a highly-opinionated selection of things happening around town, and sometimes out of town. this month's page here.
mon. jan. 2
battle royale 4:45 7:30 10:15 PM @ silent movie theatre
frank fairfield @ redwood bar
tue. jan. 3
willoughby (11 PM) @ the echo
his girl friday 1 PM @ lacma
catwalk @ the smell
wed. jan. 4
the finches @ the smell
casanova 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
into the abyss, mr. death @ new beverly
dead dawn (11 PM) @ the echo
it happened one night, his girl friday @ ucla film archive @ million dollar theater
thu. jan. 5
jeff garlin & henry rollins @ largo
ball of fire, the awful truth @ aero
weekend 5:15 7:45 10:15 @ silent movie theatre
into the abyss, mr. death @ new beverly
fri. jan. 6
wild at heart ("uncut" version) MIDNIGHT @ nuart
no age, you me & us, heller keller @ the smell
the goonies, stand by me @ egyptian
weekend 4:30 7:00 9:30 @ silent movie theatre
the skin i live in, broken embraces @ new beverly
ema & her lady parts @ pehrspace
sat. jan. 7
thee cormans @ redwood bar
dunes, ezra buchla, lucky dragons, abe vigoda @ the smell
wallace berman's underground 5 PM @ silent movie theatre
weekend 7:45 10:15 @ silent movie theatre
broken embraces 4:30 9:20 PM, the skin i live in 7 PM @ new beverly
inherit the wind @ ucla film archive
sun. jan. 8
the prince and the showgirl, some like it hot @ egyptian
weekend 2:45 5:15 7:45 10:15 @ silent movie theatre
the fifth element 7 PM @ new beverly
up the river 7 PM @ ucla film archive
l'ocelle mare, kevin greenspon @ the smell
dangerous ideas: political conceptual work in los angeles 1974-1981 3 PM FREE (RSVP) @ moca ahmanson
mon. jan. 9
zongo junction @ the mint
weekend 5:15 @ silent movie theatre
the increasingly poor decisions of todd margaret 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
the fifth element @ new beverly
tue. jan. 10
the skin i live in @ aero
weekend 5:15 7:45 10:15 @ silent movie theatre
films TBA @ grindhouse film fest @ new beverly
miss bala FREE @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges
wed. jan. 11
a separation @ aero
weekend 5:15 7:45 10:15 @ silent movie theatre
never let me go, fahrenheit 451 @ new beverly
one million years b.c. (1966), one million b.c. (1940) @ ucla film archive @ million dollar theater
tyrannosaur 9 PM FREE @ usc ray stark
green & wood @ redwood bar
thu. jan. 12
the kid with a bike @ aero
the king of comedy @ silent movie theatre
never let me go, fahrenheit 451 @ new beverly
addiction incorporated 7 PM FREE @ usc ray stark
shadows @ film independent spirit awards nominee discussion and screening @ lacma
strange notes and nervous breakdowns: punk and media art 1974-1981 6:30 PM FREE (RSVP) @ moca ahmanson
fri. jan. 13
fela! @ troubadour
the monster squad, the gate @ egyptian
topsy-turvy @ silent movie theatre
black angel 9:20 PM @ new beverly
the divide MIDNIGHT @ nuart
sat. jan. 14
blood of a poet 3 PM, testament of orpheus FREE @ getty center
the moderns FREE 7 PM @ getty center
predator, predator 2 @ egyptian
the grey, narc @ aero
rats @ the smell
the in-laws @ silent movie theatre
industry town: the avant-garde & hollywood 5 PM @ silent movie theatre
modern romance 10:30 PM @ silent movie theatre
black angel 5:50 9:20 PM @ new beverly
lady terminator MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
we need to talk about kevin 3 PM FREE @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges
sun. jan. 15
tribute to the slits night @ part time punks @ the echo
willy wonka and the chocolate factory 1 PM @ aero
viva villa! 2:55 7:30 PM, juarez 5:10 9:45 PM @ new beverly
where are you taking me? FREE @ ucla film archive
miss bala 3 PM FREE @ usc ray stark
mon. jan. 16
viva villa!, juarez @ new beverly
tue. jan. 17
kill all redneck pricks: a documentary film about a band called karp @ silent movie theatre
experiment in terror 1 PM @ lacma
viva villa!, juarez @ new beverly
wed. jan. 18
psychedelic visions & expanded consciousness 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
every man for himself, the piano teacher @ new beverly
quick millions, now i'll tell @ ucla film archive
shock corridor, the naked kiss @ ucla film archive @ million dollar theater
we need to talk about kevin FREE 7 PM @ usc ray stark
ezra buchla, joey molinaro @ machine project 1-5 pm
thu. jan. 19
last summer @ egyptian
l'age d'or, the young and the damned @ aero
every man for himself, the piano teacher @ new beverly
mur murs FREE 6 PM @ ucla fowler museum
fri. jan. 20
belle du jour, diary of a chambermaid @ aero
film socialisme 5:15 9:30 PM, breathless 7:45 PM @ silent movie theatre
crawlspace MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theatre
the bad and the beautiful, all about eve @ new beverly
white fence, king tuff, crazy band @ the smell
sat. jan. 21
the loons @ el cid
the milk of sorrow FREE (RSVP) 1 PM @ lacma
the violin FREE (RSVP) 3 PM @ lacma
driftwood singers @ the echo (early show)
meat market @ the smell
luckman jazz orchestra: tribute to hank mobley @ luckman fine arts
mad max, mad max 2: the road warrior, mad max beyond thunderdome @ egyptian
the exterminating angel, the criminal life of archibaldo de la cruz @ aero
film socialisme 2:30 PM @ silent movie theatre
los angeles observed 5 PM @ silent movie theatre
a woman is a woman, film socialisme @ silent movie theatre
the bad and the beautiful, all about eve @ new beverly
the power and the glory, fury @ ucla film archive
sun. jan. 22
no age @ moca pdc
blouse @ the echo
the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie, viridiana @ egyptian
george melies shorts program 5 PM @ aero
film socialisme 1 PM @ silent movie theatre
the big country 3:30 7:30 PM @ new beverly
mon. jan. 23
film socialisme 5:15 9:30 PM, vivre sa vie 7:45 PM @ silent movie theatre
the big country 8 PM @ new beverly
tue. jan. 24
beat the devil 1 PM @ lacma
film socialisme 5:15 9:45 PM, contempt 7:45 PM @ silent movie theatre
films TBA @ grindhouse film fest @ new beverly
wed. jan. 25
film socialisme 5:15 9:45 PM, pierrot le fou 7:45 PM @ silent movie theatre
summer, four adventures of reinette and mirabelle @ new beverly
paths of glory @ ucla film archive @ million dollar theater
thu. jan. 26
fat city, the new centurions @ aero
film socialisme 5:15 9:45 PM, masculin feminin 7:45 PM @ silent movie theatre
summer, four adventures of reinette and mirabelle @ new beverly
allah las, exploding flowers @ satellite
fri. jan. 27
the other conquest FREE (RSVP) @ lacma
the devils @ egyptian
bringing up baby, holiday @ new beverly
jon brion @ largo
reigning sound, strange boys, thee cormans @ alex's bar
margaret 4:15 7:30 10:45 PM @ silent movie theatre
sat. jan. 28
the cameraman (w/ art deco architecture presentation) 3:30 PM @ egyptian
deliverance, thunderbolt and lightfoot @ aero
optical manipulations 6 PM @ alternative projections: experimental film in los angeles 1945-1980 @ silent movie theatre
bombshell 10 PM @ jean harlow pajama party @ silent movie theatre
bringing up baby 3:25 7:30 PM, holiday 5:30 9:35 PM @ new beverly
brent weinbach (10 PM) @ ucb theatre
kit @ the smell
reigning sound, strange boys @ alex's bar
thee cormans, the teutonics, the chuckleberries FREE @ viva cantina
margaret 12:00 6:30 PM @ silent movie theatre
sun. jan. 29
ghostbusters 3:25 7:30 PM, groundhog day 5:30 9:35 PM @ new beverly
arrington de dionyso @ the smell
margaret 12:30 3:45 7:00 10:15 PM @ silent movie theatre
dos (early show, 3 PM) FREE @ redwood bar
mon. jan. 30
ghostbusters, groundhog day @ new beverly
margaret 4:15 10:15 PM @ silent movie theatre
tue. jan. 31
