a highly-opinionated selection of things happening around town, and sometimes out of town. this month's page here.
fri. jul. 1
purple rain MIDNIGHT @ nuart
dead meadow @ satellite
inferno 10 PM @ silent movie theater
jaws @ egyptian
the good the bad and the ugly @ aero
inglourious basterds MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
cleopatra jones FREE 8 PM @ epfc filmmobile
sat. jul. 2
purple rain @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
umberto (live performance), burial ground @ cinematic void
jaws @ aero
rear window 8 PM @ rooftop film club @ montalban
out of the past (RSVP) 7:45 PM @ film noir series @ starlight studios
the devils 5:00 10:00 PM @ silent movie theater
white dove @ hm157
faster pussycat kill! kill! MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
sun. jul. 3
purple rain, sign 'o' the times @ aero
the devils 7 PM @ silent movie theater
telecaves, peter kolovos, gate @ non plus ultra
susan @ pehrspace
wed. jul. 6
el mariachi FREE 8 PM @ grand central market patio
mike watt & the missingmen @ bootleg
the devils @ silent movie theater
the lives of others, knockin' on heaven's door @ new beverly
thu. jul. 7
meshes of the afternoon 7 PM, eyes without a face @ broad
ran @ egyptian
private property @ aero
the lives of others, knockin' on heaven's door @ new beverly
nuts! 7:30 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater
dr strangelove @ laemmle noho 7
fri. jul. 8
royal headache @ echo
blade runner 8 PM @ rooftop film club @ montalban
umberto @ highland park house party
escape from new york, escape from l.a. @ egyptian
two-lane blacktop, cockfighter @ aero
inglourious basterds MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
triptides @ blindspot
nuts! 7:30 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater
salome (1923) FREE 8 PM @ epfc filmmobile
sat. jul. 9
jump with joey @ roxy
so this is paris 2 PM @ silent treatment @ silent movie theater
the spiral staircase (RSVP) 7:45 PM @ film noir series @ starlight studios
the creation factory, the golden dawn arkestra @ non plus ultra
earthless FREE (RSVP) @ troubadour
willoughby @ teragram
back to the future trilogy @ egyptian
the wild bunch @ aero
faster pussycat kill! kill! MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
nuts! 5 PM @ silent movie theater
ace in the hole, detective story @ ucla film archive
sun. jul. 10
pet sounds w/ brian wilson @ hollywood bowl
bring me the head of alfredo garcia, dillinger (1973) @ aero
the lost world (1925) 2 PM @ alex theatre
breathless 6:30 PM, band of outsiders @ new beverly
ladies they talk about 1 PM @ silent movie theater
nuts! 7:00 10:00 PM @ silent movie theater
mon. jul. 11
stanley kubrick's boxes @ laca
a touch of evil 7 PM @ arclight santa monica
lee noble @ pehrspace
breathless, band of outsiders @ new beverly
nuts! 10:00 PM @ silent movie theater
tue. jul. 12
gate @ club pro
post life @ echo
five minutes to live, killers three @ new beverly
black girl @ silent movie theater
nuts! 10:00 PM @ silent movie theater
interwoven: films by kipervaser and cunningham 8 PM @ epfc
judgment at nuremberg 7 PM @ laemmle royal
wed. jul. 13
deerhoof @ teragram
into the forest @ aero
nuts! @ silent movie theater
vali 10 PM @ silent movie theater
thu. jul. 14
gories (11:00/plex), ty segall & mikal cronin (10:00/plex), 100 flowers (8:50/echo), etc @ in the red fest @ echo/plex
cinema paradiso 8 PM @ rooftop film club @ montalban
the big day, m. hulot's holiday @ aero
nuts! 10:00 PM @ silent movie theater
prettiest eyes @ smell
tony millionaire @ skylight books
from echo street to the echo park film center: feminist films by susal mogul 8 PM @ epfc
a clockwork orange @ laemmle noho 7
fri. jul. 15
oblivions (11:20/plex), hunches (10:10/plex), goggs (10:50/plex), etc @ in the red fest @ echo/plex
ducktails @ highland park ebell club
pulp fiction 8 PM @ rooftop film club @ montalban
quarry (screening), chris cohen (performance), song of eurydice (performance) FREE @ friday night flights @ getty center
citizen kane, the lady from shanghai @ egyptian
henri-georges clouzot's inferno, the truth @ aero
double indemnity 7 PM, body heat @ new beverly
inglourious basterds MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
kamikazee '89 @ silent movie theater
a life in shadows @ ucla film archive
mur murs FREE 8 PM @ epfc filmmobile @ dino's burgers parking lot
sat. jul. 16
wand (7:00), goggs (8:00), etc @ in the red fest @ echo
the revenant 8 PM @ rooftop film club @ montalban
beyond the forest (RSVP) 7:45 PM @ film noir series @ starlight studios
pierrot le fou, contempt @ aero
double indemnity 7 PM, body heat @ new beverly
faster pussycat kill! kill! MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
black girl 7 PM @ silent movie theater
sugar hill MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater
catalogne martyr, the spanish civil war in hearst newsreels, the spanish earth (welles narration) @ ucla film archive
telecaves (3:00), etc @ lafms boxstock @ the box
primary stimulus: a robert russett memorial retrospective 8 PM @ epfc
sun. jul. 17
chinese exotic architecture of the art deco era 2 PM, the bitter tea of general yen @ egyptian
lord of the flies, battle royale @ egyptian
my king @ aero
harakiri (1962) 6:30 PM, samurai rebellion @ new beverly
the wild party 1 PM @ silent movie theater
the big sky 7 PM, man without a star @ ucla film archive
gal pals FREE @ the griffin
smegma (7:00), etc @ lafms boxstock @ the box
dancing mothers 8 PM @ silents under the stars @ paramount ranch
mon. jul. 18
harakiri (1962), samurai rebellion @ new beverly
sex stains (10:00) FREE (RSVP) @ echo
la doble vida del faquir, els nens de russia FREE @ ucla film archive
tue. jul. 19
dalek @ complex
some like it hot 8 PM @ rooftop film club @ montalban
clueless @ greg proops film club @ silent movie theater
wed. jul. 20
grand budapest hotel 8 PM @ rooftop film club @ montalban
three days of the condor @ arclight culver city
brother (2016) @ aero
the steel trap, highway 301 @ new beverly
the renderers FREE @ hyperion tavern
thu. jul. 21
dirty rotten scoundrels, a fish called wanda @ egyptian
7 men from now, buchanan rides alone @ aero
the steel trap, highway 301 @ new beverly
shark toys, vial @ all star lanes
black sea, mother merry go round @ el cid
gabriel FREE 7 PM @ 356 mission
the shining @ laemmle noho 7
fri. jul. 22
autolux @ constellation room
levitation room, asteroid #4 @ echo
high rise 8 PM @ rooftop film club @ montalban
the sting, paper moon @ egyptian
leave her to heaven, bride of frankenstein @ aero
inglourious basterds MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
tara jane o'neill, little wings @ satellite
naked childhood, graduate first @ ucla film archive
el haru kuroi @ craft and folk art museum
el haru kuroi @ el cid
sat. jul. 23
autolux @ el rey
dazed and confused 8 PM @ rooftop film club @ montalban
flamingo road (RSVP) 7:45 PM @ film noir series @ starlight studios
mike watt & the missingmen, meat market, winter, etc @ dirty penni fest @ echo/plex
noyes, hex horizontal @ pehrspace
felix the cat's silent animation spectacular @ retroformat @ spielberg @ egyptian
trouble in paradise, the lady eve, the major and the minor @ egyptian
faster pussycat kill! kill! MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
day of wrath 4 PM @ silent movie theater
fantastic planet 10 PM @ silent movie theater
we won't grow old together, maurice pialat love exists @ ucla film archive
witch's cradle (w/ live score by tonos) 9 PM @ basic flowers
sun. jul. 24
jon brion @ largo
the hustler, night and the city @ egyptian
bullfighter and the lady, ride lonesome @ aero
god's little acre 6:30 PM, thunder road @ new beverly
the miracle woman 1 PM @ silent movie theater
the girl on the broomstick @ silent movie theater
for whom the bell tolls 7 PM, the spanish earth (hemingway narration) @ ucla film archive
mon. jul. 25
adult books @ echo
god's little acre, thunder road @ new beverly
king kong (1933) 7:05 PM @ arclight santa monica
once upon a time in the west @ arclight hollywood
tue. jul. 26
dead dawn FREE @ harvard & stone
the pit and the pendulum @ ampas samuel goldwyn
la jetee vis-a-vis sadie benning 8 PM @ epfc
fantastic mr fox 1 PM @ lacma
cool hand luke @ arclight hollywood
wed. jul. 27
passing through 8:30 PM @ union station
the colossus of destiny (w/ q&a + performance by the melvins) @ don't knock the rock @ regent
the american friend, the story of a cheat @ aero
law and disorder, cops and robbers @ new beverly
possession @ silent movie theater
planet of the apes (1968) @ arclight culver city
pin: a plastic nightmare FREE (RSVP) 9:30 PM @ non plus ultra
thu. jul. 28
the young girls of rochefort, the umbrellas of cherbourg @ aero
law and disorder, cops and robbers @ new beverly
moment trigger @ the lash
duelle @ bob baker marionette theater
double play: james benning and richard linklater FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc stark
possession @ silent movie theater
fantastic planet 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater
little men FREE (RSVP) @ lacma
full metal jacket @ laemmle noho 7
fri. jul. 29
jon brion @ largo
mind meld, walter, prettiest eyes @ echo
collection (screening), m geddes gengras (performance) FREE @ friday night flights @ getty center
raiders of the lost ark 8 PM @ rooftop film club @ montalban
violent cop @ egyptian
inglourious basterds MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
the creation factory @ blindspot
male gaze @ all star lanes
fantastic planet @ silent movie theater
possession 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater
noyes @ smell
a nos amours, the mouth agape @ ucla film archive
drinking flowers @ viper room
the devil's backbone (w/ q&a) @ lacma
itasca, cory hanson @ montecito heights house show
sat. jul. 30
woods @ echoplex
the godfather 8 PM @ rooftop film club @ montalban
shark toys, susan FREE @ permanent hp
l.a. witch @ hi hat
tiki night 4 PM @ egyptian
raw force 8 PM @ camp void @ spielberg @ egyptian
the goonies 2 PM @ new beverly
faster pussycat kill! kill! MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
warlocks, l'aura moire @ blindspot
possession 7 PM @ silent movie theater
black sea @ bootleg
spartacus @ ucla film archive
bouquet (8:30), chris cohen (7:30) @ 36 hour pehrathon @ pehrspace
sun. jul. 31
neil hamburger @ satellite
vision quest: the films of tangerine dream 7 PM @ regent
the goonies 2 PM @ new beverly
sunrise: a song of two humans (w/ live score by rococo jet) 7 PM @ silent movie theater
possession 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater
van gogh 7 PM @ ucla film archive
the films of ed ruscha FREE 3 PM @ moca grand
male gaze FREE @ permanent hp
deadbeats @ part time punks @ echo
mon. aug. 1
possession @ silent movie theater
back to the future 7 PM @ arclight santa monica
tue. aug. 2
possession 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater
disorder FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc stark
jane eyre (1944) 1 PM @ lacma
enter the dragon 7:45 PM @ arclight beach cities
wed. aug. 3
queen of the underground: the films of sarah jacobson 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater
predator @ arclight hollywood
the african queen @ arclight culver city
thu. aug. 4
kamikazee '89 @ aero
earthless, mind meld @ alex's bar (LB)
noroit @ bob baker marionette theater
bang! the bert berns story @ don't knock the rock @ silent movie theater
king jack FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc stark
fri. aug. 5
miss sharon jones (w/q&a) 7:30 9:55 PM @ nuart
rococo jet @ folktale fest @ human resources
on the silver globe @ silent movie theater
sat. aug. 6
smash-up: story of a woman (RSVP) 7:45 PM @ film noir series @ starlight studios
the flakes @ pickwick gardens
saccharine trust, mike watt & the missingmen, urinals @ non plus ultra
plastic crimewave sound FREE @ permanent hp
on the silver globe 4 PM @ silent movie theater
loulou, under the sun of satan @ ucla film archive
plug + mechanical eye 8 PM @ epfc
sun. aug. 7
qui @ smell
celine and julie go boating 8 PM @ bob baker marionette theater
ladies of leisure 1 PM @ silent movie theater
raza 7 PM @ ucla film archive
mon. aug. 8
on the silver globe @ silent movie theater
los punks: we are all we have FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc stark
butch cassidy and the sundance kid 7 PM @ arclight santa monica
mad max 2: the road warrior @ arclight hollywood
tue. aug. 9
lisa prank @ junior high
mark sultan @ los globos
the people vs fritz bauer FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc stark
beauty and the beast (1946) 1 PM @ lacma
2001: a space odyssey 7:45 PM @ arclight beach cities
the last starfighter 8 PM @ arclight sherman oaks
starship troopers @ arclight culver city
wed. aug. 10
david hockney and huell howser FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ l.a. louver
thu. aug. 11
thee oh sees @ teragram
boiling point @ egyptian
merry-go-round @ bob baker marionette theater
sidemen: long road to glory @ don't knock the rock @ silent movie theater
the iron giant @ laemmle noho 7
bart davenport @ el cid
fri. aug. 12
pa negre @ ucla film archive
gal pals @ bootleg
the good the bad and the ugly @ laemmle fine arts
sat. aug. 13
cold beat, vial, etc @ berserktown @ teragram
a woman of the world 2 PM @ silent movie theater
leave her to heaven, nightmare alley @ ucla film archive
bollywood marathon (NOON-MIDNIGHT) @ machine & epfc
the professionals (w/ q&a) 7:15 PM @ laemmle fine arts
sun. aug. 14
posse (1975) 7 PM, tough guys @ ucla film archive
adventures in rajasthan 7 PM @ epfc
the searchers (w/ q&a) 2:15 PM @ laemmle fine arts
the misfits 5:15 PM @ laemmle fine arts
beverly hills cop 7 PM @ arclight santa monica
indiana jones and the last crusade 8 PM @ arclight pasadena
tue. aug. 16
cool ghouls, the molochs @ resident
the devil @ silent movie theater
history of the world part i @ arclight hollywood
dirty harry @ arclight sherman oaks
wed. aug. 17
