a highly-opinionated selection of things happening around town, and sometimes out of town. this month's page here.
wed. apr. 1 clouds of sils maria FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc stark red rock west, run lola run @ new beverly thu. apr. 2 equinox flower FREE 7 PM @ csun armer black sunday (1960), black sabbath @ egyptian henry fool, fay grim @ silent movie theater little darlings FREE (RSVP) @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges el haru kuroi @ la cita these three FREE 5 PM @ the crank @ ucla james bridges red rock west, run lola run @ new beverly fri. apr. 3 woman on the run, the unfaithful @ noir fest @ egyptian la strada, lust for life @ aero ned rifle 8 PM @ an evening with hal hartley @ silent movie theater son's big doll, dust in the wind @ ucla film archive boogie nights, trainspotting @ new beverly sat. apr. 4 telecaves (11:30), lee noble (8:30), ezra buchla (10:00) @ human resources lawrence of arabia (70mm) @ aero trust 7 PM, the unbelievable truth @ silent movie theater a time to live and a time to die @ ucla film archive sea lions, mother merry go round @ non plus ultra boogie nights 6:30 PM, trainspotting @ new beverly sun. apr. 5 his name is alive, bell gardens @ the echo the hidden room, the sleeping tiger @ noir fest @ egyptian bugs bunny cartoon classics 4 PM @ aero ben-hur @ aero ned rifle 5 PM @ silent movie theater the insider 7 PM @ new beverly the birds 5 PM @ the crest mon. apr. 6 the films of gregory j. markopoulos 8:30 PM @ redcat raising arizona @ greg proops film club @ silent movie theater ned rifle 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater the insider 8 PM @ new beverly tue. apr. 7 ned rifle @ silent movie theater trust 9:50 PM @ silent movie theater pierrot le fou 1 PM @ lacma audition, sonatine @ new beverly wed. apr. 8 tame impala @ fox theater ned rifle @ silent movie theater trust 9:50 PM @ silent movie theater el mariachi, desperado @ new beverly thu. apr. 9 the suspect, ladies in retirement @ noir fest @ egyptian zorba the greek, viva zapata! @ aero ned rifle @ silent movie theater the unbelievable truth 9:50 PM @ silent movie theater the warlocks, dream boys, tashaki miyaki @ los globos essay film dissidents 8 PM @ epfc el mariachi, desperado @ new beverly fri. apr. 10 the chase, the leopard man @ noir fest @ egyptian agnes varda: from here to there part 1, jane b for agnes v @ aero a fuller life, dead pigeon on beethoven street @ silent movie theater four flies on grey velvet MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater a star is born, nothing sacred @ ucla film archive white fence (9:15), cherry glazerr (8:00) @ first fridays @ natural history museum cosmonauts, drinking flowers @ non plus ultra becky stark @ hm157 shadows and fog, bullets over broadway @ new beverly sat. apr. 11 the underworld story, abandoned @ noir fest @ egyptian kung-fu master!, agnes varda: from here to there parts 4-5 @ aero the freshman 2 PM @ the silent treatment @ silent movie theater surviving desire 4:15 PM @ silent movie theater shredder orpheus MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater wings (1927) @ ucla film archive bullets over broadway 5:15 9:25 PM, shadows and fog 7:30 PM @ new beverly sun. apr. 12 witness to murder, jeopardy @ noir fest @ egyptian cleo from 5 to 7 @ aero peppermint soda @ veggiecloud fargo, the hudsucker proxy @ new beverly a fuller life 7 PM, dead pigeon on beethoven street @ silent movie theater vertigo 5 PM @ the crest mon. apr. 13 luna @ echo fargo, the hudsucker proxy @ new beverly tue. apr. 14 fka twigs @ the belasco aghet - ein volkermord FREE @ hammer the umbrellas of cherbourg 1 PM @ lacma shark toys @ smell exotica, calendar @ new beverly wed. apr. 15 circle of danger, berlin express @ noir fest @ egyptian lake los angeles FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc stark georgia, mrs. parker and the vicious circle @ new beverly roar 7:30 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater thu. apr. 16 floating weeds FREE 7 PM @ csun armer ride the pink horse, the fallen sparrow @ noir fest @ egyptian bugsy malone @ veggiecloud georgia, mrs. parker and the vicious circle @ new beverly ninotchka @ garbo's desert island discs @ silent movie theater fri. apr. 17 el vampiro negro, no abras nunca esa puerta and si muero antes de despertar @ noir fest @ egyptian invasion of the body snatchers (1978), the outer limits: production and decay of strange particles, the outer limits: i robot @ aero the public enemy, night nurse @ ucla film archive the exorcist 6 PM @ the great horror campout @ griffith park old zoo mother merry go round FREE @ 931 e pico wand, vial @ the smell army of darkness, darkman @ new beverly hard to be a god @ silent movie theater roar 11 PM @ silent movie theater sat. apr. 18 charles bradley @ the roxy the ox-bow incident 1:30 PM @ autry army of darkness, darkman @ new beverly simple men 3:30 PM @ silent movie theater hard to be a god 6 PM @ silent movie theater roar 9:45 PM @ silent movie theater shogun assassin MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater eye seas @ pehrspace qui FREE (4:00) @ gnarburger sun. apr. 19 nasa space universe @ space 42 the ninth guest 5 PM, let us live, heat lightning, safe in hell @ noir fest @ egyptian vincent, deathwatch @ aero heroes for sale, midnight mary @ ucla film archive living in oblivian, the real blonde @ new beverly roar 6:30 PM @ silent movie theater hard to be a god 9 PM @ silent movie theater thom andersen: the thoughts that we once had @ filmforum @ spielberg @ egyptian psycho 5 PM @ the crest mon. apr. 20 perfumed nightmare 8:30 PM @ redcat cheatin' FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc broccoli living in oblivian, the real blonde @ new beverly roar 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater spokenest @ all star lanes tue. apr. 21 ty segall (solo acoustic) @ satellite the rules of the game @ lacma big bullet, downtown torpedoes @ new beverly wed. apr. 22 roar @ silent movie theater thu. apr. 23 late autumn FREE 7 PM @ csun armer the postman always rings twice @ alex theatre the last starfighter, krull @ egyptian bus stop, baby the rain must fall @ aero good men good women FREE 5 PM @ the crank @ ucla james bridges fri. apr. 24 fuzz, endless bummer @ el rey alien, aliens @ egyptian sunset boulevard, ace in the hole @ aero upsilon acrux, peter kolovos @ smell rain parade @ echoplex the battle of algiers 7 PM @ epfc scream 7:00 PM, scream 2 @ new beverly blood of a poet @ silent movie theater roar 10 PM @ silent movie theater la chienne 1:15 PM @ colcoa renoir theatre @ dga the connection FREE 7:15 PM @ colcoa truffaut theatre @ dga sat. apr. 25 river of fundament 5 PM @ ucla royce hall gilda 2 PM @ film noir fashion @ egyptian blade runner (final cut) @ egyptian now voyager, dead ringer @ aero the book of life 4 PM @ silent movie theater classic cartoons and root beer floats 8 PM @ epfc scream 7:00 PM, scream 2 @ new beverly a perfect man 2 PM @ colcoa renoir theatre @ dga film's first international superstar @ retroformat @ spielberg @ egyptian sun. apr. 26 tron, the black hole @ egyptian i'm not angry 3 PM @ ucla film archive fish & cat 7 PM @ ucla film archive the art of reperformance: ownerbuilt and the reveal @ filmforum @ spielberg @ egyptian mon. apr. 27 the blood of jesus 8:30 PM @ redcat my name is negahdar jamali and i make westerns @ ucla film archive paris texas 2:15 PM @ colcoa renoir theatre @ dga two men in town (1973) 3 PM @ colcoa truffaut theatre @ dga tue. apr. 28 repulsion 1 PM @ lacma cronos, mimic @ new beverly becky stark & john c reilly & tom brosseau @ largo wed. apr. 29 high noon, shane @ aero la femme nikita, the professional @ new beverly rear window @ the crest thu. apr. 30 the end of summer FREE 7 PM, good morning @ csun armer rear window, the night of the hunter @ aero a sense of place: short videos by form follows function 8 PM @ epfc la femme nikita, the professional @ new beverly where is the friend's home FREE @ veggiecloud fri. may 1 sleater-kinney @ palladium bouquet @ non plus ultra shark toys, cold beat, urinals @ cafe nela male gaze @ basic flowers sat. may 2 telecaves, ezra buchla @ pehrspace faust (w/ live score by roco jet) @ hm157 cold beat @ all star lanes sun. may 3 lightning bolt @ echoplex qui @ cafe nela baraka (70mm), samsara @ aero mon. may 4 flowers of shanghai 8:30 PM @ redcat real genius FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc stark tue. may 5 the big sleep 1 PM @ lacma thu. may 7 an autumn afternoon FREE 7 PM @ csun armer cafe lumiere @ ucla film archive ghost ease @ gal palace fri. may 8 der fan FREE 8 PM @ hyperion tavern sat. may 9 animal house @ cinespia @ hollywood forever tue. may 12 touch of evil 1 PM @ lacma thu. may 14 true widow, earth @ pappy & harriet's fri. may 15 nashville ramblers FREE @ the barclay (south pasadena) a summer at grandpa's, dust in the wind @ aero melbourne @ ucla film archive sat. may 16 sleep, true widow, dead meadow, earth, etc. @ psycho california @ the observatory (santa ana) nashville ramblers, rosalyns, diddley daddies @ til two club (san diego) a city of sadness @ aero mulholland drive @ cinespia @ hollywood forever sun. may 17 pentagram, om, earthless, etc. @ psycho california @ the observatory (santa ana) goodbye south goodbye, millennium mambo @ aero tue. may 19 double indemnity 1 PM @ lacma sat. may 23 close encounters