a highly-opinionated selection of things happening around town, and sometimes out of town. this month's page here.
wed. apr. 4 for heaven's sake, why worry? @ silent movie theatre pariah, my summer of love @ new beverly mccabe & mrs miller @ aero possession 10:20 PM @ silent movie theatre brent weinbach @ silverlake lounge cosmonauts @ los globos thu. apr. 5 rod bradley films FREE 7 PM @ 7 dudley cinema @ beyond baroque strangers in the night FREE 5 PM @ ucla james bridges carre blanc FREE @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges blouse @ echo pariah, my summer of love @ new beverly the turin horse @ aero ghost world FREE 6 PM @ enid meet up @ meltdown an evening with daniel clowes 8 PM @ meltdown fri. apr. 6 hausu MIDNIGHT @ nuart mazzy star @ mcnear's mystic theatre (petaluma) alice, valerie and her week of wonders @ lacma blouse @ echo to catch a thief, hudson hawk @ new beverly the dark crystal, labyrinth @ egyptian sat. apr. 7 mazzy star @ harlows (sacramento) julia holter (7:00) FREE @ origami vinyl alice in wonderland (1933) 5 PM @ lacma daisies, we eat the fruit of the trees of paradise @ lacma to catch a thief 3:25 7:30, hudson hawk 5:30 9:35 @ new beverly the silence of the lambs MIDNIGHT @ new beverly beh-hur @ egyptian los angeles plays itself @ aero amps for christ @ the smell sun. apr. 8 coogan's bluff 3:20 7:30, two mules for sister sara 5:15 9:25 @ new beverly king kong (1933) @ egyptian harvey, donnie darko @ aero the third part of the night 4:30 PM @ silent movie theatre werckmeister harmonies 7 PM @ silent movie theatre 99 poets for occupy day FREE 1 PM @ beyond baroque mon. apr. 9 sharon lockhart: double tide 8:30 PM @ redcat coogan's bluff, two mules for sister sara @ new beverly werckmeister harmonies @ silent movie theatre frank fairfield @ redwood tue. apr. 10 mazzy star @ cocoanut grove historic ballroom (santa cruz) bad fever FREE @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges the search 7 PM @ getty center exploding flowers @ silverlake lounge trigger finger FREE (RSVP) 9:10 PM @ usc ray stark wed. apr. 11 mazzy star @ regency ballroom (SF) the princess bride, 2nd feature TBA @ new beverly the player @ aero gilda, affair in trinidad @ million dollar theater to kill a mockingbird @ ampas samuel goldwyn thu. apr. 12 the princess bride, 2nd feature TBA @ new beverly beautiful city, fireworks wednesday @ aero alice @ silent movie theatre fragments of everyday life 8 PM @ echo park film center crosstown rivals: films from usc and ucla in the 1960s FREE @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges karmetik machine orchestra: samsara 8:30 @ redcat the soft pack, etc FREE @ desert daze festival @ dillon roadhouse (desert hot springs) allah-las @ townhouse & del monte macbeth (1948) FREE 5 PM @ ucla james bridges fri. apr. 13 the melvins @ troubadour white fence, sandwitches @ satellite bleached, audacity, pangea, etc FREE @ desert daze festival @ dillon roadhouse (desert hot springs) the princess bride, 2nd feature TBA @ new beverly the show must go on, just between us @ aero come back africa @ silent movie theatre black moon 9:45 PM @ silent movie theatre mourning @ ucla film archive my way @ lacma karmetik machine orchestra: samsara 8:30 @ redcat sat. apr. 14 chinatown 8 PM @ orpheum lea and darja, will not stop there @ aero family nest 4:30 PM @ silent movie theatre come back africa 7 PM @ silent movie theatre girlfriends 10:15 PM @ silent movie theatre ferestadeh @ ucla film archive alice in wonderland (1948), brothers quay shorts @ lacma prisoners and patriots: the untold story of japanese internment in santa fe 2 PM @ japanese american national museum sun. apr. 15 godspeed! you black emperor @ fernwood campground (big sur) allah las, driftwood singers, etc FREE @ desert daze festival @ dillon roadhouse (desert hot springs) come back africa 4:45 10:00 PM @ silent movie theatre damnation 7 PM @ silent movie theatre here without me 7 PM @ ucla film archive 2001: a space odyssey 8 PM @ arclight hollywood mon. apr. 16 seeing and awakening: new films by nathaniel dorsky 8:30 PM @ redcat ararat FREE 7 PM @ hammer world on a wire @ new beverly come back africa 7:40 9:45 PM @ silent movie theatre sound of my voice FREE @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges frank fairfield @ redwood raiders of the lost ark 8 PM @ arclight hollywood tue. apr. 17 the man who knew too much 1 PM @ lacma high noon 7 PM @ getty center world on a wire @ new beverly shame @ aero come back africa 5:15 10:20 PM @ silent movie theatre wed. apr. 18 hit so hard: the life and near-death story of drummer patty schemel FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc ray stark sound of my voice FREE (RSVP) 9:30 PM @ usc ray stark moon duo, black angels @ music box guitar wolf, pangea @ satellite world on a wire @ new beverly death row @ egyptian last winter @ aero come back africa 4:30 10:15 PM @ silent movie theatre river's edge, paranoid park @ million dollar theatre starring griffith park @ hollywood heritage museum thu. apr. 19 wild flag @ el rey frankie rose @ satellite (first feature TBA), cat people (1982) @ an evening with lynn lowry @ new beverly a boy and his dog @ egyptian come back africa 7:40 9:45 PM @ silent movie theatre highlights from the permanent collection 8 PM @ echo park film center crosstown rivals: films from ucla and usc in the 1960s FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc ray stark fri. apr. 20 barcelona, the last days of disco @ new beverly the great gatsby, this gun for hire @ egyptian silent comedy shorts program @ aero marley (+ all-night movie marathon of jamaican films) @ silent movie theatre a quartet of recent films by nathaniel dorsky @ ucla film archive ezra buchla with daniel brummel @ the smell tom carter, brian crook, glands of external secretion @ trapdoor fucking exit (7 PM) @ human resources dead meadow @ don the beachcomber sat. apr. 21 record store day heroes and heroines @ pehrspace dead meadow, cosmonauts, dirt dress, etc FREE @ desert daze festival @ dillon roadhouse (desert hot springs) la times festival of books barcelona 3:15 7:30, the last days of disco 5:15 9:30 @ new beverly naked alibi, suddenly @ egyptian marley 1:30 7:30 PM @ silent movie theatre films by lewis klahr & laida lertxundi 8 PM @ echo park film center twin peaks: fire walk with me - 20th anniversary group art exhibition opening 8-11:30 pm @ copro gallery, bergamot station charalambides, 500 mg, peter kolovos @ trapdoor fucking exit (7 PM) @ human resources merx (6:00) FREE @ permanent records sun. apr. 22 la times festival of books (first feature TBA), cape fear (1962) @ new beverly phantom lady, black angel, the window @ egyptian marley NOON @ silent movie theatre dead end 7 PM @ ucla film archive kosmische nite @ part time punks @ echo jaws 8 PM @ arclight hollywood conceptual media @ la filmforum @ spielberg @ egyptian maryrose crook, etc @ trapdoor fucking exit (6 PM) @ human resources mon. apr. 23 bill morrison: miners bridges lost love and other retrieved treasures 8:30 PM @ redcat jeff mangum @ orpheum vehicle blues, kevin greenspon @ pehrspace a huey p newton story FREE @ egyptian marley @ silent movie theatre warriors of the rainbow: seediq bale FREE (RSVP) @ usc ray stark frank fairfield @ redwood shanghai express @ 25 cent movie mondays @ chinese theatre tue. apr. 24 julia 7 PM @ getty center stony island @ egyptian marley @ silent movie theatre wed. apr. 25 the big red one 8 PM @ new beverly t-men, strange impersonation @ egyptian come back to the five and dime jimmy dean jimmy dean @ aero marley @ silent movie theatre black orpheus @ million dollar theater thu. apr. 26 the big red one 8 PM @ new beverly caged, big house usa @ egyptian marley @ silent movie theatre dunes @ the smell la air: john palmer 8 PM @ echo park film center audacity @ center for the arts eagle rock fri. apr. 27 jon brion @ largo le havre, la vie de boheme @ new beverly scene of the crime, reign of terror @ egyptian precious knowledge spielberg @ egyptian paris la belle, la jour se leve @ aero design in motion: oskar fischinger and abstract animation @ lacma big trouble in little china MIDNIGHT @ nuart the fire axolotl: magic lantern show & other non-electricity-based visual amusements 8 PM @ velaslavasay panorama sat. apr. 28 the birds 2:00 8:00 PM @ alex theatre pandora's box 7 PM @ getty center the legend of billie jean 8 PM @ devil's night drive-in grilled cheese invitational @ rose bowl le havre 3:35 7:30, la vie de boheme 5:30 9:25 @ new beverly slaughter on tenth avenue, edge of the city @ egyptian children of paradise @ aero alice in wonderland (1933) NOON @ mad tea party @ silent movie theatre checkpoint @ ucla film archive new works salon 8 PM @ echo park film center beyond music: catalysis projects and people insid electronics 9 PM @ beyond baroque wimfest: a wim wenders filmmarathon NOON to MIDNIGHT @ goethe-institut sun. apr. 29 gilda 3 PM @ getty center the party 3:35 7:30, i love you alice b toklas 5:35 9:30 @ new beverly johnny o'clock, johnny allegro @ egyptian high plains drifter, joe kidd @ aero neil hamburger @ satellite mon. apr. 30 the imaginary voyages of maureen selwood 8:30 PM @ redcat the party, i love you alice b toklas @ new beverly frank fairfield @ redwood dead dawn @ los globos hell's angels @ 25 cent movie mondays @ chinese theatre tue. may 1 MAY 1ST GENERAL STRIKE - http://www.occupymay1st.org/ wed. may 2 dublab presents a labrat matinee 10: the light bends FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc ray stark sisters, phantom of the paradise @ million dollar theater the warriors of qiugang FREE 7 PM, gasland @ ampas linwood dunn thu. may 3 bill brand films FREE 7 PM @ 7 dudley cinema @ beyond baroque sat. may 5 a streetcar named desire 3 PM @ getty center and god created woman 7 PM @ getty center mike watt & the missingmen (4:45), the lofty canaanites (3:45) @ beyond baroque dracula (1931), the black cat @ ucla film archive dunes, psychic feline @ homeroom double helix: the rise of film noir and the l.a. crime novelists who created the genre 3 PM, the postman always rings twice @ egyptian three strangers, nobody lives forever @ egyptian thee cormans (10:30) @ blue star seconds 7 PM, face/off @ new beverly the great dictator, the producers @ aero la venganza de los punks 10 PM @ silent movie theatre sun. may 6 blind husbands 7 PM, the phantom of the opera (1925) @ ucla film archive circumstantial evidence 3 PM, sign of the ram @ egyptian mary ryan detective @ egyptian bela lugosi meets a brooklyn gorilla 6 PM, massacre mafia style, gone with the pope @ grindhouse film festival @ new beverly you nazty spy! 5 PM, duck soup, bananas @ aero almanac of fall 5 PM @ silent movie theatre mon. may 7 cine povera: mexican experiments in 16mm 8:30 PM @ redcat ezra buchla @ pehrspace tue. may 8 the trouble with harry 1 PM @ lacma thu. may 10 traffic in souls, where are my children? @ ucla film archive god bless america FREE @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges nick waterhouse @ center for the arts eagle rock fri. may 11 all quiet on the western front (1930) @ ucla film archive wayne's world MIDNIGHT @ nuart julia holter @ bootleg sat. may 12 faster pussycat! kill!... kill! 8:30 PM @ devil's night drive-in cobra woman 4 PM @ ucla film archive poison @ ucla film archive sun. may 13 becky stark @ pehrspace three smart girls grow up 7 PM, never give a sucker an even break @ ucla film archive mon. may 14 tremellow @ pehrspace tue. may 15 black dice @ center for the arts eagle rock wed. may 16 cooked FREE 7 PM @ hammer mickey one, blast of silence @ million dollar theater thu. may 17 dum dum girls @ pappy & harriet's (pioneertown) catwalk @ echoplex fri. may 18 dum dum girls @ echoplex do the right thing @ ucla film archive sat. may 19 luckman jazz orchestra: tribute to charlie parker @ luckman fine arts sourpatch @ queer mansion dum dum girls FREE 6 PM @ getty center sun. may 20 l.a. filmworks: the state of the art in los angeles 1980 @ spielberg @ egyptian mon. may 21 new day at 40: a community's celebration 8:30 PM @ redcat the 40-year-old virgin @ ucla film archive tue. may 22 spiritualized @ wiltern secret ceremony 1 PM @ lacma wed. may 23 knock on any door, in a lonely place @ million dollar theater francis, abbott and costello meet frankenstein @ ucla film archive thu. may 24 beck @ santa barbara bowl fri. may 25 jon brion @ largo sat. may 26 silver lake jubilee goonies 8:30 PM @ devil's night drive-in sun. may 27 silver lake jubilee tue. may 29 the invisible man 1 PM, the bride of frankenstein @ lacma wed. may 30 paper moon 8 PM @ last remaining seats @ los angeles theatre fri. june 1 out of sight @ ucla film archive rushmore MIDNIGHT @ nuart wed. june 6 tootsie 8 PM @ last remaining seats @ orpheum theatre fri. june 8 frankenstein (1931), the mummy (1932) @ ucla film archive sat. june 9 the incredible shrinking man 4 PM @ ucla film archive to kill a mockingbird @ ucla film archive dazed & confused 8:30 PM @ devil's night drive-in wed. june 13 the big sleep 8 PM @ last remaining seats @ los angeles theatre thu. june 14 partch 8:30 @ redcat fri. june 15 airport @ ucla film archive ghostbusters MIDNIGHT @ nuart sun. june 17 high plains drifter 7 PM, winchester '73 @ ucla film archive mon. june 18 the sting @ ucla film archive fri. june 22 the birds @ ucla film archive beavis and butthead do america MIDNIGHT @ nuart sat. june 23 l'inferno 3 PM @ getty center dante's inferno (2007) 7 PM @ getty center inglorious basterds @ ucla film archive donnie darko 9 PM @ devil's night drive-in sun. june 24 moonbeams @ the echo dante's inferno (1924) 3 PM @ getty center jaws 7 PM @ ucla film archive wed. june 27 robin hood (1922) @ last reminaing seats @ orpheum theatre fri. june 29 the warriors MIDNIGHT @ nuart sat. june 30 the wizard of oz (1939) 2:00 8:00 PM @ last remaining seats @ saban theatre sat. jul. 7 the big lebowski 9 PM @ devil's night drive-in sat. jul. 21 the princess bride 8:30 PM @ devil's night drive-in sat. jul. 28 jaws 2:00 8:00 PM @ alex theatre WHAT IT IS: ALICE 1988/color/86 min. Scr/dir: Jan Svankmajer; w/ Kristýna Kohoutová. After twenty-five years creating some of cinema’s most indelible stop-motion shorts, “militant surrealist” Jan Svankmajer took the leap into feature filmmaking with this most fitting adaptation. Blending live-action with puppets, Svankmajer transforms Lewis Carroll’s episodic fantasy into a saga of sinister, voluptuous whimsy. A flesh-and-blood Alice is both narrator and protagonist, addressing the audience at the film’s start to say, “Alice thought to herself, ‘Now you will see a film for children . . . perhaps.” Svankmajer’s basement “wonderland” of taxidermied creatures and sundry everyday items evokes a Joseph Cornell bricolage crossed with a butcher’s display case. "Disney + Buñuel = Svankmajer's Alice."