a highly-opinionated selection of things happening around town, and sometimes out of town. this month's page here.
fri. mar. 1 blazing saddles MIDNIGHT @ nuart allah-las @ first fridays @ natural history museum bouquet, plateaus @ the smell dr. strangelove @ silent movie theater 2001: a space odyssey (70mm) @ lacma back to the future 10:15 PM @ silent movie theater vampira art show opening 8-10 PM @ monster a go go beyond the hills FREE @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges mandingo, django unchained @ new beverly mold @ la turkish film festival @ egyptian sat. mar. 2 raising arizona @ silent movie theater the dirty dozen 10:15 PM @ silent movie theater willow @ aero celebrating laurel & hardy 4 PM @ ucla film archive w-h-i-t-e @ pehrspace small poetry: recent highlights of the chicago 8 film festival 8 PM @ epfc corners, cotillon, etc @ what cheer? music festival @ overpass mandingo 6 PM, django unchained @ new beverly sun. mar. 3 twin peaks episode 2.6 (time TBA), episode 2.7, episode 2.8, episode 2.9 FREE @ twin peaks retrospective @ usc norris cinema the good the bad and the ugly @ arclight cinerama dome two-lane blacktop @ aero primer 7:45 PM @ silent movie theater heart of darkness 10 PM @ silent movie theater why we fight: the battle of russia 7 PM @ ucla film archive p-047 FREE 7 PM @ reel grit @ afi queimada 5 PM, django unchained @ new beverly mon. mar. 4 bachsung @ pehrspace the postman always rings twice @ aero try and get me, repeat performance @ ucla film archive queimada, django unchained @ new beverly tue. mar. 5 bonjour mr. lewis part one 7:30 PM, the nutty professor (1963) @ silent movie theater queimada, django unchained @ new beverly wed. mar. 6 lost & found film club 10 PM @ silent movie theater cotillon @ los globos the we and the i FREE 8:30 PM @ usc ray stark thu. mar. 7 harry's hip hop film nite FREE @ 7 dudley cinema @ beyond baroque convoy, midnight run @ egyptian lenny, slaughterhouse-five @ aero lavender diamond @ echoplex corners, dirt dress, the mallard @ the towne the misfits FREE @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges fri. mar. 8 the thing (1982) MIDNIGHT @ nuart brannigans law @ the smell bell gardens @ taix max et les ferrailleurs, le cercle rouge @ new beverly the life and death of colonel blimp 8 PM @ silent movie theater cbs playhouse: the final war of olly winter FREE @ ucla film archive black sea (9:20) @ pehrspace the black power mixtape 1967-1975 FREE @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges richard tuohy: dirty-handed cinema 8 PM @ epfc sat. mar. 9 kevin jerome everson: ten five in the grass & other shorts 8:30 PM @ redcat blazing saddles @ electric dusk drive-in brannigans law @ tribal cafe max et les ferrailleurs 2:30 7:30 PM, le cercle rouge 4:45 9:45 PM @ new beverly easy rider, five easy pieces, the last details @ egyptian the sting @ aero ezra buchla, the shivas @ the smell miami connection 11 PM @ silent movie theater eadweard muybridge zoopraxographer @ ucla film archive sun. mar. 10 twin peaks episode 2.10 (time TBA), episode 2.11, episode 2.12, episode 2.13, episode 2.14 FREE @ twin peaks retrospective @ usc norris cinema raging bull 5 PM @ arclight cinerama dome looper 7 PM, brick @ new beverly the passenger, walkabout @ aero bonjour mr. lewis part two 4 PM, artists and models @ silent movie theater heller keller, w-h-i-t-e @ the smell international house 4 PM, temple tower @ ucla film archive the chase 7 PM, high tide @ ucla film archive reconversão @ filmforum @ spielberg @ egyptian re-animator FREE 7 PM @ reel grit @ afi mon. mar. 11 tales of urban fascination FREE 6 PM @ documental @ unurban looper, brick @ new beverly the searchers @ aero tue. mar. 12 stop making sense, true stories @ new beverly the life and death of colonel blimp 7:45 PM @ silent movie theater no news from harare FREE 7 PM @ usc ray stark wed. mar. 13 somebody up there likes me FREE 7 PM @ usc ray stark aliens 8 PM @ arclight cinerama dome stop making sense, true stories @ new beverly thu. mar. 14 cotillon @ the echo we're (still) living 7 PM @ moca grand ave. stop making sense, true stories @ new beverly wild at heart, the sugarland express @ egyptian robert frost: a lover's quarrel with the world, the face of genius @ ucla film archive searching for sugarman @ silent movie theater eega 10 PM @ silent movie theater fri. mar. 15 mulholland drive MIDNIGHT @ nuart spanking the monkey @ new beverly the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie, that obscure object of desire @ egyptian smokey and the bandit, the cannonball run @ aero somebody up there likes me 8 PM @ silent movie theater krull MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater with the greeks in the firing line @ ucla film archive better mus' come 7:00 9:00 PM @ downtown independent sat. mar. 16 spanking the monkey 3:10 7:30 PM @ new beverly lost horizon 2 PM @ egyptian vanishing point, duel @ egyptian al christie silent comedies @ spielberg @ egyptian tashlin toons 4 PM, the disorderly orderly @ silent movie theater somebody up there likes me 7:45 PM @ silent movie theater that cold day in the park @ ucla film archive better mus' come 3:00 5:00 PM @ downtown independent sun. mar. 17 crass tribute night @ part time punks @ the echo the secret of nimh 5:40 9:10 PM @ new beverly bonjour mr. lewis part three 4 PM, the errand boy @ silent movie theater somebody up there likes me 7:45 PM @ silent movie theater ampas-ucla restored short subjects 7 PM @ ucla film archive better mus' come 9 PM @ downtown independent quality control @ filmforum @ spielberg @ egyptian mon. mar. 18 the thermals @ echoplex the secret of nimh 9:10 PM @ new beverly somebody up there likes me 10 PM @ silent movie theater the argonauts of california-1849 @ ucla film archive the place beyond the pines FREE (RSVP) @ lacma better mus' come 5:00 7:00 9:00 PM @ downtown independent tue. mar. 19 grass widow, chelsea light moving @ echoplex touch of evil 1 PM @ lacma the secret of nimh 9:10 PM @ new beverly somebody up there likes me 7:45 PM @ silent movie theater the monster squad MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater better mus' come 5:00 7:00 PM @ downtown independent wed. mar. 20 red desert, through a glass darkly @ new beverly loft @ aero the patsy @ silent movie theater somebody up there likes me 10 PM @ silent movie theater stay at home wilburys @ largo better mus' come 5:00 PM @ downtown independent tom brosseau @ the standard (hollywood) thu. mar. 21 red desert, through a glass darkly @ new beverly la strada @ egyptian bicycle thieves @ aero somebody up there likes me 5:30 PM @ silent movie theater ducktails, mark mcguire @ the echo la huelga 8 PM @ epfc better mus' come 5:00 7:00 PM @ downtown independent whirr @ the smell fri. mar. 22 fuzz, bleached, black lips, nick waterhouse, pangea, audacity, etc @ burgarama ii day 1 @ the observatory (santa ana) grand illusion, army of shadows @ new beverly the snake in my bed, the diary of an african nun, grey area @ l.a. rebellion redux @ ucla film archive phase iv, silent running @ lacma white zombie MIDNIGHT @ nuart chris marker shorts 8 PM @ silent movie theater sat. mar. 23 gap dream, white fence, king tuff, allah-las, cosmonauts, etc @ burgarama ii day 2 @ the observatory (santa ana) clockwork orange @ electric dusk drive-in grand illusion 2:30 7:30 PM, army of shadows 4:45 9:45 PM @ new beverly seven samurai @ aero abc stage 67: noon wine 4 PM, abc stage 67: the human voice @ ucla film archive new works salon 8 PM @ epfc tsar to lenin 3 PM @ beyond baroque sans soleil 7 PM @ silent movie theater terminator 2: judgment day 10 PM @ silent movie theater fuzz, chad and the meat bodies, bad antics @ the smell sun. mar. 24 twin peaks episode 2.15 (time TBA), episode 2.16, episode 2.17, episode 2.18, episode 2.19 FREE @ twin peaks retrospective @ usc norris cinema back to the future 5 PM @ arclight cinerama dome the house i live in 4 PM @ the broad the parallax view 2:55 7:30 PM, three days of the condor 5:00 9:35 PM @ new beverly pierrot le fou 9 PM @ egyptian sullivan's travels, o brother where art thou? @ aero bonjour mr. lewis part four 4 PM, the bellboy @ silent movie theater terminator 2: judgment day 7:45 PM @ an evening with mark goldblatt, ACE @ silent movie theater ornette: made in america 4 PM @ ucla film archive hearst metrotone and the newsreels @ ucla film archive parable @ filmforum @ spielberg @ egyptian approximately nels cline 7 PM, in search of blind joe death: the saga of john fahey @ sonos studio (RSVP) mon. mar. 25 the parallax view, three days of the condor @ new beverly upsilon acrux @ pehrspace tue. mar. 26 topaz 1 PM @ lacma wed. mar. 27 say anything 8 PM @ arclight cinerama dome the dark corner, dark passage @ new beverly sans soleil @ silent movie theater terminator 2: judgment day 9:35 PM @ silent movie theater thu. mar. 28 the dark corner, dark passage @ new beverly the wages of fear @ egyptian ninotchka @ aero the company you keep FREE (RSVP) @ lacma la air: kate brown FREE 8 PM @ epfc city lights FREE @ hammer museum john c. reilly & becky stark & tom brosseau @ largo sans soleil @ silent movie theater corners @ the towne fri. mar. 29 rantouls, thee cormans, ogres, etc @ the blowout @ viva cantina stranger than paradise, dead man @ egyptian thx 1138, the terminal man @ lacma reservoir dogs MIDNIGHT @ nuart jon brion @ largo sat. mar. 30 dukes of hamburg, rock n roll adventure kids, etc @ the blowout @ viva cantina cracking up 7 PM @ silent movie theater clipping, foot village @ the smell double door, supernatural @ ucla film archive dark star 5 PM @ lacma solaris (1972) @ lacma two films by newsreel 8 PM @ epfc cosmonauts @ overpass sun. mar. 31 chuckleberries, thee tee pees, etc @ the blowout @ viva cantina duck soup, it's a gift, horse feathers @ new beverly king kong (1933) @ egyptian bugs bunny cartoon classics 4 PM @ aero ben-hur @ aero bonjour mr. lewis part five 4 PM, cinderfella @ silent movie theater mon. apr. 1 duck soup, it's a gift, horse feathers @ new beverly design for living, trouble in paradise @ aero gun outfit, crazy band @ the smell tue. apr. 2 low @ troubadour duck soup, it's a gift, horse feathers @ new beverly the tarnished angels 1 PM @ lacma david lynch: meditation creativity peace FREE @ hammer museum gap dream, dj chris ziegler @ satellite wed. apr. 3 cul-de-sac, sexy beast @ new beverly two-lane blacktop MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater mary pickford birthday celebration 8 PM @ the silent treatment @ silent movie theater room 237 FREE (RSVP) 9 PM @ usc ray stark free radicals: a history of experimental film FREE 7 PM @ glendale central library thu. apr. 4 cul-de-sac, sexy beast @ new beverly who framed roger rabbit @ ampas samuel goldwyn dirt dress @ los globos high school confidential!, untamed youth @ aero no place on earth FREE @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges billy jack @ film independent @ lacma evil dead (1981) 5:30 PM, evil dead ii, army of darkness, evil dead (2013) @ regency village fri. apr. 5 spokenest @ the smell zardoz, fantastic planet, quest @ lacma excalibur MIDNIGHT @ nuart follow me down FREE @ hammer museum try and get me, hell drivers @ noir city @ egyptian the grapes of wrath, (2nd feature TBD) @ new beverly neighboring sounds 7:15 PM @ silent movie theater two-lane blacktop 10 PM @ silent movie theater sweet smell of success @ ucla film archive neighboring sounds FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc ray stark catwalk, chad & the meatbodies @ echoplex sat. apr. 6 quintet (1979) 5 PM @ lacma the man who fell to earth @ lacma sun. apr. 7 bonjour mr. lewis part six 4 PM, the ladies man @ silent movie theater mon. apr. 8 essay films FREE 6 PM @ documental @ unurban experiences in transformative time: new work by leighton pierce 8:30 PM @ redcat tue. apr. 9 bell gardens @ three clubs the lady eve 1 PM @ lacma sat. apr. 13 thee midniters, untamed youth, loons, thee cormans, deke dickerson's frat & garage band, etc @ norton records benefit show @ the echo sun. apr. 14 twin peaks episode 2.20 (time TBA), episode 2.21, episode 2.22 FREE @ twin peaks retrospective @ usc norris cinema mon. apr. 15 cauleen smith: black utopia lp (for sun ra) 8:30 PM @ redcat tue. apr. 16 king khan & bbq show @ troubadour tyondai braxton @ disney hall bell gardens @ three clubs wed. apr. 17 lee fields & the expressions @ troubadour fri. apr. 19 the big lebowski MIDNIGHT @ nuart sat. apr. 20 drunken angel FREE 7 PM @ getty center sun. apr. 21 fuxa @ part time punks @ the echo tokyo story FREE 3 PM @ getty center tue. apr. 23 spectrum @ the echo bell gardens @ three clubs buck privates 1 PM @ lacma tribute to miles: herbie hancock, wayne shorter, marcus miller, vinnie colaiuta, sean jones @ disney hall fri. apr. 26 this is spinal tap MIDNIGHT @ nuart jon brion @ largo sat. apr. 27 tokyo drifter FREE 4 PM @ getty center street of shame FREE 7 PM @ getty center sun. apr. 28 diary of a shinjuku thief FREE 3 PM @ getty center mon. apr. 29 cabinets of wonder: films and a performance by charlotte pryce 8:30 PM @ redcat tue. apr. 30 bell gardens @ three clubs torn curtain 1 PM @ lacma wed. may 1 gap dream @ satellite fri. may 3 tamaryn @ echoplex wed. may 8 bleached @ troubadour fri. may 10 man or astro-man? @ the echo the good the bad and the ugly (extended version) MIDNIGHT @ nuart sat. may 11 alien @ electric dusk drive-in sat. may 18 hepcat, aggrolites @ house of blues anaheim mon. may 20 the elegaic visions of phil solomon 8:30 PM @ redcat tue. may 21 black angels @ mayan fri. may 24 the loons w/ glenn ross campbell, etc @ ugly things 30th anniversary day one @ the casbah (SD) mikal cronin @ the echo sat. may 25 love revisited, the rosalyns, "the pretty things - midnight to six" (screening), etc @ ugly things 30th anniversary day two @ the casbah (SD) sun. may 26 nashville ramblers, "lester bangs: the el cajon years" (screening), etc @ ugly things 30th anniversary day three @ the casbah (SD) all about eve @ electric dusk drive-in WHAT IT IS: ABC Stage 67: "Noon Wine" (ABC, 11/23/66) Directed by Sam Peckinpah Five years after the final broadcast of CBS’ Playhouse 90 symbolically signaled the end of the “golden age of television,” ABC-TV announced plans for an ambitious new anthology, Stage 67, with an eclectic single-season slate of twenty-six programs across genres. ABC’s experiment was helmed by television impresario, Hubbell Robinson, best known as one of the original architects of Playhouse 90. In advance press for Stage 67, Robinson explicated his blueprint for the endeavor, stating, “[the series] represents a totally conscious and thought-out effort to organize a creative environment that will permit entertainment’s major talents to work for genuine excellence in television.” As evidenced by the critically-acclaimed productions, The Human Voice, starring Ingrid Bergman and Noon Wine, directed by Sam Peckinpah, Robinson’s noble goals for the ultimately short-lived Stage 67 were most certainly obtained, even though sustainable TV ratings were not. Underappreciated by the mass audience when originally broadcast, these obscure television productions are ripe for rediscovery today and stand as remarkably sophisticated beacons of quality in the outposts of the so-called “vast wasteland.” Pioneering filmmaker Sam Peckinpah began his legendary career in television, honing his distinctive talents by working in various capacities on a number of series, including writing and/or directing episodes of the western classics Gunsmoke, The Rifleman, Zane Grey Theater, and the short-lived cult-favorite that he also created, The Westerner. Peckinpah’s string of creative successes in TV led to feature film assignments, with his second motion picture, the revisionist western Ride the High Country (1962) enjoying significant critical notice, including receiving the Grand Prix Award at the Belgium International Film Festival (selected in competition over Fellini’s 8½). However, by the end of production of his third film Major Dundee (1965), Peckinpah’s perfectionism, on-set temperament, and vocal distaste for studio intervention became nearly career-ending impediments. Abruptly fired only a few days into the shooting of The Cincinnati Kid (1965), (to be helmed instead by Norman Jewison), Peckinpah was labeled as “too difficult” by Hollywood and found himself essentially blacklisted over the next few years. Despite warnings from numerous industry quarters, producer Daniel Melnick (of David Susskind’s esteemed Talent Associates production company) took a leap of faith and tapped the embattled Peckinpah for a return to television to adapt and direct Katherine Anne Porter’s celebrated novella Noon Wine for ABC’s Stage 67 anthology series. Set in turn-of-the-century Texas, Porter’s character-driven tale concerning a strange itinerant farmhand and the violent, tragic transformation of a struggling rural family proved perfectly suited to Peckinpah’s deft hand with morally-complex material. Starring acclaimed actors Jason Robards and Olivia de Havilland (in her television debut), the darkly poetic Noon Wine was an unqualified artistic and critical success on the small screen. Peckinpah’s exemplary work on the TV production garnered both Writer’s Guild and Director’s Guild Award nominations, helping to restore his reputation within the motion picture industry. His next feature film assignment would be the landmark western, The Wild Bunch (1969). Digital Betacam, color. 