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

thu. jan. 1

tell no one, a girl cut in two @ new beverly theatre
a night at the opera, animal crackers @ aero theatre


fri. jan. 2

tell no one, a girl cut in two @ new beverly theatre
raiders of the lost ark MIDNIGHT @ nuart
the adventures of baron munchausen MIDNIGHT @ fairfax regency
the poseidon adventure (1972) @ egyptian theatre
mr. smith goes to washington, meet john doe @ aero theatre


sat. jan. 3

tell no one, a girl cut in two @ new beverly theatre
future kill MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
earthquake @ egyptian theatre
monty python and the holy grail, life of brian @ aero theatre


sun. jan. 4

vera cruz, a fistful of dollars @ new beverly theatre
the hindenburg @ egyptian theatre
last stop 174 @ aero theatre


mon. jan. 5

vera cruz, a fistful of dollars @ new beverly theatre
foot village, bipolar bear @ the smell


tue. jan. 6

i love maria, return of the demon @ new beverly theatre


wed. jan. 7

venice west & the la scene, brush with life @ 7 dudley cinema
the baader-meinhof complex @ aero theatre
tom verlaine & jimmp rip: music for experimental film 8 PM, 10:15 PM @ silent movie theatre


thu. jan. 8

murmur of the heart, the fire within @ new beverly theatre
everlasting moments, waltz with bashir @ aero theatre
wholpin no. 7 dvd release party 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


fri. jan. 9

murmur of the heart, the fire within @ new beverly theatre
alien MIDNIGHT @ nuart
the towering inferno @ egyptian theatre
i've loved you so long, gomorrah @ aero theatre
jon brion @ largo
everlasting moments @ lacma
10 rillington place, the boston strangler @ silent movie theatre
paprika MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theatre
fear and loathing in las vegas MIDNIGHT @ fairfax regency


sat. jan. 10

the china syndrome @ egyptian theatre
here is your life @ lacma
elegy @ aero theatre
film ist 7 PM @ silent movie theatre
return to oz 10 PM @ silent movie theatre
saccharine trust @ highland park american legion post


sun. jan. 11

for a few dollars more, the good the bad and the ugly @ new beverly theatre
black sunday @ egyptian theatre
the last movie, backtrack @ aero theatre
brakhage on brakhage 7 PM @ spielberg theatre @ egyptian theatre


mon. jan. 12

for a few dollars more, the good the bad and the ugly @ new beverly theatre
bob odenkirk @ largo


tue. jan. 13

for a few dollars more, the good the bad and the ugly @ new beverly theatre
jerry beck presents juvenile mindrot: inappropriate and disturbing kids' cartoons 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


wed. jan. 14

badlands, the sugarland express @ new beverly theatre
berlin: symphony of a city 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
nels cline singers @ largo


thu. jan. 15

badlands, the sugarland express @ new beverly theatre
monks: the transatlantic feedback 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


fri. jan. 16

badlands, the sugarland express @ new beverly theatre
one week 8 PM, the kid brother @ orpheum theatre
jawbreaker MIDNIGHT @ nuart theatre
the magnificent seven @ egyptian theatre
jules and jim, two english girls @ aero theatre
the emigrants @ lacma
jon brion @ largo
vengeance is mine 7:15 PM, the todd killings @ silent movie theatre
belladonna of sadness MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theatre
chuck dukowski sextet, jack brewer reunion band @ the smell
brightblack morning light @ brookdale lodge, santa cruz


sat. jan. 17

wooden shjips, autolux @ henry fonda
conan the barbarian, deathstalker ii, yor the hunter from the future @ new beverly theatre
the four orphans, his nibs, while new york sleeps @ ucla film archive
gunfight at the o.k. corral, hour of the gun @ egyptian theatre
the 400 blows, antoine and collette, stolen kisses @ aero theatre
the new land @ lacma
phantom of the operator @ silent movie theatre
mondo kiddo 10 PM @ silent movie theatre
aziz ansari @ largo


sun. jan. 18

jcvd, double impact @ new beverly theatre
the emperor jones, paradise in harlem @ ucla film archive
bad day at black rock, the law and jake wade @ egyptian theatre
shoot the piano player, the last metro @ aero theatre
the five minutes game: vhs r.i.p. edition + m.l.k. weekend bbq 6 PM @ silent movie theatre


mon. jan. 19

jcvd, double impact @ new beverly theatre


tue. jan. 20

dr. black mr. hyde, TBA @ new beverly theatre


wed. jan. 21

the last picture show, what's up doc? @ new beverly theatre
essential visual music: rare classics FREE @ ucla film archive
confidentially yours @ aero theatre
the man with a movie camera 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


thu. jan. 22

the last picture show, what's up doc? @ new beverly theatre
in cold blood @ egyptian theatre
north by northwest @ aero theatre
1960s garage mix night 8 PM, cracking the egg: the untold story of the nightcrawlers @ silent movie theatre
they always say that time changes things... 7 PM @ hammer museum


fri. jan. 23

the iron horse @ getty center
paper moon, mask (director's cut) @ new beverly theatre
the friends of eddie coyle, bring me the head of alfredo garcia @ egyptian theatre
the man who knew too much, to catch a thief @ aero theatre
in cold blood 7:15 PM, star 80 @ silent movie theatre
jon brion @ largo
jay reatard @ echoplex


sat. jan. 24

the big trail 4 PM @ getty center
red river @ getty center
paper moon, mask (director's cut) @ new beverly theatre
targets MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
freebie and the bean, hickey & boggs @ egyptian theatre
rebecca, notorious @ aero theatre
something wicked this way comes 2 PM, the wonderful ice cream suit @ warner grand theatre
bill morrison shorts @ silent movie theatre
the peanut butter solution 10 PM @ silent movie theatre
bipolar bear @ mr t's bowl
distributed gallery opening @ telic arts exchange


sun. jan. 25

north by northwest, to have and have not @ new beverly theatre
play it as it lays, puzzle of a downfall child @ egyptian theatre
rear window, dial m for murder @ aero theatre
neil hamburger @ spaceland


mon. jan. 26

north by northwest, to have and have not @ new beverly theatre


tue. jan. 27

north by northwest, to have and have not @ new beverly theatre
t.v. tuesday: true crime edition 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


wed. jan. 28

touch of evil, rio brave @ new beverly theatre
psycho, the birds @ aero theatre
a page of madness 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


thu. jan. 29

touch of evil, rio brave @ new beverly theatre
the sterile cuckoo, the swimmer @ egyptian theatre
i confess, stage fright @ aero theatre
riot on sunset strip 8 PM, bummer @ silent movie theatre


fri. jan. 30

once upon a time in the west @ getty center
high sierra, gaslight @ new beverly theatre
zaza, the green goddess @ ucla film archive
f.t.a., coming home @ egyptian theatre
westworld, jurassic park the lost world @ aero theatre
the murderers are among us @ lacma
in those days 9:15 PM @ lacma
the secret life: jeffrey dahmer, deranged @ silent movie theatre
dangerous men MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theatre
jon brion @ largo
abe vigoda FREE @ tv books @ space 1520
thee cormans, the jinxes FREE @ blue star diner


sat. jan. 31

high sierra, gaslight @ new beverly theatre
basic instinct MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
bad day at black rock 4 PM @ getty center
patton oswalt @ largo
pat garrett and billy the kid @ getty center
lonely tunes of tehran @ ucla film archive
secret ceremony, deep end @ egyptian theatre
mad max, the road warrior, mad max beyond thunderdome @ aero theatre
a foreign affair @ lacma
berlin express 9:40 PM @ lacma
an evening with the prelinger archives @ silent movie theatre
lost in the desert 10 PM @ silent movie theatre


sun. feb. 1

trouble the water, up the yangtze @ new beverly theatre
one third of a nation 7 PM, cuore d'emigrante @ ucla film archive
calvin johnson @ the smell


mon. feb. 2

trouble the water, up the yangtze @ new beverly theatre
among the clouds @ ucla film archive


tue. feb. 3

trouble the water, up the yangtze @ new beverly theatre
ninotchka 1 PM @ lacma
the cocoa screenings: founding fathers of found footage films 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


wed. feb. 4

patti smith dream of life, the nomi song @ new beverly theatre
john o'keefe's adaptation of walt whitman's song of myself 7 PM, lowell blues: the words of jack kerouac, polis is this: charles olson and the persistence of place @ 7 dudley cinema
when a man loves 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


thu. feb. 5

patti smith dream of life, the nomi song @ new beverly theatre


fri. feb. 6

the fortune cookie, one two three @ new beverly theatre
the devils MIDNIGHT @ nuart theatre
berlin--schönhauser corner @ lacma
the second track 9 PM @ lacma
laura, vertigo @ silent movie theatre


sat. feb. 7

the fortune cookie, one two three @ new beverly theatre
crime without passion, back door to heaven @ ucla film archive
lola @ lacma
east side story 9:30 PM @ lacma
the thin man 6:30 PM, after the thin man @ silent movie theatre


sun. feb. 8

the decameron, arabian nights @ new beverly theatre
a light in the fog 7 PM @ ucla film archive
family books presents... TBA 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


mon. feb. 9

the decameron, arabian nights @ new beverly theatre
the blood spattered bride MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theatre


tue. feb. 10

ebony ivory and jade, the muthers @ new beverly theatre


wed. feb. 11

harold and maude, electric dreams @ new beverly theatre
unforgiven @ ucla film archive
wild orchids 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


thu. feb. 12

harold and maude, electric dreams @ new beverly theatre
breaker morant @ ucla film archive


fri. feb. 13

the umbrellas of cherbourg, amelie @ new beverly theatre
se7en MIDNIGHT @ nuart theatre
the song of sparrows @ ucla film archive
katzelmacher @ lacma
even dwarfs started small 9:10 PM @ lacma
mad love 8 PM, el @ silent movie theatre
vampyres MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theatre


sat. feb. 14

the umbrellas of cherbourg, amelie @ new beverly theatre
she's out of control MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
the third generation @ lacma
not reconciled 9:30 PM @ lacma
seventh heaven 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


wed. feb. 18

the brothers bloom, dirty rotten scoundrels @ new beverly theatre
broken blossoms @ silent movie theatre
2 blessed 2 b stressed @ silent movie theatre


thu. feb. 19

the brothers bloom, dirty rotten scoundrels @ new beverly theatre


fri. feb. 20

house of games, the spanish prisoner @ new beverly theatre
ghostbusters MIDNIGHT @ nuart theatre
yesterday girl @ lacma
the all-around reduced personality 9:10 PM @ lacma
deep end, that cold day in the park @ silent movie theatre
the velvet vampire MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theatre
thurston moore, dead machines @ the smell
okmoniks, jinxes, etc @ real boss hoss twist dance party @ mr t's bowl


sat. feb. 21

house of games, the spanish prisoner @ new beverly theatre
foxes MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
escape from east berlin @ lacma
funeral in berlin 9:15 PM @ lacma
another thin man 6:30 PM, shadow of the thin man @ silent movie theatre
mark & the escorts, the ambertones, baci galoopis, thee cormans, etc @ real boss hoss blow out @ van nuys elks lodge


sun. feb. 22

the sting, the man who would be king @ new beverly theatre


mon. feb. 23

the sting, the man who would be king @ new beverly theatre


tue. feb. 24

penitentiary 2, petey wheatstraw the devil's son-in-law @ new beverly theatre


wed. feb. 25

f for fake, 8 1/2 @ new beverly theatre
black on black FREE @ ucla james bridges theatre
the godless girl 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


thu. feb. 26

f for fake, 8 1/2 @ new beverly theatre


fri. feb. 27

the lady eve, the adventures of baron munchausen @ new beverly theatre
nightwing MIDNIGHT @ nuart theatre
takahiro iimura: film poems 1960-70s @ ucla film archive
the story of adele h. 8 PM, remember my name @ silent movie theatre
daughters of darkness MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theatre


sat. feb. 28

the lady eve, the adventures of baron munchausen @ new beverly theatre
bruce conner's explosive cinema: a tribute part i FREE @ ucla film archive
the thin man goes home 6:30 PM, song of the thin man @ silent movie theatre


fri. mar. 13

nosferatu MIDNIGHT @ nuart theatre


sat. mar. 14

smegma with john wiese @ the smell
dan auerbach @ el rey


thu. mar. 26

the mae shi, foot village @ the smell


wed. apr. 15

black lips @ detroit bar



WHAT IT IS:




THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN
Terry Gilliam revives the tall tales of the 17th century German adventurer. John Neville has the title role and little Sarah Polley is his brave assistant as he travels to the Moon and back to save a besieged city. With Eric Idle, Oliver Reed, Uma Thurman, Jonathan Pryce, and Robin Williams as the King of the Moon.


After The Thin Man
After the Thin Man finds the couple sucked into another odd caper while visiting Nora's hilariously aristocratic family on New Year's. Is cousin Thelma a crazed murderess? All family members are shuffled into the same room to find out... Dir. W. S. Van Dyke, 1936, 35mm, 113 min.


The All-Around Reduced Personality (Die allseitig reduzierte Persönlichkeit)
W. Germany/1977/b&w/98 min./16mm | Scr/dir: Helke Sander; w/ Helke Sander, Beate Kopp, Eva Gagel, Frank Burckner.
Sander’s autobiographical film about three days in the fractured life of a single mother and photojournalist with “her feet on the ground and her head in the clouds” is rich in images of the divided city.


AMONG THE CLOUDS
(2008, Iran) Directed by Rouhollah Hejazi
At a checkpoint on the Iran-Iraq border, 16-year-old Malek earns extra money pushing luggage for tourists and religious pilgrims. When he innocently woos a young woman who crosses frequently, Malek finds himself caught up in a criminal conspiracy spanning both countries. For this genre-bending teen romance-come-international thriller, director Hejazi won best debut feature at the Fajr Film Festival.
Producer: Saeeid Saadi. Screenplay: Mohammad Reza Gohari. Cinematographer: Farshad Mohammadi. Cast: Elnaz Shakerdoost, Younes Ghazali, Reza Mokhtari, Malek Seraj. Presented in Persian and Arabic dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 83 min.


Another Thin Man
1939's entry in the "Thin Man" series adds an unexpected element to the misadventures of everyone's favorite lushes; new arrival Nicky Jr. joins Nick, Nora, and genius terrier Asta as they vacation in Long Island at the fabulous estate of high-society geezer/arms manufacturer Colonel Burr MacFay. When the Colonel turns up deader than a lobster in butter sauce, all suspect his blackmailer--but Nick and Nora swig their way to the truth, thanks to a well-stocked bar in the parlor. Dir. W. S. Van Dyke, 1939, 35mm, 103 min.


Antoine and Collette
1962, Janus Films, 32 min. Dir. Francois Truffaut. In this second appearance of Truffaut’s alter ego, Antoine Doinel, Antoine (Jean-Pierre Leaud) is now a teenager on the verge of his first love affair -- an affair that will begin his lifetime of restless searching for romance. Originally part of the omnibus film LOVE AT TWENTY, this short more than stands on its own and serves as an essential chapter in the Doinel saga.


Arabian Nights
Pasolini's final film of his Trilogy of Life, Arabian Nights is a carnal comic tale following the adventures of a slave girl, Pelligrini, as she rises to power. "Rich, romantic and magnificent! Its graphic sex scenes, which have a dreamy kind of beauty to them, are erotic without being pornographic" (Vincent Canby).


THE BAADER-MEINHOF COMPLEX (DER BAADER-MEINHOF KOMPLEX) 2008, Germany, 149 minutes. Dir. Uli Edel. This high-paced thriller traces the history of the Red Army Faction (RAF), a movement that is believed to have killed more than 30 public figures in an attempt to crush West German capitalism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Moritz Bleibtreu (RUN LOLA RUN) stars as Andreas Baader alongside Martina Gedeck (THE LIVES OF OTHERS) as Ulrike Meinhof, who together are fighting a violent war against what they perceive as the new face of fascism: American imperialism supported by the German establishment (and tainted with a Nazi-ridden past). The one man who understands them is also their hunter: the head of the German police force Horst Herold, played by Bruno Ganz (DOWNFALL, WINGS OF DESIRE). While he proceeds in his relentless pursuit of the young terrorists, he knows he's only dealing with the tip of the iceberg. Discussion following with director Uli Edel and writer/producer Bernd Eichinger.