big trouble in little china @ arclight culver city
thu. aug. 18
echo park rising
hausu 7 PM @ broad
ugly dirty and bad @ egyptian
shot! the psycho-spiritual mantra of rock @ don't knock the rock @ silent movie theater
ghost world 8 PM @ epfc
fri. aug. 19
echo park rising
the heroes of telemark @ ucla film archive
sat. aug. 20
echo park rising
jackass trilogy 5 PM @ egyptian
lonely are the brave, strangers when we meet @ ucla film archive
sun. aug. 21
echo park rising
trembling before g-d 7 PM @ ucla film archive
the son of the sheik @ silents under the stars @ paramount ranch
the goonies (35mm) 3 PM @ arclight hollywood
mon. aug. 22
the fifth element 7 PM @ arclight santa monica
tue. aug. 23
flying hair @ echo
the third part of the night @ silent movie theater
the intervention FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc stark
pan's labyrinth (35mm) @ arclight sherman oaks
the poseidon adventure @ arclight beach cities
wed. aug. 24
cosmos @ silent movie theater
once upon a time in the west @ arclight culver city
thu. aug. 25
almodovar vis-a-vis mona hatoum 8 PM @ epfc
flash gordon (1980) @ laemmle noho 7
starship troopers @ arclight hollywood
fri. aug. 26
earth @ regent
cosmos @ silent movie theater
sat. aug. 27
ty segall and the muggers, tame impala, air, shellac, sheer mag, etc @ fyf fest @ exposition park
cosmos 4 PM @ silent movie theater
titicut follies (w/ q&a) 7 PM @ silent movie theater
the juggler, paths of glory @ ucla film archive
new works salon xxxv 8 PM @ epfc
sun. aug. 28
charles bradley and his extraordinaires, black lips, beach house, julia holter, etc @ fyf fest @ exposition park
neil hamburger @ satellite
titicut follies 4 PM @ silent movie theater
cosmos 7 PM @ silent movie theater
20,000 leagues under the sea 7 PM, the vikings @ ucla film archive
lawrence of arabia 3 PM @ cinerama dome
mon. aug. 29
titicut follies @ silent movie theater
cosmos 10 PM @ silent movie theater
indiana jones and the last crusade 7 PM @ arclight santa monica
tue. aug. 30
titicut follies @ silent movie theater
cosmos 10 PM @ silent movie theater
2001: a space odyssey @ arclight sherman oaks
bullitt (35mm) @ arclight hollywood
mad max 2: the road warrior 7:45 PM @ arclight beach cities
wed. aug. 31
titicut follies @ silent movie theater
cosmos 10 PM @ silent movie theater
predator @ arclight culver city
thu. sep. 1
the bigamist 7 PM @ broad
syl johnson: any way the wind blows @ don't knock the rock @ silent movie theater
north by northwest @ arclight hollywood
fri. sep. 2
high school @ silent movie theater
sat. sep. 3
pandoras, loons, flamin' groovies @ bootleg
high school 3 PM @ silent movie theater
sun. sep. 4
high school 5 PM @ silent movie theater
mon. sep. 5
high school @ silent movie theater
tue. sep. 6
high school @ silent movie theater
los olvidados 1 PM @ lacma
wed. sep. 7
high school @ silent movie theater
fri. sep. 9
upset @ echo
sat. sep. 10
law and order 5 PM @ silent movie theater
big dick @ bootleg
sun. sep. 11
the indian fighter 7 PM, last train from gun hill @ ucla film archive
tue. sep. 13
the spirit of the beehive 1 PM @ lacma
fri. sep. 16
hospital @ silent movie theater
raising bertie @ ucla film archive
sat. sep. 17
the chicago maternity story, home for life @ ucla film archive
sun. sep. 18
kraftwerk @ hollywood bowl
the strange love of martha ivers 7 PM, out of the past @ ucla film archive
mon. sep. 19
black sabbath @ hollywood bowl
tue. sep. 20
fanny and alexander 1 PM @ lacma
thu. sep. 22
heron oblivion @ teragram
ticket to write: the golden age of rock music journalism @ don't knock the rock @ silent movie theater
fri. sep. 23
moon duo, strawberry alarm clock, christian bland & the revelators, etc. @ desert stars festival @ pappy & harriet's
heron oblivion @ teragram
taylor chain i, taylor chain ii, the last pullman car @ ucla film archive
sat. sep. 24
heron oblivion, triptides, asteroid #4, etc. @ desert stars festival @ pappy & harriet's
basic training 4 PM @ silent movie theater
sun. sep. 25
dead c @ echo
mon. sep. 26
the interrupters @ ucla film archive
tue. sep. 27
kwaidan 1 PM @ lacma
thu. sep. 29
imitation of life 7 PM @ broad
fri. sep. 30
the bad and the beautiful, two weeks in another town @ ucla film archive
sat. oct. 1
essene 4 PM @ silent movie theater
thu. oct. 6
charles bradley and his extraordinaires @ shrine
the clean @ echo
fri. oct. 7
mystic braves @ troubadour
sat. oct. 8
allah-las @ regent
aliens @ frights feast film @ eagle rock rec center
juvenile court 4 PM @ silent movie theater
mon. oct. 10
fred and toody @ bootleg
thu. oct. 13
tobacco @ echoplex
triptides, temples @ teragram
fri. oct. 14
(television, brian jonestown massacre, black angels, thee oh sees, dead meadow, white fence, temples, wand, l.a. witch, etc) SCHEDULE TBD @ desert daze
the julie ruin @ roxy
sat. oct. 15
(television, brian jonestown massacre, black angels, thee oh sees, dead meadow, white fence, temples, wand, l.a. witch, etc) SCHEDULE TBD @ desert daze
flickers from the silver screen FREE 1:15 PM @ gordon r howard museum
the julie ruin @ roxy
bride of frankenstein, creature from the black lagoon @ frights feast film @ eagle rock rec center
primate 4 PM @ silent movie theater
sun. oct. 16
(television, brian jonestown massacre, black angels, thee oh sees, dead meadow, white fence, temples, wand, l.a. witch, etc) SCHEDULE TBD @ desert daze
sat. oct. 22
the thing (1982) @ frights feast film @ eagle rock rec center
welfare 4 PM @ silent movie theater
sat. oct. 29
meat 4 PM @ silent movie theater
thu. nov. 10
afi fest
fri. nov. 11
afi fest
sat. nov. 12
afi fest
om @ casbah (SD)
sun. nov. 13
afi fest
om @ regent
mon. nov. 14
afi fest
tue. nov. 15
afi fest
wed. nov. 16
afi fest
thu. nov. 17
afi fest
WHAT IT IS:
ADVENTURES IN RAJASTHAN
EPFC’s All India Weekend continues with a journey full of rare musical encounters and exquisite dancing. Through words and images, Yuval Ron and Carolyne Aycaguer will share an introduction to the tribal musical culture and the special inhabitants of the Rajasthan desert. A screening of Lacho Drom, Tony Gatlif’s stunning 1993 documentary about the music of the Romani people, follows Yuval and Carolyne’s presentation.
ALMODÓVAR vis-a-vis MONA HATOUM
HIGH HEELS (1991), Pedro Almodovar’s sardonic melodrama, twists the relationship between a mother, her drag impersonator, and a daughter in love with both. A celebrated actress returns to her hometown to visit the daughter who she left years earlier. A maze of murder and maternal longing, what follows is an idiosyncratic, yet moving portrait of self and familial space.
A rumination of maternal and daughternal narratives, Mona Hatoum’s MEASURES OF DISTANCE (1988) very literally layers voices of a mother speaking to her daughter, a daughter translating her mother’s words, and actual text written over the conversations. Hatoum’s video masterwork addresses the isolationism of a daughter who was forced to leave Lebanon, and her Palestinian family, behind when war prevented Hatoum to return home from a trip to London.
Both portraits invert the selflessness of maternal melodramas for the disorienting role of daughters and mothers as individuals, not archetypes.
A NOUS AMOURS
The incomparable Sandrine Bonnaire, in her first film, plays Suzanne, a 17-year-old driven by the power her impetuousness holds over others. In this, she is very like the film's director. At home in Paris, Suzanne is the eye of the family storm, her sexuality ratcheting up the suppressed passions of her narcissistic brother and insecure mother, and sending her father (director Maurice Pialat) out of the house. Attuned to Bonnaire's subtle signaling, the film simmers, then erupts. 35mm, color, in French with English subtitles, 100 min. DIR: Maurice Pialat. SCR: Arlette Langmann, Maurice Pialat. CAST: Sandrine Bonnaire, Evelyne Ker, Dominique Besnehard. (France, 1983)
The Bad and the Beautiful
Kirk Douglas portrays Jonathan Shields, a driven, highly successful producer of Hollywood pictures, who forms and regularly damages close relationships. Three such friends (an actress, a writer and a director) recall various betrayals, alongside Shields' enormous charm and success, and must then decide what good movies are worth! For his part, Douglas convincingly portrays this tornado of a man, who possibly—arguably—creates more than he destroys. 35mm, b/w, 118 min. DIR: Vincente Minnelli. SCR: Charles Schnee. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Dick Powell, Walter Pidgeon. (1952)
BANG! THE BERT BERNS STORY
Music meets the Mob in this biographical documentary narrated by Steven Van Zandt. You may have never heard of Bert Berns, but you know the enduring songs he has written and produced: “Twist & Shout”, “Cry to Me”, “Tell Him”, “Piece of My Heart”, “Cry Baby”, “Hang On Sloopy”, “I Want Candy”, “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love”. Berns sessions made legends of Solomon Burke, The Isley Brothers, The Drifters, Ben E. King, Wilson Pickett, Van Morrison, and Neil Diamond, and his songs became chart-topping covers for the likes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals and Janis Joplin. His premature death at 38 cut short a seven-year streak of hits, rooted in his early Brill Building and 1650 Broadway days, through his tenure at Atlantic Records to the formation and success of his own labels Bang Records and Shout Records.
The documentary film BANG! The Bert Berns Story, which had its highly acclaimed World Premiere at SXSW, beats a peripatetic pace through the history of 60s R&B-fueled rock as driven by the man who propelled the most emotive, dynamic and sublime soundtrack of the era. Together with his co-director Bob Sarles, filmmaker Brett Berns brings his late father’s story to the screen with interviews with those who knew him best and rare performance footage. Included in the film are interviews with Cissy Houston, Ronald Isley, Ben E. King, Solomon Burke, Van Morrison, Keith Richards and Paul McCartney. Dir. Brett Berns & Bob Sarles, 2016, DCP, 94 min. Q&A moderated by Michael Des Barres.
BASIC TRAINING
As dozens of plainclothes youth, their hair still long and their blue-jeaned gait still casual, stream out of a bus and into an unmarked building, we are invited to take part in Basic Training, Frederick Wiseman’s immersive portrait of the nine weeks of Army training camp that each new enlisted and drafted recruit must endure. Intense discussions on the ethics of combat precede automatic weapons training, the severity of this message somewhat undone by the ridiculous moral tales in their marching cadences, and a moment of levity during a dental hygiene video. Embedded deeply within the rank-and-file at Fort Knox, Wiseman’s observant camera follows each detail and process as new intakes learn the proper way to scrub a urinal, sergeants hammer through marching drills, and the highest-ranking officers deliver motivational speeches to the impressionable minds that stare a potential Vietnam deployment squarely in the face. Dir. Frederick Wiseman, 1971, 16mm, 80 min.
THE BIGAMIST
Like Cindy Sherman, Ida Lupino made her mark on both sides of the camera, a defiant siren of film noir, but also one of the first female auteurs, directing and producing independent features that delved into hot-button cultural topics like abortion and polyamory. For The Bigamist, Lupino positioned herself opposite Joan Fontaine, in a subtle and gorgeously photographed potboiler about a traveling salesman who takes on two wives. In Matthias Müller’s short Home Stories, the filmmaker distills gestures of the classic Hollywood melodrama, collecting the moonlit sighs and dramatic departures, shot in 16mm off of a television screen. Tickets to Doll Parts include same-night access to the full museum, including the Cindy Sherman: Imitation of Life special exhibition, before the film program.
The Big Sky (1952)
This stirring "Eastern Western" set along the Missouri River in 1832, The Big Sky finds Jim Deakins (Kirk Douglas) encountering a group of fur traders traveling upriver to trade with Blackfeet Indians there. Douglas, one member of a fascinating ensemble cast, brings dimension to the sprawling adventure story, both in action sequences and in lyrical passages (often by a campfire) dealing with friendship, nature and love. 35mm, b/w, 120 min. DIR: Howard Hawks. SCR: Dudley Nichols. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Dewey Martin, Elizabeth Threatt, Arthur Hunnicutt.
THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN
1933, Sony Repertory, 88 min, USA, Dir: Frank Capra
One of Frank Capra’s greatest films, this complex love story between an American missionary (Barbara Stanwyck) and her Chinese captor (Nils Asther) is a haunting masterpiece. Subtle and deeply mysterious, it presents Stanwyck at her best and Capra at his most provocative, with an interracial romance that is both moving and challenging.
BLACK GIRL
The historic first feature film made in Africa by a black African director, Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl may be celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, but it’s no less trenchant and eloquent than it was upon its 1966 arrival. A sharp character study in the vein of Italian neorealism, and an incisive portrait of French-Senegalese postcolonial relations, Black Girl follows a young girl named Diouana’s move from Dakar to the French Riviera with the bourgeois white family who has hired her. Sembène, who got his start as an author and labor organizer, locates political gestures at their very seeds; in personal moments of impulse and morality, he tracks the gradual shift of Diouana’s temperament’s from optimistic to quietly defiant. Courtesy of a gorgeous new restoration from Janus, cinematographer Christian Lacoste’s stark frames deliver all of their original unmistakable symbolism, under the blindingly white sun of Antibes. Dir Ousmane Sembène, 1966, DCP, 65 min.
Black Girl will be preceded by Sembène’s first short film, Borom Sarret, about the trials of an unlucky wagoner, also newly restored.