90 min. ABC Stage 67: "The Human Voice" (ABC, 5/4/67) Directed by Ted Kotcheff Ingrid Bergman gives a tour-de-force performance as a middle-aged woman going through an emotional and psychological breakdown at the end of a doomed love affair in Jean Cocteau’s pioneering one-character play, presented as the final installment of the ABC Stage 67 series. The drama unfolds as an extended monologue – a one-sided telephone conversation between the unnamed woman and her invisible, inaudible, soon-to-be former lover. The phone becomes her final link to the man and she employs it in a desperate attempt to hold onto him, despite a bad connection, the knowledge that he is leaving her to marry a younger woman, and her growing certainty that he is in fact, speaking to her from his fiancée’s home. Written in 1930 and first staged at the Comédie-Française in Paris, “The Human Voice” (“La Voix Humaine”) was subsequently filmed in Italy by Bergman’s lover/husband-to-be Roberto Rossellini as a segment of the 1948 anthology film, L’Amore starring Anna Magnani; and an operatic version with libretto by Cocteau was composed by Francis Poulenc in 1958. Bergman, who had recorded an LP record album of “The Human Voice” in 1960, makes a rare television appearance in this program, only her fourth dramatic television role to date (she had previously starred in a 1959 Ford Startime version of Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw,” for which she received an Emmy Award; 24 Hours in a Woman’s Life, a 1961 CBS special based on a story by Stefan Zweig, whose executive producer was “The Human Voice” producer Lars Schmidt; and Hedda Gabler in 1963). Broadcast directly opposite Arthur Miller’s The Crucible on CBS, the ABC State 67 presentation of “The Human Voice” reflects a frustrating pre-TiVo television scenario, and recalls then-ABC president Thomas Moore’s suggestion that the networks establish a clearinghouse in order that notable specials such as these not be scheduled to compete with each other. Digital Betacam, color, 55 min. Al Christie Silent Comedies Retro Format Films on 8mm Presents: Mack Sennett and Hal Roach were rivaled by an unjustly forgotten giant, the Christie Studios. Christie's style was often risqué, sometimes bizarre and even borderline surreal, but always witty and hilarious. Films include: * Dorothy Devore in “Know Thy Wife” (1918), a gender-bending marriage farce with a gay subtext. * Fay Tincher in “Rowdy Ann” (1919), an ahead-of-its-time gender role comedy about a young cowgirl sent back East to school by her parents in hopes that she will become a lady. * Bobby Vernon in “All Jazzed Up” (1920), a hilarious comedy of misunderstandings with amazing film of downtown Los Angeles/Bunker Hill. * Billy Dooley in “Sailor Beware” (1927), a bizarre comedy about an infected guinea pig terrorizing an entire city that must be seen to be believed! * Frances Lee as a surprisingly scantily-clad chorus girl in the scandalous “Reckless Rosie” (1929). And much more! With live piano accompaniment by Cliff Retallick. Christie's great-niece, Jeanette Ko, will be on hand to discuss the Christie legacy and her upcoming documentary! 180 min. AMPAS-UCLA RESTORED SHORT SUBJECTS The Academy Film Archive and UCLA Film & Television Archive have long enjoyed a productive and mutually beneficial relationship. In keeping with their history of cooperation and collaboration, AMPAS (The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) and UCLA have undertaken a joint project to restore and preserve the short films featured in this program, which were nominated for, or won, one or more Academy Awards. The breadth of genre and subject matter presented speaks to the range of motion pictures honored and recognized by the Academy, going back to its earliest years. In the one-reel short subject category of the 7th Academy Awards, Bosom Friends delivers a message of tolerance through the adorably persuasive antics of a menagerie of animals. Two years later, the musical short Moscow Moods, which brought the singing and dancing of Yasha Bunchuk and his "musical memories of old Russia" to American audiences, would be recognized, as well as Bored of Education, an Our Gang comedy directed by Gordon Douglas and presented in a new-to-the-series one-reel format. Animals and exotic talents were well-represented, with 1939 short subject winner Busy Little Bears capturing the mischief of bear cubs in the Sierra Nevadas, and 1945 nominee White Rhapsody exploring a run of New Hampshire's White Mountains with Swiss skier Hans Thorner. The short subject category recognized animated as well as live-action films, including Max Fleischer's Color Classics western Hunky and Spunky (1938), in which sure-footed Hunky rescues young Spunky from the clutches of a nefarious prospector, and George Pal's Puppetoon Jasper and the Beanstalk (1945), notable for its technique of replacement animation. The AMPAS-UCLA restoration program also includes prominent newsreels and motion pictures documenting American war efforts in World War II. 1942 nominee Winning Your Wings features Lieutenant Jimmy Stewart guiding viewers through the recruitment process of the Army Air Forces and inside a B-17 bomber, and Operation Vittles (1948) chronicles the relief operations of the Berlin Airlift. TRT: Approx. 98 min. THE ARGONAUTS OF CALIFORNIA-1849 (1916) Directed by Henry Kabierske Spurred by favorable weather, an assortment of local landscapes, and a desire to escape litigation by the Motion Picture Patents Company, many unlicensed independent filmmakers moved their operations west to California to make their movies. While a number of studios would eventually set up facilities in Hollywood, there were several geographic challengers to tinsel town’s supremacy in the state—one being the small town of Monrovia, located in the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles. With the support of the Monrovia Chamber of Commerce, businessman Rufus M. Francisco formed the Monrovia Feature Film Company in 1915, and the studio began shooting its first feature film, The Argonauts of California-1849, the following year. A twelve-reel gold rush drama written by Winfield Hogaboom (based on the 1911 book California: Its History and Romance by John Steven McGroarty), Argonauts was shot in the nearby foothills with a cast of relatively unknown actors and actresses, augmented with over a hundred extras brought in from Los Angeles. Helmed by Henry Kabierske (whose previous experience consisted of organizing live theatrical pageants (including the Mission Play, an elaborate pageant interpreting the history of the California Missions), The Argonauts of California portrays the discovery of gold at Sutter’s mill, and the subsequent adventures of a party of New Englanders who brave the arduous journey to stake their claim in California. The trip is predictably a dangerous one, and the settlers are challenged by death from both the rugged terrain and restive Native Americans. Once arriving at their destination, they find life in Hangtown a rough-and-tumble existence, fraught with the menace of claim jumpers, outlaws, and the occasional melodramatic love triangle. The Monrovia Feature Film Company would make one more feature in 1916 (The Daughter of the Don, also directed by Kabierske) before going out of business in the face of modest box office returns and various lawsuits. Kabierske directed one final film (The Vigilantes) before dying of a paralytic stroke in 1918. UCLA Film & Television Archive’s preservation of Argonauts began in the 1980s from multiple deteriorating and incomplete nitrate prints; the best material was selected from the surviving elements and coherently reorganized with—among other resources—an incomplete shooting script. For this festival screening, a new 35mm print has been created with improved timing and the addition of tints found in the original materials. 35mm, b/w and tinted, silent, approx. 120 min. Musical accompaniment will be provided by Robert Israel. ARTISTS AND MODELS 1956/color/109 min./VistaVision Scr: Frank Tashlin, Hal Kanter, Herbert Baker; dir: Frank Tashlin; w/ Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Shirley MacLaine, Dorothy Malone, Eva Gabor, Anita Ekberg Jerry Lewis' success at Paramount was so vital that the studio's head once said, "If he wants to set fire to the studio, I'll give him the match." Lewis began his climb to the top with Dean Martin in Artists and Models (1955), which was one of their biggest budgeted efforts. In the film, Lewis plays Eugene, whose obsession with comic strips gives him horrific nightmares. Worst of all, Eugene's continual state of anxiety is enormously irritating to his roommate, the would-be painter Rick (Martin). When Eugene discovers that one of his neighbors (Shirley MacLaine) is the creator of the Bat Lady comic that has invaded his dreams, his world goes into the most suggestive paroxysms of cartoon sexuality that director Frank Tashlin can mine. THE BELLBOY Walking too many dogs? Carrying too many suitcases? Too many phones a-ringin’? Well, join the club! The Bellboy, Jerry’s directorial debut, was miraculously conceived, written, shot and released in just six months as part of a promise to Paramount to deliver a summer film after the production of Cinderfella. With no actual story, no real plot, a main character that utters only one line of dialogue, and a baggage cart full of highly surreal jokes, The Bellboy remains Lewis’ most experimental endeavor, and one of his most endearing to boot. A true testament to Lewis’ love of the great silent clowns (Stan Laurel in particular), the Miami hotels he played in his youth, and every schlub who could never get a word in edgewise (not even a “Hey, ladeeee!”), The Bellboy is an eruption of cinematic talent that proved Lewis wasn’t just a comedian, but a total filmmaker. Jerry Lewis, 1960, 35mm, 101 min. (Archival 35mm print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive) BETTER MUS' COME In Kingston, Jamaica, in the late 1970s, the two main political parties enlist the support of gangs to enforce their policies and advance their political agenda. Young Ricky is a community leader and father, whose gang is aligned to one party. One day he meets Kamala, who belongs to a community controlled by the other party, and the two instantly connect. Will their love triumph, or will bigger forces win the day? Based on true events. Better Mus’ Come is the debut film of writer/director Storm Saulter and was produced by award-winning filmmaker Paul Bucknor (The Full Monty). The film has a sizzling original score and all Jamaican lead cast, with an electrifying cameo appearance by Roger Guenveur Smith (Malcolm X, Do the Right Thing, American Gangster) as Prime Minister, delivering the political speech that ended with the promise, “Better Mus Come!”, reflecting his party’s commitment to greater social justice and equality for all Jamaicans. BEYOND THE HILLS In an isolated Orthodox convent in Romania, Alina has just been reunited with Voichita after spending several years in Germany. The two young women have supported and loved each other since meeting as children in an orphanage. Alina wants Voichita to leave and return with her to Germany, but Voichita has found refuge in faith and a family in the nuns and their priest, and refuses. Alina cannot understand her friend’s choice. In her attempt to win back Voichita’s affection, she challenges the priest. She is taken to hospital and the people of the monastery start to suspect that she is possessed. When the doctors send her back, Alina is included in the monastic routine in the hope that she will find peace. But her condition worsens and they finally have to tie her to a wooden plank to prevent her from hurting herself. After ruling out all other options, the priest and nuns decide to read her prayers to deliver those possessed by the Evil One. They perform an exorcism, but the result is not what they had hoped, and Voichita begins to doubt the religious choice she has made. She decides to free Alina - but her decision comes too late. Inspired by the non-fiction novels of Tatiana Niculescu Bran. Running time: 150 minutes. In Romanian, with English subtitles. CABINETS OF WONDER: FILMS AND A PERFORMANCE BY CHARLOTTE PRYCE Charlotte Pryce’s exquisitely detailed and evocatively structured short films suggest an alert daydreaming in which the documented and the imagined are juxtaposed. Her films offer fleeting illuminations at the periphery of vision, calling into question the “mechanical eye” of the lens and the chemical composition of the celluloid. The films use 16mm “chrome” stocks—now-extinct reversal color—which are hand-processed and optically reprinted. “Like the items in a Cabinet of Wonder, my subjects are specimens of philosophical musing: rootless plants, mysterious insects and curious glasses,” says Pryce. The program includes Concerning Flight: Five Illuminations in Miniature, Discoveries on the Forest Floor, The Parable of the Tulip Painter and the Fly, Curious Light, Looking Glass Insects, A Study in Natural Magic, and a live magic lantern show. In person: Charlotte Pryce CAULEEN SMITH: BLACK UTOPIA LP (FOR SUN RA) Premiered at Chicago’s threewalls artspace, Black Utopia LP is a deeply original off-shoot of the years of research artist and filmmaker Cauleen Smith devoted to Afrofuturism—a cultural movement that mixes science fiction, fantasy, non-Western religion and Afrocentrism. Chicago legend Sun Ra (1914–93) and his Arkestra were a key figures in this movement. Smith produced over 800 35mm slides: images of objects found in archives, recorded in contemporary Chicago or appropriated from occult, astronomical, and historical sources. The slides are projected in a 90-minute performance to the sounds of both sides of an LP Smith recorded—a collage of lectures, rehearsals and live performances by Sun Ra, mundane ephemera, as well as commissioned contributions from Chicago artists Krista Franklin and Avery R. Young. In person: Cauleen Smith CBS PLAYHOUSE: THE FINAL WAR OF OLLY WINTER Directed by Paul Bogart In innumerable productions over his long, pioneering career, including roles in Raisin in the Sun (on Broadway and on film) and the landmark social drama, Nothing But a Man (1964), Ivan Dixon’s talents would far exceed the fame he achieved in his role on the 1960s sitcom Hogan’s Heroes. During his five seasons with Hogan, Dixon purposely utilized his time on-set to learn filmmaking, observing episodes as they were directed and edited. Despite the security the series provided, Dixon, one of the first African American regulars on network television, left the popular program to pursue other ambitions. He went on to a highly successful career as a television director, helming episodes for a diverse range of series, including The Bill Cosby Show and The Waltons. Among his most notable achievements, Dixon also directed two motion pictures that would leave an imprint on cinema history, Trouble Man (1972) and the uncompromising, The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973). Produced as the premiere presentation of the ambitious late 1960s television anthology CBS Playhouse, playwright Ronald Ribman’s poetic teleplay,”The Final War of Olly Winter” represents an exceptional showcase of Dixon’s considerable skills as an actor. In one of the earliest television dramas to realistically portray the trauma of the Vietnam War, Dixon stars as the titular character, a career soldier who is the lone survivor when his platoon is ambushed. As Winter attempts to make his way back to friendly territory he encounters a young Vietnamese woman and the two strike an uneasy bond. Though she does not speak English, Winter and the young woman must learn to communicate with each other as they trek through dangerous jungle terrain (actually, an inventive indoor set at CBS Television City). The New York Daily News hailed the experimental production as “a haunting, mordant work of infinite pathos, with a memorable virtuoso performance by Ivan Dixon.” The special was nominated for five Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Dramatic Program. For his poignant work, Dixon earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Drama. CBS. Producer: Fred Coe. Writer: Ronald Ribman. With: Ivan Dixon, Tina Chen, Patrick Adiarte. Digital Betacam, color. 