a highly-opinionated selection of things happening around town, and sometimes out of town. this month's page here.
mon. mar. 1 herostratus 8:30 PM @ redcat killer klowns from outer space 10 PM @ downtown independent fletch, into the night @ new beverly theatre we live in public 6 PM @ egyptian theatre stellar om source @ echo curio seaspin @ silverlake lounge tue. mar. 2 scope-a-toons 8 PM @ jerry beck's animation tuesdays @ silent movie theatre fletch, into the night @ new beverly theatre wed. mar. 3 the mystic 8 PM @ silent movie theatre thu. mar. 4 a night with TVTV 8 PM @ silent movie theatre it's a mad mad mad mad world (70mm) @ aero theatre mother FREE @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges theater thee cormans @ five star bar fri. mar. 5 the clientele @ spaceland mike watt & the missingmen, the mormons @ bootleg theatre the evil dead (uncut) MIDNIGHT @ nuart damnation alley 8 PM, the road warrior @ silent movie theatre the petrified forest, dead end @ ucla film archive 2001: a space odyssey (70mm) @ aero theatre bad lieutenant: port of call - new orleans, tba @ new beverly theatre sat. mar. 6 the clientele @ spaceland the man from london 7 PM @ silent movie theatre the running man 10:15 PM @ TV of tomorrow @ silent movie theatre marked woman, racket busters @ ucla film archive invisible art visible artists 10 AM FREE @ egyptian theatre lawrence of arabia (70mm) @ egyptian theatre bad lieutenant: port of call - new orleans, tba @ new beverly theatre meho plaza @ the smell ed ruscha @ book soup sun. mar. 7 adventures in babysitting 1 PM, toy soldiers @ new beverly theatre audacity @ spaceland mon. mar. 8 a bill of divorcement @ ucla film archive adventures in babysitting, toy soldiers @ new beverly theatre seaspin @ silverlake lounge tue. mar. 9 the art of the steal FREE @ lacma wed. mar. 10 blast phemy! two 8 PM @ silent movie theatre shadow of a doubt, saboteur @ new beverly theatre abe vigoda @ the echo the dylan trees @ echo curio agent ribbons @ silverlake lounge oldboy 10:30 PM @ downtown independent darker my love @ henry fonda nobunny @ five star bar thu. mar. 11 the dutchess and the duke @ the echo new mastersounds @ el rey four friends, eyewitness @ egyptian theatre key largo, murder my sweet @ aero theatre shadow of a doubt, saboteur @ new beverly theatre harmony & me FREE @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges theater jucifer FREE 7 PM @ vacation fri. mar. 12 the big lebowski MIDNIGHT @ nuart sleepy sun @ the echo quasi @ spaceland the bed sitting room 8 PM, a boy and his dog @ silent movie theatre carnaval atlantida, o cangaceiro @ ucla film archive toni, swamp water @ lacma gone with the pope, massacre mafia style @ egyptian theatre vertigo (70mm) @ aero theatre hausu 7:30 9:45 @ new beverly theatre amps for christ @ echo curio sat. mar. 13 sansho the bailiff 7:15 PM @ silent movie theatre idiocracy 10 PM @ silent movie theatre alice 11 PM @ downtown independent dark passage, dead reckoning @ ucla film archive the graduate, games @ aero theatre hausu 3:00 5:15 7:30 9:45 MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre quasi @ detroit bar sun. mar. 14 deadline u.s.a. 7 PM, the enforcer @ ucla film archive freebie and the bean 8 PM @ silent movie theatre taking off, catch-22 @ aero theatre hausu 3:00 5:15 7:30 9:45 @ new beverly theatre beaches @ the smell dunes @ echo curio the crayon fields @ the echo personal & the pizzas @ redwood bar darker my love @ the prospector (long beach) mon. mar. 15 hausu 7:30 9:45 @ new beverly theatre the crayon fields @ silverlake lounge seaspin @ silverlake lounge dunes @ pehrspace tue. mar. 16 hausu 7:30 9:45 @ new beverly theatre wed. mar. 17 women love diamonds 8 PM @ silent movie theatre the sugarland express, jaws @ aero theatre hausu 7:30 9:45 @ new beverly theatre thu. mar. 18 the hunt for red october @ ampas linwood dunn red riding: 1974 @ spielberg theatre @ egyptian theatre noises off, they all laughed @ aero theatre tba @ new beverly theatre fri. mar. 19 the end of august at the hotel ozone 8 PM, glen and randa @ silent movie theatre labyrinth MIDNIGHT @ nuart theatre amei um bicheiro, caicara @ ucla film archive la bete humaine, the woman on the beach @ lacma red riding: 1980 @ spielberg theatre @ egyptian theatre no place like home, the harder they come @ egyptian theatre saint jack, daisy miller @ aero theatre lust for life, moulin rouge (1952) @ new beverly theatre amps for christ @ sync space sat. mar. 20 the earrings of madame de... @ silent movie theatre futureskate: prayer of the rollerboys 10 PM, solarbabies @ silent movie theatre the desperate hours, sirocco @ ucla film archive the southerner, the river @ lacma red riding: 1974 5 PM, red riding: 1980, red riding: 1983 @ spielberg theatre @ egyptian theatre nosferatu the vampyre, cobra verde @ egyptian theatre clue, nuns on the run @ aero theatre lust for life 2:45 7:30, moulin rouge (1952) 5:10 9:55 @ new beverly theatre let's paint tv @ echo curio mike watt & the missingmen @ redwood bar sun. mar. 21 small change @ silent movie theatre o homem do sputnik 7 PM @ ucla film archive red riding: 1983 4 PM @ spielberg theatre @ egyptian theatre stroszek, woyzeck @ egyptian theatre the naked gun, the naked gun 2 1/2 @ aero theatre mia doi todd @ bootleg theater international surrealist film festival 8 PM @ downtown independent mon. mar. 22 seaspin @ silverlake lounge tue. mar. 23 harmony & me 8 PM @ silent movie theatre at the circus 1 PM @ lacma tba @ new beverly theatre wed. mar. 24 a woman of affairs 8 PM @ silent movie theatre harmony & me @ ucla film archive the witness: from the balcony of room 306 7 PM, trouble the water @ ampas linwood dunn the third man, the fallen idol @ egyptian theatre kansas city confidential, 99 river street @ new beverly theatre admiral radley @ bootleg theater thu. mar. 25 the maltese falcon, casablanca @ ucla film archive the resurrected, dark star @ egyptian theatre kansas city confidential, 99 river street @ new beverly theatre dead meadow @ masonic lodge @ hollywood forever audacity @ two headed horse fri. mar. 26 the last man on earth 8 PM, night of the comet, the omega man @ silent movie theatre jon brion @ largo grand illusion, the elusive corporal @ lacma mad max, mad max 2: the road warrior, mad max beyond thunderdome @ egyptian theatre z, the battle of algiers @ new beverly theatre bobby birdman, yacht @ the echo radar bros, bell gardens @ spaceland ty segall @ the smell sat. mar. 27 the round-up @ silent movie theatre peter kolovos, bill orcutt @ synchronicity la chienne, la marseillaise @ lacma the intruder, burn witch burn @ egyptian theatre z 2:25 7:15, the battle of algiers 4:55 9:45 @ new beverly theatre moon duo, dirt dress, best coast @ echoplex, echo the quarter after @ spaceland ty segall @ redwood bar sun. mar. 28 like a phoenix from the ashes 8 PM @ silent movie theatre to have and have not 7 PM, the big sleep @ ucla film archive logan's run @ egyptian theatre the adventures of buckaroo banzai 3:30 7:30, repo man 5:35 9:35 @ new beverly theatre go sailor, boyracer, etc @ slumberland 10 year anniversary @ the echo neil hamburger @ spaceland the crayon fields @ echo curio standells, giant drag @ the echo mon. mar. 29 the adventures of buckaroo banzai, repo man @ new beverly theatre seaspin @ silverlake lounge tue. mar. 30 ross lipman: urban ruins found moments 8:30 PM @ redcat butch cassidy and the sundance kid @ ucla film archive the adventures of buckaroo banzai, repo man @ new beverly theatre wed. mar. 31 eddie presley, together & alone @ egyptian theatre silence and cry, the red and the white @ aero theatre remember my name, choose me @ new beverly theatre chris corsano and peter kolovos duo @ the smell thu. apr. 1 remember my name, choose me @ new beverly theatre fri. apr. 2 the princess bride MIDNIGHT @ nuart theatre tales from the golden age @ ucla film archive rififi, touchez pas au grisbi @ new beverly theatre sat. apr. 3 the ghastly ones @ haunted house a-go-go @ bordello boogie @ ucla film archive nana @ lacma rififi 3:10 7:30, touchez pas au grisbi 5:35 9:55 @ new beverly theatre bell gardens @ bootleg theater mon. apr. 5 light echoes dark: the films of julie murray 8:30 PM @ redcat thu. apr. 8 pee-wee's big adventure 7 PM FREE @ bike night @ hammer museum fri. apr. 9 the warriors MIDNIGHT @ nuart theatre cold waves, children of the decree @ ucla film archive boudu saved from drowning, the testament of doctor cordelier @ lacma sat. apr. 10 royce hall organ & silent film - bernard hermann and alfred hitchcock 8 PM @ ucla royce hall a day at the races 2:00 8:00 PM @ alex theatre key largo @ ucla film archive a day in the country, the rules of the game @ lacma the ancient world in silent cinema 1 PM @ getty villa dirt dress @ sync space sun. apr. 11 the rest is silence 7 PM @ ucla film archive tue. apr. 13 dunes @ echo curio thu. apr. 15 autolux @ detroit bar fri. apr. 16 elevator to the gallows, le cercle rouge @ new beverly theatre autolux @ bootleg theater sat. apr. 17 elevator to the gallows, le cercle rouge @ new beverly theatre 10 to midnight MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre dum dum girls, one am radio @ origami vinyl sun. apr. 18 california dreamin' 7 PM @ ucla film archive death rides a horse 3:05 7:30, sabata 5:20 9:45 @ new beverly theatre dum dum girls @ echo curio mon. apr. 19 4 months 3 weeks 2 days @ ucla film archive death rides a horse, sabata @ new beverly theatre tue. apr. 20 california e.a.r. unit presents lou reed's metal machine music 8:30 PM @ redcat wed. apr. 21 stan douglas lecture 7 PM FREE @ hammer museum thu. apr. 22 nobunny @ echoplex tcm classic film festival fri. apr. 23 titans of the graphic novel: harvey pekar and alison bechdel 8 PM @ ucla royce hall tcm classic film festival sat. apr. 24 portrait of the poet as james broughton part one, robert frost: a lover's quarrel with the world @ ucla film archive tcm classic film festival sun. apr. 25 intersections: poetry/film - shorts program 7 PM @ ucla film archive tcm classic film festival mon. apr. 26 smile pinki, man on wire @ ampas linwood dunn thu. apr. 29 ezra buchla, foot village @ the smell mon. may 3 the lost reels of pancho villa 8:30, the vengeance of pancho villa @ redcat sat. may 8 up in smoke @ devil's night drive-in fri. may 14 daniel clowes @ skylight books tue. may 18 jonathan richman @ the smell roky erickson, wooden shjips @ mayan theatre WHAT IT IS: ALICE dir. Jan Svankmejar 1988, 35mm, color, 86 min. When Alice follows the White Rabbit into Wonderland, so begins this dream expedition into the astonishing landscape of childhood, through many dangerous adventures, and ultimately to Alice's trial before the King and Queen of Hearts. Czech animator Jan Svankmajer has created a masterpiece of cinema, a strikingly original interpretation of Lewis Carroll's classic tale. Svankmajer's Alice remains true to the absurdity of Carroll's original, but bears the stamp of his own distinctive style and obsessions. Combining techniques of animation and live action, he gives a new and fascinating dimension to the classic tale of childhood fantasies. AMEI UM BICHEIRO (I Love a Bookie) (1952, Brazil) Directed by Jorge Ileli and Paulo Wanderley Carlos (the handsome Cyl Farney) moves to Rio de Janeiro from the country in search of a better life for him and his fiancée. But things do not work out the way he had planned, and he gets sucked into the city's infamous lottery racket. A policial influenced by film noir (especially by John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle), Amei um Bicheiro was one of Atlântida Studio's most ambitious projects. Screenplay: Jorge Ileli. Cinematographer: Amleto Daissé. Cast: Cyl Farney, Eliana , Grande Otelo, José Lewgoy, Josette Bertal. Presented in Portuguese dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, B/W, 90 min. The Ancient World in Silent Cinema In the earliest days of cinema, more than 800 films were made which drew their inspiration from the ancient Mediterranean. Classical scholars Pantelis Michelakis and Maria Wyke screen a selection of rare silent films set in Ancient Greece and Rome, which survive in the British National Film Archive and are rarely seen. The Art of the Steal 2009/color & b&w/101 min. | Dir: Don Argott The Barnes Foundation, established in 1921 by the eccentric collector Dr. Albert C. Barnes, holds one of the world’s largest collections of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings, valued