—Milos Forman. ALICE IN WONDERLAND 1933/b&w/76 min. Scr: Joseph L. Mankiewicz, William Cameron Menzies; dir: Norman Z. McLeod; w/ Charlotte Henry, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, W.C. Fields, Edward Everett Horton, Charles Ruggles, Mae Marsh, Roscoe Karns, Jack Okie, Baby LeRoy, Edna May Oliver, May Robson, Louise Fazenda The sound era’s first major adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” story, Norman McLeod’s Alice in Wonderland boasts an all-star cast of Paramount players: from Cary Grant and Gary Cooper to W.C. Fields and Lubitsch regulars Edward Everett Horton and Charles Ruggles, as well as Griffith supporting star, Mae Marsh. Interweaving episodes from both of Carroll’s Alice books, the film is both madcap and mordant. Though directed by MCleod, the film’s expressionistic and claustrophobic tone is largely due to its co-screenwriter/art director William Cameron Menzies. Having worked on both the Fairbanks and Powell/Korda versions of Thief of Bagdad, Menzies’s career after Alice veered from Hollywood spectacles, such as Gone with the Wind and Duel in the Sun, to dark, atomic-age fantasies such as Things to Come and Invaders from Mars. “As dazzling as today’s digital effects can be, we remain all too aware of how they are accomplished (computers!) for them to possess the seductive sense of mystification that Menzies and McLeod achieved here, using practical techniques derived from Victorian stage magic.”—Dave Kehr, New York Times. ALICE IN WONDERLAND 1948/color/96 min. Scr: Henry Myers, Albert E. Lewin, Edward Eliscu; dir: Dallas Bower; w/ Carol Marsh, Stephen Murray, Pamela Brown. In this little-seen adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, Lou Bunin blends live-action with stop-motion animation to adapt the Carroll original, forty-years before Jan Svankmajer would do the same. A prologue finds Alice and her sisters boating in Oxford with whimsical mathematician Charles Dodgson (better-known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll) with a royal visit as a backdrop, rooting Carroll’s anthropomorphic fantasy in a real, Victorian milieu. An innovator of puppet animation, the American-born Bunin worked with Diego Rivera as a muralist before turning to cinema. Shot in two languages, English and French, across three cities—Nice, Paris, and London—the film boasts a formidable crew, many of whom would soon after the completion of the film be blacklisted: cinematographer Claude Renoir, composer Sol Kaplan, and screenwriters Henry Myers and Edward Eliscu. Bunin’s film was plagued with complications. Denied color stock from Technicolor, Bunin settled on the inferior Ansco process. Once completed, the film was held from release due to a lawsuit from Disney. When it was finally set for distribution in 1951, theater chains wouldn’t book it in deference to the Disney adaptation, and it was subsequently banned in England for more than thirty years due to its depiction of Queen Victoria. A true rarity, the film was largely unseen until the mid-1980s and is once again available in 35mm thanks to a restoration by the Museum of Modern Art. Ararat Ararat, is hands down the year’s [2002] most thought-provoking film. —New York Times Ararat is based loosely on the Siege of Van during the Armenian Genocide. While exploring the human impact of that specific historical event, the film also examines the nature of truth and its representation through art. Ararat stars Charles Aznavour, Christopher Plummer, and David Alpay and won several awards, including Best Film on Human Rights by the Political Film Society of Hollywood and the Freedom of Expression Award from the National Board of Review in New York. (2002, Dir. Atom Egoyan, 115 min.) BAD FEVER Eddie (Kentucker Audley) is a twenty-something loner whose primary goal in life is to one day take the stage at the local comedy club. He spends most of his free time speaking into a handheld recorder, practicing “jokes” (more like monologues without a punch line) and reflecting on his day-to-day life. He is so inept at social interaction that his conversations with others frequently mirror his conversations with himself – they are free-form, nearly incomprehensible, and at times so formally worded that one gets the impression that his only concept of language comes from books or movies rather than from other people. His life is thrown into a tailspin when he begins a quasi-romantic relationship with a drifter named Irene (Eleonore Hendricks) that soon becomes the dominant focus of his life. But Irene is just as broken as he is and brings her own set of issues to the table, and Eddie’s tenderness and fragility make him an easy target for manipulation. Join us for a post-show Q&A with writer/director Dustin Guy Defa, moderated by Melnitz Movies Director Samuel B. Prime. Writer/Director: Dustin Guy Defa; Starring: Kentucker Audley, Eleonore Hendricks, Annette Wright, Allison Baar, Duane Stephens, Dustin Guy Defa, Hayward Buchanan, Scott Parisi; Factory 25 Releasing; Blu-Ray, 77 min. BEAUTIFUL CITY (SHAH-RE ZIBA) 2004, Farabi Cinema Foundation, 101 min, Iran, Dir: Asghar Farhadi Teenager Akbar is imprisoned and condemned to death following his conviction on a murder charge. As Akbar's 18th birthday approaches and his execution becomes inevitable, recently released burglar A'la struggles to win freedom for his friend. In Persian with English subtitles. BIG HOUSE USA 1955, MGM/Park Circus, 83 min, USA, Dir: Howard Koch No meaner, more vicious band of bust-out psychos was ever crammed together in one cell block: Ralph Meeker, Broderick Crawford, Charles Bronson, Lon Chaney Jr. and William Talman! Meeker plays a child kidnapper sent to the Big House after his young hostage dies. He then leads the crazed cons in a breakout to retrieve the hidden ransom! Director Howard Koch turns John C. Higgins’ twist-filled script into the most jaw-droppingly brutal prison film of the 1950s! BILL MORRISON: MINERS, BRIDGES, LOST LOVE AND OTHER RETRIEVED TREASURES Los Angeles premiere | The Miners’ Hymns (USA/UK, 2011, 52 min, HD) Since The Film of Her (1996), award-winning filmmaker Bill Morrison has completed more than 20 experimental pieces in which he poetically and rhythmically reworks archival footage in various stages of preservation or decomposition. With The Miners’ Hymns, he teams up with Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson to celebrate the culture and political struggles of the Durham collieries in northeastern England. Weaving together stunning black-and-white footage from the early 1900s through the massive 1984 strikes, the film montages different aspects of the miners’ lives—the hardship of pit work, the role of the trade unions, the tradition of the colliery brass bands and the annual Miners’ Gala in Durham. A selection of earlier short films, including Outerborough (2005) and Release (2010) rounds out the evening. In person: Bill Morrison BLACK ANGEL 1945, Universal, 81 min, USA, Dir: Roy William Neil In this spellbinding adaptation of Woolrich’s thriller, noir favorite Dan Duryea gives a terrific performance as a pickled pianist whose estranged wife is murdered. When her husband is charged with the crime, nightclub canary June Vincent enlists drunken Dan’s help in a search for the real culprit. Broderick Crawford and Peter Lorre add muscle and menace to the typically warped Woolrich atmosphere, well rendered by director Roy William Neil. The Black Cat (1934) Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer Austrian-born Edgar G. Ulmer assisted F.W. Murnau on Sunrise, before directing this elegant fever dream. Honeymooners are trapped in the mansion of a sinister war-profiteer (Karloff) who’s hounded by an avenging doctor (Lugosi). The film’s astonishing sets range from art deco extravagance to subterranean chambers—everything symbolically perched on a battlefield. Universal Pictures. Producer: Carl Laemmle. Based on the short story by Edgar Allen Poe. Screenwriter: Peter Ruric. Cinematographer: John J. Mescall. Editor: Ray Curtiss. Cast: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Jacqueline Wells, Egon Brecher. 35mm, b/w, 70 min. BLACK MOON Every internationally adored big-name director, after years of critical acclaim, is sooner or later bound to craft an off-the cliff, one-for-the-ages piece of capriciousness — and Louis Malle’s turn came with this seldom-seen, magically insane ’70s fable. Drawing inspiration from Lewis Carroll, the story follows a lost English girl through a woodland landscape of the future, where men and women have declared war with one another and people can communicate with animals. She falls in with Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro(!) and his incestuous sister, which leads to even more surreal developments, and a poetic finale involving a unicorn. Beautifully shot by legendary Bergman collaborator Sven Nykvist at Malle’s own French home at the time, this stream-of-consciousness reverie remains an incredible trip, so come experience this brainbomb on the big screen where it belongs! Dir. Louis Malle, 1973, 35mm, 100 min. Blast of Silence (1961) Directed by Allen Baron Get deep inside the rage-fuelled psyche of a brutal hit man as he stalks the city and his prey in what Bright Lights Film Journal called, “the great lost masterpiece of film noir; a twilit, deathward emanation of everything that had underlain the form from its beginnings.” 35mm, b/w, 77 min. Blind Husbands (1919) Directed by Erich von Stroheim After working as an assistant director and actor for D.W. Griffith, von Stroheim made his directorial debut with this film, in which he plays an Austrian military officer who attempts to seduce a surgeon’s wife, while they are on a Swiss holiday. One of the director’s most successful films, it was released without front office interference, unlike the fate of so many subsequent von Stroheim productions. Universal Film Mfg Co. Producer: Carl Laemmle. Based on a novel by E. von Stroheim. Screenwriter: E. von Stroheim. Cinematographer: Ben F. Reynolds. Editor: Frank Lawrence, Eleanor Fried. Cast: Sam DeGrasse, Francelia Billington, E. von Stroheim, T. H. Gibson-Gowland, Fay Holderness. 