O'Neal as the morally dubious hero--a drug dealer and pimp looking to leave his business on top. Picketed for glorifying drug pushers and widely reviled by critics in its day, Superfly merely brought to the screen a twisted fantasy of the American dream that had already infected the underclass years earlier. As an action movie, it holds up well in spite of the dated fashions and dialogue. Curtis Mayfield's score is exceptional.  Dir. Gordon Parks Jr., 1972, 93 mins.


THE TAKING OF BEVERLY HILLS
(from IMDB)
A chemical spill has caused the occupants of Beverly Hills to be forcibly evacuated. A retiring football player left behind finds that the toxic gas emulating from the spill is a bogus front for a heist set up by fired police officers out to plunder the city of all its valuables. Finding himself siding with a corrupt cop who was once a part of the plan until he discovered the city's mayor had just been blown away by one of the chief crooks in charge. Now both on the run with no help in sight...both must do whatever they can to stop these murderous looters.  Dir. Sidney J. Furie, 1991, 96 min.


Target Video presents: Raw Power
In 1977, San Francisco-based artist Joe Rees founded Target Video.  Target taped bands in its studio space, in clubs, at parties and on the streets of the world when music television was nonexistent.  With a vision and love for underground music and art, Target documented a truly explosive era, and in the process created a massive archive of punk rock performance footage that captured the scene in all its raw clumsiness and exuberance.  Joe Rees and Target co-conspirator Jackie Sharp will be in-person at the Cinefamily to present an epic, two-part program drawing from the seemingly bottomless Target library.  The first half is a Los Angeles and California-centric program featuring classic footage of local heroes (The Screamers, Black Flag, TSOL) alongside lesser-known-but-equally awesome acts (Nervous Gender, BPeople, The Plugz).  The second half mines the Target library for its rarest nuggets, and features footage of bands that will make music nerds squeal with glee.  Ever heard of the Tuff Darts?  Silence Hospital?  Nash The Slash? This may be your one and only chance to ever see these clips, so this night is not to be missed.


TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE
(1959) Directed by Tom Graeff
This program celebrates the career of Los Angeles filmmaker Tom Graeff, a low-budget auteur whose fascinating, earnest and campy work is ripe for re-discovery. In 1959, Warner Bros. released Graeff's second feature as Teenagers from Outer Space and a cult classic was born. Starring Graeff's boyfriend Chuck Roberts, Teenagers was written, produced, directed, shot and edited by Graeff, who also created its notorious special effects.
Producer: Tom Graeff. Screenwriter: Tom Graeff. Cinematographer: Tom Graeff. Editor: Tom Graeff. Cast: David Love, Dawn Bender, Bryan Grant, Harvey B. Dunn, Robert King Moody. 16mm, B/W, 86 min. 


THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE
Tobe Hooper's cult film is a frightening piece of Americana, and one of the most influential and effective horror films created. This strange subversion of the slasher movie concerns five friends traveling through a flat, nondescript Texas wasteland who encounter a bizarre family of cannibals and are forced to struggle for their lives. With Marilyn Burns, Allen Danzinger, Paul A. Partain, William Vail and Gunnar Hansen as Leatherface.  DIRECTOR TOBE HOOPER IN PERSON!


THIEVES’ HIGHWAY, 1949, 20th Century Fox, 94 min. Tough-as-nails Richard Conte returns from the war to find his trucker-father crippled by a shady "accident" and heads for San Francisco to take his revenge on corrupt produce broker Lee J. Cobb. Complicating matters even more, he must choose between cool blonde WASP Barbara Lawrence and earthy European refugee Valentina Cortese. Director Jules Dassin’s leftist leanings (which would lead to his ouster from Hollywood) found their most subtle outlet in this fabulous noir, written by A.I. Bezzerides (ON DANGEROUS GROUND, KISS ME DEADLY).


3:15 THE MOMENT OF TRUTH
(from IMDB)
Violent crime is routine. Organized drug trade runs rampant in the face of powerless authority. And a vicious street gang holds dominion with a savage reign of terror. Welcome to Lincoln High! Here "the cobras" rule the school and everyone in it. Everyone except for Jeff Hanna. Once the most feared member of the Cobras, Hanna got sick of fighting and got out of the gang for good. But now The Cobras have brutalized his newfound girlfriend and threatened to kill him for his disloyalty. So it's time for one final fight. It's time for one more showdown after the school day ends. Its time for someone to die. It's 3:15.  Dir. Larry Gross, 1986, 86 min.