at 25 billion dollars. This documentary raises provocative questions about money, culture, and ethics as it chronicles the legal and political efforts used to break Barnes’s will in order to move the collection to a new museum in downtown Philadelphia. A panel, moderated by LACMA curator Stephanie Barron and including the film’s director and Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight will follow the screening. The Bed Sitting Room It's a shame midnight movies didn't really catch on until the early '70s, as Richard Lester's absurdly ahead-of-its-time, trippy post-nuke comedy The Bed Sitting Room seems perfectly pitched for late-night audiences, a la The Holy Mountain. A host of your favorite old-school British comedians (including Peter Cook, Marty Feldman and Spike Milligan) feature in the tale of twenty survivors milling about a desolate, debris-strewn apocalyptic wasteland, all performing twisted variations on their normal daily rituals. The BBC still exists, thanks to a newscaster who stands in front of a blown-out TV set offering background exposition, and many of the survivors are either mutating into furniture or animals, or being told they're dead even when they clearly aren't. As the darkly comic sketches pile on top of each other in front of increasingly surreal vistas (shot gorgeously by Lester's longtime cameraman David Watkin), the film's curtain call for humanity echoes the close of the '60s, an era whose shifting winds of change were as volatile as Pu-239. Dir. Richard Lester, 1969, 35mm, 90 min. A BILL OF DIVORCEMENT (1932) Directed by George Cukor In her screen debut, Katharine Hepburn plays Sydney, the daughter of a man (John Barrymore) recently released after years of treatment in a mental hospital. Contemplating her own mental stability, Sydney weighs her prospects as a wife and mother, leading to momentous decisions. The film was a surprise hit and the 25 year–old Hepburn holds her own against Barrymore and Billie Burke as Sydney's mother. RKO. Based on the play by Clemence Dane. Screenplay: Howard Estabrook, Henry Wagstaff Bribble. Cinematographer: Sid Hickox. Editor: Arthur Roberts. Cast: John Barrymore, Billie Burke, Katharine Hepburn, Paul Cavanagh, Henry Stephenson. 35mm, 76 min. IN PERSON: Author Charlotte Chandler and Robert Rosen, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. Blast Phemy! 2: Text Of Light (feat. Lee Ranaldo) & Parallel Join Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo, collaborating live with saxophonist Ulrich Krieger and guitarist Alan Licht, as he goes to the blasphemous extreme with live scores to the films of Stan Brakhage and other mid-century American cinema avant-gardists. According to Licht, Text of Light "does not perform soundtracks to the films of Stan Brakhage. Rather, it uses the films as a further element for improvisation, almost as [another] performer. While Brakhage intended for these films to be screened silently as films...[here] they are juxtaposed with the music, in a kind of real-time performance, mixed-media collage." But the evening doesn't stop there! The night also includes a screening of Parallel, an animation tour-de-force by mediamaker Huckleberry Lain, featuring music by Argentinean-born, L.A.-based electronic duo Languis. BOOGIE (2008, Romania) Directed by Radu Muntean Director Radu Muntean brings an assured touch to this naturalist study of the complications of marriage. While on holiday with his wife and son, Bogdan (a.k.a. "Boogie") runs into two estranged friends from high school. After a fight with his wife, he retreats from domestic security to spend a boozy night out with the boys, prompting him to reevaluate his and his friends' lives. Screenplay: Radu Muntean, Alex Baciu, Razvan Radulescu. Cinematographer: Tudor Lucaciu. Editor: Alexandru Radu. Cast: Dragos Bucur, Anamaria Marinca, Mimi Branescu, Adrian Vancica. Presented in Romanian dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 102 min. Boudu Saved from Drowning 1932/b&w/85 min. | Scr/dir: Jean Renoir; w/ Michel Simon, Marcelle Hainia, Charles Granval Michel Simon gives one of the most memorable performances in screen history as Boudu, a Parisian tramp who takes a suicidal plunge into the Seine and is rescued by a well-to-do bookseller, Edouard Lestingois (Charles Granval). The Lestingois family decides to take in the irrepressible bum, and he shows his gratitude by shaking the household to its foundations. With Boudu Saved from Drowning, Renoir takes advantage of a host of Parisian locations and the anarchic charms of his lead actor to create an effervescent satire of the bourgeoisie. "Boudu is a simple shaggy-man story told in an open way and it is the openness to the beauty of landscape and weather and to the variety of human folly that is Renoir's artistry. He lets a movie breathe... Renoir went out of the studio and so Boudu provides a photographic record of an earlier France that moved to a different rhythm, and because of the photographic equipment, is seen in a softly different light. The shop fronts look like Atget; the houses might have modeled for Bonnard."—Pauline Kael. A Boy And His Dog We all knew that the bomb would bring barren landscapes, pillaging hoards and a nightmarish restructuring of society -- but who foresaw telepathic dogs and underground sex carnivals? Harlan Ellison did in A Boy And His Dog, adapted for the screen by character actor L.Q. Jones. Billed as "A Rather Kinky Tale of Survival", the film follows teenage wasteland roamer Vic (Don Johnson), and the search for food and sex led by his mind-melded canine companion in a world in which man has become beast, and beast has become the voice of civility. The film's dark comedic visions are once removed from most others, as its action takes place after World War IV(!), indicating a wry resignation to the inevitability of a WWIII in one of the darkest entries in a genre that starts with the end of the world. Dir. L.Q. Jones, 1975, 35mm, 91 min. BURN, WITCH, BURN (aka NIGHT OF THE EAGLE), 1962, MGM Repertory, 90 min. Dir. Sidney Hayers. Professor Norman Tayler (Peter Wyngarde) discovers his scholastic success is due to voodoo spells cast by his wife (Janet Blair). When he forces her to give up her spells, the demonic forces of darkness descend. Adapted by screenwriters Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson from Fritz Leiber’s novel Conjure Wife. BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969) Directed by George Roy Hill Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are a gun-toting, bank-robbing train-blowing duo who fatefully flee to South America when they realize that progress will overcome them. A classic Western that combines slapstick and drama via terrific performances, sweeping direction and a witty script, this box office hit made Robert Redford a star. Twentieth Century Fox. Screenplay: William Goldman. Cinematographer: Conrad Hall. Editor: John C. Howard, Richard C. Meyer. Cast: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross, Strother Martin, Henry Jones. 35mm, 112 min. IN PERSON: David Fincher & Curtis Hanson (host). CAIÇARA (1950, Brazil) Directed by Adolfo Celi Vera Cruz Film Studio's main star was the blonde Eliane Lage, Brazil's answer to Greta Garbo. Here, Lage plays a beautiful woman trapped on an island in a loveless marriage to an older widower. The film was shot on location in a fishing village and directed by Italian actor Adolfo Celi (most famous for his role as Largo in Thunderball; Celi also appears in Caiçara). Celi's directorial debut was nominated for the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1951. Screenplay: Adolfo Celi, Alberto Cavalcanti, Ruggero Jaccobi. Cinematographer: H.E. Fowle. Editor: Oswald Hafenrichter. Cast: Eliane Lage, Carlos Vergueiro, Adolfo Celi, Mário Sérgio, Abilio Pereira de Almeida. Presented in Portuguese dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, B/W, 92 min. CALIFORNIA DREAMIN' (2007, Romania) Directed by Cristian Nemescu Inspired by events during the Kosovo war, the film satirizes Romanian corruption and geopolitical power in this tale of how a train of U.S. marines gets sidetracked in a remote village when they can't come up with the proper paperwork. Completed after the talented young director's death, the film garnered the Prix Un Certain Regard at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Producer: Andrei Boncea. Screenplay: Tudor Voican, Cristian Nemescu, Catherine Linstrum. Cinematographer: Liviu Marghidan. Editor: Catalin Cristutiu. Cast: Armand Assante, Razvan Vasilescu, Jamie Elman, Maria Dinulescu, Ion Sapdaru. Presented in English, Romanian, Spanish, and Italian dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, color & B/W, 155 min. CARNAVAL ATLÂNTIDA (1952, Brazil) Directed by José Carlos Burle and Carlos Manga Atlântida Studio's speciality was the chanchada: bright musical comedy, often set amid Carnaval, characterized by samba numbers with bountiful beauties. In this classic of the genre, a highbrow production of "Helen of Troy" (the director's name is Cecílio B. de Milho!) gets derailed and reworked into a samba revue. Screenplay: Berliot Júnior, Victor Lima. Cinematographer: Amleto Daissé. Cast: Oscarito , Grande Otelo, Cyl Farney, José Lewgoy. Presented in Portuguese dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, B/W, 95 min. CHOOSE ME Keith Carradine, Genevieve Bujold and Lesley Ann Warren star in one of Alan Rudolph's best films--a stylish and sexy romance that explores the quirky, ambiguous truths of intimate relationships. "An L.A. flower, a neon orchid--hip, outrageous, beautiful. It's a romance--music at its heart and farce around its edges--for those afraid to be in love" (Sheila Benson, Los Angeles Times). With Rae Dawn Chong, Patrick Bauchau and John Larroquette. Alan Rudolph---USA---1984---106 mins. COBRA VERDE, 1987, 518 Media, 111 min. Klaus Kinski plays the ruthless bandit Cobra Verde, who is banished to Africa and finds himself the only white man in a hostile environment. After enduring excruciating torture, he rallies to form a guerrilla army. Director Werner Herzog's last artistic collaboration with Kinski. Discussion between films with Werner Herzog (schedule permitting). COLD WAVES (2007, Romania/Germany/Luxembourg) Directed by Alexandru Solomon and Catalin Cristutiu One of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's most feared enemies was Radio Free Europe, the U.S.-sponsored broadcaster that transmitted music and pro-democracy propaganda across the Iron Curtain. Filmmaker Ada Solomon deftly mixes interviews and stylized re-enactments to portray Ceausescu's secret war against a medium he could not control and a time when even listening to the radio became a subversive act. Producer: Ada Solomon, Elvira Geppert, Paul Thiltges. Editor: Catalin Cristutiu. Presented in Romanian dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 108 min. Damnation Alley Amongst pulsating irradiated skies, giant scorpions, cockroach assassins and other nonsense left behind in the aftermath of a nuclear winter, Damnation Alley is a wacky, gung-ho prototypical "A-Team" adventure of hardy American military survivors leaving the confines of their NORAD-like headquarters to blaze across the countryside, hunting for other refugees and a path to the last remaining city not yet vaporized. You’ve got the crusty stogie-chomping team leader (George Peppard), the hotheaded young buck (Jan-Michael Vincent), the nervous wisecracker (Paul Winfield), the sultry foreign chick (Dominique Sanda), and the adolescent who’ll save the day (Jackie Earle Haley) -- all touring around in the RV From Hades: a gonzo, armored "Landmaster" that could easily make shredded cheese out of both The Car and Killdozer. Alongside the film's snap-crackle-and-pop exterior is also a surprising nihilistic undercurrent, with its creepy, somber missile attack prologue, and the fact that Peppard's Air Force major (the supposed hero of its post-apocalypse) also happens to be the dude who pushed the nuclear button in the first place! Dir. Jack Smight, 1977, 35mm, 95 min. DARK PASSAGE (1947) Directed by Delmer Daves Famously, Humphrey Bogart's face remains hidden from view for the first half of this San Francisco set noir, initially by writer-director Delmer Daves' bravura point-of-view camera work, then by surgical bandages, as Bogart's escaped con changes his identity to hunt for his wife's real killer. Bogart and Lauren Bacall, as the good Samaritan who may or may not have ulterior motives, sizzle again. Warner Bros.. Producer: Jerry Wald. Screenwriter: Delmer Daves. Cinematographer: Sid Hickox. Editor: David Weisbart. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Bruce Bennett, Agnes Moorehead, Tom D'Andrea. 35mm, B/W, 106 min. DARK STAR, 1974, Jack H. Harris Enterprises, 83 min. Director John Carpenter’s first feature is a hilariously lo-fi space epic about a shaggy-dog crew stuck on a spaceship with an alien that resembles a walking beach ball and a thinking time-bomb intent on blowing itself to smithereens. Co-screenwriter Dan O’Bannon co-stars as Pinback. A Day in the Country 1936/b&w/40 min. | Scr/dir: Jean Renoir; w/ Sylvia Bataille, Georges D'Arnoux, Jeanne Marken, Jean Renoir On a Sunday in 1880, a Parisian businessman takes his wife, his daughter, and the daughter's fiancé to the countryside for a picnic on the banks of the Seine, where two passing oarsmen stop and flirt with the mother and daughter; when their men go fishing, the two women accept the offer of a boat ride, and their afternoon on the river becomes a interlude they will always remember. Adapted from a story by de Maupassant. Renoir's film was shot near the town of Marlotte, where Cezanne lived, and captures like no other film the landscape, fashions, and atmosphere of impressionist painting. "The love scene on the island is one of the most beautiful in all of cinema. It owes its effectiveness to a couple of gestures and a look from Sylvie Bataille that have a wrenching emotional realism. In the space of a few frames she expresses all the disenchantment, the pathetic sadness that follows the act of love... Renoir manages to transcribe this feeling visually by use of the superb storm sequence."—André Bazin. DEAD END (1937) Directed by William Wyler Humphrey Bogart continued his string of crooked roles with the character of gangster "Baby Face" Martin, who returns to his boyhood home in New York only to find a neighborhood in transition. In a spectacular city set, class conflict erupts as the Dead End Kids prey on the rich and childhood friends Drina (Sylvia Sydney) and Dave (Joel McCrea) struggle to make a living. United Artists. Based on the play by Sidney Kingsley. Producer: Samuel Goldwyn. Screenplay: Lillian Hellman. Cinematographer: Gregg Toland. Editor: Daniel Mendell. Cast: Sylvia Sydney, Joel McCrea, Humphrey Bogart, Wendy Barrie, Claire Trevor. 35mm, 95 min. DEADLINE-U.S.A. (1952) Directed by Richard Brooks Crusading newspaper editor Ed Hutcheson (Humphrey Bogart) is a master of multitasking. A bow-tied workaholic, Hutcheson must keep his publisher's heirs from selling off the paper and lead his staff through an exposé of a local mobster while trying to repair his failed marriage. As with many of Bogart's characters, a code of honor guides him through personal and professional uncertainty. 20th Century Fox Film Corp.. Producer: Sol C. Siegel. Screenplay: Richard Brooks. Cinematographer: Milton Krasner. Editor: William B. Murphy. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ethel Barrymore, Kim Hunter, Ed Begley, Paul Stewart. 35mm, B/W, 87 min. DEAD RECKONING (1947) Directed by John Cromwell "I'm not the type that tears do anything to," explains Humphrey Bogart as Capt. 'Rip' Murdock—an ex-paratrooper hunting for his buddy's killer—to Lizabeth Scott's femme fatale, in this feverish noir seething with post-war anxieties. Here, the source of Murdock's hard-boiled attitude isn't shrouded in the past, as with so many of Bogart characters from this period, it's in the present tense as Murdock's welcome home becomes a nightmarish, sadistic ordeal. Warner Bros.. Producer: Sidney Biddell. Screenplay: Oliver H.P. Garrett, Steve Fisher. Cinematographer: Leo Tover. Editor: Gene Havlick. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Lizabeth Scott, Morris Carnovsky, Charles Cane, William Prince. 35mm, B/W, 100 min. DEATH RIDES A HORSE A vintage "spaghetti western" with one of the genre's greatest stars, Lee Van Cleef. John Phillip Law plays a gunslinger who has grown up hungry for revenge against the outlaws that murdered his parents. He rides with the tough-as-leather cowboy Ryan (Van Cleef), not knowing that his ally is one of the killers he seeks. A.k.a. Man to Man. Giulio Petroni---Italy---1968---112 mins. THE DESPERATE HOURS (1955) Directed by William Wyler Recalling his role as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest (1936), Humphrey Bogart plays the leader of a gang of escaped convicts who takes a family hostage in their own home. Remarkably, director William Wyler brings his VistaVision widescreen framing into the house and captures the claustrophobia of a family under siege. 1950s suburbia never felt so disquieting in this film inspired by a true story. Paramount. Based on the novel and play by Joseph Hayes. Producer: William Wyler. Screenplay: Joseph Hayes. Cinematographer: Lee Garmes. Editor: Robert Swink. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Fredric March, Arthur Kennedy, Martha Scott. 35mm, B/W, 112 min. The Earrings of Madame De... One of Max Ophuls’ wittiest depictions of boudoir intrigue, Madame De... proves that exquisite technique and elaborately orchestrated camera movements can be used as effectively for comedy as for tragedy. In this densely-plotted satire of marital fidelity, we follow the eponymous earrings as they are sold, gambled, gifted and grifted between an arrogant general (Charles Boyer), his impetuous wife (Danielle Darrieux), and her Italian aristocrat lover (Bicycle Thieves director Vittorio de Sica). As in Lola Montes and La Ronde, Ophuls uses ornate camera movements to depict desire as the ultimate currency of high society. Just as this desire defies the rigid social order, so too does Ophuls’ camera defy, as in the legendary ballroom sequence, the boundaries of space and time. The masterful staging of traveling shots is Ophuls’ claim to fame, and he surely doesn’t disappoint here, with dazzling extended displays of set design, choreography and performance from the very first shot to the last. Dir. Max Ophuls, 1953, 35mm, 105 min. EDDIE PRESLEY, 1992, Eddie Productions, 106 min. Dir. Jeff Burr. Living in a van off Hollywood Boulevard, tortured Elvis impersonator Eddie Presley gets another shot at stardom when the owner of a dumpy club offers him a gig. The only question is whether Eddie can overcome his own demons and achieve his showbiz dream. Based on the play by star Duane Whitaker, it’s a modest masterpiece of heartfelt independent cinema, shot on a shoestring. With Clu Gulager, Roscoe Lee Browne, Chuck Williams, Ted Raimi and Lawrence Tierney. Cameos by Quentin Tarantino and Bruce Campbell! The Elusive Corporal 1962/b&w/99 min. | Jean Renoir, Guy Lefrance; dir; Jean Renoir; w/ Jean-Pierre Cassel, Claude Brasseur, Claude Rich A Parisian army corporal (Cassel) is captured when the Germans invade France, but with the help of two friends, and later alone, he goes to absurd lengths to break out of various Nazi prisons. By turns humorous and sentimental, this slight tale is informed by Renoir's trademark humanism, and the scenes in the prison camp display his sharp eye for regional and class differences, even under the yoke of common suffering. "Renoir is clearly not interested in how prisoners escape but why. Whereas Grand Illusion was concerned with the idea of fraternity, The Elusive Corporal is concerned with the idea of liberty. Whereas the earlier film suggested that class differences were more decisive than national differences, the later film suggests that liberty means something different for each man."—Andrew Sarris. The End Of August At The Hotel Ozone "Like Andrei Tarkovsky directing Mad Max with an all-female cast." - American Cinematheque Hotel Ozone does not come from the realm of the fantastical or surreal. Unrelentingly bleak in its depiction of a human de-evolution, it's the stark Czech tale of a wise old woman and her band of feral female survivors foraging for food and mate-able males in a rural post-nuke landscape. Mangling wildlife for primal kicks and exhibiting no civilized tendencies, the womens' journey has them stumble upon one final survivor, a gentle old man keeping watch over a tiny gallery of pre-Holocaust artifacts at an abandoned inn. Hotel Ozone's tragic, Twilight Zone tone is just the right buffer between the audience and the terrifying bummer of its scenario -- right down to its final chilling frames. NOTE: Be advised -- this film contains scenes depicting realistic animal cruelty. Dir. Jan Schmidt, 1967, 35, 77 min. THE ENFORCER (1951) Directed by Bretaigne Windust Humphrey Bogart is in fine litigious form as an assistant district attorney who attempts to indict the elusive head of a murder-for-hire ring. But when he loses his sole witness, the D.A. must reconstruct the case, studying overlooked leads. Via a web of flashbacks, we are introduced to a motley cast of contract killers as the prosecutor searches for a suitable witness to testify. Warner Bros.. Producer: Milton Sperling. Screenplay: Martin Rackin. Cinematographer: Robert Burks. Editor: Fred Allen. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Zero Mostel, Ted de Corsia, Everett Sloane. 35mm, B/W, 88 min. EYEWITNESS, 1981, 20th Century Fox, 103min. Dir. Peter Yates. Steve Tesich's mystery follows a janitor (William Hurt) who uses what he knows about a murder to get close to reporter Sigourney Weaver. Steve Tesich's script, is alive with interesting characters and crackling dialogue. One of the least known, but most successful character driven mysteries of all time. The final shoot out in the riding stable is a thing to behold. Also starring Christopher Plummer, James Woods, Steven Hill and Morgan Freeman. THE FALLEN IDOL, 1948, Rialto Pictures, 95 min. Graham Greene once again supplied the story and screenplay for this psychological mystery directed by Carol Reed. Bobby Henrey is the 8-year-old son of the French ambassador in London. Left alone for the weekend, Bobby is the only witness when the housekeeper dies from a fall of ambiguous motive. FOUR FRIENDS, 1981, MGM Repertory, 114 min. Dir. Arthur Penn. Steve Tesich's largely autobiographical tale of Yugoslavian immigrant (Craig Wasson) and his friends (Michael Huddleston and Jim Metzler) coming of age in the 1960s, every one of them in love with Georgia (Jodi Thelen). A richly observed American epic of love and friendship. One of the most overlooked and misunderstood films of the 1980s. "The best film yet made about the sixties…. It has the quality of legend, a fable remembered…. For Mr. Tesich, it is another original work by one of our best young screenwriters."- Vincent Canby The New York Times. 