35mm, silent, b/w, 92 min. A BOY AND HIS DOG 1975, First Run Features, 91 min, USA, Dir: L.Q. Jones Jason Robards and Don Johnson star in this cult classic, an adaptation of Harlan Ellison’s short story about the survivors of a nuclear holocaust. Slyly satiric, the film was directed by character actor (and Peckinpah favorite) L.Q. Jones. Discussion following with author Harlan Ellison, moderated by Josh Olson. CAGED 1950, Warner Bros., 96 min, USA, Dir: John Cromwell Flat-out the best “women behind bars” movie ever made. Sentenced to prison for her role in a failed robbery that killed her husband, vulnerable innocent Marie Allen (Oscar-nominated Eleanor Parker) undergoes a degrading transformation in “the joint.” Parker gives the performance of her career, supported by a cell block of sensational actresses: Agnes Moorehead, Hope Emerson, Betty Garde, Jan Sterling, Lee Patrick, Jane Darwell and many more. A classic! Introduction by film noir expert Alan K. Rode. CARRÉ BLANC A suicide survivor works for a nameless corporation, where he puts other employees through series of bizarre performance tests in this dystopian, Tarkovsky-esque sci-fi and surreal dark fantasy, with flashes of dark humor and deep emotion. A young boy ekes out an existence with his mother in an austere, unidentified city where loudspeakers make strange announcements and proclamations, a rapidly declining population resides in grim high-rises and the weak are killed and likely used for meat. In the wake of a suicide attempt, the boy undergoes a harsh rehabilitation in a state-run school. When we next see him, he’s a productive adult member of society (Sami Bouajila), estranged from his wife (Julie Gayet) and working for a nameless organization, where he puts other employees through a series of humiliating and bizarre performance tests. CARRÉ BLANC’s cold, corporate world and atmosphere of impotent rage evoke the best of Orwell and Kafka. Making his feature debut, writer-director Jean-Baptiste Léonetti doesn’t provide easy answers regarding this infernal world in which there is no escape from the watchful eye of a cruel state, where nets surround apartment buildings to catch the frequent jumpers and people have, apparently, stopped having children — or have begun to hide them. Léonetti does, however, permeate his unrelentingly bleak critique of late capitalism with flashes of dark humor and waves of deep emotion, aided immensely by the raw, intense performances of his two leads. Both Gayet and Bouajila imbue their characters with a repressed sadness and anger that’s disturbing and powerful. Join us for a post-show Q&A with writer/director Jean-Baptiste Leonetti, producer Benjamin Mamou, and executive producer Camille Havard Bourdon! Writer/Director: Jean-Baptiste Léonetti; Starring: Sami Bouajila, Julie Gayet, Jean-Pierre Andréani, Carlos Leal, Dominique Paturel, Fejria Deliba; Solair Films; 35mm, 77 min. CHECKPOINT Directed by Parviz Sayyad A busload of College students, returning to Michigan from a Canadian field trip, is stopped at the US border at the time of the Iranian hostage crisis. The group includes a number of Iranian passengers, divided along ideological lines, whose debates about policy and politics soon lead to a full-scale confrontation. Producer/Screenwriter/Editor: Parviz Sayyad. Cinematographer: Michael Davis. Cast: Houshang Touzie, Mary Apick, Parviz Sayyad, Michael Zand, Buck Kartalian. 35mm, color, in English and Persian with English subtitles, 91 min. In-person: filmmaker Parviz Sayyad. CHILDREN OF PARADISE (LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS) 1945, Janus Films, 190 min, France, Dir: Marcel Carné Jacques Prévert's timeless script follows a theater troupe traveling through 19th-century France, where mime Jean-Louis Barrault finds great success in his professional life but is unable to find happiness in his personal life. Prévert and Carné's epic treatment of intimate emotion was named the best French film of the century in a 1990s poll of more than 600 French filmmakers and critics. “Few achievements in the world of cinema can equal it.” - Roger Ebert. In French with English subtitles. Cine Povera: Mexican Experiments in 16MM As an echo to the Arte Povera movement, Cine Povera showcases work from Mexico by filmmakers who persist in working in 16mm with the most modest resources. Using antiquated techniques to produce emphatically anti-corporate and insistently artisanal cinema, the artists address social and political concerns—from the recent upheavals in Oaxaca to the gentrification of urban neighborhoods. Not consumed with the medium’s illusions, this eclectic selection of handcrafted shorts reveals the passion, craft and ingenuity of artists who adhere to the ethos of honest effort. The screening features young Mexican filmmakers Uriel Lopez España, Txema Novelo, Hanne Jimenez, Rosario Sotelo, Mayra Isabel Cespedes Vaca, Elena Pardo, Andres García Franco, Jorge Lorenzo Flores Garza and Bruno Varel, alongside artists who have made work in Mexico, including Naomi Uman, Robert Fenz, Rocio Aranda de la Figuera and Erika Loic. COME BACK, AFRICA After witnessing firsthand the terrors of fascism as a soldier in World War II, director Lionel Rogosin vowed to fight against it wherever and whenever he saw its threats reemerging. In an effort to expose “what people try to avoid seeing,” Rogosin travelled to apartheid-struck South Africa and secretly filmed Come Back, Africa, which revealed the cruelty and injustice with which black South Africans were treated. Apartheid rule, a legal system of separation according to race, began in South Africa in 1948. This system forced black South Africans—who composed a majority of the public’s population—into crowded slums where they received poorer public services than those provided to the white minority. Before beginning the production of Come Back, Africa, Rogosin spent several months touring Africa, becoming accustomed to the way of life in South Africa and acquiring a sense of the apartheid government’s sensitivity to anti-government “conspiracies”–such as the very film he wished to create. Much of Come Back, Africa was filmed in Sophiatown, a township reserved for blacks. Blacks who had been separated into urban ghettos decades before were now considered a threat to the whites in South Africa, and so previously designated “black spots” were now being demolished and their residents transported to even worse areas. The result of this policy was demolition of towns such as Sophiatown, which was being gradually destroyed during the production of the film. Dir. Lionel Rogosin, 1960, 35mm, 83 min. Cooked Cooked tells the story of the most traumatic heat wave in U.S. history, in which 739 Chicago citizens died in a single week of July 1995, most of them poor, elderly, and African American. The film explores the intersection of poverty, global warming, and the politics of crisis. Judith Helfand’s other films include the Sundance award-winning, Emmy nominated Blue Vinyl, and its Peabody Award-winning prequel A Healthy Baby Girl (a five-year video diary about her experience with cancer). The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Helfand. (Dir. Judith Helfand, approx. 60 mins.) CROSSTOWN RIVALS: WORKS FROM USC AND UCLA IN THE 1960S Enthused by the possibilities of “underground” film, energetic students at Los Angeles’ leading universities made a healthy amount of work using alternative approaches in the 1960s. This work gained notoriety in the mass media, with an article in Time Magazine, among others. Wipeout (Paul Golding, 1965, 16mm, 3min.) A dynamic social protest collage film utilizing still photos, accompanied by the Surfaris recording of "Wipeout". - Creative Film Society catalog, 1972 Pulp (Bruce Green, 1967, 16mm, 8min.) A cynical yet tongue-in-cheek satire on today's leather-jacketed rebels-without-a-cause whose attitudes and sexual appetites are influenced by the multitude of men's pulp magazines. - Creative Film Society catalog, 1972 Marcello, I’m So Bored (John Milius, 1966, 16mm, 9 min) John Milius was a precious critic of the 'counter-culture,' his critique may be seen as a its most turgid in APOCALYPSE NOW (which he wrote with George Lucas in 1967) and at its lightest in this early film, an intentionally crude cartoon with a live action epilogue in which Milius appears with Gayle Hunnicutt. - Scratching the Belly of the Beast Catalogue, 1994 Herbie (Paul Golding and George Lucas, 1965, 16mm, 2:45) The filmmakers create stylish visual music from the diffuse, reflected lights of driving cars against a soundtrack of Herbie Hancock music. - Mark Toscano Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4 EB (George Lucas, 1967, 16mm, 15 min) THX 1138 4EB runs through passages into order to escape a totalitarian dystopia. Freightyard Symphony (Robert Abel, 1963, DVD, color, sound, 6.5min.) Highly accomplished animated student film by commercial effects pioneer Robert Abel – on trains and movement. S.W.L.A. (Rob Thompson, 1971, 16mm, b/w & color, 6min.) Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive. A semi-abstract cinepoem using high contrast black and white images and stylized color effects to capture the mood of an industrial area in Southwest Los Angeles. The film is reminiscent in style and artistic effectiveness of the work of Pat O'Neill and Scott Bartlett, particularly their 7362 and METANOMEN, and is highly recommended as the largest example of this sort of psychedelic-surreal filmartistry. Winner of innumerable 1971 film festival awards. - Creative Film Society Catalog, 1975 Now That The Buffalo’s Gone (Burton Gershfield, 1967, 16mm, color, 7 min.) Provided courtesy of the Academy Film Archive. A powerful New American Cinema protest against the decline and fall of the American Indian, using quasi-three dimensional color techniques as part of its overall structure. 'This beautiful little film uses fast-moving positive-negative color images to recall how the American Indian was displaced from the land. From the colorful past of the buffalo hunt to the less than perfect life of present day reservations this sympathetic protest film shows why even Indians on television can never really win. This film is recommended for discussion with Junior highs through adults and for worship services built around a theme of concern for the American Indian.' - Media for Christian Formation. - Creative Film Society Catalogue, 1975 Sanctus (David Lebrun, 1967, 16mm, 18 min) Provided courtesy of the Academy Film Archive. A New American Cinepoem in which three individual ritual ceremonies in Mexico are filmically interrelated: (1) a Catholic High Mass, (2) a bullfight, (3) the sacred mushroom ceremony of the Mazatec Indians. Creative Film Society Catalogue, 1972 Synthesis (Penelope Spheeris, 1968, 16mm, color, sound, 7min.) Penelope Spheeris's first film, made at UCLA. In a seemingly near-future control room devoid of people, various readouts and calculations suggest that humankind is not altogether compatible with the grand scheme of the universe. Les AngeS Dorment (Felix Venable, 1965, 16mm, color, sound, 9 min) Restored print from the Academy Film Archive. The only extant film made by the legendary Felix Venable, a primary mentor and friend to Jim Morrison. Venable’s own mythic status among Doors fans in part derives from his tragic early death in November 1970 (a few months before Morrison himself). In Les AngeS Dorment (note the capitalization…), a series of vignettes set to varying scores are exemplified by highly refined and intuitive camerawork and editing. This influential film is intensely and quietly psychedelic, suggestive of acid experiences and a shifting sense of fragmented consciousness. DAISIES 1966/color/74 min. | Scr: Ester Krumbachová, Vera Chytilová; dir: Vera Chytilová; w/ Jitka Crhová, Ivana Karbanová, Julius Albert. A milestone in the Czech New Wave, Vera Chytilová’s Daisies follows two young girls, both named Marie, as they embark upon an anarchic series of escapades and impromptu happenings. Exclaiming “one should try everything,” they play pranks, get drunk, gorge themselves and engage in all manners of homespun absurdism with complete abandon as Chytilová douses them in shifting colors and random visual effects. A Dadaist comedy shot through with freeform largesse, Daisies is co-written by Ester Krumbachová, who not only worked with Chytilová on its follow-up, We Eat the Fruit of the Trees of Paradise, but also the darker Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. Held from release by the censors for longer than a year, Daisies was promptly banned after a brief run. But over the years it’s legacy has quietly grown, and it’s influence can be found in Jacques Rivette’s Celine and Julie Go Boating and in the irreverent films of Athina Rachel Tsangari (whose Attenberg was released this year) and Jennifer West. “Masterpiece . . . looks better every year—it’s amazing that this feminist Duck Soup is not yet regarded as a classic.”—J. Hoberman, Village Voice. DAMNATION One of the late philosopher Susan Sontag's favorite films, this powerful work reveals the evolution of the cinematic method and dark metaphysical style that Hungarian auteur Bela Tarr made famous in Santantango and Werckmeister Harmonies. Black and white images seem to float out of an endless drunken dream as a reclusive loner obsessively pursues his former lover. "Damnation is the ultimate film-noir, a deeply existential rumination on the miserableness of existence and the search for a meaning or a means of escape" (DVD Times). Dir. Béla Tarr, 1988, 35mm, 116 min. DANTE'S INFERNO (1924) In conjunction with the exhibition Heaven, Hell, and Dying Well: Images of Death in the Middle Ages, this series focuses on three interpretations of Dante Alighieri's Inferno. Since the fifteenth century, illustrators, painters, and (finally) filmmakers have envisioned the "nine circles of hell." Dante's Inferno (1924, United States, 60 minutes, black and white) Directed by Henry Otto. Silent, presented with live piano accompaniment. DANTE'S INFERNO (2007) In conjunction with the exhibition Heaven, Hell, and Dying Well: Images of Death in the Middle Ages, this series focuses on three interpretations of Dante Alighieri's Inferno. Since the fifteenth century, illustrators, painters, and (finally) filmmakers have envisioned the "nine circles of hell." Dante's Inferno (2007, United States, 88 minutes, color) Directed by Sean Meredith DEAD END (BON BAST) Directed by Parviz Sayyad This provocative film stars Mary Apick (best actress winner at the Moscow International Film Festival) as a lonely young woman who attracts the attentions of a mysterious suitor haunting the dead end street where she lives. Warming to his attentions, she learns that he is not what he seems to be, and that she and her family may be in danger. Producer/Screenwriter: Parviz Sayyad. Houshang Baharlou. Editor: Ruhallah Emami. Cast: Mary Apick, Parviz Bahador, Apick Yousefian, Bahram Zarrinpour, Mansoureh Shadmanesh. 