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

sun. mar. 1

lost soul: the doomed journey of richard stanley's island of dr. moreau 9 PM @ silent movie theater
rashomon 5 PM @ majestic crest
jfk 7 PM @ new beverly


mon. mar. 2

llyn foulkes one man band FREE @ lacma
on dangerous ground 5 PM, the hitch-hiker FREE @ women in film noir @ la library durant branch
jfk 8 PM @ new beverly
the color of pomegranates @ silent movie theater


tue. mar. 3

lost soul: the doomed journey of richard stanley's island of dr. moreau 10:15 PM @ silent movie theater
project shirley: short films by shirley clarke 8 PM @ filmforum @ epfc
mean streets FREE 6 PM @ santa monica library ocean park branch
bob and the trees FREE (RSVP) @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges
tie me up tie me down, high heels @ new beverly


wed. mar. 4

wie man sieht: in memory of filmmaker harun farocki: night eight 7 PM @ filmforum @ goethe-institut
tommy boy, trapped in paradise @ new beverly
lost and found film club: toon town 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater


thu. mar. 5

early summer FREE 7 PM @ csun armer
mike watt and the secondmen, small wigs FREE @ harvard and stone
david holzman's diary @ veggiecloud
the spoilers, pittsburgh @ egyptian
tommy boy, trapped in paradise @ new beverly
klown @ silent movie theater


fri. mar. 6

the crawdaddys @ casbah (SD)
the thoughts that once we had 8:30 PM @ redcat
battle royale (director's cut) @ egyptian
the matrix, fight club @ new beverly
dead pigeon on beethoven street @ ucla film archive


sat. mar. 7

the loons @ redwood
dead meadow (11:30), the warlocks (10:15), drinking flowers (10:00) @ bootleg
ezra buchla @ pehrspace
kim gordon (book reading) 3 PM @ moca grand
love you madly - a portrait of duke ellington (opening concert) 3 PM @ william grant still arts center
the matrix, fight club @ new beverly
abd's saturday morning cartoons: origins NOON @ silent movie theater
fletch 7 PM @ silent movie theater
celebrating laurel & hardy 3 PM @ ucla film archive
too late for tears, the guilty @ ucla film archive


sun. mar. 8

bouquet FREE 6 PM @ origami
the hidden fortress 5 PM @ majestic crest
jim mcbride trio of films @ veggiecloud
doctor zhivago @ egyptian
magnolia 7 PM @ new beverly
bachelor's affairs, society girl @ ucla film archive


mon. mar. 9

nightmare alley FREE 5 PM @ women in film noir @ la library durant branch
magnolia 8 PM @ new beverly
lost soul: the doomed journey of richard stanley's island of dr. moreau 10:45 PM @ silent movie theater


tue. mar. 10

chungking express, days of being wild @ new beverly
lost soul: the doomed journey of richard stanley's island of dr. moreau 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater


wed. mar. 11

blank tapes @ the echo
everything is terrible! legends 7:30 10:15 PM @ silent movie theater
now i'll tell, disorderly conduct @ ucla film archive


thu. mar. 12

tokyo story FREE 7 PM @ csun armer
naomi punk @ take off
meat market @ smell
taxi driver, bringing out the dead @ egyptian
breathless (1983) @ veggiecloud
west of zanzibar @ the devil's photographer: william mortensen and hollywood @ silent movie theater
animation breakdown: the new and the dark 10 PM @ silent movie theater


fri. mar. 13

wand @ the echo
the golem (1920) 9 PM @ hm157
susan @ smell
shark toys @ silverlake lounge
dazed and confused, swingers @ new beverly
private property @ ucla film archive


sat. mar. 14

swingers 5:15 9:40 PM, dazed and confused 7:30 PM @ new beverly
molly o' 1 PM @ the silent treatment @ silent movie theater
the island of dr. moreau MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater


sun. mar. 15

high and low 5 PM @ majestic crest
glen and randa @ veggiecloud
bunker hill revisited 3 PM, angel's flight @ egyptian
hiroshima mon amour, last year at marienbad @ egyptian
in the soup 5:15 10:05 PM, ed wood 7:30 PM @ new beverly


mon. mar. 16

strangers on a train FREE 5 PM @ women in film noir @ la library durant branch
ed wood, in the soup @ new beverly
lost soul: the doomed journey of richard stanley's island of dr. moreau 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater
the big broadcast, the milky way @ ucla film archive


tue. mar. 17

the killer, once a thief @ new beverly
lost soul: the doomed journey of richard stanley's island of dr. moreau 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater


wed. mar. 18

anita: speaking truth to power FREE 7 PM @ santa monica library main branch


thu. mar. 19

early spring FREE 7 PM @ csun armer
bringing up baby, holiday @ egyptian
all i could do is watch 8 PM @ epfc


fri. mar. 20

sea lions @ the echo
nanook of the north @ mush! to the movies: a polar film club @ filmforum @ velaslavasay panorama
becky stark FREE @ stories
the color of pomegranates @ silent movie theater
island of lost souls 9:45 PM @ silent movie theater
brandy in the wilderness @ ucla film archive


sat. mar. 21

grouper @ hollywood forever
the mill at calder's end, the long hair of death, pit and the pendulum @ egyptian
tillie's punctured romance @ spielberg @ egyptian
the color of pomegranates 5:30 PM @ silent movie theater
welcome to the dollhouse MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater
white zombie, ouanga @ ucla film archive
from sweden with love 8 PM @ epfc


sun. mar. 22

moon duo @ the observatory (santa ana)
yojimbo 5 PM @ majestic crest
the big easy @ veggiecloud
broken water @ the echo
1941 5 PM @ egyptian
the crime of doctor crespi 3 PM, the drums of jeopardy @ ucla film archive
the friends of eddie coyle FREE 7 PM @ reel grit @ afi


mon. mar. 23

the road warrior FREE 5:30 PM @ la library edendale branch
in a lonely place FREE 5 PM @ women in film noir @ la library durant branch
lost soul: the doomed journey of richard stanley's island of dr. moreau 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater
revisiting l.a. rebellion @ ucla film archive


tue. mar. 24

moon duo @ los globos
knockin' on heaven's door, too many ways to be no. 1 @ new beverly
lost soul: the doomed journey of richard stanley's island of dr. moreau 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater


wed. mar. 25

ravished armenia FREE @ hammer
plasmodian telecaves FREE @ hyperion tavern
unforgiven, the silence of the lambs @ new beverly


thu. mar. 26

tokyo twilight FREE 7 PM @ csun armer
too late for tears 6:45 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 4
breaker morant 9:45 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 4
my man godfrey 10 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 1
the sea hawk 10 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 6
the godfather @ aero
unforgiven, the silence of the lambs @ new beverly
fritz the cat FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc stark
la air: anna luisa petrisko 8 PM @ epfc


fri. mar. 27

king khan & bbq show @ jewel's catch one
colleen green @ echo
roky erickson @ the roxy
reign of terror NOON @ tcm festival @ chinese 4
the proud rebel 12:15 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 1
limelight 2:30 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 6
chimes at midnight 3 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 1
the cincinnati kid 3:15 PM @ tcm festival @ egyptian
raiders of the lost ark 5:45 PM @ tcm festival @ el capitan
norma rae 6 PM @ tcm festival @ tcl chinese
rififi 6:15 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 1
steamboat bill jr 7:15 PM @ tcm festival @ egyptian
the invisible man 7:30 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 4
the party 8 PM @ tcm festival @ hollywood roosevelt poolside
on her majesty's secret service 9:15 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 1
the bank dick 9:15 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 6
roman holiday 9:15 PM @ tcm festival @ el capitan
the war game 9:30 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 4
rebecca 10 PM @ tcm festival @ egyptian
boom! MIDNIGHT PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 6
heavy traffic, american pop @ aero
reservoir dogs, pulp fiction @ new beverly
little feet @ silent movie theater
spider baby MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater
let's hear it for the labs! 8 PM @ epfc


sat. mar. 28

white fence, jacco gardner, endless bummer @ echo
roky erickson, weezer, gang of four, black angels, mystic braves, cosmonauts, bleached, corners, together pangea, tomorrow's tulips, etc @ burgerama @ observatory (santa ana)
air mail 1:45 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 4
the apartment 6 PM @ tcm festival @ tcl chinese
the wind and the lion 6:15 PM @ tcm festival @ egyptian
history of the world part i 6 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 1
viva zapata! 6:15 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 6
earthquake 8 PM @ tcm festival @ hollywood roosevelt poolside
imitation of life 8:45 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 1
the french connection 9:15 PM @ tcm festival @ tcl chinese
the loved one 9:30 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 4
return of the dream machine 9:30 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 6
nothing lasts forever MIDNIGHT @ tcm festival @ chinese 6
the lord of the rings (1978), wizards @ aero
reservoir dogs 6:30 PM, pulp fiction @ new beverly
little feet @ silent movie theater
the color of pomegranates 9:30 PM @ silent movie theater
everly MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater
post life @ smell
playhouse 90: alas babylon 3 PM @ ucla film archive
spring night summer night @ ucla film archive


sun. mar. 29

white fence, jacco gardner, colleen green, ty segall, thee oh sees, king khan & bbq show, black lips, nick waterhouse, tobacco, audacity, etc @ burgerama @ observatory (santa ana)
seven samurai 5 PM @ majestic crest
bouquet @ center for the arts eagle rock
psycho 1:15 PM @ tcm festival @ tcl chinese
gunga din 1 PM @ tcm festival @ egyptian
judgement at nuremberg 4 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 4
out of sight 4:15 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 1
houdini 4:45 PM @ tcm festival @ chinese 6
the grim game 8:15 PM @ tcm festival @ egyptian
gangs of wasseypur 5 PM @ aero
little feet @ silent movie theater
woman on the run 7 PM @ ucla film archive
burning bush FREE (RSVP) 4 PM @ usc stark
films by kanakan-balintagos 7 PM @ epfc


mon. mar. 30

transforming spaces: new films from l.a. filmmakers 8:30 PM @ redcat
salt of the earth (1954) FREE 6 PM @ east la library
the long voyage home @ ucla film archive


tue. mar. 31

the blade, king of beggars @ new beverly
jules and jim 1 PM @ lacma
pauline at the beach FREE (RSVP) @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges


wed. apr. 1

clouds of sils maria FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc stark


thu. apr. 2

equinox flower FREE 7 PM @ csun armer
black sunday (1960), black sabbath @ egyptian
henry fool, fay grim @ silent movie theater
little darlings FREE (RSVP) @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges
el haru kuroi @ la cita


fri. apr. 3

woman on the run, the unfaithful @ noir fest @ egyptian
la strada, lust for life @ aero
ned rifle 8 PM @ an evening with hal hartley @ silent movie theater
son's big doll, dust in the wind @ ucla film archive


sat. apr. 4

telecaves, lee noble @ human resources
lawrence of arabia (70mm) @ aero
trust 7 PM, the unbelievable truth @ silent movie theater
a time to live and a time to die @ ucla film archive
sea lions @ non plus ultra


sun. apr. 5

his name is alive, bell gardens @ the echo
the hidden room, the sleeping tiger @ noir fest @ egyptian
bugs bunny cartoon classics 4 PM @ aero
ben-hur @ aero
ned rifle 5 PM @ silent movie theater


mon. apr. 6

the films of gregory j. markopoulos 8:30 PM @ redcat
raising arizona @ greg proops film club @ silent movie theater
ned rifle 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater


tue. apr. 7

ned rifle @ silent movie theater
pierrot le fou 1 PM @ lacma


wed. apr. 8

tame impala @ fox theater
ned rifle @ silent movie theater


thu. apr. 9

the suspect, ladies in retirement @ noir fest @ egyptian
zorba the greek, viva zapata! @ aero
ned rifle @ silent movie theater
the warlocks, dream boys, tashaki miyaki @ los globos
essay film dissidents 8 PM @ epfc


fri. apr. 10

the chase, the leopard man @ noir fest @ egyptian
agnes varda: from here to there part 1, jane b for agnes v @ aero
four flies on grey velvet MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater
a star is born, nothing sacred @ ucla film archive


sat. apr. 11

the underworld story, abandoned @ noir fest @ egyptian
kung-fu master!, agnes varda: from here to there parts 4-5 @ aero
ned rifle 4:15 PM @ silent movie theater
the freshman 2 PM @ the silent treatment @ silent movie theater
surviving desire 4:15 PM @ silent movie theater
shredder orpheus MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater
wings (1927) @ ucla film archive