ghostbusters, groundhog day @ new beverly
margaret 4:15 7:30 10:45 PM @ silent movie theatre
wed. feb. 1
disorderly conduct @ ucla film archive
margaret 4:45 10:30 PM @ silent movie theatre
thu. feb. 2
natasha maidoff films & more FREE 7 PM @ 7 dudley cinema @ beyond baroque
margaret 4:15 7:30 10:45 PM @ silent movie theatre
tue. feb. 7
music + image 8:30 PM @ redcat
wed. feb. 8
thee silver mt. zion memorial orchestra @ troubadour
fri. feb. 10
say anything MIDNIGHT @ nuart
ceait festival night 1: noise night 8:30 PM @ redcat
sat. feb. 11
syl johnson @ the echo
ceait festival night 2: ambient night 8:30 PM @ redcat
sun. feb. 12
grimble grumble @ my bloody valentine tribute night @ the echo
mon. feb. 13
lee anne schmitt: the last buffalo hunt 8:30 PM @ redcat
wed. feb. 15
rock & roll experiments 8 PM @ alternative projections: experimental film in los angeles 1945-1980 @ silent movie theatre
dr. jekyll and mr. hyde (1941) @ ucla film archive
john cage centenary festival night one 8:30 PM @ redcat
thu. feb. 16
yael bartana & dani gal: hammer screenings 7 PM @ hammer
john cage centenary festival night two 8:30 PM @ redcat
lavender diamond @ troubadour
sat. feb. 18
everything is terrible! presents doggiewoggiez! poochiewoochiez! 10 PM @ silent movie theatre
sun. feb. 19
l.a. zine fest @ the last bookstore
mon. feb. 20
ezra buchla @ pehrspace
fri. feb. 24
budos band @ echoplex
jon brion @ largo
sat. feb. 25
bleached @ bootleg
thu. mar. 1
roky erickson @ el rey
fri. mar. 2
dead alive MIDNIGHT @ nuart
sat. mar. 3
white fence, ty segall, mikal cronin @ troubadour
sat. mar. 10
tillie's punctured romance 8 PM @ royce hall organ and silent film @ ucla royce hall
luckman jazz orchestra: tribute to j.j. johnson @ luckman fine arts
fri. mar. 16
alien MIDNIGHT @ nuart
mingus dynasty 8 PM @ ucla royce hall
sun. mar. 18
the seventh cross 7 PM, bad day at black rock @ ucla film archive
wed. mar. 21
the last hurrah @ ucla film archive
thu. mar. 22
daniel eisenberg: the unstable object 8:30 PM @ redcat
fri. mar. 23
the big lebowski MIDNIGHT @ nuart
sat. mar. 24
morton subotnick & california e.a.r. unit 8:30 PM @ redcat
sun. mar. 25
the living end: remixed and remastered 7 PM @ ucla film archive
fri. mar. 30
guess who's coming to dinner @ ucla film archive
mon. apr. 2
narrative bodies: films and videos by abigail child 8:30 PM @ redcat
fri. apr. 6
hausu MIDNIGHT @ nuart
mon. apr. 9
sharon lockhart: double tide 8:30 PM @ redcat
sun. apr. 15
godspeed! you black emperor @ fernwood campground (big sur)
mon. apr. 16
seeing and awakening: new films by nathaniel dorsky 8:30 PM @ redcat
mon. apr. 23
bill morrison: miners bridges lost love and other retrieved treasures 8:30 PM @ redcat
sat. apr. 28
the birds 2:00 8:00 PM @ alex theatre
mon. apr. 30
the imaginary voyages of maureen selwood 8:30 PM @ redcat
WHAT IT IS:
ADDICTION INCORPORATED
The explosive story of Victor DeNoble, one of the most important and influential whistleblowers of all time, comes to the big screen in Addiction Incorporated.
In the 1980s, DeNoble was a research scientist at a major tobacco company, where he was tasked with finding a substitute for nicotine that would not cause heart attacks. His quest was to discover if it would be possible to create a cigarette that would be safer for smokers (although not necessarily less addictive). DeNoble succeeded, but in the process produced something that many suspected was true, but the industry had been denying for years: scientific evidence that nicotine was addictive. This set off a chain of events that still reverberates today.
In an act of modern-day heroism, DeNoble took his findings to the people despite being subject to a strict confidentiality agreement, testifying about his research in the infamous 1994 Congressional hearings—the same ones where the seven heads of the major tobacco companies declared that nicotine was not addictive. In the end, an unprecedented alliance of journalists, politicians, attorneys, and whistleblowers banded together to achieve what was once considered impossible: the first ever federal regulation of the tobacco industry.
They all come together to tell their stories in Addiction Incorporated - a personal story of one man risking everything to make a difference, shaking up a powerful industry and saving countless lives along the way, set against the backdrop of billion-dollar lawsuits and massive scientific conspiracy. 35mm print provided courtesy of Acapella Pictures and Variance Films. Rated PG-13. Running time: 100 minutes.
Followed by a Q&A with Charles Evans Jr.
A SEPARATION (JODAEIYE NADER AZ SIMIN)
2011, Sony Pictures Classics, 123 min, Iran, Dir: Asghar Farhadi
In this wrenching family drama, the dissolution of an upper-middle class marriage reveals sexual, class and religious fault lines in contemporary Iran. When Simin (Leila Hatami) asks her husband Nader (Peyman Moaadi) to emigrate in search of better opportunities for their daughter, the man refuses, insisting that they stay with his invalid father. The couple separate and Nader hires Razieh to tend to his dad, but the arrival of this poor, devout and pregnant woman in the household brings serious complications. Winner of the Golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlin International Film Festival.
"I have almost never seen a film from Iran that wasn't quiet, and Asghar Farhadi's masterpiece fits that description. Yet just beneath the quietude, this drama of marital discord expands, almost invisibly, into the most searingly organic of thrillers. A knockout." -- Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
In Persian with English subtitles.
THE AWFUL TRUTH
1937, Sony Repertory, 92 min, USA, Dir: Leo McCarey
Leo McCarey won a Best Director Oscar for this side-splitting masterpiece in which Irene Dunne and Cary Grant decide to divorce - but darn it, it just doesn’t seem to take. With Ralph Bellamy (in his defining "other man" role), Alex D’Arcy, (Miss) Cecil Cunningham and Joyce Compton, who steals the show with her unique rendition of "Gone With the Wind."
BALL OF FIRE
1941, 111 min, USA, Dir: Howard Hawks
Barbara Stanwyck is sassy, saucy Sugarpuss O’Shea, a wisecracking nightclub singer on the run from mob kingpins. Gary Cooper is good egg Professor Bertram Potts, a naïve scholar who meets the crooner while researching slang. Two worlds collide as Sugarpuss hides out with Potts and his nerdy crew of lexicographers in Howard Hawks’ wonderfully hilarious romantic comedy, which garnered four Oscar nominations, including Stanwyck for Best Actress and Billy Wilder and Thomas Monroe for Best Original Screenplay.
BEAT THE DEVIL
Humphrey Bogart stars as one of five disreputable adventurers who are trying to get uranium out of East Africa. Bogart's associates include pompous fraud Robert Morley, and Peter Lorre as the German-accented "O'Hara", whose wartime record is forever a source of speculation and suspicion. Becoming involved in Bogart's machinations are a prim British married couple (Edward Underdown and blonde-wigged Jennifer Jones). As a climax to their many misadventures and double-crosses, the uranium seekers end up facing extermination by an Arab firing squad. The satirical nature of Beat the Devil eluded many moviegoers in 1953, and the film was a failure. The fact that the picture attained cult status in lesser years failed to impress its star Humphrey Bogart, who could only remember that he lost a considerable chunk of his own money when he became involved in the project. Peter Viernick worked on the script on an uncredited basis.