BACK DOOR TO HEAVEN
(1939) Directed by William K. Howard
Part film noir, part French poetic realism, this low-budget and fatalistic but emotionally affecting account of a delinquent's criminal career (and the hard knocks of poverty) was renegade director Howard's bitter response to the strictures and conventions of the Hollywood studio system.
Screenplay: John Bright, Robert Tasker. Cinematographer: Hal Mohr. Editor: Jack Murray. Cast: Wallace Ford, Patricia Ellis, Aline MacMahon, Jimmy Lydon, Anita Magee. 35mm, 85 min.


BACKTRACK (aka CATCH FIRE), 1990, Easy Rider Productions, 98 min. Dir. Dennis Hopper. Artist Ann Benton (Jodie Foster) witnesses a mob hit and goes on the run after spotting one of the gangsters (Dean Stockwell) at the police station. Mob assassin Dennis Hopper is sent after her, but he becomes more and more fascinated by his prey as he learns more about her life and art. One of Hopper’s many excursions into film noir territory, and quite possibly the best. Director’s Cut!


BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK
Bad Day at Black Rock (1955). Directed by John Sturges.
The western genre can be a beautiful thing: at once it can be the setting for the hero, the bad guy, and the horse, or it can be a film which uses western signifiers and settings as allegory for the social circumstances of the day. Here Sturges brilliantly utilized western tropes—the one-armed stranger vs. the town of hostile ruffians—as an allegory for the blacklist blazing through 1950s Hollywood.


Badlands
Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek star in a story based on the 1950's murder spree across the Midwestern plains by Charlie Starkweather and his 15-year-old girlfriend, Carol Fugate. A chilling insight into the cold-hearted mind of the sociopath in one of the most stunning directorial debuts in the American cinema. The film, writes British critic Robin Wood, "produces a subtle, idiosyncratic balance between engagement and detachment, complicity and horror."


Belladonna Of Sadness
With a style that seems to meld Chuck Jones and Ralph Bakshi into a big sexual, violent crucible, director Eiichi Yamamoto widens the palette of the Shojo Manga genre (a manga variation popular with young girls) with Belladonna of Sadness, a ravishing hallucinatory fable alluding to both women's lib and sexual liberation. Based on Jules Michelet’s work of non-fiction “Satanism and Witchcraft”, it’s about a woman who is raped, and thusly accused of deviousness and witchery. Utilizing styles from watercolor-rendered bucolic scenes to zonked pyrotechnics (imagine an "Electric Company" cartoon shot up with LSD), the action flows fluidly from one extraordinary, poetic composition to another. Flowers form into vaginas, open wounds take flight like blood red bats, and jazz keyboardist Masahiko Satoh’s outstanding psych funk fusion soundtrack propels this remarkable mosaic. Though this film was a commercial failure at the time of its release, it inspired a whole generation of Japanese animators and filmmakers to further push the envelope both stylistically and thematically.
Dir. Eiichi Yamamoto, 1973, digital presentation, 89 min.


Berlin: Symphony Of A City (w/ live score TBA)
French poet Charles Baudelaire famously theorized the flaneur, or urban vagabond "who walks the city in order to experience it". L.A.'s decentralized sprawl makes life difficult for the flaneur, which is perhaps why we are thankful for films like Berlin: Symphony of a Great City. A vast, restless celebration of urban life in Weimar Germany, Walter Ruttman's masterwork is perhaps the most poetic of the great "City Symphony" films--it feels like it was edited with a glass of wine and a notebook, not a flatbed and a pair of scissors. Unfolding in five acts, Berlin's documentary depictions of work, transportation, relaxation, and night life teem with life and photographic creativity. Ruttman's fluid editing pairs the dynamic pace of modern life with the bottomless curiosity of the wide-eyed observer. It's as much as a love song as a symphony.
Dir. Walter Ruttman, 1927, digital presentation, 65 min.


Berlin Express
USA/1948/b&w/86 min. | Scr: Harold Medford; dir: Jacques Tourneur; w/ Robert Ryan, Merle Oberon, Paul Lukas.
In this thinly veiled paean to Allied cooperation, an American officer teams up with a French secretary, a Russian lieutenant and a British officer to rescue a champion of the peace movement from the Nazis. The film is most notable for Lucien Ballard's stark cinematography of the ruins of Frankfurt.


Berlin—Schönhauser Corner (Berlin—Ecke Schönhauser)
GDR/1957/b&w/81min. | Scr: Gerhard Klein, Wolfgang Kohlhaase; dir: Gerhard Klein; w/ Ekkehard Schall, Ilse Pagé, Ernst-Georg Schwill.
This classic teen cult film, viewed with suspicion by cultural authorities, was instantly embraced by the East German public for its truthful portrayal of the political and economic divisions affecting the entire population. “The sensation of 1957…successfully combined aspects of Italian neorealism with Hollywood juvenile-delinquency flicks.”—J. Hoberman, Village Voice.


THE BIG TRAIL
The Big Trail (1930). Directed by Raoul Walsh. Walsh and cinematographer Arthur Edeson create a riveting tale of pioneers crossing the Oregon Trail with the help of trapper John Wayne whose incredible visage, physique, and presence announce him in his debut as a major star.


Bill Morrison Shorts
The forgotten becomes unforgettable in the exquisite 35mm shorts of justly celebrated filmmaker Bill Morrison, known for his groundbreaking feature Decasia. Resisting the lures of kitsch, nostalgia and winking sarcasm, Morrison's found footage films could be described as seances or invocations, playing on the idea of the motion picture as a kind of spiritual lost-and-found. Works like Light is Calling and The Mesmerist, which draw from damaged nitrate prints, let time perform its own commentary on the image. The Highwater Trilogy, a response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, looks at the representation of disaster through beautifully scarred archival clips. In these hauntological shadowplays, figures vanish into the flood of history, only to reemerge as ghostly apparitions and unreal visions. Also on the program are The Film Of Her and Outerborough.
Dir. Bill Morrison, 1996-2006, 35mm, 120 min.


BLACK ON BLACK (KNXT, 7/18/1968)
(1968)
Broadcast during the tension-filled summer of 1968, "Black on Black" gave African-American residents of South Central Los Angeles a chance to speak for themselves about their lives, without narrator, host, reporter, script or commercial interruption. One critic called the award-winning show, "the best documentary ever made on what it feels like to be black and live in the urban ghetto."
Preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive
In Person: Joe Saltzman, Dan Gingold, Dr. Darnell M. Hunt.
Please note: This screening will be held at the James Bridges Theater on the UCLA campus.
Executive Producer: Dan Gingold. Producer: Joe Saltzman. Cinematographer: Jack Leppart. Editor: Robert Heitmann. Beta-SP, 90 min.


BLACK SUNDAY, 1977, Paramount, 143 min. Director John Frankenheimer (THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, THE TRAIN), collaborating with screenwriter Ernest Lehman, adapts the novel by Thomas Harris (SILENCE OF THE LAMBS) into a taut suspense thriller. Israeli agent Robert Shaw is on the trail of Marthe Keller, a Black September terrorist operative intent on manipulating deranged Vietnam vet Bruce Dern into piloting the Goodyear blimp in a plot to kill thousands during the Miami Super Bowl. Fritz Weaver (DEMON SEED) is Shaw’s American FBI liaison. "You simply haven't lived until you've seen the innocuous Goodyear blimp turned into an instrument of death." – Christopher Null, Filmcritic.com; "…an intelligent and meticulous depiction of an act of outlandish terrorism…a well-plotted, well-executed countdown to potential mass disaster. The motivations of stars Robert Shaw, as an Israeli guerrilla, Black September activist Marthe Keller and mentally unbalanced pilot Bruce Dern are handled with unusual dramatic depth which displays the gray areas of real life." -- Variety.


The Blood Spattered Bride
The title alone made this Spanish entry into the '70s lesbian vampire craze an instant grindhouse favorite, but its beautiful, heady imagery and visceral nastiness established this one of the most brutal adaptations of J. Sheridan LeFanu's oft-filmed "Carmilla" (vampyro lesbo template extraordinaire). Susan, an unstable young bride, hallucinates rape attacks while her chauvinist husband is out of the hotel room. Ditching the lodging, the unhappy couple ends up at an ancestral home connected to the husband, and Susan has violent dreams involving a strange woman in white--Mircalla, who turns up in the bosomy flesh not long after. Repelled by her husband's macho demands, Susan falls under Mircalla's spell and embarks on a spree of bloody mayhem. Whether viewed as an audacious feminist parable or sick macho trash, it's overflowing with spurting gore and full frontal, and is a fascinating horror fantasy that moves at a speedy clip all the way to its queasy, unforgettable final shot.
Dir. Vicente Aranda, 1972, 35mm, 100 min.


The Boston Strangler
If Rillington's single-case chamber piece is the micro view of serial killers, then Fleischer's earlier, stylish The Boston Strangler takes the macro view, casting its net across a legion of cases, making the entire city of Boston a central character. The film's excessive detail and adherence to the facts (as reported at the time) set the template for the realistic cop/crime films of the '70s, and it stands out as the oft-imitated prototype of the modern serial killer film. Dir. Richard Flesicher, 1968, 35mm, 116 min.


BREAKER MORANT
(1980, Australia) Directed by Bruce Beresford
This classic of Australia cinema is fresh as ever with its searing depiction of soldiers caught up in the changing rules of "a new kind of war." Cinematographer Donald McAlpine, on his sixth outing with director Bruce Beresford, leaned on his background in documentary filmmaking to craft the natural lighting for the story of three Australian lieutenants charged with murdering prisoners during The Boer War.
In person: Donald McAlpine, ASC, ACS
Based on on the play by Kenneth G. Ross. Producer: Matt Carroll. Screenplay: Jonathan Hardy, David Stevens, Bruce Beresford. Cinematographer: Donald McAlpine. Cast: Edward Woodward, Jack Thompson, John Waters, Bryan Brown. 35mm, approx. 107 min.


Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
Warren Oates stars in this underrated film by Sam Peckinpah, as a seedy piano player south of the border who knows the location of the notorious Alfredo Garcia--the man who deflowered the daughter of a wealthy patron. Expect a high body count and excellent character studies from a cast that includes Gig Young, Robert Webber, Isela Vega, Emilio Fernandez and Kris Kristofferson as a mean biker.


Broken Blossoms
D.W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms, aka The Yellow Man and the Girl, adapted from Thomas Burke's "The Chink and the Child"(!), kicks off its brutally strange tale by casting Richard Barthelmess as Chinese immigrant Cheng Huan, a missionary living in London's seediest district, whose hopes of spreading Buddhism are lost when he develops an opium addiction. Enter the always-astonishing Lillian Gish, a delicate sylph incapable of extracting herself from a home in which she is routinely beaten unconscious by her father, who's an amateur boxer and professional wretch. To say these lovers are star-crossed is a hysterical understatement--though the tragedy of their impossible love is acknowledged with surprising sensitivity by Griffith, who many claim offered this film to audiences as an apology for his frightening portrayal of racial intolerance in Birth of a Nation. Remarkably poetic intertitles complement the on-screen insanity.
Dir. D.W. Griffith, 1919, 35mm, 90 min.


THE BROTHERS BLOOM
The Brothers Bloom are the best con men in the world, swindling millionaires with complex scenarios of lust and intrigue. Now they've decided to take on one last job - showing a beautiful and eccentric heiress the time of her life with a romantic adventure that takes them around the world.


BRUCE CONNER'S EXPLOSIVE CINEMA: A TRIBUTE, PART I
Influential maestro of found-footage, Bruce Conner (1933-2008) was often described as the father of MTV-style editing--his reply:"Don't blame me!" An artist of explosive intensity and enigmatic allure, Conner was legendary for his multivalent mastery of assemblage, drawing, collage and film. At once voluptuous and razor-edged, Conner's compact, cinematic bombs are an inspired mix of heartfelt meditation and tragicomic political satire.
"Bruce Conner's ecstatic films were at once salvage projects and assertions of individuality in an increasingly anonymous age. They are generally a blast--witty, exuberant, despairing, engaged, apocalyptic." --The New York Times
The Archive, REDCAT, and Los Angeles Film Forum team up in this memorial tribute encompassing Conner's major body of film work over the past 50 years. Longtime friend and co-conspirator Dennis Hopper will be on hand to introduce the programs, along with guest of honor, Jean Conner.
Admission to the Wilder program is free. Priority Seating available for Cineclub Members.
In person: Dennis Hopper, Jean Conner.
All films Directed/Edited/Photographed by Bruce Conner.


BRUSH WITH LIFE -The Art Of Being Edward Biberman ('07, 83m) Jeff Kaufman's (in person) portrait of Biberman, who was the first and foremost delineator of Southern California's urban landscape in the medium of painting. Brother of writer-producer Herbert, great heart and one of the Hollywood Ten, Edward's talent led him on an artistic ody ssey from Paris and Berlin in the 20s, to New York, New Mexico, and then to the "cultural wasteland" of 1930s Los Angeles. Portrait painter to the stars (Joan Crawford and Lena Horne among them), muralist (Venice Post Office) in the time of Rivera, friend of Paul Robeson, Frida Kahlo, Isamu Noguchi, Alexander Calder, Georgia O'Keefe, Martha Graham a nd Dashiell Hammett, Biberman was also a social activ ist in concert with the love of his life, Sonia Dahl-Biberman, who, along with her husband's paintings, invests this wonderful film with its vibrant spirit.


BUMMER
Going toe-to-toe on the madness tip is Bummer!, which thoroughly lives up to its title. "The Group", a scrungy go-nowhere L.A. band, features a fat, ugly drunken bassist named Butz who's got more in common with De Sade than Dee Dee Ramone. Enjoy! Dir. William Allen Castleman, 1973, 35mm, 90 min.


THE CHINA SYNDROME, 1979, Sony Repertory, 122 min. Dir. James Bridges. "Today, only a handful of people know what it means... Soon you will know," warned the ominous tagline. TV reporter Jane Fonda, eager to do something other than puff pieces, covers a routine story at a nuclear power plant with cameraman Michael Douglas. While talking to operations manager Jack Lemmon, the pair witness a near-miss crisis that could have resulted in a catastrophic meltdown. The company powers-that-be immediately try to cover it up, but soon even true believer Lemmon is having serious doubts about the safety of the plant. Fonda and Douglas race against time to prevent a full-scale nuclear cataclysm, trying to get Lemmon’s story on the air before the nuclear plant owners can take lethal action against them. "…smashingly effective… as topical as this morning's weather report, as full of threat of hellfire as an old-fashioned Sunday sermon and as bright and shiny and new-looking as the fanciest science-fiction film…the film makes a compelling case based on man's not-so-rare predisposition to cut corners, to take the easy way out, to make a fast buck, to be lazy about responsibility and to be awed by the authority representing vested interests…There is suspense almost from the film's start…and it builds without much letup until the finale." – Vincent Canby, The New York Times


The Cocoa Screenings: Founding Fathers of Found Footage Films
The modern world is thoroughly converted to the validity of using "found" media as one's medium, from hip-hop sampling and teenagers on YouTube to art galleries and museums. But fifty years ago, this was not commonplace. The pioneers of perverting other people's intellectual property invented a whole new art form, recontextualizing through montage, creating new significance that lied dormant in otherwise neutral footage. In the bourgeoning days of Pop Art, these spiritual descendants of Duchamp and his readymades found a new language of cinema through creative theft. Besides, why hustle to raise the bread to buy raw film stock, or to go to deepest Africa, or to restage the Hindenburg explosion--when there's all this glorious discarded footage in the garbage bins behind the processing lab? For this calendar's "Cocoa Screening", we've programmed an assemblage of ground-breaking found footage films that'll tour you through some of the earliest artifacts of this now ubiqitous art form.


COMING HOME
Jane Fonda, Jon Voight and Bruce Dern star in a powerful drama about the effects of the Vietnam War on the home front. Fonda falls in love with a disabled vet (Voight) while husband Dern is fighting overseas. Voight and Fonda won Academy Awards for their performances and the screenplay was also so honored. Good supporting work by Penelope Milford and Robert Carradine.


CONAN THE BARBARIAN
(from IMDB)
A barbarian trained in the arts of war joins with thieves in a quest to solve the riddle of steel and find the sorcerer responsible for the genocide of his people in this faithful adaptation of Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery adventures. This film briefly sparked a wave of fantasy films including the sequel, Conan the Destroyer, in the early 80s.