BOILING POINT
1990, Film Movement, 96 min, Japan, Dir: Takeshi Kitano
When gangsters attack the coach of a small-time baseball team, two players decide to seek revenge in this action-packed and mordantly funny crime film from writer-director Takeshi Kitano. To purchase the requisite firepower, the pair (Masahiko Ono and Minoru Iizuka) travel to Okinawa, where they are befriended by Uehara (Kitano), an unhinged yakuza with his own axes to grind. In Japanese with English subtitles.
BROTHER
(BROER)
2016, 115 min, Belgium/Ireland, Dir: Geoffrey Enthoven
Even after his twin brother Michel’s (Koen De Graeve) death, Mark (Koen De Bouw) still seethes at him for the failures of his marriage and the family hotel. When he gets a message intended for Michel from wealthy former flame Grace (Alison Doody), Mark thinks he can regain some of what he’s lost by impersonating his brother – but he has no idea what he’s walking into. The third collaboration between director Enthoven and screenwriter Pierre De Clercq is a seamless mix of thriller, family drama and a touch of buddy comedy. With Titus De Voogdt and Udo Kier. In Dutch and English with English subtitles.
BUCHANAN RIDES ALONE
1958, Sony Repertory, 78 min, USA, Dir: Budd Boetticher
Randolph Scott stars as a former mercenary, carrying $2,000 in blood money, trapped in a border town by a corrupt family. Everyone is willing to trade a dead man’s honor for hard cash in this almost comically remorseless Western. With Craig Stevens, L.Q. Jones.
BURIAL GROUND
1981, Severin Films, 85 minutes Dir: Andrea Bianchi
A professor accidentally fulfills the prophecy of the black spider and unleashes the SLOWEST zombies to ever shamble along in cinematic history. Armed with lawn tools and more brains then their human victims, the undead trudge along in one of the most bizarre entries in Italian zombie horror. Gore-soaked lunacy anchored by Peter Bark’s star-making performance as Michael: the lovable boy with a major Oedipus complex. The film will be preceded by a performance by UMBERTO (Not Not Fun Records / Death Waltz Recording Company.)
CATALOGNE MARTYR
From the Filmoteca de Catalunya's collection, this documentary by Laya Films recounts the bombardment of several Catalan cities by German and Italian warplanes. DCP, b/w, in French with English subtitles, 30 min. DIR: Ramon Biadiu. (Spain, 1938)
CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING
Like a richly-rendered Borges story, Céline and Julie Go Boating is so welcomingly sensual, you’ll be just as tempted to laze in its warm beauty as you will to decipher its labyrinthine puzzles. Jacques Rivette’s gorgeous 1974 exploration of the nature of narrative is one of the most mischievously immersive products of the French New Wave, casually bending time and space, enticing its audience to another realm with its play and luster. Librarian Julie (Dominique Labourier) and cabaret magician Céline (Godard regular Juliet Berto) are the mysteriously linked protagonists who spontaneously form a friendship of the caliber of famous duos from the likes of Daisies and Mulholland Dr; the other realm in question is a Parisian household from a bygone era, revealed in fragmented film-within-a-film memories brought on by magical candies. Rivette’s biggest commercial hit in France, but sadly unreleased on DVD in this country, Céline and Julie is a rarity that demands to be beheld on the big, mesmerizing screen. Dir. Jacques Rivette, 1974, 35mm, 193 min.
THE CHICAGO MATERNITY STORY
This galvanizing, rock-fueled documentary (Black Sabbath features prominently on the soundtrack) follows the mid-1970s grassroots fight to save the Chicago Maternity Center after 75 years of serving the community with maternity care and safe at-home births. One woman’s experience with the center, from consultations to delivery, puts the human face on protester demands and the corporatization of American medicine. Digital Video, b/w, 60 min. DIR: Jerry Blumenthal, Suzanne Davenport, Sharon Karp, Gordon Quinn, Jennifer Rohrer. (1976)
Chinese Exotic Architecture of the Art Deco Era
East meets West and North meets South in this survey of Chinese exotic architecture in California during the Art Deco era. Author and Art Deco Society of California Preservation Director Therese Poletti will give an illustrated presentation on Chinese motifs as a form of exotica in architecture and design in the Golden State. Works by several forward-thinking California architects will be discussed, including Julia Morgan, Timothy Pflueger and Raymond Kennedy, along with comparison photos of Chinese architecture from Beijing and Shanghai. The golden era of the Chinese American nightclub in San Francisco and Sid Grauman figure in. Hollywood’s dragon-adorned Nirvana Apartments will also be explored, as well as the Art Deco office of prominent Los Angeles immigration attorney Y.C. Hong - one of the pioneers of the “new” Chinatown in 1938 (presented by his granddaughter Celeste Hong) and much more. Some period color footage of Los Angeles' Chinatown, shot by Y.C. Hong will be included in the presentation along with some photos of his office interior.
COCKFIGHTER
1974, Concorde-New Horizons, 83 min, USA, Dir: Monte Hellman
Monte Hellman, adapting the novel by Charles Willeford (Miami Blues), follows stubborn loner Warren Oates, who had been disqualified from receiving a Cockfighter of the Year award due to his boisterous, intoxicated behavior during a match. Oates takes a vow of silence until he wins again, and we follow him on his lonely odyssey, trying to regain his lost sense of worth as he partners with fast-talking gambler Omar (Richard B. Shull) and plans for the future with his sweetheart (Patricia Pearcy). Filmed on Georgia locations (cockfighting reportedly was still legal there) by Nestor Almendros, director Hellman creates another austere slice-of-life road saga, remaining true to the seedy milieu but bringing a compassion and insight to the characters indicative of his agile and elegant strengths as a filmmaker. With an exceptional cast that includes Harry Dean Stanton, Millie Perkins, Troy Donahue, Laurie Bird, Ed Begley Jr., Steve Railsback and a cameo by novelist Charles Willeford.
COLLECTION
* POSSUM TROT: THE LIFE AND WORK OF CALVIN BLACK - Directed by Allie Light and Irving Saraf, 1977, 16mm (digital presentation), 28 min. Possum Trot tells the story of Calvin Black, a folk artist who lived in the Mojave Desert and created more than 80 life-size female dolls, each with its own personality, function, and costume. Black also built the "Bird Cage Theater," where the dolls were orchestrated to perform and sing in voices recorded by the artist. The film documents the artist's legacy, while also using the medium of cinema to enable the dolls to move, sing, and come to life in the protected space of the theater, just as Black imagined.
* WILD WHEELS - Directed by Harrod Blank, 1992, 16mm (digital presentation) 64 min. Documentarian Harrod Blank examines the obsession that drives him and others to modify automobiles and motorcycles into fanciful vehicular sculptures and canvases for eccentric collections. One car is morphed into an alligator; a motorcycle becomes a hamburger; and other vehicles are covered entirely with faucets, pennies, and buttons. The artists who have painstakingly created them are builders on the one hand, but they are also performers who cause us to consider the soul's carriage through the physical plane: each vehicle travels with specially anointed grace; each is a shrine.
* LIFE AT A SNAIL'S PACE - Directed by Alexandra Gaulupeau, 2016, digital video, 23 min. Marla Coppolino is the Snail Wrangler. This brief portrait follows her mission to bring awareness to the importance and beauty of land snails through education, niche commerce, and creative display. A trained malacologist and biological illustrator, Coppolino also works wrangling snails for photography and film shoots and makes her own snail art with a collection of antique and handmade miniatures: snails ride magic carpets in the sky, ooze out of teacups, and slide across tiny bottles of champagne.
* BOWERS CAVE - Directed by Lee Anne Schmitt and Lee Lynch, 2010, 16mm (digital projection), 20 min. In 1884 two boys in Southern California discovered a cave of Chumash Indian artifacts in the San Martin Mountains on land that is now part of the Chiquita Canyon landfill, located in the small town of Castaic. Known as Bowers Cave, the cave was named after the amateur archeologist Stephen Bower, a notorious looter of Indian sites, who bought the artifacts from the boys, and then resold them for a profit, mostly to private collectors. This film loosely traces the history of the cave’s collection, meditating on the eradication of the Chumash culture, as well as a larger conflict between the metaphysical and the material.
THE COLOSSUS OF DESTINY: A MELVINS TALE
The Colossus Of Destiny – A Melvins Tale is a film about a band who have defied all the rules, for over 33 years and counting, and still managed to succeed and do it their own way. This is the journey of band members King Buzzo and Dale Crover which leads us from the backwards-waters of the Chehalis River in Washington State, down through the Golden Gate of Northern California, finally settling into the Los Angeles River Basin of Southern California with the rest of the world thrown in along the way.
Witness first hand the beliefs and attitudes, values and obscenities, slows and fasts, triumphs and toils, loves and hates, wits and giggles of a hugely talented and highly influential band. Hear what the countless number of peers, collaborators, understudies, admirers, even haters, have to say about their encounters with The Melvins over the past 3 decades and more. And come away with a lesson in how to survive in the wicked world of the music biz without taking yourself too damn seriously. The documentary features interviews with Mike Patton, Chris Cornell, Jello Biafra, Gene Simmons, Krist Novoselic, Mark Arm, J. Mascis, Josh Homme, David Yow and many more. Dir. Bob Hannam & Ryan Sutherby, 2016, DCP. Film followed by directors Bob Hannam & Ryan Sutherby and Melvins, and an intimate set by Melvins
Cops and Robbers
Director Aram Avakian (who made the wonderfully infamous Terry Southern adaptation of novelist John Barth’s End of the Road) turned out this rambunctiously funny crime comedy that has all the on-location goodness we’ve come to expect from seventies New York cinema. Joe Bologna and Cliff Gorman are two NYC cops, disgruntled at their workload and comparatively small salaries, who decide to pull a heist of millions of dollars worth of bearer bonds with the complicity of a local mobster. Needless to say, complications ensue. Screenwriter Donald Westlake adapted his own novel. With a crackerjack supporting cast that includes John Ryan, Joe Spinell and Dolph Sweet. Dir. Aram Avakian, 1973, 89 min.
COSMOS
Zulawski’s final film–a begrudgingly apt swan song–follows a freshly-failed law student’s descent into a bed and breakfast’s vortex of pulsating ids. Based on Witold Gombrowicz’s surreal novel of the same name, the story leaps from free-associative monologues (sometimes in the voice of Donald Duck) declaring Sartre a “mistaken crosseye” to an indulgent obsession with a dead sparrow in the woods, as our Byronic protagonist broods around the property, falls in love, and lusts to touch a hairlip. Dense and deliberate, eerie tableau vivants see Zulawski’s characters writhing on the floor in intense episodes of pain/ecstasy, building a mystery–but one that the audience nonetheless may not, and need not, fully parse. Dir. Andrzej Zulawski, 2015, DCP, 103 min.
DAVID HOCKNEY AND HUELL HOWSER
Celebrating three unique California icons, David Hockney, Huell Howser and Yosemite National Park, with a screening of epiosdes from Howser's beloved public television series: Visiting with Huell Howser and California’s Gold. Episodes:
* Visiting With Huell Howser (David Hockney’s Pearblossom Highway #2): Huell Howser and David Hockney visit the exact location where Hockney captured images for his most famous photographic collage Pearblossom Highway #2.
* Visiting With Huell Howser (David Hockney's studio): Filmed in the late 1980s, Howser takes us inside Hockney's Los Angeles studio and gives us an intimate view of the artist's studio practice.
* California’s Gold (Yosemite Firefall): Howser traces the history behind Yosemite National Park’s “firefall,” a bygone spectacle in which burning embers were sent down Glacier Point, creating a 3,000 ft. glittering cascade.
DAY OF WRATH
Against the backdrop of seventeenth-century witch-hunts, an elderly pastor’s young wife begins an affair with her adult stepson. Haunted by rumors of her deceased mother’s witchcraft and the town’s hungry moral majority, she breaks from repression and pursues this obsessive, passionate love. Has some spell sparked this wild awakening? Or has a small town gone mad with religious fear? Steeped in Lutheran-infused existential dread, and made under Nazi occupation by Carl T. Dreyer (The Passion of Joan Of Arc, Vampyr), this already loaded film might be an accidental Resistance allegory, with its anti-institutional bent and portrayal of interrogation and torture. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1943, 35mm, 97 min.
THE DEVIL
Hitting an off-the-charts level of subversive allegory, Zulawski’s second feature is a blood-splattered rampage through a war-charred 1790s Poland that turns the historical epic inside out, and dances on its carcass. Immediately banned in the director’s Communist Poland for over a decade and a half, The Devil writhes with nonstop demonic energy as it follows a nobleman who, after escaping from prison, swan dives into insanity and mass murder. Returning home to his once-rich family—now reduced to savagery—and manipulated by a black-cloaked Satanic stranger at the center of a web of political treachery, the nobleman eventually enacts a Hamlet-like pyrrhic revenge on just about everyone in sight. But The Devil’s most spectacularly intense violence is all emotional, with near-constant outbursts of grief, and desperation of a seizure-like intensity that is downright mesmerizing. You won’t be able to look away, and with the way Zulawski’s gloriously restless camerawork captures all the detail, you’ll never want to. Dir. Andrzej Zulawski, 1972, DCP, 119 min.
THE DEVILS
Exploding at the seams with anti-puritanical flamboyance, Ken Russell’s assuredly-directed The Devils is like a darkly humorous journey into a mind on the brink of insanity. With sumptuous set design by Derek Jarman (Jubilee, Sebastiane), and celestial and melodramatic costuming by Shirley Russell, the film tells the tale of a 17th-century priest (Oliver Reed in his most arresting performance) accused of witchcraft by Sister Jeanne (a maddeningly creepy Vanessa Redgrave), a nun firmly in the grips of erotic hysteria. Dir. Ken Russell, 1971, 35mm , 112 min.
DISORDER
What happens when the man hired to protect you may be the real threat? Matthias Schoenaerts (Rust and Bone) stars as Vincent, a troubled Afghanistan veteran who, after being discharged from the army, becomes bodyguard to the wife (Diane Kruger) and young son of a wealthy Lebanese businessman at their luxurious villa on the French Riviera. But trapped in a perpetual mental warzone, the unstable Vincent must determine which dangers to the family are real and which are the product of his PTSD-fueled paranoia if he is going to keep them safe. Director Alice Winocour (Augustine) masterfully keeps the tension simmering in this pulse-pounding psychological thriller. Running time: 99 minutes. In French, with English subtitles.