90 min. CELEBRATING LAUREL & HARDY "No films have been mistreated and mishandled more than Laurel and Hardy’s over the past 70 years, and it’s high time someone did right by them. UCLA will be inviting fans to contribute to the cause and I will be among the first to volunteer."—Leonard Maltin, Movie Crazy UCLA Film & Television Archive continues its long-term initiative to restore the legacy of Laurel & Hardy, working with negatives that have survived (sometimes only barely) decades of abuse and neglect. The beloved comedians’ films have been altered for theatrical re-releases and for television, with footage often discarded, lost or damaged, and improperly stored in the bargain. With this major restoration effort, the Archive has entered a new era, establishing the Laurel & Hardy Preservation Fund. Launched with a lead gift from Mr. Jeff Joseph, for two years the fund has received gifts from numerous concerned members of the public, enabling this important work to proceed and connecting the entertainers to their audience in a meaningful, new way. Donations are still received on the devoted "Laurel & Hardy" page of the Archive’s website. In this program, we showcase a number of projects restored via this initiative. Tiembla y Titubea features the boys as unsuccessful street musicians whose luck changes when they find a lost wallet. The film is one of a number of alternate, Spanish-language versions of Laurel & Hardy shorts—in this case, their Below Zero—created for a Spanish-speaking market. The stars’ line readings in Spanish are as delightful as the story. (This is the only Spanish-language film in the lineup). In Busy Bodies, a masterpiece of physical comedy, Stan and Ollie report for work at the sawmill where they are employed, haplessly creating mayhem with planks and saws. County Hospital takes us to the sickbed of Mr. Hardy, hospitalized in traction with a broken leg, as he receives Mr. Laurel for a friendly visit. Not surprisingly, the visit leads to a number of well-intended mishaps. The program also includes two rare trailers for the well-known Laurel & Hardy feature films Babes In Toyland and A Chump at Oxford. The Chase (1946) Directed by Arthur D. Ripley Combining an original setting and timely story elements, Arthur D. Ripley here crafts a highly original film noir. Chuck Scott (Robert Cummings) is a down-on-his-luck, ex-serviceman, badly in need of a meal in post-war Miami. Stumbling upon a lost wallet, he traces the owner of the billfold to a palatial home. Owner Eddie Roman (Steve Cochran), a suave businessman, is pleased by “Scotty’s” honesty, and offers him a job as chauffeur. From the side, taciturn Peter Lorre as “Gino,” Roman’s sidekick, grimaces and bemoans these displays of honor and goodwill. Scotty quickly catches on that Roman is bad news, probably involved in the death of a business competitor, but he keeps his mouth shut for the sake of his meal ticket. His resolve is tested, however, when Roman’s trophy wife Lorna (Michèle Morgan) appeals to him for help in secretly spiriting her from Miami to Havana as an escape from her soulless existence. Once off American shores, the couple find common ground—and love. But they discover it’s not so easy to escape Roman’s octopus-like reach and influence. And soon, Scotty finds himself at the center of his own murder mystery. Scotty’s moral lapse and corruptibility are somewhat more surprising than in many noir titles, owing to the film’s intersection with the “returning soldier” subgenre, which often treated such characters more earnestly. (William Wyler’s reverent The Best Years of Our Lives was released to great fanfare in the same year). Scotty’s status also becomes a driver of the plot when the possibility is introduced that many of the horrible things he witnesses may be symptoms of an ex-soldier’s overheated imagination, not to be taken too seriously. Director Arthur D. Ripley had begun as a gag writer for Mack Sennett. A prolific screenwriter who went on to produce and direct, upon retirement Ripley was sought out to become the first Professor of Cinema Arts in the Motion Picture Division of the Department of Theater Arts, the foundation of today’s UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. This restoration was the last to be completed by UCLA Film & Television Archive preservationist Nancy Mysel, who passed away in 2012. It caps a magnificent career in film preservation, and is a tribute to Nancy’s inspiring passion for the moving image. 35mm, b/w, 86 min. THE COMPANY YOU KEEP 2013/color/125 min. Scr: Lem Dobbs; dir: Robert Redford; w/ Robert Redford, Shia LaBeouf, Julie Christie, Sam Elliott, Brendan Gleeson, Terrence Howard, Richard Jenkins, Anna Kendrick, Brit Marling, Stanley Tucci, Nick Nolte, Chris Cooper, Susan Sarandon. Robert Redford stars as Albany defense attorney Jim Grant who is trying to keep career and life from falling apart as he deals with the recent aftermath of his wife’s death. Laboring to raise her pre-teen daughter and maintain personal/professional equilibrium, Grant suddenly finds himself on the run from the law. Shia LaBeouf costars as Ben Shepard, the hard-working reporter whose investigation of a story about the arrest of a long-hidden 1960s radical sets into motion the chaos that overtakes Grant’s existence. Redford directs Lem Dobbs’s adaptation of Neil Gordon’s novel. Dobbs gives The Company You Keep the feel of an ensemble piece, with an all-star series of entrances and exits that include Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte, Julie Christie, Terrence Howard, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Elliott, Stanley Tucci, and Richard Jenkins. Followed by a Q&A, guest to-be-announced. CRACKING UP Jerry Lewis reprises his previous movie persona, this time as Warren Nefron, a man unable to successfully kill himself, while Herb Edelman is Dr. Jonas Pletchick, the psychiatrist out to cure him of his failure, in this undistinguished slapstick comedy. Many of Lewis' past routines crop up again through the device of flashbacks, as he sits in the doctor's office and remembers vignettes from his past. Dir. Jerry Lewis, 1983, 35mm, 89 min. THE DARK CORNER 1946, 20th Century Fox, 99 min, USA, Dir: Henry Hathaway Wrongly convicted private eye Bradford Galt (Mark Stevens) is sprung from prison, but bad luck sticks to his gummed shoes. Who's the mystery man in the white suit and why won't he leave Galt alone? What's his connection to the big money boys on the Upper East Side? Galt's no Marlowe. Without his loyal gal Friday (Lucille Ball), he wouldn't make it out from behind the 8-ball alive. "I'm backed up in a dark corner," he grouses, "and I don't know who's hitting me." Co-starring Clifton Webb, William Bendix. DARK STAR 1974/color/83 min. Scr: John Carpenter, Dan O'Bannon; dir: John Carpenter; w/ Brian Narelle, Dre Pahich, Cal Kuniholm, Dan O'Bannon. Initially created as a short film by writer-director-composer John Carpenter and writer-editor-actor Dan O’Bannon at the University of Southern California, and later picked up and expanded for distribution by Jack H. Harris (Ride in the Whirlwind, Equinox), Dark Star remains a rare example of a genuinely funny science-fiction comedy. The film parodies the milieu of space exploration so reverently depicted in 2001: A Space Odyssey with the absurdism of Dr. Strangelove. Four terminally bored astronauts on a pointless mission to destroy “unstable planets” are culturally situated in the Southern California burnout mode: pin-up girls, dorm-room levels of cleanliness, petty arguments, and desperate acts of eccentricity define life aboard the eponymous spaceship. But the astronauts must also contend with the eeriness and total isolation of their mission. (It’s not too surprising that O’Bannon would go on to write Alien and that Carpenter’s doom-laden electronic score anticipates his future career as a horror auteur.) A technical marvel given its miniscule $55,000 budget, the film’s use of computer readouts and depictions of hyperspace travel (based on John Whitney’s streak photography that also inspired Douglas Trumbull’s slit-scan effects in 2001) impressed George Lucas enough to hire O’Bannon to create similar graphics for Star Wars. The film’s final scene draws heavily from Ray Bradbury’s short story “Kaleidoscope,” ending on a bittersweet note of serenity in the face of oblivion. David Lynch: Meditation, Creativity, Peace This fascinating documentary follows the renowned director David Lynch on a 16-country tour of Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America to promote the individual and global impact of meditation. With equal parts wit and passion, the film reveals Lynch’s commitment to transcendental meditation as way of changing the world, starting from within. (2012, 71 min. Digital projection) A Q&A with David Lynch and Russell Brand will follow the screening. DESIGN FOR LIVING 1933, Universal, 91 min, USA, Dir: Ernst Lubitsch Playwright Tom Chambers (Fredric March) and painter George Curtis (Gary Cooper) share an apartment in Paris and both fall for lovely interior designer Gilda Farrell (Miriam Hopkins). Gilda can't make up her mind which man she loves, so she concocts a scheme for the three of them to live together platonically. Of course it's not long before the two men are figuratively clawing at each other’s throats in this pre-Code delight from director Ernst Lubitsch and screenwriter Ben Hecht, based on Noel Coward’s play. The Diary of an African Nun (1977) Directed by Julie Dash A nun in Uganda weighs the emptiness she finds in her supposed union with Christ. Adapted from a short story by Alice Walker, the film was a bold first move by its director toward narrative filmmaking. Its graphic simplicity and pantomimed performance by Barbara O. Jones give it an intensity that anticipates Julie Dash’s work on Daughters of the Dust. Producer: Julie Dash. Based on the short story by: Alice Walker. Cinematographer: Orin Mitchell. Editor: Julie Dash. With: Barbara O. Jones, Barbara Young, Makimi Price, Ron Flagge, Renee Carraway. 16mm, b/w, 15 min. Diary of a Shinjuku Thief The title character, played by Tadanori Yokoo, takes the first step on the road to ruin when he steals an inconsequential item from a bookstore. Caught in the act by the shopgirl (Rie Yokoyama), the shoplifter becomes the girl's sexual partner-and virtual slave. The film is rife with erotic symbolism that will be lost on no one. Originally titled Shinjuku Dorobo Nikki, Diary of a Shinjuku Thief is director Nagisa Oshima's homage to controversial French author (and unregenerate thief) Jean Genet. (1969, Nagisa Oshima, 96 minutes, DVD) THE DISORDERLY ORDERLY The Disorderly Orderly is set in a hospital where all the patients seem to be insane, along with at least one orderly to boot. Some of Jerry Lewis’ strangest moments ever are all present, including some wicked fourth-wall-breakers, and the legendary full-body cast gag. Plus, Jerry’s constant empathetic reactions to his patients are throughout the film are priceless. Dir. Frank Tashlin, 1964, 35mm, 90 min. Double Door (1934) Directed by Charles Vidor Protests from the playwright and producers notwithstanding, New Yorkers who flocked in the fall of 1933 to see Elizabeth McFadden's play Double Door knew it was inspired by the Wendel family of Manhattan, a Gilded Age dynasty of fabulously wealthy eccentrics. What could be more gothic than seven sisters sequestered in a gloomy mansion, tainted by madness, forbidden to marry, presided over by an avaricious brother? As the 19th-century mansions along Fifth Avenue fell before the booming commerce of the 20th-century, the Wendels became the stuff of New York legend. By 1914 their mansion stood a solitary sentinel against the hue and cry of the emergent commercial district, staring unblinking at the Lord & Taylor department store across the street at Fifth Avenue and 39th Street. When the last of the line, Ella, died in 1931 at age 78, New York gasped: she had left $100 million, it was reported, and no heirs. Double Door is a dark riff on this legend, compressed into a three-act melodrama. The scion became a tyrannical spinster, holding in thrall a neurotic sister and a demoralized kid brother. When the brother makes a bid for sanity and freedom and takes a bride, the wheels of madness begin to turn. Paramount brought Anne Revere and Mary Morris directly from the stage to recreate their roles as the emotionally battered Caroline and the dominatrix Victoria. The film is an absolute triumph for Morris (only 39 years old, she credibly plays two decades older), whose only film this was. Revere would split her time between stage and pictures, receiving three Oscar nominations and one win. The ingénue Evelyn Venable, as the butterfly caught in Victoria's web, retired from films in 1943 and forged a second career as a classics professor at UCLA. Double Door is the best kind of filmed stage play, with a strong script and a director who respects his actors. Director Charles Vidor imposes film technique judiciously to punctuate a key revelation with a camera move, an unexpected angle or a lighting shift. One of these is a meticulously plotted in-camera effect breathtaking in its subtlety. Double Door was a template for the Gaslight school of cat-and-mouse thrillers that would proliferate on the New York and London stage over the next forty years, terrain that director Vidor would embrace again with Ladies in Retirement (1941). 