of the third kind @ cinespia @ hollywood forever sun. may 24 upsilon acrux @ the smell dazed & confused @ cinespia @ hollywood forever tue. may 26 kiss me deadly 1 PM @ lacma thu. may 28 neutral milk hotel, the minders @ north park theatre (san diego) fri. may 29 neutral milk hotel, the minders @ observatory (santa ana) spokenest @ the wulf den sat. may 30 neutral milk hotel, the minders @ pappy & harriet's (pioneertown) wire @ echoplex vertigo @ cinespia @ hollywood forever sun. may 31 neutral milk hotel, the minders @ ventura theatre (ventura) beggars of life 7 PM, wild boys of the road @ ucla film archive tue. jun. 2 the kids in the hall @ ace hotel theatre sat. jun. 6 harold & maude @ cinespia @ hollywood forever sat. jun. 13 island in the sky 3 PM @ ucla film archive do the right thing @ cinespia @ hollywood forever sun. jun. 14 westward the women 7 PM, yellow sky @ ucla film archive sat. jun. 20 good men good women, goodbye south goodbye @ ucla film archive sun. jun. 21 beau geste (1939) 7 PM, the light that failed @ ucla film archive thu. jun. 25 the great man's lady, roxie hart @ ucla film archive pee wee's big adventure FREE 7 PM @ silver lake picture show fri. jun. 26 the pandoras, the loons @ casbah (SD) sat. jun. 27 white fence, the molochs, cosmonauts, winter, drinking flowers, corners, la witch, froth, adult books, etc @ lolipalooza @ echo/echoplex sun. jun. 28 track of the cat 7 PM, the ox-bow incident @ ucla film archive thu. jul. 9 amelie FREE 7 PM @ silver lake picture show thu. jul. 23 spaceballs FREE 7 PM @ silver lake picture show tue. aug. 18 2001: a space odyssey (w/ live accompaniment) @ hollywood bowl WHAT IT IS: ABANDONED 1949, Universal, 78 min, USA, Dir: Joseph M. Newman Gale Storm plays a naive young woman who’s come to Los Angeles in search of her missing sister. Shunned by the police, she’s assisted by an intrepid reporter (Dennis O’Keefe), who smells a story when he gets wind of an underground racket in black-market babies. Featuring film noir favorites Raymond Burr and Mike Mazurki, and the screen debut of future star Jeff Chandler. NOT ON DVD. AGHET - EIN VOLKERMORD The prizewinning film Aghet – Ein Völkermord (Armenian for "the catastrophe") by acclaimed German film maker Eric Friedler tells the story of the Armenian genocide, one of the darkest chapters of the First World War. Though there is an international consensus that up to 1.5 million Armenians died in the Ottoman Turkish Empire the Armenian genocide is still not recognized by Turkey as a historical fact. Aghet – Ein Völkermord deals with the political motives for this continuing silence. This innovative German documentary relies on authentic testimonies by European and American personnel stationed in the Near East at the time and Armenian survivors. Famous German actors give these eyewitnesses finally the opportunity to make their voices heard. Director Eric Friedler joins us for a discussion following the screening. (2010, Dir. Eric Friedler, 90 min). Agnes Varda: From Here to There Part 1 2012, Cine-Tamaris, 45 min. Trailer This multi-episode documentary series picks up where THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS left off, following the acclaimed director as she travels around the world meeting with friends, artists and fellow filmmakers. In Episode 1, Varda visits the home of experimental filmmaker Chris Marker to talk media before heading to Nantes to share memories of Jacques Demy at a screening of his film LOLA. Finally Agnès is off to Portugal, where she kicks up her heels with writer-director Manoel de Oliveira. In French with English subtitles. Discussion between screenings with director Agnès Varda. Agnès Varda: From Here to There Parts 4 - 5 2012, Cine-Tamaris, 90 min. The final installments of the documentary series following the globe-trotting director give testament to Varda’s broad interests. In Episode 4, she talks with an old friend, artist Pierre Soulages, on his terrace overlooking the Mediterranean. Then Agnès reconnects with two brothers she met years ago, while creating her famous “Cabin on the Beach” installation, before going to the Lyon Biennale. In Episode 5, a vanitas exhibit draws Varda to the Maillol Museum in Paris; later she flies to Mexico to converse with filmmaker Carlos Reygadas. Finally, she arrives in Los Angeles for a memorial to Doors singer Jim Morrison. In French with English subtitles. An Autumn Afternoon (1962), 113 mins. The last film by Yasujiro Ozu was also his final masterpiece, a gently heartbreaking story about a man’s dignified resignation to life’s shifting currents and society’s modernization. Though the widower Shuhei (frequent Ozu leading man Chishu Ryu) has been living comfortably