1954/b&w/100 min. Scr: Truman Capote, John Huston; dir: John Huston; w/ Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre
THE BIG COUNTRY
Gregory Peck is the retired sea captain who comes to marry Carroll Baker, but is instead thrown into a battle against Burl Ives and his sons over water rights. Ives won an Oscar as the patriarch; Charlton Heston delivers a strong performance as the ranch foreman. A brilliant musical score by Jerome Moross. 1958, USA, 35mm, 165 minutes. Directed by William Wyler; written by Robert Wilder; starring Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Charlton Heston, Carroll Baker, Burl Ives, Charles Bickford, Alfonso Bedoya, Chuck Connors; music by Jerome Moross
BILL MORRISON: MINERS, BRIDGES, LOST LOVE AND OTHER RETRIEVED TREASURES
Los Angeles premiere | The Miners’ Hymns (USA/UK, 2011, 52 min, HD)
Since The Film of Her (1996), award-winning filmmaker Bill Morrison has completed more than 20 experimental pieces in which he poetically and rhythmically reworks archival footage in various stages of preservation or decomposition. With The Miners’ Hymns, he teams up with Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson to celebrate the culture and political struggles of the Durham collieries in northeastern England. Weaving together stunning black-and-white footage from the early 1900s through the massive 1984 strikes, the film montages different aspects of the miners’ lives—the hardship of pit work, the role of the trade unions, the tradition of the colliery brass bands and the annual Miners’ Gala in Durham. A selection of earlier short films, including Outerborough (2005) and Release (2010) rounds out the evening. In person: Bill Morrison
BLACK ANGEL
A beautiful blackmailer is murdered and John Phillips--who has been cheating on his wife with her--is a suspect, along with Dan Duryea and Peter Lorre. 1946, USA, 35mm, 81 minutes. directed by Roy William Neill; screenplay by Roy Chanslor; based on the novel by Cornell Woolrich; starring Dan Duryea, June Vincent, Peter Lorre, Broderick Crawford, Constance Dowling, Wallace Ford
THE CAMERAMAN
1928, Warner Bros., 69 min, USA, Dir: Buster Keaton
Buster has a huge crush on Sally, an adorable office worker for MGM Newsreels. Buster gives up his tintyping job and gets himself a camera, with a new plan to catch the attention of both Sally and MGM. The novice cameraman is in the right place at the right time to capture on film a Tong war smack in the middle of Chinatown - and must narrowly escape plenty of disasters, Buster-style! In a clever meta-comment on impressing the studios, this delightful comedy was originally an MGM production.
CASANOVA
One of the most lavish historical epics of the silent era gets its first Los Angeles screening in over twenty years! Ivan Mosjoukine (regarded as the Russian equivalent to Valentino) stars in this light-hearted and opulent version of the classic “Casanova” story. Within a cheery episodic frame, the film bounces our lusty hero from Italy to Austria, to Russia and back again, all in the name of amorous anarchy — until he must choose between the everlasting attentions of Russia’s Catherine The Great and a commoner girl. This late-period silent provides both a signature comedic role for Mosjoukine (whose real-life romantic escapes with his admirers nearly equaled the heat of Casanova’s on-screen travails), and hand-tinted Technicolor sequences (during the “Carnival of Venice” sequence) that thrill on the level of the greatest motion picture art of the era. One of the first silents to get the full loving restoration treatment around the same time as Gance’s Napoleon, Casanova was brought back to the moviegoing public in 1986, and has barely received any theatrical play since then — so join us for a truly rare 35mm experience!
Dir. Alexandre Volkoff, 1927, 35mm, 132 min. (Archival 35mm print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive)
CRAWLSPACE
Equalling his turns in Woyczek or Aguirre: The Wrath of God for pure moment-by-moment mania, Klaus Kinski gives one of his career-defining performances as the uber-creepy Dr. Karl Guenther in the 1986 voyeur-tastic freakout Crawlspace! The film concerns an apartment building run by our madman Klaus, and the impossibly accommodating labyrinth of air ducts that allow the good doctor to spy on his tenants. No one can ooze creepiness like Kinski, and director David Schmoeller wisely milks this super-power for all it’s worth. The film is a loving and effective tribute to Psycho with a few nice twists up its sleeve, a fun ‘80s vibe, and a great score by regular De Palma collaborator Pino Donaggio. Plus, there isn’t a moment when Kinski’s face is onscreen that won’t make your skin crawl — with delight! Director David Schomeller will be at the Cinefamily for a Q&A after the film!
THE CRIMINAL LIFE OF ARCHIBALDO DE LA CRUZ
1955, 89 min, Mexico, Dir: Luis Buñuel
This pitch-black comedy from Luis Buñuel follows the thwarted best-laid plans of Archibaldo de la Cruz (Ernesto Alonso), a privileged screwball living during the Mexican Revolution who believes his calling in life is to be a serial killer of women - yet every woman he stalks either accidentally dies, kills herself or is bumped off by someone else before he can get his satisfaction! A rarely screened gem, and in good company with THE YOUNG AND THE DAMNED, THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL and “Simon of the Desert” as Buñuel’s finest Mexican films. With Miroslava. In Spanish with English subtitles.
Dangerous Ideas: Political Conceptual Work in Los Angeles, 1974-1981
In the political hotbed of the 1970s, some artists merged conceptual approaches practice in video or film with their political concerns in an explicit manner. These artworks play with basic elements of media creation and perception, while at the same time addressing the troubled times covered by the MOCA show Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974–1981, This afternoon we’ll primarily screen film work from that period, works viewed far less often than some more well-known works on video which can be viewed in the exhibition.
In person: Tom Leeser and Dennis Phillips!
DANIEL EISENBERG: THE UNSTABLE OBJECT
What do a luxury automobile, a wall clock, and a cymbal have in common? Daniel Eisenberg’s (Persistence, Something More Than Night) latest film, The Unstable Object (2011) is an elegant and visually sensual essay on contemporary models of production. Interested in the ways “things” affect both producer and consumer, Eisenberg travels to a Volkswagen factory in Dresden, Germany, where individualized cars are hand-built by high-tech specialists; to Chicago Lighthouse Industries, where blind workers produce wall clocks for government offices; and to a deafening cymbal factory in Istanbul, Turkey, where sought-after cymbals are cast and hammered by hand, exactly as they were 400 years ago. Through sequences sympathetic to each site and subject that highlight the senses of sight, sound, and touch, The Unstable Object quietly probes the relationships our global economy creates among individuals around the world. In person: Daniel Eisenberg
THE DEVILS
1971, Warner Bros., 108 min, UK, Dir: Ken Russell
Director Ken Russell’s adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun remains one of the most disturbingly memorable films of the early 1970s. In 17th-century France, Cardinal Richelieu’s minions use the womanizing of activist priest Urban Grandier (Oliver Reed) as an excuse to investigate his "diabolic possession" of the local nuns, including the demented, hunchbacked Mother Superior Sister Jeanne (an unforgettable Vanessa Redgrave).
DISORDERLY CONDUCT
Directed by John W. Considine, Jr.
An honest cop who arrests a corrupt politician’s daughter for speeding, Tracy soon finds himself a pawn of the corrupt system: Persecuted, demoted and demoralized, he lapses and faces the danger of becoming just another crooked cop. By contrast with his mobster and small-time crook roles, here Tracy essays the part of a man concerned with duty and morality, a strand that would infuse most of his succeeding career.
Fox Film Corp. Screenwriter: Del Andrews, William Anthony McGuire. Cinematographer: Ray June. Editor: Frank Hull. Cast: Spencer Tracy, Sally Eilers, El Brendel, Dickie Moore, Ralph Bellamy. 35mm, b/w, 82 min.
THE DIVIDE
After a cataclysmic explosion wipes out New York City, eight survivors blockade themselves in their apartment house basement, but claustrophobia and armed attackers turn the tenants against one another as they scramble to escape. L.A. Premiere! Actor Michael Biehn In Person!
EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF
Jean-Luc Godard ended a lengthy sojourn in video with the release of this moody and cerebral narrative film about a male television producer (Jacques Dutronc), his ex-girlfriend (Nathalie Baye), and a prostitute (Isabelle Huppert). Godard explores these characters first in individual segments, and then in a final movement that brings their stories together. While it isn't as strident as many of his other works, Sauve Qui Peut La Vie utilizes bold experimental techniques and delves into themes of class, gender, power, and identity. 1980, France/Austria/West Germany/Switzerland, 35mm, 87 minutes. New 35mm print! directed by Jean-Luc Godard; written by Jean-Claude Carrière, Jean-Luc Godard, Anne-Marie Miéville; starring Jacques Dutronc, Isabelle Huppert, Nathalie Baye; music by Gabriel Yared; in French with English subtitles
EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE! PRESENTS DOGGIEWOGGIEZ! POOCHIEWOOCHIEZ!
Those krazed VHS-hunting pupz from Everything Is Terrible! (everyone’s favorite found footage chop shoppe) return to the Cinefamily with the L.A. premiere of their third feature film — containing a feat never before attempted in either human or canine history. EIT! asks but a few simple questions: 1) “What if we made a movie composed ENTIRELY out of dog-related found footage?”; 2) ‘What if this magickal movie, made up of thousands of other dog movies, was also a remake of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 masterpiece The Holy Mountain?”; and, 3) “What if we went on the road performing an all-new “live in fur” show that picked up where Cirque Du Soleil and The Rock-A-Fire Explosion left off?” Well, let’s stop asking dumb rhetorical questions because this never-ending spiral of World-Pup winning, sunglasses-wearing, murder-solving, skateboarding pooches is real! This is it! Are you dog enough to go fetch it? ARFFFFFF!
THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL
1962, Janus Films, 95 min, Mexico, Dir: Luis Buñuel
A dinner gathering of wealthy Mexican sophisticates at a mansion devolves when the servants abandon their posts and the guests are inexplicably unable to leave the grand music room. As days wear on, facades and hierarchies dissolve and the upper-crust prisoners become increasingly uncouth and downright animalistic. Luis Buñuel’s merciless takedown of social structures is at once haunting and riotous. Featuring international screen icon and VIRIDIANA star Silvia Pinal. “The great Spanish director Luis Buñuel traps us in the Surrealistic universe of THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL, his most bitter, most brilliant work since VIRIDIANA.” - Roger Ebert. In Spanish with English subtitles. 50th Anniversary!
FILM SOCIALISME
If scholars and fans had fun discerning the Brechtian devices and Marxist aesthetics of Godard's past films, the auteur/intellectual puts his lefty geopolitics front and center in Socialism while somehow offering even fewer answers than in filmed treatises like Week End and One Plus One. Broken into three parts, this semi-documentary travels with Patti Smith and fellow passengers on a ferry across the Mediterranean, documents an avant-garde performance at a gas station, and slices and dices archival footage with rhetoric designed to agitate or amuse, depending on your viewpoint. Jean-Luc Godard---France/Switzerland---2010---101 mins. Our screenings of Film Socialisme are presented with FULL English subtitles (for the first time ever in the U.S.!), rather than previous international screenings’ notorious “Navajo English” subtitles.
FOUR ADVENTURES OF REINETTE AND MIRABELLE
(from IMDB)
Four interwoven stories of Reinette and Mirabelle: (1) L'heure bleue/The blue hour; (2) Le garçon de café/The coffee-shop's waiter; (3) Le mendiant, la kleptomane et l'arnaqueuse/The beggar, the kleptomaniac and the swindler; (4) La vente du tableau/Selling the painting. 1987, France, 35mm, 95 minutes. New 35mm print! written and directed by Eric Rohmer; starring Joëlle Miquel, Jessica Forde, Philippe Laudenbach, Béatrice Romand, Marie Rivière, Fabrice Luchini; in French with English subtitles
Fury (1936)
Directed by Fritz Lang
A fascinating intersection of talents, Fritz Lang’s drama cast Tracy as a man whose faith in human nature is destroyed by being wrongfully accused of a crime, pursued by a mob and left for dead in a burning jail. A more Teutonic vision than Tracy’s typical dramatic packages, it represents one of his most externalized portrayals and one of the most exciting and successful ones of his early career.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. Producer: Joseph L. Manckiewicz. Based on a story by Norman Krasna. Screenwriter: Bartlett Cormack, F. Lang, Cinematographer: Joseph Ruttenberg. Editor: Frank Sullivan. Cast: Sylvia Sidney, Spencer Tracy, Walter Abel, Bruce Cabot, Edward Ellis. 35mm, b/w, 90 min.
THE GREY
2012, Open Road Films, 117 min, USA, Dir: Joe Carnahan
In this frostbitten thriller from director Joe Carnahan, Liam Neeson leads an unruly group of oil-rig roughnecks when their plane crashes in the remote Alaskan wilderness. Battling mortal injuries and merciless weather, the survivors have only a few days to escape the icy elements - and a vicious pack of rogue wolves on the hunt - before their time runs out. With Dermot Mulroney and Frank Grillo. Discussion between films with director Joe Carnahan.
THE IMAGINARY VOYAGES OF MAUREEN SELWOOD
Since 1980 Maureen Selwood’s hand-drawn animations have taken viewers into the strange, beautiful, and sometimes terrifying lands of the mind. For her first solo show in Los Angeles, she presents a selection of more recent pieces, including the haunting black-and-white imagery of Hail Mary (1998); the expressively rendered Drawing Lessons (2006) and I Started Early (2007); As You Desire Me (2009), the single-channel version of an installation inspired by her residence at the American Academy in Rome at the beginning of the Iraq War; the hallucinogenic trip of How Much Better if Plymouth Rock Had Landed on the Pilgrims (2009); the unexpected washing-machine madness of A Modern Convenience (2012); as well as Mistaken Identity (2001), her alluring deconstruction of 1955 noir classic Kiss Me Deadly, presented with live performance. In person: Maureen Selwood
THE INCREASINGLY POOR DECISIONS OF TODD MARGARET
Join David Cross in person for a special presentation of what’s possibly his most warped creation ever! Created, written by, and starring Cross (“Arrested Development”, “Mr. Show”), IFC’s “The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret” follows the awkward misadventures of an American office temp/convenient liar who bluffs his way into a senior sales position heading up the London office for the new energy drink/toxic poison Thunder Muscle. Aided in his imbecilic gaffes and misfortunes by his mysteriously devious and sometimes useless assistant (Blake Harrison of “The Inbetweeners”), Todd inadvertently wrecks havoc on the entire city of London, to devastatingly hilarious results. Co-starring Will Arnett, Janeane Garofalo, Amber Tamblyn and Russ Tamblyn. Come watch a special feature-length edition of Season One with us, followed by a Q&A with David Cross
INDUSTRY TOWN: THE AVANT-GARDE & HOLLYWOOD
Tonight’s eruptive experiments come courtesy of filmmakers whose works play explicitly with the commercial film industry (Hollywood and beyond), parodying and often willfully mutating its staid structures, inverting the intended messages of classic and not-so-classic films by using familiar signifiers as raw material. The program kicks off with a brazenly cynical 1928 silent shot by Citizen Kane cinematographer Gregg Toland, then jumps into the ‘60s/‘70s counter-culture with Peter Mays’ hallucinatory dream screens, George Lucas’ auspicious abstract docu-poem 6-18-67, conceptual collage legend John Baldessari’s rare and cryptic Title, and more!
INHERIT THE WIND
Directed by Stanley Kramer
The screen version of the controversial stage play about the infamous (and still-relevant) Scopes “Monkey Trial” of 1925 pits Tracy’s progressive defense lawyer against Fredric March’s prosecutor, in a case about a schoolteacher charged with teaching evolution in class. The aging Tracy is perfectly suited to the role of a modern great statesman, his passion for what is right tempered by a weary compassion for his adversary.
United Artists Corp. Producer: Stanley Kramer. Based on the play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. Screenwriter: Nathan E. Douglas. Cinematographer: Ernest Laszlo. Editor: Frederick Knudtson. Cast: Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Gene Kelly, Florence Eldridge, Dick York.
35mm, b/w, 126 min.
In-person: author James Curtis; actress Donna Anderson.
THE IN-LAWS
This wild comedy stars Peter Falk as a CIA agent, or at least he claims to be one. Alan Arkin is really a dentist whose daughter is marrying Falk's son. Somehow the comic relationship between these future in-laws leads them into a plot that foils a South American dictator and his counterfeiting schemes. Arthur Hiller---USA---1979---103 mins. Kevin Pollak will be here at the Cinefamily to perform, as well as introduce the film, and participate in a Q&A afterwards!
INTO THE ABYSS
Conversations with death row inmate Michael Perry and those affected by his crime serve as an examination of why people - and the state - kill. 2011, USA, 35mm, 105 minutes. written, directed and narrated by Werner Herzog; featuring Werner Herzog, Michael Perry, Jason Burkett
JUAREZ
(from IMDB)
The newly named emperor Maximilian and his wife Carolotta arrive in Mexico to face popular sentiment favoring Benito Juarez and democracy. He tries to appease the Mexicans but fails. Abraham Lincoln is supporting Juarez and asks the French to withdraw support for Maximilian. Carlotta goes to France to plead with Napoleon, to no avail... 1939, USA, 35mm, 125 minutes. directed by William Dieterle; produced by Hal B. Wallis; written by Aeneas MacKenzie, John Huston, Wolfgang Reinhardt; starring Paul Muni, Bette Davis, Brian Aherne, Claude Rains, John Garfield; music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold
THE KID WITH A BIKE (LE GAMIN AU VELO)
2011, Sundance Selects, 87 min, Belgium, Dir: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
11-year old Cyril (an incredibly natural Thomas Doret) is the problem child of his state-run youth farm, insisting through tantrums and escape attempts that his neglectful father will return for him. During one of his episodes, Cyril encounters Samantha (Cecile De France), a hairdresser who feels an instant connection to the haphazard youth. Underestimating how much pain the boy carries around with him, she offers to host him on the weekends - but her efforts to help the troubled boy are threatened by a local drug dealer, who sees Cyril as a potential lieutenant. Shot in the Dardenne brothers' trademark naturalistic style, THE KID WITH A BIKE practically glows with compassion, and was a well-deserved Grand Prix winner at the Cannes Film Festival.