sun. apr. 12

witness to murder, jeopardy @ noir fest @ egyptian
cleo from 5 to 7 @ aero


mon. apr. 13

luna @ echo


tue. apr. 14

fka twigs @ ace hotel theatre
aghet - ein volkermord FREE @ hammer
the umbrellas of cherbourg 1 PM @ lacma
shark toys, lorelle meets the obsolete @ smell


wed. apr. 15

circle of danger, berlin express @ noir fest @ egyptian
lake los angeles FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc stark


thu. apr. 16

floating weeds FREE 7 PM @ csun armer
ride the pink horse, the fallen sparrow @ noir fest @ egyptian


fri. apr. 17

el vampiro negro, no abras nunca esa puerta and si muero antes de despertar @ noir fest @ egyptian
invasion of the body snatchers (1978), the outer limits: production and decay of strange particles, the outer limits: i robot @ aero
the public enemy, night nurse @ ucla film archive


sat. apr. 18

charles bradley @ the roxy
the ox-bow incident 1:30 PM @ autry
simple men 3:30 PM @ silent movie theater
shogun assassin MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater


sun. apr. 19

nasa space universe @ space 42
the ninth guest 5 PM, let us live, heat lightning, safe in hell @ noir fest @ egyptian
vincent, deathwatch @ aero
heroes for sale, midnight mary @ ucla film archive


mon. apr. 20

perfumed nightmare 8:30 PM @ redcat
cheatin' FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc broccoli


tue. apr. 21

ty segall (solo acoustic) @ satellite
the rules of the game @ lacma


thu. apr. 23

late autumn FREE 7 PM @ csun armer
the postman always rings twice @ alex theatre
the last starfighter, krull @ egyptian
bus stop, baby the rain must fall @ aero


fri. apr. 24

fuzz, endless bummer @ el rey
alien, aliens @ egyptian
sunset boulevard, ace in the hole @ aero
upsilon acrux, peter kolovos @ smell
rain parade @ echoplex
the battle of algiers 7 PM @ epfc


sat. apr. 25

endless bummer, susan, heathers, etc @ thirty two thirty five fest @ jewel's catch one
river of fundament 5 PM @ ucla royce hall
gilda 2 PM @ film noir fashion @ egyptian
blade runner (final cut) @ egyptian
now voyager, dead ringer @ aero
the book of life 4 PM @ silent movie theater
classic cartoons and root beer floats 8 PM @ epfc


sun. apr. 26

tron, the black hole @ egyptian
i'm not angry 3 PM @ ucla film archive
fish & cat 7 PM @ ucla film archive


mon. apr. 27

the blood of jesus 8:30 PM @ redcat
my name is negahdar jamali and i make westerns @ ucla film archive


tue. apr. 28

replusion 1 PM @ lacma


wed. apr. 29

high noon, shane @ aero


thu. apr. 30

the end of summer FREE 7 PM, good morning @ csun armer
rear window, the night of the hunter @ aero
a sense of place: short videos by form follows function 8 PM @ epfc


fri. may 1

sleater-kinney @ palladium


sun. may 3

lightning bolt @ echoplex
qui @ cafe nela


mon. may 4

flowers of shanghai 8:30 PM @ redcat
real genius FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc stark


thu. may 7

an autumn afternoon FREE 7 PM @ csun armer
cafe lumiere @ ucla film archive


fri. may 15

nashville ramblers FREE @ the barclay (south pasadena)
a summer at grandpa's, dust in the wind @ aero
melbourne @ ucla film archive


sat. may 16

sleep, true widow, dead meadow, earth, etc. @ psycho california @ the observatory (santa ana)
nashville ramblers, rosalyns, diddley daddies @ til two club (san diego)
a city of sadness @ aero


sun. may 17

pentagram, om, earthless, etc. @ psycho california @ the observatory (santa ana)
goodbye south goodbye, millennium mambo @ aero


thu. may 28

neutral milk hotel, the minders @ north park theatre (san diego)


fri. may 29

neutral milk hotel, the minders @ observatory (santa ana)


sat. may 30

neutral milk hotel, the minders @ pappy & harriet's (pioneertown)
wire @ echoplex


sun. may 31

neutral milk hotel, the minders @ ventura theatre (ventura)
beggars of life 7 PM, wild boys of the road @ ucla film archive


tue. jun. 2

the kids in the hall @ ace hotel theatre


sat. jun. 13

island in the sky 3 PM @ ucla film archive


sun. jun. 14

westward the women 7 PM, yellow sky @ ucla film archive


sat. jun. 20

good men good women, goodbye south goodbye @ ucla film archive


sun. jun. 21

beau geste (1939) 7 PM, the light that failed @ ucla film archive


thu. jun. 25

the great man's lady, roxie hart @ ucla film archive


sun. jun. 28

track of the cat 7 PM, the ox-bow incident @ ucla film archive





WHAT IT IS:


ABANDONED
1949, Universal, 78 min, USA, Dir: Joseph M. Newman
Gale Storm plays a naive young woman who’s come to Los Angeles in search of her missing sister. Shunned by the police, she’s assisted by an intrepid reporter (Dennis O’Keefe), who smells a story when he gets wind of an underground racket in black-market babies. Featuring film noir favorites Raymond Burr and Mike Mazurki, and the screen debut of future star Jeff Chandler. NOT ON DVD.


AGHET - EIN VOLKERMORD
The prizewinning film Aghet – Ein Völkermord (Armenian for "the catastrophe") by acclaimed German film maker Eric Friedler tells the story of the Armenian genocide, one of the darkest chapters of the First World War. Though there is an international consensus that up to 1.5 million Armenians died in the Ottoman Turkish Empire the Armenian genocide is still not recognized by Turkey as a historical fact. Aghet – Ein Völkermord deals with the political motives for this continuing silence. This innovative German documentary relies on authentic testimonies by European and American personnel stationed in the Near East at the time and Armenian survivors. Famous German actors give these eyewitnesses finally the opportunity to make their voices heard.  Director Eric Friedler joins us for a discussion following the screening. (2010, Dir. Eric Friedler, 90 min).


Agnes Varda: From Here to There Part 1
2012, Cine-Tamaris, 45 min. Trailer
This multi-episode documentary series picks up where THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS left off, following the acclaimed director as she travels around the world meeting with friends, artists and fellow filmmakers. In Episode 1, Varda visits the home of experimental filmmaker Chris Marker to talk media before heading to Nantes to share memories of Jacques Demy at a screening of his film LOLA. Finally Agnès is off to Portugal, where she kicks up her heels with writer-director Manoel de Oliveira. In French with English subtitles.
Discussion between screenings with director Agnès Varda.


Agnès Varda: From Here to There Parts 4 - 5
2012, Cine-Tamaris, 90 min.
The final installments of the documentary series following the globe-trotting director give testament to Varda’s broad interests. In Episode 4, she talks with an old friend, artist Pierre Soulages, on his terrace overlooking the Mediterranean. Then Agnès reconnects with two brothers she met years ago, while creating her famous “Cabin on the Beach” installation, before going to the Lyon Biennale. In Episode 5, a vanitas exhibit draws Varda to the Maillol Museum in Paris; later she flies to Mexico to converse with filmmaker Carlos Reygadas. Finally, she arrives in Los Angeles for a memorial to Doors singer Jim Morrison. In French with English subtitles.


AIR MAIL (1932)
Seven years before Howard Hawks put his stamp on Only Angels Have Wings (1939), John Ford used some of the same story material—a group of aviators flying through treacherous mountain passes in terrible weather, the girl who wants to keep their leader grounded, the flyer trying to redeem himself after a single act of cowardice in his past—and made them his own. The film marked a rare trip to Universal for the director (he was looking for extra money in the face of salary cuts at his home studio, Fox), where producer Carl Laemmle Jr. wanted to compete with other big aviation dramas like The Dawn Patrol and Hell’s Angels (both 1930). For the film, the studio built a special effects soundstage complete with miniature sets, a full water tank and a gantry overhead for flying model planes. Ralph Bellamy stars as the group’s stoic leader, with Gloria Stuart as his concerned girlfriend and Pat O’Brien as a hotshot flyer whose womanizing gets him in trouble. At first, the stars didn't understand Ford’s attention to seemingly minute details, but the finished film reveals a coherent view of the world, with the details clearly establishing the pilots’ isolation on their remote base at the foot of the Rockies. (d. John Ford, 84m, 35mm)


AMERICAN POP
1981, Sony Repertory, 96 min, Dir: Ralph Bakshi
The bouncing and bruising story of four sets of fathers and sons, this is Bakshi’s musical cruise through rock’n roll history, fueled by classic tunes from Gershwin, Bob Dylan, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Seger, and dozens of others. Discussion between films with director Ralph Bakshi, including a clip from his new film "Last Days of Coney Island."


An Autumn Afternoon (1962), 113 mins.
The last film by Yasujiro Ozu was also his final masterpiece, a gently heartbreaking story about a man’s dignified resignation to life’s shifting currents and society’s modernization. Though the widower Shuhei (frequent Ozu leading man Chishu Ryu) has been living comfortably for years with his grown daughter, a series of events leads him to accept and encourage her marriage and departure from their home. As elegantly composed and achingly tender as any of the Japanese master’s films, An Autumn Afternoon is one of cinema’s fondest farewells.


BABY, THE RAIN MUST FALL
1965, Sony Repertory, 100 min, USA, Dir: Robert Mulligan
The TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD team of director Robert Mulligan, producer Alan Pakula and writer Horton Foote reunite for this underrated drama set in rural Texas. In a role that plays as if it hit close to home, Steve McQueen is a troubled singer (whose band includes Glen Campbell) recently released from prison. If only for their daughter’s sake, wife Lee Remick hopes to keep him on the straight and narrow - but deputy sheriff Don Murray is there just in case she can’t. Discussion following with actor Don Murray. 


BERLIN EXPRESS
1948, Warner Bros., 87 min, USA, Dir: Jacques Tourneur
Robert Ryan, Merle Oberon and Paul Lukas head an international cast in the first Hollywood film shot on location in Allied-occupied postwar Germany. An ad-hoc cadre of allied officials, headed by train to a peace conference, suddenly become detectives when Germany’s most outspoken peace activist goes missing. A solid thriller, and a remarkable historical document of its time.


THE BIG EASY (1987, Dir: Jim McBride)
Featuring one of the greatest sex scenes on film, The Big Easy casts Dennis Quaid as a maybe-corrupt New Orleans police lieutenant, and Ellen Barkin as the district attorney investigating him—and simultaneously carrying on a hot romance with him in a city of elastic mores. Steamy, slippery New Orleans is itself a major player, providing the perfectly soiled yet charming backdrop to questions of passion and evenhandedness.


BLACK SUNDAY (1960)
(LA MASCHERA DEL DEMONIO)
1960, 87 min, Italy, Dir: Mario Bava
Mario Bava’s first full film as a director stars Barbara Steele in a double role as a deathless witch and her own virginal descendant. With John Richardson and Ivo Garrani. “Still the No. 1 film of the Italian Horror renaissance, startlingly original and genuinely creepy.” - Glenn Erickson, DVD Savant. English dubbed print. Uncut European Version! 35mm Print!