35mm, b/w, 75 min. DRUNKEN ANGEL Takashi Shimura plays a doctor who tries to bring about the spiritual and physical recovery of the human debris who live in the ashes of a poor quarter of Tokyo immediately after the war. Toshiro Mifune is an uprooted petty gambler and black-marketeer committed to life outside the law. "Akira Kurosawa's first critical success is an odd blend of American film noir and Italian neorealism" (Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader). In Japanese with English subtitles. (1948, Akira Kurosawa, 102 minutes, 35mm) DUEL 1971, Universal, 88 min, USA, Dir: Steven Spielberg Originally broadcast as a television film (and later expanded for theatrical release), DUEL stars Dennis Weaver as a businessman crossing a stretch of deserted highway, who finds himself terrorized by a malevolent, unseen truck driver. Nerve-wracking suspense and superb, turbo-charged action in the best MAD MAX vein, from 25-year old gunslinger Steven Spielberg! Discussion between films with actor Paul Koslo. Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (1975) "One of the best essay films ever made on a cinematic subject..." -- Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader Directed by Thom Andersen, with Fay Andersen and Morgan Fisher Thom Andersen’s first feature announced the arrival of one of America’s most significant documentary auteurs. Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer is at once a biography of Muybridge, a re-animation of his historic sequential photographs, and an inspired examination of their philosophical implications. If the film seems born fully-formed, this is in no small part due to intensive pre-conceptualization. Writing first in the pages of Film Culture in 1966, Andersen established the framework which would ultimately inform the completed work before it materialized. Its practical realization began soon thereafter as a UCLA thesis film in which he meticulously re-photographed more than 3,000 of Muybridge’s images. While historiographic efforts to reanimate these studies trace to at least J. Stuart Blackton’s The Film Parade in 1932, the exercise was in this case just a launching pad. Working in collaboration with prominent artists and scholars including filmmaker Morgan Fisher (who helped edit the final work), composer Mike Cohen, Muybridge biographer Robert Bartlett Haas, and narrator Dean Stockwell, Anderson took the visual idea as raw material and expanded it into a profound meditation on the nature of vision. The “zoopraxography” of the title speaks to both Muybridge’s practice of motion study--as distinct from photography--and his 1979 device, which enabled the images’ projection. As such, it foregrounds Muybridge’s role in the invention of cinema, and cinema itself as an illusion arising from stillness. When Andersen’s laborious re-animation process exceeded time limits in UCLA’s workrooms, the production moved shop to the Dickson/Vasu studio, where it was completed on any stand not occupied by the 1970s Peanuts cartoons, which were shot there simultaneously. The film’s final funding came from a California Arts grant via KCET, who were so surprised by the results that they promptly gave the rights back to Andersen, wanting no part of it. He ultimately sold it to Dan Talbot of New Yorker Films, who recognized the young filmmaker’s unique voice as a cultural commentator and helped launch his career. 35mm, color, 59 min. In-person: director Thom Andersen; Ross Lipman, senior film preservationist, UCLA Film & Television Archive. EEGA “Eega is the best film about a man reincarnated as a housefly avenging his own murder that you will ever see. The film is completely insane, endlessly enjoyable, and absolutely unique. Only S.S. Rajamouli could show a fly causing a human to roll his car in a most spectacular fashion to end the first half of the film, and then follow it up by making that seem like mere distraction for the really good stuff.” — J. Hurtado, TwitchFilm We Cinefamilians absolutely adore our “when animals attack” horror films — but what happens when it’s a human-reincarnated-as-a-housefly flick, and what happens when it’s not a horror film, but a Die Hard-level revenge actioner? The answer is the deliriously deranged Eega, a truly inspired over-the-top piece of 2012 wackiness from the world of Tollywood: the humungous film industry of India’s West Bengali region (ironically found on the eastern side of the country.) Its loopy CGI rendering of a spiteful insect hero seeking to annihilate the mob thug who murdered his previous human iteration, and the out-there lengths to which the director Rube Goldbergs said carnage ensues, is a damned sight to behold. Dirs. S.S. Rajamouli & J.V.V. Sathyanarayana, 2012, digital presentation, 145 min. THE ELEGAIC VISIONS OF PHIL SOLOMON Since 1975, Phil Solomon has been making films that magically penetrate the surface of images and reveal depths of new poetic meaning. Solomon’s 16mm films imbue prerecorded imagery with fantastical sensual and dimensional qualities. His recent work extends these concerns into the digital realm, creating haunting landscapes that reawaken the mysteries of life and death, and of physical reality and alternative states. Solomon presents two masterful films, What's Out Tonight is Lost (1983) and Psalm I: “The Lateness of the Hour” (1999), and four digital works, Innocence and Despair (2002), his tribute to 9/11, and In Memoriam (2005–09), a trilogy in memory of filmmaker Mark LaPore that mystically transforms backgrounds from the video game series Grand Theft Auto. In person: Phil Solomon THE ERRAND BOY The perfect companion piece for Jerry’s directorial debut The Bellboy, The Errand Boy is both its mirror and its opposite. Again, we’re given a minimally-plotted series of outrageous gags riffing on the misadventures of a lowly schlemiel in a big, pretentious institution — but whereas The Bellboy was a quiet film, a silent film homage in an environment of luxury and relaxation, The Errand Boy is more like a noisy, manic film shoot wrap party capturing all the crazed energy of the biz. It’s also Jerry’s love letter to filmmaking — shot all over the Paramount lot, it’s a virtual documentary of the industry that could have been called “A Day at the Studio.” The film gives you riffs on every aspect of filmmaking, from ADR sessions to test-screenings, and every profession is gently mocked from the mailroom shlubs all the way up to the starlets. A rollicking, raucous, timeless romp! Dir. Jerry Lewis, 1961, 35mm, 92 min. (Archival 35mm print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive) EXPERIENCES IN TRANSFORMATIVE TIME: NEW WORK BY LEIGHTON PIERCE Leighton Pierce’s cinema transforms ordinary sounds and visual impressions into ecstatic experiences filled with new kinds of movements and sensory rediscoveries of the world. Often hovering between definition and abstraction, and between gestural implication and narrative meaning, his musical eye and ear find beauty and magic in everyday places and situations. Pierce’s work has been shown widely at festivals and museums, and this screening features two early 16mm films along with nine recent digital pieces, including Viscera, described by filmmaker Jon Jost as “an astonishing piece on the recreation of a presence through remnants of their being, memories of their gestures, as molded in the impressionistic contours of light. A film built upon cascading refractions. The film dissolves in the memory as one watches it…” In person: Leighton Pierce Follow Me Down Follow Me Down explores the remarkable impact of music in Louisiana prisons. Filmed in three prisons over the course of two years, Georgetown University ethnomusicologist Ben Harbert weaves together portraits of extraordinary inmate musicians—some serving life sentences, some new commits, and one soon to be released. With unprecedented access, this unique investigation exemplifies music as a powerful tool in struggles with alienation, criminal justice, community, race, gender, privacy, and manipulation, ultimately revealing the humanity in us all. (103 min., color, HD) A Q&A with filmmaker Ben Harbert will follow the screening. Grey Area (1982) Directed by Monona Wali The title of Monona Wali’s UCLA thesis film, Grey Area, refers to the spaces of compromise that seemingly have to be made to survive in white society. The film revolves around an African-American woman reporter for a local television station who must seemingly compromise her political principles to keep her job, just as a former Black Panther Party member gets out of prison, only to realize that the old comrades in the struggle have moved on with their lives. It is also a plea for community development in Watts and other black L.A. neighborhoods, a concern that connects many of the L.A. Rebellion projects. Screenwiters: Monona Wali, Thomas G. Musca. Cinematographer: Amy C. Halpern. Editor: Monona Wali. With: Eve Holloway, Haskell V. Anderson, Lance Nichols, Sy Richardson. 16mm, b/w, 38 min. HARRY’S HIP HOP FILM NITE Extraordinaire dancer Harry Weston’s pops, locks, breaks & b-boys street dance history with rare film clips & live demonstration: West African, Gene Kelly, Michael Jackson, Pina Bausch & James Brown. Hearst Metrotone and the Newsreels In this program we will take a look at the Hearst Metrotone News collection and the newsreels in general. Examples of how newsreels affected and reflected society, and the role they played in American culture will be illustrated, and the issue of faking news footage, a controversy that continues to this day, will be examined. Among the films to be shown are the oldest surviving Hearst produced newsreel story: coverage of a German saboteur bombing a bridge between the U.S. and Canada in 1915. Special attention will be paid to specific newsreel issues produced by Hearst including one from 1936 that features Franklin Roosevelt, Alf Landon, Haile Selassie, Max Schmeling, and Jesse Owens; a line-up of notables strong enough to make any newsreel noteworthy, but what will probably stand out most to contemporary audiences is coverage of the Marbles Championship held in Ocean City, New Jersey, coverage of which was an annual staple in Hearst newsreels. Special note is made that one of the finalists is a girl, but no mention is made of the controversy around the fact that the winner, Leonard Tyner, is African American. A 1937 newsreel containing the famous scene of a lone baby crying in the bombed out ruins of the Shanghai train station (filmed by Hai Sheng “Newsreel” Wong), will also be shown. Arguably the single most influential newsreel in history, it is credited with generating pro-Chinese sympathy within the notoriously isolationist U.S. TRT: approx. 120 min. High Tide (1947) Directed by John Reinhardt "I can smell death when it's close. I can smell it now." Dusk at Malibu. A sedan, flung from the Pacific Coast Highway, sits wrecked at the waterline. The man in the front seat has a broken back. His companion is wedged under the vehicle. The evening tide is rolling in, fast. "I never did want to die alone. Glad you're with me, pal." No film noir curtain raiser telegraphs its fatalism with such concision. As the story unfolds in flashback we learn that Fresney (Lee Tracy) is a cynical newspaper editor. Slade (Don Castle) is an ex- reporter turned private dick. Both are caught in a maze of corruption and graft. High Tide is anchored by Lee Tracy as Fresney. It's as if Tracy's rancid reporters from Blessed Event (1932) and The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (1932) were bodily lifted from 1932 and plunked down in post-World War II Los Angeles. He's worked up to the city desk, but middle age has conferred not wisdom but a thicker skin of callous indifference. He's still buying headlines with the coin of human suffering. "Let's have a picture of the widow!", he cries, as flashbulbs singe the bereaved woman whose husband has been wrongly executed to satisfy his paper's thirst for circulation. High Tide was the second of two independent crime thrillers produced in 1947 by Texas oil tycoon Jack Wrather. It carries over from The Guilty the same cameraman and screenwriter, the same protagonist in actor Don Castle (later Wrather's line producer for the Lassie TV series), and the same director, Austrian-born John Reinhardt. Reinhardt learned his trade directing Spanish-language features in the thirites and would make a half-dozen post-War crime thrillers. Like a drug store dime novel, High Tide features the standard attributes of its genre: the naive PI soiled by his job, the confluence of high and low society, the Los Angeles milieu of dirty alleys and Malibu beach houses, the sexually frustrated and drunken femme fatale, and, above all, the genre's signature whimsical fatalism. As he and Slade wait for the Pacific Ocean to engulf them, Fresney muses: "Think of all the trouble you'd have saved yourself if you hadn't answered that telegram. 35mm, b/w, 72 min. The House I Live In “FEARLESS! A model of the ambitious, vitalizing activist work that exists to stir the sleeping to wake.” – The New York Times The War on Drugs has incarcerated millions, and cost one trillion—yet forty years later, drugs are more easily available than ever. Recognizing drug abuse as a public health issue, The House I Live In demonstrates the incentivized failure of drug policy and enforcement, the brunt of which is born by poor and minority communities. From acclaimed director Eugene Jarecki, with executive producers Danny Glover and Brad Pitt. IT’S A GIFT 1934, Universal, 73 min, USA, Dir: Norman Z. McLeod Considered by some to be the Great Man’s greatest film, this short, sweet W.C. Fields vehicle is little more than a series of zany sketches loosely tied to his desire to move to California and grow oranges. Includes the legendary "Mr. Muckle" and "Carl LaFong" scenes, as well as the hanging mirror and sleeping porch routines. Jean Rouverol, who co-wrote THE FIRST TIME, plays Fields’ daughter. KEVIN JEROME EVERSON: TEN FIVE IN THE GRASS & OTHER SHORTS With six feature-length films and more than 70 shorts, Alpert Award recipient Kevin Jerome Everson has explored the multiple facets of African American life via a variety of formal approaches. Whether through his signature long shots, collage of archival sources or the re-enactment of fictional material that echoes the lives of his performers, Everson favors a strategy that interrupts the documentary impulse, abstracting everyday actions and statements into theatrical gestures. His work plays with the ambivalent relationships between art and narrative, fact and fiction. This screening includes a selection of shorts, from the Lumière-inspired Workers Leaving the Job Site (2013), to a dark, witty, homage to Chester Himes, Early Riser (2012), to an exploration of the world of black cowboys, Ten Five in the Grass (2012). In person: Kevin Jerome Everson LA AIR: KATE BROWN LA AIR is a new artist-in-residence program that invites Los Angeles filmmakers to utilize EPFC resources in creating a new work over a four-week period. March LA AIR resident Kate Brown will screen her new 16mm film Vilas Kortas, celebrating cars, film, sound, and Los Angeles. The evening will include a short program of other car films. Kate Brown lives in Los Angeles. She makes 16mm films and works on paper. Her films have been shown at Anthology Film Archive and Museum of Modern Art in New York, and at the Schindler House, Barnsdall, and Calarts in Los Angeles. THE LADIES MAN There is no better argument for Jerry Lewis’s technical genius than The Ladies’ Man. After the wild success of The Bellboy, Jerry he was given unprecedented budgetary freedom — and boy, did he put it to good use. As a filmmaker, Jerry loved his toys, and for The Ladies Man he built the biggest, coolest playpen of them all: a four-story, sixty-room, open-faced dollhouse. This awe-inspiring set was so large that it comprised the entirety of two soundstages, each room armed with its own lighting kit, closed-circuit sound system, a working elevator, the world’s largest crane, and a battery of video monitors secreted around