CONFIDENTIALLY YOURS (VIVEMENT DIMANCHE!), 1983, Janus Films, 110 min. In Francois Truffaut’s delightfully entertaining tribute to Hitchcock, a businessman (Jean-Louis Trintingnant) is wrongly accused of murder, and while he goes on the lam his secretary (Fanny Ardant) tries to find the real killer. Gorgeous black-and-white photography by Nestor Almendros and a witty screenplay (by Truffaut and frequent collaborators Suzanne Schiffman and Jean Aurel, adapting hardboiled American writer Charles Williams’ The Long Saturday Night) make this one of the director’s most enjoyable efforts. Film critic Kevin Thomas will introduce the screening.


CRIME WITHOUT PASSION
(1934) Directed by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
A fierce New York defense lawyer (Rains) becomes entangled in his own bizarre romantic machinations after he concocts a scheme to dump his current flame, a Mexican nightclub singer, for a society woman. The first, and best, of Hecht and MacArthur's notorious series of Astoria productions, Crime Without Passion features stunning montage sequences by Slavko Vorkapich depicting mythical female"Furies" who attack wrong-doers.
Screenwriter: Charles MacArthur, Ben Hecht. Cinematographer: Lee Garmes. Editor: Arthur Ellis. Cast: Claude Rains, Margo , Whitney Bourne, Stanley Ridges, Leslie Adams. 35mm, 72 min.


CUORE D'EMIGRANTE
(a.k.a. Santa Lucia Luntana)
(1932) Directed by Harold Godsoe
Buffeted by the effects of gangsterism and jazz, a family confronts the consequences of their immigration to America. Cuore D'emigrante is notable in that it presents a different, rarely seen example of an ethnic or "race" film (in addition to Jewish and African-American productions), produced in Fort Lee, New Jersey for Italian-American audiences.
Producer: Angelo De Vito. Screenplay: Orazio Cammi. Cinematographer: Frank Zucker. Cast: Carlo Renard, Yolanda Carluccio, Rafaelo Bougini. Presented in Italian and English dialogue. 35mm, 59 min.


Dangerous Men
Forgot Troll 2, forget the filmography of Ed Wood, forget even The Visitor--Dangerous Men is the holiest of all Holyfuckingshits. Trying to describe this film to those who haven't seen it is a nearly pointless exercise--even director John S. Rad himself relied on a cacophony of mixed adjectives in his great tagline "An unforgettable comedy suspense, mystery drama" (not our comma). In its initial mysterious one-week L.A. theatrical run, in which it was booked into EIGHT theaters in the same arthouse chain, this inexplicable-in-every-way film was viewed by literally about 50 people. These intrepid viewers, whenever they run into each other at a party or BBQ, will swap stories like veterans of a great war battle, eagerly recounting practically every scene in the picture in minute detail to each other, in no particular order of awesomeness, savoring every memory. Just for you (and us), we've plucked the film from the clutches of oblivion to give to you one of the most singularly unique movie experiences you've had in years, so that you too may join the cult, and find yourself muttering the code words "Dangerous Men" to strangers.
Dir. John S. Rad, 2005, 35mm, 80 min.


Daughters of Darkness
Surrealist Belgian director Harry Kumel conjures up a dark, magical brew spilling over with haunting imagery and chimeric plot twists. This kinky fairy tale revolves around ethereal vampiress Delphine Seyrig (Last Year at Marienbad), whose world-weary persona resembles Marlene Dietrich after lingering in a sarcophagus a few years too many. Recently married Stefan (Dark Shadows’ John Karlen) and wife Valerie find themselves staying at a deserted, off-season hotel along with the traveling Countess Elizabeth Bathory (Seyrig) and her beautiful sapphic companion. Soon Bathory sets her sights on seducing Valerie away from her brutal, belt-whipping husband, who has more than a few nasty skeletons tucked away in his closet. Intoxicatingly erotic, haunting, creepy, and even hilarious, this ravishing mixture of art house elegance and blood-spraying horror is like no other; at the very least, you’ll never look at a glass punchbowl the same way again.
Dir. Harry Kumel, 1971, 35mm, 87 min.


DEATHSTALKER II
(from IMDB)
Deathstalker helps Reena the Seer out of a few jams, and she solicits his help for a bigger task. She reveals that she is actually Princess Evie, but the evil sorcerer had her abducted and cloned in order to seize control of the kingdom. Together they travel to the evil sorcerer's stronghold to restore the princess to her rightful position, encountering challenges along the way both from the sorcerer's goons and the fierce Amazon women.


The Decameron
The first part of Pasolini's "trilogy of life" (followed by The Canterbury Tales and Arabian Nights) is based on the ribald tales of Boccaccio, which deal with human sensuality and artistic creation. Pasolini has refashioned the 100 tales into a collection of 11 sketches that are at the same time erotic, political, humorous and autobiographical. Pasolini himself appears in the role of the painter Giotto.


DEEP END
We travel to mod London for Deep End, where teenage bathhouse attendant John Moulder-Brown learns more than he's ready for from older co-worker Jane Asher, all the while backed by music from Cat Stevens and Can. Director Jerzy Skowlimowski plays things for laughs in the beginning, as the precocious boy hits the highs and lows of puberty, but things grow darker as Asher takes the boy's affections for granted, and he in turn can't properly process adult sexuality. A kind of disturbing anti-Harold and Maude, the rarely seen Deep End deserves cult status. Dir. Jerzy Skowlimowski, 1970, 35mm, 88 min.


Deranged
The twisted little B-movie gem Deranged, AIP's version of the Ed Gein story (who was inspiration for horror movies as varied as Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Dirs. Jeff Gillen & Alan Ormsby, 1974, 35mm, 82 min.


THE DEVILS
Oliver Reed is Father Grandier, accused of sorcery by the half-mad nuns of the fortified city of Loudun; Vanessa Redgrave is Sister Jeanne of the Angels, whose own sexual obsession triggers the ferocious events that follow. Ken Russell's controversial masterpiece is based on Aldous Huxley's book. NOT ON DVD


DR. BLACK, MR. HYDE
(from IMDB)
An African-American scientist develops a formula to regenerate dying liver cells, but it has the unfortunate after-effect of turning him into an albino vampire with a mania for killing prostitutes. A tough police lieutenant investigating the murders discovers the existence of the dual-personality killer, and determines to bring him in.


DOUBLE IMPACT
(from IMDB)
Jean Claude Van Damme plays a dual role as Alex and Chad, twins separated at the death of their parents. Chad is raised by a family retainer in Paris, Alex becomes a petty crook in Hong Kong. Seeing a picture of Alex, Chad rejoins him and convinces him that his rival in Hong Kong is also the man who killed their parents. Alex is suspicious of Chad, especially when it comes to his girlfriend.


EARTHQUAKE, 1974, Universal, 123 min. It’s almost a given that 90% of big-budget disaster films begin with a complicated network of soap opera subplots involving scores of characters, and director Mark Robson (VALLEY OF THE DOLLS) makes no exception. He spins a spectacularly entertaining guilty-pleasure yarn of Los Angeles denizens trapped by a high-magnitude earthquake, with Charlton Heston as a construction engineer trying to deal with his boozy, jealous wife, Ava Gardner, whose father (Lorne Greene of TV’s "Bonanza") just happens to be his boss, while walking a tightrope with his mistress, widow Genevieve Bujold. Meanwhile, maverick cop George Kennedy may quit the force, and lecherous grocery store manager Marjoe Gortner has the hots for Victoria Principal (of TV’s "Dallas") whose brother Gabriel Dell is the assistant to hot-shot motorcycle stunt rider Richard Roundtree (SHAFT). Then the earthquake hits! With Barry Sullivan, Lloyd Nolan and Walter Matthau in a surprising cameo. "…maximum mayhem and on that score EARTHQUAKE really delivers. The Oscar-winning visual effects still impress 25 years on and the specially developed 'Sensurround' works a real treat..." -- Almar Haflidason, BBC (U.K.) Introduction to the screening by a surprise guest speaker. In Sensurround!


East Side Story
France/W. Germany/1997/color/78 min. | Scr: Andrew Horn, Dana Ranga; dir: Dana Ranga
This entertaining documentary follows the socialist musical from the propagandistic folk operas of post revolutionary Soviet Union to the widescreen films of the sixties in which East German students sing the praises of communism while beach-blanket-bingoing at the Baltic Sea.


EBONY, IVORY AND JADE
(from IMDB)
An American track team has just arrived in The Philippines for an international competition. Among the competitors are Ginger and Pam, nicknamed "Ivory" and "Ebony", who meet up with another friend, Jackie, nicknamed "Jade". After they arrive at their hotel, a gang of thugs kidnaps them, along with some other girls from the team. To get away, the trio are going to have to use all their fighting skills.


8 1/2
Fellini's great autobiographical masterpiece is an audacious account of a film director during the course of making a film, finding himself trapped by his fears and insecurities. Continually inventive, with the performance of a lifetime from Marcello Mastroianni as Guido, the director. Also starring Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimee, Sandra Milo, and Barbara Steele. "8 1/2 somehow coalesces for me, in many ways, the essence of cinema" (Terry Gilliam).


El
Luis Buñuel's clinically precise study of an older gentleman's dizzying descent into sexual paranoia. As the film's May-December romance dissolves over the husband's hallucinations of his wife's infidelity, Buñuel provides an endless wicked undercurrent of satiric jabs at machismo and Catholic repression. One of Buñuel's most perverse explorations of perversity. Dir. Luis Bunuel, 1953, digital presentation, 90 min.


ELECTRIC DREAMS
The story of a young man who falls in love with his beautiful upstairs neighbor. The only problem is that his computer shares his taste in women, and will do anything to have her to "himself."


ELEGY, 2008, Samuel Goldwyn Films, 108 min. In Isabel Coixet’s visually assured and deeply observant adaptation of Philip Roth's The Dying Animal, a celebrated college professor (Ben Kingsley) meets a young woman (Penelope Cruz) whose beauty both ravishes and destabilizes him. As their intimate connection transforms them -- more than either could imagine -- a charged sexual contest evolves into an indelible love story. In a superb supporting turn, Dennis Hopper provides Kingsley's professor with both a best friend and a doppelganger, a man whose life has been defined by a search for carnal pleasure. Discussion following with Dennis Hopper.


The Emigrants (Utvandrarna)
1971/color/191 min. | Scr: Bengt Forslund, Jan Troell; dir: Jan Troell; w/ Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Eddie Axberg.
One of the great works of seventies world cinema, this two-part film depicts the arduous journey of a group of Swedish farmers, among them Karl and Kristina Nilsson (von Sydow and Ullmann, in her favorite role) to the promised land of Minnesota. Based on Upon a Good Land, the best-selling series of Swedish novels by Vilhelm Moberg, the film led Pauline Kael to write that she “never felt more at home with film characters.… I repeatedly wept and rejoiced.” Nominated for five Academy Awards including Picture, Director, Actress and Foreign Language Film (twice).


THE EMPEROR JONES
(1933) Directed by Dudley Murphy
This controversial adaptation of O'Neill's play focuses on Brutus Jones, an enterprising railway porter who becomes the brutal ruler of a Caribbean island. The film was one of the first modern independent features, but suffered heavy cuts from the censors within weeks of its release. The bulk of those dialogue cuts have now been restored by The Library of Congress.
Based on the play by Eugene O'Neill. Screenplay: Du Bose Heyward. Cinematographer: Ernest Haller. Cast: Paul Robeson, Dudley Digges, Frank Wilson. 35mm, 80 min.


Escape from East Berlin
USA/1962/b&w/94 min. | Scr: Gabrielle Upton, Peter Berneis, Millard Lampell; dir: Robert Siodmak; w/ Don Murray, Christine Kaufmann.
Directed by Hollywood film noir master Siodmak (The Killers, The Spiral Staircase) who returned to his native Germany in the mid-fifties, Escape was inspired by a true story about twenty-nine East Germans who fled Communist rule by tunneling under the Berlin Wall. With its emphasis on suspense over politics and its topical setting, the film was a success with US audiences.


ESSENTIAL VISUAL MUSIC: RARE CLASSICS
UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Center for Visual Music (CVM) are pleased to present this program of rarely screened films from the CVM collection. This evening features a range of works, from experiments by German film pioneers to light show psychedelia, and highlights the evolving technology and artistic sophistication of visual music and experimental animation. Several of the works in the show were designed to be used in performance contexts, light shows and other expanded forms of cinema, often with independent musical accompaniment. Accordingly, one of the themes that emerges from this program is a dialogue between structure and spontaneity in visual music. A number of the films were made in Southern California, and include early experiments in computer graphics from UCLA in the 1960s and Cal Arts in the 1970s. Many of the prints in this show represent recent preservation work by CVM.
A discussion with filmmakers Michael Scroggins, David Lebrun and Peter Mays will follow.


Even Dwarfs Started Small (Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen)
W. Germany/1970/b&w/96 min. /16mm | Scr/dir: Werner Herzog; w/ Helmut Döring, Paul Glauer, Gisela Hertwig.
In Herzog’s shocking allegory, cast entirely with dwarves and midgets and shot on the tropical island of Lanzarote, the inmates of a correctional institute revolt. “The anarchist uprising is a beautiful negation of bourgeois values, sometimes savage, but usually compassionate and amusing.”—Time Out.


An Evening With The Prelinger Archives
Beginning in the 1980s traveling around the U.S. in a van and visiting local schools, public libraries and private collectors, archivist Rick Prelinger accumulated perhaps the country’s largest collection of “ephemeral” works – industrial and sponsored films, home movies, educational films and commercials, and more. Over the years his Prelinger Archives has amassed a cult following, part of which is due to the magnetic personality of Prelinger himself, who finds ways to contextualize the films in his collection that are evocative and inspiring. Tonight we offer one such evocative presentation from Prelinger, who will discuss the life and work of Jamison “Jam” Handy, who produced almost 7,000 sponsored industrial and commercial films during his lifetime, including the “Roads to Romance” series promoting tourism by car, the “American Look” series on 1950s design and architecture, and many more. Select Jam Handy films from the archive will be screened after the presentation.


EVERLASTING MOMENTS (MARIA LARSSONS EVIGA OGONBLICK), 2008, IFC Films, SWEDEN/DENMARK, 131 min. Dir. Jan Troell. Maria (Maria Heiskanen) is a young, working-class woman who happens upon a camera she wins in a lottery in 1907 Sweden. With the help of an older storeowner, she begins to photograph her world, and newfound skill thrusts her on a journey that changes her entire life. The camera lens enables Maria to see the world through new eyes; it also becomes a threat to her nearly alcoholic womanizer of a husband, just as it brings the charming photographer "Piff Paff Puff" into her life. "Swedish master Jan Troell (The Emigrants (1971), for which he was nominated for Academy Awards for both best direction and best adapted screenplay ) has always had a deep understanding of historical currents and how individuals confront them. His heroes have been either drifters, buffeted about by historical currents, or dreamers who found themselves ahead of the cultural curve, railing against their time and, in some cases, nature itself. Set in the early days of the last century, Everlasting Moments has the same epic scope as his previous work, encompassing everything from socialist and evangelical movements to industrialization and urbanization. But it also operates on a far more intimate, human scale. Based on the life of his wife's grandmother, the film is a profoundly personal look at cultural shifts through the history of one family." (Toronto Film Festival) "Production details transport the viewer back a century with utter credibility, and the camerawork makes every second an intense pleasure." - Todd McCarthy, Variety


F FOR FAKE
Orson Welles's "magnificent confidence game, a trick, a seduction and a magic act: a buoyant film about forgery and fakery which, beneath our astonished gaze, explodes into wonderment and guilt" (Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune). Welles's theme of forgery in art focuses on the forger, Elmyr de Hory, as well as Clifford Irving, de Hory's biographer, Howard Hughes, Pablo Picasso and Welles himself. "Alternately superficial and profound, hollow and moving, simple and complex, this film also enlists the services of Oja Kodar, Welles's principal collaborator after the late 60s, as actor, erotic spectacle and co-writer" (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader).