THE BLADE
After the master of the Sharp Manufacturer saber factory abdicates and appoints On, his least popular worker, as his successor, On, unwilling to lead his surly colleagues, embarks on a quest of revenge to kill the evil, flying, tattooed kung fu master who killed his father. (1995) [105 min.] Directed by Tsui Hark


THE BLOOD OF JESUS
“A masterpiece of folk cinema that has scarcely lost its power to astonish.” – Village Voice, March 2008
Spencer Williams (1893–1969) was among the very first African American independent filmmakers, and his great cultural morality tale, The Blood of Jesus (1941, 57 min.), is a landmark of American cinema. Still known primarily as a radio and screen actor (Andy in Amos ’n’ Andy), Williams made more than a dozen films with all-black casts. He traveled the South to show his work in church basements, and The Blood of Jesus was a huge hit with African American audiences for years. A story of sin and redemption, the film’s vivid depiction of spiritualism and folk beliefs has a power that few big-budget movies have ever achieved. Scholar Jacqueline Stewart, who is preparing a biography of Williams, introduces the work. In person: Jacqueline Stewart


BOB AND THE TREES
Bob has a problem: A skunk bit a pig. Now his wooded property is being quarantined for rabies and he must contract himself out to cut trees elsewhere. When a competitor sets him up, matters go from bad to worse as Bob faces a series of difficulties with his farm, family and livelihood. With only rap music and a nine iron as outlets for his frustration, Bob is pushed to the limits of his capabilities to pull out of this spiraling mess. The film, set in beautiful Berkshires Mountains of rural Massachusetts, uses real woodcutters and real families as actors. Using a loosely scripted, but well structured narrative allows the subjects to easily act out the nuanced dilemmas from their own lives. Gorgeous cinematography by Sundance favorite DPs Chris Teague and Danny Vecchione intimately follows Bob through interactions with his workers, wife, son and livestock in a way that only a real farmer/logger could. The series of misfortunes that befall Bob, which seem to take on the ominous presence of an oncoming plague, in many ways serve as an allegory for the tribulations of American rural life today.
“Perceptively scripted, nimbly shot and efficiently produced, Ongaro’s debut is well suited for a broad regional audience, and with the right handling, could break through on the national art house circuit as well.” Justin Lowe, The Hollywood Reporter
“For a film about logging, BOB AND THE TREES is strangely compelling, a tonal ambient score amps up the tension as Bob becomes more unhinged with worry about his business.” Katie Walsh, Indiewire
“(An) immersive verite style drama.” Ben Kenigsberg, Variety
Director: Diego Ongaro. Cast: Bob Tarasuk, Polly MacIntyre, Matt Gallagher, Winthrop Barrett, Nathaniel Gregory. 91 min./ Digital Projection


THE BOOK OF LIFE
Hal Hartley directed this French-produced comedy about the Second Coming of Christ (Martin Donovan), with Thomas Jay Ryan in the role of Satan. While a gambler (David Simonds) and a waitress (Miho Nikaido) talk with Satan in a hotel bar, Jesus arrives at JFK airport with Magdalena (PJ Harvey). Jesus has been sent down to end the world by breaking the Seven Seals on a computer disk in a bowling alley locker room. Made in digital video blown up to 35mm, this film is part of the French "Collection 2000 Seen By" television series of one-hour films about the Millennium (and the only one by an American director). Dir. Hal Hartley, 1998, digital presentation, 63 min.


BOOM! (1968)
Critics and audiences detested this Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton film about a poet labeled the “Angel of Death” because of his attraction to wealthy women nearing their ends. Even one of its greatest fans, John Waters (1972’s Pink Flamingos), labels it “beyond bad. It’s the other side of camp.” Yet Tennessee Williams—who adapted the screenplay from his The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, which flopped twice on Broadway—considered it the best screen version of any of his plays. Despite critics’ complaints, the film has an almost irresistible charm. Part of the  fascination is watching the actors play characters with parallels to their own lives. Taylor is Flora “Sissy” Goforth, a woman who has survived multiple marriages without losing her uncanny beauty. Burton is a poet whose spark of genius makes him catnip for the ladies (and one gentleman, the Witch of Capri, played by Noel Coward). In addition, a team of top professionals—including director Joseph Losey and cinematographer Douglas Slocombe—have made the picture captivatingly beautiful. Losey did location work in Sardinia, where the Mediterranean has an almost unearthly blue. The studio sets are baroque masterpieces, while Taylor wears a stunning collection of black-and-white costumes. The results are so dazzling you won’t want to tear your eyes from the screen. (d. Joseph Losey, 110m, 35mm)


Burning Bush
Acclaimed director Agnieszka Holland (Europa, Europa) returns to a pivotal time in modern Czech history: the shocking act of a student of the Charles University's Faculty of Arts, who in protest of the Soviet occupation, set himself on fire in Prague's Wenceslas Square on the 16th of January 1969, and died four days later. Through the story of the brave defense attorney Dagmar Buresova, who defended Palach's legacy in a doomed lawsuit, the film examines the transformations taking place in Czechoslovak society after the invasion of the armies of the Warsaw Pact in August of 1968. It depicts the beginnings of Czech and Slovak resistance against the occupation, which reached its apex with the mass protests during Palach's funeral. It also shows the nation's gradual resignation under the pressure of fear and harsher persecution. 231 minutes. In Czech, with English subtitles.


BUS STOP
1956, 20th Century Fox, 96 min, USA, Dir: Joshua Logan
Marilyn Monroe stunned critics and fans alike with her heartbreakingly tender performance as a truck-stop singer who falls in love with naive young cowpoke Don Murray, in this beautiful, bittersweet drama based on the William Inge play. With Betty Field, Arthur O’Connell.


Café Lumière  (Taiwan, 2003)
Kohi jiko
In this Tokyo-set rumination on the interplay between past and present, freelance writer Yoko researches a talented but forgotten Taiwanese composer, as she copes with an unexpected pregnancy and impending single motherhood.  The legacy of colonialism, the erosion of traditional domesticity, and the solitude and displacements of contemporary urban life reverberate through Hou Hsiao-hsien's contemplative tribute to the films of Yasujiro Ozu.
Producer: Miyajima Hideshi, Yamamoto Ichiro, Osaka Fumiko.  Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien.  Screenwriter: Hou Hsiao-hsien.  Cinematography: Mark Lee (Ping-bin).  Editor: Liao Ching-sung.  Cast: Hitoto Yo, Asano Tadanobu, Hagiwara Masato, Yo Kimiko, Kobayashi Nenji.  35mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles, 103 min.


THE CHASE
1946, 86 min, USA, Dir: Arthur Ripley
Scripted by Philip Yordan, from the novel The Black Path of Fear by Cornell Woolrich. In this hallucinatory adaptation, Robert Cummings plays a drifter hired as a chauffeur by two Florida crooks (Steve Cochran and Peter Lorre). He falls for Cochran’s dishy wife (Michelle Morgan) with dire, unpredictable results. As close to Lynch-ian as movies got in the 1940s.


Cheatin'
In a fateful bumper car collision, Jake and Ella meet and become the most loving couple in the long history of Romance. But when a scheming “other” woman drives a wedge of jealousy into their perfect court ship, insecurity spells out an untimely fate. With only the help of a disgraced magician and his forbidden “soul machine”, Ella takes the form of Jake's numerous lovers, desperately fighting through malfunction and deceit as they try to reclaim their destiny. Running time: 76 minutes. Written and Directed by Bill Plympton. Followed by a Q&A with Bill Plympton.


CIRCLE OF DANGER
1951, Warner Bros., 86 min, UK, Dir: Jacques Tourneur
Ray Milland journeys to Scotland to unravel the truth of his brother's strange death as a commando during World War II. This suspenseful British-made adaptation of Philip MacDonald’s novel is expertly helmed by Tourneur and produced with Hitchcockian aplomb by Joan Harrison. Also starring the alluring Patricia Roc, Hugh Sinclair and Naunton Wayne.


A CITY OF SADNESS
BEI QING CHENG SHI
1989, 158 min, Taiwan, Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
A Golden Lion winner at the Venice Film Festival, this powerful epic is considered by many to be director Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s greatest achievement. After WWII, control of Taiwan is ceded by Japan to the mainland Chinese government; the ensuing campaign of repression soon ensnares the Lin brothers (Tony Leung, Chen Sung-yung and Jack Kao). Viewing a nation’s history through the lens of a single family, Hou not only illuminates the formerly taboo subject of the “White Terror,” but shows how events that shake a society filter down to shape the lives of everyday people. In Mandarin, Taiwanese, Cantonese, Shanghainese, and Japanese with English subtitles. Introduction by Berenice Reynaud, who will sign copies of her book, A City of Sadness, in the lobby at 7:00 PM.


Clouds of Sils Maria
At the peak of her international career, Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche) is asked to perform in a revival of the play that made her famous twenty years ago. But back then she played the role of Sigrid, an alluring young girl who disarms and eventually drives her boss Helena to suicide. Now she is being asked to step into the other role, that of the older Helena. She departs with her assistant (Kristen Stewart) to rehearse in Sils Maria; a remote region of the Alps. A young Hollywood starlet with a penchant for scandal (Chloë Grace Moretz) is to take on the role of Sigrid, and Maria finds herself on the other side of the mirror, face to face with an ambiguously charming woman who is, in essence, an unsettling reflection of herself. Rated R. Running time: 123 minutes. Written and Directed by Olivier Assayas


DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY (1967, Dir: Jim McBride)
“A primordial metafiction, autofiction, mockumentary, and time capsule of sights and sounds, ideas and moods, politics and history…one of the greatest first films.” -Richard Brody, The New Yorker
L.M. Kit Carson plays David, a would-be filmmaker living in Manhattan, who turns his camera on himself, his messy room, and his messy life. The film takes on, in casual, table-talk terms, everything from voyeurism, to hipness, to the myopia of cinematic objectives—all in the pursuit of meaning.  *Jim McBride In Conversation with Peter Markham to follow


Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street  (Germany, 1974)
Tote Taube in der Beethovenstraße
Hot on the trail of a scandalous photo of a U.S. senator with an unknown blonde, an American detective is gunned down in Bonn on Beethoven Street.  His partner, Sandy (Glenn Corbett), arrives in Germany to pick up the chase, and maneuvers his way into an international syndicate of blackmailers, falling for Christa (Christa Fulller), the mysterious blonde from the photograph.  She promises to help Sandy, but the Yankee gumshoe might be in over his head in this high-stakes game of global extortion.
From its cutthroat opening, Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street displays the confrontational kineticism central to Fuller’s work and probes familiar themes of duplicitous identities and malleable allegiances.  Approached to make a picture for the German television series Tatort, Fuller seized the chance to create a “tongue-in-cheek adventure”: “I wanted Dead Pigeon to be full of high jinks and hilarity.  People expected me to be doing war movies or action pictures. I’d always dreamed of doing a comedy, a film of pure entertainment.”
Invoking the conventions of the detective film, but not taking them particularly seriously, Dead Pigeon romps knowingly through an assemblage of international diplomats and underhanded scammers, with a gun battle staged in a nursery (bullets fly overhead as the heavy, Charlie Umlaut, ducks for cover behind a row of bassinets), and a comically overwrought final showdown between the hotheaded American and the fencing-enthusiast mastermind behind the syndicate.  Stylistic elements amplify Fuller’s experimental leanings: abrupt zooms, jump cuts and surveillance-like camera angles figure prominently.
Returning to Germany for the first time since his service in World War II, Fuller took full advantage of the location, incorporating Cologne’s annual Carnival and landmarks including Beethoven’s home, where Fuller reportedly spent a war-weary night sleeping under Beethoven’s piano during the capture of Bonn.  Released to enthusiastic support abroad—the film was praised by Take One as “relentlessly inventive and bizarre”—Dead Pigeon’s domestic release was minimal.
The Archive’s first completely digital restoration, we’re proud to present this unique articulation of Fuller’s artistic vision, in a never before seen director’s cut with additional footage not included in prior versions.  —Nina Rao
Director: Samuel Fuller.  Production: Bavaria Atelier GmbH, Chrisam Films.  Distribution: Bavaria Atelier GmbH.  Producer: Joachim von Mengershausen.  Screenwriter: Samuel Fuller.  Cinematographer: Jerzy Lipman.  Art Direction: Lothar Kirchem.  Editor: Liesgret Schmitt-Klink.  Music: Can.  Cast: Christa Lang, Glenn Corbett, Anton Diffring, Eric P. Caspar, Sieghardt Rupp.  DCP, color, 127 min. Restored from 35mm Interpositive (IP) and 16mm print.


DEAD RINGER
1964, Warner Bros., 116 min, USA, Dir: Paul Henreid
This well-crafted thriller provides a double dose of deception with Bette Davis playing twin sisters driven apart by love and money. When one kills the other to assume her identity, she faces hurdles in the form of two boyfriends - police sergeant Karl Malden and unscrupulous playboy Peter Lawford.


DEATHWATCH
1966, 88 min, USA, Dir: Vic Morrow
Actor Vic Morrow made his directing debut with this low-budget adaptation of Jean Genet’s 1947 play, a triangle between three prison inmates played by Leonard Nimoy, Michael Forest, and future directing legend Paul Mazursky. Sharing a cell, the men engage in complex power struggles and games of manipulation, photographed in stark black-and-white by Vilis Lapenieks and edited by the legendary Verna Fields.