35mm, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 95 min. In-person: filmmaker Parviz Sayyad. DEATH ROW 2012, Investigation Discovery, 188 min, USA, Dir: Werner Herzog Director Werner Herzog continues the exploration of capital punishment that he initiated in INTO THE ABYSS with a series of four 47-minute documentaries: "Portrait: James Barnes," "Portrait: Hank Skinner, "Portrait: Joseph Garcia and George Rivas," and "Portrait: Linda Carty." Taken together, these four case studies of convicts on death row powerfully examine the ethics of the death penalty and the humanity of the accused without resorting to easy answers or preaching. Herzog’s talent for observing eccentric behavior and his obsession with probing complex issues are both on triumphant display in this ambitious piece of cinematic moral inquiry. Discussion with director Werner Herzog between the second and third portraits, as well as an INTO THE ABYSS DVD and poster signing following the films. DESIGN IN MOTION: OSKAR FISCHINGER AND ABSTRACT ANIMATION In conjunction with the exhibition California Design 1930–1965: Living in a Modern Way, LACMA and the Center for Visual Music present two programs of landmark, avant-garde filmmaking: “Optical Poetry: An Oskar Fischinger Retrospective” and “Color and Form: Modernist Animation in California.” The German-born Fischinger emigrated to Los Angeles in 1936 and is often called “cinema’s Kandinsky.” This retrospective features 35mm preserved prints of his classics, including Allegretto, An American March, Muratti Greift Ein, Studies 5, 6, 7 and 8, his masterpiece Motion Painting no. 1 (1947), plus many more. The evening’s second program, “Color and Form: Modernist Animation in California,” includes Fischinger's delightful and rarely seen advertisement for Muntz TV (1952), as well as films by some of the many California filmmakers whom he inspired: stunning jazz films by Jordan Belson (Caravan, 1952) and Harry Smith (Film #3), Jules Engel's Mobiles, Play Pen and his color-field film Landscape; Belson's rarely screened Mandala (1953), John Stehura's groundbreaking Cibernetik 5.3 (1960-65)—one of the very first computer films, Charles Dockum's Mobilcolor Projector light-experiment film, and other surprises. DUBLAB PRESENTS A LABRAT MATINEE 10: THE LIGHT BENDS Open your pupils wide and join us for another sublime installment of rarely-seen music videos, comedy clips, out-there animation, new Dublab films, and other eye-melting magic. EDGE OF THE CITY 1957, Warner Bros., 85 min, USA, Dir: Martin Ritt Another gritty exploration of life on the Manhattan docks that’s also a powerful look at 1950s race relations. Sidney Poitier and John Cassavetes play working-class pals driven apart by ignorance and racism (exemplified by a virulent thug, played brilliantly by Jack Warden). Martin Ritt’s stunning directorial debut, based on Robert Alan Aurthur’s 1955 teleplay “A Man Is Ten Feet Tall.” Not entirely noir, but a smart and suspenseful drama overdue for rediscovery! FAMILY NEST This impressive first film by Hungarian auteur Bela Tarr heralded the arrival of one of late 20th century cinema's most compelling and original voices. Shot in a cinema verite style, the film captures the lives of an ordinary family in a broken society. The housing shortage in Communist-ruled Hungary forces a young couple to live with the husband's parents in a cramped, one-room apartment. The proximity of too many people in too small a space leads to tireless arguments and a feeling of unending hopelessness. Dir. Béla Tarr, 1977, 35mm, 100 min. FERESTADEH (The Mission) Directed by Parviz Sayyad An Islamic revolutionary from Iran, dispatched to New York City to assassinate a former member of “Savak” (the Shah’s secret police), faces a crisis of conscience as he prepares to fulfill his mission. A fascination glimpse at the lives of post-revolutionary exiles in America, the film was Sayyad’s first as an exiled filmmaker, and he himself portrays the official marked for death. Producer: Reza Aria, P. Sayyad. Screenwriter: P. Sayyad. Cinematographer: Reza Aria. Editor: P. Sayyad. Cast: Houshang Touzie, Mary Apick, P. Sayyad, Saeed Rajai, Kamram Nozad. 35mm, color, in English and Persian w/ English s/t, 110 min. In-person: filmmaker Parviz Sayyad. FILMS BY LEWIS KLAHR & LAIDA LERTXUNDI Master collagist Lewis Klahr has been making films since 1977. He is known for his uniquely idiosyncratic experimental films, which have screened extensively in the United States, Europe and Asia. "Above all Klahr's great subject is time, which certainly explains the exquisitely melancholy tone that pervades his work. He traffics in modes that are pitched just beyond the realm of reason. Somewhere between waking and sleeping, we can find that wavelength and achieve understanding--only to have it slip away as we enter ones state or the other. Klahr's films and videos provide a rare opportunity for us to engage with a liminal state of consciousness with our alert mind and to reach those "infrathin" moments that Proust describes as existing outside of time."-- Chris Stults, Film Comment. Laida Lertxundi makes films with non-actors that evoke external and internal spaces of intimacy. Through intricate arrangements of actions and sounds, her work explores how filmic moments can be imbued with emotional resonance. As her cinema questions how viewers’ desires and expectations are shaped by cinematic forms of storytelling, it also searches for alternative ways of linking sound and music with found locales, constructed situations, and quotidian environments. Shot within and around Los Angeles, her films map out a geography of landscapes transformed by affective and subjective states. Her films have been selected for the 2012 Whitney Biennial, and other venues and festivals where her work has been shown include MoMA, LACMA, the Viennale, “Views from the Avant Garde” at the New York Film Festival, and the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Program: Wednesday Morning Two A.M. (2009, Digital Video), Lethe (2009, Digital Video), and Two Hours To Zero (2004, 16mm) by Lewis Klahr; Footnotes to a House of Love (2007), My Tears Are Dry (2009), Llora Cuando Te Pase / Cry When It Happens (2010),and A Lax Riddle Unit (2011)(all 16mm) by Laida Lertxundi. LEWIS KLAHR AND LAIDA LERTXUNDI IN ATTENDANCE! FIREWORKS WEDNESDAY (CHAHARSHANBE-SOORI) 2006, Facets Multi Media, 102 min, Iran, Dir: Asghar Farhadi During her first day at a new job, Roohi finds herself in an extremely uncomfortable position - in the middle of a domestic squabble between her employer and his wife. Director Asghar Farhadi uses this interpersonal conflict as the basis for a sweeping examination of the tensions that characterize modern-day Iranian society. In Persian with English subtitles. FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE “The good American, still devoutly believed in during the 1920s, was two things: he was aggressive, and he was innocent…and then there was Harold Lloyd. A boy whom nothing could defeat.” — Walter Kerr, “The Silent Clowns” Made famous by his stunningly athletic physical comedy and his “glasses” character — an ambitious go-getting Man of the Century, yet an everyman who resembled those in his audience — Harold Lloyd remains one of the era’s greatest comedians, alongside Chaplin and Keaton. Tonight’s first feature is For Heaven’s Sake (one of Lloyd’s best gags-for-gags’-sake films) in which he plays a wealthy man who falls for a homeless mission volunteer, is kidnapped by his friends offended by his breaching of class, and must escape their clutches to “make it to the church on time”. The ensuing escape on a double-decker bus remains one of Lloyd’s finest chase numbers. Harold Lloyd’s granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd will be be here at the Cinefamily to introduce the show — and join us for birthday cake, as we celebrate Harold’s upcoming April birthday! Dir. Sam Taylor, 1926, 35mm, 58 min. FRAGMENTS OF EVERYDAY LIFE: FILMS BY JANIS CRYSTAL LIPZIN & FRANCESCO GAGLIARDI The films on tonight's program all draw upon small moments from every day life to create complex mosaics with multiple layers of meaning. San Francisco Bay Area-based Janis Crystal Lipzin is an interdisciplinary artist who has created over two dozen films and videos, and whose work has been featured in numerous museum shows including the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art (NY), the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and numerous galleries and festivals. Her works shown tonight—Trepanations (Super 8 on video), Visible Inventory Six: Motel Dissolve and Visible Inventory 9: Pattern of Events (both 16mm)—simultaneously present different sources of information, drawn from personal correspondence, newspapers, and texts by Gertrude Stein, among others, that complicate and reflect upon the potentials of meaning through differing modes of communication between people as well as between places. Francesco Gagliardi is a performance artist and occasional filmmaker based in Toronto. His film Short Sentences 1993–2005 (Super 8 on video) was made over the course of twelve years, filming friends, family, and acquaintances on Super 8 film and recording their voices on a handheld cassette recorder as a performance of Gertrude Stein’s play of the same name. FILMMAKERS JANIS CRYSTAL LIPZIN AND FRANCESCO GAGLIARDI IN ATTENDANCE! Gasland Directed by Josh Fox. Produced by Trish Adlesic, Fox, Molly Gandour When Josh Fox is approached by a company wishing to drill for natural gas on his property, he begins a disturbing investigation into the environmental repercussions of the process. In region after region across the country, he documents evidence of serious pollution and contamination caused by drilling methods that have been exempted from the standards required by the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. Digital. 107 mins. Academy Award nominee: Documentary Feature GIRLFRIENDS One of the first fictional efforts by former documentary maker Claudia Weill, Girlfriends focuses on a pair of roommates, Susan Weinblatt and Anne Munroe, played by Melanie Mayron and Anita Skinner. Anne gets married, leaving the plump, insecure Susan alone for virtually the first time in her life. A mild flirtation with a rabbi leads to a whole new life for Susan when she becomes a portrait photographer for Jewish weddings and bar mitzvahs. Claudia Weill wrote the (presumed) autobiographical screenplay with Vicki Polon. Filmed in New Jersey, Girlfriends was an expansion of a short subject subsidized by the American Film Institute. Dir. Claudia Weill, 1978, 35mm, 86 min. GOD BLESS AMERICA Frank (Joel Murray) has had it. A soul-crushing cacophony of stupidity surrounds him: his neighbors’ ignorance and their baby’s non-stop bawling; the mindless water-cooler blather of his idiot office mates; a workplace act of kindness that blows up into sexual harassment; and to cap things off, a brain tumor. Frank finally snaps when the nation unites in the communal ridicule of a simpleminded contestant on a television singing competition. (Remember William Hung’s fifteen minutes of fame on AMERICAN IDOL?) How did his country become so cruel to the poor, huddled masses? Is it a sign of a declining empire when such a lowbrow arena of malice is pedaled as entertainment? Someone must pay. When Frank reaches for his handgun, he finds an unlikely ally in Roxy (Tara Lynn Barr), a high-school student whose ADD-like intolerance for the morons around her jives with Frank’s train of thought. She provides him with the targets to knock off. In turn, he gives her lessons in marksmanship. And so this platonic duo — a 45-year-old and a teenager — embark on a road trip with a body count. Join us after the screening for a Q&A with writer/director Bobcat Goldthwait! THE GREAT GATSBY (1949) 1949, Universal, 91 min, USA, Dir: Elliott Nugent Resurrected at last is this Golden Age version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, unseen for decades. Thanks to our friends at Universal Pictures, Alan Ladd’s noir-tinged take on the timeless tale of shady success and lost love can be seen again, in a brand-new print made exclusively for Noir City! Screenplay by Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum, based on the novel and a play by Owen Davis. Directed by Elliott Nugent. An intriguing take on an American classic. NOT ON DVD. This brand new print of THE GREAT GATSBY has been made exclusively for Noir City! Introduction by film noir experts Eddie Muller and Alan K. Rode. HERE WITHOUT ME (INJA BEDOONE MAN) Directed by Bahram Tavakoli Bahram Tavakoli deftly adapts Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie to a contemporary Iranian context. Fatemeh Motemed-Aria stars as a matriarch determined to marry off her handicapped and alienated daughter, seeing a last hope in the son of a work colleague. Abounding with contemporary detail, the film represents an effective transposition of a classic tale to a new social context. Producer: Saeed Sadi. Screenwriter: Bahram Tavakoli. Cinematographer: Hamid Khozooee. Editor: Bahram Dehghani. Cast: Fatemeh Motemed-Aria, Parsa Pirouzfar, Saber Abbar, Negar Javaherian. 