Film Ist
Gustav Deutsch’s Film Ist. may be the perfect “essay film”, a nearly wordless exposition of cinema’s birth, life and potential. Deutsch uses a set of industrial, scientific, educational and silent narrative films to explore the basic properties and abilities of cinema, providing twelve pithy and profound answers to the question, “What is Film?” From the birth of cinema in the laboratory and the fairground sideshow, Film Ist demonstrates cinema’s power to deceive, to document, to illuminate and transform reality, masterfully juxtaposing images of great mystery and comic banality. X-rays, Méliès, slow-motion car crashes, smoke, mirrors and surgeries: the astounding images in this major work of the Austrian avant-garde show both the versatility of the cinema, and Deutsch’s uncanny ability to combine the conceptual and the poetic. With equally brilliant music by Fennesz and other stars of the Vienna experimental electronic scene.
Film Ist., parts 1-6 Dir. Gustav Deutsch, 1998, 16mm, 60 min.
Film Ist., parts 7-12 Dir. Gustav Deutsch, 1998, 35mm, 90 min.


The Fire Within
Louis Malle's painful and devastating portrait of dissolution and self-destruction, The Fire Within captures the final two days of a wealthy French writer while visiting friends upon his release from a mental asylum. Brilliantly scored by Erik Satie, the film has a harsh, bleak beauty and despair. With Maurice Ronet, Lena Skerla, Yvonne Clech, and Hubert Deschamps.


The Five Minutes Game: VHS R.I.P. Edition + M.L.K. Weekend BBQ
On December 22nd, 2008, The Los Angeles Times officially declared the VHS medium as "dead". Groundbreaking news, you interject? Their point was that the very last VHS wholesaler in the country has finally stopped selling pre-recorded tapes--that this moment truly marks the end of an era. In memory of this life-changing medium, we present another installment of The Five Minutes Game. We're firm believers in "Every movie is interesting for at least its first five minutes", those fascinating moments when you're still entering the new world a film presents you, and trying to figure out what the hell's going on. What we're gonna do is choose fifteen movies you've likely never seen before, selected from the decaying ruins of the few remaining mom-n-pop video stores out there (with most, if not all the films unavailable on DVD), line 'em up, and only show you the first five minutes of each, not counting their opening credits. After all that, you, the audience, gets to vote on which film out of the fifteen we all then watch in its entirety. So, bring something to cook on our patio grill, and let's get started!


A Foreign Affair
USA/1948/b&w/116 min. | Scr: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, Richard L. Breen; dir: Billy Wilder; w/ Marlene Dietrich, Jean Arthur, John Lund.
This sardonic comedy about postwar profiteering in Berlin pits a prim congresswoman (Arthur) against a ravishing and pragmatic ex-Nazi chanteuse, a role that Dietrich, the recent recipient of the US Medal of Honor, was reluctant to accept. The finished film, Wilder’s most controversial, was banned in Germany by the Defense Department until 1977 when it premiered to great acclaim.


Foxes
Jodie Foster, Cherie Currie (from legendary '70s all-girl punk band, The Runaways), Marilyn Kagan and Kandice Stroh star as four troubled teens coping with divorce, drugs and alcohol abuse in L.A.'s fast lane. With Scott Baio, Sally Kellerman and Randy Quaid.


The Fortune Cookie
When TV cameraman Jack Lemmon is knocked down at a football game, his shyster lawyer advises him to get all he can out of the fortuitous injury. Walter Matthau won an Oscar for his performance as the conniving legal counsel. With Ron Rich, Cliff Osmond, Judi West and Lurene Tuttle. Biting script by A.L. Diamond and the director.


THE FOUR ORPHANS
(1920) Directed by Gregory La Cava
La Cava directs this raucous two-reeler about a childless couple who borrow a foursome of waifs to impress their rich uncle.
Cinematographer: Charles Gilson. Cast: Raymond McKee, Mary Anderson. 16mm, 20 min.
Musical accompaniment by Michael Mortilla.


FREEBIE AND THE BEAN
(from IMDB)
Freebie and Bean, two San Francisco police detectives, have one goal in life: to bring down Red Meyers, a local hijacking boss. After many fruitless months they finally collect an important piece of evidence. However, before they can get an arrest warrant, they hear the news of the hitman being hired to kill Meyers. Directed by Richard Rush, 1974.


THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE
Eddie Coyle is an aging, low-level gunrunner for the Irish Mob in Boston, Massachusetts. Facing several years in prison for a truck hijacking and hoping for a sentencing recommendation, he informs on a non-mob gun buyer - only to learn that is not enough. Directed by Peter Yates, 1973.


F.T.A.
A documentary about a political troupe headed by actors Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland which traveled to towns near military bases in the US in the early 1970s. The group put on shows called "F.T.A.", which stood for "Fuck the Army", and was aimed at convincing soldiers to voice their opposition to the Vietnam War, which was raging at the time. Various singers, actors and other entertainers performed antiwar songs and skits during the show.


Funeral in Berlin
UK/1966/color/102 min./Panavision | Scr: Evan Jones; dir: Guy Hamilton; w/ Michael Caine, Oskar Homolka.
In this sequel to The Ipcress File, bespectacled antihero Harry Palmer travels to Berlin to oversee the defection of a Soviet intelligence officer. As the double crosses pile up, Goldfinger director Hamilton keeps Caine hopping through such Berlin landmarks as the Kurfürstendamm, the Europa-Centre, the Tiergarten, Kreuzberg, and Checkpoint Charlie.


FUTURE-KILL
With a title that's anything but deceptive, Future-Kill is overflowing with low-budget sci-fi violence. Edwin Neal and Marilyn Burns of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre star as nuke-protesting mutant punks. Burns plays a benevolent freak, and Neal an evil, ironclad, mohawked killer (think Robocop meets Wez from Road Warrior) poetically named Splatter. When prankster frat boys enter the big city in which the mutant activists dwell, the frats are framed for a mutant's murder. The actual killer, Splatter, goes on a murderous rampage in order to kill the Greek brothers before his mutant-on-mutant crime is discovered. Though the story is actually much crazier than can be described, rest assured that prostitutes get killed, someone is tarred-and-feathered, and there's fire.


GASLIGHT
Ingrid Bergman won her first Oscar for her stunning role as a susceptible young woman who marries the suave, romantic Charles Boyer, never suspecting he is involved in a murderous scandal in Cukor's electrifying mystery drama.


A GIRL CUT IN TWO
Claude Chabrol, who should soon be shooting his 70th feature, is at once wildly prolific and utterly faithful — at least to the conventions of the commercial thriller. Darkly droll, his A Girl Cut in Two updates the scandalous case of the celebrated fin de siècle architect Stanford White — shot dead by the jealous young millionaire who married White’s teenage mistress, a showgirl. An old-fashioned cineaste, Chabrol came to the story by way of its 1955 Hollywood version, The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, though he transposes it to contemporary Lyons. Charles, a successful novelist and practiced libertine (played with seasoned suavity by François Berléand), vies with Paul, the young, unstable heir to a pharmaceutical fortune (given a memorable foppish swagger by Benoît Magimel), for the favors of an innocent TV weather girl, Gabrielle (wide-eyed, luscious Ludivine Sagnier). Confident yet vulnerable, Gabrielle falls for the (much) older guy and, in love for the first time, allows herself to be debauched by this veteran roué. Then, after a nasty breakup and an ensuing breakdown, on the rebound, she marries the preening young fool — thus effectively incinerating them all. A Girl Cut in Two is a spry piece of work, and although directed for mordant comedy, the spectacle of a naive, lower-middle-class woman’s misadventures in a nest of wealthy vipers is initially unsettling and ultimately gut-wrenching. (J. Hoberman)


The Godless Girl
Restored 35mm print couresty of UCLA Film And Television Archive
Plagued by electrocutions, fires that resulted in several burn victims and exhaustion-fueled near-drownings, the production of Cecil B. DeMille's final silent film was nearly as fraught with catastrophe as the story it tells. The chaos kicks off with a rivalry between high school clubs--an Atheist society that swears its allegiance on a monkey head (evolution, get it?), and a Christian group that takes its Bible-thumping literally, by pummeling the Athiests into a pulp. When their confrontations lead to a student's death, all are hauled off to juvie (in cute his' and hers' prisons that conveniently neighbor each other), where their brutal torture at the hands of countless sadists forces the groups' leaders, Judy and Bob, to work together--prepare to drop your jaws when crosses get burned into their hands as they touch through an electric fence! The Godless Girl is remembered for its fever pitch, but it's also notable for the fervent fan mail Lina Basquette's performance elicited from Adolf Hitler.
Dir. Cecil B. Demille, 1929, 35mm, 128 min.


GOMORRAH (GOMORRA), 2008, Italy, IFC Films, 137 min. Dir. Matteo Garrone. An epic, mesmerizing tour-de-force based on Robert Saviano’s explosive best-selling mafia expose. As five seemingly unrelated stories unfold, Italy’s infamous Camorra crime family is revealed as the common force brutally dominating over Naples and the lives of its inhabitants. Filmed with gritty realism, it gives an honest and frank depiction of the cycle of crime, refreshingly devoid of sensationalism. A box-office smash in Italy, GOMORRAH was a critical sensation at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prize. It has also won five European Film Awards including Best Film and is the official Italian Oscar selection. With Salvatore Cantalupo. "[Matteo Garrone] tells all this with an unfussy style, with a documentarist’s eye for the authentic, both for people or places, and a dramatist’s urge for the tragic and the universal."- Dave Calhoun, Time Out. Matteo Gorrone will introduce the film.


THE GREEN GODDESS
(1923) Directed by Sidney Olcott
British character actor George Arliss had one of his greatest successes playing the Rajah of Ruhk in this popular melodrama about a group of English travelers taken captive after their plane crashes in a remote mountain kingdom. UCLA has restored the film to its full length and original tints. Filmed at the Bronx Biograph studio.
Preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, with funding from Warner Bros. and the NEA Media Arts Program.
Based on the play by William Archer. Screenplay: Forrest Halsey. Cinematographer: Harry Fischbeck. Cast: George Arliss, Alice Joyce, David Powell, Harry T. Morey, Jetta Goudal. 35mm, silent, 89 min.
Musical accompaniment by Michael Mortilla.


Gunfight at The O.K. Corral
The Earps vs. the Clantons. Two rival factions in the Arizona town of Tombstone decide to settle their differences in public. The Earps are the ones with the badges. With Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp and Kirk Douglas as the tubercular friend Doc Holliday. Also Rhonda Fleming, Earl Holliman, DeForrest Kelly, John Ireland, and Lee Van Cleef.


Here is Your Life (Här har du ditt liv)
1967/color and b&w/167 min. | Scr: Jan Troell, Bengt Forslund; dir: Jan Troell; w/ Eddie Axberg, Gudrun Brost, Ulla Akselson Max von Sydow.
Troell’s debut feature follows a young man as he attempts to escape his rural upbringing in search of self-realization. “Expansive…a statement of intent, reviving the outdoor naturalism through which the classic Swedish cinema of Sjöström and others made its name, but applying a typically sixties sensibility.”—Time Out.


HICKEY & BOGGS
(from IMDB)
Al Hickey (Bill Cosby) and Frank Boggs (Robert Culp) are tired, broke, alcoholic detectives approached by a lawyer (Lou Frizzell) to find his girlfriend who has gone missing. The 'girlfriend' is actually the only living member of a bank holdup crew that stole $400,000 from a Detroit Bank. When Hickey starts to investigate he finds a murdered lead and Boggs discovers evidence that leads to the fact that the bank robbery from years before has a woman sending thousand-dollar bills to fences as an invitation to buy back the $400,000 in stolen money. The woman, Mary Jane, it seems is married to a leader of a Black Panther-like radical group, and is covering up trails to her by killing off loose ends and also trying to find a buyer for the stolen dough. When the lawyer fires Hickey and Boggs, and the Chief of Detectives Papadakis (Vincent Gardenia) starts to pressure the detectives after dead bodies begin showing up, Hickey and Boggs decide to track down the stolen money for the $25,000 reward. Directed by Robert Culp, 1972.


HIGH SIERRA
Humphrey Bogart stars as Roy "Mad Dog" Earle, a kindhearted gangster from Indiana who runs into serious trouble in the scenic mountains of Northern California. With Ida Lupino, Arthur Kennedy, Henry Hull, Barton MacLane, Cornel Wilde and Joan Leslie as the young woman with the clubfoot. Script by John Huston and W.R. Burnett, based on Burnett's novel.


THE HINDENBURG, 1975, Universal, 125 min. Director Robert Wise helmed this film about the Hindenburg conflagration touched off when the German zeppelin landed in Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937. George C. Scott is a conflicted German security officer aboard, Anne Bancroft is a wayward countess, William Atherton (DAY OF THE LOCUST) a possible saboteur, Roy Thinnes (TV’s "The Invaders") a fanatical Gestapo officer and Charles Durning (DOG DAY AFTERNOON) the Hindenburg’s captain. Recipient of two Oscars for Special Achievement in Sound Effects (Peter Berkos) and Visual Effects (Albert Whitlock, Glen Robinson).


HIS NIBS
(1921) Directed by Gregory La Cava
One of Gregory La Cava's first directorial jobs after moving from animation, His Nibs was a major discovery at last year's Pordenone Silent Film Festival. Vaudeville star "Chic" Sale plays multiple roles in this film within a film about a movie screening in a small town.
Preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Screenplay: Arthur Hoerl. Cast: Charles"Chic" Sale, Colleen Moore, Joseph Dowling, J.P. Lockney. 35mm, 59 min.


Hour of the Gun
In this melancholy installment in the Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday saga, James Garner assumes the role of Earp (capably filling in for Burt Lancaster, who played the gunslinger in this film's predecessor, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral). The lawman has weathered with age, and his morally questionable actions aren't as high-minded as they once were. When a local thug (Robert Ryan) kills Earp's brother in cold blood, the hero organizes a posse to avenge the death. Jason Robards plays the wry, cynical doctor with a fondness for rye.


HOUSE OF GAMES
David Mamet's acclaimed first feature film, starring Lindsay Crouse as a famed psychiatrist/author whose work draws her into the dangerous but provocative world of a smooth-talking con man (Joe Mantegna), from which there is no escape. Mamet's flair for streetwise yet poetic dialogue is very much in evidence in this memorable drama of tricks that always outdo the truth.


I LOVE MARIA
(AKA RoboForce)
Lovely songstress Sally Yeh (aka Yeh Ching-Wen) plays an evil superpowered robot, but a mismatched trio of good guys--John Sham Ki-Fan, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Tsui Hark--try to harness her powers for good. With Lam Shing-Ying. Action directed by Ching Siu-tung.


IN COLD BLOOD
Richard Brooks' impeccable 1967 version of In Cold Blood (based upon Truman Capote's pioneering non-fiction novel) sticks unsettlingly close to the particulars of the famous Midwestern murder case it's based on, yet never once gets bogged down by dry court-reporter details. We instead get a humanistic portrait of two dysfunctional losers (Robert Blake and Scott Wilson), their flight from the gruesome scene of the crime, and their glacial stints on Death Row. Conrad Hall's Oscar-nominated pointed cinematography and Quincy Jones' cool-cat jazz score add flames to counterpoint the film's well-done frosty verissimilitude. Dir. Richard Brooks, 1967, 35mm, 134 min.


In Those Days (In jenen Tagen)
Germany/1947/b&w/111 min. | Scr: Helmut Käutner, Ernst Schnabel; dir: Helmut Käutner; w/ Gert E. Schäfer, Erich Schellow, Winnie Markus.
Narrated in seven chapters from the rise of Nazism to the bombed out streets of Berlin, this clever film by one of Germany’s most acclaimed directors portrays a cross-section of average citizens whose lives are linked by their successive ownership of the same car. “A strange and profound beast, a Madame de . . .–style odyssey.. Käutner roams around his tortured homeland hunting for truth. Every sequence is a marvel of melancholy eloquence, and each tale is focused on the characters’ sympathies and devotions to one another.”—Michael Atkinson, Boston Phoenix.


THE IRON HORSE
The Iron Horse (1924). Directed by John Ford.
In his first epic western, Ford tells the story of the creation of the first transcontinental railroad completed in 1869. The film lays the groundwork for the tropes that would always be considered "Fordian": landscape as character, sensitivity to the worker over the businessman, and, above all, a deep sensitivity of how history is turned into myth. Silent with live piano accompaniment.