the set so Jerry could check his own performance at all times. Populating this dollhouse with (what else?) “dolls”, Jerry put a coterie of gorgeous dames to use in a series of hilarious, incredibly choreographed setpieces that could only be compared to the best of Buster Keaton or Jacques Tati, but with that signature Jerry mania. Dir. Jerry Lewis, 1961, 35mm, 95 min. LA HUELGA La Huelga is an experimental documentary video that examines a student strike at the largest public University in Mexico (UNAM) in 1999–2000, by juxtaposing participant interviews with a lyrical portrait of the campus architecture. The video highlights the buildings within the central campus, which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007, and designed by Mexican modernists Mario Pani and Enrique del Moral. Juan O' Gorman also created complex mosaics with pre-Hispanic associations on the central library, and José David Alfaro Siqueiros finished famous murals on the administration building. This unique architectural space sets the stage for a series of in-depth interviews with students, authors, activists, and politicians attempting to unravel the complex legacy of Mexico's most contested contemporary student movement. Ken Ehrlich is an artist and writer whose work focuses on the material, social, and formal dimensions of the built environment. He has exhibited internationally in a variety of media, including video, sculpture, and photography. He is the editor of Art, Architecture, Pedagogy: Experiments in Learning (viralnet.net, 2010), and coeditor (with Brandon LaBelle) of Surface Tension: Problematics of Site (2003); Surface Tension: Supplement, No. 1 (2006); and What Remains Of A Building Divided Into Equal Parts And Distributed for Reconfiguration: Surface Tension, No. 2 (2009), published by Errant Bodies Press. He currently teaches in the Department of Critical Studies at CalArts and in the Department of Art at the University of California, Riverside. THE LAST DETAIL 1973, Sony Repertory, 104 min, USA, Dir: Hal Ashby A pair of U.S. Navy petty officers (Jack Nicholson and Otis Young) are assigned to escort a young sailor (Randy Quaid) to prison to serve an eight-year sentence. Taking pity on the young man, they decide to make his last days of freedom memorable ones. Robert Towne’s superb (and profanity-laden) screenplay and the outstanding performances of Nicholson and newcomer Quaid all earned Oscar nominations. LA STRADA 1954, Janus Films, 107 min, Italy, Dir: Federico Fellini When peasant Gelsomina (the dazzling Giulietta Masina) is sold to boorish strongman Zampanò (Anthony Quinn) as his on-the-road assistant, she quickly becomes both an adept carnival performer and victim of her master’s cruelty. This magical, poetic tale of love, loss and loneliness was one of Fellini’s favorites. With Richard Basehart. Winner of the inaugural Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar in 1956. "Giulietta has the lightness of a phantom, a dream, an idea. She possesses the movements, the mimic skills and the cadences of a clown." - Fellini. In Italian with English subtitles. THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP “With every passing interval of time — and that’s what the film is about, after all — it seems to have become more profound. You could say that it’s the epic of an ordinary life. And what you retain from this epic is an overpowering sense of warmth and love and friendship, of shared humor and tenderness, and a lasting impression of the most eloquent sadness.” — Martin Scorsese Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s epic satire still feels (in the best way) like the most British film ever made — a sprawling melange of propriety and profundity, packaged with a Technicolor elegance and bone-dry humor not replicated before or since. Dashing Powell/Pressburger mainstay Roger Livesey plays General Clive Wynne-Candy, in an epic feature-length flashback exploring forty years of his life’s most charged chapters: political and personal intrigues both lofty and cartoonish, along with Zhivago-scale loves and longings. The stunning, incandescent Deborah Kerr (The King And I) plays the multiple roles of the three most impactful women in Candy’s decades-long journey — from feisty neophyte to stiff-upper-lipped WWII vet. Witnessing Kerr’s chameleonic shifting is one of the most delightful elements in a film packed to the brim with cinematic virtuosity: depictions of wartime take on the scope of a funhouse-mirror Eisenstein, while intimate emotional interplays between the film’s love triangle take on the gravity of an eloquent chamber piece. In the hands of Powell & Pressburger, the subjects addressed are elevated to a nuanced, grand and comical symphony — and one that’s a true pleasure to witness. Restored 35mm print! Dirs. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1943, 35mm, 163 min. LOFT 2008, Independent Films, 118 min, Belgium, Dir: Erik Van Looy A group of married men share a luxurious Antwerp loft, using it for their extramarital affairs. The five friends think they know each other well - until the dead body of a young woman appears in the apartment and turns their camaraderie into suspicion and deceit. A major hit in Belgium, this stylishly shot, expertly plotted murder mystery never runs out of surprises. The top-flight cast includes Koen De Bouw, Bruno Vanden Broucke, Filip Peeters and RUST AND BONE’s Matthias Schoenaerts (who is featured in the Hollywood remake THE LOFT due later this year). In Dutch with English subtitles. LOST HORIZON Co-presented by the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles The new science of aerodynamics was emerging in the early 1930s and influenced all forms of design. Known as Streamlining, industrial designers and architects embraced this efficient and elegant form of design. From cars to architecture and appliances, the “Streamline Moderne” style reflected growth and the popularity of speed, travel and technology throughout the 1930s. Join John Thomas, President of the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles, as he presents an overview of the influence and variety of the Streamline Moderne design. LOST HORIZON is one of many movies where the art direction and set design embraced the new style; its sets, created by Stephen Goosen, represent Shangri-La in high Streamline Moderne. A screening of the film will follow the talk. LOST HORIZON: 1937, Sony Repertory, 132 min, USA, Dir: Frank Capra Ronald Colman finds long-sought-for harmony – and love – in the Himalayan mountains. Director Frank Capra’s adaptation of James Hilton’s novel combines edge-of-your-seat adventure with an exploration of what it means to be at peace with oneself. Brilliantly mounted on all levels, from the supporting cast including Jane Wyatt and Sam Jaffe to the Shangri-La set. MAX ET LES FERRAILLEURS Frustrated by his inability to reduce crime in Paris, a courtroom judge hangs up his robes and takes to the streets as an independent enforcement officer in this gritty post-noir from Claude Sautet. Max (Michel Piccoli) sets his sites on a beautiful prostitute (Romy Schneider) and her thieving boyfriend (Bernard Fresson), but his attraction to the young woman interrupts his noble venture. 1971, France/Italy, 35mm, 112 minutes. New 35mm print! directed by Claude Sautet; starring Michel Piccoli, Romy Schneider, Georges Wilson, Bernard Fresson, François Périer; in French with English subtitles MIAMI CONNECTION “Awesome & proof that God exists…A Psychotronic Masterpiece!” — Ain’t It Cool News “Hilarious Yet Oddly Touching, Goofy, Yet Totally Sincere, This Is One Of The Most Entertainingly Bizarre Movies I’ve Ever Seen.” — Matt Singer, Screencrush “Miami Connection has repeatedly destroyed our audience in a more powerful way than anything else in the 15 years of our theater’s existence.” – Zack Carlson, Alamo Drafthouse The year is 1987. Motorcycle ninjas tighten their grip on Florida’s narcotics trade, viciously annihilating anyone who dares move in on their turf. Multi-national martial arts rock band Dragon Sound have had enough, and embark on a roundhouse wreck-wave of crime-crushing justice in the streets of Orlando, Florida. Directed by 9th-degree black belt philosopher/author/inspirational speaker Grandmaster Y.K. Kim, Miami Connection is pretty much the most entertaining film you will ever see. EVER. Be there. Dir. Richard Park, 1987, 90 min. MOLD Basri is a lonely man who seems to be floating in his own life. He watches over the railroads, walking the endless tracks through the abundant landscape of Anatolia. His only son, Seyfi, has been taken into custody 18 years ago and no one has heard from him ever since. After the death of his wife, Basri has slowly isolated himself from society. But there is still hope in his life, as he keeps on writing petitions twice a month to look after his son. Director: Ali Aydin. North American Premiere. NEW WORKS SALON Several local and visiting artists will present in-progress or recently completed works in an informal screening with brief introductions by the artists and time for discussion between each work. This month’s artists include Lisa Marr, who will present Knitting And Ripping, a work in progress on the theme of aging. An award-winning filmmaker, writer and musician, Lisa’s work has been performed and exhibited throughout the world. Also on the program is Signs of Arrival, an essay film by Yelena Zhelezov, a Belarusian Israeli artist based in Los Angeles, whereby she examines the presence of Russian language in Los Angeles architecture. Mostly found above the doors of shops specializing in Eastern European groceries, these Russian words, spelled in English, are brought together in the film to locate semiotic sites of memory belonging to post-Soviet Jewish and Armenian immigrants within the urban landscape of Los Angeles. Signs of Arrival is funded by the Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists a program of the Foundation for Jewish Culture, originally founded in partnership with Avoda Arts and JDub. The Six PointsFellowship LA Cohort is made possible through major funding from The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, and the Righteous Persons Foundation. The program will conclude with a live performance by Jeremy Rourke, a self taught animator and musician from San Francisco. He uses paper, paint, shadows, wood, glass, photographs, charcoal, flowers, tape, pens, pencils, sticks and leaves to piece together his animations, which are set to his own music. No News From Harare A cutting edge account of political persecution in the guise of democracy. Filmed undercover in Zimbabwe, and presented at special event screenings and discussions at Harvard, UC Berkeley, Columbia and Stanford Universities with Wendy Dent as guest-speaker, 'No News From Harare' is a timely study of the denial of civil rights, freedom of the media and freedom of expression in Zimbabwe, now even more timely as Harare prepares for its March 16 constitutional referendum and upcoming elections. Featuring covertly filmed interviews with opposition leaders and human rights lawyers, and spiced with razor sharp political comedy which satirises the unspeakable, No News From Harare presents a portrait of Zimbabwe which Mugabe would prefer remains unseen. Written/Directed/Edited by Wendy Dent. Followed by a Q&A with Wendy Dent Ornette: Made in America (1985) Directed by Shirley Clarke Nearly thirty years after its initial release, Ornette: Made in America can now be fully appreciated on its own terms, beyond the extraordinary interaction of two visionaries. Upon its release in 1985, Shirley Clarke’s experimentation with practically every conceivable aspect of cinema at times overwhelmed viewers struggling merely to keep up with her subject, Ornette Coleman’s thoroughly demanding re-invention of music. At the time of release, the two artists’ careers were on opposing trajectories. Clarke had seen her greatest success in the 1960s with a remarkable trio of features, The Connection (1961), The Cool World (1964), and Portrait of Jason (1967). Her subsequent career, as one of the earliest experimental video pioneers was remarkable, but received far more limited acclaim. Ornette was to be her last major piece. Coleman, an underground legend since his controversial1959 NY appearances at the Five Spot, had long been deemed a pariah. This status is hard to exaggerate. He had literally been beaten and had his saxophone smashed in his early career in Los Angeles. But as critic John Rockwell notes in the film, his work “got him branded him as an eccentric when he was young; it gets him branded as a genius when he’s old.” By 1985, Coleman was collaboratively touring with Pat Metheny on their Song X project, and getting the key to his native city of Fort Worth, Texas (as documented by Clarke), all without compromising in the slightest. He retains his completely unique vision to this day, undeterred by mainstream acceptance, and reiterating his importance as a living part of jazz history. Clarke’s formal innovation in Ornette, involving the integration of a myriad of techniques and formats, has often been compared to Coleman’s sonic experimentation. His concept of Harmolodics, in which all the various components of music--harmony, melody, rhythm, timbre, time—carry equal weight, indeed has some corollary in Clarke’s polyphonic construction of Ornette. But the comparison does full justice to neither, for Clarke’s work is as filmic as Coleman’s is musical, and each is uniquely their own. Her voice intermingles with his, even as they remain singular; the epitome of what Coleman called unisons, working in concert. The film thus represents both but a whole beyond either—at once dense and weightless, beyond emptiness or gravity—and a thoroughly entertaining provocation. 