35mm, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 97 min. HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION The EPFC extended family curates a program of highlights from our permanent collection of neglected and discarded 16mm film prints, featuring cartoons, educational and industrial films, newsreels, nature documentaries and other artifacts from the recent past. Titles include Computers: The Friendly Invasion, which explores the role computers play in everything from our dishwashers to the animations of John Whitney to some really far out multi-media performance; Discovering Electronic Music, with Moogs, Fairlights, oscilloscopes and sequencers galore; Bernard Longpre's psychedelic Carousel from 1968, and more! HIT SO HARD: THE LIFE AND NEAR-DEATH STORY OF DRUMMER PATTY SCHEMEL HIT SO HARD: The Life and Near-Death Story of Drummer Patty Schemel is a behind-the scenes portrait of what has been dubbed the unlucky 13th Generation, told through one woman’s amazing journey. In HIT SO HARD we follow the rise and fall and recovery of Patty Schemel, an openly gay female drummer who can rock with the best of them, most notable for her remarkable artistry in Courtney Love’s seminal rock band “Hole.” And it hopefully offers inspiration for its audience to embrace the redemptive power of facing your demons to find your place in what can feel like a hostile world. Directed by P. David Ebersole. Produced by Todd Hughes and Christina Soletti. Running time: 103 minutes. A HUEY P. NEWTON STORY 2001, Starz, 86 min, USA, Dir: Spike Lee Born in a small town in Louisiana, later moving with his family to Oakland as an infant, Huey P. Newton grew up to be the co-founder of the Black Panther Party, which he led for more than two decades. Director Spike Lee and actor-playwright Roger Guenveur Smith collaborate for the seventh time to bring to life Newton's thoughts, philosophies, history and distinct personality. Adapted from Smith's Obie Award-winning, Off-Broadway solo performance of the same name, Lee’s bio-doc uses his signature mix of film and archival footage to capture the thoughts of this revolutionary political leader. Discussion following with actor-playwright Roger Guenveur Smith and producer Stephan Adams. THE IMAGINARY VOYAGES OF MAUREEN SELWOOD Since 1980 Maureen Selwood’s hand-drawn animations have taken viewers into the strange, beautiful, and sometimes terrifying lands of the mind. For her first solo show in Los Angeles, she presents a selection of more recent pieces, including the haunting black-and-white imagery of Hail Mary (1998); the expressively rendered Drawing Lessons (2006) and I Started Early (2007); As You Desire Me (2009), the single-channel version of an installation inspired by her residence at the American Academy in Rome at the beginning of the Iraq War; the hallucinogenic trip of How Much Better if Plymouth Rock Had Landed on the Pilgrims (2009); the unexpected washing-machine madness of A Modern Convenience (2012); as well as Mistaken Identity (2001), her alluring deconstruction of 1955 noir classic Kiss Me Deadly, presented with live performance. In person: Maureen Selwood In a Lonely Place (1950) Directed by Nicholas Ray In this emotionally wrenching noir meditation on human frailty, director Ray directs his then wife Gloria Grahame as a woman locked in a tumultuous relationship with Bogart’s belligerent screenwriter (and murder suspect). 35mm, b/w, 94 min. JOE KIDD 1972, Universal, 88 min, USA, Dir: Clint Eastwood Clint Eastwood stars in this late Western by old master John Sturges (THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN), who brings his usual muscular style to the staging of some classic action sequences. Robert Duvall plays a wealthy land baron who hires bounty hunter Eastwood to track down a Mexican leader (John Saxon) fighting for reform. What seems like a simple job quickly becomes complicated for Eastwood as his allegiance starts to shift. Eastwood favorite Bruce Surtees brings his usual evocative touch to the imagery, while ace screenwriter Elmore Leonard provides the words. JOHNNY ALLEGRO 1949, Sony Repertory, 81 min, USA, Dir: Ted Tetzlaff In this underrated George Raft vehicle, the actor plays the title reformed crook, sent undercover to a Caribbean island hiding American gangsters. (Scripters Karen De Wolff and Guy Endore must have vacationed in Havana!) Allegro’s job: Take down Mr. Big (George Macready). Once Mrs. Big (Nina Foch) falls for Raft, things spiral into MOST DANGEROUS GAME territory, with Macready breaking out his bow and arrows! Directed by Ted Tetzlaff (THE WINDOW). NOT ON DVD JOHNNY O’CLOCK 1946, Sony Repertory, 85 min, USA, Dir: Robert Rossen Innocent Nancy Hobson (Evelyn Keyes) ventures to the nasty noir city when her sister winds up dead. She’s soon up to her chin in a tangle of gamblers, gangsters and surly cops - not to mention falling under the spell of charismatic casino owner Johnny O’Clock (Dick Powell, in his signature role). Scribe Robert Rossen’s directorial debut as a director offers the full range of noir iconography, and is played to the hilt by a colorful cast, featuring Lee J. Cobb, Ellen Drew, Nina Foch and Thomas Mitchell. NOT ON DVD. Introduction by film noir expert Alan K. Rode. JULIA One of four films by director Fred Zinnemann screening at the Getty Center this April, Julia stars Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave in an adaptation of playwright Lillian Hellman's memories of her best friend, a leader in the 1930s antifascist resistance. A conversation with Academy Award-winning sound designer and film editor Walter Murch, Academy Award-winning screenwriter Alvin Sargent, and Getty scholar Jennifer Smyth follows the screening. (20th Century Fox; 35 mm, 117 min. Print courtesy of 20th Century Fox.) JUST BETWEEN US (NEKA OSTANE MEDJU NAMA) 2010, 87 min, Croatia, Dir: Rajko Grlic Wealthy philanderer Nikola (Miki Manojlovic) is married to Anamarija (Daria Lorenci), the ex-girlfriend of his equally philandering brother, Braco (Bojan Navojec). Deeply resentful of his brother, Braco has retaliated by marrying Nikola's childhood sweetie, Marta (Ksenija Marinkovic), and meanwhile secretly is supplying sperm for Anamarija, who's trying to conceive through in vitro fertilization. Rajko Grlic’s farce of sexual musical chairs and hyperbolic familial ax-grinding is one hilarious hairpin turn after another, anchored by a winningly charming cast. In Croatian with English subtitles. KARMETIK MACHINE ORCHESTRA: SAMSARA “KarmetiK Machine Orchestra mark[s] a giant leap toward a future when we might go to concerts to hear machines play.” Newsweek Brilliant musicmakers are allied with fantastical robotic instruments in this paradigm-shifting performance that invokes “samsara”—the Sanskrit concept of the cycle of birth, life, death, and reincarnation—as the Machine Orchestra offers musical interpretations of several traditional Indian fables drawn from the Panchatantra and the Jataka Tales. Musicians, electro-mechnical instruments, dancers, and multiple speakers are dispersed in and around the audience for this “rebirth” of ancient morality tales in the technologically ingenious 21st century. Samsara is directed by Ajay Kapur and Michael Darling. Special guest artists include interactive electronic performers Curtis Bahn and Tomie Hahn, choreographer Raakhi Kapur and the legendary kinetic sculptor and musician Trimpin. World premiere. LA AIR: JOHN PALMER LA AIR is a new artist-in-residence program that invites Los Angeles filmmakers to utilize EPFC resources in creating a new work over a four-week period. Our April resident, John Palmer, plans to work on a series of hand-processed photogram 16mm films, a video about secrets, and—time-willing—a work-in-progress using manipulated projection and live performance. John Palmer is a Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary artist and designer. His work includes film, video, photography, and sculpture, and has been exhibited internationally, including venues such as Southern Exposure, SF Cameraworks, Black Maria Gallery, Blaffer Gallery, La Enana Marron, Artists Space, Pacific Film Archive and Millennium Film Workshop. He received his BFA from San Francisco Art Institute and is a recipient of the Princess Grace Foundation Honorarium and the James Broughton Film Award. L.A. FILMWORKS: THE STATE OF THE ART IN LOS ANGELES, 1980 In the early 1980s, Filmforum’s Terry Cannon assembled a few mixed shows for touring of experimental films by Los Angeles filmmakers. Along with Filmforum Film (Craig Rice, 1980), a document of Filmforum, selections from these shows proves a fitting end to the series, revealing the state of the art as seen by its curators in Los Angeles, circa 1980. Guests will include Craig Rice, William Scaff and Filmforum founder Terry Cannon. LAST WINTER (L'HIVER DERNIER) 2011, Cinéart, 103 min, John Shank, 27-year-old Johan (Vincent Rottiers) lives alone on his father’s farm in south-central France, tending to the land and shuttling his mentally unstable sister between the countryside and a nearby institution. As winter sets in, Johan becomes increasingly isolated, neglecting his girlfriend and fixating on a wolf that has never been seen but that he is certain is endangering his livestock. John Shank’s elegant drama, hailed by Variety as “stunningly shot, languidly paced… assembled with impressive confidence and featuring quietly powerful performances,” follows the solemn alienation of a man desperately holding on to a bygone rural existence. “A carefully crafted visual poem set on an unforgiving landscape.” - 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. In French with English subtitles. LA VIE DE BOHEME Kaurismaki succeeds in creating a wonderfully ironic chamber drama about three rebel, eccentric artists -- a poet, a painter and a composer. They all live the "bohemian life" in which their friendship and camaraderie are the most valued characteristics, even as each faces the harsh everyday reality of the outer world. Kaurismaki creates a fabulously artificial milieu in a film of gentle and unexpected humor and warmth. 1992, France/Germany/Sweden/Finland, 35mm, 100 minutes. written and directed by Aki Kaurismäki; based on Henri Murger's novel (Scènes de la Vie de Bohème ); starring Matti Pellonpää, Evelyne Didi, André Wilms, Kari Väänänen, Christine Murillo, Jean-Pierre Léaud; in French with English subtitles LE HAVRE In this warmhearted portrait of the French harbor city that gives the film its name, fate throws young African refugee Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) into the path of Marcel Marx (André Wilms), a well-spoken bohemian who works as a shoeshiner. With innate optimism and the unwavering support of his community, Marcel stands up to officials doggedly pursuing the boy for deportation. A political fairy tale that exists somewhere between the reality of contemporary France and the classic cinema of Jean-Pierre Melville and Marcel Carné, Le Havre is a charming, deadpan delight. 2011, Finland/France/Germany, 35mm, 93 minutes. written and directed by Aki Kaurismäki; starring André Wilms, Kati Outinen, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Blondin Miguel; in French with English subtitles LE JOUR SE LÈVE (DAYBREAK) 1938, Studio Canal Plus, 93 min, France, Dir: Marcel Carné Seven years before they made film history with CHILDREN OF PARADISE, writer Jacques Prévert and director Marcel Carné teamed up for this landmark of French cinema. Jean Gabin, in one of his best performances, plays a foundry employee driven to murder due to complicated romantic entanglements. In French with English subtitles. L'INFERNO In conjunction with the exhibition Heaven, Hell, and Dying Well: Images of Death in the Middle Ages, this series focuses on three interpretations of Dante Alighieri's Inferno. Since the fifteenth century, illustrators, painters, and (finally) filmmakers have envisioned the "nine circles of hell." L'Inferno (1911, Italy, 68 minutes, black and white) Directed by Giuseppe de Liguoro LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF 2003, 169 min, Dir: Thom Andersen A must-see for Los Angeles history buffs and cinema enthusiasts. Marvel at the hundreds of archival and film clips revealing an almost secret history of the City of Angels. A Cinematheque favorite - see it now on the big screen! THE MAKIOKA SISTERS The Makioka Sisters chronicles the life and affairs of four sisters in late '30s Japan. An older, conservative sister tries to continue family traditions and pretensions to status, while the younger sisters discover the new freedoms becoming available to them. "This Kon Ichikawa film has a triumphant simplicity about it. You don't just watch the film--you coast on its rhythms and glide past the precipitous spots" (Pauline Kael, The New Yorker). The cast includes Juzo Itami, who would later emerge as a prominent director with The Funeral, Tampopo and A Taxing Woman. In Japanese with English subtitles. 1983, Japan, 35mm, 140 minutes. 