for years with his grown daughter, a series of events leads him to accept and encourage her marriage and departure from their home. As elegantly composed and achingly tender as any of the Japanese master’s films, An Autumn Afternoon is one of cinema’s fondest farewells. The Art of Reperformance: ownerBuilt and The Reveal An exciting set of explorations where the verisimilitude of image and audio is questioned and documentary and artistic practice converge. Lawrence Andrews’s ownerBuilt, making its Los Angeles premiere, is a remarkable work of animation and also apparently an animated documentary, but where the most common arbiter of “truth” in animated documentary, the recorded testimony, has been reperformed. Adie Russell’s The Reveal, also in its LA premiere, sees Russell visually performing Marlon Brando and Dick Cavett in Brando’s appearance on Cavett’s show, with the audio staying true to its source. Zora Neale Hurston’s recordings upset the normal conventions of ethnographic recording, where she plays the songs that she has learned from the local musicians. A set of works that may lead you to question your expectations of the picture-sound relationship, and, by extension, the presuppositions of power and authority. Artist Lawrence Andrews will be in town from the Bay Area to discuss. “ownerBuilt firmly occupies and is concerned with the space around the margins of society. This work therefore imagines the various ways anonymity can function in that space, especially as it relates to the problems of visibility and the attainment of political power. Ultimately, as an aural performance reconfigured in cinematic space, ownerBuilt is envisioned as a Radical Sound Project, where the sound of the dog wags the tail of the picture, positioning sound as the privileged track and effectually dethroning image.” (Lawrence Andrews) Lawrence Andrews in person! BABY, THE RAIN MUST FALL 1965, Sony Repertory, 100 min, USA, Dir: Robert Mulligan The TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD team of director Robert Mulligan, producer Alan Pakula and writer Horton Foote reunite for this underrated drama set in rural Texas. In a role that plays as if it hit close to home, Steve McQueen is a troubled singer (whose band includes Glen Campbell) recently released from prison. If only for their daughter’s sake, wife Lee Remick hopes to keep him on the straight and narrow - but deputy sheriff Don Murray is there just in case she can’t. Discussion following with actor Don Murray. BERLIN EXPRESS 1948, Warner Bros., 87 min, USA, Dir: Jacques Tourneur Robert Ryan, Merle Oberon and Paul Lukas head an international cast in the first Hollywood film shot on location in Allied-occupied postwar Germany. An ad-hoc cadre of allied officials, headed by train to a peace conference, suddenly become detectives when Germany’s most outspoken peace activist goes missing. A solid thriller, and a remarkable historical document of its time. BLACK SUNDAY (1960) (LA MASCHERA DEL DEMONIO) 1960, 87 min, Italy, Dir: Mario Bava Mario Bava’s first full film as a director stars Barbara Steele in a double role as a deathless witch and her own virginal descendant. With John Richardson and Ivo Garrani. “Still the No. 1 film of the Italian Horror renaissance, startlingly original and genuinely creepy.” - Glenn Erickson, DVD Savant. English dubbed print. Uncut European Version! 35mm Print! THE BLOOD OF JESUS “A masterpiece of folk cinema that has scarcely lost its power to astonish.” – Village Voice, March 2008 Spencer Williams (1893–1969) was among the very first African American independent filmmakers, and his great cultural morality tale, The Blood of Jesus (1941, 57 min.), is a landmark of American cinema. Still known primarily as a radio and screen actor (Andy in Amos ’n’ Andy), Williams made more than a dozen films with all-black casts. He traveled the South to show his work in church basements, and The Blood of Jesus was a huge hit with African American audiences for years. A story of sin and redemption, the film’s vivid depiction of spiritualism and folk beliefs has a power that few big-budget movies have ever achieved. Scholar Jacqueline Stewart, who is preparing a biography of Williams, introduces the work. In person: Jacqueline Stewart THE BOOK OF LIFE Hal Hartley directed this French-produced comedy about the Second Coming of Christ (Martin Donovan), with Thomas Jay Ryan in the role of Satan. While a gambler (David Simonds) and a waitress (Miho Nikaido) talk with Satan in a hotel bar, Jesus arrives at JFK airport with Magdalena (PJ Harvey). Jesus has been sent down to end the world by breaking the Seven Seals on a computer disk in a bowling alley locker room. Made in digital video