DOUBLE PLAY: JAMES BENNING AND RICHARD LINKLATER
Gabe Klinger's intimate and unassumingly insightful documentary–winner of the Venezia Classici Award at the 2013 Venice Film Festival–brings together two masters of modern filmmaking for a series of casual, wide-ranging conversations touching on cinema, sports, and the unexpected artistic corollaries between their indelible corpuses. Forgoing tired nonfiction storytelling tropes, Klinger allows the natural rapport and shared camaraderie of his subjects, the Texas-born indie icon Richard Linklater and the Milwaukee-bred avant-garde figurehead James Benning, to shape a narrative that follows their discussions from the baseball diamond (where each spent a great deal of their youth) to the editing room (where we see Linklater working on Boyhood). The result is a portrait both unique and refreshing, locating affinities and drawing parallels between two unlikely comrades. Running time: 70 minutes. Directed, Produced, and Edited by Gabe Klinger. Introduced by Director of Photography Edu Grau.
DUELLE
“The Girls of Fire,” an incomplete group of films by Jacques Rivette, is undoubtedly one of the most criminally overlooked corners of cinema. Conceived in 1976, the films were inspired as much by the mystical writings of Gerard de Nerval, the arcane origins of Mardi Gras, and certain Hollywood postwar genre films as by magic, ritual and a quest to invent an entirely new form of mise en scène. Join us for an extremely rare screening of the first of these, Duelle. Experience the bewitching Goddess of the Sun (radiant Bulle Ogier) and the Goddess of the Moon (luminous Juliet Berto) as they descend to Earth in search of a magical red diamond that will allow them to extend their stay in the mortal realm. With a glorious orchestration of color, costume, and sinuous, sinister camera moves, Duelle is infused with the occult noir spirit of Mark Robson’s The Seventh Victim and the poetic romanticism of Cocteau’s Knights Of The Round Table (the sole male cast-member is one of his dancers), and exists as one of those rare portals, a movie mirror through which the viewer may glide trembling to an endlessly seductive twilight world of invented myth. Dir. Jacques Rivette, 1976, Digital Presentation, 121 min.
ELS NENS DE RUSSIA
This plaintive documentary recounts the saga of several children formerly of the Cantabrian coast, evacuated to Russia in wartime. Returning to Spain in later life, they were suspected of spying and interrogated by Francoist police and even the CIA, many later returning to Russia or relocating to Cuba. Their heartbreaking stories are told by the refugees themselves, now adults rendered rootless citizens of the world. 35mm, color, in Spanish and Catalan with English subtitles, 93 min. DIR: Jaime Camino. (Spain, 2001)
ESSENE
Named after the ascetic community purported to have scribed the Dead Sea Scrolls, Essene finds Wiseman immersed in a Benedictine monastery in rural Michigan, whose members struggle to reconcile their individual idiosyncrasies with the community’s collective needs. He films the brethren in prayer, at study, holding mass, and maintaining the grounds, granted access even to private counseling sessions. In a departure from earlier works, he returns to a few subjects, allowing them to become characters in their own right, including one monk on the brink of a nervous breakdown. Wiseman’s presence is all but invisible here, including one virtuosic 360-degree handheld shot around the abbot in the middle of a mass service. Dir. Frederick Wiseman, 1972, 16mm, 86 min.
FANTASTIC PLANET
Animation Breakdown is back with your favorite blue aliens in the 1973 cult French classic Fantastic Planet (La Planète Sauvage), the hypnotic sci-fi masterpiece by director René Laloux and illustrator Roland Topor, newly restored by Janus Films. Based on the French sci-fi novel Oms en série by Stefan Wul, Fantastic Planet follows a revolutionary clash on the alien planet Ygam, where enslaved humans—Oms—are treated as pets by their giant native blue masters—Draags—in their meditation-based utopia. Developed at the Jirí Trnka Studios in the old Czech Republic, Fantastic Planet is a landmark of hallucinatory animation, thanks to the eerie creature & backgrounds designs of surreal illustrator Roland Topor and the amazing psychedelic soundtrack by French jazz pianist Alain Goraguer (sideman of Boris Vian and Serge Gainsbourg). Following the screening, join us for a Sauvage Soirée on the patio! The feature presentation will be preceded by Laloux’s short film, Les Escargots. Les Escargots Dir. René Laloux, 1965, Digital Presentation, 11 minutes. Fantastic Planet Dir. René Laloux, 1973, DCP, 72 minutes
Felix the Cat's Silent Animation Spectacular
Celebrate the career of Felix the Cat, the No. 1 cartoon star of the 1920s, with a program including Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer’s “Felix in Hollywood” (1923) and other shorts featuring the fabulous feline. Plus such animated gems as Winsor McCay’s “The Sinking of the Lusitania” (1918) and “The Pet” (1921), Max Fleischer’s “The Tantalizing Fly” (1919) and “Koko’s Auto Ride” (1921) and more. With live musical accompaniment by Cliff Retallick. Screening format: 8mm | 100 min.
THE FILMS OF ED RUSCHA
Join us for a screening of the only two films ever created by iconic LA-based artist Ed Ruscha, Premium (1971, 16 mm, 24 mins.) and Miracle (1975, 16 mm, 28 mins.). Premium, Ruscha’s first film, starring artist Larry Bell and model Léon Bing, exemplifies the artist’s deadpan aesthetic and his investigation of the codes of Hollywood storytelling. Miracle, a story about a curious day in the life of an auto mechanic, stars artist Jim Ganzer and actress Michelle Phillips. LA-based film, video, and installation artist Kerry Tribe introduces Ruscha’s films; Tribe’s work is included in LA’s first public art biennial, CURRENT:LA Water, opening July 16, 2016. Felipe Lima will present Ed Ruscha: Buildings and Words, a new short-length documentary film about Ruscha’s extraordinary body of work written and directed by Lima.
Five Minutes to Live
Robber extortionist Fred (Vic Tayback) narrates, going back over the catastrophic hold-up scheme that he and his partner, the unstable Johnny (Johnny Cash), devised to pry a small fortune away from a local bank. While Johnny, posing as a door-to-door salesman, holds the bank president’s wife (Cay Forester, who also wrote the screenplay) hostage at their home, Fred delivers an ultimatum to her husband (Donald Woods) at his office: he’s got five minutes to cash Fred’s personal check for $70,000 or Johnny will shoot his spouse. Despite the low budget, the film develops a raw power from its totally-shot-on-location style, gritty black and white cinematography and Cash’s unusually intense performance. It was slightly cut, retitled (as Door-to-Door Maniac) and re-released by American International in 1966. “It could be your street… your house… your life!” was one of the taglines. Dir. Bill Karn. Starring Johnny Cash, Donald Woods, Cay Forester, Pamela Mason, Vic Tayback, Ron Howard. 1961, 74 min.
FLICKERS FROM THE SILVER SCREEN
Annual vintage horror show with silent films, talkies, theater slides, and music, going back to the 1890s.
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway’s novel about the Republican resistance, based on his experience in Spain while The Spanish Earth (1937) was in production, was filmed by director Sam Wood (ironically, a noted anti-Communist) and stripped of much of its political specificity. Nonetheless it constituted Hollywood's only popular treatment of the war, and was prohibited in Spain until after the death of Franco. UCLA Film & Television Archive’s restoration adds several minutes to truncated versions that were circulated for years, and will be presented with entry music and an intermission. 35mm, color, 157 min. DIR: Sam Wood. SCR: Dudley Nichols. CAST: Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, Akim Tamiroff. (1943)
From Echo Street to the Echo Park Film Center: Feminist Films by Susan Mogul
Artist/Filmmaker Susan Mogul presents an evening of her short non-fiction films from 1993 to the present. Four of these films – decidedly feminist – feature all female casts comprised of women from the Los Angeles arts community. Everyday Echo Street (1993), Mogul’s video diary about living in Highland Park – not Echo Park – will be screened for the first time in the USA on 16mm film. Two of the shorts, works-in- progress, have never been screened in a public venue. FILMMAKER IN ATTENDANCE!
GABRIEL
A screening of Agnes Martin’s little-known 1976 feature-length film, Gabriel. Martin's only completed film loosely follows the wanderings of a 10-year-old boy as he walks through the landscape.
THE GIRL ON THE BROOMSTICK
All cooped up for 300 years, bored young sorceress Saxana (Petra Cernocka) illicitly enchants herself into the human realm, only to end up in a mortal high school. When the only way to get home is to procure a hag’s ear, Saxana embarks on her own mystical comedy of errors in which the teachers become rabbits, the principal’s head goes missing, and – worst of all – she keeps getting caught passing notes. With her own sly yet amateur brand of magic, Saxana works spells in pursuit of friendship, mischief, and to get back home to her castle – all girded by a mysterious soundtrack of fuzzy slow-jazz grooves (some of which Petra performs herself!). A fable with plenty of signature Czech charm, dramatic costuming, and tongue-in-cheek humor, The Girl on the Broomstick is a vintage treasure and a staple fantasy adventure for all of them witches out there. Dir. Václav Vorlícek, 1972, 35mm, 76 min.
GRADUATE FIRST
Director Maurice Pialat's follow up to Naked Childhood (1968) plays as a portrait of "the blank generation" of the 1970s as several high school students enter the netherworld between graduation and the unemployment line. Drifters in their northern French mining town, they engage in palliative sex or desperate marriage while some head out for the anonymity of Paris, hoping to resist, as long as they can, the social roles they feel being pressed upon them. 35mm, color, in French with English subtitles, 86 min. DIR: Maurice Pialat. CAST: Sabine Haudepin, Philippe Marlaud, Annick Alane. (France, 1978)
HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT’S INFERNO
2009, Flicker Alley, 94 min, France, Dir: Henri-Georges Clouzot, Serge Bromberg, Ruxandra Medrea
Among the most legendary unfinished films in world cinema, INFERNO was extinguished after three weeks of shooting in 1964, leaving behind 15 hours of stunning imagery unseen until now. Noted preservationist Serge Bromberg and co-director Ruxandra Medrea have reconstructed Henri-Georges Clouzot’s tale of all-consuming jealousy starring Romy Schneider and Serge Reggiani, bridging gaps with interviews, storyboards and re-enactments. The resulting hybrid of documentary and narrative film is a hypnotic look at the intersection of madness and creativity. In French with English subtitles.
THE HEROES OF TELEMARK
This handsomely mounted adventure film tells the true story of Norwegian Resistance fighters who successfully sabotaged a Nazi plot to develop an atomic bomb. Kirk Douglas, as a scientist recruited to this mission, must coordinate with the hot-headed Resistance fighter Richard Harris, locking horns over strategy and authority in their race against time. Spectacular locations and widescreen compositions grace this late masterwork by Anthony Mann. 35mm, color, 131 min. DIR: Anthony Mann. SCR: Ivan Moffat, Ben Barzman. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Richard Harris, Ulla Jacobsson, Michael Redgrave. (1965)
HIGH SCHOOL
The eternally youthful vibes of Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” guide us through establishing shots of suburban Philadelphia and onto the campus of Northeast High School, the setting for Wiseman’s sophomore filmmaking effort. From the hip-as-heck teacher who asks her students to tune into the poetry of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Dangling Conversation” to the brutal body politics of a homegrown fashion show, High School captures a day-in-the-life of the students and faculty at an upper-middle-class establishment, wandering from homeroom to the gymnasium to capture—with always-impeccable framing—the microdramas inherent in this most American of institutions. 35mm Restoration courtesy of the Library of Congress. Dir. Frederick Wiseman, 1968, 35mm, 75 min.
HOME FOR LIFE
The first film produced under the Kartemquin banner mobilizes multiple nonfiction modes to draw us into the experiences of two new residents of a Chicago nursing home as they adjust to their new lives. Through their separate circumstances, depicted frankly but with a deep sense of dignity, the larger challenges of age and care for the aged are brought into sharp, poignant view. 16mm, b/w, 82 min. DIR: Gerald Temaner, Gordon Quinn. (1966)
Preceded by:
* Parents (1968) This fly-on-the-wall document of a parish youth group discussing their parents and the generation gap is a fascinating time capsule from the era of the “rap session” even as it captures the eternal restlessness of adolescence. Digital Video, b/w, 20 min. DIR: Gordon Quinn, Gerald Temaner.
HOSPITAL
In pre-HIPAA 1970, inside the four walls of the Metropolitan Hospital in New York’s East Harlem, Frederick Wiseman made a film that depended on a degree of access to doctors and patients that is unfathomable today. We see overtaxed doctors handle everything from stoned hippies to neglected children to alcoholics–lots of alcoholics. Wiseman’s attentive gaze never leans on simplification, even as he stares stereotypes in the face. Doctors aren’t villains–they’re flawed and overworked, and sometimes they go the extra mile for their patients while other times they discuss lunch alongside deep suffering. The alcoholics and druggies and various other oft-underprivileged patients that burst through the ER doors aren’t villains either– they are people at the mercy of a limited institution for care. This newly restored 35mm print is an invitation into the bowels of a place where the American movie-going public will likely never be invited again. 35mm Restoration courtesy of the Library of Congress. Dir. Frederick Wiseman, 1970, 35mm, 84 min.
The Indian Fighter
The first picture from Kirk Douglas' own Bryna Productions (named for his mother) was this Western adventure, in which Douglas, as a frontier scout guiding a wagon train through Sioux country, must keep the peace despite the Sioux chiefs' well-founded suspicions of the white men's motives, and the plot of two rogue settlers to steal the Indians' newly discovered gold. 35mm, color, 88 min. DIR: André De Toth. SCR: Frank Davis, Ben Hecht. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Elsa Martinelli, Walter Abel, Walter Matthau. (1955)
INFERNO
Foregoing conventional logic for pure nightmare dreamscape, Inferno finds director Dario Argento at the top of his game, and is the second film in his “Three Mothers” trilogy (directly following Suspiria). An American college student in Rome (Leigh McCloskey) is called to New York to help his poet sister investigate the mysterious and supernatural history of her building. The threadbare plot serves as a springboard for some of Argento’s wildest set pieces (the underwater ballroom!), imaginative use of light and color, and continued exploration of visual alchemy propelled by a raging soundtrack (this time by Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s keyboard virtuoso Keith Emerson). With optical effects by Argento’s mentor, Italian grandmaster Mario Bava, Inferno is easily one of the most beautiful films in the Video Nasties canon — so don’t miss it loud ‘n large in 35mm! With an introduction by Leigh McCloskey, actor, author, and expert on the occult! Dir. Dario Argento, 1980, 35mm, 107 min.