35mm print made in 2011! directed by Kon Ichikawa; starring Keiko Kishi, Yoshiko Sakuma, Sayuri Yoshinaga, Yûko Kotegawa; in Japanese with English subtitles MARLEY From Kevin Macdonald (director of Touching The Void, The Last King of Scotland and State of Play) comes the definitive documentary portrait of one of pop music’s greatest icons. Exhaustively researched, filled to the brim with interviews of inner-circle friends & family, and featuring never-before-seen footage, Marley transcends the “rock bio” to become one of the most epic human stories from the Seventies era. In addition to our premiere screening of Marley, our opening night party features an all-nighter movie marathon of Jamaican cinema classics TBA! Dir. Kevin MacDonald, 2012, 35mm, 145 min. Mickey One (1965) Directed by Arthur Penn Arthur Penn’s New Wave-influenced, jazz riff on film noir and post-war alienation was years ahead of its time and still casts a hypnotic spell as Warren Beatty’s stand-up comic tries to out run the mob. 35mm, b/w, 93 min. MOURNING Directed by Morteza Farshbaf A young boy accompanies his aunt and uncle on a road trip, during which they secretly discuss whether to tell him his parents have died in a traffic accident. Their exchanges reveal a degree of dysfunction—a recurring feature of contemporary Iranian film—but also, heartrending moments in which compassion falteringly asserts itself. A beautiful and humanistic tale, the film is an impressive debut by filmmaker Morteza Farshbaf. Screenwriter: Anahita Ghazvinizadeh. Cast: Sharareh Pasha, Kiomars Giti, Adel Yaraghi. 35mm, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 90 min. MY WAY 2011/color/137 min./Scope Scr: Kang Je-gyu, Kim Byung-in; dir: Kang Je-gyu; w/ Jang Dong-gun, Joe Odagiri, Bingbing Fan Film Independent at LACMA presents the U.S. premiere of the 2011 drama My Way, directed by Kang Je-gyu and starring Jang Dong-gun and Joe Odagiri. This action-drama offers a very different look at World War II and centers on the intense competition between two men, one Korean and the other Japanese, that begins in their boyhood and follows them into battle in World War II, as both end up fighting for the Japanese Imperial Army. Kang integrates personal and political conflicts as well as class warfare into this expansive and thought-provoking epic, defining the collateral damage of war in ways rarely examined in film. In person: Kang Je-gyu NAKED ALIBI 1953, Universal, 86 min, USA, Dir: Jerry Hopper A murder suspect (Gene Barry), released for lack of evidence, vows vengeance on the cops who brutalized him. When one of those cops turns up dead, his partner (Sterling Hayden) hunts down the “innocent” man to prove him guilty. Both end up in thrall to bordertown bad girl Gloria Grahame, whose unique sexiness is on full display in this ultra-rare potboiler! Screenplay by Lawrence Roman, from a story by Gladys Atwater and Robert Bren. Directed by Jerry Hopper. NOT ON DVD. Introduction by film noir experts Eddie Muller and Alan K. Rode. NEW WORKS SALON Several artists will present new in-progress or recently completed works. As a result of spending a month long residency at EPFC Ursula Brookbank became involved with shooting film after ten years of working with video. Super 8 was used for the documentation of objects from the SHE WORLD archive, an on going accumulation of feminine detritus gathered by the artist. As a work in progress, multiple projection of the films is being explored as well forms of narration. Walter Vargas shows his Super 8 My Mother’s Money for this Film, a work about Sacramento's politics and a South Central boy empowered by Frida Kahlo’s painting The Two Fridas, walking on a tightrope between self-comfort and biculturalism, seeing what the hell Chicano means, and that it's ok to be two, or not. Bay Area artist Linda Scobie visits us with her 16mm works Craig’s Cutting Room Floor, a furious two-minute fragmented journey through cinema’s history taken right off the cutting room floor of San Francisco collage artist, filmmaker, and eclectic archivist of 16mm films Craig Baldwin, and her newly completed Skydogs. Kim Strouse will present her on-going video project begun in 2009 MAKE UP, in which she explores how making up functions in her relationship from self to other, from apology to lipstick; what is my make up? how do I make up? how do we make up? Cosmo Segurson will present a new work based on Edgar G. Ulmer's 1945 Detour, which “has haunted me since the first night I watched it. With absolute respect for the source material, this is my first attempt to expand my favorite scene into a fever dream of despair, and existential horror. Enjoy.” Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1940) Directed by Edward Cline For his last starring vehicle, Fields developed a loose story that has him playing a version of himself (more or less): an aging comedian at Esoteric Pictures, trying to sell the studio on his wild ideas while mentoring his niece, a young singing star (Jean). Such a straight-forward synopsis, however, doesn’t even begin to capture the surreal energy of this eccentric romp. Universal Pictures. Screenwriter: John T. Neville, Prescott Chaplin. Cinematographer: Charles Van Enger. Editor: Arthur Hilton. Cast: W. C. Fields, Gloria Jean, Leon Errol, Margaret Dumont, Susan Miller. 35mm, b/w, 70 min. New Day at 40: A Community's Celebration REDCAT is proud to host a celebratory screening (program TBA) to mark the 40th anniversary of New Day Films—created by filmmakers Julia Reichert and Jim Klein when they failed to secure distribution for Growing Up Female (1971), about the social constraints placed on women aged 4 to 35. In the early 1970s the act of hearing women’s voices was perceived as a “radical,” and New Day welcomed the work of filmmakers—both men and women—who were challenging the political status quo in terms of gender, social and racial inequality. Today, New Day Films counts more than 100 members, whose films have won Academy Awards, Emmys, and premiered at major film festivals, and cover issues as diverse as immigration, human rights, LGBT, disability, addiction, criminal justice, youth and aging. In person: Members of New Day Films Paris la belle (“Paris the Beautiful”) 1960, Argos Films, 24 min. Dir. Pierre Prévert. In this delightful short co-scripted by Jacques Prévert, the Paris of 1928 is contrasted with the Paris of 1959, with a combination of lovely black-and-white and color imagery collected by Jacques's brother, Pierre. In French with English subtitles. PARTCH “Weird and wonderful sonorities, truly unlike anything else on Earth or any neighboring celestial body.” LA Weekly Celebrating the release of the first recording of the complete Bitter Music, Partch’s often hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, long-lost hobo journal from 1935 is performed as a special multimedia presentation including the work’s original pen and ink illustrations, photographs from the composer’s scrapbooks and his legendary instruments. From the transient shelters of mid-Depression California to the reading room of the British Museum, from cleaning sewers to taking tea with Irish poet W.B. Yeats, Partch’s story reveals seven months in a lifetime of extraordinary struggle to forge a new musical language outside the traditions of western classical music. The evening also includes a newly discovered 1969 interview with Partch about Bitter Music, and the first performance of the long-lost 1942 version of Barstow for 2 voices, Adapted Guitar and Chromelodeon. Poison Todd Haynes (Velvet Goldmine, Far From Heaven) first exploded onto the post-Soderbergh '90s Sundance landscape with this controversial debut feature, a dizzying, perverse mix of kitschy drive-in fare, docudrama and lyrical poeticism. Sprinkled with quotes and situations from the literature of writer/thief/convict Jean Genet, and with a dose of vivid queer sexuality, Poison posits a triptych of stories relentlessly intercut with each other to produce an escalating sense of unease: a procedural pseudo-doc in which family and friends discuss a disappeared magical, murderous child; a '50s sci-fi parody featuring a mad doctor who chemically isolates the human sex drive; and, the aching tale of an inveterate thief whose prison life is disrupted by the object of his affection from their old reformatory days. Elegantly assembled and often disturbing, operating through dense subliminal suggestions that take hold long after the closing credits roll, Poison both nabbed the 1991 Sundance Grand Jury Prize, and ignited a firestorm of debate when its partial funding by the NEA became a target of the religious right. Dir. Todd Haynes, 1991, 35mm, 85 min. In-person: filmmaker Todd Haynes; scholar B. Ruby Rich. POSSESSION Capturing the energy generated when two people whose lives are so intensely fused and woven are forcibly split, Possession is an emotional nuclear explosion. If all we were given were its operatic and shamanistic performances by leads Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill, its impossible-to-describe music by Andrzej Korzynski, and its masterful, hyper-kinetical ballet of camera choreography — all delivered with the force of a a long-suppressed traumatic memory — then Possession would already be the best film about divorce ever filmed. But when the angels and demons of our inner nature are literally incarnated in phantasmagorical form — the kind requiring the talents of Oscar-winning creature FX master Carlo Rambaldi (who, instead of making a cutey-pie “E.T.”, concocts a tentacled Lovecraftian octo-sex-demon) — you have the kind of explosively cathartic and entertaining experience that leads to movie-lover nirvanic bliss. Welcome to Possession, your new favorite movie. Prisoners and Patriots: The Untold Story of Japanese Internment in Santa Fe by Neil Simon During World War II, the U.S. government detained more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent in "internment" camps throughout the West. One camp was different. Run by the Department of Justice, the Santa Fe Camp held 4,555 men considered the ‘worst of the worst.’ Despite their experience behind barbed wire, their story has largely been unknown—a hole in the history books for the last 60 years. Prisoners and Patriots: The Untold Story of Japanese Internment in Santa Fe is the first documentary to fill that void. Based on 20 hours of exclusive interviews with former Santa Fe camp survivors and their families, previously classified government documents and private photographs, this film tells a story that, in many cases, fathers never told their own children after the war. Santa Fe’s prisoners were all men—some Japanese nationals, some U.S. citizens. Many were Buddhist ministers. Some were businessmen, teachers or journalists from the West Coast, Hawaii, and Latin America whom the U.S. government feared would be able to gain large pro-Japanese followings. Considering the youngest internees were in their 20s, the few remaining survivors from Santa Fe are now at least in their 80s. Prisoners and Patriots is a film that ensures their story will be preserved, passing on a remembrance of who they were and how they endured their desert detention. A QUARTET OF RECENT FILMS BY NATHANIEL DORSKY Working in film since his childhood, Nathaniel Dorsky has become established as one of this country’s pre-eminent masters of essential cinema. His works, which are characteristically 16mm and silent and regularly exhibited in major art institutions, are explorative, devotional observations of everyday scenes and situations, whose sensitivity to light, shadow, movement and time render the anecdotal and familiar as unfamiliar, revealing mysteries ever-present but seldom recognized. Sarabande (2009) “Dark and stately is the warm, graceful tenderness of the Sarabande.” —Nathaniel Dorsky. 16mm, color, silent, 15 min. Compline (2009) “Compline is a night devotion or prayer, the last of the canonical hours, the final act in a cycle. This film is also the last film I will be able to shoot on Kodachrome, a film stock I have shot since I was ten years old. It is a loving duet with and a fond farewell to this noble emulsion." —Nathaniel Dorsky. 16mm, color, silent, 19 min. Aubade (2009) "An aubade is a poem or morning song evoking the first rays of the sun at daybreak. Often, it includes the atmosphere of lovers parting. This film is my first venture into shooting in color negative after having spent a lifetime shooting Kodachrome. In some sense, it is a new beginning for me." —Nathaniel Dorsky. 16mm, color, silent, 12 min. Winter (2008) “San Francisco’s winter is a season unto itself. Fleeting, rain-soaked, verdant, a brief period of shadows and renewal.” —Nathaniel Dorsky. 16mm, color, silent, 22 min. In-person: filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky. REIGN OF TERROR (aka THE BLACK BOOK) 1949, Sony Repertory, 88 min, USA, Dir: Anthony Mann Director Anthony Mann and DP John Alton, using the full-bore noir treatment, turn the French Revolution into a crime saga dripping with greed, deceit and betrayal. With Robert Cummings as Charles D’Aubigny and Richard Basehart as Robespierre, all of the elements are here - atmospheric camerawork, taut script, a beautiful spy (Arlene Dahl, again!) and fearsome Charles McGraw (looking like the leader of a French biker gang) as Robespierre’s sadistic henchman. ROD BRADLEY FILMS - BRADLEY's (in person) moving portraits of poets, painters and jazz musicians reveal inner consciousness. THE SEARCH One of four films by director Fred Zinnemann screening at the Getty Center this April, The Search examines one Czechoslovakian boy's survival in postwar Germany. A conversation with director Fred Zinnemann's son, Tim Zinnemann, and Getty scholar Jennifer Smyth follows the screening. (Praesens Film, MGM; 35 mm, 104 min. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.) SEEING AND AWAKENING: NEW FILMS BY NATHANIEL DORSKY Nathaniel Dorsky’s work celebrates the essence of cinema, creating profound experiences that explore the world through images of extraordinary beauty and a use of montage that subverts the descriptive to awaken mystery. Dorsky’s Devotional Cinema is a modern classic on the poetics of the medium, and he has written, “It is the direct connection of light and audience that interests me.” Making films beginning in the 1960s, Dorsky has completed thirteen films since 1996 that have been prominently featured at festivals and museums throughout the world. This program includes Pastourelle (2010), The Return (cited by The New York Times as one of the best films of 2011), and the world premiere of August and After. An additional program of Dorsky’s films is presented at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. In person: Nathaniel Dorsky SHARON LOCKHART: DOUBLE TIDE 16mm transferred to HD, color, sound, 93 min. In the wake of her cinematic meditations on the relationship between laboring bodies and their environment—NO (2003) and Lunch Break (2008), both shown at REDCAT—artist/filmmaker Sharon Lockhart positioned her camera in the wild coastal landscape of Seal Cove, Maine, a historic site for commercial clamming. Following the backbreaking efforts of clam digger Jen Casad, the film unfolds in two uninterrupted takes to capture the rare phenomenon of “double tide”—when low tide occurs twice during daylight hours, once at dawn and once at dusk. The splendid imagery is matched by a seductive sound track, bird chirpings mixed with the sound of wind, water and an invisible foghorn, interrupted just once by the digger’s lone, moving cry. In person: Sharon Lockhart THE SHOW MUST GO ON 2010, 80 min, Croatia, Dir: Nevio Marasovic In the near future, successful TV producer Filip (Sven Medvesek) has just launched a reality show focusing on the lives of six couples living together, a direct competitor to his ex-wife’s higher-rated news show. When the much-speculated World War III breaks out, Filip hides the international news from his sequestered contestants, who continue with their sheltered on-set lives as if nothing has happened. Filip suddenly finds himself with a massively popular escapist TV show on his hands, and must grapple with the slippery morals that go along with it while trying to protect his son from the harsh realities of war. In Croatian with English subtitles. Discussion between films with director Nevio Marasovic and composer Zeljko Marasovich Silent Comedy Shorts Program Join us for our monthly program of favorite early comedians and pranksters: A compilation of shorts from Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Georges Méliès, Winsor McKay, Segundo de Chomón and Harold Lloyd will be presented with live musical accompaniment. "French Interpreter Policeman" (1908, 7 min). A group of local French cops take private English lessons at the school of Miss Blacford in this charming short from early cinema wizard Georges Méliès. “The Rink” (1916, 30 min). Charlie Chaplin stars as a busboy posing as hoity-toity Sir Cecil Seltzer in this riotous early gem. Includes a “ballet” on a roller-skating rink! “The Frozen North” (1922, 17 min). Buster Keaton’s at “the last stop on the subway,” i.e. Alaska, in this hilarious short. Touches of surrealism and Buster playing the bad guy make this a unique film in Keaton’s work. “Gertie the Dinosaur” (1914, 12 min). Winsor McKay’s animated delight features the popular cartoonist drawing a dinosaur (Gertie), and then climbing in the frame with the brontosaurus and going for a ride. The first animated film to star a “personality” animal, this short paved the way for Mickey Mouse and countless others. “Music, Forward!” (1907, 3 min). Segundo de Chomón has heads turning into music notes and Lilliputian people forming a marching band in this whimsical wizardry short. If you love Georges Méliès, you’ll love this! “An Eastern Westerner” (1920, 20 min). Harold Lloyd stars as a New York city slicker tending his uncle’s ranch in the West. Little does Harold know that the nearby outpost of Piute Pass is being terrorized by Tiger Lip Tompkins and his gang, the Masked Angels. Sisters (1973) Directed by Brian DePalma De Palma’s first full-tilt Hitchockian thriller stars Margot Kidder as Siamese twins, separated at birth but bound by a horrifying secret as a reporter tracking a murder case soon discovers. 35mm, color, 93 min. SLAUGHTER ON TENTH AVENUE 1956, Universal, 103 min, USA, Dir: Arnold Laven This stepson to ON THE WATERFRONT packs a wallop of its own. An upstart district attorney (Richard Egan) tries to crack the New York waterfront’s mob-enforced code of silence and mete out justice for a murdered whistleblower. Jan Sterling is terrific as the victim’s widow, heading a dynamite supporting cast of familiar and fantastic character actors, including Dan Duryea, Charles McGraw, Sam Levene and Walter Matthau. Lawrence Roman’s fact-based script is vigorously directed by Arnold Laven. NOT ON DVD. Introduction by film noir expert Alan K. Rode. Discussion between films with actress Julie Adams. SOUND OF MY VOICE Following much preparation, Peter and Lorna are given an address. In the dead of night, they pull off the lonely road and await further instructions. Soon they part with their clothes and belongings. After they shower and clean themselves thoroughly, they are blindfolded and whisked to an undisclosed location, where they descend into a basement. Once downstairs, they perform the complicated handshake and are able to gain entry into the group. With that, the young couple, who have been posing as believers, successfully infiltrate the cult’s inner sanctum and meet enigmatic leader Maggie (Brit Marling, ANOTHER EARTH). Maggie claims to come from the future, and she has grand plans. What follows is a delicately paced and riveting plunge into a psychological maelstrom of uncertainty and danger. Filmmaker Zal Batmanglij’s feature debut (co-written with Marling) crackles with a mesmerizing command of form, offering no easy answers to the elusive search for truth. Starring Griffith Park Carved from the former Spanish land grant Rancho Los Feliz, Griffith Park, the 4,300-acre wilderness in the heart of Los Angeles, has been a playground for Angelenos for over a century. Since 1896, when the land was donated by philanthropist Griffith J. Griffith, generations of weekenders enjoyed its many features. The park, which lies in the shadow of the Hollywood sign, has been a frequent filming site for legendary movies like Back to the Future, Birth of a Nation, and Rebel Without a Cause. Authors E.J. Stephens and Marc Wanamaker will present an evening of clips about Griffith Park as a filming location from the earliest years to the present. Their Arcadia Publishing book on Griffith Park will be available for sale and for signing by the authors the evening of the show following their presentation. STONY ISLAND 1978, 97 min, USA, Dir: Andrew Davis Sweet and naive Richie Bloom (Richard Davis) is an 18-year-old guitar player living in the rough Chicago South Side neighborhood of Stony Island. Richie and his silky-voiced best friend Kevin (Edward “Stoney” Robinson) have wistful hopes of starting an R&B band, and when local saxophone legend Percy Price (Gene “Daddy G” Barge) and fellow saxophonist Harold (George Englund) join their ranks, the boys’ pipe dreams of a funky musical supergroup seem to be within reach. But when a sudden loss strikes, Richie and Kevin realize it’s going to take all the wit, sleight-of-hand and outrageous Chicago bravado they have to finally turn their aspirations of a smash debut into reality. A tour-de-force of charm and infectiously good music, STONY ISLAND also boasts cinematography by Tak Fujimoto (BADLANDS) and a score by David Matthews. With Rae Dawn Chong. Discussion following with director Andrew Davis. STRANGE IMPERSONATION 1944, Films Around the World, 68 min, USA, Dir: Anthony Mann This kooky and claustrophobic crime/sci-fi/soap opera hybrid crams about three movies’ worth of plot into its brief running time: chemical experiments, insurance scams, romantic triangles, plastic surgery - it’s a bizarre and berserk funhouse ride, featuring Brenda Marshall, William Gargan and sexy Hillary Brooke. One of director Mann’s more stylish, inventive (and nutty) B’s, paving the way for his ascension to A-list assignments and eventual auteur status. STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT Anthony Mann's early noir, STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT (1944), tells the story of Marine Johnny Meadows (William Terry) who has recently returned home with the hopes of meeting the young woman, Rosemary, with whom he has been corresponding. He arrives at her house only to find her mother, who makes a series of excuses for Rosemary's absence. The longer Johnny stays at the house, the more suspicious the secretive actions of the old woman seem until it becomes apparent that his life might be in serious danger. "The inky noir style and fatalist themes that would emerge full force in director Anthony Mann’s T-MEN (1948) and BORDER INCIDENT (1949) begin to take shape in this, Mann’s sixth feature, an early gothic B-thriller about a returning vet lured into a psychological nightmare by the promise of love." - Paul Malcolm, UCLA Archive SUDDENLY 1954, Lobster Films, 86 min, USA, Dir: Lewis Allen In this tense thriller, Hayden plays a small-town sheriff confronting a trio of paid killers bent on assassinating the vacationing president of the United States. Frank Sinatra is electrifying as the boss bad guy; the actor-singer tried to buy up all copies of this film after the murder of John F. Kennedy. Lewis Allen provides his strongest directing effort for Richard Sale’s taut, suspenseful script. THE THIRD PART OF THE NIGHT Emerging right out of the gate with a debut as emotionally potent and stylistically inventive as any of his dazzling later works, Andrzej Zulawski’s masterful fever dream The Third Part of the Night is a elliptical wonder on par with the most mind-stretching intellectual Moebius strips of Tarkovsky and David Lynch. Based on the real-life experiences of Zulawski’s father during the Nazi occupation of Poland, the film follows a fugitive who, after witnessing the murder of his wife and child, is hurled into a life that literally is not his own. Littered with trapdoors, doubles, and wormholes, Zulawski creates a cinematic world on the verge of collapse, where doppelgangers and dread abound alongside the true untold story of a Nazi vaccine laboratory, where Jews and members of the resistance were “employed” as feeders for parasites infected with typhus (thus protecting them from persecution.) It’s a history that’s mind-bogglingly fascinating on its own; in Zulawski’s hands, it’s one of the most unique war films ever created. Dir. Andrzej Zulawski, 1971, 35mm, 105 min. THIS GUN FOR HIRE 1942, Universal, 81 min, USA, Dir: Frank Tuttle Alan Ladd skyrocketed to stardom playing vengeful assassin Philip Raven in this stylish adaptation of Graham Greene’s classic novel of espionage, transposed to the California coast. Veronica Lake sizzles in her first of seven onscreen pairings with Ladd, and noir favorites Laird Cregar and Marc Lawrence lend memorable support. Directed by Frank Tuttle, from a screenplay by W.R. Burnett (THE ASPHALT JUNGLE) and Albert Maltz (NAKED CITY). T-MEN 1947, 92 min, USA, Dir: Anthony Mann Director Anthony Mann and DP John Alton - king of chiaroscuro - pull out all the stops in relating the intensely exciting and shockingly brutal tale of Treasury agents, led by the redoubtable Dennis O’Keefe, going undercover to infiltrate a cadre of counterfeiters. Great character bits from Charles McGraw and Wallace Ford in a vivid script by crime scribe John C. Higgins. One of the most artfully arresting visual spectacles of the original film noir era! Traffic in Souls (1913) Directed by George Loane Tucker A woman is snatched literally off the boat in New York harbor and sold into what was euphemistically called the white slavery trade, secretly run by a well-known philanthropist. Taking a cue from D.W. Griffith's Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) and its mistrust of wealthy do-gooders, Tucker’s yellow journalism earned back 100 times its production costs and was Universal’s first international hit. Independent Moving Picture Co. Screenwriter: Walter MacNamara, G.L. Tucker. Cast: Jane Gail, Ethel Grandin, William Turner, Matt Moore, William Welsh. 