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, 2 DAYS (2007, Romania) Directed by Cristian Mungiu Following two college roommates as they try to obtain an illegal abortion, Cristian Mungiu's film masterfully captures the daily bartering and sacrifices required in the waning days of the Soviet bloc. With bravura long takes and performances, this long day's journey into night won the Palme d'Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and remains one of the best films of the aughts. Producer: Oleg Mutu, Cristian Mungiu. Screenplay: Cristian Mungiu. Cinematographer: Oleg Mutu. Cast: Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov, Alexandru Potocean, Luminita Gheorghiu. Presented in Romanian dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 113 min. Freebie And The Bean For March's CDR night, we welcome one of the most instantly recognizable (and instantly funny) actors of his generation: Michael Cera, whose turns in Superbad, Juno and Youth In Revolt have bumped John Cusack out of the top slot of nerd girl crushes everywhere. His film pick for the evening is a left-field choice from someone so sweet: the mayhem-packed, filthy-mouthed comedy Freebie and The Bean. Michael says: "Filled with car crash sequences, guns, yelling, transvestites and Alan Arkin, Freebie and the Bean has got to be the best buddy-cop film of 1974." It's a veritable "who's who" of '70s film awesomeness, starring James Caan and Alan Arkin, directed by Richard Rush (The Stunt Man, Getting Straight), co-written by Floyd Mutrux (Dusty And Sweets McGee) and shot by Laszlo Kovacs (Easy Rider)! Caan and Arkin are a pair of racist, homophobic and misogynist San Francisco supercops who think nothing of plowing cars into pedestrians, plugging suspects full of lead in toilet stalls and demolishing half the city's free-standing structures in order to nab the bad guy, in this gleefully anarchic ode to kicking ass first, and takin' names later. Dir. Richard Rush, 1974, 35mm, 113 min. GAMES, 1967, Universal Pictures, 100 min. Dir. Curtis Harrington. Beautiful people James Caan and Katharine Ross live in a funhouse filled with Pop Art and pinball games – until mysterious charlatan Simone Signoret drops in, and the parlor games turn devilishly sinister. Discussion in between films with Katharine Ross. Glen And Randa "The city’s far, far away, over the mountains," the magician told him. "I was 15 when it was totaled. They was droppin’ dead in the streets for years." "Take me to the city," Glen said. But the magician had other business, so just like Prince Valiant on his quest for the Holy Grail, Glen set out for the city. The record of the journey is Glen and Randa, a primitive, desperate odyssey by the last bewildered survivors of an atomic holocaust. Neither moralizing sci-fi nor melodrama, despite its fanciful premise, the film is rather like a cinéma verité doomsday doc — a parable in newsreel form. Using a rigorously unadorned style, director Jim McBride and co-writer Rudy Wurlitzer convey a sense of primitive desolation, transforming contemporary landscapes into primeval heaths. Although the film is unsparing in its vision, its dour brutality is frequently alleviated by a cool eye for satire. Jim McBride will appear in person for a Q&A after the show! Dir. Jim McBride, 1971, 35mm, 93 min. GONE WITH THE POPE, 1976, Grindhouse Releasing, 83 min. Writer-director-producer Duke Mitchell stars as Paul, a criminal with an unholy scheme: to kidnap the pope and charge "a dollar from every Catholic in the world" as ransom. This deliriously entertaining saga was shot in 1976 but remained unfinished until 2009. Now fully realized in 35mm! Grand Illusion 1937/b&w/104 min. | Scr: Charles Spaak, Jean Renoir; dir: Jean Renoir; w/ Jean Gabin, Dita Parlo, Pierre Fresnay, Erich von Stroheim Renoir became an international figure with the commercial success of Grand Illusion, which was acclaimed for its pacifist and anti-war sentiments. Widely seen in Europe with the exception of Germany where the Jewish character was deleted and Italy where it was banned, the film played across America, remaining fifteen weeks in a New York first-run cinema, garnering both an Oscar nomination for Best Picture and the endorsement of FDR. The story, a series of dramatic episodes, each with its own shading propelled forward by the desire to escape, is set during World War l and centers on three French soldiers held in a fortress prison by the Germans—Lt. Maréchal (Gabin), a former auto mechanic, Captain de Boïeldieu (Fresnay), a career officer, and Rosenthal (Dalio), a banker from a nouveau-riche Jewish family—who establish a friendship across class lines and a fraternity with the other French prisoners. The most striking relationship however is trans-border, between Boïeldieu and Von Rauffenstein (von Stroheim), the German commandant, who are bound by their aristocratic lineage and their espousal of the values of a prewar Europe. Von Stroheim, with his neck and chin clamped into a metal brace, is a powerful screen presence—the epitome of Prussian will—and his studied performance is unique in Renoir's work. "Grand illusions are doubtless the dreams which help men to live. The theme of illusion is scattered throughout the film: the illusion of sexuality fostered by soldiers in women's costumes; the illusion of liberty behind every attempt to escape; the illusion of approaching peace; the illusion of hatred that arbitrarily divides men who in reality are not separated by anything; and the illusion of boundaries and the wars which result from them."—André Bazin. Harmony & Me "The most creative works of art often come from heartache. In a way, that’s all we can hope for and from Harmony, a sullen young lyricist, as he pines for a woman who broke his heart with seemingly little remorse. Harmony finds solace in song, yet fails to find compassion from those around him: pathetic friends who drive minivans convince him that love is a vaguely pedophilic letdown, and self-serving coworkers show him that life is generally sadistic. Meanwhile, chewy frozen chocolate serves as a reminder that at times everything can be too grievous to handle. Austin-based filmmaker Bob Byington’s homegrown style transcends the piece's budgetary limitations, and his scripted esprit results in colorful, chaotic characters brought to life by Justin Rice, Kevin Corrigan, Pat Healy, and Kristen Tucker. These characters don’t merely mimic reality; they heighten the hilarity of a traumatic post-breakup, which in truth is probably just about as ridiculous in life as it is onscreen." (CineVegas) Director Bob Byington will appear live for a post-screening Q&A! Herostratus “The world of Herostratus is cold, stark metallic, expressed with an imagery as succinct and evocative as anything in Antonioni at his best.” Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times UK, 1967, 142 min., hdcam Though Australian-born Don Levy taught and inspired generations of filmmakers and artists at CalArts in the 1970s and ’80s, his own underground masterpiece Herostratus remained largely out of public view. Now, more than 40 years after the psychedelic shock Levy delivered to a British film industry steeped in kitchensink realism, Herostratus is screening once more, thanks to a new restoration by the British Film Institute. In this coruscating work, Michael Gothard astonishes as the eponymous young poet who hires a pr firm to turn his planned suicide into a media spectacle. Bursting with psychological and aesthetic urgency, Herostratus proved as prescient about the failure of the ’60s counterculture as it was inspirational for the likes of Stanley Kubrick and Nicolas Roeg. “[S]een by virtually every filmmaker then working in the British film industry…. Herostratus must now certainly rank among the most influential of unknown films,” according to Amnon Buchbinder. INTERSECTIONS: POETRY/FILM SHORTS PROGRAM In the 20th century, avant-garde and documentary filmmakers searching for new cinematic forms frequently turned to poetry as a source of inspiration and to poets themselves as collaborators. By the 1960s and ‘70s, particularly with respect to the Beat poets, it was clear that poetry and avant-garde film—both together and in parallel—had achieved a major evolution of visual and written language which continues to fuel popular and artistic culture today. As the UCLA campus welcomes the 2010 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, the Archive presents two nights of films exploring the intersection of mid-century poets and filmmakers and the casual, humorous and often rigorous cross-pollinization between these artists of the page and screen. THE INTRUDER (aka I HATE YOUR GUTS), 1962, Filmgroup, 80 min. Dir. Roger Corman. William Shatner plays a racist agitator traveling the South to foment tension against newly-court-ordered school desegregation. With on-location authenticity, Charles Beaumont’s terse script and convincing performances, the film still packs a wallop today. KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL A tough '50s crime thriller, ably directed by the reliable Phil Karlson. Preston Foster plays an ex-cop who masterminds a brilliant bank robbery in which not even the members of the gang (all masked) know the other crooks involved. John Payne is an innocent man set up to take the blame for the heist. Assuming the identity of one of the bank robbers, Payne sets out for revenge. Also starring Coleen Gray, Lee Van Cleef and Neville Brand. "Shamefully ignored for years, Kansas City Confidential is violent as hell, kinetic, and suspenseful...possibly one of the best caper films ever" Phil Karlson---USA---1952---98 mins. La bête humaine 1938/b&w/100 min. | Scr/dir: Jean Renoir; w/ Jean Gabin, Simone Simon, Fernand Ledoux Lantier, an engineer, suspects that the yard foreman and his wife have murdered a man on his train but, seeing the fear in the woman's eyes, says nothing; his complicity leads to an affair with the woman, but when he falls victim to her duplicitous charms, his fate is sealed and the film hurtles to its pitiless ending. In adapting Zola's novel to the present, Renoir retained the theme of industrial progress as a force that crushes the humanity of ordinary men, and positioned Lantier, a man haunted by a family legacy of alcoholism and madness, as the central character. With its documentary-like opening sequence of a mighty locomotive racing along the tracks from Paris to Le Havre (the cameraman was strapped to the front of the engine) and its chiaroscuro lighting, La bête humaine has an intensity unlike any other Renoir film. "In La bête humaine there is a strong, ever-present rhythm like a heartbeat of the railroad, and the visual melancholic poetry of smoke, soot and steam. This somber melodrama became, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful of Renoir's pictures, a human drama of three poor beings struggling in the cogwheels of their passion. This feeling of doom corresponded with the atmosphere in Europe at the time. The air was charged with the tension of impending war..."—Eugene Lourie, art director. La chienne 1931/b&w/95 min. | Scr: Jean Renoir, Andre Girard; dir: Jean Renoir; w/ Michel Simon, Janie Marèse, Georges Flamant Heading home late from an office party, Legrand, an unassuming clerk whose hobby as an amateur painter provides relief from a boring job and a shrewish wife, intervenes in an argument between Lulu, an attractive young woman, and Dédé, her inebriated companion and abusive pimp. Manipulated by the couple, who plan to fleece the naïve old man, Legrande rents a comfortable apartment to house his illicit lover and to display his paintings, but happiness is short-lived: faced with mounting debts, the theft of his canvasses, and Lulu's brazen betrayal, he descends into madness. Renoir's first sound film is one of his most visually inventive: in the prologue, Punch and Judy puppets debate whether the film is a serious social drama or a comedy of manners; on occasion the camera moves outdoors to observe the action through the window; and mirrors and reflections are used throughout to visually underscore the pattern of hypocrisy, treachery, and moral ambiguity. It is typical of Renoir that this sordid melodrama, with its flawed creatures and immoral ending, is a film in which the dominant emotions are tenderness and pity. La Marseillaise 1938/b&w/132 min. | Scr/dir: Jean Renoir; w/ Pierre Renoir, Lise Delamare, Louis Jouvet A neorealist fresco of the early days of the French Revolution, produced in the heady atmosphere of the leftist Popular Front and funded by the trade unions, La Marseillaise begins in Marseille where five hundred volunteers are preparing to march to Paris to participate in the capture of the Tuileries and the fall of the monarchy. Around this historical episode Renoir depicts the lives of the protagonists, who come from every segment of society; in the opinion of François Truffaut "he is careful to avoid the artifice and stiffness inherent in a period film... and succeeds perfectly in humanizing thirty or so major characters by using details from everyday reality." For the critic André Bazin, "Renoir demythologizes history by restoring it to man" noting that "the aristocrats are marvelously individualized... Renoir gives each character a precise and subtle style. The most developed from this point of view is Louis XVI." The same detail can be found in the dialogue: according to Truffaut, La Marseillaise "is the richest in culinary vocabulary of any Renoir film," and Georges Sadoul wrote that "the Marseillaise troops were played by actors from the south of France, trained by Pagnol to speak dialect." Sadoul concludes by noting that "there is no idealization in the film and no dramatization; its impact lies in its naturalness, and its attempt to portray human details against a background of history." The Last Man On Earth Everyone has fantasized about what it might be like to be the last person alive on the planet. Anything you could possibly want would be right there at your disposal. Sounds fun, right? Not quite, at least according to writer Richard Matheson, whose nightmarish short novel I Am Legend, later to become The Omega Man, was first