The Interrupters
As the tragic gun violence afflicting Chicago continues to make news, Hoop Dreams (1994) director Steve James’ extraordinary portrait of the people working literally door-to-door and block by block to end it remains as urgent as ever. At its center are three “Violence Interrupters” working for the innovative intervention program CeaseFire. As they endeavor to overcome their own violent pasts, they use their hard won credibility to convince others they can do the same. Heartbreaking and, at times, harrowing, The Interrupters is essential nonfiction filmmaking. DCP, color, 125 min. DIR: Steve James. (2011) In-person: Steve James, Gordon Quinn.
THE INTERVENTION
A weekend getaway for four couples takes a sharp turn when one of the couples discovers the entire trip was orchestrated to host an intervention on their marriage. Starring Clea DuVall, Melanie Lynskey, Natasha Lyonne, Vincent Piazza, Jason Ritter, Ben Schwartz, Alia Shawkat, & Cobie Smulders. Running time: 90 minutes. Written and Directed by Clea DuVall. Followed by a Q&A with Clea DuVall, Sev Ohanian, and Director of Photography Polly Morgan
INTERWOVEN: FILMS BY KIPERVASER and CUNNINGHAM
Anna Kipervaser and Alex Cunningham take their recent short films on the road together in the experimental cinema salon tradition. Showing recent experimental film and video work. Alex and Anna explore intersections between realities, between abstraction and translation, structure and poetry, internal and external.
INTO THE FOREST
2016, 101 min, Canada, Dir: Patrica Rozema
Director Patrica Rozema’s adaptation of the Jean Hegland novel offers a look at the collapse of civilization that’s not driven by special effects or zombies. Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood play sisters living an idyllic life in their forest home when the power goes out for good; the two must rely on each other more than ever as they struggle to survive. “Beautiful and sensitive to character but gripping when it needs to be.” - John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter. Discussion following with director Patrica Rozema.
JACKASS Trilogy
* JACKASS: THE MOVIE, 2002, Paramount, 87 min. Documentary/Comedy. Dir. Jeff Tremaine.
* JACKASS NUMBER TWO, 2006, Paramount, 92 min. Documentary/Comedy. Dir. Jeff Tremaine.
* JACKASS 3D, 2010, Paramount, 94 min. Documentary/Comedy. Dir. Jeff Tremaine.
WARNING: Do not attempt this marathon at home! The brilliantly brain-dead, irresponsible ode to camaraderie known as “Jackass” quietly debuted on MTV at the height of the Boy Band boom, and hasn’t yet lost an ounce of its power to shock, amaze and guffaw us to the ground. Despite the small-screen origins of “Jackass,” its three theatrical features demand to be seen on the big screen, where a packed crowd can vicariously rock to every ingenious stunt, devilish prank and life-threatening punchline. Forget reality TV - this is art. “God help me, thumbs up.” - Roger Ebert, on JACKASS: THE MOVIE.
Marathon features audience participation challenges between the films, plus cast and crew Q&A!
The Juggler
Filmed in newly-established Israel, The Juggler concerns German Jewish concentration camp survivor Hans Müller (Kirk Douglas), once a famous juggler in Germany, who has immigrated to Israel to begin life anew, though facing the hurdle of severe psychological trauma. A rare American feature to treat Jewish experience and the Holocaust so directly, it also offered Douglas the space for a tour-de-force performance of international resonance. 35mm, b/w, 86 min. DIR: Edward Dmytryk. SCR: Michael Blankfort. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Milly Vitale, Paul Stewart, Joey Walsh. (1953)
JUVENILE COURT
An attentive and non-judgemental look at the youth courts system in Memphis, Juvenile Court showcases Wiseman’s inimitable observational abilities. Dealing with cases concerning everything from armed robbery and sexual assault to drug addiction, abuse, and foster care, Wiseman approaches each moment with his trademark respect for his chosen subject. Imbued with remarkably instinctual cinematography, rife with poignant imagery–a piece of tissue sticking to a young girl’s eye as she attempts to wipe the tears away, a badly burned young boy’s pained whisper as he tries to answer sensitive questions–and expertly crafted, Juvenile Court is a captivating document of the devastatingly human turmoil and confusion that finds its home in the supposedly ordered courtroom. Dir. Frederick Wiseman, 1973, 16mm, 144 min.
KAMIKAZE '89
A blindsiding exercise in pure aesthetics, this once-lost ‘80s curio–newly restored on 35mm!–delivers the eyecandy of a leopard-besuited Rainer Werner Fassbinder in his final acting role before his untimely death at the age of 37. As excessive as the seismic German auteur was in his career and personal life, Kamikaze ‘89 promises shades of Blade Runner and Liquid Sky (what exactly was up in 1982?), all set to an organic, instrumental score from Tangerine Dream’s Edgar Froese. It’s Godard’s mysterious, sci-fi-infused trickery of Alphaville meets the fantastical exorbitance of Cannon Group’s The Apple, as directed by Fassbinder’s friend Wolf Gremm. What’s happening here? It kind of doesn’t matter in this dystopian, Orwellian futurescape that we’d sooner immerse ourselves in than really try to parse. Dir. Wolf Gremm, 1982, 35mm, 106 min.
Killers Three
“It started out as a Country Picnic! But before it was over 37 men were dead!” Killers Three director Bruce Kessler toiled away on episodic television through most of the 1970s but worked early on for low budget studios American-International and Crown International, churning out engaging exploitationers such as Simon King of the Witches, The Gay Deceivers and Angels from Hell. During Prohibition, Robert Walker, Jr. and Dick Clark (who also co-wrote and produced) are two desperate thieves who murder a bootlegger and steal his bankroll, escaping with Walker’s wife (Diane Varsi, of Wild in the Streets, Bloody Mama) into the North Carolina countryside, trying to get over the state line. Merle Haggard is the beleaguered sheriff out to catch them. Merle sings “Mama Tried” and the title song. Dir. Bruce Kessler, 1968, 88 min.
KING JACK
Jack is a scrappy fifteen year-old kid stuck in a run-down small town. Trapped in a violent feud with a cruel older bully and facing another bout of summer school, Jack’s got all the problems he can handle. So when Jack’s aunt falls ill and his runty younger cousin must stay with him for the weekend the last thing Jack wants to do is look after him. Unfortunately no one really cares what Jack wants. Set over a hazy summer weekend, King Jack is a tough and tender coming of age story about friendship and finding happiness in rough surroundings. Running time: 80 minutes. Written and Directed by Felix Thompson. Followed by a Q&A with Felix Thompson.
Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door
German director Thomas Jahn’s freewheeling crime/action thriller, punctuated with very dark humor, follows two terminal cancer patients (Inglourious Basterd’s Til Schweiger, Jan Josef Liefers) who have met after both being told their prognosis by their respective doctors. Getting drunk and stealing a classic Mercedes leads to bizarre repercussions when they figure out the car holds a million dollars belonging to a mob boss in its trunk. The pair decide to spend the money doing things they’ve always wanted to do but soon find themselves pursued by both gangsters and police on a roller coaster of unexpected plot twists. Dir. Thomas Jahn, 1997, 87 min.
LA DOBLE VIDA DEL FAQUIR
This documentary recounts the production of an earlier film, Imitando el faquir (1937), by wealthy industrialist and amateur filmmaker Felip Sagués, who sought wartime refuge in a small Catalan village and produced his fantastic film with the elaborately costumed students of a local Catholic school for orphans. The child actors, now grown, relive the experience at a reunion and screening in their old school, recalling the headiness of the project, and their war experience. 35mm, color, in Catalan and Spanish with English subtitles, 90 min. DIR: Elisabet Cabeza, Esteve Riambau. (Spain, 2005)
THE LADY EVE
1941, Universal, 97 min, USA, Dir: Preston Sturges
Henry Fonda is dim-witted ale heir "Hopsy" Pike ("Snakes are my life"); Barbara Stanwyck is Eve, cardsharp and con artist par excellence. Can this relationship work? Savage but never mean-spirited, this is Sturges at his best, blending violent slapstick, zesty dialogue and genuine romance into a peerless masterwork. With Charles Coburn, William Demarest, Eugene Pallette and Eric Blore.
LA JETEE VIS-A-VIS SADIE BENNING
The cine-conversation continues with this month’s pairing: the experimental classic La Jetée (1962) and a program of early films by video artist Sadie Benning (1989-1998). A sci-fi epic told in still images, La Jetée travels back and forth through time as a man deals with love and violence in the wake of World War III. Told with a keen awareness of genre, what follows is filmmaker Chris Marker’s spiral of narrative memory and a visual essay on image-construction as it pertains to recollection and death. (Be on the lookout for the one moving image tucked into this masterpiece.)
Sadie Benning’s video art from the 1990s uses a barrage of images and popular culture tropes to layer intimate stories of a teenager recalling her first girlfriends, loves, and anxieties. Made with a Pixelvision camera, which records footage onto cassette tapes, the video diaries are jagged art-objects themselves that blast with energy (and sometimes the music of Bikini Kill) while compounding nostalgia in the newfound. The fictions and frictions of memory are at the forefront of these riotous films. Benning’s films scheduled to be screened include, but are not limited to: Me and Rubyfruit (1990), If Every Girl Had A Diary (1990), A Place Called Lovely (1991), Girl Power (1992), It Wasn’t Love (1992), and Flat is Beautiful(1998).
The Last Pullman Car
A century of industrial expansion and contraction, bad transportation policy, union building and busting, and racial politics comes to bear when Steelworkers Local 1834 starts a fight to keep the Pullman Standard Chicago Car Works open in the face of global competition. From factory floor to the state legislature, directors Gordon Quinn and Jerry Blumenthal trace the workers’ struggle against the odds to “keep mass transit rolling.” Digital Video, color, 57 min. DIR: Gordon Quinn, Jerry Blumenthal. (1983) In-person: Gordon Quinn.
Last Train from Gun Hill
When U.S. Marshal Matt Morgan's Native American wife is raped and murdered, and the perpetrator is proven to be the son of his friend, he must supplant the urge for revenge with justice in his aim to put the young man on a train to stand trial. But this is not so easy; he must oppose the young man's father, and make it to the train on time. 16mm, color, 93 min. DIR: John Sturges. SCR: James Poe. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn, Carolyn Jones, Earl Holliman. (1959)
Law and Disorder
Filmmaker Ivan Passer was a veteran of the mid-sixties Czech New Wave and a collaborator with director Milos Forman on such classics as Loves of a Blonde and The Firemen’s Ball. Eventually, he would helm the acclaimed hardboiled neo-noir Cutter’s Way (1981) starring Jeff Bridges and John Heard. 1974 saw the release of this comedy drama with Carrol O’Connor (“All in the Family”) as a cabbie and Ernest Borgnine as a Marine veteran hairdresser joining New York City’s auxiliary police to fight crime on the Lower East Side. Passer captures the grittiness of the then-current urban blight but, as the New York Times’ Vincent Canby put it, “The sense of alienation that grips the city at times seizes the film itself…always in fascinating ways. A film of less consistent intelligence would probably be destroyed by a scene so pricelessly funny it’s almost a specialty number, when the auxiliary policemen and their wives attend a lecture on rape by “the author of the best-selling book, ‘Sexual Deviations of the Seventies.'” Co-starring Karen Black, Jack Kehoe and Ann Wedgeworth. Dir. Ivan Passer, 1974, 101 min.
LAW AND ORDER
Watching Law & Order, one feels almost as if the black and white 16mm film is the only signifier of time having passed; Wiseman’s attention to the structures of law enforcement and their interaction with race and class seems not to have aged one bit, even 47 years later. The made-for-TV, Emmy-winning doc (best news documentary in 1969) is the filmmaker’s foray into the riots-era Kansas City, MO police department of 1968. As his camera roves, it captures myriad situations that officers are called upon to resolve – some appropriately within their jurisdiction, and others seemingly dumped upon them because civilians didn’t know where else to turn; one such a case is a domestic dispute over child-custody which results in the officer telling the child’s father that he simply must hire a lawyer if anything’s to be done. Wiseman’s hard look at the relations between officers and civilians is sympathetic and genuine, attuned to the limitations of the staid categories of law and order, and the humanity and chaos that spill out of them. Dir. Frederick Wiseman, 1969, 16mm, 81 min.
A LIFE IN SHADOWS
This moving feature displays the extent to which the Civil War impinged on the life of one man with a passion for the cinema. A jewel of Spanish filmmaking produced in the pall of “franquismo,” the independent production faced censorship and other official resistance. Little known until its recent rediscovery, the film is now hailed as a cinematic rarity, free from the aesthetic and ideological constraints of 1940s Spanish cinema. DCP, b/w, in Spanish with English subtitles, 80 min. DIR: Llorenç Llobet Gràcia. SCR: Victorio Aguado, Llorenç Llobet Gràcia. CAST: Fernando Fernán Gómez, María Dolores Pradera.
Preceded by:
* News of Spain (Spain, 1938) A newsreel of the Spanish Civil War's events, produced by Laya Films, the cinema unit of the official Propaganda Commissariat of the Catalan government. DigiBeta, b/w, in Catalan with English subtitles, 10 min.
* The Coastal Cork Makers (Spain, 1937) A portrait of the centuries' old Catalan craft of cork-making, crucial to global wine culture and a possible boon to the war effort. DCP, b/w, in Catalan with English subtitles, 10 min.