35mm, color, 85 min. In-person: Denardo Coleman (via Skype); Ornette Coleman (via Skype, pending schedule); Ross Lipman, UCLA Film & Television Archive. THE PASSENGER PROFESSIONE: REPORTER 1975, Sony Pictures Classics, 126 min, Italy, Spain, France, Dir: Michelangelo Antonioni Bringing together two of the screen’s most exciting personalities, Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider (the latter of whom had become an overnight sensation opposite Marlon Brando in LAST TANGO IN PARIS), THE PASSENGER is, on the simplest level, a suspense story and a haunting portrait of a drained journalist trying to escape his own life, whose deliverance is an identity exchange with a dead man. Based on an original story by Mark Peploe and shot on location in Africa, Spain, Germany and England, this preferred director’s cut is the version of the film that was originally released in Europe under the title PROFESSIONE: REPORTER. “I consider THE PASSENGER my most stylistically mature film. I also consider it a political film as it is topical and fits with the dramatic rapport of the individual in today’s society.” - Michelangelo Antonioni THE PATSY In one of the most self-reflexive films in the Lewis canon (originally conceived as a sequel called Son of the Bellboy), The Patsy chronicles a young bellboy chosen at random to be transformed into a famous actor, Pygmalion-style, by an out-of-work entourage who just lost their movie star employer in a freak accident. What transpires is a stage-by-stage satire of the Hollywood machine, and some of Jerry’s best signature fake-bad performance pieces — a hapless and hilarious attempt at lip-synching, the ultimate cringe-inducing, cricket-chirping standup act, and a singing lesson that literally brings down the house. Here, Jerry’s perfectionist nature also shines, as the famous “vase” sequence is a master stroke in physical timing — requiring weeks of rehearsal just to stage himself catching a plethora of falling vases in mid-air a fraction of a second before they would smash on the ground. The last of Jerry’s big-budget Paramount pictures, The Patsy closes out an era in style — and with plenty of deep laughs. Dir. Jerry Lewis, 1964, 35mm, 101 min. (Archival 35mm print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive) PHASE IV 1974/color/84 min. Scr: Mayo Simon; dir: Saul Bass; w/ Nigel Davenport, Michael Murphy, Lynne Frederick, Alan Gifford, Robert Henderson Legendary graphic designer Saul Bass, renowned for iconic posters and credit sequences of countless movies, directed only one feature film: this science fiction thriller. Like Kubrick (who collaborated with Bass on Spartacus and The Shining), he delights in defamiliarizing the natural world. A mysterious cosmic event sparks the rise of highly intelligent ants that ravage the desert—killing people and animals alike. Two scientists arrive on the barren location, now home to an enigmatic and Stonehenge-like cluster of geometric monoliths, and hole up in their research station to study the ants . . . or are the ants studying them? In contrast to the highly structured and communal behavior of the ants, the human scientists diverge in their approaches: Hubbs (Nigel Davenport) seeks to destroy the mutant insects while Lesko (Michael Murphy) hopes to communicate with them; the arrival of a dazed young woman (Lynne Frederick) complicates the tensions. The film’s dazzling graphic montages and dramatic footage of real ants avoid the typical clichés of stop-motion or costumed-creature features, instead beautifully crafting a menacing tone that is at once naturalistic and mystical, expository and abstract. Bass’s original ending for the film—an elaborately hallucinatory sequence (literally, the final phase of the four-part film)—was cut by Paramount and never seen by audiences in the U.S. until its archival rediscovery in 2012. Screening with film's "lost" alternate ending. PIERROT LE FOU 1965, Rialto Films, 110 min, France, Italy, Dir: Jean-Luc Godard Jean-Paul Belmondo, fed up with his wife and Paris, heads for the South of France with old flame Anna Karina, a classic pulp-fiction moll of a gang of crooks. Essential ’60s Godard, with sun-splashed color and CinemaScope photography by Raoul Coutard, a cameo by tough-guy director Sam Fuller and an explosive finale. "The most ravishing and romantic film ever made. ... The dazzling mise-en-scene alternates Lichtenstein with Cezanne, pop art with Impressionism, the shadow of Amerika falling across the Provençal sun." - Amy Taubin, Village Voice. In French with English subtitles. THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES 2013/color/140 min./Scope Scr: Derek Cianfrance, Ben Coccio, Darius Marder; dir: Derek Cianfrance; w/ Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Rose Byrne, Mahershala Ali, Dane DeHaan, Emory Cohen, Ben Mendelsohn, Ray Liotta In his follow-up to Blue Valentine, writer/director Derek Cianfrance reunites with Ryan Gosling. Cianfrance continues his interest in depicting hard times and the withering loss of innocence that can come as a result. Gosling stars as a down-on-his-luck motorcycle stunt rider. Starting a family with Rosina (Eva Mendes) places a monetary strain on him that forces him to turn to crime. Ambitious rookie cop Avery (Bradley Cooper) has a momentary victory that’s tainted by the discovery of widespread corruption. For Cianfrance, so much of the world revolves around a moment of passion that can set various, seemingly unrelated lives on a collision course—and how the eagerness to make a better life can often lead to tragic turns. Followed by a Q&A with director/co-writer Derek Cianfrance. P-047 Lek and Kong work side by side at the shopping mall. Lek is a lonely locksmith, and Kong is an aspiring writer. When Kong comes up with a plan to put Lek’s lock picking skills to good use, the two start breaking into other people’s homes, not to steal anything but just to bask temporarily in the lives of others. One day, Kong pries too deeply into someone else’s life, and things grow rather complicated. Recalling Christopher Nolan by way of Wong Kar-wai, P-047 beautifully weaves together flashbacks, fantasy sequences and fragmented memories into a film that is part meditation, part multilayered mystery and utterly fascinating. (Thailand, 2011, 98 mins) Directed By: Kongdej Jaturanrasamee QUEST Equally allegorical is Elaine and Saul Bass’s rarely screened short film Quest (1983), a Ray Bradbury–scripted adaptation of his short story “Frost and Fire”: on a planet where humans age their entire lifespans in only eight days, a child has a week to attempt the archetypal hero’s journey and restore longevity. (1983/color/30 min.) QUINTET 1979/color/118 min. Scr: Robert Altman, Frank Barhydt, Patricia Resnick; dir: Robert Altman; w/ Paul Newman, Vittorio Gassman, Fernando Rey, Bibi Andersson, Brigitte Fossey Writer-director Robert Altman’s frigid drama set in a post-apocalyptic ice age compresses one of his favorite premises—the loner who navigates a corrupt society—into a highly unusual, minimalist fable. At times resembling a future Western, it sketches a story in which seal hunter Essex (Paul Newman) and his pregnant wife wander through a snowy wasteland into the ruins of a frozen city. There, he becomes embroiled in a real-life murderous extrapolation of a board game called Quintet involving five competing players and a sixth “advisor.” Newman and the international cast (including Bibi Andersson and Fernando Rey) portray the last remnants of the human race; death is ever-present, but the exhausted characters carry wearily on, trying to avoid the packs of roving Rottweilers and murderous intrigue in the hopes of surviving for another day. Altman and his team created a special filter that claustrophobically blurs the edges of the frame, and his typically drifting camera and searching zooms find much to explore in the film’s sets—humanitarian posters, abstract sculptures, and assorted detritus in the abandoned structures of Montreal’s Expo 67 World’s Fair. Altman’s parents had recently passed away, and he described the film as being conceived in the shadow of their deaths; a meditation on life as a dangerous game, a constant cheating, a gamble that promises the thrill of the chase. Reconversão (Reconversion) (2012, Portugal/USA, video, color, 65 mins) Reconversão portrays 17 buildings and projects by the Porto architect Eduardo Souto Moura, accompanied usually by his own writings. It is a search for his architecture, without critical commentary. Only the tour guide at Braga Stadium offers generalizations, which fit that work well enough, but it may be the exception, not the rule. Souto Moura has the last word: "If there is nothing there, I invent a preexistence." Technically, Reconversão combines the crudeness of proto-cinema with the hyperrealism of digital cinema, bringing us back to the ideals of Dziga Vertov. Shooting only one or two frames per second and animating the images, in the manner of Muybridge, produces greater resolution, although not necessarily a greater sense of reality, and brings attention to the movements of water and vegetation that generally pass unnoticed. "Is a film about architecture a boring proposal? Yes, in 99% of the cases, but this is not the case of Reconversão, which is permeable to irony. Is the program didactic? Yes, and efficacious, but it goes beyond this level. With the accurate choice of the points of view, and the melodic voice-over which goes along with them (based on work notes by the architect and what Thom Andersen found on location), Reconversão not only establishes an affectionate relationship with the work of Souto Moura, but also reframes it through a political journey over the last three decades of history of the north of the country. In Vila do Conde Festival, from all the films we saw, no other was superior to it." — Francisco Ferreira, Expresso-Atual "Although Andersen was invited specifically to make the film in Portugal on the occasion of the Vila do Conde festival's 20th anniversary, his attentiveness to the Pritzker prize winning architect's buildings and unbuilt projects is equal to the revered contemplation of his hometown in 2003's Los Angeles Plays Itself. — Experimenta Weekend – Artists Films and Videos at the BFI London Film Festival With filmmaker Thom Andersen in person! Red Desert Michelangelo Antonioni's panoramas of contemporary alienation were decade-defining artistic events, and Red Desert, his first color film, is perhaps his most epochal. This provocative look at the spiritual desolation of the technological age - about a disaffected woman, brilliantly portrayed by Antonioni muse Monica Vitti, wandering through a bleak industrial landscape beset by power plants and environmental toxins, and tentatively flirting with her husband's coworker, played by Richard Harris - continues to keep viewers spellbound. With one startling, painterly composition after another, Red Desert creates a nearly apocalyptic image of its time, and confirms Antonioni as cinema's preeminent poet of the modern age. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964, 35mm, 117 min. Repeat Performance (1947) Directed by Alfred Werker Following in the footsteps of her studio colleagues (Bette Davis, James Cagney, etc.), Warner Bros.’ girl-next-door Joan Leslie sued the studio in court because of the undesirable roles she was being assigned. Leslie won the court battle in 1946, but Jack Warner made certain she was persona non grata at the other major studios. Worried that she may never work again, Leslie signed a two-picture deal with Eagle-Lion Films in 1947. Her first film for the poverty row studio was a noir drama with a time-travel twist titled Repeat Performance; it would be the studio’s biggest budgeted feature to date. Leslie plays glamorous Broadway actress Sheila Page, who at the very start of the film, rings in the New Year by killing her alcoholic husband (Louis Hayward). Our heroine immediately confesses the crime to her producer and friend John Friday, and wishes she had the entire year to live over again in order to correct the chain of events. In a twist worthy of The Twilight Zone, her wish comes true—although the screenplay adaptation by Walter Bullock of the William O’Farrell novel does not spend any time defending this outrageous turn of events. The audience gets to enjoy the now very adult Leslie utilize all of her alluring feminine machinations to keep history from turning into another “repeat performance.” The film’s cast includes a wide variety of highly talented yet atypical supporting players. A dashing and earnest Richard Basehart turns his film debut as poet William Williams into one of the film’s most memorable performances. Vivacious Broadway musical star Benay Venuta makes her feature debut in this noir drama as wise-cracking Bess Michaels (Venuta was the popular replacement for Ethel Merman in Cole Porter’s Anything Goes). Tom Conway delivers a crisp performance as John Friday (Conway is best remembered today for successfully replacing his brother George Sanders in the “Falcon” mystery series). Virginia Field and Natalie Schafer round off the terrific supporting cast with sophisticated cattiness appropriate to Bullock’s crackling dialogue. Film Noir Foundation Founder and President Eddie Muller has stated that “this fantasy-noir hybrid, with all of its back-stabbing backstage melodrama, is basically the film noir version of It’s a Wonderful Life. Although The New York Times dismissed the film as “dramatic hocus-pocus” that would “drive a small segment of the public completely and irrevocably mad,” Variety praised the handsome production as being “well-paced and well-acted.” 35mm, b/w, 91 min. In-person: Eddie Muller, founder and president, Film Noir Foundation. RICHARD TUOHY: DIRTY-HANDED CINEMA Presenting a program of hand made16mm film work from Australian experimental filmmaker Richard Tuohy—a distinctively cinematic experience, wrestled from mundane objects and salvaged film industry equipment. More visual then cerebral, these pictures move, and with an energy unique to film. Tuohy’s films have screened at Rotterdam IFF, Ann Arbour, Media City, EMAF, FLEX, Onion City, Abstracta, ExIS and KLEX. Tuohy is part of the growing artist run film lab movement. As the film industry sheds much of its traditional machinery, Tuohy and others like him are scavenging these technological left-overs, giving them new life in the growing artist run film labs movement, and discovering new possibilities and techniques that had been largely out of reach for an earlier generation of film experimenters. Tuohy refers to such lab-working filmmakers as coming from the school of 'dirty hands'; where the filmmaker really gets their hands into the nitty-gritty of film. Tuohy sees this change as an opportunity, indeed as a kind of liberation for the experimental filmmaker – allowing experimentation in areas that previously were too often a costly mystery kept in the hands of professionals. This program presents six hand-processed and d-i-y printed 16mm film works from Tuohy's recent output. The films, though diverse, are all highly abstract and tightly structured and share a fascination with the visual possibilities of basic traditional film technology. All these films are hand processed and hand printed on a salvaged 16mm contact printer! Program: Iron-wood (2009) Tasmanian Splintering (2011) Dot Matrix (2013) Etienne’s Hand (2011) Flyscreen (2010) Seoul Electric (2012) Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel with the World (1963) Directed by Shirley Clarke, Robert Hughes “The artist, however, faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the lost champion of the individual mind and sensibility, against an intrusive society and officious state.”—John F. Kennedy The opening remarks of President John F. Kennedy’s speech on the occasion of Robert Frost receiving the Congressional Gold Medal in March of 1962, also forms the epigraph for director Shirley Clarke’s powerfully human portrait of Frost, shot just months before the iconic poet’s death in 1963. Clarke follows through on Kennedy’s theme by intercutting footage of Frost out in the world—speaking to students, touring a naval vessel, delivering a talk at Sarah Lawrence College—and scenes of his purposeful, solitary puttering around the house and grounds of his rural home in Ripton, Vermont. Clarke captures the rhythmic flow of the poet’s life, from gathering up calm to vibrant engagement. Ever one to challenge convention, Clarke allows her subject to comment on her approach. Speaking to his audience at Sarah Lawrence, Frost indicates to the cameras on stage with him: “What you’re seeing here, this sideshow, this is a documentary film going on…but it is a false picture that presents me as always digging potatoes or saying my own poems.” The audience bursts out laughing, caught up in the whimsical spell that the 88-year-old literary giant casts on everyone he encounters, including Clarke. Though born and raised in San Francisco, Frost came to prominence in the first half of the 20th century as a poet of rural New England where he made his home. In poems such as “The Road Less Traveled,” “Mending Wall,” “Birches” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” Frost deployed everyday language—what he called "the sound of sense”—to describe encounters with the natural world and scenes of farming life that resonate with a distinctly American melancholy and joy. As poet and critic Randall Jarrell wrote of Frost, “No other living poet has written so well about the actions of ordinary men.” Clarke’s visual style rises to meet the colloquial power of Frost’s work with handheld intimacy and grace. Originally produced for WGBH, Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World won the Academy Award for best Feature Documentary. 