Three Resurrected Drunkards (Kaette Kita Yopparai)
1968/color/80 min./Scope  | Scr: Masao Adachi, Nagisa Oshima, Mamoru Sasaki, Takeshi Tamura; dir: Nagisa Oshima; w/ Kazuhiko Kato, Osamu Kitayama.
Shot in widescreen with eye-popping color and a crazed score, this raucous satire follows a trio of hapless young guys who are mistaken for Korean stowaways when their clothes are stolen during a dip in the sea. "Part Hellzapoppin', part Celine and Julie Go Boating."—J. Hoberman, Village Voice.  New 35mm print


THE THRILL KILLERS
Director Ray Dennis Steckler (aka Cash Flagg) made this grubby shocker about a band of marauders who randomly terrorize wealthy Los Angeles suburbs and kill indiscriminately. With Cash Flagg, Liz Renay, Brick Bardo, Carolyn Brandt and Atlas King.  Dir. Ray Dennis Steckler, 1965, 82 mins.


A Throw Of Dice (w/ live score by Nishat Khan & Jimmy Rip)
Nishat Khan, one of the world's greatest living sitar virtuosos, accompanied by consummate guitarist and bandleader Jimmy Rip (returning to the Cinefamliy stage after his triumphant night with Tom Verlaine), provide a live score for this recently restored 1929 silent classic. A Throw of Dice (Prapancha Pash) is the third film in a pioneering trilogy of silent films made through a unique partnership between German director Franz Osten and Indian actor-producer Himansu Rai, whose films combined documentary techniques with narratives derived from Indian myths and legends. Based upon a section of the epic poem The Mahabharata, A Throw of Dice follows royal cousins Sohat and Rajit, neighboring rulers who have in common a love of gambling, tiger hunting....and same damsel Sunita. Soon they're friendship turns to rivalry. Shot on location in Rajasthan with an extravagance that could only be matched by Cecil B. Demille, the film features over ten thousand extras and an impressive array of horses, elephants and tigers. Its star actors all had major careers in Indian cinema and remain legendary and much-loved figures. A Throw Of Dice is both a sumptuous epic and an intimate romantic drama, and Nishat Khan's new score for the film will transplant you to lush, faraway kingdoms of the imagination.
Dir. Franz Osten, 1929, digital presentation, 74 min. 


THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT
Michael Cimino (The Deer Hunter, Heaven's Gate) made his directorial debut with this unusual crime caper about a veteran thief (Clint Eastwood) who takes a young drifter (Jeff Bridges) under his wing as he joins up with some misfit colleagues to retrieve the loot from a daring robbery committed years earlier. A well-made "buddy" film with unexpected moments of lyricism and melancholy. Bridges' performance earned him an Oscar nomination.  Dir. Michael Cimino, 1974.


TILL DEATH DO WE SCARE
(from IMDB)
Innovative directing, great soundtrack - this is an early eighties Hong Kong ghost flick. Silly in the extreme, the trio of ghosts, who all look like vampires, do their best to encourage this hapless guy's lovelife. They appear and disappear using the film technology available at the time in a very creative way. Especially nice is a chair dancing scene after one of the characters sees a picture of Charlie Chaplin gracing the girlfriend's apartment wall. It's an homage to early cinema - very nice. The music score also compliments the action in a great way, with a leitmotif announcing the ghosts, making the most out of limited resources, combining real instruments with early eighties electronics. Great slapstick fun.  Dir. Chia Yung Liu, 1982, 91 min.


TIMECRIMES
This kind-of brilliant B-thriller gravitates towards sci-fi when a man hunted by a masked murderer escapes into a research lab and gets jettisoned back in time. Well, one version of himself. "Nacho Vigalondo's feature debut shows that good cinematic time travelers can be done on a shoestring with the right script" (Variety).  Dir. Nacho Vigalondo, 2008, 89 mins.