I'VE LOVED YOU SO LONG (IL Y A LONGTEMPS QUE JE T’AIME), 2008, France, Sony Pictures Classics, 115 min. Dir. Philippe Claudel. Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) has been estranged from her French family for 15 years while in prison for a domestic crime. At her return, her younger sister Lia (Elsa Zylberstein) takes her into the home she shares with her husband Luc, his father, and their adopted Vietnamese daughters. As their lives begin to readjust to each other, Juliette’s family struggles to trust her again. A highly nuanced character study and Philippe Claudel’s directorial debut, I'VE LOVED YOU SO LONG is a film about the strength of women and their capacity to shine forth, reconstruct themselves and be reborn. "Rarely do head and heart coalesce to such sublime effect in film." - Maggie Lee, The Hollywood Reporter. Director Philippe Claudel will introduce the film.


JAWBREAKER
A birthday prank goes terribly wrong when a teenaged girl dies in the trunk of her friends' car. Trying to cover up the disaster, the three popular school girls just dig themselves in deeper. A dark comedy very much in the vein of Heathers, highlighted by a soundtrack of pop/punk ditties. Director Darren Stein & Guests in attendance.


JCVD
Although not a bio-pic per se, the self-reflexive action comedy JCVD derives its title from the initials of its leading man, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and features the 47-year-old action star playing more or less himself in a screwily entertaining farce concocted by French director Mabrouk El Mechri. I first heard about this movie when it screened in the market at this year's Cannes Film Festival, where it earned enthusiastic praise from several discerning colleagues. Now I've caught up with it here in Toronto, and, simply put, it's a blast. Floundering in direct-to-video obscurity and stuck in a messy divorce proceeding, Van Damme walks into a Belgian post office and right into a robbery-in-progress engineered by a trio of incompetent hoods, who proceed to make it look as if the actor himself is the criminal mastermind. A media circus soon ensues. Dog Day Afternoon this isn't, but Mechri keeps things jaunty and energetic, with lots of deft potshots at the vagaries of fame and success. (After bad-mouthing John Woo for failing to cast Van Damme in any films after Hard Target, one of the robbers concedes, “On the other hand, when you see Windtalkers, there's a justice.”) And Van Damme is a pleasure to watch — funny and light on his feet, at once playing it straight and winking at the audience — particularly in a third-act, direct-to-camera, autobiographical monologue that should silence all those who thought that the Muscles From Brussels was all bulk and no brains. -- Scott Foundas


Jerry Beck presents Juvenile Mindrot: Inappropriate and Disturbing Kids' Cartoons
Too violent, too scary, too depressing and no longer suitable for kids! Animation historian Jerry Beck returns with a full program of classic cartoons both no longer shown on television, and not on DVD. Originally made for children, these roasters are no longer appropriate for small fry, whether it's because of the violence, cross dressing, smoking, sexism, or just straight-up bizarre ingredients contained within. If your childhood wasn't already perverted by hours upon hours of unhinged animation, this show will make it up to you. Ultra-rare 16mm and 35mm prints will be screened--bring your kids at your own risk.


JOHN O'KEEFE'S ADAPTATION OF WALT WHITMAN's SONG OF MYSELF ('07, 49m) at 7pm - All too often, filmed theatrical performances are as flat as the screens upon which they are projected. Not so with John O’Keefe’s phenomenal adaptation of Walt Whitman’s lovingly radical and radically loving poem from 1855. A quintet of camera operato rs (including the director, William Farley), don’t merely film one of the most gifted solo performers in the world, they accompany O’Keefe as he celebrates every moment and beat of the poem just as Whitman celebrated every moment and beat of his life. John O’Keefe goes beyond a recitation or interpretation of the poem; he inhabits it.


Katzelmacher
W. Germany/1969/b&w/88 min. | Scr/dir: Rainer Werner Fassbinder; w/ Fassbinder, Harry Baer, Irm Hermann, Hanna Schygulla.
In this early film based on his own Brechtian play, a Greek guest worker (Fassbinder) living in a Munich suburb provokes the xenophobia and violence of his brutish neighbors when he begins dating a local girl.


The Kid Brother
One of Lloyd's most visually elegant pictures. He plays the meek youngest son of a rural sheriff, whose family is accused of stealing town funds. The real culprits are layabouts employed by a traveling medicine show, and it's up to Lloyd to right their wrongs. This picture's fantastic epic chase takes place on a creaky grounded frieghter, as Lloyd and a simian(!) companion track down the heavies at a 45-degree angle.
The Kid Brother Dir. Ted Wilde, 1927, 35mm, 84 min.


THE LADY EVE
Barbara Stanwyck is the cardsharp, Henry Fonda the millionaire scientist who knows more about snakes than about women. Stanwyck and her father hatch a plan to scheme the naive Fonda out of a bundle, but love complicates the matter. "A frivolous masterpiece...full of classic moments and classic lines; it represents the dizzy high point of Sturges' comedy writing" (Pauline Kael).


THE LAST METRO (LE DERNIER METRO), 1980, Janus Films, 131 min. Dir. Francois Truffaut. During the German occupation of Paris, a theater company struggles to produce a new play while its director is forced to hide in the basement, leaving his wife (Catherine Deneuve) to carry on an affair with the new leading man (Gerard Depardieu). This meditation on the ultimate powerlessness of the artist is surprisingly charming given its heavy subject matter, and Deneuve is as elegant and compelling as ever.


THE LAST MOVIE, 1971, Easy Rider Productions, 108 min. Dennis Hopper followed up his EASY RIDER triumph directing this hallucinatory meditation on Hollywood, economic exploitation and pop music. Hopper plays a stuntman working on a film (directed by Sam Fuller, playing himself) on which one of the lead actors has been killed in a stunt accident. When the shoot is over, Hopper remains in Peru and becomes involved in an imaginary movie being shot by local villagers. This premise inspires an audacious series of digressions in which Hopper heads off in search of gold in the mountains and romances a Peruvian woman, with astonishing experimental editing. The iconoclast cast includes Tomas Milian, Kris Kristofferson, Peter Fonda, Julia Adams and John Phillip Law.


LAST STOP 174, 2008, Myriad Pictures, 108 min. Directed by Bruno Barreto, one of Brazil’s most accomplished and prestigious directors (Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Foreign-Language Film in 1998 for FOUR DAYS IN SEPTEMBER), and written by Braulio Mantovani (Academy Award nominee for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2005 for CITY OF GOD), the film tells the tragic saga of a boy in search of a family and a mother in search of her son. Based on a true story, it is a shockingly realistic picture of growing up in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. Young Sandro is both criminal and victim in a world where lies, degradation, corruption and violence are the norm, and where justice is an unreal concept. The cast features young actors from theater groups from the slums of Rio.


Laura
What links Otto Preminger's Laura and Hitchcock's Vertigo is their detective heroes, each falling madly in love with temptresses from beyond the grave. The heroine of Laura (played by Gene Tierney) is a murder victim whose phantom--embodied in her portrait and possession, like the title character in Hitchcock's Rebecca--bewitches the cop trying to solve the case (Dana Andrews). Dir. Otto Preminger, 1944, 35mm, 88 min.


A LIGHT IN THE FOG
(Cheraghi dar meh)
(2008, Iran) Directed by Panahbarkhoda Rezaee
In a mountain village, Rana cares for her ailing father while waiting against hope for the return of her husband who disappeared years before in the Iran-Iraq War. When a local bachelor proposes marriage, Rana must finally confront the depth of her grief. Marked by stunning compositions of fog-shrouded rural landscapes and a meditative pace, A Light in the Fog is a poetic exploration of solitude and loss.
Producer: Mahmoud Fallah. Screenplay: Hossein Saberi. Cinematographer: Ali Muhammad Ghasemi. Editor: Panahbarkhoda Rezaee. Cast: Parivash Nazariyeh, Massoud Heshmat, Behrouz Jalili. 35mm, 75 min.


Lola
W. Germany/1981/color/113 min. | Scr: Pea Fröhlich, Peter Märthesheimer, Rainer Werner Fassbinder; dir: Rainer Werner Fassbinder; w/ Barbara Sukowa, Armin Mueller-Stahl.
In this stylish and cynical look at Germany’s much lauded “economic miracle,” Sukowa gives a brilliant performance as a blonde, social-climbing whore and cabaret performer who seduces the idealistic and newly appointed building commissioner (Mueller-Stahl) of a provincial city circa 1955. Made shortly before Fassbinder’s death, this loose homage to Josef Von Sternberg’s classic The Blue Angel is a diabolic tribute to capitalism. “Here is the work of a major filmmaker in midcareer, at the peak of his form, refining his methods and chancing new ones in the ebullient manner of someone who has decades of work ahead of him.”—Vincent Canby, The New York Times.


LONELY TUNES OF TEHRAN
(Taraneh Tanhaiye Tehran)
(2008, Iran/France) Directed by Saman Salour
This bittersweet comedy centers on a mismatched pair of cousins, the combative Hamid and his cousin Behrooz, a nerve-shattered war vet, who eke out a living installing illegal satellite dishes in Tehran. Director Saman Salour strikes a perfect balance between the poignant and the absurd as Hamid and Behrooz bring the world via satellite to their wealthy customers and find their own dreams forever out of reach.
Producer: Saman Salour. Screenwriter: Saman Salour. Camera: Touraj Aslani. Cast: Behrouz Jalili, Hamid Habibifar, Mojtaba Bitarafan, Mohammad Fassihi, Maryam Sabaghian. Presented in Persian dialogue with English subtitles. DigiBeta, 75 min.


Lost In The Desert
Lost in the Desert (aka Dirkie) is a South African kids' movie sadistic to the point of absurdity, submitting its lone boy protagonist, poor eight-year old Dirkie, to a cavalcade of traumas and tribulations punishing in their accumulation, and positively Christ-like in their extremity. This movie is either the bleakest of godless nightmares, or the blackest, most hilarious comedy made ever concocted--and made for children, no less. Mel Gibson would flinch at what happens to this kid. And, unbelievably, the film was directed by the wee actor's dad. Stranded in the Kalahari without water, Dirkie biblically wanders the desert with his pet terrier where he is harassed by hyenas, repeatedly injured, sleep-deprived, psychologically tortured, and finally left passed out and half-buried in the sand looking like an image from an Arrabal film. Disturbing and relentless right up to its oblique, ambigous and haunting last shot...and, oh, those dead puppies in the sand...dead puppies in the sand...
Dir. Jamie Uys, 1970, 35mm, 90 min.


LOWELL BLUES: THE WORDS OF JACK KEROUAC ('05, 25m) at 8pm - Henry Ferrini fuses visual history, language and jazz to illuminate Kerouac's childhood holy land. With Johnny Depp, David Amram, Robert Creeley, and Lee Konitz. The film interprets how place activates t he writer's imagination, and how the writer's art reshapes his city with reverence and respect.


Mad Love
Peter Lorre revived his signature "M look", the visage of a bug-eyed mini-demon, for Mad Love, a remake of the silent classic The Hands of Orlac. Dr. Gogol (Lorre) is a creepy little man possessed by the image of his favorite theater actress. When she enlists his surgeon skills after her husband loses his hands, Lorre, in convoluted and love-blinded fashion, decides he'll have a better chance with her if he grafts a dead killer's digits onto the man. In addition to Lorre's legendary performance, Mad Love is cited as having a direct visual influence on Citizen Kane. Dir. Karl Freund, 1935, 35mm 68 min.


The Magnificent Seven
Inspired by Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, this western classic has thrilled generations of movie fans with its story of seven gunmen who take on an army of bandits. The action is set against the backdrop of beautiful Mexican scenery. Looking awfully darn cool in their cowboy costumes are Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Eli Wallach, Robert Vaughn, and others. Rousing musical score by Elmer Bernstein.


THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
Grand telling of the Rudyard Kipling classic adventure story of two soldiers of fortune in 19th century India, who set out to conquer lands and make themselves king. Sean Connery and Michael Caine are brilliantly cast.


The Man With The Movie Camera (w/ live score TBA)
The Man with a Movie Camera is the kind of movie that turns cinephiles into cinemaniacs. A kaleidoscope of visual possibilities, a feast of energy and ideas, Dziga Vertov's everything-including-the-kitchen-sink picture-poem teems with life, craft and innovation. It's an ode to the city, to the machinery of modern life, to the rhythms of everyday people and to the visual splendor of movement, but most of all it's a love letter to the camera itself. Vertov may have pioneered the use of the "hidden camera", capturing moments of uncommon naturalism, but this restless film also puts the material reality of filmmaking front and center, even letting the camera do a charming stop-motion dance number. Toying with the artificial omnipotence of filmmaking, Vertov takes the documentary places few have been able to follow. This film wasn't made for DVD--like a wild horse, The Man with a Movie Camera needs to run through the projector gate!
Dir. Dziga Vertov, 1929, 16mm, 80 min.


MASK
Based on a true story, Bogdanovich's account of a courageous teenager (Eric Stoltz) who suffers from a rare disease that enlarged and disfigured his head, and who searches for love and tries to get his mother (Cher) off drugs. Also stars Sam Elliott.


MEET JOHN DOE, 1941, 122 min. Dir. Frank Capra. Gary Cooper is a hobo who gets recruited by corrupt politician Edward Arnold to lead a "common man" movement, in which he soon learns he’s being used to manipulate the pliable masses for unsavory purposes. Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Brennan co-star in this complicated piece of social commentary, in which Capra espouses his usual populist beliefs while acknowledging their dark undercurrents.


MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, 1939, Sony Repertory, 129 min. Dir. Frank Capra. Naive, straight-shooting idealist Mr. Smith (James Stewart) is elected to Congress then used and eventually framed by his corrupt mentor Claude Rains and fatcat Edward Arnold. A still incredibly topical slice of Americana with unflinching insights into how easily a free enterprise system can be debased and exploited by ruthless profiteers. Smith pleading his case before a cold-hearted unbelieving Congress sends chills down the spine and remains one of the most moving sequences in the history of cinema. Jean Arthur is the worldly cynic who has her heart melted when she realizes Smith is the real thing. With Thomas Mitchell.


Mondo Kiddo (featuring The Great Land of Small)
Our cute little worker-elf slaves have been assigned to dig up the most demented batch of made-for-kiddie goodies they can find, from too-frightening educational films to insomnia-inducing after-school specials. And if they don't succeed, we beat them to work them harder. After viewing their plunder, we'll take a trip to The Great Land Of Small, a film directed by by the writer of The Peanut Butter Solution. This film has so many flavors of wrong: a full-on Cirque Du Soleil show set against a post-apocalpytic "magical" Sea World-sized stage (that looks cold, dank, and reeking of sulfur), merged with a grubby hobo aesthetic--and then there's Jasny, who seems to have a serious intent to keep making the bizarre surrealist films that made him a favorite of David Lynch. GLOS is a lot like Twin Peaks, down to the apperance of Lynch's favorite midget, Michael J. Anderson, dancing and looking crazy, with gold glitter caught in his beard and moist mouth like remnants of food. The whole movie is like that filthy, glittering gold.
The Great Land Of Small Dir. Vojtech Jasny, 1987, 35mm, 93 min.


Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback
Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback tells of one of the strangest bands ever to hit rock 'n roll. Formed by five American G.I.s stationed in Hamburg in the mid-'60s, the band came up through the nightclub scene, looking for an edge to catch the eye of disaffected German youth. Their answer? Shaving their heads and wearing noose-necked robes as "The Monks", a primitive, reductio-ad-absurdum version of early psych rock. Songs like "Shut Up" and "Complication" paired blasting feedback with stomping rhythms and anti-war sentiment--a sound they and their Nietzchean manager Kurt called "The Over-Beat". This doc tells their story, stranger perhaps than their music. How did a band this weird ever end up on German T.V., at a dinner party with the cream of the German intelligentsia, open for the Kinks and show a young Jimi Hendrix how to use a wah-wah pedal? The Transatlantic Feedback may give us the answers, but you'll have a hard time believing your ears.
Dirs. Dietmar Post & Lucia Palacios, 2006, 100 min.


The Murderers are Among Us (Die Mörder sind unter uns)
Germany/1946/b&w/90 min. | Scr/dir: Wolfgang Staudte; w/ Hildegard Knef, Ernst Wilhelm Borchert, Arno Paulsen.
When concentration camp survivor Knef returns to Berlin, she finds her apartment occupied by an alcoholic surgeon who is obsessed with killing a war criminal. Both a love story and a post-war morality play, this seminal film was the first production of the newly formed East German state film studio DEFA.