blown up to 35mm, this film is part of the French "Collection 2000 Seen By" television series of one-hour films about the Millennium (and the only one by an American director). Dir. Hal Hartley, 1998, digital presentation, 63 min. BUGSY MALONE (1976, Dir: Alan Parker) Presented by Honey Bird Working with a cast entirely under the age of 17, Alan Parker set out to make a gangster musical that had everything he loved about The Godfather, but could be watched by kids. Based on the exploits of prohibition gangsters like Al Capone and Bugs Moran, the film stars 13-year-old Jodie Foster, and introduced Scott Baio (shooting cream pies instead of bullets). It features a soundtrack by Paul Williams (Phantom of the Paradise and The Muppet Movie) and was nominated for the Golden Palm at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival. Scott Baio later described the production process as "awesome." BUS STOP 1956, 20th Century Fox, 96 min, USA, Dir: Joshua Logan Marilyn Monroe stunned critics and fans alike with her heartbreakingly tender performance as a truck-stop singer who falls in love with naive young cowpoke Don Murray, in this beautiful, bittersweet drama based on the William Inge play. With Betty Field, Arthur O’Connell. Café Lumière (Taiwan, 2003) Kohi jiko In this Tokyo-set rumination on the interplay between past and present, freelance writer Yoko researches a talented but forgotten Taiwanese composer, as she copes with an unexpected pregnancy and impending single motherhood. The legacy of colonialism, the erosion of traditional domesticity, and the solitude and displacements of contemporary urban life reverberate through Hou Hsiao-hsien's contemplative tribute to the films of Yasujiro Ozu. Producer: Miyajima Hideshi, Yamamoto Ichiro, Osaka Fumiko. Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien. Screenwriter: Hou Hsiao-hsien. Cinematography: Mark Lee (Ping-bin). Editor: Liao Ching-sung. Cast: Hitoto Yo, Asano Tadanobu, Hagiwara Masato, Yo Kimiko, Kobayashi Nenji. 35mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles, 103 min. THE CHASE 1946, 86 min, USA, Dir: Arthur Ripley Scripted by Philip Yordan, from the novel The Black Path of Fear by Cornell Woolrich. In this hallucinatory adaptation, Robert Cummings plays a drifter hired as a chauffeur by two Florida crooks (Steve Cochran and Peter Lorre). He falls for Cochran’s dishy wife (Michelle Morgan) with dire, unpredictable results. As close to Lynch-ian as movies got in the 1940s. Cheatin' In a fateful bumper car collision, Jake and Ella meet and become the most loving couple in the long history of Romance. But when a scheming “other” woman drives a wedge of jealousy into their perfect court ship, insecurity spells out an untimely fate. With only the help of a disgraced magician and his forbidden “soul machine”, Ella takes the form of Jake's numerous lovers, desperately fighting through malfunction and deceit as they try to reclaim their destiny. Running time: 76 minutes. Written and Directed by Bill Plympton. Followed by a Q&A with Bill Plympton. CIRCLE OF DANGER 1951, Warner Bros., 86 min, UK, Dir: Jacques Tourneur Ray Milland journeys to Scotland to unravel the truth of his brother's strange death as a commando during World War II. This suspenseful British-made adaptation of Philip MacDonald’s novel is expertly helmed by Tourneur and produced with Hitchcockian aplomb by Joan Harrison. Also starring the alluring Patricia Roc, Hugh Sinclair and Naunton Wayne. A CITY OF SADNESS BEI QING CHENG SHI 1989, 158 min, Taiwan, Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien A Golden Lion winner at the Venice Film Festival, this powerful epic is considered by many to be director Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s greatest achievement. After WWII, control of Taiwan is ceded by Japan to the mainland Chinese government; the ensuing campaign of repression soon ensnares the Lin brothers (Tony Leung, Chen Sung-yung and Jack Kao). Viewing a nation’s history through the lens of a single family, Hou not only illuminates the formerly taboo subject of the “White Terror,” but shows how events that shake a society filter down to shape the lives of everyday people. In Mandarin, Taiwanese, Cantonese, Shanghainese, and Japanese with English subtitles. Introduction by Berenice Reynaud, who will sign copies of her book, A City of Sadness, in the lobby at 7:00 PM. Clouds of Sils Maria At the peak of her international career, Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche) is asked to perform in a revival of the play that made her famous twenty years ago. But back then she played the role of Sigrid, an alluring young girl who disarms and eventually drives her boss Helena