TOPKAPI, 1964, MGM Repertory, 119 min. Dir. Jules Dassin. Melina Mercouri and lover Maximilian Schell, backed by a hand-picked team, find their carefully laid plans to heist emeralds from the Topkapi museum in Istanbul laid low by the bumblings of hanger-on Peter Ustinov -- in an Oscar-winning performance (Supporting Actor) -- then decide to go ahead anyway. Pioneer of the heist genre Dassin keeps his tongue firmly in cheek but the suspense taut in this adaptation from intrigue titan Eric Ambler. The high-tech heist has been appropriated by everything from MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE to WALLACE &  GROMIT! "As playful and lighthearted as Dassin's RIFIFI is stark and somber, TOPKAPI demonstrates that the director could make a heist picture in any manner he chose."– Time Out New York; "Remains unsurpassed for breathless suspense in its depiction of the jewel heist to end all jewel heists." – Terrence McNally, The New York Times


TRICK BABY
This offbeat "blaxploitation" film concerns two con men--one black and one white--out to grift anybody who crosses their path. As they work their marks, they try to keep a step ahead of the law and of gangsters they have swindled in the past. Starring Kiel Martin (best known as "J.D. LaRue" from TV's Hill Street Blues) and Mel Stewart. Also known as Double Con.  Dir. Larry Yust, 1973, 89 mins.


True Stories
(from IMDB)
presented by Tim & Eric
David Byrne of Talking Heads fame visits a typical (and fictional) Texas town, on the eve of the town's celebration of the state's sesquicentennial. He meets various colorful local characters, most notably Lewis Fyne, a big-hearted bachelor in search of matrimony.  Dir. David Byrne, 1986, 90 min.


200 Motels
Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention get inventive in this free-for-all film that features Ringo Starr as Frank's twin. Theodore Bikel wears an impressive uniform, and an animated featurette on proper dental hygiene is presented along with lots of music and bizarre humor. Made for those who haven't got the money for drugs.  Dir. Frank Zappa/Tony Palmer, 1971, 98 mins.


UNDER TWO FLAGS
(1936) Directed by Frank Lloyd
The French Foreign Legion is featured again in Fox's playful romp set in turn-of-the-century Algeria. This fourth adaptation of the Ouida novel, and the only sound version, stars a dashing Ronald Colman as Sgt. Victor, a Legionnaire who joined after being convicted of a crime committed by his brother. While fighting rebel chieftain, Sidi-Ben Youssiff, Victor also finds himself caught between a feisty French girl, "Cigarette" (Colbert), the daughter of the café owner, and the posh Lady Venezia Cunningham (Russell).
Under Two Flags will be presented in a new print from Fox.
Based on the novel by Ouida. Screenplay: W. P. Lipscomb, Walter Ferris. Cinematographer: Ernest Palmer. Editor: Ralph Dietrich. Cast: Ronald Colman, Claudette Colbert, Rosalind Russell, Victor McLaglen. 35mm, 112 min. 


THE UNTOUCHABLES, 1987, Paramount, 119 min. Director Brian De Palma and screenwriter David Mamet turn the raw material of 1960s television and American crime history into the stuff of glorious cinematic mythology in this literate, visually arresting gangster epic. Kevin Costner is treasury agent Eliot Ness, Robert De Niro is his nemesis Al Capone, and Sean Connery is the grizzled cop who does things "the Chicago way" as bullets fly in dynamic, expertly staged action sequences. De Palma’s bloody riff on BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN’s "Odessa steps" sequence alone is worth the price of admission.  70mm Print!


Urgh! A Music War
The legendary concert film Urgh! A Music War is the cinematic equivalent of a tried-and-true mixtape: a non-stop whirlwind of great bands spanning the new wave/punk gamut. In 1980, director Derek Burbidge filmed jam-packed bills in L.A., NYC, London and France, to capture in a Woodstock-ian presentation the bands on the cutting edge of rock and synthpop: Devo, Dead Kennedys, X, The Cramps, Oingo Boingo, Gang of Four, The Police, Wall of Voodoo, Klaus Nomi, Gary Numan, OMD, Pere Ubu, Magazine and more. Rarely were these bands--some of whom lasted a very short time--afforded the full lavish film shoot treatment, so Urgh! is a rare close-up peek at some of the most furious bands of the era at the peak of their powers, as well as an intriguing time-capsule snapshot of the era's rock fans, decked out in period gear and acting extra-wacky for the camera. Dir. Derek Burbidge, 1982, 35mm, 122 min.


Vashti Bunyan: From Here To Before
For many cult artists, rediscovery comes too late; they never live to know their art has been reappraised, and is being loved by generations not even born when they were at work. In the case of Vashti Bunyan, the “Godmother of Freak Folk”, thirty years of obscurity ended in 2000 with the rediscovery of her lost classic album “Just Another Diamond Day”--inspired by an end-to-end journey across the U.K. by horse and carriage--and her subsequent reintroduction into a mainstream she was never part of in the first place.  A lyrical, modern day road movie, From Here To Before is a wonderfully evocative film that retraces Vashti’s extraordinary trip across the British Isles. and sets it against the backdrop of her first high profile London concert.  Featuring rare interviews with music luminaries Andrew Loog Oldham, Joe Boyd and Robert Kirby and musicians such as Devendra Banhart, Max Richter and Adem Ilhan.