Murmur of the Heart
Louis Malle directed this affectionate story of a young man's coming of age. When a 14-year-old boy from a bourgeois home is sent to a sanitarium for his health, he learns that mother knows best. A comic and, at the time, quite scandalous motion picture. With Benoit Ferreux as the rambunctious kid and Lea Massari as his sensuous mom. Also Daniel Gelin, Marc Winocourt and Michel Lonsdale.


THE MUTHERS
Set in a desolate South American jungle, Jayne Kennedy is the mistress of a corrupt warden, who orchestrates a daring liberation of women prisoners to escape the harsh living conditions.


The New Land (Nybyggarna)
1972/color/204 min. | Scr: Bengt Forslund, Jan Troell; dir: Jan Troell; w/ Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Eddie Axberg.
One of the great works of seventies world cinema, this two-part film depicts the arduous journey of a group of Swedish farmers, among them Karl and Kristina Nilsson (von Sydow and Ullmann, in her favorite role) to the promised land of Minnesota. Based on Upon a Good Land, the best-selling series of Swedish novels by Vilhelm Moberg, the film led Pauline Kael to write that she “never felt more at home with film characters.… I repeatedly wept and rejoiced.” Nominated for five Academy Awards including Picture, Director, Actress and Foreign Language Film (twice). “Infinitely absorbing and moving… a very rare film.”—Roger Ebert.


NIGHTWING
(from IMDB)
In this adaptation of the Martin Cruz Smith novel (co-scripted by Smith himself), Nick Mancuso plays Youngman Duran, a policeman with the Maskai tribe in New Mexico, who has more than one problem to contend with. Not only does he have to butt heads with Walker Chee (Stephen Macht), who represents progress and new ways of thinking, but animals and soon people are succumbing to mysterious animal attacks. The culprits are vampire bats, and a Van Helsing of sorts, Phillip Paine (David Warner, contributing a little class) arrives to help save the day. Apparently, exterminating this species (you'd think that would get him in trouble with environmentalists) is his life's work!
This had to have been an odd choice of material for veteran director / former Academy president Arthur Hiller, known more for mainstream comedies and dramas like "Love Story". It doesn't offer much in the horror department, however; only an excellent bat attack set piece where one person is run over by a car and another set on fire is truly harrowing and nasty. It's really more of a social drama, as a modern day (well modern circa 1979) Indian comes to terms with the clash between ages-old superstition and progress. Durans' scenes with Chee really drive this point home, and Mancuso does a good job of creating a conflicted character.
As one might expect from a movie in such a setting, there are some eye-popping vistas to enjoy, capably photographed by Charles Rosher, Jr. Henry Mancini also contributes heavily with a typically fine music score. The special effects by Carlo Rambaldi aren't too shabby, either.


1960s Garage Mix Night
We've clicked the garage door opener, and trawled through dusty boxes to bring you the awesomest vintage video nuggets we could grab.The night's mix includes clips from: Dom Kallar Oss Mods, an obscure Swedish doc featuring the Lea Riders Group that covers the lives of the aimless youth on the streets of Stockholm; Kiddie-A-Go-Go, a '60s Chicago variation on Romper Room where garage bands would play for gyrating five-year-olds; Beloved Invaders, which documents The Ventures' tour of Japan; movie musical moments from Japan's "Group Sound" scene, with bands like The Spiders and The Tigers; highlights from Dame Un Poco De Amooor...!, the lone vehicle for Los Bravos, Spain's answer to the Monkees; and, in its entirety, the 40-minute doc Little Black Egg, about the song of the same name first done by The Nightcrawlers (who took it into the Billboard Top 100), which has long been a garage covers standard.


Ninotchka
1939/b&w/111 min.| Scr: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, Walter Reisch; dir: Ernst Lubitsch; w/ Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Ina Claire, Bela Lugosi.
A coldhearted Soviet agent is warmed up by a trip to Paris and a night of love.


The Nomi Song
One of popular music's most distinctive pioneers, Klaus Nomi (nee Klaus Sperber) was a German-born opera singer who moved to New York City in the mid-1970's and established himself as a pop icon by the 1980's. Blending cabaret with opera, disco, and other styles, Nomi forged a truly distinctive look and sound that captured the imagination of the Manhattan club scene. Andrew Horn's film chronicles Nomi's eventful life, following the singer from his unlikely beginnings through to his New-Wave heyday and tragic struggle with AIDS. In so doing, Horn "uses his subject to revisit the euphoria of artistic and musical culture at a crossroads, and in the process brings it, briefly and poignantly, back to life again" (San Francisco Chronicle).


NORTH BY NORTHWEST, 1959, Warner Bros., 136 min. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Cary Grant gives one of his greatest performances as womanizing, mama’s boy executive Roger Thornhill – whose cozy life of afternoon cocktails with the boys is turned upside down when he’s mistaken for elusive government operative "George Kaplan" by suave villain James Mason and murderous crony Martin Landau. Eva Marie Saint co-stars as Mason’s elegant mistress, with the wonderful Jesse Royce Landis as Grant’s fur-clad society mom ("You gentlemen aren’t really trying to murder my son, are you?"). Brilliantly scripted by Ernest Lehman (THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS), and photographed by veteran Hitchcock collaborator Robert Burks (STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, REAR WINDOW).


Not Reconciled (Nicht Versöhnt oder Es hilft nur Gewalt wo Gewalt herrscht)
W. Germany/1965/b&w/55 min. | Scr: Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet; dir: Jean-Marie Straub; w/ Heinrich Hargesheimer, Carlheinz Hargesheimer, Martha Staendner, Ulrich von Thüna.
A former assistant to Bresson, Renoir and Rivette, Straub presents a stark and rigorously compressed adaptation of Heinrich Boll’s Billiards at Half Past Noon. The lives of three generations of the Fähmel family, from the turn of the century through Nazi Germany to the mid-1960s, are intertwined in this influential and austere debut feature. “Straub and Huillet make the layers of history live in the present tense, which they judge severely. The tamped-down acting and the spare, tense visual rhetoric suggest a state of moral crisis as well as the response—as much in style as in substance—that it demands.”—Richard Brody, The New Yorker.


ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST
Once upon a Time in the West (1968). Directed by Sergio Leone.
Like its fairy tale title, Leone's operatic ode to the west captures a period of time both current—the "civilization" of the wilderness through the railroad and commerce—and mournful, as it simultaneously parables the death of the western. Gathering up influences of westerns past, Leone here etches his own vision of the myth, as the grizzled human face stands equal with the fading brushwood of the land, both destined to fade into the sunset.


ONE THIRD OF A NATION
(1939) Directed by Dudley Murphy
Adapted from the Federal Theatre Project's long-running "Living Newspaper" production, One Third of a Nation was the first WPA property sold to a Hollywood studio. Featuring Sylvia Sidney and a very young Sidney Lumet as slum-dwellers living in a wretched tenement, this courageous independent film struggles with a solution to the urban housing mess.
Based on the play by Arthur Arent. Screenplay: Oliver H.P. Garrett, Dudley Murphy. Cinematographer: William Miller. Cast: Sylvia Sidney, Leif Erickson, Sidney Lumet, Muriel Hutchison. 35mm, 75 min.


One, Two, Three
James Cagney plays a Coca Cola executive stationed in West Berlin who finds himself in trouble when his boss's daughter marries a fierce young Communist. It's rowdy entertainment co-scripted and directed by Billy Wilder.


ONE WEEK
The Great Stoneface, Buster Keaton, plays a hapless newlywed who is given a house as a wedding present. But the house is in the form of a build-it-yourself kit. Needless to say things don't go together according to the plans as Buster and his bride put together their home in One Week. Today this film remains a comedic tour de force with a staggering number of laughs packed into 19 minutes.


A Page of Madness (w/ live score by The Gaslamp Killer)
Restored 35mm print courtesy of The George Eastman House
The most modern and challenging Japanese silent film to survive the firebombings of WWII, A Page of Madness throws the viewer into a maelstrom of hallucinations and obsession, and easily stands way out amongst its kabuki and jidai-geki silent contemporaries. A haunted man takes a job as a janitor in an insane asylum where his wife is committed; his fantasies of liberating her blend into the mad, confounding visions of the inmates. Told without intertitles, the narrative takes a back seat to pure visual expression. Director Teinosuke Kinugasa, already a connoisseur of world cinema when this film was made in 1927, synthesizes every available experimental technique known at the time: his use of superimpositions, flashbacks, rapid montage and complex subjective camerawork rival the innovations of Murnau and Gance for sheer audacity. Lost for half a century after its completion and rediscovered in the early '70s by Kinugasa himself in his own garden shed, A Page of Madness is a stunning, singular work. The evening's live musical accompaniment comes from psychedelic soundsmith The Gaslamp Killer.
Dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926, 35mm, 60 min.


Paprika
Based on the novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui of the same name, Paprika is the story of a sort-of superhero who helps folks work through their mental hang-ups and schisms by dipping into their dreams and guiding them through their own minds. Director Satoshi Kon (Memories, Millenium Actress) stretches his muscles to give us astounding setpieces with the aesthetic of a Tokyo thrift store, full of movie-poster imagery and dancing products like cell phones and porcelain cats prancing about in large parades. Paprika is full of Kon's pure painterly technique, his state-of-the-art gorgeous craftsmanship, full of balanced color and abstractions rendered in impeccable visual metaphor--but even beyond that, the real joy of of Paprika is the film's narrative-shredding storyline, a take on the dense, information-overload Japanese pop culture landscape in which even your mental space is impossible to delimit from your neighbors. In its light way, Paprika is as maddening and terrifying as a Philip K. Dick reality deconstruction, and as densely packed and beautifully realized as a Bosch canvas.
Dir. Satoshi Kon, 2006, 35mm, 90 min.


PARADISE IN HARLEM
(a.k.a. Othello In Harlem)
(1939) Directed by Joseph Seiden
A black vaudevillian, weary of performing minstrel routines, dreams of bringing Shakespeare to the Harlem stage but is hounded by gangsters after witnessing a murder. Predating Paul Robeson's Broadway Othello, this remarkable movie (based on a story by the lead actor) was clearly influenced by the Orson Welles "voodoo" Macbeth of 1936.
Based on the story by Frank Wilson. Screenplay: Vincent Valentini. Cast: Frank Wilson, Mamie Smith, Norman Astwood, Edna Mae Harris, Merritt Smith. 16mm, 70 min.


PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973). Directed by Sam Peckinpah.
Fifty years after John Ford initially celebrated the birth of the west, Sam Peckinpah, a true lover of the west and the western, elegizes it here. Progress in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid equals the dehumanizing take over of wilderness and the end of the way of life inherent to the western. As James Coburn as Pat Garrett claims, "This country's getting old and I'm getting old with it." Not, however, without a fight.


Patti Smith: Dream of Life
More than a decade in the making, this striking portrait of boundary-pushing rocker Patti Smith features (almost too) personal interviews with the artist, who recalls her early days in New York and her current status as elder stateswoman of punk rock. Her politics, poetry, and songs are joined by vintage performance clips, rare photos, and her own narration. Winner of a Cinematography Award and Nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.


The Peanut Butter Solution
Since 1985, The Peanut Butter Solution has left a trail of nightmares in its wake. Easily one of the most horrifying and bewildering childrens' films ever produced, this mind-melting Canadian feature will have you gasping and guffawing in equal measure. It's so strange that it seems its origins must be beyond explanation--until you find out that it was directed by Mark Rubbo, leftist political documentarian and official village painter of Morin Heights, and co-written by Vojtech Jasny, one of the surrealist luminaries of the Czech New Wave. After 11-year-old Michael loses all his hair from peeking inside a burned-down hobo squat, the ghosts of two bums teach him a secret air-regeneration formula. But when Michael screws up the recipe, his hair starts growing...and growing...and growing. As crazy as this puberty panic scenario sounds, it doesn't even begin to describe the madness that is The Peanut Butter Solution.
Dir. Michael Rubbo, 35mm, 1985, 94 min.


PENITENTIARY 2
Drama about a falsely accused man, "Too Sweet" (Leon Isaac Kennedy), who returns to prison, where he survives the harsh conditions through his prowess as a boxer. With Mr. T. (in his first screen role), Glynn Turman, Ernie Hudson and Malik Carter.


PETEY WHEATSTRAW: THE DEVIL'S SON-IN-LAW
An African-American folktale is retold by "Dolemite" himself, Rudy Ray Moore. The story is that of a man so useless that he cuts a deal with Satan himself--he has to marry the devil's ugly daughter.


Phantom of the Operator
The Phantom of the Operator invites us into a world where science meets fiction—breathing poetic new meaning into archival films and revealing a little-known chapter in industrial history. The 20th Century had its invisible workforce: telephone operators. Not merely "voices with a smile", they were shooting stars in a universe of infinite progress--they were test pilots for the management systems of their time. Director Caroline Martel takes overlooked artefacts of cinema history—one hundred industrial, advertising and scientific management films produced in North America between 1903 and 1989—and turns them into a dreamlike montage documentary. She also resurrects from the past an arcane electronic musical instrument: the ondes Martenot, adding to the mood set by the voice of award-winning actor Pascale Montpetit. Phantom sheds light on the corporate, scientific and popular imaginations of the past century to provide a wry yet ethereal portrait of human society in the technocratic age.
Dir. Caroline Martel, 2004, 35mm, 66 min.


PLAY IT AS IT LAYS, 1972, Universal, 99 min. Director Frank Perry (DAVID AND LISA) delivered many edgy psychological classics, and none is more deserving of rediscovery than this rarely-screened adaptation of Joan Didion’s bestseller, with a screenplay by Didion and her late husband, John Gregory Dunne. Tuesday Weld is at her best as fiercely intelligent Maria, an ex-model on the verge of a nervous breakdown. In-the-closet producer Anthony Perkins is her only friend and Adam Roarke her estranged, director husband trying to jumpstart his career out of the biker-film ghetto. A scathing stream-of-consciousness portrait of Hollywood in the early 1970’s. NOT ON DVD (?)


POLIS IS THIS - Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place20('07, 57m) at 8:30pm -Ferrini tells the story of Olson, a colossus of American letters. Polis Is This surpasses the challenge of containing this giant and his ideas in cinematic form while simultaneously expanding our awareness of how much the universal is contained in the local. For Olson, the local was Gloucester, Massachusetts, the polis (a body of citizens in a particular place) which shaped his life and poetry. Beyond a generous amount of Olson footage, striding his 6’8" corpus about his polis o r engaging in the teacher’s art, we also meet the polis of this film: the artists – Amiri Baraka, Robert Creeley, Dianne DaPrima, Pete Seeger, Ed Sanders, John Sinclair, Anne Waldman – and the locals who knew him. Hosted, after an Olsonesque fashion, by John Malkovich.


THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, 1972, 20th Century Fox, 117 min. Director Ronald Neame and producer Irwin Allen’s literally titanic disaster epic features a boatload of acting talent – Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Carol Lynley, Jack Albertson, Roddy McDowall, Stella Stevens and more -- all doing their best to stay alive in the hellish inferno of the capsized ocean liner the S.S. Poseidon. Special kudos to Shelley Winters for her unforgettably ballsy performance, and to special effects expert L.B. Abbott and stunt coordinator Paul Stader for some of the most spectacular disaster scenes in movie history, including the famous upside-down ballroom.


PUZZLE OF A DOWNFALL CHILD
(from IMDB)
Lou Andreas Sand, a once famous model, recalls her past as she tries to make success in the modeling world of New York, her stressfull workdays, her affair with Mark, an advertising executive, her friendship with photographer Aaron, and her downward spiral into ruin. Directed by Jerry Schatzberg, 1970.


RED RIVER
Red River (1948). Directed by Howard Hawks.
Historically based on the opening of the Chisholm Trail in 1867, Hawks' film invokes a typical Western theme—the Tough Journey through Tough Land—but with his penchant for drawing character, the interior story of conflict between the gritty, headstrong father John Wayne, and the softer, compassionate son Montgomery Clift, rivals the stunningly shot external story.