35mm, b/w, 51 min. In-person: screenwriter Robert Markowitz. 35mm, b/w, 51 min. SILENT RUNNING 1972/color/89 min. Scr: Deric Washburn, Mike Cimino, Steve Bochco; dir: Douglas Trumbull; w/ Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin, Jesse Vint For his first feature as director, Douglas Trumbull applied the state-of-the-art special effects he helped develop for 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Andromeda Strain to bring an impassioned ecological parable to life. Bruce Dern oscillates between hostility and gentleness in his portrayal of Freeman Lowell, a botanist—and lone idealist—overseeing a group of greenhouse spaceships carrying Earth’s last remaining vegetation. His three colleagues merely want to go home, and they gladly accept an order from Earth to destroy their green cargo, but Lowell—along with his robot companions Huey, Dewey, and Louie—takes matters into his own hands. Technically sublime, from the sumptuous garden imagery of its opening credits to its views of Saturn looming over botanic geodesic domes, the film provides a vivid expression of the need to preserve vegetable life at all costs. Trumbull achieved a budget-conscious authenticity by filming on slightly remodeled sections of a retired aircraft carrier and using a variety of front projection screens for windows. Inspired by performers in Todd Browning’s Freaks (1932), Trumbull cast four bilateral amputee actors to play the squat, two-legged robots that waddle around assisting Lowell. Their cute design and human-inflected movements are clear forerunners to later movie droids. SMALL POETRY: RECENT HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CHICAGO 8 FILM FESTIVAL Founded in 2011, the annual Chicago 8 Small Gauge Film Festival is dedicated to encouraging and supporting filmmakers working the 8mm and Super-8mm formats through the exhibition of contemporary and historical works created in these humble yet inspiring gauges. Tonight Chicago 8 co-founder Karen Johannesen appears in person to present a selection from the fest’s first two years including: Mie Kurihara's Small Poetry and Sheri Wills' Fever, each ethereal and poignant meditations on light and shadow; Jason Halprin’s I Colonize The Golden Triangle, a travelogue documenting the maker’s travels through Northern India; Pablo Marin's Diario Colorado, a fluid, masterful, multiple exposure study; Ross Meckfessel's He, She, I Was, a series autobiographical fragments of friends’ lives; and Tara Nelson's, Flying Fish, a home movie which brings us into the intimate living space of the filmmaker. Also screening: Paul Clipson’s Another Void; Clint Enns’ Sears Catalogue 2011/broadcast/a single tear; Sam Hoolihan’s Summer Elsewhere; Saul Levine’s Light Licks: By The Waters of Babylon: I Want To Paint It Black; Janis Crystal Lipzin’s De Luce; Gordon Nelson’s Feather; Pablo Valencia’s Blindside II; Naren Wilks’ Collide-o-scope; Tony Wu’s More Intimacy and Stephanie Wuertz’ Luilekkerland. Filmmaker Pablo Valencia and Chicago 8 co-founder Karen Johannesen in person! The Snake in My Bed (1995) Directed by Omah Diegu In Nigeria a boy’s identity originates in the village of the father. If he is an orphan, he literally has no identity. Directed in Nigeria and Germany with funding from the German Kuratorium of Young Cinema and Germany’s ZDF by UCLA film school graduate Omah Diegu, this personal documentary relates the story of a middle class Nigerian woman who marries a German expatriate in Lagos and has his child, only to learn that he has a wife and child back in Germany. She goes to Germany to get justice for his bigamy and give her son an identity, since both Germany and Nigeria have reciprocal marriage laws. There she finds that the German bureaucrats she faces only work to protect the philandering white man. This beautiful, poetic documentary celebrates maternal love, even as it exposes German racism. Producer: Ijeoma Iloputaife. Screenwriter: Omah Diegu. Cinematographer: Berthold Schweiz, Petra Buda, Omah Diegu. Editor: Omah Diegu. 16mm, color, 90 min. SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME The latest smart, subversive comedy from Bob Byington (Harmony and Me, RSO: Registered Sex Offender), Somebody Up There Likes Me skips through 35 years in the life of Max Youngman (Keith Poulson), his best (and only) friend Sal (Nick Offerman, “Parks and Recreation”), and the woman they both adore (Jess Weixler, Teeth). As they stumble in and out of hilariously misguided relationships — strung together with animated vignettes by Bob Sabiston (A Scanner Darkly) and an original score by Vampire Weekend’s Chris Baio — Max never ages, holding on to a mysterious briefcase that may or may not contain the secret to life. Dir. Bob Byington, 2012, digital presentation, 76 min. “Consistently silly and poignant at once. Byington excels at turning the edict that time waits for no one into a sensory experience. The tone combines supreme deadpan delivery with a light, airy atmosphere that brings to mind Wes Anderson without the requisite pandering to hip expectations. In his endless quest to find happiness in life — or in death — [Max] is a supremely likable creation.” (Eric Kohn, Indiewire) Street of Shame Street of Shame is the final film by the great director Kenji Mizoguchi. A story about the dreams and problems of a group of prostitutes living in one gaudy Tokyo brothel, the film features a remarkable performance by the legendary Machiko Kyo. In Japanese with English subtitles. (1956, Kenji Mizoguchi, 87 minutes, 35mm) THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS 1974, Universal, 109 min, USA, 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. Supernatural (1933) Directed by Victor Halperin On the strength of their independent horror film White Zombie, a freak success in 1932, Victor and Edward Halperin landed at Paramount on a one-picture deal. For the only time in their careers the Halperins worked at a major studio with access to first-rate production facilities, competent supporting players and a major star in Carole Lombard. The result is a disturbing programme picture that reprises the dual performance that had just won Fredric March an Academy Award for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and the exposé of spiritualism that Paramount explored in Darkened Rooms (1929). But while the spiritualist in Supernatural is a fraud, its spirits are genuine and not gangsters in bed sheets, nor the whimsical dear departed à la Thorne Smith. Supernatural has been overshadowed by the goofy high school pageant that is White Zombie, lacking its predecessor's fairy tale poetics and bursts of Lugosiana. White Zombie may be maddeningly amateurish with a reach far exceeding its grasp, but it resonated with audiences then and continues to radiate a cultural half-life today. Smarter and better made, Supernatural was not a success and has been largely forgotten. For modern critics the operetta revenants of White Zombie reflect the army of forgotten men milling on the breadlines of the Great Depression; the social subtext of Supernatural (which opened a month after Roosevelt's 1933 bank holiday) needs no critical studies interpretation. Its malevolent ghost and trickster are denizens of Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side, trekking uptown to work their wickedness in plain sight among the Yacht Club and Polo Pony set. Carole Lombard is said to have despised being assigned the movie, making the vitality of her essay in demonic possession all the more impressive as she channels the brassy hysteria of Vivienne Osborne's doomed-to-die murderess, seen indelibly in the first reel. Arthur Martinelli's constantly roving camera, punctuated with unexpected lightning set-ups, is complemented by the uncredited music by Karl Hajos and Milan Roder. It is among the first original dramatic scores of the 1930s (and includes a brief but surprising quotation from Bruckner's Symphony No.3). Perhaps the most unusual aspect of Supernatural is its depiction of characters who laugh in the face of death, a risus sardonicus that occurs three times in the course of the story before its apotheosis at the climax. 35mm, b/w, 65 min. TALES OF URBAN FASCINATION Urban wanderings inspire these six experimental films -- from a collage of movie trailers found outside a Brooklyn theater, to an evocation of an Uruguayan poet's life as a bookkeeper, to a compendium of vox populi interviews gleaned from city streets. Created over 10 years, this collection reveals the urban experience with verve and insight. " Mark Street combines the strengths of the city symphony, the essay-film, and the experimental film in one tender, dazzling package which conveys the weirdness and fresh humanity of daily life”. - Phillip Lopate, Author, Film Critic. “ The globe is Mark Street’s cinematic canvas onto which he impresses shimmering reflections and lyric montage sequences”. - Jon Gartenberg, Tribeca Film Festival. "This second volume of Street’s work ends up being symbolic of the current preoccupation with the death of film. ...Yet, the vitality of his use of film is so life-affirming that it would appear that this art form will no doubt evolve and only disappear when Kodak shuts down operations." IN PERSON: Mark Street TASHLIN TOONS The only director with a style wild and wacky enough to match Jerry Lewis’ manic energy and rubber-limbed physicality (along with the experience and savoir faire to earn his personal respect), Frank Tashlin directed the best Jerry films not directed by the King of Comedy himself. “Tash”, as Lewis affectionately called him, was also a bit of a mentor; Jerry once said Tashlin taught him “everything I ever learned” about filmmaking. And Tash knew a lot: his resumé included creating classic cartoons for both Disney and Warner Brothers, and writing gags for Bob Hope and the Marx Brothers. Tonight, we celebrate Tashlin’s looney legacy with a selection of his greatest cartoon work (screened from rare 16mm and 35mm prints). Temple Tower (1930) Directed by Donald Gallaher Probably the most familiar motion pictures depicting the adventures of the literary character “Bulldog Drummond” belong to the eight-film series released by Paramount beginning in 1937. Ray Milland starred in the first, with John Howard taking over for the remaining seven. More Drummonds followed from other studios, showcasing such actors as Walter Pidgeon and Richard Johnson. Preceding all of these were a handful of silent film adaptations and five sound features, the first of the latter being Bulldog Drummond (1929), cited regularly as one of the best early Talkies. A follow-up, Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (1934), is a particular cinephile favorite. From England came The Return of Bulldog Drummond (1934) and Bulldog Jack (1935), one serious, the other a spoof, yet each equally entertaining. And then there’s Temple Tower, adapted from Herman Cyril McNeile’s 1929 novel of the same name, and the second sound Bulldog Drummond feature. Running for barely an hour, and more economically produced than particularly its 1929 predecessor, it feels like a “B” picture by comparison. But Temple Tower has its own rewards. Played like a horror film, it sports a terrific old dark house atmosphere, a plethora of over-the-top costumed villains, a few gruesomely good chills, and some eye-popping camerawork. There are even a few laughs, although a couple of them undoubtedly are unintentional. The basic story, furthermore, was good enough to bear repeating only a few years later in the Paramount series as Bulldog Drummond’s Secret Police (1939). Both films remain highly watchable today, and great fun for any fan of 1930s cinema. 35mm, b/w, 58 min. In-person: actress Rose Marie; Scott MacQueen, head of preservation, UCLA Film & Television Archive; James Curtis, author, "W.C. Fields: A Biography." THE TERMINAL MAN 1974/color/105 min. Scr/dir: Mike Hodges; w/ George Segal, Joan Hackett, Richard Dysart, Michael C. Gwynne, Donald Moffat Author Michael Crichton was a Harvard MD who never practiced medicine, choosing instead to launch a lucrative career penning techno-thrillers and their cinematic adaptations. The Terminal Man is British writer-director Mike Hodges’s fascinating adaptation of Crichton’s 1972 novel. Harry Benson (played with Jekyll/Hyde flair by George Segal) is an A.I. programmer prone to seizures in which he becomes extraordinarily violent. He voluntarily submits to experimental neurosurgery (performed by character actors Richard Dysart, Donald Moffat, and Michael Gwynne) that implants a computer in his body in hopes of forestalling the seizures. But in typical Crichton fashion, the technology sets off unintended consequences. Stanley Kubrick was reportedly an admirer of the film, and it’s easy to see why: Hodges’s exacting direction (a clinical black-and-white color scheme, the virtual absence of any score, and simmering, controlled performances) fashions a chilling vision of modern, mechanized society. Like a missing link between A Clockwork Orange and The Shining, the film explores the interface between humans and machines with a creeping, deliberate pace that only gradually reveals its horrors. (Its intertitles identifying the days of the week and a terrifying bathroom invasion are particularly clear antecedents of Kubrick’s latter film.) Hodges also makes great use of Los Angeles locations, from the Ennis-Brown House to a memorably surreal climax in Forest Lawn cemetery. The film also counts Terrence Malick among its admirers: writing to Hodges personally, he described the film as "magnificent, overwhelming" and went as far as to say, "your images make me understand what an image is." THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK (1969) Directed by Robert Altman By 1969, Robert Altman was a prolific director of episodic television, craving a transition to feature filmmaking, but facing a steep climb toward his goal. His first few feature outings (the 1957 independent feature The Delinquents, a documentary about James Dean from the same year, and the 1968 space thriller Countdown), had not sufficiently captured the imaginations of audiences or the film industry to sustain a feature career. That Cold Day in the Park represented a daring gambit in this context: quiet and cryptic, it displayed Altman’s iconoclastic fascinations: a sensitivity to schisms within normalcy, a fascination with female subjectivity, and the construction of atmospheres as expressive of psychological states. Sandy Dennis portrays Frances Austen, a young spinster who occupies a well-appointed apartment in Vancouver. There she listlessly entertains a suitor several years her senior, and engages in rote domestic routines. From her window one day, Frances spies a young man (Michael Burns) on a park bench outside, visibly cold and wet. Inviting him inside, she shows the handsome stranger, who is apparently mute, every hospitality—food, clothes, profuse conversation, and a room of his own. Little does she realize that her charming, receptive listener has a complex life of his own, to which he escapes nightly through his bedroom window. The stage is set for conflict as Frances’ loneliness takes on a ferocity that drives the story to a harrowing conclusion. Altman draws a fascinating, restrained performance from the famously mannered Sandy Dennis. Her Frances seems related to other troubled women in contemporaneous films, by the likes of Roman Polanski and even Alfred Hitchcock (for whom Altman had directed television episodes). But Frances may also be said to represent a general bourgeois type to whom comforts and social rituals represent suffocating dead ends—in contrast to glimpses of the boy’s unconventional outer life, or the tawdry streets and underground lesbian bars that Frances trolls before the story is over. Par for the course, the film was received with ambivalence