DUST IN THE WIND
LIAN LIAN FENG CHEN
1987, 110 min, Taiwan, Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
At the end of the 1960s, high-school sweethearts Wan (Wang Chien-wen) and Huen (Hsin Shu-feng) leave their little mining town in search of greater opportunities in Taipei, where the vicissitudes of life take their toll on the relationship. One of the key films of Taiwan’s New Cinema (and the concluding chapter in Hou’s coming-of-age trilogy), this moving and reflective drama has a naturalistic feel that belies its meticulous shot composition. In Mandarin and Taiwanese with English subtitles.


Early Spring (1956), 145 mins
In his first film after the commercial and critical success of Tokyo Story, Ozu examines life in postwar Japan through the eyes of a young salaryman, dissatisfied with career and marriage, who begins an affair with a flirtatious co-worker.


Early Summer (1951), 125 mins
The Mamiya family is seeking a husband for their daughter, Noriko, but she has ideas of her own. Played by the extraordinary Setsuko Hara, Noriko impulsively chooses her childhood friend, at once fulfilling her family’s desires while tearing them apart. A seemingly simple story, Early Summer is one of Yasujiro Ozu’s most complex works—a nuanced examination of life’s changes across three generations. The Criterion Collection is proud to present one of the director’s most enduring classics.


EL VAMPIRO NEGRO
THE BLACK VAMPIRE
1953, Argentine Sono Films, 90 min, Argentina, Dir: Román Viñoly
This stunning reimagining of Fritz Lang’s classic M has been rediscovered by the Film Noir Foundation and subtitled in English for the first time. Olga Zubarry, Argentina’s answer to Marilyn Monroe, plays a chanteuse and single mother who is the sole eyewitness to the child killer stalking the streets of Buenos Aires. Will her daughter be the next victim? Featuring stunning cinematography by Anibal González Paz. A major cinema discovery! In Spanish with English subtitles. NOT ON DVD.


The End of Summer (1961), 103 mins.
The Kohayakawa family is thrown into distress when childlike father Manbei takes up with his old mistress, in one of Ozu’s most deftly modulated blendings of comedy and tragedy.


Equinox Flower (1958), 118 mins.
Later in his career, Ozu started becoming increasingly sympathetic with the younger generation, a shift that was cemented in Equinox Flower, his gorgeously detailed first color film, about an old-fashioned father and his newfangled daughter.


EVERLY
Director Joe Lynch & DP Steve Gainer in person! It’s still only March, but we’ve already got a clear contender for the most outrageous action brain smash of the year! Perfectly birthed as a future cult classic, Everly is a high-body-count, “hard-R” showcase in what can be done with a low budget but with a lot of ingenuity, blood and bullets. Salma Hayek(!) takes no prisoners as a femme fatale unleashing the ultimate vengeance against a sadistic mob boss and his army of assassins. Battling through a brutal barrage of machine-gunning maniacs, killer dogs, knife-wielding killers, prostitutes, cruel torturers and more, the movie rockets along as the spiritual embodiment of Takashi Miike working for Cannon Films on the set of The Raid. As you might have guessed, it’s freakin’ awesome. Director (and proud Cinefamily member) Joe Lynch joins us to discuss the makings of his new late-night fan favorite. Dir. Joe Lynch, 2014, DCP, 92 min.


EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE! LEGENDS
Once a millenium, something emerges from the darkest corner of the universe and enlightens us to the true meaning of being. Something so mystickal, so magickal, and so mind-splitting that all concepts before its existence sounds stupid and boring. Of course, we are talking about Everything Is Terrible! The Legends show is a culmination of the first seven (of 777) years of work from the video alchemists at EIT! These mindfreaks have taken thousands of forgotten VHS tapes, chewed them up, and spit them back to their young via daily website postings, six movies, and world tours. In that time, they’ve exposed us to wonders such as massaging cat ladies, apocalyptic facial exercises, pizzas parties in hell, and our immortal party-god, Duane. Nobody could have predicted the cultural, psychological, and illuminating impact EIT! would have on our consciousness, but seeing all their greatest works chronicled in one place reminds us that in the right hands, garbage can be turned into gold! It is time pack up your copies of Jerry Maguire and accept the fact that your life up until this moment has been pointless.


THE FALLEN SPARROW
1943, Warner Bros., 94 min, USA, Dir: Richard Wallace
Scripted by Warren Duff, from the novel by Dorothy B. Hughes. This convoluted but compelling story, told in creepy Val Lewton style, stars John Garfield as a Spanish Civil War veteran being driven crazy by stateside fascists. Is porcelain-gorgeous Maureen O’Hara his only ally … or his enemy? Stunning photography by RKO’s in-house noir master, Nicholas Musuraca. With Walter Slezak, Patricia Morison and Martha O’Driscoll. Discussion between films with actress Patricia Morison (THE FALLEN SPARROW).


The Films of Gregory J. Markopoulos
“One of the true visionaries of the post-WWII American avant garde” – Harvard Film Archive
A great figure of American independent cinema, Gregory J. Markopoulos (1928–1992) made some of the key films of the postwar avant-garde. Poetic, romantic and formally rigorous, his work was deeply rooted in mythological associations and the ritual dimensions of cinema. Despite Markopoulos’ huge influence as a filmmaker and polemicist in the new American Cinema of the 1960s, his films have been largely unavailable until now. The program this evening includes Bliss (1967, 7 min.) and Gammelion (1968, 54 min.), which are among the first films made by Markopoulos after he left the U.S. for Europe and represent a major step toward the epic form of his 80-hour magnum opus, Eniaios. In person: Curator Mark Webber, editor and publisher of Film As Film: The Collected Writings Of Gregory J. Markopoulos


Fish & Cat  (Iran, 2013)
Mahi va gorbeh
Selected for New Directors/New Films in 2014, Fish & Cat heralds the emergence of a fresh and original new voice in Iranian cinema.  Shot entirely in a single, black and white bravura camera take, writer-director Shahram Mokri’s second feature plays mind-bending games with time and place while a pair of potential serial killer cannibals stalk a group of camping students at a lake.  Thoroughly creepy, but never (really) gory, Fish & Cat reveals an absurdist, apocalyptic edge in the end that suggests more the influence of Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr, than American horror films.
Kanoon Iran Novin.  Producer: Sepehr Seifi.  Director: Shahram Mokri.  Screenwriter: Shahram Mokri.  Cinematography: Mahmoud Kalari.  Cast: Babak Karimi, Saeed Ebrahimifar, Siavash Cheraghipoor, Mohammad Berahmani, Faraz Modiri.  DCP, b/w, in Persian with English subtitles, 134 min.  In-person: Sharam Mokri.


Floating Weeds (1959), 119 mins.
In 1959, Yasujiro Ozu remade his 1934 silent classic A Story of Floating Weeds in color with the celebrated cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (Rashomon, Ugetsu). Setting his later version in a seaside location, Ozu otherwise preserves the details of his elegantly simple plot wherein an aging actor returns to a small town with his troupe and reunities with his former lover and illegitimate son, a scenario that enrages his current mistress and results in heartbreak for all. Together, the films offer a unique glimpse into the evolution of one of cinema’s greatest directors. A Story of Floating Weeds reveals Ozu in the midst of developing his mode of expression; Floating Weeds reveals his distinct style at its pinnacle. In each, the director captures the joy and sadness in everyday life.


FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI
“An emotionally shattering masterpiece... Flowers of Shanghai is one of the most sublimely beautiful films I’ve ever seen, and one of the most unbearably sad.” – Manohla Dargis
The breathtaking cinema of Hou Hsiao-Hsien, the leading figure of the Taiwanese new Wave, is the subject of a retrospective that spans more than three decades. As one of the participating venues, REDCAT shows a new 35mm print of Hou’s richly textured masterpiece Flowers of Shanghai (Haishanghua, 1998, 125 min.). An heir to the great modernist legacy—with its use of elegantly staged long takes, performances by many non-professional actors, and a radically elliptical mode of storytelling—Hou has created a body of work that has opened up exciting new horizons for the medium.


GANGS OF WASSEYPUR
2012, Cinelicious Pics, 320 min, India, Dir: Anurag Kashyap
Inspired by the real-life exploits of local gangs in coal-rich eastern India, this bloody crime saga follows the rival Khan and Singh crime families across three generations with an ambition that recalls THE GODFATHER and ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. The tumultuous growth of modern India can be seen through the clans’ battles for supremacy. The ferociously intense GANGS lifts the country’s cinema to a new level, with rapturous response at the Sundance, Toronto and Cannes film festivals. “Puts Tarantino in a corner with its cool command of cinematically inspired and referenced violence, ironic characters and breathless pace.” - Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter. In Hindi with English subtitles. Food truck at intermission. Introduction by executive producer Adi Shankar.


GLEN AND RANDA (1971, Dir: Jim McBride)
Twenty years after The Bomb, Glenn (Steven Curry) and Randa (Shelley Plimpton, mother of Martha) wander across a post-apocalyptic, unremembered America in search of an imagined Western city. They are spurred on by a run-in with a junk-selling magician, who shows them an old map of Idaho and a Wonder Woman comic book set in a city where people fly. Along with McBride and Lorenzo Hart, cult novelist Rudolph Wurlitzer wrote the screenplay. Jonathan Rosenbaum writes: “Glen and Randa pays nostalgic tribute to the sort of junk and gratuitous rituals that fill up civilizations and living rooms; but unlike them, it examines these emblems at the point of extinction.”


GOODBYE, SOUTH, GOODBYE
NAN GUO ZAI JIAN, NAN GUO
1996, 112 min, Taiwan/Japan, Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
This look at aimless young adults on the fringe of Taiwan’s underworld was named one of the best films of the 1990s by Cahiers du cinéma. A pop-up gambling den is the latest venture for Gao (Jack Kao) and his friends, whose get-rich-quick schemes eventually bump up against the established criminal order. The fast times and bleak futures of a lost generation are occasionally offset here by moments of transcendence thanks to some kinetic visual sequences and the pulsing soundtrack by costar Lim Giong. In Mandarin and Taiwanese with English subtitles.


Good Men, Good Women  (Taiwan, 1995)
Hao nan hao nu
In this moving and formally rigorous historical epic, director Hou Hsiao-hsien pays tribute to those individuals who resisted Chiang Kai-Shek's martial law in the "White Terror" of the 1950s.  Dramatizing the making of a film about one such leader, he simultaneously details the anxieties of the actress who will play her, implicitly lamenting the anomie and alienation that have filled the gap left by men and women of conviction. 
Producer: Ichiyama Shozo, Mizuno Kastuhiro, Ben Hsieh, His Hsiang, Okuyama Kazuyoshi, Michael Yang.  Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien.  Screenwriter: Chu Tien-wen.  Inspired by Lan Po-Chou's Song of the Covered Wagon.  Cinematography: Chen Huai-en.  Editor: Liao Ching-sung.  Cast: Annie Shizuka Inoh, Lim Giong, Jack Kao, Vicky Wei, His Hsiang.  35mm, color, in Mandarin, Taiwanese, Cantonese and Japanese with English subtitles, 108 min.


Good Morning (1959), 93 mins.
Ozu’s hilarious Technicolor reworking of his silent I Was Born, But . . . , Good Morning (Ohayô) is the story of two young boys in suburban Tokyo who take a vow of silence after their parents refuse to buy them a television set. Shot from the perspective of the petulant brothers, Good Morning is an enchantingly satirical portrait of family life that gives rise to gags about romance, gossip, and the consumerism of modern Japan.


THE GRIM GAME (1919)
The second of master escape artist and magician Harry Houdini’s five silent films, and the first of two made for Paramount, has long been unavailable to the public as Paramount only had one five-minute sequence featuring a mid-air plane collision. Thanks to a print held by longtime Houdini fan Larry Weeks, however, Festival audiences can catch the world premiere restoration of the complete film. Originally titled Circumstantial Evidence, THE GRIM GAME casts Houdini as a newspaper reporter who fakes his uncle’s murder so he can be convicted of it, only to have villains kill the man and kidnap the reporter’s news hen fiancée. Of course, it’s all a pretext for a series of daredevil escapes, from Houdini’s breaking out of prison to his getting out of a straitjacket suspended from the top of a skyscraper. The plane crash was an accident during filming that the producers decided to incorporate within the plot. Fortunately, both flyers were able to get their planes under control and land safely. At the picture’s premiere, Houdini offered a $1,000 reward to anybody who could prove the collision had been faked. He also claimed to have been flying one of the planes, something studio records disprove. In fact, all of the shots of him mid-air are clearly studio shots cut into the real aerial footage. This screening will feature a World Premiere original score composed and conducted by Brane Živkovic. (d. Irvin Willat, 71 m) World premiere restoration presented by Turner Classic Movies


HEAT LIGHTNING
1934, Warner Bros., 63 min. Dir. Mervyn LeRoy.
A startling, existential pre-Code gem with a feminist slant, about two sisters (the brilliant Ann Dvorak and Aline MacMahon) who run a Mojave Desert filling station/tourist stop and become trapped by their past and a pair of gunmen (Preston Foster and Lyle Talbot) on the lam. This fast-paced, noir-stained predecessor to THE PETRIFIED FOREST was adapted from a George Abbott play and still packs a wallop. With Glenda Farrell, Frank McHugh and Ruth Donnelly.