Remember My Name
A truly forgotten '70s gem, Alan Rudolph's Rememeber My Name, in which terror takes the unlikely form of tiny Geraldine Chaplin. Her performance as an ex-convict single-mindedly pursuing Anthony Perkins is chilling and unforgettable, and memorable supporting performances along with Rudolph's haze of odd details and defocused style keep the action unpredictable and disturbing. Held up from home video release 'cause of music clearances (the film features a great original soundtrack by Alberta Hunter), this Altmanesque thriller is rarely screened, and not to be missed! Dir. Alan Rudolph, 1978, 35mm, 94 min.


RETURN OF THE DEMON
In this Hong Kong horror classic, a vengeful demon wreaks havoc on Hong Kong after being roused from its slumber. A spiritual master incorporates a dog's instincts into his soul in order to better track down this evil demon. Dick, an impatient sorcerer, and the good-natured Cho are disciples of the master, who is looking for the secret to eternal life. Dick begins killing people in order to take their life force. He becomes very powerful until his former master imprisons him in the hand of a giant Buddha statue. But Dick has figured a way out. It is up to Cho to stop tricky Dick before he can kill again. With Dick Wei, Wu Ma, Natalis Chan, Emily Chu, Charlie Cho, Robert Mak, Shing Fui-on.


Return To Oz
One would think that the ingrained familiarity of MGM's Wizard Of Oz and the Disney name would make Return To Oz a predictable, harmless diversion. Its prologue of little Dorothy sent to electro-shock therapy to "cure" her delusions of another world are the jarring first clue that this pendulum swings the other way. In his only directorial outing, legendary editor Walter Murch delivers an accurate depiction of L. Frank Baum's visions and creatures, in both their whimsical pleasures and darker trappings. Fairuza Balk is a more sober but no less awestruck Dorothy, Nicol Williamson voices the Will Vinton created claymation Nome King, and Jean Marsh is unforgettably frightening as the head-collecting witch Mombi; her character essays in flesh the great tradition of scary Disney villainesses. While initial audiences decried the harsh turn away from the beloved MGM boilerplate, what is on display captures the delicate balance of fear and wonder that marks the best filmed fairy tales.
Dir. Walter Murch, 1985, 35mm, 113 min.


Rio Bravo
This American classic features John Wayne as a sheriff trying to prevent a killer from escaping or being captured by a group of men determined to handle him on their own terms. With Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson and Walter Brennan. "Arguably Hawks' greatest film...beautifully acted, wonderfully observed, and scripted with enormous wit and generosity" (Geoff Andrew, Time Out).


Riot On Sunset Strip
The real-life '66 Hollywood youth culture "hippie riots" formed the conveinent basis for Riot On Sunset Strip, an entertaining case of AIP producer Sam Katzman cashing in right at the crucial flashpoint of teenage fads. Aldo Ray stars as the cop stuck in the middle between obsequious peaceniks and bloodthirsty "Normals", and Mimsy Farmer is his long-lost rebellious daughter who, after getting dosed at a party, gets tossed into an transcendentally hardcore trip sequence, a fetishistic heaven for fans of the form. Performances by The Chocolate Watchband and The Standells bookend the madness. Dir. Arthur Dreifuss, 1967, 35mm, 87 min.


The Second Track (Das Zweite Gleis)
GDR/1962/b&w/80 min. | Scr: Günter Kunert, Joachim Kunert; dir: Joachim Kunert; w/ Albert Hetterle, Annekathrin Bürger, Horst Jonischkan.
This noirish thriller about a guilt-ridden security guard who fails to report the culprit in a railway robbery is the only East German film to deal with the sensitive subject of former Nazis leading normal lives in the GDR.


SECRET CEREMONY
Elizabeth Taylor is at the top of her highly theatrical form in Joseph Losey's memorably odd psychological drama. Taylor plays a prostitute who develops a strange bond with a mentally challenged young woman (Mia Farrow), becoming both mother and manipulator to her. Their relationship is especially intense as Taylor's character resembles Farrow's dead mother and Farrow is nearly identical to Taylor's deceased daughter. Robert Mitchum and Peggy Ashcroft also star in this interesting feature, full of director Losey's distinctive visual flourishes.


The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer
Made less than two years after Jeffrey Dahmer's arrest, The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer is a case study--not just of the sick mind of a serial killer, but in how much more incredible a film can be just by sticking to the true story. Over a thousand hours of research went into this low-budget, effective biopic, and the facts are presented almost flatly and without affectation, like a courtroom reenactment or a industrial training film. The most grisly details--the acid baths, the experiments in human zombification--are deadpanned to unnerving effect. But what really tips the creep meter into the red is the incredible voiceover narration. Seamlessly collaged together from actual Dahmer quotes and set to a bathetic synth score, the range of emotions it evokes counterpoint and transform the visuals of Dahmer's murder spree at various times into Barry White-like love rhapsodies, macabre Hallmark cards, and the maudlin diary entries of a depressed teenager. Writer/star Carl Crew will be in attendance to introduce the film and do a post-screening Q&A! Dir. David R. Bowen, 1993, digital presentation, 99 min.


Seventh Heaven
Archival 35mm print courtesy of Fox
"This exquisite tale of mystical romance stresses the redemptive side of couplehood so persuasively that otherworldly connotations, like the strong ray of light that literally shines down on them after their various trials, seem only fair and natural." - Dan Callahan, Slant
We agonized over what to show on Valentine's Day, and can say with certainty that all romantics will understand why we chose Seventh Heaven. The inspired casting of Janet Gaynor made for a landmark film with Murnau's Sunrise, but her appearance opposite Charles Farrell in Frank Borzage's Seventh Heaven resulted, without question, in one of the defining romantic films. Its enrapturing love story follows two Parisians thrown together by maudlin circumstances. With a perfect balance of intensity and tenderness, the film produces something miraculous--a story that beautifully affirms the overpowering nature of love, without a hint of irony, apology, or restraint. To round out the evening, we will also present a short film program of love-themed silent comedies Come spend a romantic evening with the Cinefamily--a beautiful old art deco theatre, cupcakes, a short program of silent comedies, and live musical accompaniment to a silent romantic masterpiece.
Dir. Frank Borzage, 1927, 35mm, 110 min.


Shadow of the Thin Man
1941's Shadow of the Thin Man follows the couple's trip to the local race track, where plans for a leisurely afternoon are interrupted when a corrupt jockey is shot dead in the locker room. A bit of snooping and a lot of sparkling banter later, the Charles' find themselves knee-deep in an investigation of an organized crime ring--and their riskiest, strangest case yet. Dir. W. S. Van Dyke, 1941, 35mm, 97 min.


She's Out of Control
Tony Danza stars as the dad of teenage girl gone from ugly duckling to foxy knockout. Will he be able to protect his daughter from an endless barrage of punkers and preppies?


SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER (TIREZ SUR LE PIANISTE), 1960, Janus Films, 92 min. Director Francois Truffaut once said that every filmmaker’s first movie is a mad rush of ideas, while every second movie is an exercise in style. This, his own second movie, is both: a stylistic tour de force filled with innovative visual ideas, but also a longing, bittersweet character study of uncommon depth and resonance. Charles Aznavour is a washed-up concert pianist unable to return to his former glory due to connections with gangsters and other nefarious types; Marie Dubois is the woman who loves him. A long confession scene is Truffaut’s tribute to Ingrid Bergman’s 10 minute confession in Hitchcock’s UNDER CAPRICORN. Adapted from the great novel Down There by David Goodis (who also wrote DARK PASSAGE).


Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)
Ray Bradbury honors Williams Bookstore's 100th Anniversary: When a traveling carnival comes to a small town, the proprietor, Mr. Dark (Jonathan Pryce), promises to make residents' dreams come true. But the price turns out to be steep, as those dreams slowly spiral into a nightmare. Now, two boys (Vidal Peterson and Shawn Carson) must try to fight the sinister force infesting the town. Based on a Ray Bradbury novel, this surreal psychological thriller co-stars Jason Robards, Diane Ladd and Pam Grier.


THE SONG OF SPARROWS
(Avaz-e gonjeshk-ha)
(2008) Directed by Majid Majidi
After Karim loses his job as an ostrich farmer, a twist of fate finds him making more money as a taxi driver in the big city. What, at first, appears like blessing becomes something considerably more ambiguous, however, as this once simple, loving family man becomes obsessed with acquiring material things. Master director Majid Majidi tells this allegorical tale with subtlety, humor and effortless grace.
Screenplay: Majid Majidi, Mehran Kashani. Cinematographer: Tooraj Mansoouri. Cast: Reza Naji, Maryam Akbari, Kamran Dehghan. 35mm, 96 min.


Song of the Thin Man
1947's Song of the Thin Man finds Nick and Nora attending a jazzy charity benefit aboard a gambling ship, which quickly becomes thorny when a much-reviled bandleader turns up stiff. Luckily, inexplicable corpses never keep the couple from celebrating their numerous vices--the series ends, as expected, on a glorious, glamorous note. Appearances by a great supporting cast including Keenan Wynn, Jayne Meadows, Gloria Grahame and a very, very young Dean Stockwell also keep things extra-zippy! Dir. Edward Buzzell, 1947, 35mm, 86 min.


Star 80
As In Cold Blood's fateful on-screen murders were filmed in the home of its real-life victims, so was the scene of the final moments in the life of former Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten, one of the two subjects of Bob Fosse's Star 80. The real motivating force behind Fosse's story is Paul Snider, Stratten's half-assed impresario boyfriend, played to the absolute psychotic hilt by Eric Roberts in what's easily the finest performance of his career, or almost anyone else's. Fosse brings his characteristic barrelful of intensity to the tale, showing through sharp edits and snappy pacing that wasn't just a brilliant choreographer, but also a filmmaking powerhouse. Dir. Bob Fosse, 1983, 35mm, 100 min.


THE STERILE CUCKOO
Offbeat tale of awakening love with Liza Minnelli and Wendell Burton. A "surprisingly gentle, surprisingly good film" (Pauline Kael). Based on the novel by John Nichols. Directed by Alan Pakula, 1970.


STOLEN KISSES (BAISERS VOLES), 1968, Janus Films, 90 min. Dir. Francois Truffaut. In the third Antoine Doinel film, Antoine (Jean-Pierre Leaud) returns to Paris after a dishonorable discharge from the army. There, he finds himself trying a series of ridiculous jobs (including private detective) as he falls hopelessly in love. Lyrical and nostalgic, this is one of Truffaut’s most romantic films, which is really saying something. With Delphine Seyrig.


The Story of Adele H.
First, we have Truffaut's The Story of Adele H., based on the true-life diaries of Victor Hugo's schizophrenic daughter, and her mad international pursuit of a handsome army lietenant. Isabelle Adjani's heart-arresting beauty only makes the insane focus with which Adele chases her idée fixe around the globe all the more unnerving, and Nestor Alemendros' gorgeous, natural cinematography also contributes to one of Truffaut's most underrated masterpieces. Dir. Francois Truffaut, 1975, 35mm, 96 min.


Sugarland Express
Steven Spielberg's theatrical film debut is a fictionalized account of the true story of a young couple (Goldie Hawn and William Atherton) who take a police officer hostage and head off across the barren Texas landscape to kidnap their child from its foster parents. Critically acclaimed (Spielberg's script won an award at Cannes), but a box-office flop, the film shows a young director honing signature techniques that would make him a household name.


THE SWIMMER
Based on the short story by John Cheever, with Burt Lancaster as the middle-aged swimmer who hops from pool to pool on his way home during an afternoon and evokes the past at each pool. Directed by Frank Perry, 1968.


TAKAHIKO IIMURA: FILM POEMS 1960-70S
Takahiko Iimura started making films in Tokyo in 1960 after reading reports from abroad about the then exploding Underground Film movement in the United States. (It would be years before Iimura actually saw many of the films that first inspired him.) From these relatively isolated beginnings, Iimura has become one of the most influential and important experimental filmmakers of our time.
His body of work encompasses a wide-ranging aesthetic, from poetic cinema early on to more conceptual investigations in the 1970s, as he has pursued a sustained, multi-faceted exploration of light, space, time, nature and technology.
The Archive is pleased to present this evening's show as part of a ten-day multi-venue Iimura retrospective, organized by Adam Hyman of Los Angeles Filmforum.
In person: Takahiko Iimura.


TARGETS
The stunning film-making debut of critic-turned-director Peter Bogdanovich. A psychotic sniper and an aging horror movie star (Boris Karloff in his final film) find their lives drawn together by a series of unrelated events.


Tell No One (Ne le dis a personne)
François Cluzet, who looks like Daniel Auteuil and runs like Dustin Hoffman, simmers beautifully as a Paris pediatrician who, eight years after the brutal murder of his beloved wife (Marie-Josée Croze), receives an e-mailed video purporting to show her alive. His search for her or her captors is, to understate the situation, complicated by their search for him and the growing suspicions of the police—who reopen the case after two more corpses pop up—that the doc is his wife's killer.


10 Rillington Place
Richard Fleischer's 10 Rillington Place gives us the compellingly twitchy murderer John Christie (a tightly wound Richard Attenborough, riding the line between menace and trustworthiness), who lures in lodger Timothy Evans (John Hurt) and his wife, dispatching the latter and leaving the former to take the blame--Evan's likely wrongful execution is credited with ending capital punishment in Great Britain. Fleischer's controlled tone is exactly right; the real horror comes from Christie's eerie low-key, methodical handiwork contrasting with his unthreatening, very English facade. Dir. Richard Fleischer, 1971, 35mm, 111 min.


That Cold Day In The Park
In Robert Altman's That Cold Day In The Park, Michael Burns is a silent homeless boy in New York City taken in by lonely, repressed, manipulative older rich woman played by Sandy Dennis, in a performance that brings out the creepy in her her frail cracked persona. This excellent little thriller is pre-M*A*S*H Robert Altman, and is arguably the first film of his in which his trademark style really emerges complete with overlapping improvised dialogue, as well as zoomerific cinematography (provided here by Laslo Kovacs). Dir. Robert Altman, 1969, 35mm, 113 min.


They Always Say That Time Changes Things
"They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." - Andy Warhol
This series of short films studies how time has been interpreted by experimental film artists from 1963 to the present. Featuring works by Andy Warhol, Bas Jan Ader, Jørgen Leth, Christian Marclay, Joe Diebes, Annika Larsson, Reynold Reynolds, and Carlo Zanni, the series takes the conceptual films of Andy Warhol as a point of departure, investigating the fundamental ways in which the camera can either document or manipulate real time. Warhol utilizes both of these cinematic devices in Kiss when time appears to freeze. The trajectory of contemporary artists presented engages the many ways in which the camera can communicate passage of time, whether through simply recording an event or creating a hyper-real world with new technologies. Organized by Julia Fryett and Michele Thursz.


The Thin Man
The first boozy installment in the "Thin Man" series introduced the film world to retired detective Nick Charles, jostled back into a career in crime-solving by the disappearance of a close friend suspected of murder. With a martini always in hand and lovely, sharp-tongued socialite wife Nora always at his side, Nick stumbles with alarming wit and charisma from clue to clue. The big reveal of the true culprit unfolds in a stirring, convention-establishing dinner-party scene, in which all the suspects are present. Dir. W. S. Van Dyke, 1934, 35mm, 93 min.


The Thin Man Goes Home
Stolen paintings, long-range Japanese rifles, and a village idiot named Crazy Mary all play a part in The Thin Man Goes Home, in which Nora attempts to get her pompous father-in-law to reconcile with his son's nutty career. Before Nora can wonder aloud how fortunate it would be for disapproving Dad to witness Nick solving a crime, a local painter is offed at their front door. Suspects pile up as the body count grows-- though the mystery's a convoluted one, this story belongs to the entire Charles family, depicted here with rich detail for the first time. Dir. Richard Thorpe, 1944, 35mm, 100 min.


The Third Generation (Die Dritte Generation)
W. Germany/1979/color/105 min. | Scr/dir: Rainer Werner Fassbinder; w/ Margit Carstensen, Eddie Constantine, Hannah Schygulla, Udo Kier, Bulle Ogier.
A group of deluded and manipulated losers hole up in a house to plot the overthrow of the state. “A cruel and sometimes very funny comedy about terrorism… and one of the richest looking and sounding films I’ve ever experienced.”—Vincent Canby, The New York Times.