Little Men
This is the newest film from writer/director Ira Sachs (The Delta, Married Life, Love is Strange). Working again with co-writer Mauricio Zacharias, Sachs’s Little Men examines the friendship between a pair of teenaged boys, Jake (Theo Taplitz) and Tony (Michael Barbieri). Jake is sensitive and shy, and the confident Tony recognizes how easily Jake’s feelings can be bruised, especially by callous adults. The guys seek each other out for just for the respite of hang time, but the social and economic gap between their families—and the everyday pressure of life in New York—threaten to overwhelm and undermine their relationship. Sachs has assembled a cast that also features Greg Kinnear, Alfred Molina, Jennifer Ehle, and Talia Balsam as the adults whose immature behavior functions as both tragic and comic contrasts to the open and clear-eyed take on the world that Jake and Tony share. Sachs and Talpirz will discuss Little Men onstage after the movie. 2016, 85 min, color, DCP. Written by Mauricio Zacharias & Ira Sachs; directed by Ira Sachs; with Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Ehle, Paulina Garcia, Alfred Molina, Talia Balsam, introducing Michael Barbieri and Theo Taplitz.
The Lives of Others
Writer and director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s psychological thriller won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Set in 1984, an East German Stasi agent develops suspicions that a celebrated playwright’s loyalty to the Communist regime is too good to be true and recommends to his superior that the writer and his wife be put under surveillance. What he doesn’t count on is gradually coming to sympathize with the couple and watching out for them in small ways, something that eventually causes a subtle blowback from his bosses. Paranoia slowly escalates until the surprising conclusion. With Martina Gedeck, Sebastian Koch and Ulrich Mühe. Dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006, 137 min.
Lonely are the Brave
Cowboy Jack Burns manipulates his way into a rural jail to affect an escape for his friend who's accused of abetting Mexican border-crossers. When the principled friend refuses to leave, Jack breaks out himself, futilely attempting escape to Mexico on horseback, but bedeviled by unromantic cars and helicopters—pursued, it seems, by modernity itself. An elegiac take on the drifter (a Kirk Douglas staple), the film has long been a favorite of its star. 35mm, b/w, 106 min. DIR: David Miller. SCR: Dalton Trumbo. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Gena Rowlands, Walter Matthau, Michael Kane. (1962)
LOS OLVIDADOS (THE YOUNG AND THE DAMNED)
A young boy named Pedro lives in the festering slums of Mexico City, where he and other destitute youths are drawn into a brutal cycle of violence and crime. 1950, 80 min, 35mm, Mexico. Directed by Luis Buñuel; written by Luis Alcoriza and Luis Buñuel; with Estela Inda, Miguel Inclan, Alfonso Mejia, Roberto Cobo.
LOS PUNKS: WE ARE ALL WE HAVE
Punk rock is thriving in the backyards of South Central and East Los Angeles. A cobbled-together family of Hispanic teens and young adults comprise the scene: bands, fans, production, marketing, and security interwoven into a sub-culture of thrash and noise and pits. The sense of belonging is palpable; emotional bonds fostered among good families and those broken, poverty and wealth, adolescence and maturity, with the music emanating a magnetic chorus for all to sing together. Los Punks: We Are All We Have is a documentary feature film honestly and sincerely portraying this vibrant ‘DIY’ community. Running time: 79 minutes. Directed by Angela Boatwright. Followed by a Q&A with Angela Boatwright and members of the L.A. backyard punk scene.
Loulou
In a crowded nightclub, Nelly (Isabelle Huppert), bourgeois-bred and married, takes her passions out for an air. She finds herself with Depardieu’s happy, drunken lout, leaves with him, and stays with him. Director Maurice Pialat explores a woman's multifarious desires for sexual liberation, Gérard Depardieu graciously playing along, calibrating his hypersexual character to suit Nelly's perceptions, both of them in it, not forever after, but until desire is played out. 35mm, color, in French with English subtitles, 110 min. DIR: Maurice Pialat. SCR: Arlette Langmann. CAST: Isabelle Huppert, Gérard Depardieu, Guy Marchand. (France, 1980)
THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR
1942, Universal, 100 min, USA, Dir: Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder made his Hollywood directorial debut with this wartime farce, cowritten with frequent collaborator Charles Brackett. Ginger Rogers sparkles as a woman who masquerades as a 12-year-old girl to travel by train on a child’s fare; Ray Milland is the military man who shelters the youngster.
Man Without a Star
Cowboy-drifter Dempsey (Kirk Douglas) accepts work on a vast cattle ranch, owned by a beautiful female rancher (Jeanne Crain) with a megalomaniacal desire to expand her territory. She employs Dempsey as a strongman and part-time lover, as competing ranchers defend their traditional grazing lands by stringing barbed-wire fences (Dempsey's great hate). Struggles ensue on the plains and in the boudoir in King Vidor's Western potboiler. 35mm, color, 89 min. DIR: King Vidor. SCR: Borden Chase, D.D. Beauchamp. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Jeanne Crain, Claire Trevor, William Campbell. (1955)
Maurice Pialat, Love Exists
Produced by Maurice Pialat’s widow, Sylvie Pialat, an acclaimed producer in her own right, this insightful documentary offers a window into the filmmaker’s irascible personality and demanding aesthetics. Clips from his films and rare interview footage traces his development as an artist from his childhood, to his earliest cinematic influences—Ozu, Ford—through his attitude toward the French New Wave and his relationship with his frequent collaborators. 35mm, color, in French with English subtitles, 81 min. DIR: Anne-Marie Faux, Jean-Pierre Devillers. (France, 2007)
MERRY-GO-ROUND
Originally conceived as part of the “Girls of Fire” tetralogy (later retitled Scenes From a Parallel Life), which began with Duelle & Noroît, Merry-Go-Round would ultimately stretch Rivette and all those involved to their limits (Last Tango in Paris’ Maria Schneider eventually walked off set). Described by Rivette as a simple story wherein “two people get together because a third, who has arranged to meet them, does not show up,” Merry-Go-Round feels like waking up from a dream that might have been a nightmare. With periodic interludes to alternate realities and dreamscapes, this sometimes maddeningly circuitous film, posing as an espionage thriller loaded with symbolism and macguffins at every turn—mysterious phone calls, anonymous notes, empty graves, sand dunes, and a seemingly endless string of X-marks-the-spots—but ultimately reveals itself to be far more interested in the game of looking than resolution itself. Bolstered by Rivette’s perverse version of a Greek chorus (an improv jazz clarinetist and a double bass player), Merry-Go-Round is bursting with passion and energy, and is one of cinema’s greatest experiments. Dir. Jacques Rivette, 1981, Digital Presentation, 160 min.
MISS SHARON JONES
Sharon Jones is a true soul survivor. She’s been called “the female James Brown” for the energy she brings to the stage backed by her band The Dap-Kings. That energy is the fuel for a study of contrasts in Miss Sharon Jones!, as we follow her on an emotional journey as she goes through chemotherapy and struggles to mount a comeback show at New York’s Beacon Theater. This story finds its perfect match in director Barbara Kopple, another soulful talent and two-time Oscar winner for Harlan County, USA and American Dream, whose career also includes studies of performers in Wild Man Blues and Shut Up and Sing! Kopple’s supreme skill at observational filmmaking shines through as she captures the highs and lows of Jones’ efforts to battle cancer and keep her band together. We watch as the band completes its 2014 album Give the People What They Want. By the end of this film, what you’ll want is more Sharon Jones. Dir. Barbara Kopple, 2015, DCP, 93 min.
The Mouth Agape
A dutiful son (Philippe Léotard) takes his mother for radiation treatment in a Paris hospital; when she is pronounced incurable, he accompanies her back to her home in Auvergne and persuades his reluctant wife (Nathalie Baye) to join him. Director Maurice Pialat approaches the grim predictability of illness and death with the same unflinching, piercing gaze he brings to the chaos of relationships exploding with life, finding, there, amid seeming futility, the moments that actually sustain us. 35mm, color, in French with English subtitles, 82 min. DIR: Maurice Pialat. CAST: Philippe Léotard, Nathalie Baye, Hubert Deschamps. (France, 1974)
MY KING
(MON ROI)
2015, Film Movement, 124 min, France, Dir: Maïwenn
Emmanuelle Bercot earned a Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for her affecting turn as Tony, a young woman sidelined by a skiing accident who falls in love with the charming if tempestuous Georgio (Vincent Cassel, also superb). In sharp contrast to typical movie romances, MON ROI has a raw honesty that draws viewers to these characters even as clouds gather on their horizon. “Maïwenn remains underappreciated by the critical community, but that will change after the world experiences MON ROI, a movie that may sound anti-romantic but is just the opposite: boldly ultra-romantic, of the sort that has turned French pics (like JULES AND JIM or A MAN AND A WOMAN) into worldwide hits before.” - Peter Debruge, Variety In French with English subtitles. Discussion following with director Maïwenn.
NAKED CHILDHOOD
François Truffaut was a keen supporter of director Maurice Pialat's first feature, which recalls The 400 Blows in its semi-autobiographical story of a young boy lashing out at life as he’s passed from one foster family to another. When he is placed in the home of an elderly couple, he at last discovers a kind of peace, and can begin to discover the world. 35mm, color, in French with English subtitles, 83 min. DIR: Maurice Pialat. SCR: Arlette Langmann, Maurice Pialat. CAST: Michel Terrazon, Raoul Billerey, Maurice Coussonneau. (France, 1968)
NEW WORKS SALON XXXV: Braunschweiler, Levin, O’Dwyer, Vargas, Verdin
The New Works Salons series is a casual forum for the presentation and discussion of new works in film, video, sound, and performance, with local and visiting artists in-person to introduce their work, curated by Rick Bahto. This program features: Marco Braunschweiler will show the first three films in his Monkey Series, an in-progress album of 15–18 videos that loosely follows the narrative structure of James Joyce’s Ulysses, along with a selection of other short video works. New York-based artist Mikael Levin’s At Work; Me, My Brother, Our Father. For this short video, Mikael Levin filmed himself printing in his darkroom, filmed his brother painting in his studio, and re-edited old footage of his father writing in his beachside cottage. We see each engaged in his work; method and workspace giving form to the interiority of the creative process. (Mikael Levin, Brooklyn, NY 2016; Eli Levin, Apodaca, NM 2013; Meyer Levin, Beit Yanai, Israel 1970). Deirdre O’Dwyer will show a new hand-drawn animation about the artist Tom Tierney (1928–2014), who published at least 400 paper-doll books in his lifetime. The film is a remembrance of his hands, set to his own voice. O’Dwyer drew this film, tracing iPhone footage of a conversation between Tom Tierney and Sarah Jacoby, another fan he welcomed into his home and studio in Smithville, Texas, in January 2014. Walter Vargas will show his new video A cooking experiment (for Internet consumption only), and Pedro Verdin will show prologue to the ending, a video documenting two conversations occurring simultaneously in Northern California.
NOROIT
On a foggy island off the shore of nowhere, in an unnamed 12th Century castle, a merry band of sartorially-inclined pirates coexist outside of relative or urgent time in Jacques Rivette’s adventurous Noroît, the endlessly anachronistic sister film to 1976’s Duelle. The title—a spin on a phrase meaning “the wind from the North West”—is as playful as the bodily improv and unrehearsed performance that drive this singular, sumptuous work, which hinges on ebbing relationships in a predominantly matriarchal collective of thieves. The omnipresent full moon, hanging like the threat of death each night, serves as a visual reminder of the flat, planar time in which Rivette freely experiments with the conventions of both Western theater and kabuki tradition, housed in the arc of a Jacobean revenge tragedy. With live, improvised music as spontaneous as the dynamic and deranged performances from a sublime cast of captivating female leads, this third film in Rivette’s “Dream Cycle” abstracts its narrative beyond verbal expression and into a realm where physical acts are the most potent form of communication. Dir. Jacques Rivette, 1976, digital presentation, 145 min.
NUTS!
This Sundance documentary paints the bonkers, stranger-than-fiction portrait of “Dr.” John R. Brinkley, the outlandish renegade surgeon who grew to astounding fame for his goat gland transplants in impotent men. That’s right, he claimed grafted goat testicles were a miracle cure for “sexual weakness.” Almost instantly under investigation from a then-fledgling American Medical Association, Brinkley would perform enough life-changing surgeries to build a booming medical empire, complete with his own patented serums, name brand hospitals and even radio stations, enough to make Dr. Phil blush. And that’s just the beginning… The film courts questions of Brinkley’s meteoric career and alleged charlatanism, primarily through animated re-enactments full of uncomfortable, King of the Hill-worthy humor, all guided by a peculiarly upbeat narrator. Equal parts Wilhelm Reich, Howard Stern, and Horatio Alger, his story has all the freewheeling charm of a see-it-to-believe-it Americana folklore, along with hilariously savage insights into the births of mass marketing and modern medicine. It’s all pretty nuts. Dir. Penny Lane, 2016, DCP, 79 min.
ON THE SILVER GLOBE
A three-hour spaceman journey straight into the center of Andrzej Zulawski’s poetic heart, On the Silver Globe is the director’s most phantasmagorical film. In 1976, Zulawski embarked on the largest-scale film production in Polish history, and over the course of two intense years, executed an eye-popping, grandiloquent sci-fi epic concerning astronauts who crash-land on the moon and kickstart their own bizarre, primitive society. Sadly, the Polish government deemed the film subversive, shut the production down just before shooting was completed, and destroyed its film print materials, sets, and impossibly lush costumes. Ten years later, using secret footage, Zulawski was able to piece together a version of the film that came as close as possible to his original vision — and the results will defy your mind, as even in its reconstituted form, On the Silver Globe is a true brainquake that effortlessly takes you to dizzying heights, and just keeps on elevating. Dir. Andrzej Zulawski, 1977/1988, DCP, 166 min.
Pà negre
The consequences of the Spanish Civil War in the rural areas of Catalunya are recalled in all their human and political brutality. The eyes of the children, innocent victims of a long and arbitrary war, intensify the drama of this rare, beautiful feature spoken in Catalan, which has received multiple awards in Spain. 35mm, color, in Catalan with English subtitles, 108 min. DIR/SCR: Agusti Villaronga. CAST: Francesc Colomer, Marina Comas, Nora Navas. (2010)
PASSING THROUGH
Upon being released from prison after murdering a music-industry mobster, a jazz saxophonist searches for his mentor while trying to reunite his band. The allegorical narrative works to define jazz as the musical expression of the Black experience, with its African roots and its American battles with appropriation and exploitation. The film also leaves plenty of time for the music itself, from the onscreen appearances by Horace Tapscott and the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra to the performances by Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Sun Ra on the soundtrack. By combining music, allegory and analysis, Passing Through has achieved canonical status as one of the few great jazz films.