HEAVY TRAFFIC
1973, Park Circus/MGM, 77 min, USA, Dir: Ralph Bakshi
The roaring follow-up to FRITZ THE CAT, HEAVY TRAFFIC offers up another highly personalized view of urban America, this time about Michael, a down-and-out cartoonist drowning in the sounds of the city around him - pimps, pushers, provocateurs and more.  Discussion between films with director Ralph Bakshi, including a clip from his new film "Last Days of Coney Island."


THE HIDDEN ROOM
OBSESSION
1949, Eagle-Lion Films, 96 min, UK, Dir: Edward Dmytryk
British psychologist Clive Riordan (Robert Newton), fed up with his wife’s philandering, makes her latest lover disappear in a deviously devised “perfect crime.” Made in England by the blacklisted Edward Dmytryk, THE HIDDEN ROOM is an unjustly neglected masterpiece, packed with wit and suspense, anchored by Robert Newton’s brilliant and subtle performance as the vengeful cuckold. Costarring Sally Gray and Phil Brown.


I'm Not Angry  (Iran, 2014)
Asabani nistam!
The title of director Reza Dormishian’s second feature echoes the prescribed mantra given to Navid (Mohammadzadeh) by his psychiatrist (along with antidepressants) to recite when events feel overwhelmed.  For Navid, a university student expelled for political activity, however, his explosive rage has deeper sources.  Jarring in tone and visually arresting, I’m Not Angry captures the seething frustrations of a generation with a blunt frankness that led to its being pulled from competition at the Fajr Film Festival.
Producer: Reza Dormishian.  Director: Reza Dormishian.  Screenwriter: Reza Dormishian.  Cinematography: Ali Azhari. Editor: Haydeh Safiyari.  Cast: Baran Kosari, Navid Mohammadzadeh, Reza Behoudi, Misagh Zare, Bahram Afshari.  DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 110 min.


JANE B. FOR AGNÈS V.
1988, Cinelicious Pics, 97 min, France, Dir: Agnès Varda
Jane Birkin started as an actress during London’s Swinging ’60s, sang duets with Serge Gainsbourg (whom she married), earned plaudits for humanitarian work … and is the subject of this delightful documentary. Birkin and director Varda are longtime friends, and this film emerges as a portrait of two talented artists who have challenged limitations placed on women in culture and society. In French with English subtitles. Discussion between screenings with director Agnès Varda.


JEOPARDY
1953, Warner Bros., 69 min, USA, Dir: John Sturges
Barbara Stanwyck and Barry Sullivan play a vacationing couple whose fishing trip to Baja turns into a nightmare when the husband is trapped under a rotting pier with the tide rising. Their only hope is a fugitive killer (Ralph Meeker), whose aid comes at a high cost for the terrified, if resourceful, wife. A suspense gem directed and played with all the stops out, especially when Stanwyck and Meeker go toe-to-toe!


JIM MCBRIDE TRIO OF FILMS
MY GIRLFRIEND’S WEDDING (1969); PICTURES FROM LIFE’S OTHER SIDE (1971); MY SON’S WEDDING TO MY SISTER-IN-LAW (2009) all Dir: Jim McBride
A trio of autobiographical films that, together, form an impressionistic (or diagrammatic in the final’s case) portrait of interwoven family. Shot over the course of a single day, My Girlfriend’s Wedding chronicles the green-card marriage of McBride’s then partner, the frank and free-spirited Clarissa, to another man.Pictures from Life’s Other Side follows the couple’s cross-country move out west with Clarissa’s son from a previous relationship in tow, and a new baby on the way. That child, the filmmaker’s son Jesse, marries a member of McBride’s extended family in the final short of the series, a full circle ending to a rich body of work, which elevates the home movie to an indelible realm beyond pure document.


KING OF BEGGARS
The spoilt son of a millionaire finds the love of his life, but she will only accept him if he proves himself as a kung-fu master. He enters and wins the "Kung-Fu Scholar" tournament, little realizing that this victory will lead to him becoming penniless, homeless and sleepy. One day, while sleeping under a tree, he encounters a beggar he helped when he was still rich...  (1992) [101 min.] Directed by Gordon Chan


KUNG-FU MASTER!
LE PETIT AMOUR
1988, Cinelicious Pics, 80 min, France, Dir: Agnès Varda
Nope, French New Wave pioneer Agnès Varda hasn’t come up with a martial arts flick; instead, this is a thought-provoking, poetic and occasionally humorous tale of forbidden love. Jane Birkin stars as Mary-Jane, a divorced mother of two drawn to a 14-year-old schoolmate of her daughter (played by Birkin’s real-life daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg). Varda’s real-life son, Mathieu Demy, plays the boy, graduating from video games (the inspiration for the film’s title) to the complexities of an adult relationship. In French with English subtitles. Discussion following KUNG-FU MASTER! with director Agnès Varda and actor Mathieu Demy.


LADIES IN RETIREMENT
1941, Sony Repertory, 91 min, USA, Dir: Charles Vidor
Ida Lupino scores as a timid housekeeper who becomes enmeshed in murder and madness. Ida tends to an aged actress (Isobel Elsom) and persuades her to take in her two eccentric sisters (Elsa Lanchester and Edith Barrett). All bets are off when a mysterious stranger (future Lupino spouse Louis Hayward) arrives to stir the pot further. There is nothing retiring about this suspenseful Victorian noir, which has been unjustly overlooked and underappreciated.


Lake Los Angeles
Lake Los Angeles will be the third film of Mike Ott's Antelope Valley trilogy, following Littlerock (2010) and Pearblossom Hwy (2012). This time, we follow the story of Francisco, a middle-aged Cuban immigrant working at a holding house, and Cecilia, a 10 year old Mexican girl who ends up there with no family members to fend for her.
When Cecilia ends up on her own, she turns the desert into a fantastical world- creating characters and stories to make the hopelessness of the empty landscape a survivable habitat. ?Through navigating what was supposed to be both Francisco and Cecilia's promise land, they find a common hope in each other while journeying through the hauntingly beautiful and desolate world that is Lake Los Angeles. Running time: 85 minutes. Directed by Mike Ott.


Late Autumn (1960), 128 mins.
The great actress and Ozu regular Setsuko Hara plays a mother gently trying to persuade her daughter to marry in this glowing portrait of family love and conflict—a reworking of Ozu’s 1949 masterpiece Late Spring.


LET US LIVE
1939, Sony Repertory, 68 min. Dir. John Brahm.
Compelling proto-noir concerning a pair of innocent taxi drivers (Henry Fonda and Alan Baxter) railroaded to the death house for a robbery-homicide. An early standout performance by Fonda receives stellar support from costar Maureen O’Sullivan, along with a well-crafted script (by Anthony Veiller and Allen Rivkin), photography (Lucien Ballard) and superior direction by noir maestro John Brahm.


LITTLE FEET
Dip your toes in silky monochrome, then submerge to consider the aqueous essence of ghosts (or goldfish) in a brand-new jaunt by In The Soup filmmaker Alexandre Rockwell that explores the weird, fragile logic of childhood — the era when you might’ve seen spirits in your bathwater. The far-out musings of Rockwell’s own four- and seven-year-olds are preserved in amber through a series of exuberant improvisations, as they portray neglected siblings who navigate their mother’s death via a slummed-out Echo Park enchanted forest odyssey that trades its trees for a smog-stained sprawl of twisted chainlink, dumpster divers and fixie-mounted street magicians. Thom Andersen’s vision of an under-depicted cinematic Los Angeles comes to mind: a poverty-stricken alter-Southland of “those who walk” and “those who ride the bus,” lovingly enshrined in 16mm short ends immortalizing our faded carnicerías, bleached parking lots and sun-baked roadside chaparral in a glimmering daydream travelogue. Filmmaker Alexandre Rockwell in person (3/27 and 3/28 only) — plus, the show kicks off with Frances Bodomo’s short film Boneshaker, starring Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild)! Little Feet Dir. Alexandre Rockwell, 2013, DCP, 60 min. Boneshaker Dir. Frances Bodomo, 2013, DCP, 12 min.


LOST SOUL: THE DOOMED JOURNEY OF RICHARD STANLEY'S ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU
The outlandish rumors behind the making of the 1996 sci-fi/horror mish-mosh The Island of Dr. Moreau are the stuff of legend: a brilliant Young Turk director who, after being fired at the end of the first day of shooting, clandestinely sneaking back onto the set disguised as a “mutant animal” extra; actress Fairuza Balk fleeing across Australia to try and escape the scene; Marlon Brando insisting on appearing in whiteface and demanding that the world’s tiniest living human become his co-star; Val Kilmer living up to the hype of his (ahem) reputation. David Gregory’s new doc reveals a true story far more nutz than those mostly-true rumors, and shows how gifted filmmaker Richard Stanley’s vision was blown to pieces by an unreal conflagration of epically bad decisions, torrential weather, giant battling egos, clueless studio suits and bizarre group behavior — to become one of the most magnificently derailed production tales in Hollywood history. A Cinefamily staff favorite, this is a must-see for all fans of behind-the-scenes movie madness. Dir. David Gregory, 2014, DCP, 97 min.


Melbourne  (Iran, 2014)
Writer-director Nima Javidi’s remarkable debut feature opens as a young couple in Tehran prepares for an imminent trip abroad.  A patient accumulation of familiar detail—the hurried list checking, the small annoyances of packing—hints at their hopeful expectations for the future, which would seem to include the baby sleeping in their back bedroom.  Then everything turns upside down.  Before we know it, Javidi plunges us into one the most nerve-wracking, nail-biting, what-would-you-do ethical thrillers in recent memory.  It’s a ride you don’t want to miss.  
Inan Independents.  Producer: Javad Norouzbeigi.  Director: Nima Javidi.  Screenwriter: Nima Javidi.  Cinematography: Hooman Behmanesh.  Editor: Sepideh Adovahab.  Cast: Payman Maadi, Negar Javaherian, Mani Haghighi, Shirin Yazdanbaksh, Elham Korda.  DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles,  91 min.


The Milky Way  (1936)
Although The Milky Way, adapted from the successful 1934 Broadway play of the same name, was originally intended as a Jack Oakie vehicle, the role of timid, bespectacled Burliegh Sullivan ended up being a pitch-perfect character for Harold Lloyd, who had already successfully transitioned to sound films.  Utilizing all of Lloyd’s silent era strengths for madcap physical comedy and pratfalls, this very funny and breezy screwball comedy shines with the star’s performance as a mild-mannered milkman who is mistakenly identified as a boxing champion.
When it debuted in 1936, The New York Times stated, “We expected a one-man show; The Milky Way is nearer a three-ring circus.”  Helmed by the talented Leo McCarey, this film is a fine example of the director’s tremendous winning streak of critically acclaimed and financially successful features throughout the 1930s, each noted for their outstanding ensemble work.  In the end, it is ringmaster McCarey and his fine supporting cast that elevate this gem to comedic perfection.  Wisecracking, gum-smacking Adolphe Menjou as the insomniac fight manager, Helen Mack as the feisty sister, the delightful Verree Teasdale who teaches our hero to box in waltz-time, and sparring partner Lionel Stander are just several of the supporting players that easily contribute to the film’s unwavering amusement.  Lionel Stander got to reprise his role in the 1946 Samuel Goldwyn remake of this film titled The Kid From Brooklyn, starring Danny Kaye.
Hollywood anecdotes have long indicated that producer Goldwyn had the original negative and almost all existing prints of The Milky Way destroyed when he bought the rights to remake the film.  Thankfully, Harold Lloyd’s 35mm safety dupe negative made from his original nitrate print was vaulted at the Archive many decades ago and was the source of this photochemical preservation.  —Todd Wiener
Director: Leo McCarey.  Production: Paramount Productions, Inc.  Distribution: Paramount Productions, Inc.  Producer: E. Lloyd Sheldon.  Screenwriters: Grover Jones, Richard Connell, Frank Butler.  Based on the play The Milky Way by Lynn Root and Harry Clork.  Cinematographer: Alfred Gilks.  Art Direction: Hans Dreier, Bernard Herzbrun. Editor: LeRoy Stone.  Cast: Harold Lloyd, Adolphe Menjou, Verree Teasdale, Helen Mack, William Gargan.  35mm, b/w, 85 min. Restored from a 35mm acetate composite dupe negative and a 35mm acetate rerecorded track negative.