"With customary restraint, the Dardenne brothers have added yet another exquisite entry to their masterful body of work...there isn’t a single unearned emotion in this tremendously moving drama." -- David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter
In French with English subtitles. Directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne will appear in person for discussion following the film.
KING OF COMEDY
In Scorsese's perceptive look at the extremes of celebrity worship, Robert De Niro is obsessive, would-be stand-up comic Rupert Pupkin. When not performing in front of cardboard cutouts of his idols, he stalks a TV talk show host (Jerry Lewis in an understated, brilliant performance). Eventually he teams with another unstable fan (Sandra Bernhard) to kidnap the host in a desperate attempt to win a spot on the show. Martin Scorsese---USA---1983---101 mins. Garry Shandling will be here at the Cinefamily to perform, as well as introduce the film, and participate in a Q&A afterwards!
LADY TERMINATOR
This irresistibly noxious exploitation film tells of a beautiful anthropologist who's controlled by the spirit of an evil Asian Queen. Because the woman is possessed by a magical eel that lives inside her genitalia and emerges to castrate and murder her lovers, her insatiable sexual appetite poses something of a public health problem. At some point this Indonesian oddity morphs into an East Asian retelling of The Terminator--a delightfully incongruous change-up that will have you scratching your head even as you squirm at all the gore. 1989, Indonesia, 35mm, 82 minutes.
directed by H. Tjut Djalil; written by Karr Kruinowz; starring Barbara Anne Constable, Christopher J. Hart, Claudia Angelique Rademaker
L’AGE D’OR
1930, Kino International, 60 min, France, Dir: Luis Buñuel
Wonderfully bizarre and spun together with the allusive dictates of dream logic, the second collaboration between Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí is a series of gleefully irreverent vignettes, the most sustained of which centers on Gaston Modot and Lya Lys, lovers attempting to consummate their passion but continuously stalled by some of Buñuel’s favorite fixations - the church and the bourgeoisie! Featuring an infamous sequence in which Lys fellates the toe of a religious statue, L’AGE D’OR was banned from distribution for nearly 50 years after its initial release in 1930. With Surrealism co-founder Max Ernst. In French with English subtitles.
THE LAST HURRAH
Directed by John Ford
In this moving, autumnal work, Tracy and John Ford (who collaborated on Up The River, 1930) ennoble the image of the dogged fighter in this portrait of an aging mayor running for re-election, deploying high-minded principle and dirty politics with equal fervor. Tracy’s unapologetic Frank Skeffington seems reconciled to both his cynicism and public virtues, allowing for a complex picture of leadership as a hardscrabble game.
Columbia Pictures Corp. Producer: John Ford. Based on the novel by Edwin O’Connor. Screenwriter: Frank Nugent. Cinematographer: Charles Lawton, Jr. Editor: Jack Murray. Cast: Spencer Tracy, Jeffrey Hunter, Diane Foster, Pat O’Brien, Basil Rathbone. 35mm, b/w, 122 min.
LAST SUMMER
1969, Warner Bros., 95 min, USA, Dir: Frank Perry
Bruce Davison, Barbara Hershey and Catherine Burns star in this aggressively unsentimental coming of age story. Director Frank Perry charts the behavior (and misbehavior) of a group of teens on Fire Island whose tastes for sex, drugs, and rock and roll devolve into more sinister interests as the summer progresses. Ultimately the characters' loss of innocence mirrors that of America in the decade during which the film was made and takes place.
screening format: 16mm
Discussion following with Bruce Davison and Barbara Hershey, moderated by Larry Karaszewski.
LEE ANNE SCHMIDT: THE LAST BUFFALO HUNT
Los Angeles premiere | 76 min., HDCAM, 2010
For five years, filmmaker Lee Anne Schmitt and her collaborators followed Terry Albrecht, a guide-for-hire for hunters who want to kill buffalo. Yet Albrecht is tired; his livelihood is threatened by the rising cost of gasoline, and the mystique of the West has become a commodity for nouveaux riches—like the couple posing in Santa costumes in front of their trophy, or the woman who switches pleasures from shopping sprees to insulting a buffalo that wouldn’t die fast enough. The film ends on a melancholy sequence, in a hokey wax museum, where cowboys and buffalo alike become ghosts. In the West, it is the legend that is printed, not the history—because history is repeated twice—once as slaughter, the second time as pageantry. In person: Lee Anne Schmitt
THE LIVING END
Directed by Gregg Araki
In a time when Hollywood largely skirted the topic of AIDS, Gregg Araki’s breakaway hit, The Living End, was one of the few independent features to boldly take it on. A hustler and a film critic, both gay and HIV+, set off on an anarchic road trip, wasting homophobes and hurtling toward certain doom with reckless abandon. As tender as it is hard-boiled, the stylish film gave voice to a growing population and turned the heads of audiences and critics.
Screenwriter/Cinematographer/Editor: Gregg Araki. Cast: Mike Dytri, Craig Gilmore, Mark Finch, Mary Woronov, Johanna Went.
In-person: filmmaker Gregg Araki.
LOS ANGELES OBSERVED
If Thom Anderson’s 2003 celluloid essay Los Angeles Plays Itself explored the way Hollywood trained thousands of lenses upon its fragmented topography over the course of a century, tonight’s program uncovers how alternate visions of L.A. were executed by several generations of experimental filmmakers. Apt that Anderson’s own contribution to the oeuvre, 1966’s Olivia’s Place, will be screened alongside a saturated roster of unconventional documentaries, avant-garde ethnographies and rare films that capture landscapes turned on their fractured heads. Beautifully restored prints showcase William Hale, Baylis Glascock and other artists whose takes on their surroundings were carried out with a palpable awareness of truth’s often lovely precariousness in non-fiction.
MARGARET
Rare is it that a picture praised as “the best film of 2011” (LA Weekly) can be given no theatrical release, save for a lone under-the-radar Oscar-qualifying run — but due to Top Ten List inclusion from critics across the country, and the passionate word-of-mouth campaign dubbed “Project Margaret”, Cinefamily helped fight for your right to see director Kenneth Longeran’s magnum opus on the big screen. Featuring an amazing all-star cast of Anna Paquin, Matt Damon, Mark Ruffalo, Matthew Broderick, Kieran Culkin and Jeannie Berlin, Margaret is a densely-layered tale of teenage angst in the post-9/11 age, with Paquin as a NYC high schooler who feels certain she played a role in a traffic accident that claimed a woman’s life, and who must cope with the loss of innocence that comes with emotional responsibility. Shot in 2005, edited over the course of an astounding six-year period and emerging in a final cut supervised by Martin Scorsese, Longeran’s follow-up to the indie smash You Can Count On Me was subject to the most fascinating movie business controversy of the last few years, before dropping off the map. Come get on-board Project Margaret, in a second chance fit for what Time Out New York calls “frayed-edges filmmaking at its finest”!
Dir. Kenneth Longeran, 2011, 35mm, 150 min.
The Milk of Sorrow
Fausta is suffering from a rare disease called the milk of sorrow, which is transmitted through the breast milk of pregnant women who were abused or raped at the time of Peru’s history of terrorism. While living in constant fear and confusion due to this “disease,” Fausta faces the sudden death of her mother. She chooses to take drastic measures to not follow in her mother’s footsteps. The film won the 2009 Golden Bear award and FIPRESCI prize at the Berlin International Film Festival. It was nominated for the 82nd Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film, becoming the first Peruvian film to be nominated for the award.
Peru/Spain, 2009/95 min. | English subtitles. Scr/Dir: Claudia Llosa; w/ Magaly Solier, Susi Sánchez, Efraín Solís
MISS BALA
Miss Bala tells the story of Laura, a young woman whose aspirations of becoming a beauty queen turn against her, delivering her into the hands of a gang that's terrorizing northern Mexico. Although Laura succeeds in winning the beauty queen crown, her experiences as an unwilling participant in Mexico's violent war leave her shaken and transformed.
MR. DEATH: THE RISE AND FALL OF FRED A. LEUCHTER, JR.