Paths of Glory
Kirk Douglas gives a powerful performance as an honorable French Army officer who, on orders from his superiors, must lead his men on a doomed mission to wrest control of a German-held hill in WWI France. A quintessential Douglas role pitting the hero against dire circumstance, the film also represented a fortuitous pairing of Douglas' and director Stanley Kubrick's moral temperaments. 35mm, b/w, 90 min. DIR: Stanley Kubrick. SCR: Stanley Kubrick, Calder Willingham. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, Adolphe Menjou, George Macready. (1958)
THE PEOPLE VS. FRITZ BAUER
Germany, 1957. Attorney General Fritz Bauer receives crucial evidence on the whereabouts of SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Adolf Eichmann. The lieutenant colonel, responsible for the mass deportation of the Jews, is allegedly hiding in Buenos Aires. Bauer, himself Jewish, has been trying to take crimes from the Third Reich to court ever since his return from Danish exile. However, with no success so far due to the fierce German determination to repress its sinister past. Because of his distrust in the German justice system, Fritz Bauer contacts the Israeli secret service Mossad, and, by doing so, commits treason. Bauer is not seeking revenge for the Holocaust ?? he is concerned with the German future. Running time: 105 minutes. In German, with English subtitles.
PIN: A PLASTIC NIGHTMARE
Ready for a Canadian psychosexual Polanski-esque brainbomb you’ll never be able to unsee? Pin: A Plastic Nightmare, with its strong echoes of Psycho, has an absurd central obsession: a skinless, plastic medical dummy that’s the catalyst to truly bizarre power games of incest, repression and murderous schizoid behavior. An overly strict doctor/ventriloquist mimes the voice of “Pin” for his patients; they, and the doctor’s preppy children are awestruck by the magic. However, the spell is a tad more complicated for the doctor’s son Leon, when he witnesses a lonely nurse sexually violate “Pin” after hours -- resulting in the kid’s brain splitting in two. A decade later, following their parents’ unexpected fatal auto accident, the magical delusion of “Pin” lingers on for Leon when the dummy "moves in" at their now-unsupervised house. (1988)
PLUG + MECHANICAL EYE
Please join us as we celebrate 2 sister microcinemas bringing the love to the people many miles away. We are honored to host Caitlin Horsmon (from Plug Cinema in Kansas City Missouri) and Charlotte Taylor (from Mechanical Eye in Asheville, North Carolina) as they wind their way through Los Angeles.
POSSE
Kirk Douglas produced and directed this whimsical revisionist Western concerning a U.S. marshal who pursues and nabs a notorious train robber (Bruce Dern) for political gain in his pursuit of a Senate seat. But Marshal Nightingale's ego is his Achilles' heel, which his prisoner knows, and uses to his advantage. Their delightful cat-and-mouse game capitalizes on the actors' generational difference, and on Douglas' own self-deprecating sense of humor. 35mm, color, 93 min. DIR: Kirk Douglas. SCR: William S. Roberts, Christopher Knopf. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Bruce Dern, Bo Hopkins, James Stacy. (1975)
POSSESSION
Capturing the energy generated when two people whose lives are so intensely fused and woven are forcibly split, Possession is an emotional nuclear explosion. If all we were given were its operatic and shamanistic performances by leads Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill, it’s impossible-to-describe music by Andrzej Korzynski, and its masterful, hyper-kinetical ballet of camera choreography — all delivered with the force of a long-suppressed traumatic memory — then Possession would already be the best film about divorce ever filmed. But when the angels and demons of our inner nature are literally incarnated in phantasmagorical form — the kind requiring the talents of Oscar-winning creature FX master Carlo Rambaldi (who, instead of making a cutey-pie “E.T.”, concocts a tentacled Lovecraftian octo-sex-demon) — you have the kind of explosively cathartic and entertaining experience that leads to movie-lover nirvanic bliss. Dir. Andrzej Zulawski, 1981, 35mm restoration, 123 min.
PRIMARY STIMULUS: A ROBERT RUSSETT MEMORIAL RETROSPECTIVE
To celebrate the life and work of the singular artist and animation historian Robert Russett (1935-2015), guest curator Mark Toscano has assembled this nearly complete retrospective of Russett’s 16mm films. This program will span his early, radical Pop hybrids of Sharits and Conner, through his fascinating and rigorous abstract perceptual explorations, to the haunting and ominous impressionistic rephotography works in which Russett explored his adopted homeland of Acadian Louisiana.
PRIMATE
Wiseman’s visit to the Yerkes National Primate Research Center is a meticulous study of the processes used to test and document the behavior of various apes, including orangutans, chimps, and gorillas. Equal parts interspecies anthropological study and a slow-cooking horror-show, you’re just as likely to smile at nurses giving baby chimps little milk bottles and changing their diapers as you are to gasp at the harvesting of a gibbon’s brain. Wiseman balances long takes of surgery and observation with quick close-ups of the various instruments and machines used, representing increasingly experimental (think mad-scientist) procedures in excruciating detail, without sacrificing the sense of elapsed time. Dir. Frederick Wiseman, 1974, 16mm, 105 min.
PRIVATE PROPERTY
1960, Cinelicious, 79 min, USA, Dir: Leslie Stevens
Future “The Outer Limits” creator Leslie Stevens made this subversive examination of gender roles on a minuscule budget; denied MPAA approval due to its controversial subject matter, it vanished for decades until this new restoration. A pair of drifters – the devious Duke (Corey Allen) and slow-witted Boots (Warren Oates) – follows a beautiful young woman (Kate Manx) from a gas station to her Hollywood hills home in the hopes of seducing her. Menace is never far from the surface in this prescient drama, strikingly shot in B&W by noir specialist Ted McCord.
QUEEN OF THE UNDERGROUND: THE FILMS OF SARAH JACOBSON
Before leaving this world all too soon at age 32, Sarah Jacobson left an indelible mark on underground filmmaking as an outspoken feminist proponent of the D.I.Y. ethos. A student of George Kuchar’s unbridled non-conformist enthusiasm, she had the freshly xeroxed news from the underground to back up her 8mm manifestos. Armed with soundtracks featuring the likes of Mudhoney and Heavens to Betsy, Jacobson took her subversive films on the road, producing and promoting them with the help of her cool mom and a network of punk zine tape traders. Her debut, I Was A Teenage Serial Killer, is a raw, angry 19-year-old’s rebel yell for feminist vengeance that gender-flips the slasher movie script with bristling vitality. Her feature, Mary Jane’s Not A Virgin Anymore, visits the world of a punk rock movie theater to tell the story of an intellectual young woman’s sexual awakening. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to push popcorn with a rogue’s gallery of punks, drunks, poseurs, collector freaks and future best friends, or even if you have, this is your movie. Justly praised by Roger Ebert and Kim Gordon alike, these films are more than just totally 90’s time capsules, they’re also the ultimate cinematic retort to every condescending straight white catcalling male slob you’ve ever gotten mixed up with.
I Was A Teenage Serial Killer, dir. Sarah Jacobson, 1992, 16mm, 27min.
Mary Jane’s Not A Virgin Anymore, dir. Sarah Jacobson, 1997, 16mm, 98min.
Raising Bertie
The inexorable changing of the seasons, beautifully shot by cinematographer Jon Stuyvesant, lends a poetic undercurrent to director Margaret Byrne’s intensely personal six-year portrait of three young African American boys growing into adulthood in rural Bertie County, North Carolina. All students at The Hive, an alternative school for struggling kids, until its funding gets cut, Byrne’s subjects fight to define themselves and build futures in an environment where opportunities are hard to find. DCP, color, 100 min. (2016) DIR: Margaret Byrne. In-person: Margaret Byrne.
Preceded by:
* Trick Bag (1974) Bringing their cameras to parks, street corners, factory gates and homes around Chicago, Kartemquin filmmakers sound the state of race relations in the city in this remarkable document that reverberates into the contemporary moment. 16mm, b/w, 21 min. DIR: Kartemquin Films, Rising Up Angry, Columbia College.
RAW FORCE
1982, Vinegar Syndrome, 86 min, USA, Dir: Edward D. Murphy
When members of the Burbank Kung Fu club go on a jaunt to a mysterious tropical island, they enter what can only be described as an outrageous episode of “Gilligan's Island” concocted on psychedelic drugs. Now Burbank's finest must push their skills to the limit against a horde of zombified martial arts masters, gun-toting white slave traders and a strange cult of monks. RAW FORCE is an action-packed exploitation film tour de force slathered in madness and gore. Discussion following with director Edward D. Murphy.
Raza
Adapted from a novel by Francisco Franco (writing under a pseudonym) and produced with the support of the state apparatus without acknowledging Franco's authorship, this film illustrates the experiences of a Galician family whose divided loyalties are finally aligned with the Nationalists as Franco rises to power. Adapted after 1945 for a new release with Fascist elements replaced by anti-communist ones, this original version was long thought lost, but can now be appreciated as the ultimate ideological appeal by the new government to Nationalist sentiment. 35mm, b/w, in Spanish with English subtitles, 113 min. DIR: José Luis Sáenz de Heredia. SCR: J.L. Sáenz de Heredia, Antonio Román. CAST: Alfredo Mayo, Ana Mariscal, José Nieto. (Spain, 1941)
RIDE LONESOME
1959, Sony Repertory, 73 min, USA, Dir: Budd Boetticher
Shot in CinemaScope, this complex, poetic revenge tragedy stars Randolph Scott as a sheriff turned bounty hunter, using a young desperado to flush out his murderous older brother. Scott’s final act of absolution at the hanging tree ranks with John Wayne’s last moments in THE SEARCHERS. With Pernell Roberts and James Coburn.
7 MEN FROM NOW
1956, Batjac Prod., 78 min, USA, Dir: Budd Boetticher
The first of the Randolph Scott Westerns (and Budd Boetticher’s personal favorite of all his movies), the legendary 7 MEN FROM NOW was long thought to be a lost film – until it was restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, with the cooperation of producer John Wayne’s son, Michael. And what a rediscovery it is: Scott stars as a tight-lipped sheriff relentlessly hunting the men who killed his wife, while fending off distractions from lovely Gail Russell and loquacious bandito Lee Marvin.
SHOT! THE PSYCHO-SPIRITUAL MANTRA OF ROCK
SHOT! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock is an odyssey into the colorful and bohemian tales of rock ‘n’ roll’s history. A cinematic adventure that delves deep into the mind of one of rock’s greatest living photographers: Mick Rock. Told through the poignant lens of rock ‘n’ roll mythology, icon-maker, psychedelic explorer, poet and custodian of dreams, Mick Rock navigates his story from the glam rock shimmer of London to the snarl of NYC punk, and deep into the new millennium. Dir. Barnaby Clay, 2016, DCP, 95 min. Q&A Moderated by Michael Des Barres
SIDEMEN: LONG ROAD TO GLORY
Sidemen : Long Road To Glory is an intimate look at the lives and legacies of three legendary bluesmen; piano player Pinetop Perkins, drummer Willie ‘Big Eyes’ Smith and guitarist Hubert Sumlin, all Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf sidemen. The film captures some of the last interviews and final live performances, before their deaths in 2011. The historic live shows are accompanied by performances and personal insights from many of the blues and rock stars these legendary musicians inspired including; Bonnie Raitt, Gregg Allman, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Tim Reynolds, Shemekia Copeland, Robby Krieger, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Joe Perry, Joe Bonamassa and Johnny Winter. Dir. Scott Rosenbaum, 2016, DCP, 77 min.
SO THIS IS PARIS
A glittering social satire staged safely abroad, So This Is Paris passes off the routine infidelities of Jazz Age blue-bloods as “the French way.” Teasing the audience with urbane good humor—and featuring a nigh-surrealist montage of an “artist’s ball” (read: nightclub) that superimposes throngs of dancing legs and arms into a proto-psychedelic rendering of a really good champagne high—this silent doesn’t shy away from wanton hedonism. Lubitsch is a master of glamour and subtlety, with Wilde’s edged wit, and the ability to stack a dozen ironies on top of one another in five seconds flat. Lurid details are suggested by the simple presence of a man’s cane in the wrong woman’s home, or, not so subtly, in a long string of vulgar insults (to a police officer) left conspicuously missing from the intertitles. Dir Ernst Lubitsch, 1926, 35mm, 80 min. Featuring live accompaniment by Cliff Retallick!
The Spanish Civil War in Hearst Newsreels 1936-1939
From UCLA Film & Television Archive's vast collection of Hearst Metrotone newsreels comes this selection of five issues showing the progress of the Spanish Civil War, along with contemporaneous world events. Among the images seen are refugees desperately fleeing to France, insurgents struggling for control of the Andalusian stronghold of Malaga and the 1937 bombing of Guernica. 35mm, b/w, approx. 45 min.
Screening:
* Latest Films of Spain's Civil War (1936)
* No Holiday for Death in Madrid (1937)
* Spain's Holy City Laid in Ruins (1937)
* Franco Presses Greatest Drive to End Spanish War (1938)
* The Fall of Barcelona (1939)
The Spanish Earth (Hemingway Narration)
Orson Welles' narration of the original version of The Spanish Earth (1937), considered too emphatic by the film's producers, led to the organization of this first release version narrated by Ernest Hemingway. Minor changes were made to the spoken text; also the removal of praise for the Popular Front, which at the time of its formation included factions that went against Moscow's orthodoxy. 16mm, b/w, 53 min. DIR: Joris Ivens. (1937)
The Spanish Earth (Welles Narration)
The documentaries made during the Spanish Civil War were essential to publicize the international dimension of the conflict. The Spanish Earth, filmed from an embedded position in the conflict by Joris Ivens as an initiative of the Communist Party, was finished in a number of versions. In the first of these, shown here, Orson Welles served as narrator of the original text by Ernest Hemingway. 35mm, b/w, 53 min. DIR: Joris Ivens. (1937)
STANLEY KUBRICK'S BOXES
A few years after his death, the widow of Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) asks Jon Ronson to look through the contents of about 1,000 boxes of meticulously sorted materials Kubrick left. Ronson finds that most contain materials reflecting work Kubrick did after the release of "Barry Lyndon " in 1975, when Kubrick's film output slowed down. Ronson finds audition tapes for "Full Metal Jacket," photographs to find the right hat for "Clockwork Orange" or the right doorway for "Eyes Wide Shut" -- thousands of details that went into Kubrick's meticulous approach. Ronson believes that the boxes show "the rhythm of genius." Interviews with family, staff, and friends are included. Dir. Jon Ronson, 2008.