MILLENNIUM MAMBO
QIAN XI MAN PO
2001, 119 min, Taiwan/France, Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
At the center of this portrait of Taipei night life is Vicky (Shu Qi), a party girl stuck in a rut of self-destructive thrills and an on-again, off-again relationship with her no-good boyfriend (Tuan Chun-hao). She narrates the events in hindsight from ten years after their occurrence, giving poignancy to pretty but vacant lives adrift in a new millennium. With Jack Kao as Vicky’s gangster-protector. In Mandarin and Japanese with English subtitles.


My Name is Negahdar Jamali and I Make Westerns  (Iran, 2013)
Utterly unexpected and thoroughly charming, director Kamran Heidari’s debut documentary about an amateur filmmaker in southwestern Iran explodes preconceived notions and illuminates the universal power of popular culture.  Since he was a teen, Negahdar Jamali has obsessively made low-budget westerns modeled on his idols John Ford and Sergio Leone in the arid plains surrounding his hometown of Shiraz.  Ignored by the official film ministry and harangued by his long-suffering wife, Jamali perseveres with a dreamer’s passion.
Producer: Merdad Monavarian.  Director: Kamran Heidari.  Cinematography: Kamran Heidari.  Editor: Bahman Kiarostami.  Cast: Negahdar Jamali.  DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 65 min. In-person: Kamran Heidari.


Nanook of the North
US, 1922, 79 min., B&W, Digital Projection
Directed by Robert Flaherty
Silent with score by Timothy Brock
In this ground-breaking work, Flaherty essentially originated the common form of documentary in telling the tale of Nanook and Nyla - glimpses into the life of a protagonist as he faces challenges in nature.
PRECEDED BY:
The Idea of North
US, 1995, 14 min., B&W, 16mm Projection
Directed by Rebecca Baron
"In the guise of chronicling the final moments of three polar explorers marooned on an ice floe a century ago, Baron's film investigates the limitations of images and other forms of record as a means of knowing the past and the paradoxical interplay of film time, historical time, real time and the fixed moment of the photograph. Marrying matter-of-fact voiceover and allusive sound fragments, evidence and illustration, in Baron’s words, "meaning is set adrift"."--New York Film Festival, 1997, Views from the Avant-Garde program notes


NED RIFLE
Hal Hartley’s cinematic universe — born out of the scrappy ‘80s underground, flourishing brightly in the ‘90s Golden Age of American Indies and blooming even further onto the modern landscape — is dense with deadpan poetics, insouciant attitude and a nicotine-stained East Coast whimsy that will live forever. As we geared up for Ned Rifle, Hal’s latest, we realized it absolutely was the time to bring his previous works to the Cinefamily screen. Join Hal as he regales us with tales from across his entire career, followed by the L.A. premiere of Ned Rifle, and a Q&A with co-stars Aubrey Plaza & James Urbaniak! (4/3 ONLY)
Kickstarter-funded and cast from Hartley’s career-spanning pool of favorite faces, NED RIFLE is a truly independent cinema, tailor-made on a level that big studio flicks will still never match. The story beginning with Henry Fool (starring Thomas Jay Ryan) and continuing with Fay Grim (starring Parker Posey) concludes with the two namesakes’ son in the driver’s seat. Liam Aiken plays the soft-spoken teenaged holy warrior on a totally un-ironic mission to kill his father, who may or may not be an extremely well-educated agent of Satan. Along for the ride is Parks & Rec’s Aubrey Plaza, who, totally in line with Hartley’s ongoing vision, beautifully plays up an unsettling ability to deliver a line with total sincerity, laced with arsenic sarcasm. Dir. Hal Hartley, 2014, DCP, 85 min.


THE NINTH GUEST
1934, Sony Repertory, 65 min. Dir. Roy William Neill.
A spine-tingling “locked-room” mystery about eight guests invited to spend a night in a penthouse apartment. The trapped ensemble is compelled by a disembodied host to deduce the identity of the ninth guest by morning … or else! Stylishly directed by the underrated Roy Neill (THE BLACK ROOM, THE SCARLET CLAW), this rare horror-mystery stars Donald Cook, Genevieve Tobin, Vince Barnett and Samuel S. Hinds. NOT ON DVD.


NO ABRAS NUNCA ESA PUERTA and SI MUERO ANTES DE DESPERTAR
NEVER OPEN THAT DOOR and IF I SHOULD DIE BEFORE I WAKE
1952, Argentine Estudios San Miguel, 151 min, Argentina, Dir: Carlos Hugo Christensen
Be here for the U.S. premiere of this stunning anthology film adapted from the short stories of noir master Cornell Woolrich. Originally conceived by its makers as a single film, the titles were released separately. Tonight marks the first time they have been screened in a single, unified presentation, in newly struck prints funded by the Film Noir Foundation, complete with - for the first time ever - English subtitles. In Spanish with English subtitles. NOT ON DVD.


NOTHING LASTS FOREVER (1984)
Saturday Night Live has produced a number of cinematic offshoots, from hits like The Blues Brothers (1980) and Wayne’s World (1992) to unjustly neglected pictures like Stuart Saves His Family (1995). Perhaps one of the least seen films to emerge from that hotbed of satire and cultural parody is this 1984 sci-fi comedy written and directed by series writer Tom Schiller. Zach Galligan stars as an aspiring artist in a futuristic New York run by the Port Authority. When he fails a drawing test, he’s forced to direct traffic in Holland Tunnel, which puts him in touch with a group of homeless people who secretly rule the world. To flesh out the story, Schiller managed to secure a number of inspired celebrity cameos from fellow SNL-ers Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, comics Imogene Coca and Mort Sahl and singer Eddie Fisher. The picture even marked the on-screen debut of Anita Ellis, a big band singer best known for dubbing Hollywood stars like Rita Hayworth and Jeanne Crain. MGM was gung ho for the film until it tested poorly in previews. At that point, they pulled it from their schedule, even ignoring two invitations to screen it at the Cannes Film Festival. It played on television in a few European countries and made its U.S. television debut earlier this year as part of the TCM Underground franchise. (d. Tom Schiller, 82m, 35mm)


The Outer Limits: I, Robot
(1964, Park Circus, 51 min. Dir. Leon Benson). A robot wrongly accused of killing its creator is tried for murder, as defense attorney Howard da Silva and newspaper reporter Leonard Nimoy (who also would appear in the episode’s 1995 remake) struggle to uncover the truth. Adapted from Amazing Stories magazine.


The Outer Limits: Production and Decay of Strange Particles
(1964, Park Circus, 51 min. Dir. Leslie Stevens). Leonard Nimoy is one of a team of physicists whose experiments on subatomic particles trigger a chain reaction that takes control of the scientists one by one, and threatens to engulf the world.


The Ox-Bow Incident  (1943)
Director William A. Wellman used a restrained narrative style and classical visual composition to create this starkly realistic take on vigilante justice.  Two cowboy drifters witness a lynching of innocent travelers in cattle country.  Henry Fonda's performance as an outsider of humble origins responding to injustice recalls his young Mr. Lincoln and Tom Joad [The Grapes of Wrath (1940)].  The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won acclaim worldwide, although initial box office in the U.S. was slow.  A re-release the following year was more successful.
Twentieth Century Fox.  Producer: Lamar Trotti.  Director: William A. Wellman.  Screenwriter: Lamar Trotti.  Based on the novel by Walter Van Tilburg.  Cinematography: Arthur C. Miller.  Editor: Allen McNeil.  Cast: Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Mary Beth Hughes, Anthony Quinn, Harry Morgan.  35mm, b/w, 75 min.


PERFUMED NIGHTMARE
"One of the most original and poetic works of cinema made anywhere in the seventies." – Werner Herzog
Filipino director Kidlat Tahimik reprises his famous semi- autobiographical fable Perfumed Nightmare (1977, 93 min.), a work of rare brilliance. Raised in “a cocoon of American dreams,” the young Kidlat, a bus driver in a town near Manila, dispenses with documentary convention and himself assumes the role of protagonist on a journey of self-discovery. As president of the local Werner von Braun fan club, Kidlat dreams of Cape Canaveral and American technological prowess, but grows disenchanted with Western cultural colonialism as he travels from the countryside to France and Germany. Staged and improvised accounts of Kidlat’s seriocomic experiences commingle with newsreels of politicians, footage of puberty rituals, and lyrical interludes extolling the beauty of the Philippine landscape— creating an astonishingly original cinematic texture. In person: Kidlat Tahimik


Playhouse 90: "Alas, Babylon"
CBS, 4/3/60
Airing on primetime network television in the spring of 1960, a full two years before the Cuban missile crisis confronted the world with the dire possibility of a catastrophic thermonuclear war, CBS’s Playhouse 90 presentation of “Alas, Babylon” provided a reported audience of 24 million viewers with a shockingly realistic dramatization of the potential horrors of the atomic age.  Originally announced as the premiere installment of Playhouse 90’s opening season in 1959, the production was abruptly postponed, initially without formal explanation by CBS.  While the network reported weeks later that the withdrawal was to accommodate the availability of actor Charlton Heston as a possible a lead in the production, the New York Times speculated that the delay of the broadcast was to avoid any negative repercussions that might impact a (then pending) visit to the United States by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
Adapted by prolific Tony Award-winning, television writer David Shaw (Redhead) from the best-selling novel of the same name by author Pat Frank (nom de plume of journalist, Harry Hart Frank) the Playhouse 90 teleplay of “Alas, Babylon” unflinchingly portrays the tragic aftermath of a major nuclear conflict with the U.S.S.R, including scenes featuring a child being rendered blind from a violent bomb flash and a character severely disfigured by radiation burns.  Narrated in flashback with solemn resignation by noir veteran Dana Andrews, who announces in the play’s first lines that he is already dead (à la Sunset Boulevard), the controversial drama was both lauded and criticized for its grim, daringly honest exploration of a scenario in which “92 percent of the world’s people were killed.”  While the New York Times praised the presentation’s “remarkably convincing” performances by an all-star cast including Don Murray, Barbara Rush, and Rita Moreno, the paper decried the teleplay’s “moral cloaked in horror” stating that it was “impossible to comprehend what good purpose could be served by… [the] terror and hysteria depicted in the program.”  Variety disagreed, proclaiming the broadcast as “powerful propaganda for peace.”  —Mark Quigley. Director: Robert Stevens.  A CBS Television Network Production.  Producer: Peter Kortner.  Screenwriter: David Shaw.  Based on the novel Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank.  Cast: Don Murray, Barbara Rush, Kim Hunter, Rita Moreno, Dana Andrews.  DigiBeta, b/w, 90 min. Preserved from the original master 2".


Private Property  (1960)
Produced on a minuscule budget reportedly just below $60,000, Leslie Stevens’ controversial directorial debut Private Property was hailed by Variety as a “possible forerunner of an American ‘new wave’ movement” and was equally condemned by the National Catholic Legion of Decency for its exploration of seduction, rape and latent homosexuality.  Due to the film’s taboo subject matter, the Production Code Administration denied the work a code seal, making Private Property the first U.S. feature to be released without MPAA approval since Otto Preminger’s stark exploration of heroin addiction, The Man with the Golden Arm, in 1955.  Lack of Code approval, however, which kept major distributors from picking-up and widely releasing Private Property, didn’t prevent the disquieting independent film from eventually grossing over $2 million in box office receipts and enjoying successful art house runs across Europe.
Framed by Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Ted McCord’s gritty noir shadows as juxtaposed against a tony, sunbathed Beverly Hills location (in reality, Leslie Stevens’ own home), Private Property showcases a trio of edgy, superbly understated Method-esque performances by leads Kate Manx (in her screen debut), Corey Allen (Rebel Without a Cause, 1955), and Warren Oates (Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, 1974).  As a vulnerable, affluent young woman driven to psychological distress by a sexless marriage, and further menaced by a pair of sociopathic drifters, Manx conveys a muted, permeating melancholy that effectively serves to anchor the drama’s purposeful excesses of Freudian symbolism.
Married prior to the making of Private Property in 1958, Manx and Stevens would divorce in 1964, with the actress tragically dying later that year from a reported overdose of sleeping pills.  Stevens continued to successfully work in film and television into the 1990s, and is best-remembered for creating and writing and directing episodes of the cult-classic science fiction television series, The Outer Limits (1963-1965).  —Mark Quigley
Director: Leslie Stevens.  Production: Kana Productions, Inc., Daystar Productions.  Distribution: Citation Films, Inc.  Producer: Stanley Colbert.  Screenwriter: Leslie Stevens.  Cinematographer: Ted McCord.  Editor: Jerry Young.  Music: Alex Compinksy.  Cast: Corey Allen, Warren Oates, Kate Manx, Robert Wark, Jerome Cowan.  35mm, b/w, 79 min. Restored from a 35mm acetate composite dupe negative, a 35mm acetate print and a 35mm acetate track negative. 