adapted as The Last Man On Earth, an intriguing, underrated Italian production starring Vincent Price. Last Man presents Price as Robert Morgan, a former scientist surviving amidst a plague of vampire-like zombies. Barricading himself in an abandoned house, Price struggles to keep the ghouls out, and when a human woman suddenly appears, Morgan believes he's found the key to rebuilding society -- but fate holds some nasty surprises in store. Shot in gritty B&W, Last Man's queasy, almost documentary feel is a clear inspiration on George Romero's later Night of the Living Dead, and Price is excellent as the debonair gatekeeper of humanity in a world gone gear. Dirs. Ubaldo Ragona & Sidney Salkow, 1964, 35mm, 86 min. Light Echoes Dark: The Films of Julie Murray “A masterful editor and visionary filmmaker.” Chris Gehman, Cinematheque Ontario Irish-born, New York-based filmmaker Julie Murray combines found and original footage to conjure strange and paradoxical universes resonant with ambiguous meanings. Mystery and menace lurk equally amid the eloquence of her visual rhymes and word associations—whether in repeated images of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and the Heimlich maneuver (Conscious, 1993, 10 min.), shots of trees growing among crumbled brick ruins (Orchard, 2004, 9 min.), views from an aerial tram leaving Manhattan (If You Stand With Your Back to the Slowing of the Speed of Light in Water, 1997, 18 min.), or captioned excerpts from an instructional movie for the deaf (I Began to Wish, 2003, 5 min.). Comprising all 16mm films, this program features Murray’s latest work, ELEMENTs (2008, 7 min.) Like A Phoenix From The Ashes: "Pomegranates" Record Release Party Join us as we inaugurate the release of "Pomegranates", a compilation of Persian folk, funk, and psychedelia on the Finders Keepers record label, in a night also celebrating Norooz (the Persian New Year!) This spring-equinox-special will boast a psychedelic visual feast of ultra-rare and never-before-screened vintage film and video clips from '60s/'70s Iran, collaged and curated by Cinefamily's Tom Fitzgerald, and soundtracked with a Middle Eastern mash-up mix done by Finders Keepers founder Andy Votel. A fun celebration of drinks, catered Persian dinner and pastries, and artwork along with special guest B-Music DJs will preview and follow the film presentation! Lost Reels of Pancho Villa “Movie-history enthusiasts, among others, will be intrigued by Lost Reels’ quest for a cinematic ‘Holy Grail.’” Variety Gregorio Rocha’s award-winning documentary Los rollos perdidos de Pancho Villa (Mexico/Canada/USA, 2003, 49 min., b/w and color) recounts his painstaking intercontinental search for one of film history’s most intriguing lost works: Raoul Walsh’s The Life of General Villa, a quasi-factual 1914 biography commissioned by the Mexican revolutionary strongman (in which Villa allowed cameramen to follow him into actual combat). While sleuthing in countless archives, vaults and institutional back rooms, the Mexico City-based filmmaker and media archivist uncovers a wider, decidedly conflicted legacy of how the general was depicted in the newsreels and movies of the silent film era—and locates in the process the heretofore little-known origins of border cinema. In person: Gregorio Rocha LUST FOR LIFE Kirk Douglas is cast as the tormented genius Vincent Van Gogh in this Vincente Minnelli film in full color. Based on the best-selling biographical novel by Irving Stone. Douglas throws himself into the role, but Anthony Quinn walked away with the Oscar as his best friend Gauguin. A first-class production with James Donald, Pamela Brown and Everett Sloane. Vincente Minnelli---USA---1956---122 mins. The Man From London After several years' absence, Bela Tarr returned to the big screen in 2007 with his latest feature, The Man From London, a philosophical noir parable that, in the hands of another director like Sam Fuller, would play fast 'n rough, but in Tarr's signature slow-burn style, radiates with a seductive, chilly intensity. The dreary Maloin (played with morbid creakiness by Miroslav Krobot) works at a gloomy seaside port, and catches a sudden murder taking place on a dock. He recovers a mysterious suitcase full of cash abandoned in the bloody struggle -- which only worsens his despair-laden life, as the moral implications of keeping the loot weigh on him like concrete loafers. Tarr's languid, epic takes, upwards of the ten-minute mark (as in the mesmeric opening shot, exploring every inch of the dock before shockingly switching gears to reveal the murderous act), offer stark accompaniment to the story of a man trapped in the ferocious ambience of his own indecision. Dirs. Béla Tarr & Ágnes Hranitzky, 2007, 35mm, 139 min. MARKED WOMAN (1937) Directed by Lloyd Bacon The picture belongs to Bette Davis—as a dance hall girl who defies a ruthless mob boss after the death of her kid sister—but it's noteworthy in that Humphrey Bogart doesn't play the mob boss. As D.A. David Graham, Bogart plays the crusader for justice, a character type he'll blend so famously with world-weariness a few years later in films such as Casablanca (1942). Warner Bros.. Screenplay: Robert Rossen, Abem Finkel. Cinematographer: George Barnes. Editor: Jack Killifer. Cast: Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Lola Lane, Isabel Jewell. 35mm, 96 min. MASSACRE MAFIA STYLE (aka THE EXECUTIONER), 1978, Grindhouse Releasing, 83 min. Duke Mitchell wrote, directed and stars in this hyper-violent mob movie that plays like THE GODFATHER at half the length and twice the carnage. An exiled mob leader returns to the U.S. to try to re-establish himself, only to set off a bloody gangland war. MOTHER Hye-ja is a devoted single parent to her simple-minded son, Do-joon. Walking home alone one night, he encounters a young girl who he follows for a while before she disappears into a dark alley. The next morning, she is found dead and Do-joon is soon convicted for her murder. Trusting no one, Hye-ja’s maternal instincts kick into overdrive, and she sets out to find the girl’s killer and prove her son’s innocence. Official Selection, 2009 New York Film Festival Co-presented by UCLA's Asia Institute and Center for Korean Studies "As he previously did for the police procedural (Memories of Murder) and the monster movie (The Host), South Korea’s sublimely talented Bong Joon-ho here takes another venerable pulp genre — the wronged-man thriller — and enthusiastically stands it on its head." -Scott Foundas, LA WEEKLY MOULIN ROUGE The colorful story of French painter Henri Toulouse-Lautrec as interpreted by director John Huston. Jose Ferrer is cast as the Parisian artist who may have been short of stature but never of talent. The film won Oscars for its art direction, set decoration and costumes. Return to the exciting and naughty world of Montmartre in the late 19th century. The cast includes Eric Pohlmann, Colette Marchant, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Zsa Zsa Gabor ---USA---1952---123 mins. The Mystic Gypsies, scams, carnivals and magic -- all with the signature flair that director Tod Browning brought to classics like The Unholy Three, Freaks and Dracula. The Mystic follows Hungarian gypsy fortune teller Zara (played by the alluring Aileen Pringle) and her two cohorts as they take their show on the road to the U.S., and craft a scheme (backed by an unscrupulous American) to grift a gullible heiress by pretending to communicate with the dead. Even though the plot of The Mystic is to expose fraudulent spiritualism, the theme actually capitalized on the public’s persistent interest in occult themes throughout the 1920s, and Browning himself was inspired by the German Expressionist movement that sprouted just a few years earlier with distorted dreamlike carnival settings that surface in this film. As well as the visuals being superior, The Mystic also boasts the sumptuous costumes of famed French designer "Erté", whose elegant illustrations influenced the Art Deco movement. Come be hypnotized by the only Los Angeles 35mm screening of this film in ages! Dir. Tod Browning, 1925, 35mm, 70 min. Nana 1926/b&w/150 min. | Scr: Pierre Lestringuez; dir: Jean Renoir; w/ Catherine Hessling, Jean Angelo, Werner Krauss, Claude Autant-Lara Nana, the ninth novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume Les Rougon-Macquart series, which includes La bete humaine, tells the story of Nana Coupeau, a streetwalker and music hall performer. Rising to high-class cocotte, she destroys a string of wealthy lovers—among them Count Muffat, whose faithfulness earns him humiliation after humiliation—before dying a horrible death from smallpox. In Renoir's ambitious adaptation, Nana is played by Catherine Hessling, Renoir's wife and a former painter's model for Auguste, and Werner Krauss of Caligari fame plays the count. The film cost a million dollars to make and was a commercial failure due mainly (according to Renoir) to the public's inability to accept Hessling's extreme performance: "She was not a woman at all but a marionette... I restricted Catherine's makeup to a thick white base; her eyes and mouth were completely black. She became a kind of puppet-a puppet of genius." François Truffaut writes, "There are various characteristic themes here: the love of spectacle, the woman who chooses the wrong vocation, the actress trying to find herself, the lover who dies of his sincerity, the showman. It is the first of Renoir's films in which acting took precedence over the story and the plastic elements. It was made under the influence of Foolish Wives which explains why Nana is one of only two Renoir films in which money plays an important role." Live musical accompaniment. Night Of The Comet This '80s horror/comedy takes the Last Man On Earth premise and gives it a colorful and satirical shot in the arm. Valley girls Regina and her sister Samantha (The Apple's Catherine Mary Stewart and Chopping Mall's Kelli Maroney) are the only ones not interested in the great rogue comet scheduled to pass by Earth, and the morning after, find everyone else turned into piles of red dust -- which of course makes them ecstatic to be rid of annoying adults, to plunder high-end department stores and to play good music on the radio for a change. However, they're soon caught up in a deadly power play between the un-dusted zombie masses and a cabal of isolated scientists more interested in saving themselves than the whole of mankind. Lucky for us, our heroines are unafraid to get their coiffs mussed, 'cause they're pumped and accessorized for battle! Dir. Thom Eberhardt, 1984, 35mm, 95 min. A Night With TVTV Before The Daily Show sent their "reporters" out into the world for satirical newscoverage, before Christopher Guest and This is Spinal Tap utilized cinema verité's natural deadpan to devastating comic effect, and before American Movie and Heavy Metal Parking Lot popularized the comic documentary form -- there was TVTV. Radical, hilarious and influential, "Top Value Television" was an ad hoc collective of documentarians whose pioneering use of portable, low-tech video gear allowed them unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to everything from presidential conventions to the Super Bowl. Their philosophy,articulated in co-founding member Michael Shamberg's 1971 manifesto "Guerrilla Television", was to "demonstrate the potential of decentralized video technology" as a means to break free from the ideological strangehold broadcast technology had on American culture -- forecasting the media free-for-all that's rapidly becoming our day-to-day lives. The Cinefamily celebrates the TVTV spirit, and the top notch documentary filmmaking they produced, with a panel discussion/reunion of TVTV members, a video "primer" of past works, and a screening of Lord Of The Universe, an expose on sixteen-year-old Guru Maharaj Ji and the national gathering of his followers at the Houston Astrodome. 