35mm, silent, b/w, 88 min. TRIGGER FINGER Morgan Westin (Layla Mae) is a teenage wallflower -- who may or may not be responsible for her step-sister's murder. Detective Harold Casey (Michael James Bell) is brought on to the case once suspicion for the crime falls on Joseph (Carlos Castillo), a local drug dealer with whom Casey has a long-unsettled score. When Casey discovers that the killer might be Morgan, not Joseph, he decides to help her get away with murder, so that the "right man" can end up in jail. But is Morgan a cold-blooded killer, an innocent victim, or something in between? Followed by a Q&A with cast & crew THE TURIN HORSE 2011, Cinema Guild, 146 min, Hungary, Dir: Béla Tarr While traveling in Turin, Italy in 1889, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche witnessed a horse being whipped. He tossed his arms around the horse’s neck to protect it, and then collapsed. Less than a month later, Nietzsche would be diagnosed with a mental illness that left him bedridden and mute for the next 11 years, until his death at age 65. But whatever happened to the horse? After opening with this ingenious set-up and in less than three dozen long takes spread out over 146 minutes, THE TURIN HORSE, the latest and reportedly last film from Hungarian maestro Béla Tarr, plunges us into a feat of speechless, spellbinding storytelling, hypnotically evoking the rhythms of daily life as he follows a farmer forced to accept the mortality of his beloved horse. In Hungarian with English subtitles. VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS 1970/color/77 min. Scr: Jaromil Jireš, Ester Krumbachová; dir: Jaromil Jireš; w/ Jaroslava Schallerová, Helena Anýzová, Petr Kopriva, Jirí Prýmek. Valerie and her Week of Wonders meshes a coming-of-age allegory with baroque fantasy, trippy horror, and potent symbolism. Equal parts old-world superstition and Victorian fairy tale, Valerie infuses its splintered narrative with hippie audacity. Living with her grandmother in a Transylvanian hamlet, teenage Valerie walks a fine line between dream state and waking life after she begins to menstruate. Past and present merge, characters take on multiple identities, vampires, priests and other strange creatures abound. A lasting cult classic, Valerie most recently had a substitute to its original Luboš Fišer score created by a psych-rock supergroup that calls itself The Valerie Project. The Warriors of Qiugang Directed by Ruby Yang. Produced by Thomas Lennon, Yang When a chemical company begins poisoning their air and water, the villagers of Qiugang, China, decide to fight for a safe environment for their home. Digital. 39 mins. Academy Award nominee: Documentary Short Subject WARRIORS OF THE RAINBOW: SEEDIQ BALE Wei Te-sheng's epic film Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale reclaims an extraordinary episode from 20th-century history which is little-known, even in Taiwan. Between 1895 and 1945, the island was a Japanese colony inhabited not only by the majority (Han Chinese Immigrants) but also by the remnants of the aboriginal tribes who first settled the mountainous land. In 1930 Mouna Rudo, the leader of the Seediq tribe settled on and around Mount Chilai, forged a coalition with other Seediq tribal leaders and plotted a rebellion against their Japanese colonial masters. It was to begin at a sports day meeting where the assembled tribesmen were to attach and kill the Japanese officials and would then broaden to sieges on police stations and local government offices in the region. The initial uprising took the Japanese by surprise and was almost entirely successful. But the Japanese soon sent in their army to crush the rebellion, using aircraft and poison gas. Mouna Rudo knew from the start that the relatively small force of Seediq tribesmen stood no chance of defeating the might of Japan. But he and his allies were sustained by the beliefs and myths which had nourished their tribes since time immemorial. Young males in the tribes had to undergo a rite of passage to become adult men, which gave them the right to have their faces tattooed. In the tribal language, they became Seediq Bale – heroes of the tribe. Their belief was that their ancestors would lead the spirits of the Seediq Bale across a rainbow bridge to the summit of the mountain when their time came. And so whatever the result of their uprising against Japan, they would march in victory across the rainbow bridge. The heroism and fortitude of the Seediq warriors and their womenfolk shocked even the Japanese, and won them enduring respect. Written and Directed by Wei Te-Sheng. Produced by John Woo, Terence Chang and Jimmy Huang. Followed by a Q&A with LIN CHING-TAI (actor, "Mouna Rudo") WE EAT THE FRUIT OF THE TREES OF PARADISE 1970/color/99 min. | Scr: Ester Krumbachová, Vera Chytilová; dir: Vera Chytilová; w/ Jitka Novákova, Karel Novak, Jan Schmid. Reteaming with her Daisies collaborators—cinematographer Jaroslav Kucera and screenwriter Ester Krumbachova—while adding soundscapes by avant-garde composer Zdenek Liska (Marketa Lazarova, The Little Mermaid, various Svankmajer shorts), Chytilová presents a modern-day, pungently psychedelic reimagining of the Adam and Eve story in We Eat the Fruit of the Trees of Paradise. Eden is a pastoral resort, and, as Eve explores its leafy vastness (all the while tailed by a bearded Satan), Chytilová unleashes a cavalcade of effects—multiple exposures, step printing, frantic edits, slow motion—that echo her protagonist’s visionary experience. Premiered at the 1970 edition of Cannes, We Eat the Fruit of the Trees of Paradise never had a U.S. release. WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES In Bela Tarr's celebrated film, the arrival of a couple of bizarre circus attractions--the stuffed corpse of a huge whale and a mysterious character with magnetic powers called The Prince--sparks unrest in a provincial Hungarian town. Although composed of only 39 shots, the mesmerizing camerawork of this complex allegory creates subtle suspense and a lingering sense of dread. Dirs. Béla Tarr & Ágnes Hranitzky, 2000, 35mm, 145 min. Where Are My Children? (1916) Directed by Lois Weber, Phillips Smalley An overzealous prosecutor accuses a local doctor of performing illegal abortions, unaware of his own wife’s complicity in helping create choices for women. Little known today, Lois Weber was one of a whole cadre of women directors working at Universal in the 1910s. This highly controversial and successful blockbuster made her one of the most powerful women in Hollywood. Universal Film Mfg Co. Screenwriter: Lois Weber. Cinematographer: Al Siegler, Stephen S. Norton. Cast: Tyrone Power, Helen Riaume, Marie Walcamp, Cora Drew, Rene Rogers. 35mm, silent, b/w, 62 min. WHY WORRY? “The good American, still devoutly believed in during the 1920s, was two things: he was aggressive, and he was innocent…and then there was Harold Lloyd. A boy whom nothing could defeat.” — Walter Kerr, “The Silent Clowns” Made famous by his stunningly athletic physical comedy and his “glasses” character — an ambitious go-getting Man of the Century, yet an everyman who resembled those in his audience — Harold Lloyd remains one of the era’s greatest comedians, alongside Chaplin and Keaton. In Why Worry?, Lloyd arrives on a South American island, to find himself caught up in the locals’ political revolution. The film benefits from a breathtaking abundance of non-stop gags, and the eye-catching presence of giant Johan Aasen as Lloyd’s sidekick. As well, Why Worry? marks the first appearance in a Lloyd film of Jobyna Ralston, who was to be his romantic foil in five subsequent features. Harold Lloyd’s granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd will be be here at the Cinefamily to introduce the show — and join us for birthday cake, as we celebrate Harold’s upcoming April birthday! Dirs. Fred Newmeyer & Sam Taylor, 1923, 35mm, 60 min. WILL NOT STOP THERE (NIJE KRAJ) 2008, 100 min, Croatia, Dir: Vinko Bresan Vinko Bresan’s deliciously cynical black comedy is told from the point of view of Djuro (Predrag “Predjo” Vusovic), a jaded porn star enlisted by Croatian war veteran-turned-private detective Martin to help find his missing love, Desa. But Desa has gotten herself mixed up in a Serbian prostitution ring, and when the two finally find her, they must contend with a money-grubbing pimp to get her back. Winner of the Audience Award at the Pula Film Festival. “Mixes sex, violence and humor into a rollicking whole.” – Variety. In Croatian with English subtitles. WIMFEST! A WIM WENDERS FILMMARATHON The program includes: * ALICE in den Städten (Alice in the Cities) b/w, 110min., 1974. After wandering aimlessly across America, alienated journalist Vogler meets a woman- and finds himself saddled with her nine-year-old daughter when she mysteriously disappears. Intelligent, often hypnotic film reflects on the effect of American pop culture on post-war Europeans. (Leonard Maltin’s Movie & Video Guide, 2001) * DER amerikanische Freund (The American Friend) color, 123 min., 1977. Vague but suspenseful statement about American gangster films and the Americanization of European cinema, centering on a young German picture-framer (Ganz) hired to assassinate a mobster. Based on Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley’s Game. (Leonard Maltin’s Movie & Video Guide, 2001) * AUFZEICHNUNGEN zu Kleidern und Staedten (Notebook on Cities and Clothes) color, 79min., 1989. Fascinating documentary about Yohji Yamamoto, the influential Japanese high-fashion designer. The film is as much an observation of the moviemaking process (…) as it is a straight on look at Yamamoto and his world. (Leonard Maltin’s Movie & Video Guide, 2001) * DIE Unsichtbaren (Invisibles) color, 106min., 2007. The collaborative documentary film project 'Invisibles' marked the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Spanish branch of 'Médecins Sans Frontières' (Doctors Without Borders). Five directors travelled to the organization's work 'venues' in order to give voice to the forgotten victims of conflict, poverty and disease. * LISBON Story color, 105min., 1994. The director Monroe unsuccessfully attempts to produce a silent black-and-white film on Lisbon and calls his friend Phillip Winter, a sound engineer, to help. Winter arrives too late and only finds the unfinished film. Monroe has disappeared and Winter, fascinated by the city and a Portuguese singer, decides to look for the sounds by himself (Goethe.de) * NICK’S Film - Lightning over Water color, 92min., 1981. Nicholas Ray and Wim Wenders decide to make a film together, two directors, two generations, with a close relationship through their love of the cinema. For Ray this is an attempt to regain self-confidence and dignity in the face of death. For Wenders it means extreme personal observation, accompanying his fatally ill friend who has a strong will to continue his work, in a sensitive, unsparing and honest manner. * POLIZEIFILM 16 mm, s/w, 11min., 1969. Wenders' only "political" film, looking for the spirit of the late sixties. A grotesque and ironically playful collage somewhere between Godard and Laurel & Hardy. * SAME Player Shoots Again b/w, 12min., 1967. Wenders' first surviving film shows the same uncut setting five times, in various shades: black-and-white, green, sepia, blue and red. A man with a machine gun in his hand staggers along the pavement, the camera following alongside him without ever showing more than his legs and lower abdomen, the paving stones and a few poles. * STAND der Dinge (The State of Things) b/w, 120min., 1982. Fascinating if uneven mystery from Wenders, centering on what happens as a film crew attempts to complete a remake of Corman’s THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED on location in Portugal. (Leonard Maltin’s Movie & Video Guide, 2001) * TOKYO - GA color, 92min., 1985. In 1983. 20 years after film director Yazujiro Ozu's death, Wenders wanders through Tokyo, the new mecca of consumer electronics and a flood of images. Wenders compares Tokyo today with the city he knows from Ozu's films. The difference is striking. WORLD ON A WIRE "A textbook example of a film that was ahead of its time - a movie that anticipates Blade Runner in its meditation on artificial and human intelligence and The Matrix in its conception of reality as a computer-generated illusion." - Dennis Lim, The New York Times A dystopic science-fiction epic, World on a Wire is German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder's gloriously cracked, boundlessly inventive 1973 take on future paranoia. With dashes of Kubrick, Vonnegut, and Dick, but a flavor entirely and unmistakably his own, this fascinating four-hour film (originally shown as a two-part miniseries on German television) tells the noir-spiked tale of reluctant action hero Fred Stiller (Klaus Lowitsch, who also starred in Fassbinder's WWII masterpiece The Marriage of Maria Braun), a cybernetics engineer who uncovers a massive corporate and governmental conspiracy. At risk? Our entire (virtual) reality as we know it. This long-unseen cinematic labyrinth is a satiric and surreal look at the weird world of tomorrow from one of cinema's kinkiest geniuses. 1973, West Germany, 35mm, 212 minutes. directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder; written by Daniel F. Galouye, Rainer Werner Fassbinder; starring Klaus Löwitsch, Barbara Valentin, Mascha Rabben, Karl Heinz Vosgerau