Errol Morris turns his attention to a morbid yet tragic figure in this provocative documentary. The subject is Fred Leuchter, Jr., a self-taught execution specialist who became a leading capital punishment consultant to prisons across the country. Leuchter claims his mission is to make executions more humane, but his own humanity is questioned after he is hired to find evidence to assist the defense of a Holocaust denier involved in a controversial trial. "Using archly staged interviews and reconstructions that draw attention to the components of the documentary form, Morris does justice to the complexity of hot-button issues by suggesting several layers of subtext at once" (Lisa Alspector, Chicago Reader). Errol Morris---USA---1999---92 mins.
MODERN ROMANCE
Albert Brooks' second feature film as director is a hilarious look at filmmaking, neurotic behavior and preserving a love relationship. Film editor Brooks is crazy about Katharine Harrold--perhaps too crazy. Sometimes stuffed animals as presents work, sometimes they don't. With Bruno Kirby, George Kennedy and Bob Einstein (Albert's real brother). Albert Brooks---USA---1981---93 mins. Andy Kindler will be here at the Cinefamily to perform, as well as introduce the film, and participate in a Q&A afterwards!
The Moderns (USA, 1988)
Alan Rudolph's homage to 1920s Paris delights in having real-life personalities—Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway—interact with his fictional characters in the smoky cafes and esteemed salons of this radically creative place and time.
Mur Murs
(1981, 16 mm film transferred to DVD, 80 minutes, color)
Agnès Varda’s love letter to Los Angeles’ ephemeral, idiosyncratic, and startling street murals captures the good, the bad, and the sublime in the realm of our public canvases, and features interludes in which the artists speak for themselves, including the performance “The Death of Fashion,” by Asco. Their backdrop is their skull mural painted on the façade of Self-Help Graphics, and Gronk and Willie Herrón dress as teardrops, Patssi Valdez as a candy in a wrapper, and Harry Gamboa in whiteface makeup and a tarpaper hat, in what would be their last performance together.
MUSIC + IMAGE
In the early 1980s, many artists were excited by the possibility of showing video art on television—a promise that was broken by commercialism. This selection of short videos takes inspiration from the spirit of Ernie Kovacs, television impresario and music lover, as it highlights some of the era’s most compelling video art accompanied by music. By turns humorous, pensive, or even abstract, the works are drawn from screenings and exhibitions at the Long Beach Museum of Art, and include artists Bob Snyder; Cynthia Maughan; Dara Birnbaum; Philip Mallory Jones; Tom DeWitt, Vibeke Sorensen, and Dean Winkler; Cecelia Condit; Toni Basil and David Byrne; Max Almy; Kit Fitzgerald and John Sanborn; Laurie Anderson; Claus Blume; MICA-TV (Carole Ann Klonarides and Michael Owen); Zbigniew Rybczynski; and Henry Selick. In person: Curator Nancy Buchanan
Presented in conjunction with Exchange and Evolution: Worldwide Video Long Beach, 1974–1999, at the Long Beach Museum of Art. Presented as part of Pacific Standard Time
THE NAKED KISS
A reformed big city prostitute (ably played by Constance Towers) tries to go the straight and narrow route in small town America, but finds that beneath the little town's squeaky clean veneer lies perversion and corruption of the highest order. Michael Dante plays her creepy new boyfriend. One of the best from Fuller and a cult classic. Sam Fuller---USA---1964. 35mm, b/w, 93 min.
NARRATIVE BODIES: FILMS AND VIDEOS BY ABIGAIL CHILD
Poet, essayist and filmmaker Abigail Child sees her creations as a curious and particular intersection, often humorous, sometimes alchemical, between sound and image. Bodies, fetishes, symbols, icons and relics are reinvented and refitted to new realities and new desires. The total assembly is a movement metaphorically (with the ghostly re-emergence of Griffith on one side and on the other Eisenstein), and the images and poetic rhythms use structure as a magnifying glass to uncover the lies and injustices of history. Child’s film cycle, Is This What You Were Born For (1981–89), is a landmark of contemporary avant-garde cinema, and her recent works continue to be widely shown and celebrated. Films include Peripeteia I (1977), Perils (1986), Mayhem (1987), The Future is Behind You (2004–05), Mirror World (2006) and Ligatures (2009). In person: Abigail Child
NATASHA MAIDOFF FILMS & MORE
A Young Girl In A Small Room, 8 minutes, super-8. A young woman plays duck-duck-goose with her stuffed animals in Ohio and gets frustrated when they don't respond.
Is There a Cure for my Friend?, 10 minutes, 16mm. Two best friends embark on a mystical odyssey to find a cure for HIV.
Traverse, 2 minutes, 16mm. A woman chases a lizard through Joshua Tree National Park and learns about the illusive nature of love.
The Orange Orange, 2 minutes, 35mm. A young woman gets locked out of her house and then hit over the head by an orange, which sends her on an odyssey through Venice, California.
The Stone Thieves, 18 minutes, mini DVD and super-8. A modern fable shot in Italy about a thief who enlists the help of donkeys, wild boar and a toad to help him steal stones from his American neighbor. This film weaves a tale of hope as the thief's niece befriends the Americans and the thief realizes the stones belong to everyone.
Burroughs on Bowery (1977, 4 minutes). MARC OLMSTED's cut-up and rephotography of WILLIAM BURROUGHS in NYC, outside the Bunker, echoing xerox punk-art at the time in 1977. "To move the camera or not to move the camera." "Right."
American Mutant (1978, 4 minutes). MARC OLMSTED's pretend movie-trailer in narrative format with WILLIAM BURROUGHS, ALLEN GINSBERG, TIM LEARY, MARC OLMSTED and SISTER STACEY. About mutants and their battle with the CIA. ALLEN GINSBERG said "MARC OLMSTED inherited Burroughs' scientific nerve and Kerouac's movie-minded line, nailed down with gold eyebeam in San Francisco."
Manhole 452 (2011, 13 minutes). by JEANNE C. FINLEY and JOHN C. MUSE. Despite assurances from local municipalities, a fact of life is that Manholes blow sky high more frequently than most people realize. Manhole 452 directs the viewer’s attention to the shapes, sizes and patterns of manhole covers on Geary Street in San Francisco, and then plunges deep below into the manholes themselves to explore the hidden threat that lies below.The fictionalized film is a first person narrative, drawn from documentary interviews and research that follows the reflections of a middle-age man whose car was hit from below by an exploding manhole. He is now forced to ride the 38 Geary Limited bus for the entire length of the street (from the Pacific Ocean to the San Francisco Bay) to his job, fitting prosthetic limbs. His narrative explores an obsession with calculating odds and the possibility of miracles, amid the presence of random violent occurrences. "Finley and Muse construct a darkly lyrical hybrid of rumination and documentation, so slightly tinted with humor as to leave viewers wondering whether they perceive it or imagine it." - KENNETH BAKER, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Down On The Farm, 2003, 6:30 minutes, 16mm, Color/so. Director: ALFONSO ALVAREZ, Music: THE OVERDUB CLUB. Amid the rolling flatlands west of Toronto, Canada, there is a place they call the Film Farm. Here in a rustic old Mennonite barn, filmmaking pilgrims make hand-crafted films every summer. This short work is ALFONSO ALVAREZ' version of a week’s worth of inspired exploration.
Repeat Performance, 2011, 4:03 minutes, video. Director: ALFONSO ALVAREZ, Music: LUCIO MENAGON. The apex predator in the suit and tie isn’t so different from the animals fighting in the basement. The young tiger has my name; black rooster in one hand, white snake in the other. I’m off the leash and I’m not coming home again.
NEVER LET ME GO
Screenwriter Alex Garland (28 Days Later) and director Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo) bring Kazuo Ishiguro's prized dystopian novel to the screen with a focus on realism and romance. At a boarding school in a slightly altered version of Great Britain, the children are raised in isolation from the outside world, and taught that they are special. And it's true: they're clones who will one day be harvested for parts. Well, unless they can find a loophole. This isn't the first instance of such a morose sci-fi premise, but that's fine--the clone business acts as a backdrop for what is really a character-driven prestige drama. Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, and Keira Knightley star alongside Sally Hawkins and Charlotte Rampling. 2010, UK/USA, 35mm, 103 minutes. Schedule permitting, director Mark Romanek will appear IN PERSON both nights!