99 RIVER STREET (from IMDB) Having lost his heavyweight championship match, boxer Ernie Driscoll now drives a taxi for a living and earns the scorn of his nagging wife, Pauline, who blames him for her lack of social status. Dir. Phil Karlson, 1953, 83 min. NOISES OFF..., 1992, Disney, 101 min. Dir. Peter Bogdanovich. One of the funniest films of the last 20 years! A director (Michael Caine) tries to get a group of bumbling actors ready for a stage production in which one disaster follows another. Peter Bogdanovich's adaptation of Michael Frayn's stage farce features a stellar cast including John Ritter, Denholm Elliott, Carol Burnett, Christopher Reeve and Marilu Henner. NO PLACE LIKE HOME, 2006, IFM, 95 min. Dir. Perry Henzell. Following the success of THE HARDER THEY COME, Perry Henzell directed part two of his Jamaican trilogy, which follows New York producer Susan as she ventures into the Jamaican countryside (reversing the country-to-city trajectory of the first film) in search of a runaway actress. After working on the film throughout the 1970s, Henzell discovered that the footage had been lost; fortunately, it was found 30 years later, and now Henzell's follow-up to his breakthrough classic can be seen on the big screen! With music by Bob Marley & The Wailers, Toots & The Maytals and Peter Tosh and introducing Grace Jones and P.J. Soles. NOSFERATU, THE VAMPYRE, 1979, I, 107 min. An homage to Murnau’s 1922 classic, Herzog’s NOSFERATU achieves its own hypnotic power by evoking a romantic past, aided by the eerie sensuality of Klaus Kinski’s performance. In German with English subtitles. O CANGACEIRO (The Bandit) (1953, Brazil) Directed by Lima Barreto O Cangaceiro—about a bandit who falls for the school teacher he kidnaps—was Vera Cruz Film Studio's only box office blockbuster. Comparable to a Hollywood Western, but with interesting and tragic deviations, the film was a 2-time winner at the Cannes Film Festival in 1953 (International Prize for the director Lima Barreto and Special Mention for the outstanding musical score). Producer: Cid Leite da Silva. Screenplay: Lima Barreto. Cinematographer: H.E. Fowle. Cast: Marisa Prado, Alberto Ruschel, Milton Ribeiro, Vanja Orico. Presented in Portuguese dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, B/W, 103 min. O HOMEM DO SPUTNIK (The Sputnik Man) (1959, Brazil) Directed by Carlos Manga Atlântida Studio films were known for their mix of broad comedy and irreverent satire. In this political spoof, a Brazilian peasant enters into the elite class when the Sputnik satellite lands on his chicken coop and Cold War operatives try to nab it. Producer: Cyl Farney. Screenplay: José Cajado Filho. Cinematographer: Özen Sermet. Editor: Waldemar Noya. Cast: Oscarito , Cyl Farney, Zezé Macedo, Neide Aparecida. Presented in Portuguese dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, B/W, 98 min. The Omega Man The second stab at adapting Richard Matheson's classic post-apocalyptic vampire tale "I Am Legend", The Omega Man eschews Matheson's gothic horror for '70s grooviness. Charlton Heston stars in a role that's an analog of his characters from Soylent Green and Planet Of The Apes, but it's always a thrill to watch him to chew acres of barren scenery, and have moments of genuine psychotic glee, as in the scene where he laughs maniacally during a deserted screening of Woodstock (WTF?). The villains here are more an albino cult than vampires (led by Anthony Zerbe, who steals the show,) but in all it's a pretty rollicking good time and a must see for fans of pre-Star Wars '70s sci-fi. If nothing else, you'll get a kick out of watching Heston living in a bizarrely decked-out fortified penthouse pad, and barreling through the empty streets of Los Angeles in a giant red convertible while grooving to mellow tunes on 8-track. Dir. Boris Segal, 1971, 35mm, 98 min. PORTRAIT OF THE POET AS JAMES BROUGHTON, PART ONE Directed by John Luther Schofill Initially intended as a simple portrait of poet-filmmaker James Broughton, John Luther Schofill's magnum opus became a six-year undertaking, employing a dense array of layered imagery and sound in an inspired study of Broughton's vision, words and spirit. 16mm, 1974-80, 40 min. THE PETRIFIED FOREST (1936) Directed by Archie L. Mayo A drifter (Leslie Howard) attracts the affection of a waitress (Bette Davis) in a roadside diner, but their budding romance is tested when killer Duke Mantee (Humphrey Bogart) and his gang hide out in the restaurant. Bogart's gangster turn won him acclaim and a long-term contract with Warner Bros. and hinted at the traits that he would develop over the years: "rugged individualism" and cool cynicism. Warner Bros.. Based on the play by Robert Sherwood. Screenplay: Charles Kenyon, Delmer Daves. Cinematographer: Sol Polito. Editor: Owen Marks. Cast: Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Genevieve Tobin, Humphrey Bogart. 35mm, 83 min. RACKET BUSTERS (1938) Directed by Lloyd Bacon A minor classic of the action-packed, torn-from-the-headlines social problem film that Warner Bros. turned out on a regular basis, Racket Busters exemplifies the supporting gangster role that Humphrey Bogart endured and spun into memorable performances through out the 1930s. As racketeer Pete Marin, Bogart builds a criminal empire by any means necessary until George Brent's earnest trucker has enough of getting pushed around. Warner Bros.. Screenplay: Robert Rossen, Leonardo Bercovici. Cinematographer: Arthur Edeson. Editor: James Gibbon. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, George Brent, Gloria Dickson, Allen Jenkins. 35mm, 71 min. THE RED AND THE WHITE, 1967, 90 min. Dir. Miklos Jancso. Elaborate tracking shots, haunting black-and-white and panoramic Scope images frame this story of defeated Hungarian army soldiers caught behind enemy lines during the Russian civil war of 1919. The difference between killer and victim blurs with mind-boggling fluidity as the soldiers are left to defend themselves by all means possible. RED RIDING: 1974, 2009, IFC Films, 105 min. Dir. Julian Jarrold. Inspired by the novels of David Peace, part one of the trilogy centers on Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield), a rookie journalist who returns to his Yorkshire home town, where ten-year-old Clare Kemplay (a figurative Red Riding Hood, seen in a red hoodie) has just been abducted. Seeing a possible link to two other local missing children, Eddie throws himself into a spiriling investigation of child abductions and murders that leads him to suspect that there’s a terrifying connection between the perpetrators and the upper echelons of Yorkshire power. With David Morrissey and Rebecca Hall. RED RIDING: 1980, 2009, IFC Films, 96 min. Director James Marsh (MAN ON WIRE) continues the narrative for part two of the trilogy. With the police and public still baffled that the "Ripper" remains at large and may have inspired a copycat killer, veteran police officer Peter Hunter (Paddy Considine) is called in from Manchester to take over the investigation. While struggling with scandal and tragedy in his personal life, his new theories about the case only incite growing opposition to his involvement. RED RIDING: 1983, 2009, IFC Films, 104 min. Dir. Anand Tucker. When yet another young girl is kidnapped, Detective Maurice Jobson (David Morrissey) notices a number of powerful similarities to the abduction cases he had investigated back in the ’70s for which a man was convicted and sentenced. Meanwhile, a reluctant local solicitor, John Piggott (Mark Addy), decides to take up the condemned man’s cause. REMEMBER MY NAME (from IMDB) Just released from prison, a young woman arrives in town to "start a new life", but soon begins stalking a married construction worker for no apparent reason, turning his life inside out and eventually terrorizing him and his wife. Dir. Alan Rudolph, 1978, 94 mins. THE RESURRECTED, 1992, Scotti Brothers Picture Distribution, 108 min. Dir. Dan O’Bannon. Private detective John March (John Terry) investigates the mysterious activities of Charles Dexter Ward (Chris Sarandon), an occultist obsessed with finding the secret to resurrecting the dead. It soon becomes apparent that Ward is using his neighbors as guinea pigs. THE REST IS SILENCE (2007, Romania) Directed by Nae Caranfil Inspired by the making of Romania' first feature-length film in 1911, the film follows failed actor Grigore, who sets out to make an epic about the Romanian struggle to win independence from the Ottoman Empire. Director Nae Caranfil, a key figure in the Romanian film renaissance, crafts an intelligent period piece that pays homage to Romania's first major filmmaker while celebrating cinematic history. Producer: Cristian Comeaga. Screenplay: Nae Caranfil. Cinematographer: Marius Panduru. Editor: Dan Nanoveanu. Cast: Marius Florea Vizante, Ovidiu Niculescu, Mirela Zeta, Ioana Bulca. Presented in Romanian, French, and German dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 140 min. The River 1951/color/99 min. | Scr: Rumer Godden, Jean Renoir; dir: Jean Renoir; w/ Nora Swinburne, Patricia Walters, Thomas E. Breen | Restored by The Academy Film Archive in cooperation with The British Film Institute and Janus Films. Restoration funding provided by The Film Foundation and The Hollywood Foreign Press Association. This sublime adaptation of a novel by Rumer Godden, who was raised in India and collaborated during the shoot, was a challenge to bring to the screen: the first Technicolor film shot in India, it involved heavy equipment and long delays in printing the dailies; the cast was almost entirely nonprofessional; local festivities and superstitions interfered with the normal pace of production; and the locations needed frequent adjustments to reflect a year of seasons. The story is narrated by Harriet, now an adult, who recalls her life in India at age fifteen, the year that Captain John came to visit; and through her eyes we follow the day-to-day routine of a British colonial family, share her adventures with her closest companions, an Indian girl and her little brother, contemplate the natural beauty and mysterious culture of a foreign land, and experience the pain and joy of first love. In time with the flow of the ever-present river, the film has a measured pace that chronicles life with its sudden bursts of tragedy and pleasure. "Like Rossellini's Voyage to Italy (1953), The River has survived falling out of fashion to re-emerge as a touchstone for a certain kind of modernity in cinema. It's a self-conscious, reflective film that draws on the 'reality' of India but does so to immerse us in the spiritual drama of its central character. None of the principal characters in The River find immediate happiness; instead, they learn to overcome frustration and despair… Unlike conflict-centered Hollywood narratives, which invariably end in resolution, Renoir's films tend to show that not all problems are soluble."—Ian Christie. The Road Warrior The phrase "high octane" has become a cliche in reference to action films, but George Miller's classic deserves it, as it remains for most film fans the pulse-pounding post-apocalypse film, often imitated but never outdone. The story here is rooted more in the Western tradition than the film's trappings would suggest: in a desolate fuel-depleted future, loner Max (Mel Gibson, in the role that made him a star) aids a small band of survivors trying to protect their precious oil supply from an invading barbaric horde. But what matters here is the punk-rock-meets-sports-gear aesthetic and the glorious, glorious vehicular mayhem. Miller's swooping frenetic camera work, coupled with stupefying, dangerous and real stunts make this easily one of the greatest car chase movies, as well as one of the most beloved actioners. If you've somehow escaped seeing it on the big screen before, you owe it to yourself to rectify that. One for the ages. Dir. George Miller, 1981, 35mm, 91 min. ROBERT FROST: A LOVER'S QUARREL WITH THE WORLD (1963) Directed by Shirley Clarke Shirley Clarke's Academy Award–winning portrait of Robert Frost captures the warmth and humor of the incomparable American poet through a verité cinematic language that rises to meet the colloquial power of his work. Whether sharing his philosophy to an audience at Sarah Lawrence College or reflecting on his career at home in Ripton, Vermont, Frost exudes a captivating love of life and art. 35mm, B/W, 52 min. Ross Lipman: Urban Ruins, Found Moments “Lipman’s films are wonderful…. strong and delicate at the same time… unique. The rhythm and colors are so subtle, deep and soft.” Nico le Brenez, Cinémathèque Française Known as one of the world’s leading restorationists of experimental and independent cinema, Ross Lipman is also an accomplished filmmaker, writer and performer whose oeuvre has taken on urban decay as a marker of modern consciousness. He visits REDCAT with a program of his own lyrical and speculative works, including the films 