and disdain by many critics, and did not meet with commercial success; hardly the calling card that Altman needed. However, fate brought M*A*S*H (1970) and great fame to Altman soon afterward, while That Cold Day in the Park has gathered admirers over time, particularly among those who recognize in it a first flowering of its director’s unique gift. 35mm, color, 112 min. THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY 1961, Janus Films, 89 min, Sweden, Dir: Ingmar Bergman Winner of the 1962 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and featuring an astonishing lead performance by Harriet Andersson, Ingmar Bergman's film presents an unflinching vision of a family's near disintegration. While vacationing on a remote island retreat, a family's already fragile ties are tested when daughter Karin (Andersson) discovers her father has been using her schizophrenia for his own literary means. As she drifts in and out of lucidity, Karin's father (Gunnar Bjornstrand), husband (Max von Sydow) and younger brother (Lars Passgard) are unable to prevent her harrowing descent into the abyss of mental illness. In Swedish with English subtitles. TOKYO DRIFTER With its visual daring and breathless action, Tokyo Drifter represents the best of Suzuki's outrageously inventive yazuka films. The conventional story--about a gangster who honors the old code long after it has been abandoned by the new mob--spins deliriously out of control. Hunted by mobsters and his own bosses, the pop-idol hero pouts, poses, and sings through a mad chase across Japan. Disordered, violent, and irreverent, Tokyo Drifter succeeds marvelously as a thriller and a parody. "A jaw-dropping, eye-popping fantasia. Astonishes with style even as it hammers home points about the struggle for individualism" (LA Weekly). In Japanese with English subtitles. (1966, Seijun Suzuki, 89 minutes, 35mm) TOKYO STORY One of the legendary classics of humanist cinema, Tokyo Story tells the simple, sad story of an elderly couple who travels to Tokyo to visit their two married children, only to find themselves politely ushered off to a hot springs resort. "A large part of the film's appeal lies in its strict but playful treatment of figures, settings, and movement. Ozu does not eliminate narrative, but he opens it out" (David Bordwell, Film Art). (1953, Yasujiro Ozu, 136 minutes, 35mm) TROUBLE IN PARADISE 1932, Paramount, 83 min, Dir: Ernst Lubitsch In this classic by director Ernst Lubitsch, posh European thief Gaston Monescu (Herbert Marshall) meets his match and the love of his life in Lily (Miriam Hopkins), a pickpocket who disguises herself as a countess. The mischievous duo find work with the lovely Mariet Colet (Kay Francis), owner of the Colet perfumery, and Gaston assumes the position of her secretary, Monsieur Leval. When gossip begins to spread that Mariet is being stolen away from previous suitors by a charming “M. Leval,” Gaston must choose between the two beautiful women in his life. Try and Get Me (a.k.a. The Sound of Fury) (1950) "..one of the most emotionally devastating film noirs you will have ever seen" - Eddie Muller Directed by Cyril Endfield In 1947, novelist and B-movie screenwriter Jo Pagano published his third novel titled The Condemned. The novel was based upon the 1933 kidnapping and murder of Brooke Hart in San Jose, California, and the subsequent lynching of two suspects by a hysterical mob fueled by a frenzied media. Considered the only public lynching covered with such media scrutiny, The New York Times stated the event “was an outburst characterized by hysteria and ribaldry.” Pagano would adapt his novel into the screenplay The Sound of Fury (Fritz Lang’s film Fury (1936) is based on the same shocking event). Director Cyril “Cy” Endfield delivered a career-defining one-two punch in 1950 with a pair of atmospheric and unflinching films indicting the sociopolitical decline of post-war American society. Endfield’s The Underworld Story (1950) is a gritty crime drama that addresses sensationalistic journalism and racism, while his interpretation of Pagano’s The Sound of Fury resulted in a startlingly dark meditation on the psychology of class-warfare and mob violence. Although these two underappreciated noir treasures still offer a fascinating relevance to 21st century audiences, they were viewed as blatantly anti-American at the time and became fodder for the House of Un-American Activities Committee. Blacklisted in 1951, Endfield fled to England to continue his career in film. In The Sound of Fury, Frank Lovejoy delivers a solid performance as Howard Tyler; a down-on-his-luck family man caught in a downward spiral of crime-induced misfortune. The standout performance in the film belongs to UCLA alumnus Lloyd Bridges. With a sociopathic nuance that goes from charm to harm at the drop of a hat, Bridges' textured performance as criminal Jerry Slocum is a refreshing change from his many 1940s B-western roles. Unfortunately, the film did not connect with audiences. The New York Times negatively stated that audiences had “to expend pity and resentment towards society in the cause of a common thief.” Producer Robert Stillman pulled the film from national release and changed the title to Try and Get Me in all areas except Los Angeles and San Francisco (these two regions already had extensive ad campaigns utilizing the original title). Repackaging the film as a genre potboiler still was unsuccessful and the film sank into obscurity. Thankfully, modern noir audiences have come to respect the exceptional artisanship and dark irony of one of the finest crime dramas of the 1950s. 35mm, b/w, 85 min. In-person: Eddie Muller, founder and president, Film Noir Foundation. TSAR TO LENIN First released in 1937, Tsar to Lenin presents an extraordinary cinematic account of the Russian Revolution—from the mass uprising, which overthrew the centuries-old Tsarist regime in February 1917, to the Bolshevik-led insurrection eight months later that established the first socialist workers’ state and the final victory in 1921 of the new Soviet regime over counter-revolutionary forces after a three-year-long civil war. The Russian Revolution of 1917 ranks among the seminal events of the twentieth century. The victory of the Bolshevik Party and the establishment of the Soviet Union not only abolished capitalism in the largest country on earth. The example of a victorious socialist revolution politically radicalized the working class throughout the world, inspiring the masses with the possibility of an alternative to capitalism and imperialism. Based on archival footage assembled over more than a decade by the documentary filmmaker Herman Axelbank (1900-1979), Tsar to Lenin provides an unparalleled film record of a revolutionary movement, embracing millions, which “shook the world” and changed the course of history. Following the screening of the film, there will be a question-and-answer session. Presented by the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE.) Twin Peaks Retrospective Over the course of the Spring 2013 semester, the USC School of Cinematic Arts will host a complete series retrospective of ABC's landmark 1990 prime-time drama, Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch & Mark Frost. Each week, episodes of the series will be followed by in-depth Q&As with key cast & crew from the production. Guests will include Mark Frost, Duwayne Dunham, Ron Garcia, Grace Zabriskie, Mädchen Amick, Dana Ashbrook, Robert Engels, Peggy Lipton, Johanna Ray, Charlotte Stewart, Richard Hoover, Philip D. Segal, Carel Struycken, and Lenny Von Dohlen. Coffee and pie and/or donuts will be served at intermission. A 35mm screening of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me will take place in May 2013. TWO FILMS BY NEWSREEL "Newsreel was conceived out of the progressive social movements of the late 1960's. At the height of the Vietnam War and as liberation movements mobilized worldwide, hundreds of artists and activists were compelled to document events and issues which were being distorted or ignored by the mass media. In December 1967, Newsreel was established in New York City, and within two years, a national network of activist documentary film collectives was formed, with chapters in Boston, Yellow Springs, Chicago and Ann Arbor and San Francisco and other cities. This network produced large numbers of short 16mm documentaries quickly and inexpensively and would distribute them – almost always with someone accompanying them to discuss the content, providing an alternative media that would increase public awareness of topical issues. The goal, though, was not just to educate, but to inspire action for change." -- Third World Newsreel. In this program, Hearkenings presents two of Newreel's most important films: Off the Pig (1968, 15min, 16mm) "The film on the Black Panther Party turns people's heads around, awing them with the strength and the nature of the Panthers of which they may not have previously conceived. We think this film is politically and visually exciting -- it demands that people react to it, and not pass it off. It is a film that evokes response with the most diverse kinds of audiences -- liberals on their way to the film festival, students at universities, the black community." -- San Fransisco Newsreel, Film Quarterly. The Woman's Film (1970, 40min, 16mm presented on DVD) "The Woman's Film was made entirely by women in San Fransisco Newsreel. It was a collective effort between the women behind the camera and those in front of it. The script itself" -- San Fransisco Newsreel. "The protagonists are strong, perceptive women who bear witness to the strength and self-awareness of the working class. They conquer stereotypes and demolish myths. Despite its flaws, The Woman's Film is one of Newsreel's greatest accomplishments." -- Bill Nichols, Cineaste. The We and the I It is the last day of the school year, and a group of Bronx high-schoolers board a city bus to make their way home. With the summer break ahead, and feeling more liberated than usual, this colorful crowd of kids-- the cool ones, the outsiders, and everyone in between--act out as only teens can when they are among their peers and away from authority figures. Oblivious to the grown-ups in their midst, (who are smart enough to either get out of the way or get off the bus entirely), they gossip and gloat, brag and bully, cajole and confide, exchange truths and tall tales, and spar verbally and physically. In short, they are unapologetically themselves at this pivotal point in their lives when the pressures and realities of adulthood have yet to turn them into someone else. In the course of this one afternoon, as day fades to evening and they say goodbye to one another--and to a little bit of their childhood-- all their friendships, rivalries, anxieties, and ambitions are gradually revealed. From Michel Gondry, one of cinema's true originals, comes his most personal film yet-- THE WE AND THE I. Collaborating for two years with actual students at a neighborhood after-school arts program in the Bronx, Gondry's large ensemble cast, all of them first-timers, essentially play themselves, though the script (credited to Gondry, Jeffrey Grimshaw and Paul Proch) is an artful, fully imagined vision of the life these kids live--and the future that awaits them--rendered without a trace of moralizing or condescension. Though set almost entirely on the bus, Gondry's customary visual flair enlivens the film with an inventive mix of smart phone videos, text messages, and witty trompe l'oeil effects, making THE WE AND THE I a totally authentic, one-of-a-kind evocation of the energy, anarchy, and enthusiasm of teenagers living in the here and the now. Running time: 103 minutes. Directed by Michel Gondry. Written by Michel Gondry, Paul Proch, and Jeffrey Grimshaw WE'RE (STILL) LIVING Los Angeles Filmforum at MOCA presents an evening of new work by Rick Bahto, Mark So and Julia Holter. Working at the intersection of art, experimental music, and projector performance, these three artists come together for a unique event in which their distinct, yet related practices share time and space. Relying heavily on chance and the tensions that arise as media combines in real time, the work pays homage to composers such as John Cage, and yet looks, sounds, and feels like nothing else. In their words: there is no picture. there are things going on in the world. it wouldn't cross your mind to improvise. in place of realizing a blueprint, something more like gardening. do we want to make a new kind of pumpkin pie, or do we want to plant pumpkin seeds and pay attention, really see what happens? WHY WE FIGHT: THE BATTLE OF RUSSIA Directed by Frank Capra (uncredited) and Anatole Litvak (uncredited) Special Services Division INFORMATION FILM #5 - US Theatrical version Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, director Frank Capra enlisted as a major in the U.S. Army. In February 1942, Capra was assigned to work directly under Army Chief of Staff, George C. Marshall, to create a series of films to show American soldiers the reason for U.S. involvement in the war. Though Capra’s assignment was to make documentary films, he claimed that he had never seen one. He decided to view a print of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph Of The Will (1934) as his first example. Capra stated that Triumph Of The Will “fired no gun, dropped no bombs. But as a psychological weapon aimed at destroying the will to resist, it was just as lethal.” Capra was challenged by Riefenstahl’s film and was determined to create an American response to it. Capra’s idea for the documentary series was to “let the enemy prove to our soldiers the enormity of his cause---and the justness of ours.” He would use the enemy’s speeches, films, newsreels, and newspaper articles to help make the case for U.S. involvement in the war. From this idea, a series of seven documentary films entitled Why We Fight was created. The fifth film in the series, The Battle of Russia, attempts to paint a picture of the heroic struggle of the Soviet people against the Nazi invaders. The film opens with a general history of Russia and its people. It continues with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, beginning in June 1941 and the brutal Siege of Leningrad. It then concludes with the Nazi’s historic defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad. 35mm, b/w, 81 min. WITH THE GREEKS IN THE FIRING LINE (1913) One hundred years ago the Ottoman Empire was in decline. Bit by bit it had lost most of its European territory. By the end of the 19th century Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria had all gained their independence and wanted to expand their borders. This desire led to the Balkan War of 1912-13. During the Second Balkan War German filmmaker Robert Schwobthaler gained permission from King Constantine I of Greece to film the conflict. With the Greeks in the Firing Line (also known as With the Camera on the Firing Line) is the resulting film record; an early feature-length documentary showing what early 20th century warfare was like. Schwobthaler traveled up the Kresna Pass with the Greek Army during the summer of 1913 shooting images of troops being fed, treated for injuries, and burying their dead. Schwobthaler was also able to film the King and the Crown Prince Alexander of Greece, as well as Crown Prince Waldemar of Denmark who are shown visiting the front. The film ends with the Battle of Dchumaja (present day Blagoevgrad) and the celebration that followed. The Moving Picture World said, “There is little of the romance and the glory which poets associate with war visible in these films which tell the truth so plainly and literally.” 35mm, b/w, silent, 16 fps, approx. 80 min. Musical accompaniment will be provided by Cliff Retallick.