to suicide. Now she is being asked to step into the other role, that of the older Helena. She departs with her assistant (Kristen Stewart) to rehearse in Sils Maria; a remote region of the Alps. A young Hollywood starlet with a penchant for scandal (Chloë Grace Moretz) is to take on the role of Sigrid, and Maria finds herself on the other side of the mirror, face to face with an ambiguously charming woman who is, in essence, an unsettling reflection of herself. Rated R. Running time: 123 minutes. Written and Directed by Olivier Assayas THE CONNECTION / La French West Coast Premiere. France, 2014, 135 min. Confidently striding in where William Friedkin’s The French Connection left off, The Connection answers with the lesser known but equally thrilling true-crime saga of French magistrate Pierre Michel’s obsessive six year battle to make the streets of Marseille safe from Gaëtan Zampa, the infamous drug kingpin known as “La French,” played by Mesrine’s Gilles Lellouche. In 1975, Zampa’s hydra-tentacled heroin distribution ring is just one piece of an empire that includes procuring, extortion, and robbery. Michel, a man of staunch integrity and tenacity sympathetically incarnated by The Artist star Jean Dujardin, faces off against Zampa, a surprisingly anti-drug family man, but with a ruthlessness to rival Michel’s relentlessness. At first, Michel tries to play by the rules, but as his job starts to take on the pitched fury of a crusade, it dawns on him that rules don’t mean a thing against a man who has half of the city’s officials paralyzed with fear, and the other half on his payroll. The drug trafficking operations known as “The French Connection” were actually a criminal ring active on multiple continents tracing as far back as the 1930’s, but always with Marseille at its epicenter. Writer/director Cédric Jimenez grew up in the embattled Marseille that he faithfully depicts in this, his third feature. Working again with co-writer Audrey Diwan, Jimenez wanted to bring something of his own experiences of a city and an era straining under the weight of organized crime. Always drawn to the thriller genre, Jimenez’ first feature was the full throttled Scorpion (2007), written with Julien Seri and Sylvie Verheyde, which takes place in the world of Thai boxing and Ultimate Fighting, and has been dubbed the “French Fight Club”. With his second film, Aux yeux de tous (2012), Jimenez, along with co-writers Audrey Diwan and Arnaud Duprey, conceived a story that unfolds predominantly through surveillance cameras and webcams overridden by an anonymous hacker trying to discover the identity of a terrorist who planted a bomb on a train. DEAD RINGER 1964, Warner Bros., 116 min, USA, Dir: Paul Henreid This well-crafted thriller provides a double dose of deception with Bette Davis playing twin sisters driven apart by love and money. When one kills the other to assume her identity, she faces hurdles in the form of two boyfriends - police sergeant Karl Malden and unscrupulous playboy Peter Lawford. DEATHWATCH 1966, 88 min, USA, Dir: Vic Morrow Actor Vic Morrow made his directing debut with this low-budget adaptation of Jean Genet’s 1947 play, a triangle between three prison inmates played by Leonard Nimoy, Michael Forest, and future directing legend Paul Mazursky. Sharing a cell, the men engage in complex power struggles and games of manipulation, photographed in stark black-and-white by Vilis Lapenieks and edited by the legendary Verna Fields. DUST IN THE WIND LIAN LIAN FENG CHEN 1987, 110 min, Taiwan, Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien At the end of the 1960s, high-school sweethearts Wan (Wang Chien-wen) and Huen (Hsin Shu-feng) leave their little mining town in search of greater opportunities in Taipei, where the vicissitudes of life take their toll on the relationship. One of the key films of Taiwan’s New Cinema (and the concluding chapter in Hou’s coming-of-age trilogy), this moving and reflective drama has a naturalistic feel that belies its meticulous shot composition. In Mandarin and Taiwanese with English subtitles. EL VAMPIRO NEGRO THE BLACK VAMPIRE 1953, Argentine Sono Films, 90 min, Argentina, Dir: Román Viñoly This stunning reimagining of Fritz Lang’s classic M has been rediscovered by the Film Noir Foundation and subtitled in English for the first time. Olga Zubarry, Argentina’s answer to Marilyn Monroe, plays a chanteuse and single mother who is the sole eyewitness to the child killer stalking the streets of Buenos Aires. Will her daughter be the next victim? Featuring stunning cinematography by Anibal González Paz. A major cinema discovery! In Spanish with English subtitles. NOT ON DVD. The End of Summer (1961), 103 mins. The