10-17-88 (1989, 11 min.) and Rhythm 06 (1994/2008, 9 min.), selections from the video cycle The Perfect Heart of Flux, and the performance essay The Cropping of the Spectacle. “Everything that’s built crumbles in time: buildings, cultures, fortunes, and lives,” says Lipman. “The detritus of civilization tells us no less about our current epoch than an archeological dig speaks to history. The urban ruin is particularly compelling because it speaks of the recent past, and reminds us that our own lives and creations will also soon pass into dust. These film, video, and performance works explore decay in a myriad of forms—architectural, cultural, and personal.” In person: Ross Lipman The Round-Up A gripping parable of power and rebellion drawn from the pages of Hungary’s tumultuous history, The Round-Up is perhaps the most timeless and universal of director Miklos Jancso's films of the '60s and '70s. Set in a prison camp on the vast, desolate Hungarian steppe, the film chronicles the oppressive techniques of the Austrian military as they torture, humiliate and turn their captives, a downtrodden mob of peasants and revolutionaries, against one another. The film's moral ambiguity and dispassionate depiction of suffering invokes not only the Communist regime of the film's era, but the Abu Ghraib prison scandal as well. Though the film hints at the hardcore formalism of Jancso's later works, The Round-Up strikes a delicate balance between experimentation and narrative intrigue; Jancso's dazzling widescreen cinematography and precise arrangement of bodies in space never overwhelm the urgent, focused storytelling that propels this classic of political cinema. Dir. Miklós Jancsó, 1965, 35mm, 95 min. ROYCE HALL ORGAN & SILENT FILM - BERNARD HERMANN AND ALFRED HITCHCOCK This UCLA Live-only event honors two cinematic geniuses: director Alfred Hitchcock and film composer Bernard Herrmann. Their fruitful collaboration from 1955 to 1964 included “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” “Vertigo” and “Psycho.” (Hermann even served as sound consultant on the music-less film “The Birds,” creating the creature’s noises.) Acclaimed organist Stephan Tharp – a composer and champion of new organ music – opens the program with adaptations of those films’ scores. Then UCLA’s own organist Christoph Bull – creator of the eclectic Organica concert series – provides a live improvised score to the early Hitchcock silent film, “The Lodger.” The Rules of the Game 1939/b&w/110 min. | Scr: Jean Renoir, Carl Koch; dir: Jean Renoir; w/ Nora Gregor, Marcel Dalio, Jean Renoir, Paulette Dubost, Gaston Modot Buoyed by the success of Grand Illusion and La bête humaine, Renoir formed his own production company to make a film constructed around a group, in his words, "to depict a class… to show a rich, complex society where, to use an historic phrase, we are dancing on a volcano." In conceiving a film about the dangers facing contemporary European society, he cloaked his criticism in "the form of eighteenth-century French comedy," allowing him to populate his scenario with masters and servants, scheming aristocrats, saucy maids, and cuckolded husbands, all of whom are caught up in an intricate plot driven by gossip, jealousy, and mistaken identity. Into this game, set in a chateau owned by the Marquis de la Chesnaye where his sophisticated guests have assembled for a weekend of hunting and parties, comes an outsider who does not respect the rules and in so doing brings the comedy to a tragic conclusion. Using deep-focus photography that captures both background and foreground action, and long takes that allow the camera to follow the narrative from room to room, Renoir moves invisibly among the characters, whose romantic intrigues, social rivalries, and human foibles are observed by an unblinking eye that refuses to judge. In viewing this multilayered masterpiece today, one is struck by the film's audacious blend of farce and realism, the lightness in Renoir's touch, the deftness and speed of the storytelling, the tour de force editing of the hunting sequence, the brilliance of the acting, the wit of the dialogue, the individuality of the characters and the timelessness of their concerns. As a work of art it is both modern and classic; it is a film about history and it became part of history. To add to the complexity, Renoir cast himself as the character Octave who, like his off-screen counterpart, "directs" the onscreen action. Though far from omnipotent or faultless, he connects with all the major characters in the film—he's the only character comfortable hanging out with the servants—and very often "guides" them with his enthusiasm or advice. Octave is the movie's glue. The Running Man TV Of Tomorrow (feat. The Running Man) Don't touch that dial! Stay tuned, we'll be right back -- with the decline and fall of western civilization! Of all the goofball prognastications that litter the landscapes of stupid future flicks, none are more consistently amusing and instantly dated than the inevitable peek at what television is going to look like in the future. Aside from the quaint idea that people will still be watching TV rather than cruising the grand central computerverse, one can enjoy how every wacky graphic and ironic khyron is irreversibly stamped with the year these film were made. So come take a couch trip back to the future, as we show you 1976's vision of 1985 (X-rated commercials as the new "normal"), 1997's vision of 2010 (nakedly crypto-fascist news broadcasts), and finally, we'll all watch 1987's 2019, brought to you in the form of one of our favorite "Most Dangerous Game"-show flicks, The Running Man, starring the Governator and hosted by "Family Feud"'s Richard Dawson. The Running Man Dir. Paul Michael Glaser, 1987, 35mm, 101 min. SABATA (from IMDB) Several pillars of society have robbed an Army safe containing $100,000 so they can buy the land upon which the coming railroad will be built. But they haven't reckoned on the presence of the master gunslinger, Sabata (Lee Van Cleef). Dir Gianfranco Parolini, 1969, 111 mins. SAINT JACK, 1979, Concorde-New Horizon, 112 min. One of director Peter Bogdanovich’s best and most underrated films is adapted from the Paul Theroux novel and features Ben Gazzara as an easygoing, expatriate American pimp in Vietnam-era Singapore. Exceptionally authentic location atmosphere highlights this fascinating character study. With Denholm Elliott, Joss Ackland, George Lazenby. Sansho The Bailiff Director Kenji Mizoguchi’s masterful use of depth-of-field and camera movement reveals itself subtly and powerfully in this classic Japanese melodrama. The immersive power of its long takes conjures the poetic, emotional tone of a folk tale, yet Sansho the Bailiff remains startling in its realistic depiction of poverty, suffering and the cruelty of power. The family of an exiled provincial lord, travelling through a treacherous countryside, are tricked by bandits and sold into slavery; the two children, separated from their mother, find themselves in the servitude of the heartless Sansho the Bailiff. Through years of brutal treatment and toil, the children grow up, waiting for their chance to escape and reunite with their long-lost mother, now a courtesan on a distant island. Mizoguchi’s technique rarely draws attention to itself; by limiting his use of the long-take to the scenes of the greatest dramatic impact, the director frames a profound humanist message with unparalleled immediacy and clarity. Dir. Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954, 35mm, 124 min. Scope-A-Toons This month our resident animation historian Jerry Beck will screen a collection of classic cartoons from the 1950s which were made in various anamorphic widescreen formats. The majority of these cartoons have not been projected in their original screen ratios since their first release –- and will include Disney’s Oscar-winning Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom and Terrytoons’ classic Juggler of Our Lady (narrated by Boris Karloff, designed by R.O. Blechman.) Rarely seen on the big screen, Jerry will expand your animated horizons in CinemaScope, MetroScope, TotalVision and SuperPanaoramaUltraScope! A once in a lifetime presentation -- Mr. Magoo, Tom & Jerry, Donald Duck, will never look the same! SILENCE AND CRY, 1968, 73 min. Dir. Miklos Jancso. It is Hungary, 1919, and a former Red soldier on the run from White Terror agents finds refuge in a family's farm home. However, the family is under political suspicion and ruthlessly refuses to be caught or to let anyone expose them. The soldier eventually realizes he is slowly being poisoned. SIROCCO (1951) Directed by Curtis Bernhardt Financed by Humphrey Bogart's own production company, Santana, with a script by A.I. Bezzerides (Kiss Me Deadly), Sirocco dismantles the wartime romanticism that permeates so much of Casablanca (1942). As Harry Smith, an ex-pat black-marketeer in Syria during the Arab revolt against the French, Bogart seems to reprise Rick Blaine until it's revealed that Smith has much more in common with Harry Lime. Based on a novel by Joseph Kessel. Producer: Robert Lord. Screenplay: A. I. Bezzerides, Hans Jacoby. Cinematographer: Burnett Guffey. Editor: Viola Lawrence. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Marta Toren, Lee J. Cobb, Everett Sloane. 35mm, B/W, 98 min. Small Change One of Francois Truffaut's most endearing labors of love, Small Change is one of those rare films that strikes dead the cynicism in any hardened heart. Filmed entirely in Thiers, a small town in the French countryside, the film presents an interconnected series of vignettes featuring one of the most vibrant child casts ever gathered, as the kids (ages 0 to 14) go to school, horse around, go to the movies, fall out of windows, care for (and rebel against) their parents and explore each other; as Truffaut himself said, "Our idea really is 'From the first bottle to the first kiss.'" The film's schoolbound world is the antithesis of the dour oppressiveness Truffaut paints in The 400 Blows, and the joyousness of the proceedings clearly wore off on the director, for Small Change is as innocent, buzzing and wide-eyed as childhood itself. We're thrilled to present Small Change in a gorgeous, newly-struck 35mm print! The Southerner 1945/b&w/92 min. | Scr/dir: Jean Renoir; w/ Zachary Scott, Betty Field, J. Carrol Naish, Beulah Bondi, Norman Lloyd Renoir, casting against type, chose Texas-born Zachary Scott to play Sam Tucker, a desperately poor migrant cotton-picker who strikes out on his own, moving his wife, two kids and crotchety old mother onto an abandoned farm; a harsh winter follows but the family's efforts point to a good harvest until a flood washes the crop away. Renoir called The Southerner "the most interesting film I've made here. Another story too simple to tell. A poor family is born, lives, dies…" The film was nominated for three Oscars including Best Director and won the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival. "A harsh yet human antidote to traditional Hollywood attitudes about 'real people', this is Renoir's most successful American film, loose, free-flowing, honest… so accurate and impressionistic in its view of nature, that you can smell the river and the dead rain after the flood that almost ends their struggle."—Time Out. STROSZEK, 1977, Werner Herzog Film, 115 min. Dir. Werner Herzog. Bruno S., the troubled street singer from Herzog’s EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF AND GOD AGAINST ALL, returns and travels from Berlin to the wide open spaces of Wisconsin in an effort to start a new life. Unfortunately, he finds only incomprehensible absurdity. THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS, 1974, Universal, 109 min. Dir. Steven Spielberg. An ambitious blend of madcap slapstick and downbeat social commentary starring Goldie Hawn and William Atherton as a latter-day Bonnie & Clyde. Swamp Water 1941/b&w/88 min. | Scr: Dudley Nichols; dir: Jean Renoir; w/ Walter Brennan, Walter Huston, Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews For his Hollywood debut Renoir settled on a script by Dudley Nichols, the author of several films by John Ford, Renoir's favorite American director, that tells the story of a young man living in a backward town who stumbles upon a fugitive from justice and his wild-child daughter hiding in a nearby swamp. Although Renoir may have been attracted to the folkloric elements of the script and its focus on outsiders, he seized on the visual possibilities of the setting and convinced Fox to let him shoot on location. Anticipating by a decade Renoir's subtle use of the Ganges in The River, the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia, with its black water and its poisonous snakes, serves as both location and metaphor, a place of danger and refuge around which swirl the tragic events of the story. "A specimen of the Deep South poor white genre, a near-Western and a film noir in the general sense, (the film) draws much of its meaning from rural myth with its abrasive interactions between toil, trade, individuals, the family, the community, and exile."