Where's Poppa?
presented by Sarah Silverman
According to tonight's host, Sarah Silverman, "I chose Where's Poppa? because I saw it once, and it blew my mind."  We can vouch for the virtues of Carl Reiner's 1970 jet black comedy, which, along with being an absolute classic of crass, loud, tush-baring tastelessness, is also a period piece.  George Segal stars as a turn-of-the-century schlamazel dying to throw his nutty, senile mom (Ruth Gordon, perfect as always) off a proverbial train.  Matters are complicated when he meets the woman of his dreams, played to WASPy perfection by Trish Van Devere. Says Sarah: "It's so hardcore and silly, and funny in a way that I think is emerging now. I was surprised it existed then. Also, I only saw it once, and to be honest I fell asleep at the end. It wasn't the movie's fault, it just happens when I watch movies in bed. So it will be nice to know how one of my favorite movies ends." Come find out how it ends (and begins) tonight-- you haven't lived until you've seen Ruth Gordon wack a gorilla-suited George Segal in his hairy, hairy balls.
Dir. Carl Reiner, 1970, 35mm, 82 min.


Wholpin No. 8 DVD Release Party
Join us for Wholpin's return to the Cinefamily, to celebrate the release of their latest DVD edition, Wholphin No. 8, which begins with actor James Franco defying Martin Sheen's Apocalypse Now performance as he meticulously explores the outer reaches of his psyche while trashing a bedroom. The issue goes on to feature the award-winning Lauren Greenfield's deeply disturbing, hilarious, and timely documentary kids + money, which examines the spending trends of teenagers in L.A.  Next comes this year's Sundance Short Award winner, the touching Short Term 12, followed by a powerhouse collaboration between celebrated playwright Patrick Marber and British contemporary artist, Sam Taylor-Wood, on a short film produced by the late Anthony Minghella, which follows the burgeoning romance of two British teens over their mutual appreciation of the Buzzcocks' "Love You More."  For the piece de resistance, we present Carlos D. from Interpol's gorgeously photographed surrealist dreamscape My Friends Told Me About You.


WILLIE DYNAMITE
The wardrobes simply must be seen to be believed in this "blaxploitation" favorite. The title character is a pimp determined to make it to the top of the criminal underworld. Among those in his way is one of the most outrageously stereotyped gay villains ever to grace the screen.  Dir. Gilbert Moses, 1974, 102 mins.


WINCHESTER '73
A major western with James Stewart involved in hunting down a man and his stolen gun through a series of inter-related episodes. With a great shootout among the hills at the end, Leonard Maltin credits this film with reviving the popularity of Westerns during the 1950's. With Shelley Winters, Dan Duryea.


WITCHBOARD
A Ouija board is used a party game and contact is made with the spirit of a playful young boy. But, when one party-goer (Tawny Kitaen, Bachelor Party) decides to use the board alone to contact the child, she unleashes a vengeful spirit with a taste for murder and violent possession.  Dir. Kevin Tenney, 1985, 98 min.


WITCHTRAP
(from IMDB)
Parapsychologists try to make an inn haunted by an evil witch's ghost safe for guests.  Dir. Kevin Tenney, 1989, 92 min.


THE WOMAN I STOLE
(1933) Directed by Irving Cummings
Oilman Jim Bradler (Holt) returns to the North African oilfield where he was once a respected--and ruthless--supervisor to reclaim Vida (Wray), the cheating wife of his upright successor Steve Corew (Cook). Against his better judgment, however, Bradler becomes re-entangled in the company's troubles, including raids on the oilfield by marauding Arab bandit Rayon (Beery--as exotic as a Brooklyn cabbie). Contrasting ineffectual Steve with morally lapsed but highly effective Bradler, the preposterous but cynical plot flippantly suggests the systemic brutality of the Western colonial enterprise. Wray is delightfully wicked, a year before her star-making turn in King Kong.
Columbia. Based on the novel "Tampico" by Joseph Hergesheimer. Screenplay: Jo Swerling. Cinematographer: Benjamin H. Kline. Editor: Gene Havlick. Cast: Jack Holt, Fay Wray, Donald Cook, Noah Beery, Raquel Torres. 35mm, B/W, 70 min.