PROJECT SHIRLEY: SHORT FILMS BY SHIRLEY CLARKE
“Dancer, bride, runaway wife, radical filmmaker and pioneer — Shirley Clarke is one of the great undertold stories of American independent cinema.” — Manohla Dargis, New York Times Filmforum is delighted to host the forces behind Milestone Films tonight as we present some of Shirley Clarke’s wonderful short films, from her earliest dance films, Dance in The Sun and Bullfight through the avant-garde classic Bridges-Go-Round, to her 1970s video experiments in dance and drama such as Trans and Tongues. Dennis Doros and Amy Heller of Milestone Films in person!


RAVISHED ARMENIA
The 1919 silent film Ravished Armenia tells the incredible story of Aurora Mardiganian, an Armenian girl caught up in the 1915 Armenian Genocide. After witnessing the murder of her family, Aurora was kidnapped, forced to march over fourteen hundred miles, and sold into slavery before finally escaping to Europe and then the U.S.. Her story was the basis for a hugely popular book and film, starring Aurora herself, which was seen by thousands of people around the world. Filmmaker Carla Garapedian, from the Armenian Film Foundation, and Anthony Slide, author of Ravished Armenia and the Story of Aurora Mardiganian and former film historian of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, bring Aurora’s story to life with rare film clips and photos.


REIGN OF TERROR (1949)
With shadowy corners, unsettling camera angles, rampant corruption and an icy femme fatale this neglected classic belies its historical setting to emerge as a kind of French Revolution noir. The source of its visual interest is the teamwork of two film noir masters, director Anthony Mann and cinematographer John Alton, in the third of their five films together. They had previously collaborated on the classic suspense films T-Men (1947) and Raw Deal (1948), so turning 18th-century Paris into a collection of mean streets came naturally to them. Some of the dark shadows were a matter of necessity. Producer Walter Wanger (uncredited on the film) only allocated a small budget to this fictionalized tale of a heroic Frenchman, Charles D’Aubigny (Robert Cummings), working with former love Arlene Dahl to end Robespierre’s (Richard Basehart) dreams of dictatorship. Wanger didn’t stint on the cast—including great character actors like Arnold Moss, Norman Lloyd (who also narrates) and Beulah Bondi—or the writing team of Philip Yordan and Aeneas MacKenzie. But he forced Mann to shoot on sets leftover from Joan of Arc (1948) and then kept the film on the shelf until headlines about a Communist “reign of terror” struck him as free advertising. The film made a big impression on MGM head of production Dore Schary, who hired Mann and Alton, marking their move from B-movies to top product. (d. Anthony Mann, 89m, 35mm)


RETURN OF THE DREAM MACHINE: HAND CRANKED PROJECTOR SHOW (1902-1913)
Experience the movies like the first audiences did, with hand-cranked projection of 35mm film prints featuring icons from cinema’s earliest years, including a color-tinted version of George Méliès’ A TRIP TO THE MOON (1902), the Edison Company’s THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (1903), D.W. Griffith’s A CORNER IN WHEAT (1909) and Lois Weber’s splitscreen thriller SUSPENSE (1913). This collection is presented by Randy Haberkamp of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and Joe Rinaudo, who will operate his 1909 hand-crank power’s Model 6 cameragraph motion picture machine assisted by Gary Gibson.  Pre-show music from the era will be played by Galen Wilkes on a 1908 Edison Phonograph and Michael Mortilla will provide live accompaniment to the films. (d. various, 105m, 35mm)


RIDE THE PINK HORSE
1947, Universal, 101 min, USA, Dir: Robert Montgomery
In this adaptation of the novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, a surly vet (director/actor Robert Montgomery) ventures into a New Mexico resort town during fiesta to settle a score with a vacationing mobster. A strange, oddly paced film that plays as much like a Japanese samurai movie as film noir. With Thomas Gomez, Wanda Hendrix and Andrea King.


RIVER OF FUNDAMENT
Written and directed by Matthew Barney
Music composed and directed by Jonathan Bepler
Produced by Matthew Barney and Laurenz Foundation
A radical reinvention of Norman Mailer’s novel Ancient Evenings, this epic film is the latest work by world-renowned art visionary Matthew Barney in collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler.
Barney and Bepler fuse narrative cinema, live performance, sculpture and opera, reconstructing Mailer’s hypersexual story of Egyptian gods and the seven stages of death alongside the rise and fall of the American car industry. Alluring, authentic and intense, this vast, multidimensional experience is interspersed with remarkable live performances filmed over six years. The film’s cast includes Paul Giamatti, Elaine Stritch, Aimee Mullins, Milford Graves and Maggie Gyllenhaal.


SAFE IN HELL
1931, Warner Bros., 73 min. Dir. William A. Wellman. Trailer
Only Darryl F. Zanuck and Wild Bill Wellman could have conjured up this lurid pre-Code thriller. New Orleans prostitute Dorothy MacKaill is accused of murdering the pimp who turned her out. To avoid extradition, she is smuggled to a wayward Caribbean isle by her boyfriend (Donald Cook) and ends up being targeted as the singular object of lust by a group of international criminals and assorted lowlifes inhabiting a sleazy seaside hotel.


SHOGUN ASSASSIN
To celebrate Light in the Attic’s brand-new Record Store Day release of the classic Shogun Assassin soundtrack, we’re unleashing the most brutally badass Japanese hero to ever paint the screen red. Seized by the police during the U.K.’s notorious "Video Nasty" scare, the film remains one of the most deliriously entertaining and action-packed exploitation flicks of all time, slicing through pop culture and influencing everything from GZA's Liquid Swords album to Big Trouble in Little China and Kill Bill. This ballet of bloodied bodies and slashed limbs is the Americanized condensation of the legendary Lone Wolf and Cub series, and it distills all the anger, energy and violence of the world's most famous samurai into a frenzied grindhouse melee with English dubbing (featuring Sandra Bernhard!) and an added heavy synthesizer score by Paul Revere and the Raiders singer Mark Lindsay. Tomisaburo Wakayama (Zatoichi, The Bad News Bears Go to Japan) stars as Ogami Itto, traveling the countryside with his young son and a deadly, tricked-out cart on a blood-thirsty mission of vengeance against the Shogun that murdered his wife. Essential viewing. Dirs. Robert Houston & David Weisman, 1980, 35mm, 85 min.


SHREDDER ORPHEUS
The next great Neon No-Wave rediscovery is here, and it f’ing shreds! Shredder Orpheus is a skatepunk nightmare dialed to eleven, a heroic cult vision of hallucinatory ambition — along with a heavy dose of forbidden-zone poetry, courtesy of the late, great Steven Jesse Bernstein: the Bukowski of the ‘80s Pacific Northwest. When the Devil’s “Euthanasia Broadcast Network” unleashes an evil television signal that corrupts and kills its viewers, only rock star Orpheus (writer/director Robert McGinley) and his band of Shredders can penetrate the underworld and free the airwaves. Armed with his trusty tricked-out deck and a futuristic Hendrix-designed guitar, our hero must battle legions of gothed-out, post-apocalyptic zonkers to get to the truth. Don’t miss your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see this unique blend of sick skateboarding, sci-fi social commentary, slashin’ songs, spaced-out comedy and ultra-wild décor — with the filmmaker behind it all IN PERSON to discuss! Dir. Robert McGinley, 1989, 35mm, 88 min.


THE SLEEPING TIGER
1954, Astor Pictures, 89 min, Dir: Joseph Losey
Psychologist Clive Esmond (Alexander Knox) boards a criminal youth (Dirk Bogarde) in his home, in order to test his methods of behavior modification through psychoanalysis. Just wait until the doctor’s wife (Alexis Smith) gets her hands on the young stud. Losey’s first British-made film is an early example of what would become his métier - characters engaged in wicked sex and class warfare.


Spring Night, Summer Night  (1967)
Director J.L. Anderson’s remarkable first—and only—feature, Spring Night, Summer Night has been claiming the attentions of a growing number of critics as it has gradually emerged from a decades-long obscurity following screenings, in recent years, at the Museum of Modern Art and the Rural Route Film Festival.  This stunning new restoration promises to bring the film an even wider audience and will no doubt be seen as one of the great re-discoveries of this year’s UCLA Festival of Preservation.
Shot on location in rural southeastern Ohio, its rolling hills shimmering in eddies of black-and-white grain, accentuated by the film’s low-key lighting, Spring Night brings an earthy poetry to its death trap portrait of small town America.  In the clamor at the family dinner table, Carl (Ted Heimerdinger) and Jessie (Larue Hall), the eldest children in an extended brood, see the grinding trajectory of their lives laid out: from carefree youth to embittered adulthood to forgotten old age.  Both, secretly, hungering for escape, they rebel against the ties that bind them to this place and to each other through an illicit act of love that brings both tender and traumatic consequences.  Through these young ill-fated lovers and the hardscrabble world around them, Anderson captures in almost ethnographic detail the postwar bust of the Appalachians where regrets and recriminations are soaked in Blatz and fuel a pernicious rumor mill.  This last, seemingly the town’s last booming industry, ironically offers Carl and Jessie a glimmer of hope in their impossible situation (they may not actually be related).
The galvanizing effect of Anderson’s lone directing credit comes not only from the power of his images and themes, but also from the mere fact of its existence.  Writing in Sight & Sound, Archive senior preservationist Ross Lipman situates Spring Night along with Kent MacKenzie’s The Exiles (1961), Barbara Loden’s Wanda (1970), Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1979), and Billy Woodberry’s Bless Their Little Hearts (1984) to expand what he describes as “an unknown and completely accidental—but surprisingly coherent—body of American neo-realism.”  Village Voice, on the other hand, declared it “the missing link between Shadows and The Last Picture Show.”  Dropped from the line-up of the 1968 New York Film Festival in favor of John Cassavetes’ Faces and with no other options for distribution, the film was picked up by exploitation distributor Joseph Brenner who tacked on some nude scenes and released a bastardized version under the title Miss Jessica is Pregnant.  The restored version screening here is Anderson’s original cut, ready to take its place, finally, among the pantheon of American independent cinema.  —Paul Malcolm
Production: Triskele Limited.  Producer: Franklin Miller, J.L. Anderson.  Director:  J.L. Anderson.  Screenwriter: Doug Rapp, Franklin Miller, J.L. Anderson.  Cinematographers: David Prince, Brian Blauser, Art Stifel.  Editors: J.L. Anderson, Franklin Miller.  Cast: Larue Hall, Ted Heimerdinger, Marjorie Johnson, John Crawford, Betty Ann Parady.  35mm, b/w, 82 min. Restored from a 35mm print and the original 35mm track negative.


A SUMMER AT GRANDPA’S
DONG DONG DE JIA QI
1984, 98 min, Taiwan, Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
The first part of acclaimed director Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s coming-of-age trilogy follows 11-year-old Tung-Tung (Wang Chi-kuang), who travels with his little sister to his grandparent’s country home after his mother is hospitalized. Told from the boy’s perspective, this slice-of-childhood-life is not quite as idyllic as the title suggests; while playtime is never far away for these kids, neither is an adult world with problems just beyond their understanding. Jury Prize winner at the 1985 Locarno Film Festival. In Mandarin and Taiwanese with English subtitles.