The Todd Killings
The Todd Killings, based on the exploits of Charles Schmid, "The Pied Piper of Tucson"--a natural for bougie teensploitation trappings (one Internet reviewer dubbed the film "The anti-Breakfast Club".) Schmid was a small-town sleazeball, a rich twenty-something hipster who spent his time methodically seducing each years' fresh batch of high school hotties and eventually murdering them--even with the local kids who idolized him knowing full well what he was doing. The Todd Killings adapts his story into a trashy anti-hippy tale of cultural rot that'll appeal to both the hardcore true crime freak and the teen movie fanatic within. Dir. Barry Shear, 1971, 16mm, 93 min.


TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, 1944, Warner Bros., 100 min. Dir. Howard Hawks. Lauren Bacall’s screen debut opposite Humphrey Bogart is one of the wittiest romances ever made, as well as a rousing Hawks adventure film. Bogie is a cynical fisherman in a French colonial port who tries to keep his nose out of WWII until Bacall wins his heart and awakens his idealism. Co-starring Walter Brennan as Bogie’s rum-soaked sidekick.


Tom Verlaine & Jimmy Rip: Music For Experimental Film
Innovative, influential musician Tom Verlaine and celebrated producer/guitarist Jimmy Rip reawaken the spirit of the avant-garde as they perform on the Cinefamily stage a series of original musical scores for experimental silent film. Verlaine was the guiding force behind the proto-punk NYC band Television and a host of award-winning solo albums, and as composer, producer and sideman, Rip has collaborated with music legends Jerry Lee Lewis, Mick Jagger and Deborah Harry. The groundbreaking works of filmmakers (Man Ray, Watson & Weber, Fernand Leger and Hans Richter) pushing the limits of what was then still a new medium take on a new life wrapped in these new scores that are by turns playful, haunting, serene and intense. Not only do these surreal and timeless shorts rarely screen theatrically, but Verlaine and Rip's stirring twin guitar attack provide a consummate accompaniment.


TOUCH OF EVIL
One of the most original and entertaining films Hollywood has ever turned out, Touch of Evil was Orson Welles' last film for a major American studio. This film noir masterpiece is as odd and humorous as it is exciting, and its overall strangeness makes even the ludicrous casting of Charlton Heston as a Mexican police detective seem appropriate. The opening sequence remains one of the most famous in film history and the picture never lets up from there. The wonderfully eclectic cast includes Welles as the candy-chomping corrupt American cop, Janet Leigh as Heston's wife, Marlene Dietrich as a cynical woman of the world, Dennis Weaver as a creepy pre-Norman Bates motel attendant, Mercedes McCambridge as a butch, drug-dealing gang leader and--just for the hell of it--Zsa Zsa Gabor. A stylistic triumph.


THE TOWERING INFERNO, 1974, 20th Century Fox, 165 min. Dir. John Guillerman and Irwin Allen. The big daddy of disaster pictures, with one of the all-time largest all-star casts ever assembled. Architect Paul Newman is having problems getting multimillionaire building owner William Holden to take safety issues seriously as they rush toward the grand opening of their new mega-skyscraper. Sure enough, something goes wrong, and the race begins in earnest to save a Who’s Who of Hollywood greats from burning to a crisp in the ensuing holocaust. Steve McQueen is the no-nonsense fire chief trying to make the best of a horrific situation. With Fred Astaire, Faye Dunaway, Susan Blakely, Robert Vaughn, Robert Wagner, Jennifer Jones, Richard Chamberlain and O.J. Simpson trying to reach the ground floor without becoming toast! Winner of three Oscars for Best Cinematography (Fred J. Koenekamp, Joseph F. Biroc), Best Film Editing (Harold F. Kress, Carl Kress) and Best Original Song (Al Kasha, Joel Hirschhorn – "We May Never Love Like This Again"). "…a brawny blockbuster of a movie, by far the best of the mid-1970s wave of disaster films…a masterpiece of stunt coordination and special effects" –Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times


TROUBLE THE WATER
Hurricane Katrina may have driven off a large segment of New Orleans’ African-American population, the providers of much of the city’s character. But in one sense the deadly storm was a uniter, not a divider: Only three years ago, the devil wind brought together much of the country in contempt of the Bush administration’s loose definition of humanitarian aid. Fresh as a slap, the outrage of Katrina’s mishandling comes flooding back in Trouble the Water, a documentary account so starkly surreal that at times it seems wrought from another century’s folklore.
Winner of the documentary Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Trouble the Water bears roughly the same relation to Spike Lee’s kaleidoscopic When the Levees Broke that a talking-blues dispatch has to a David McCullough history. The topic may be the same, but the scope is personal rather than monumental. Yet, by following a husband and wife from New Orleans’ stricken Ninth Ward through the flood and its aftermath — most memorably in their own camcorder footage — the movie becomes an eyewitness epic of history in miniature.


T.V. Tuesday: True Crime Edition
Since Halloween is the favorite holiday of millions of Americans, and since advertisers love to flog the hell out of Halloween, there exists a bounty of creepy commercials, scary "special" episodes and terrifying TV movies all centered around the mischevious dark spirit that drives All Hallows' Eve. We promise a magical night where every flip of the channel lands you on lost eerie emissions you can't seem to look away from. We've got at least two great '70s horror TV movies, and a whole mess of stuff you can barely remember, or can't believe existed. Bring your favorite snacks, join our couch and snuggle up, 'cause it's TV Tuesday: The True Crime Edition!


2 Blessed 2 B Stressed
Pittsburgh artist Jacob Ciocci, one of the three primary members of the East Coast art collective Paper Rad, will present at the Cinefamily a new twenty-minute mix of original videos and animations. Jacob's work is concerned with the relationships between popular culture, technology and notions of transcendence, all mixed inside a frenzied cartoon universe that is simultaneously celebratory and critical. Jacob will also be performing "I Let My Nightmares Go" which uses a video projector and live dance moves to grapple with mental demons, Web 2.0, G.O.D., 21st-century breakdown, real lies and fake truths, cartoon violence, and awareness bracelets. In addition, San Diego-based electro-sci-fi-metal act Fortress of Amplitude will perform.


TWO ENGLISH GIRLS (LES DEUX ANGLAISES ET LE CONTINENT), 1971, Janus Films, 108 min. Dir. Francois Truffaut. In a sort of reverse-gender JULES AND JIM, a young writer (perennial Truffaut surrogate Jean-Pierre Leaud) finds himself in a long-term affair with two sisters. Truffaut returns to his earlier film’s themes with an older, more melancholy eye; youthful enthusiasm has given way to mature resignation, and the sophistication of Truffaut’s ideas is matched by his most visually stunning images (courtesy of legendary cinematographer Nestor Almendros).


UP THE YANGTZE
Nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, this stunning Canadian documentary uses the massive Three Gorges Dam project on China's Yangtze River as a means to explain the rapid cultural and economic changes the country is undergoing. Filmmaker Yung Chang returns to the homeland of his grandfather, taking a luxury cruise up the Yangtze to observe as industry and "progress" engulf the landscape and its history.


Vampyres
The most savage girl-on-girl vampire movie ever, Vampyres usually gets tagged as British horror even though it was directed by José Larraz, the mad Spaniard who stunned '70s audiences with potent visions of carnal violence like The Coming Of Sin and Black Candles. Two incredibly sexy women living in a remote English estate (later used in The Rocky Horror Picture Show as Frank-N-Furter’s castle) drain their victims’ blood after bouts of wild sex and leave the bodies in staged car accidents, but when one insatiable man comes their way along with a nearby couple camping out in an RV, the stakes get considerably higher. Packed with a ridiculous amount of nudity and blood as well as a strong poetic streak and a purposefully baffling framing story, this sinfully entertaining cult classic drips with dank, dingy English atmosphere and just keeps getting better with age.
Dir. José Ramón Larraz, 1974, 35mm, 87 min.


The Velvet Vampire
Dune buggies, rattlesnakes and hippies aren’t common staples of your average vampire movie, but then again, there’s never been anything before or since like this outrageous desert paean to bloodsucking and partner-swapping. Incredibly, this arty answer to Hammer’s same-sex fang flicks was one of the earlier releases from Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, who ruled ‘70s drive-ins. Michael Blodgett (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls' Lance Rocke, R.I.P.) is caught between his vapid, vanilla girlfriend (Sherry Miles) and the smokin’ hot exhibitionist/art gallery devotee Diane (Celeste Yarnall), but soon it looks like he might be out of the picture once the two ladies develop eyes for each other. Directed by fascinating Corman protegee Stephanie Rothman and laced with a psych music score, this endearing, rare cult item remains best experienced on the big screen in all its gaudy, color-coded glory.
Dir. Stephanie Rothman, 1971, 35mm, 80 min.


Vengeance Is Mine
Vengeance Is Mine is a shattering portrait of raw, naked id. Director Shohei Imamura believed the true Japanese psychology was more animal and "below the belt", as opposed to the starchy exterior they liked to project--and found expression for this idea in the true story of murderer Iwao Enokizu (Ken Ogata), who lead police on a legendary 78-day manhunt, hiding out under the tame identity of a Kyoto professor (metaphor complete). Imamura beautifully catches the viewer off-guard with an immersive view into the full banality of a serial killer's everyday life, contrasting horrible, sadistic killings with fly-on-the-wall day-to-day particulars, all the while utilizing a thrilling smorgasbord of film technique (freeze-frames, fractured time structure, vérité touches). A film masterpiece that really rocks. Dir. Shohei Imamura, 1979, 35mm, 140 min.


VENICE WEST & THE LA SCENE - Swinging in the Shadows Part One ('06, 58m) Mary Kerr's engaging documentary on the early Ferus, Syndell Studio, Gas House, and Venice West Café (now Sponto Gallery) connecting art and poetry. What took place in these spaces, studios and in the "pads" in Venice and LA were the roots of what developed into a very professional; but still, energetic Los Angeles art scene. The surviving poets, most20still living in poverty, remain true to the uncompromising spirit they forged in the 50s. "The myth of the muse set our spines straight directed" -Tony Scibella


Vera Cruz
This exciting Western, set in 1860 Mexico, features Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster involved in a plot to overthrow Emperor Maximilian. A lively and entertaining melodrama, Vera Cruz is highlighted by the use of many unusual locations, and its alternating touches of comedy and suspense. Also starring Cesar Romero, Ernest Borgnine, and Charles Bronson.


Vertigo
In Vertigo, a private eye (James Stewart) falls in love with a woman (Kim Novak) who may be possessed by the soul of a dead woman. When his love object dies, he can't let go. Slick suspense plotting is the pretext for spinning a visual spell: ravishing, dreamlike color photography in Vertigo, and a glittering version of '40s noir in Laura. Bernard Herrman's matchless score for the Hitchcock and David Raskin's hit theme song for the Preminger add their own ineffable perfumes. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1958, 35mm, 128 min.


WALTZ WITH BASHIR, 2008, Sony Pictures Classics, 90 min. This mesmerizing and gripping "animated documentary" is a hand-drawn chronicle of director-writer-producer Ari Folman’s repressed memories of war. It begins one night at a bar, when an old friend tells Folman about a recurring nightmare in which he is chased by 26 vicious dogs. Every night, the same number of beasts. The two men conclude that there’s a connection to their Israeli Army mission in the first Lebanon War of the early 1980s. Ari is surprised that he can’t remember a thing anymore about that period of his life. Intrigued by this riddle, he begins to meet and interview old friends and comrades around the world in order to rediscover his past, his identity, and the consequences of so much violence on his psyche. As Ari delves deeper and deeper into the mystery, his memory begins to offer up surreal images. Winner of six Awards of the Israeli Film Academy, including Best Film and Best Director. "It's a provocative, strange and arresting film, whose unusual blend of style and substance should reach a large worldwide audience." - Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com.


When A Man Loves
Restored 35mm print courtesy of UCLA Film And Television Archive
John Barrymore's nuanced performance can't quell this French period drama's epic intensity: priests are defrocked, identities are disguised, monarchs are corrupted, and delicate maidens are sold into horrifying marriages--and that's just the tip of the flaming iceberg. Chivalry might very well be dead, but Barrymore takes a defibrillator to it in his turn as Fabien des Grieux, a divinity-student-turned-fake-courtesan-gambler bent on rescuing beautiful young Manon (Dolores Costello) from an endless coterie of unsavory clutches. Murder, imprisonment, thunderstorms, sword fights, convict boat mutinies, puppets, monkeys--lucky for us, this film spares no punches in its portrayal of 18th-century French intrigue and heroic histrionics. If this is what happens when a man loves...
Dir. Alan Crosland, 1927, 35mm, 111 min.


WHILE NEW YORK SLEEPS
(1920) Directed by Charles Brabin
Shot at the new Fox studio on West Fifty-Fifth Street (and with extraordinary use of New York locations), this pre-noir dramatic anthology features the same group of actors in three separate stories which reveal the duplicity and corruption behind the public face of the world's greatest city.
Screenplay: Charles Brabin. Cinematographer: George W. Lane. Cast: Estelle Taylor, William Locke, Marc McDermott, Harry Southern. 35mm, 65 min.


Wholpin No. 7 DVD Release Party
Join us for Wholphin's return to the The Cinefamily, to celebrate the release of both Wholphin No. 7 and the Best of Wholphin Volume 1, two of the latest DVDs of shorts, docs and uncategorizable films curated by the folks at McSweeney's. Among the picks to be screened are: the early Gus Van Sant short The Discipline Of D.E., based on a William S. Burroughs short story; the documentary Nutkin's Last Stand, about England's fight to save her beloved red squirrels from invasion by the American grey squirrels; and, the gorgeous in-house Wholpin production Look At The Sun, an incredibly close look at the sun in its most gorgeous and inactive state. Also featured are Academy Award-winning shorts, UFOs, giant squid, and a live, interactive scientific experiment in retroactive causality, in which the audience, just by watching, will help to determine the role of consciousness in the establishment of a physical reality.


Wild Orchids
A luminous, alluring young Greta Garbo (draped in incredible wardrobe by legendary Hollywood costumer Adrian) is torn between the love of a tiger hunter and the lusty advances of a dangerous Javanese prince in 1929's Wild Orchids, a film which managed to give even silent-era audiences more than they bargained for in the way of steamy melodrama. The love triangle at the center of this tumultuous narrative builds in suspense as its main characters journey further into the sweltering heart of its exotic locale. Practically flung from lover to lover, Garbo's stamina is nearly as impressive as her performance--her glamorous turn lights up the film's many larger-than-life setpieces. The resulting romantic catastrophes, and an edgy-for-its-time nightmare sequence featuring Garbo in the hands of a domineering lover, mirror the complex rivalries of Hemingway's most twisted short stories.
Dir. Sidney Franklin, 1929, 35mm, 100 min.


The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit
Ray Bradbury wrote the screenplay for this adaptation of his own short story and play about five cash-strapped men who pool their financial resources to buy a glorious white suit that fits them all. The suit proves to be truly magical, making all the wishes of each man who wears it come true. Joe Mantegna, Edward James Olmos and Esai Morales co-star in this offbeat, lighthearted fantasy--a departure for horror and sci-fi specialist Stuart Gordon (Reanimator, From Beyond).


Yesterday Girl (Abschied von Gestern)
W. Germany/1966/b&w/88 min./16mm | Scr/dir: Alexander Kluge; w/ Alexandra Kluge, Gunther Mack, Hans Bramme.
Anita G., a penniless young refugee from the East (played by Kluge’s sister), wanders through the alien landscape of the “economic miracle” committing petty crimes. As Anita encounters judges, social workers, and bureaucrats, Kluge makes it clear that she's a product of a history that Germany wants to forget.


YOR, THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE
(from IMDB)
Yor, an extremely blond prehistoric warrior, comes to question his origins, particularly with regard to a mysterious medallion he wears. When he learns of a desert goddess who supposedly wears the same medallion, Yor decides that he must find her and learn his true identity. Along the way, he encounters ape-men, dinosaurs, and a strange futuristic society.


ZAZA
(1923) Directed by Alan Dwan
Silent screen goddess Gloria Swanson plays the titular Zaza, a brazen French music hall queen and former prostitute, who battles another woman (Thurman) for the affections of a wealthy businessman (Warner). The first of eleven silent features Swanson made in New York, lavishly produced at the Astoria studio.
Based on the play by Pierre Burton and Charles Simon. Producer: Adolf Zukor. Screenplay: Albert Shelby Le Vino. Cast: Gloria Swanson, H.B. Warner, Ferdinand Gottschalk, Lucille Laverne. 35mm, silent, 66 min.