THE NEW CENTURIONS
1972, Sony Repertory, 103 min, USA, Dir: Richard Fleischer
Director Richard Fleischer brings his usual straightforward approach to this underrated adaptation of former cop-turned-author Joseph Wambaugh’s bestseller. George C. Scott is excellent as the seasoned police veteran who shepherds young newcomer Stacy Keach in the ways of the street. Initially hoping to support himself by police work until he gets his degree, law student Keach is gradually worn down by the pitiless grind and lets go of his ambition and family (including wife Jane Alexander). The job likewise takes its toll on Scott, but he is better at keeping his emotions hidden – until it is too late.
Now I'll Tell (1934)
Directed by Edwin Burke
An unusual bit of tabloid journalism packaged as film entertainment, this picture dramatizes the true confessions of the wife of America’s most famous Jewish gangster, Arnold Rothstein, renamed “Murray Golden” and portrayed by Tracy. Working his way up the criminal food chain, Golden winds up bested by his own ambition in this portrait of a driven man brought low by hubris.
Fox Film Corp. Producer: Winfield Sheehan. Screenwriter: Edwin Burke. Cinematographer: Ernest Palmer. Editor: Harold Schuster. Cast: Spencer Tracy, Helen Twelvetrees, Alice Fay, Robert Gleckler, Henry O’Neill. 35mm, b/w, 87 min.
The Other Conquest
The Other Conquest (La Otra Conquista) is a 2000 Mexican feature film (re-released theatrically in 2007) written, directed, and edited by Salvador Carrasco. The film is a powerful drama about the aftermath of the Spanish conquest of Mexico in the 1520s, told from the perspective of the indigenous Aztec people. It explores the social, religious, and psychological changes brought about by a historical process of colonization that defined the American continent. The Other Conquest depicts the complex fusion that took place between the Catholic faith brought to Mexico by the Spaniards and the Aztec beliefs of the indigenous natives. Receiving wide critical acclaim during its run in the United States, the film was ranked as one of the Los Angeles Times's top ten films of 2000.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the director Salvador Carrasco, the film’s protagonist Damián Delgado (as Topiltzin), and local scholars.
Mexico, 2000/105 min. 35mm print, in Spanish and Nahuatl with English subtitles; rated R for scenes of violence and some strong sexuality/nudity.
THE PIANO TEACHER
Michael Haneke's challenging adaptation of Elfriede Jelinek's novel won honors for Best Actress (Isabelle Huppert), Best Actor (Benoit Magimel) and the Grand Prize of the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival. Huppert portrays a single, middle-aged piano teacher whose lonely, unhappy existence includes voyeuristic activities and self-mutilation. Pursued by a talented musician (Magimel), she enters into a disturbing relationship of violent, masochistic sexuality. "...watching Huppert, a great actress tearing into a landmark role, is riveting" (Peter Travers, Rolling Stone). 2001, Austria/France/Germany, 35mm, 131 minutes. written and directed by Michael Haneke; based on Die Klavierspielerin by Elfriede Jelinek; starring Isabelle Huppert, Benoît Magimel, Annie Girardot; in French and German w/ English subtitles
The Power and the Glory (1933)
Directed by William K. Howard
William Howard’s rendition of this early Preston Sturges screenplay depicts the rise of young entrepreneur Tom Garner (Tracy) to the pinnacle of power as a ruthless but alienated railroad tycoon. Constructed as a victim and a creator of his own success, Garner gave Tracy considerable range to portray a man weighted down by ambivalence, and set up better casting opportunities than he had previously known.
Fox Film Corp. Producer: Jesse L. Lasky. Screenwriter: Preston Sturges. Cinematographer: James Wong Howe. Editor: Paul Weatherwax. Cast: Spencer Tracy, Colleen Moore, Ralph Morgan, Helen Vinson, Clifford Jones. 35mm, b/w, 77 min.
PSYCHEDELIC VISIONS & EXPANDED CONSCIOUSNESS
Hyperkinetic experimental film and animation in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s both echoed and informed the volcanic psychedelia that defined those years — and the filmmakers featured in tonight’s show created challenging, gorgeous work during that era through obsessive mastery of groundbreaking techniques. Chick Strand’s solarized synchronicities, Pat O’Neill’s optically-printed densely haptic experiments and Adam Beckett’s infinite ecstatic morphs all manage to alter minds, both addled and unaided. The care that went into the films of tonight’s sizeable collection of visionaries cannot be overstated, and their influence is a testament to the potent revolutions that originated in obscurity, but still resound in our collective consciousness.
Quick Millions (1931)
Directed by Rowland Brown
Tracy found a meaty role as a truck driver who becomes a corrupt organizer through manipulation and thuggery even as he longs to go legit. Trading up to a more genteel girlfriend, and legal business, are all futile; Bugs is doomed, as the genre dictates. But Tracy leaves a surprisingly charming mark on a character type that he would be glad to escape in just a few years: the “mug.”
Fox Film Corp. Screenwriter: R. Brown, Courtenay Terrett. Cinematographer: Joseph August. Editor: Harold Schuster. Cast: Spencer Tracy, Marguerite Churchill, John Wray, Warner Richmond, Sally Eilers. 35mm, b/w, 69 min.
SEEING AND AWAKENING: NEW FILMS BY NATHANIEL DORSKY
Nathaniel Dorsky’s work celebrates the essence of cinema, creating profound experiences that explore the world through images of extraordinary beauty and a use of montage that subverts the descriptive to awaken mystery. Dorsky’s Devotional Cinema is a modern classic on the poetics of the medium, and he has written, “It is the direct connection of light and audience that interests me.” Making films beginning in the 1960s, Dorsky has completed thirteen films since 1996 that have been prominently featured at festivals and museums throughout the world. This program includes Pastourelle (2010), The Return (cited by The New York Times as one of the best films of 2011), and the world premiere of August and After. An additional program of Dorsky’s films is presented at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. In person: Nathaniel Dorsky
SHARON LOCKHART: DOUBLE TIDE
16mm transferred to HD, color, sound, 93 min.
In the wake of her cinematic meditations on the relationship between laboring bodies and their environment—NO (2003) and Lunch Break (2008), both shown at REDCAT—artist/filmmaker Sharon Lockhart positioned her camera in the wild coastal landscape of Seal Cove, Maine, a historic site for commercial clamming. Following the backbreaking efforts of clam digger Jen Casad, the film unfolds in two uninterrupted takes to capture the rare phenomenon of “double tide”—when low tide occurs twice during daylight hours, once at dawn and once at dusk. The splendid imagery is matched by a seductive sound track, bird chirpings mixed with the sound of wind, water and an invisible foghorn, interrupted just once by the digger’s lone, moving cry. In person: Sharon Lockhart
SHOCK CORRIDOR
To catch a killer and win a Pulitzer Prize, reporter-hero Johnny Barrett has himself committed to a mental institution. He must find out who killed Sloan in the kitchen by questioning three inmates who witnessed the crime--men driven crazy by the hypocrisies of the American dream as it relates to racism, anti-communism, and the bomb. A complex, wacky masterpiece by one of Hollywood's great directors. Sam Fuller---USA---1963. 35mm, b/w, 101 min.
Strange Notes and Nervous Breakdowns: Punk and Media Art, 1974-1981
Punk and the Do It Yourself aesthetic were born in the late 1970s. Most scholarship on punk film and video has focused on works from New York and San Francisco, but Los Angeles also was home to a rich scene of such media. In conjunction with Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974–1981, Los Angeles Filmforum presents this amazing collection of rarely screened performances by punk bands of the era, performance art, and D.I.Y. works. We’ll be seeing performances from the early days by the Screamers, X, Suburban Lawns, Black Flag, The Germs, Los Plugz, Johanna Went, and more. Some display the raw energy of real rock and roll, and some show the playful energy of early video manipulation - the explorations of a new medium by a new generation.
SUMMER
Delphine doesn't know where she can go for her August holidays in France where she will have a good time. An amusing tale of a very annoying young woman, it is the fifth in Rohmer's series of "Comedies and Proverbs." The French title is taken from Jules Verne's The Green Ray. 1986, France, 35mm, 98 minutes. New 35mm print! directed by Éric Rohmer; written by Eric Rohmer with the collaboration of Marie Rivière; starring Marie Rivière, Rosette, Béatrice Romand, Carita, Vincent Gauthier; in French with English subtitles
THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT
1974, MGM Repertory, 114 min, USA, Dir: Michael Cimino
Writer-director Michael Cimino’s first film is a terrific, offbeat heist film and modern-day Western, with pro thief Clint Eastwood trying to elude murderous ex-partners George Kennedy and Geoffrey Lewis with aid from gentle-souled drifter Jeff Bridges. THUNDERBOLT constantly surprises with ingenious plot twists, character-driven humor and a wistful sweetness that is all too rare in most action films.
TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE
Silent film on the big screen, with sounds from the magnificent Skinner Organ filling Royce Hall. Acclaimed organist and Fulbright scholar Steven Ball — widely known for his aptitude in silent-film composition — sets a live score to Tillie’s Punctured Romance, which film historians believe may be the first full-length comedy ever. The 1914 film stars Charlie Chaplin and also marks the screen debut of Marie Dressler, popular stage actress of the time. The film is a rarely seen treasure that was preserved in 2004 by UCLA Film and Television Archive with funding from the Film Foundation, UK Film Council and Saving the Silents.
TOPSY-TURVY
Best known for his realistic film portraits of contemporary society, Mike Leigh proved his talent also extends to period dramas with this rich, colorful, funny and sad look at the backstage lives of Gilbert and Sullivan and their theatrical collaborators. The creation of The Mikado is the center of this captivating, multi-faceted story, highlighted by the wonderful performances of Jim Broadbent, Allan Corduner and Timothy Spall. Named Best Film by the National Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics' Circle. Both groups also named Leigh as Best Director. In addition, the film won Academy Awards for Best Costume Design and Best Make-Up. Mike Leigh---Great Britain---1999---160 mins. Paul F. Tompkins will be here at the Cinefamily to perform, as well as introduce the film, and participate in a Q&A afterwards!
TYRANNOSAUR
Joseph (Peter Mullan), a doomed, damaged petty thief finds love in the most unlikely place when he literally runs into pious Hannah (Olivia Colman). He thinks her religious nature makes her better off than him, which is far from the truth. As Hannah opens up to him, Joseph discovers a woman as damaged and hungry for human contact as he. Eddie Marsan co-stars in the writing and directing debut of actor Paddy Considine.
UP THE RIVER
Directed by John Ford
Prison convicts Spencer Tracy and Warren Hymer break free, but circumstances bring them back by choice. Tracy had been a hit on Broadway in the prison drama The Last Mile, and proved versatile when Up The River was developed as a comedy involving prison baseball, a genre mix that Tracy straddled with aplomb. Humphrey Bogart also turns in a fascinating first-feature performance.
Fox Film Corp. Screenwriter: William Collier, Sr. Cinematographer: Joseph August. Editor: Frank Hull. Cast: Spencer Tracy, Clare Luce, Warren Hymer, Humphrey Bogart, William Collier.
35mm, b/w, 84 min.
The Violin
Don Plutarco, his son Genaro, and his grandson Lucio live a double life: they are humble rural musicians, who also support the campesino peasant guerrilla movement against the oppressive government. One afternoon, they come home to discover the army seized their village. Plutarco plays up his appearance as a harmless violin player to get into the village and recover the ammunition hidden in the corn field. His violin playing charms the army captain, who orders Plutarco to come back daily. Weapons and music play a tenuous game of cat-and-mouse that ultimately results in painful betrayal. Winner of three 2007 Ariel Awards, including Best First Feature. “One of the most amazing Mexican films in many a year”—Guillermo del Toro
Mexico, 2006/98 min. | English subtitles. Scr/Dir: Francisco Vargas Quevedo; w/ Ángel Tavira, Dagoberto Gama, Gerardo Tarcena, Fermín Martínez, Mario Garibaldi
VIVA VILLA!
(from IMDB)
In this fictionalized biography, young Pancho Villa takes to the hills after killing an overseer in revenge for his father's death. In 1910, he befriends American reporter Johnny Sykes. Then a meeting with visionary Francisco Madero transforms Villa from an avenging bandit to a revolutionary general. To the tune of 'La Cucaracha,' his armies sweep Mexico. After victory, Villa's bandit-like disregard for human life forces Madero to exile him. But Madero's fall brings Villa back to raise the people against a new tyrant... 1934, USA, 35mm, 115 minutes. directed by Jack Conway, Howard Hawks (uncredited), William Wellman (uncredited); produced by David O. Selznick; written by Ben Hecht, Howard Hawks (uncredited), James Kevin McGuinness (uncredited), Howard Emmett Rogers (uncredited); starring Wallace Beery, Fay Wray, Leo Carrillo
WALLACE BERMANS'S UNDERGROUND
In the mid-1960s, underground wunderkind and collage art luminary Wallace Berman became the true nerve center of a brilliant kind of social assemblage, inspiring and communing with a close-knit circle of actors and artists who screened their underground films domestically among a group of Topanga Canyon bohemians. These films (made by folks with their ears to the ground of the L.A. scene like Bruce Connor, Dean Stockwell and Russ Tamblyn) were influenced by Berman’s spiritualist and radically amateur concepts of art, in which sculpting out of woodscraps later gave way to pioneering photocopy works and the now-legendary mail art publication Semina. Tonight’s program features the world premiere of Bruce Conner’s edit of Dean Stockwell’s film Pas De Trois, and visits with Berman’s friends and collaborators to explore the fascinating intersection among art, Hollywood, and the institutions of the semi-commercial underground! Show curated by Rani Singh and David E. James. Schedules permitting, Toni Basil, Tosh Berman, Russ Tamblyn and George Herms will all be at the Cinefamily in person to help celebrate Wallace Berman’s legacy and influence!
WEEKEND
“A great, original work…Weekend is Godard’s vision of Hell, and it ranks with the greatest.” — Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
Jean-Luc Godard’s scathing late-’60s satire is one of cinema’s great anarchic works, and is a flawless document capturing the revolutionary resolve of the era. Determined to collect an inheritance from a dying relative, a petit-bourgeois couple travel across the French countryside on “a weekend road trip that becomes a plunge into the last throes of consumerist society as it destroys itself in auto wrecks and disappears into the stewpots of cannibalistic revolutionaries.” (Gene Siskel Film Center) Featuring a justly famous centerpiece single-take sequence of an endless traffic jam, Weekend is a surreally funny, beautifully shot and deeply disturbing expression of social oblivion that ended the first phase of Godard’s long and storied career — and, according to the credits, cinema itself. Presented in a brand-new 35mm print!
Dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1967, 35mm, 105 min.
WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME?
"A poetic corrective to lingering stereotypes." —LA Weekly
Directed by Kimi Takesue
Kimi Takesue’s lyrical, observational documentary takes us to the streets, shops and countrysides of post-civil war Uganda, painting a portrait of a country rediscovering its human connections in peacetime. Eschewing a journalistic discussion of wartime atrocities and losses, Takesue allows such contextual information to quietly enter the frame, as her roving camera quietly observes the negotiations, rhythms and cycles of daily life in a new Uganda.
Producer, Cinematographer: Kimi Takesue. Editor: K. Takesue, John Walter. HDCam, color, 72 min.
Yael Bartana & Dani Gal
Polish artist and Holocaust survivor Alina Szapocznikow often reflected on the ephemeral condition of human life in her work. This program presents the work of two contemporary filmmakers who provide context to her experiences. In Dani Gal’s Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog, 2011, 22 min.), policemen transport the ashes of notorious Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Yael Bartana explores an imaginary world in which Polish Jews form a fictional Jewish Renaissance Movement in her Polish Trilogy: Mary Koszmary (Nightmares, 2007, 11 min.); Mur i Wie za (Wall and Tower, 2009, 15 min.); and Zamach (Assassination, 2011, 35 min).
In conjunction with the exhibition Alina Szapocznikow: Sculpture Undone, 1955–1972.
THE YOUNG AND THE DAMNED (LOS OLVIDADOS)
1950, Kino International, 85 min, Mexico, Dir: Luis Buñuel
Having directed only a handful of for-hire Mexican films in the multiple-decade interim since L’AGE D’OR and LAND WITHOUT BREAD, Spanish refugee Luis Buñuel’s 1950 return to iconoclastic form is this razor-sharp, no-holds-barred docudrama. Teenage delinquent Jaibo (Roberto Cobo), fresh out of a reformatory stint, returns to the savage streets of Mexico City to head up a gang of undesirables who beat up beggars, snatch purses and loiter. But Jaibo has an insatiable itch in violent need of scratching - to settle the score with the stool pigeon who put him away. “Sharp, swift and lethally compact, LOS OLVIDADOS is a celluloid switchblade swiped at the jugular of city living. A ferocious masterpiece... There isn’t a single good shot in LOS OLVIDADOS. They're all perfect.” - Nathan Lee, New York Sun “A MASTERWORK!” - Pauline Kael. In Spanish with English subtitles.