—Raymond Durgnat. TAKING OFF, 1971, Universal, 93 min. Director Milos Forman’s first American film is a warm and hilariously subversive comedy about parents trying to cope with their runaway children. The focus is on bewildered Buck Henry and Lynn Carlin as they try to deal with daughter Linnea Heacock’s flight to Greenwich Village hippie life - and end up expanding their consciousness as much as she does! Discussion in between films with Buck Henry. TALES FROM THE GOLDEN AGE (2009, Romania/France) Directed by Ioana Uricaru, Hanno Hoefer, Razvan Marculescu, Constantin Popescu, and Cristian Mungiu 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days director Cristian Mungiu writes and co-directs this omnibus film, in which five filmmakers recreate urban myths popular from the last decade of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's rule. Each told with bitter irony, the episodes together form a picaresque portrait of life during the grim 1980s and serve as a testament to the range of talents of Romanian cinema. Producer: Oleg Mutu, Cristian Mungiu. Cast: Alexandru Potocean, Avram Birau, Vlad Ivanov, Calin Chirila, Ion Sapdaru. Presented in Romanian dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 141 min. 10 TO MIDNIGHT (from IMDB) Leo Kessler (Charles Bronson) attempts to stop a serial killer that's terrorizing a college dormitory. In his attempts, he finds the law isn't always on his side. Dir J. Lee Thompson, 1983, 101 mins. The Testament of Doctor Cordelier 1961/b&w/95 min. | Scr/dir: Jean Renoir; w/ Jean-Louis Barrault, Teddy Billis, Michel Vitold Renoir's free adaptation of the Jekyll and Hyde story was made for French television on a small budget and is distinguished by its icy black-and-white images and its lucid abstract style. "Dr. Cordelier, an eminent psychiatrist, seeks to prove the existence of the soul by causing it to materialize. Experimenting on himself he creates the alter ego of Opale who is bestial, cruel and destructive… The interest and novelty of this version lie in Renoir's masterful use of Jean-Louis Barrault (Children of Paradise) who was chosen for the contrasting qualities of his dry, classical acting and his light, nimble, ethereal miming. Thus the change in the character is the result of a complete physical transformation. Barrault's abilities give Renoir a wide latitude in expressing the intellectual thrust that informs his film."—Jean Douchet. THEY ALL LAUGHED, 1981, HBO Films, 115 min. Peter Bogdanovich uses the private-eye genre as a vehicle to deliver deeply romantic insights about love, marriage and regret. John Ritter and Ben Gazzara work for the Odyssey Detective Agency, a firm where the investigators are more concerned with their own complicated love lives than with solving any cases. Audrey Hepburn and Dorothy Stratten co-star in this hilarious ensemble dramedy, a film that Quentin Tarantino declared one of the 10 greatest ever made. TOGETHER & ALONE, 1998, 50th Street Films, 84 min. Dir. Duane Whitaker. Joe Unger gives the performance of a lifetime in this portrait of Los Angeles at night. Echoes of Robert Altman, but it's far from the world of THE PLAYER. These are struggling artists are a lot further down the Hollywood food chain. Actor-writer Duane Whitaker (PULP FICTION) makes his directorial debut with this low-budget ensemble gem. Also starring Joe Estevez, John Bishop, Casey Siemaszko, Tim Thomerson and Mariah O'Brien. Following: a behind the scenes tribute to the late great Lawrence Tierney on the set of Eddie Presley, "Tierney’s Tyranny”, 1992, 11 min. Discussion in between films with Jeff Burr, Duane Whitaker, Joe Unger, Daniel Roebuck, Joe Estevez, Chuck Williams, John Bishop, Willard Pugh, and Clu Gulager. Toni 1935/b&w/81 min. | Scr: Jean Renoir, Carl Einstein; dir: Jean Renoir; w/ Charles Blavette, Jenny Helia. Celia Montalván, Édouard Delmont Inspired by a report of a crime passionel within a community of migrant laborers, Renoir decided to make a film entirely on location in Martigues, with its Provençal landscape of vineyards and rocky hills, and to cast nonprofessionals, mostly Italian migrants, in many of the roles. Toni, a simple man with a romantic streak, works in the local quarry and lives with the older Marie; but his easygoing manner disappears when he falls in love with Josepha, a fiery woman tied by marriage to Albert, the foreman of the quarry and a brute. François Truffaut called Toni "a tragedy in which the sun takes the place of Fate," an apt description for a film that portrays the natural world of the migrants with a powerful realism. "I was at pains to avoid the dramatic. My aim was to give the impression that I was carrying a camera and a microphone in my pocket and recording whatever came my way. My dream was uncompromising realism... but I was wrong! While I imagined I was filming a squalid episode based on real life, I was recounting, almost despite myself, a heart-rending and poetic love story."—Jean Renoir. Trouble the Water Directed and produced by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal “Trouble the Water” is a redemptive tale of two self-described street hustlers who survive Hurricane Katrina and then seize a chance for a new beginning. 35mm. 96 mins. The Vengeance of Pancho Villa Los rollos perdidos screens with a newly restored 35mm print of Rocha’s most remarkable discovery, Edmundo and Felix Padilla’s La venganza de Pancho Villa (Mexico/USA, 1930–34, 50 min., b/w), which is receiving its Los Angeles premiere. Mixing found footage of the real Villa and his army with re-enactments, this anarchic collage by the father-and-son duo freely crosses the borders separating north from south and fiction from documentary. WE LIVE IN PUBLIC, 2009, 90 min., Interloper Films. Ten years in the making and culled from 5000 hours of footage, the film reveals the effect the web has on our society, as seen through the eyes of the "Warhol of the Web" aka "the greatest Internet pioneer you've never heard of", artist, futurist and visionary Josh Harris. Through his experiments, including a six-month stint living with his girlfriend under 24-hour electronic surveillance which led to his mental collapse, Harris demonstrated the price we pay for living in public. Award-winning director Ondi Timoner (DIG! - which also won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize in 2004 - making Timoner the only director to win that prestigious award twice) documented his tumultuous life for more than a decade to create a riveting, cautionary tale of what to expect as the virtual world inevitably takes control of our lives. The Witness – From the Balcony of Room 306 Directed by Adam Pertofsky Produced by Vicki Tripp, R. Stephan Mohammed, Margaret Hyde On April 4, 1968, the Reverend Samuel “Billy” Kyles stood beside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel and bore witness to his brutal assassination. “The Witness – From the Balcony of Room 306” is a poignant retelling of a crucial turning point in the civil rights movement and a vibrant reminder of Dr. King’s impact on the movement and our nation. 35mm. 32 mins. A Woman Of Affairs A Woman of Affairs marks the third pairing of on- and off-screen lovers Greta Garbo and John Gilbert, and is based on the 1924 bestseller "The Green Hat" -- a novel so scandalous that when it arrived on the desks of the MGM story department, it was labeled "sordid and filthy and entirely impossible for screen consideration!" Garbo plays an elegant woman who's forbidden by her family to marry Gilbert, a suave aristocrat, and so instead marries a loser who turns out to be a crook. After his death, she reunites with a now-married Gilbert, setting off an explosive and tragic spiral of events. A Woman Of Affairs is the first of almost twenty films in which Garbo's wardrobe was designed by Adrian (the costumier behind classics like The Wizard Of Oz and Camille), who very quickly rose through the ranks at MGM, and whose iconic work for Garbo is so integral to her persona that without it, it's possible she might've been just another Swedish starlet. Dir. Clarence Brown, 1928, 35mm, 91 min. The Woman on the Beach 1947/b&w/71 min. | Scr: Jean Renoir, Frank Davis, J.R. Michael Hogan; dir: Jean Renoir; w/ Joan Bennett, Robert Ryan, Charles Bickford Renoir was invited by his friend Joan Bennett to direct a film for RKO based on a novel about a blind painter, his wife, and the mysterious man she meets on the beach and invites into their life. Renoir stated that he wanted to "make a love story in which there was no love, in which the attractions were purely physical," and, despite the noir casting of Bennett as the femme fatale and Ryan as the archetypal loner scarred by a traumatic past, the final result was not a crime film but a cryptic love story steeped in an atmosphere of impending violence, punctuated by surreal dreams, and set in an isolated house vulnerable to fog and fire. A disastrous test screening led to severe cuts, but the existing version retains considerable power, inspiring the critic Andre Bazin to write: "It is a strange film, stubborn, sincere, elusive, obscure… it remains one of the most sincere and one of the most hampered of Renoir's works." Jacques Rivette writes on the film, "The Woman on the Beach looks like a film made by Fritz Lang…but the tragedy of the film does not stem from the inexorable force of destiny, as in Lang, but from fixation and immobility: each of the three characters is frozen in a false image of himself and his desire… However mutilated it is in comparison to the original, it can be as fairly judged as von Stroheim's Greed. If there was ever a director who conceives each part as a microcosm of the whole, it is Renoir." Women Love Diamonds From its title, Women Love Diamonds sounds like a genteel, sweet romance, but is really a melodrama that's surprisingly gritty for its time, and contains enough bursts of emotion to rival works by Sirk or Borzage. Pauline Starke plays a young woman of dubious parentage supported by Lionel Barrymore, whom she claims is her uncle. Finding love in the arms of both rich suitor Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and his valet, and then a brutal rejection when her family truth is revealed, Starke must climb her way back from the murky emotional depths. When original casting choice Greta Garbo went on salary strike from MGM, the film's costume designer must have breathed a sigh of relief. Clemente André-Ani, a collaborator of Erté and costumier for contract players like Norma Shearer and Marion Davies, never saw eye-to-eye with Garbo's outspoken ideas about overdone American fashion, and subsequently loaded Women Love Diamonds with enough lavish flowing gowns, hats and jewelry to clothe an army of radiant damsels. Dir. Edmund Goulding, 1927, 35mm, 70 min. WOYZECK, 1978, Werner Herzog Film, 82 min. Dir. Werner Herzog. Klaus Kinski gives a characteristically intense performance as the title character, a common man whose oppression drives him to insanity and murder. In German with English subtitles. Discussion in between films with Werner Herzog (schedule permitting). Z A landmark political thriller, Costa-Gavras' Academy Award-winning film follows the routine investigation of a seemingly accidental death of a Greek pacifist leader, which eventually uncovers a web of violence and terrorist tactics that implicates an entire government in its secret conspiracy to murder an honest man. "...one of the fastest, most exciting melodramas ever made...never loses emotional contact with the audience" (Pauline Kael, The New Yorker). Starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jacques Perrin, Yves Montand and Irene Papas. In French with English subtitles. Costa-Gavras---France/Algeria---1969---127 mins.