SURVIVING DESIRE
Ahhh, if only people really spoke this way, casually weaving philosophy and unmasked declarations of intent with poetic asides about laundry detergent. If you’ve ever wished more movies were built around passages from Dostoyevsky, this one’s your jam. Clocking in at a cool 53 minutes, Hal Hartley’s absurdist graph of dysfunctional love circa 1993 maps a tryst, from the classroom to the bookstore, to the bedroom and then back to the classroom, and finally down into the gutter, between a burnt-out college English professor (Hartley’s longtime male muse Martin Donovan) and his favorite student (Mary B. Ward). She writes her fantasies and accusations into a short story about her self-hating egotist lover, but is she really just writing about herself? Is ignorance the necessary condition of human happiness? Is it wrong to physically harm students because they don’t like the Classics? In this dryly funny, willfully surreal ode to heartbreak, the answers — if there are any — lie in the questions themselves. The afternoon’s program also includes the 1991 Hal Hartley shorts Ambition and Theory of Achievement! Dir. Hal Hartley, 1992, digital presentation, 53 min.


THE SUSPECT
1944, Universal, 85 min, USA, Dir: Robert Siodmak
Timid tobacconist Philip Marshall (Charles Laughton) develops a friendship with a poor young woman (Ella Raines), igniting his wife’s shrewish jealousy. Despite the Edwardian-era decorum, THE SUSPECT is a classic noir - one of Siodmak’s best - featuring Laughton’s memorable portrait of a repressed and lonely man who will do anything to protect the unexpected joy he’s found too late in his life. Costarring Stanley Ridges and Rosalind Ivins.


THE THOUGHTS THAT ONCE WE HAD
Los Angeles Premiere
One of America's foremost practitioners of the essay film returns to REDCAT with a major new work inspired by the writings of Gilles Deleuze on cinema. Andersen's The Thoughts That Once We Had (2014, 108 min.) is a richly layered journey through cinematic history, masterfully edited as it playfully moves across decades and genres, and suffused at every turn by the renowned filmmaker and critic’s lifelong passion for the movies. Andersen’s newly remastered Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) is a modern classic, ranked among the 50 greatest documentaries of all time in Sight & Sound magazine’s critics poll. His other works include The Tony Longo Trilogy (2014), Reconversao (2012), Get Out of The Car (2010), Red Hollywood (1996) and Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (1974). In person: Thom Andersen


A Time to Live and a Time to Die  (Taiwan, 1985)
Tong nian wang shi
A beautifully attenuated observation of the immigrant experience and ephemeral youth, director Hou Hsiao-hsien's semi-autobiographical tale follows teenage Ah-hsiao (like Hou himself, an immigrant from the Chinese mainland) over 20 years during which childhood gives way to reckless adolescent involvement with street gangs, then to the assumption of responsibility within the family.  Delicate and restrained, the film is often cited for its similarity to the austere masterworks of Yasujiro Ozu.
Producer: Lin Teng-fei, Hsu Hsin-chih, Chang Hwa-kun.  Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien.   Screenwriter: Hou Hsiao-hsien.  Cinematography: Mark Lee (Ping-bin).  Editor: Wang Chi-yang.  Cast: Yu An-shun, Tien Feng, Mei Fang, Tang Ju-yun, Hsiao Ai, Hsin Shu-fen.  35mm, color, in Mandarin with English subtitles, 136 min.


Tokyo Story (1953), 137 mins.
A profoundly stirring evocation of elemental humanity and universal heartbreak,Tokyo Story is the crowning achievement of the unparalleled Yasujiro Ozu. The film, which follows an aging couple’s journey to visit their grown children in bustling postwar Tokyo, surveys the rich and complex world of family life with the director’s customary delicacy and incisive perspective on social mores. Featuring lovely performances from Ozu regulars Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara, Tokyo Story plumbs and deepens the director’s recurring theme of generational conflict, creating what is without question one of cinema’s mightiest masterpieces.


Tokyo Twilight (1957), 141 mins.
One of Ozu’s most piercing portraits of family strife, Tokyo Twilight follows the parallel paths of two sisters contending with an absent mother, unwanted pregnancy, and marital discord.


TOO LATE FOR TEARS (1949)
Lizabeth Scott shows why she was one of the most popular femmes fatales of the post-war years in this delightfully duplicitous suburban film noir. She stars as a seemingly normal woman whose life changes when she and her husband (Arthur Kennedy) accidentally discover a suitcase full of stolen loot. He wants to turn it in to the police but she convinces him to stash it at Union Station until she can change his mind. When a grifter (Dan Duryea) comes looking for the cash, things turn complicated— and homicidal. Scott was no stranger to film noir, she had even worked previously with director Byron Haskin on I Walk Alone (1948) with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. Her sultry features and husky voice perfectly fit both of the genre’s female archetypes: the good woman and the femme fatale. In this film, she pours on the allure, turning the usually savvy Duryea into putty. Her performance is one of the main reasons the film has built a cult following over the years. Sadly, this film noir is less known today than other classics of the genre because the copyright owners allowed it to fall into public domain, leading to a glut of badly degenerated video—until Eddie Muller’s Film Noir Foundation funded a complete restoration last year. (d. Byron Haskin, 99m, 35mm)


Track of the Cat  (1954)
For several years, director William A. Wellman wanted to adapt this brooding novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark (who also wrote The Ox-Bow Incident).  When the studio compelled him to shoot the film in color, he filmed the snowy northern California setting in such monochromatic color as to simulate his preferred black-and-white look.  The story centers on a slightly unhinged family of backwoods pioneers.  Son Robert Mitchum is haunted by a marauding mountain lion, a symbol of evil in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe.  With this dark film, Wellman became one of the first Hollywood auteurs to explore 1950s baroque obsessions.  This Cold War western has been referred to as “CinemaScope's first genuine weirdie.”
Wayne-Fellows Productions, Inc.  Producer: John Wayne, Robert Fellows.  Director: William A. Wellman.  Screenwriter: A.I. Bezzerides.  Based on the novel by Walter Van Tillburg Clark.  Cinematography: William H. Colthier.  Editor: Fred MacDowell.  Cast: Robert Mitchum, Teresa Wright, Diana Lynn, Tab Hunter, Beulah Bondi.  35mm, color, 103 min.


Transforming Spaces: New Films from L.A. Filmmakers
This program of experimental work reflects creative approaches by which Angeleno filmmakers are engaging with real or imagined spaces and shaping those encounters into distinctly cinematic experiences. Landscape becomes a meditative space in Kate Brown’s Utah (2014, 20 min.) while it abstracts into sensual tapestries in Abigail Severance’s latest Kinesthesia Series entry (2014, 8 min.). Laura Kraning turns to heavy industry in Port Noir (2014, 11 min.) and recasts its structures as haunted mazes. The cinema itself becomes a shared space for reflecting on time and sensation in Madison Brookshire’s About 11 Minutes (2014, 11 min.), whereas in Janie Geiser’s The Hummingbird Wars (2014, 10 min.), the screen serves in its familiar role as window, one that magically blends a treasure trove of found objects into a luminous spectral domain.


THE UNDERWORLD STORY
1950, Warner Bros., 90 min, USA, Dir: Cy Enfield
Another unjustly neglected noir by director Cy Enfield, in which the always entertaining Dan Duryea plays a cynical reporter who digs dangerously close to a corrupt publisher’s family secrets. Costarring Herbert Marshall, Gale Storm and Howard da Silva, and featuring dazzling cinematography by the great Stanley Cortez (NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS).


THE UNFAITHFUL
1947, Warner Bros., 109 min, USA, Dir: Vincent Sherman
Ann Sheridan plays a woman whose sexual indiscretion leads to murder and a tangled web of deceit. Isn’t that always the way? Legendary noir scribe David Goodis applies his typically thorny plotting to this reimagining of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Letter, transposed to post-WWII Los Angeles. Featuring Zachary Scott, Lew Ayres and Eve Arden.


VINCENT
1981, Paul Brownstein Productions, 88 min, USA, Dir: Leonard Nimoy
Leonard Nimoy directs and stars as both Vincent Van Gogh and his brother Theo in this filmed production of his tour-de-force one-man show. Using Van Gogh’s paintings as a backdrop, Nimoy brings both the art and the man to life in a moving portrait based on the correspondence between the two brothers.


THE WIND AND THE LION (1975)
Writer-director John Milius set out to echo classic adventure films like GUNGA DIN (1939) by creating a fictional story inspired by real events. His source was a real-life kidnapping of an American businessman by Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli in 1904 to embarrass the reigning Moroccan sultan. To make the story more cinematic, he changed the businessman to a beautiful American widow and threw the US Marines into battles that never took place. Then he shot in Spain, using many of the same locations as LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962). When Faye Dunaway fell sick, Candice Bergen inherited the role of the woman who falls for her kidnapper, while Sean Connery took on Raisuli. Joining them are Brian Keith and John Huston in scene-stealing performances as President Teddy Roosevelt and Secretary of State John Hay. The film has a curious political outlook: Milius seems to be glorifying Western imperialism while at the same time giving the Berber culture its due (the picture was particularly well-received by Islamic critics). One thing is certain, the film is a visual feast with glorious shots of the desert and thrilling stunts coordinated by Terry Leonard. He was part of a team of four American stuntmen who did most of the horse work that adds to the film’s  excitement. (d. John Milius, 119m, 35mm)


WITNESS TO MURDER
1954, Park Circus/UA, 83 min, USA, Dir: Roy Rowland
This distaff version of REAR WINDOW (released before the Hitchcock classic) stars Barbara Stanwyck as an independent career woman who watches neighbor George Sanders strangle a victim in his swanky digs. It's the word of a single woman against that of a renowned author (and closet Nazi) - so guess who the LAPD believes? Featuring the chiaroscuro camerawork of noir shadow-meister John Alton.


WIZARDS
1977, 20th Century Fox, 82 min, USA, Dir: Ralph Bakshi
A post-apocalyptic vision like none before, where twin wizards - the wicked Blackwolf and the good-hearted Avatar - battle for rule over an epic, fantasy wasteland. Discussion between films with director Ralph Bakshi.


Woman on the Run  (1950)
Shot largely among the gritty working class landscapes of mid-century San Francisco, Woman on the Run spotlights Ann Sheridan as an acerbic wise-cracking wife in search of her estranged husband who suddenly disappears after witnessing a gangland assassination.
After a suffering through a series of disappointing roles at Warner Bros, Sheridan bought out her remaining contract and turned to the upstart independent Fidelity Pictures in an attempt to re-establish her career as a leading lady.  The resultant film was Woman on the Run, and Sheridan delivers a tour-de-force performance, aided by equally strong turns by Dennis O’Keefe, Robert Keith, and Ross Elliott in the supporting roles.
Director Norman Foster, a former protégé of Orson Welles, had just returned to Hollywood after helming a successful string of features in Mexico and captured the anxiety-driven mood of Alan Campbell’s screenplay with seemingly effortless dexterity.  The Bay Area location filming—in addition to the opening sequence shot in Bunker Hill and the dramatic climax staged at the Santa Monica Pier—was beautifully shot by esteemed cinematographer Hal Mohr and adds atmospheric realism to the production that studio-bound efforts of the era could not hope to match.
Although the film opened strongly amidst positive critical reviews, attendance dwindled precipitously due in part to a bizarre advertising campaign that touted the movie as a woman’s picture: “a probing study of the failure of modern marriage.”  Quickly falling into obscurity, the film has been long and unjustly neglected, compelling Film Noir Foundation founder and president Eddie Muller to remark that “If Woman on the Run had been directed by Raoul Walsh or Joseph H. Lewis or Don Siegel, it would have been rediscovered decades ago and heralded as a minor masterpiece.”
For years it was believed that a restoration of Woman on the Run was impossible after the last known surviving print of this film was destroyed in a studio fire.  An exhaustive worldwide search was eventually rewarded with the discovery of duplicate pre-print elements in the vaults of the British Film Institute.  —Steven K. Hill
Director: Norman Foster.  Production: Fidelity Pictures Corporation.  Distribution: Universal Pictures Company, Inc. Producer: Howard Welsch.  Screenwriters: Alan Campbell, Norman Foster.  Based on the short story “Man on the Run” by Sylvia Tate.  Cinematographer: Hal Mohr.  Art Direction: Boris Leven.  Editor: Otto Ludwig.  Music: Arthur Lange, Emil Newman.  Cast: Ann Sheridan, Dennis O’Keefe, Robert Keith, John Qualen, Frank Jenks.  35mm, b/w, 86 min. Restored from a 35mm nitrate dupe picture negative, a 35mm nitrate composite print and a 35mm acetate composite print.