THE STORY OF A CHEAT
LA ROMAN D’UN TRICHEUR
1936, Janus Films, 81 min, France, Dir: Sacha Guitry
Writer-director Sacha Guitry also stars in this witty and unusual comedy, playing a man who learns from an early age that honesty is not always the best policy. In a device reused in KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS, this scoundrel revisits his life with voiceover narration as he writes his memoirs, covering his career as a jewel thief, cardsharp and would-be assassin of Czar Nicholas II.
Strangers When We Meet
A pas-de-deux of lonely suburban souls, Strangers When We Meet pairs a successful, married architect (Kirk Douglas) with an attractive married neighbor (Kim Novak), both misunderstood by their spouses. They begin a furtive affair, around which discussions of fulfillment, forgiveness, authenticity and desire grow like tendrils. Modern in its attitudes, the film also develops a theme of disaffection and world-weariness worthy of Douglas Sirk. 35mm, color, 117 min. DIR: Richard Quine. SCR: Evan Hunter. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Kim Novak, Ernie Kovacs, Barbara Rush. (1960)
SUGAR HILL
The “witch” at hand here is Marki Bey as Diana Hill, aka Sugar Hill, a glam, white jumpsuit-clad voodoo queen, out to seek revenge for her lover’s murder at the hands of a band of sleazy and racist goons. The gangsters get what Sugar decides they deserve, with the help of the voodoo lord of the dead, Baron Samedi, and his zombie army made up the preserved bodies of former slaves brought over from Guinea. This blaxploitation flick hits all the right notes, equal parts cutting and creepy, and a forest-set “reawakening of the zombies” scene that simply cannot be beat. Dir Paul Maslansky, 1974, 35mm, 91 min. Director Paul Maslansky in person!
SYL JOHNSON: ANY WAY THE WIND BLOWS
Fans of 1960s R&B music know Syl Johnson as an influential African-American artist who cut under-appreciated classics like “Come On Sock It To Me” and “Is It Because I’m Black.” Despite enormous talent and a dynamic stage presence, mainstream success never happened for Syl. He drifted into obscurity while his smooth, sexy-voiced rival Al Green (“Let’s Stay Together”) zoomed to stardom. Syl eventually quit music and opened a chain of fast-food fish restaurants after disco crushed the memory of soul. Story over, right? Not so fast. Payback’s a bitch, and Syl—a righteously aggrieved curmudgeon—took his revenge in a most satisfying way. The opening seconds of his 1967 song “Different Strokes”—primal grunts over a stark drumbeat with Minnie Riperton’s laughter swirling overhead—became one of the most sampled breakbeats in hip-hop, and Syl turned into a litigation machine. And he was a natural! Syl got so much money from RZA and the Wu-Tang Clan that he now calls his home “The House That Wu Built.” While he chased down more people to sue, a new generation of fans discovered his classic records through the reissue record label Numero Group, and Syl’s on-stage career was reborn. With a funky, energetic soundtrack, an original score by Yo La Tengo, and interviews with hip-hop icons RZA, Prince Paul, Jazzy Jay, and Peanut Butter Wolf, this documentary is a buoyant and satisfying celebration of an unsung legend who stuck around around long enough to finally enjoy his redemption. Dir. Robert Hatch-Miller, 2015, DCP, 85 min.
Taylor Chain I: A Story in a Union Local
The down-and-dirty politics and persuasion of a labor dispute take center stage in this brutally honest document of a seven-week strike at a chain manufacturing plant in Indiana. Digital Video, b/w, 34 min. DIR: Jerry Blumenthal, Gordon Quinn. (1980)
Taylor Chain II: A Story of Collective Bargaining
Three years after they first visited the workers at Taylor Chain, Kartemquin filmmakers returned to find the factory’s future increasingly uncertain and tensions high as a radically reduced workforce begins talks with a new management team. Digital Video, color, 31 min. DIR: Jerry Blumenthal, Gordon Quinn. (1983)
THE THIRD PART OF THE NIGHT
Emerging right out of the gate with a debut as emotionally potent and stylistically inventive as any of his dazzling later works, Andrzej Zulawski’s masterful fever dream The Third Part of the Night is an elliptical wonder on par with the most mind-stretching intellectual Moebius strips of Tarkovsky and David Lynch. Based on the real-life experiences of Zulawski’s father during the Nazi occupation of Poland, the film follows a fugitive who, after witnessing the murder of his wife and child, is hurled into a life that literally is not his own. Littered with trapdoors, doubles, and wormholes, Zulawski creates a cinematic world on the verge of collapse, where doppelgangers and dread abound alongside the true untold story of a Nazi vaccine laboratory, where Jews and members of the resistance were “employed” as feeders for parasites infected with typhus (thus protecting them from persecution). It’s a history that’s mind-bogglingly fascinating on its own; in Zulawski’s hands, it’s one of the most unique war films ever created. Dir. Andrzej Zulawski, 1971, DCP, 105 min.
TICKET TO WRITE: THE GOLDEN AGE OF ROCK MUSIC JOURNALISM
“We were rock stars!” explains former Creem editor Jaan Uhelszki. From 1966-81, music magazines gave counter culture its literary wit—and the writers were as flamboyant as the rock stars. Music critics like Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer, Ben Fong-Torres, Gene Sculatti, Sandy Pearlman, Susan Whitall, Bill Holdship, and Sylvie Simmons developed followings of thousands of music listeners who loyally read their writing in the pages of Crawdaddy, Rolling Stone, Creem, Circus, Hit Parader, Trouser Press, New York Rocker, Who Put the Bomp, Mojo and countless other zines, alt-weeklies, and student rags. However, when MTV emerged in 1981, the magazines saw their market share collapse as America shifted from print media to cable television—young people wanted their MTV. Follow the rise and fall of the rock n’ roll magazine! Dir. Raul Sandelin, 2016, Digital Presentation, 85 min. Q&A with filmmakers and rock journalist guest panel!
TITICUT FOLLIES
The first feature-length effort by lawyer-turned-documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, Titicut Follies is a cinéma-vérité portrait of the appalling patient conditions inside Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, a correctional institution in Massachusetts. Over the course of 29 days–what would become the typical amount of time for the filmmaker to spend in each of the American institutions he depicted over the course of his 50 years of filmmaking–Wiseman and his synchronized-sound 16mm camera unflinchingly capture the unsanitary living environment and basic human rights violations nakedly unfolding before him. Banned upon its 1967 release due to questions of ethics and patients’ rights, Titicut never shies away from the painful, harsh realities of existence inside a mental institution, marking newcomer Wiseman almost instantly as the quintessential observational filmmaker of contemporary institutional life in America. 35mm Restoration courtesy of the Library of Congress. Dir Frederick Wiseman, 1967, 35mm, 84 min. Frederick Wiseman in person (8/27 screening only)
TOUGH GUYS
Old-time hoods Harry Doyle (Burt Lancaster) and Archie Long (Kirk Douglas) are released from prison after serving a thirty-year sentence for train robbery. Finding a disorienting world on the outside, and one decidedly inhospitable to older people, they do what the situation (and the genre) demand and begin planning their next heist, in this buoyant reunion of two charismatic stars. 35mm, color, 103 min. DIR: Jeff Kanew. SCR: James Orr, Jim Cruickshank. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Charles Durning, Dana Carvey. (1986)
TROUBLE IN PARADISE
1932, Paramount, 83 min, Dir: Ernst Lubitsch
In this classic by director Ernst Lubitsch, posh European thief Gaston Monescu (Herbert Marshall) meets his match and the love of his life in Lily (Miriam Hopkins), a pickpocket who disguises herself as a countess. The mischievous duo find work with the lovely Mariet Colet (Kay Francis), owner of the Colet perfumery, and Gaston assumes the position of her secretary, Monsieur Leval. When gossip begins to spread that Mariet is being stolen away from previous suitors by a charming “M. Leval,” Gaston must choose between the two beautiful women in his life.
THE TRUTH
(LA VERITÉ)
1960, Sony Repertory, 130 min, France/Italy, Dir: Henri-Georges Clouzot
Brigitte Bardot tops her amazing work with Godard and Vadim in this scorching portrait of amour fou. She stars as Dominique, a hedonistic free spirit on trial for the murder of her lover, musician Sami Frey. Clouzot breaks ground in his fearless look at private insecurities, revealing what supposedly constitutes a “sordid” lifestyle, and why it is so threatening to bourgeois society. Co-written by Clouzot and his wife, Véra (star of DIABOLIQUE). Winner of the 1961 Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. In French with English subtitles.
Two Weeks in Another Town
Jack Andrus (Kirk Douglas) is a washed-up actor whose reckless living effectively ended his career. Summoned to Rome by Maurice Kruger (Edward G. Robinson), his onetime director and friend, Jack is unenthused about the opportunity to coach actors in dubbing films to English. But when Kruger is taken ill and Jack is given the opportunity to direct, he comes alive, stepping up creatively, and taking time to experience integrity, friendship and love. 35mm, color, 107 min. DIR: Vincente Minnelli. SCR: Charles Schnee. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Edward G. Robinson, Daliah Lavi, George Hamilton. (1962)
UGLY, DIRTY AND BAD
BRUTTI, SPORCHI E CATTIV
1976, Film Movement, 115 min, Italy, Dir: Ettore Scola
Ettore Scola earned a Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival for this tragicomic portrait of a very dysfunctional family. Patriarch/slumlord Giacinto Mazzatella (Nino Manfredi) lives in a Roman ghetto, sharing a tiny shack with a legion of relatives. Giacinto has money from an accident settlement, but doesn’t share it with his family; when he starts spending it on a prostitute, his wife and sons plot against him. This gleefully offensive film was also released as DOWN AND DIRTY. In Italian with English subtitles.
Under the Sun of Satan
For the film that would win him the Palme d’Or at Cannes, director Maurice Pialat adapted a novel by Bernanos—an author more famously filmed twice by Bresson. The result is a fearless, beautiful, intense film about a priest (Gérard Depardieu), haunted by doubts and dogged by Satan as he struggles to the save the soul of Sandrine Bonnaire’s country waif, a girl both desired and despised, and a murderer, who is always shot in a golden light. 35mm, color, in French with English subtitles, 97 min. DIR: Maurice Pialat. SCR: Maurice Pialat. CAST: Gérard Depardieu, Sandrine Bonnaire, Maurice Pialat. (France, 1987)
VALI
The lone documentary inclusion in our ALL OF THEM WITCHES series, Vali is also perhaps the rarest, receiving only limited theatrical distribution on the occasional arthouse screen and a brief home release from Mystic Fire Video in the ‘80s. Underground filmmaking couple Sheldon and Diane Rochlin took their 16mm camera deep into the woods along Italy’s Amalfi coast into the forest home of Vali Myers, an Australian expat and practicing artist, dancer and general Western counter-cultural muse, who was an acknowledged inspiration to a young Patti Smith and patronized by tastemaker and The Paris Review founder and editor, George Plimpton. A distinct and autonomous entity even for bohemian types, Vali’s unique brand of mystic spiritualism has her engaging in esoteric rituals and magic spells before the Rochlins’s camera, which captures her dynamic movements with impressionistic cinematography as pure and magical as the psychedelic Witch of Positano herself. Sheldon’s graceful, lilting lensing and the duo’s playful editing highlight the magical properties of natural color and light, reinforcing the self-expression to which Vali’s lifestyle so beautifully subscribes. Dir. Sheldon Rochlin, 1967, Digital Presentation, 65 min.
Van Gogh
Director Maurice Pialat himself abandoned painting for lack of funds but he approaches van Gogh (Jacques Dutronc) without pity, as an artist who is part of and apart from a true and bustling world. Pialat takes up his story during the last two months of van Gogh’s life. Only after the artist's suicide do we see these days as a winding down, quiet irascibility as fearsome weariness. 35mm, color, in French with English subtitles, 158 min. DIR: Maurice Pialat. CAST: Jacques Dutronc, Alexandra London, Bernard Le Coq. (France, 1991)
VIOLENT COP
1989, Film Movement, 103 min, Japan, Dir: Takeshi Kitano
Originally a TV comedian, “Beat” Takeshi Kitano defied expectations to make his directorial debut with this tough-as-nails crime drama. He stars as Azuma, a police detective notorious for roughing up suspects, whose ruthless tactics become indistinguishable from those of the gangster he pursues after his sister is kidnapped by yakuza. VIOLENT COP showcases the spare shooting style, nihilistic worldview and deadpan humor that have made Kitano one of Japan’s most revered contemporary filmmakers. In Japanese with English subtitles.
VISION QUEST: THE FILMS OF TANGERINE DREAM
For almost 50 years, German electronic voyagers Tangerine Dream have generated a thick, uncompromising, beguiling mist of non-stop rhythm and sound. After film director William Friedkin used their impossibly cool work as the soundtrack to 1977’s “Sorcerer,” the band created for Hollywood a seismic array of priceless instrumentals across the Eighties -- including scores for “Thief,” “Risky Business,” “The Keep,” “Firestarter,” “Vision Quest,” and “Legend.” Tonight, we give thanks to these intrepid synth trailblazers with a video tour through their starkly brilliant body of film work, followed by a secret 16mm screening of one of their choicest genre film selections. DJ sets before and after the show from the Restless Nites crew!
WITCH'S CRADLE
Join us for an encore screening of our Witch’s Brew mixtape–a rare and archival cauldron of incantations and ephemera–featuring Maya Deren’s Witch’s Cradle with a live score by Tonos (Elaine Carey from Telecaves).