Kohayakawa family is thrown into distress when childlike father Manbei takes up with his old mistress, in one of Ozu’s most deftly modulated blendings of comedy and tragedy. Equinox Flower (1958), 118 mins. Later in his career, Ozu started becoming increasingly sympathetic with the younger generation, a shift that was cemented in Equinox Flower, his gorgeously detailed first color film, about an old-fashioned father and his newfangled daughter. THE FALLEN SPARROW 1943, Warner Bros., 94 min, USA, Dir: Richard Wallace Scripted by Warren Duff, from the novel by Dorothy B. Hughes. This convoluted but compelling story, told in creepy Val Lewton style, stars John Garfield as a Spanish Civil War veteran being driven crazy by stateside fascists. Is porcelain-gorgeous Maureen O’Hara his only ally … or his enemy? Stunning photography by RKO’s in-house noir master, Nicholas Musuraca. With Walter Slezak, Patricia Morison and Martha O’Driscoll. Discussion between films with actress Patricia Morison (THE FALLEN SPARROW). Film's First International Superstar Presented by the American Cinematheque and Retro Format Films on 8mm Mary Pickford enchants in a fascinating evening of short films by pioneers D.W. Griffith and Thomas H. Ince, including her first starring role in “The Violin Maker of Cremona” (1909), “Sweet and Twenty” (1909), “Artful Kate” (1911), “Lena and the Geese” (1912), “A Beast at Bay” (1912), “Friends” (1912) and more, with Lionel Barrymore, Henry Walthall, Owen Moore, Billy Quirk and many more. With live musical accompaniment by Cliff Retallick. The Films of Gregory J. Markopoulos “One of the true visionaries of the post-WWII American avant garde” – Harvard Film Archive A great figure of American independent cinema, Gregory J. Markopoulos (1928–1992) made some of the key films of the postwar avant-garde. Poetic, romantic and formally rigorous, his work was deeply rooted in mythological associations and the ritual dimensions of cinema. Despite Markopoulos’ huge influence as a filmmaker and polemicist in the new American Cinema of the 1960s, his films have been largely unavailable until now. The program this evening includes Bliss (1967, 7 min.) and Gammelion (1968, 54 min.), which are among the first films made by Markopoulos after he left the U.S. for Europe and represent a major step toward the epic form of his 80-hour magnum opus, Eniaios. In person: Curator Mark Webber, editor and publisher of Film As Film: The Collected Writings Of Gregory J. Markopoulos Fish & Cat (Iran, 2013) Mahi va gorbeh Selected for New Directors/New Films in 2014, Fish & Cat heralds the emergence of a fresh and original new voice in Iranian cinema. Shot entirely in a single, black and white bravura camera take, writer-director Shahram Mokri’s second feature plays mind-bending games with time and place while a pair of potential serial killer cannibals stalk a group of camping students at a lake. Thoroughly creepy, but never (really) gory, Fish & Cat reveals an absurdist, apocalyptic edge in the end that suggests more the influence of Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr, than American horror films. Kanoon Iran Novin. Producer: Sepehr Seifi. Director: Shahram Mokri. Screenwriter: Shahram Mokri. Cinematography: Mahmoud Kalari. Cast: Babak Karimi, Saeed Ebrahimifar, Siavash Cheraghipoor, Mohammad Berahmani, Faraz Modiri. DCP, b/w, in Persian with English subtitles, 134 min. In-person: Sharam Mokri. Floating Weeds (1959), 119 mins. In 1959, Yasujiro Ozu remade his 1934 silent classic A Story of Floating Weeds in color with the celebrated cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (Rashomon, Ugetsu). Setting his later version in a seaside location, Ozu otherwise preserves the details of his elegantly simple plot wherein an aging actor returns to a small town with his troupe and reunities with his former lover and illegitimate son, a scenario that enrages his current mistress and results in heartbreak for all. Together, the films offer a unique glimpse into the evolution of one of cinema’s greatest directors. A Story of Floating Weeds reveals Ozu in the midst of developing his mode of expression; Floating Weeds reveals his distinct style at its pinnacle. In each, the director captures the joy and sadness in everyday life. FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI “An emotionally shattering masterpiece... Flowers of Shanghai is one of the most sublimely beautiful films I’ve ever seen, and one of the most unbearably sad.” – Manohla Dargis The breathtaking cinema of Hou Hsiao-Hsien, the leading figure of the Taiwanese new Wave, is the subject of a retrospective that spans more than three decades. As one of the participating venues, REDCAT shows a new 35mm print of Hou’s richly textured masterpiece Flowers of Shanghai (Haishanghua, 1998, 125 min.). An heir to the great modernist legacy—with its use of elegantly staged long takes, performances by many non-professional actors, and a radically elliptical mode of storytelling—Hou has created a body of work that has opened up exciting new horizons for the medium. GOODBYE, SOUTH, GOODBYE NAN GUO ZAI JIAN, NAN GUO 1996, 112 min, Taiwan/Japan, Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien This look at aimless young adults on the fringe of Taiwan’s underworld was named one of the best films of the 1990s by Cahiers du cinéma. A pop-up gambling den is the latest venture for Gao (Jack Kao) and his friends, whose get-rich-quick schemes eventually bump up against the established criminal order. The fast times and bleak futures of a lost generation are occasionally offset here by moments of transcendence thanks to some kinetic visual sequences and the pulsing soundtrack by costar Lim Giong. In Mandarin and Taiwanese with English subtitles. Good Men, Good Women (Taiwan, 1995) Hao nan hao nu In this moving and formally rigorous historical epic, director Hou Hsiao-hsien pays tribute to those individuals who resisted Chiang Kai-Shek's martial law in the "White Terror" of the 1950s. Dramatizing the making of a film about one such leader, he simultaneously details the anxieties of the actress who will play her, implicitly lamenting the anomie and alienation that have filled the gap left by men and women of conviction. The final installment of Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s trilogy of films (following A CITY OF SADNESS and THE PUPPETMASTER), GOOD MEN, GOOD WOMEN continues the preceding works’ nuanced exploration of themes of loss, historical memory, and societal transformation. The only film of the three to be partly set in contemporary times, it juxtaposes scenes from the life of an actress—her relationship with a man with criminal affiliations, his eventual death, her harassment by a man who has stolen her diary—with depictions of the film that she is scheduled to act in, centering on the true story of two political activists who are persecuted in the early years of the White Terror. The complex, multilayered narrative is complemented by the variation and inventiveness of the cinematography, the work of frequent Hou collaborator Huai-en Chen. “The visual mastery is stunning . . . probably the most artistically accomplished new feature I saw in 1995.” —Jonathan Rosenbaum, The Chicago Reader “A rigorous work of art whose mysteries are worth unraveling.” —Caryn James, The New York Times Good Morning (1959), 93 mins. Ozu’s hilarious Technicolor reworking of his silent I Was Born, But . . . , Good Morning (Ohayô) is the story of two young boys in suburban Tokyo who take a vow of silence after their parents refuse to buy them a television set. Shot from the perspective of the petulant brothers, Good Morning is an enchantingly satirical portrait of family life that gives rise to gags about romance, gossip, and the consumerism of modern Japan. HARD TO BE A GOD “Our chaotic journey makes Werner Herzog’s ‘Aguirre, The Wrath of God” look like ‘Downton Abbey’.” — The New York Times “‘Hard to Be a God’ is itself a case of cinematic exaggeration, an extreme case of visionary film, and as much a delirium as a movie in any customary sense.” — Film Comment In the space between Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev and Zulawski’s On The Silver Globe lies Hard To Be A God, the final epic film from Russian auteur Aleksei Guerman. Previously unseen on L.A. screens until now, this meticulously-constructed monument to sensory overload was the culmination of a life’s work for Guerman: his idea for it formed back in the mid-’60s, and would use up every last bit of his energy for his final decade among us. Happily, he brought the film close enough to completion for his wife and son to apply the finishing touches immediately after his passing. It’s based upon a novel by the same brothers who wrote the source material for Tarkovsky’s Stalker, and it tracks the dense, purposefully hazy goings-on on an Earth-like planet on the other side of the galaxy in the midst of its own Middle Ages — and contains what’s possibly the most realistic depiction of mud-soaked delirium of that historical era ever filmed. Dir. Aleksey German, 2013, DCP, 170 min. HEAT LIGHTNING 1934, Warner Bros., 63 min. Dir. Mervyn LeRoy. A startling, existential pre-Code gem with a feminist slant, about two sisters (the brilliant Ann Dvorak and Aline MacMahon) who run a Mojave Desert filling station/tourist stop and become trapped by their past and a pair of gunmen (Preston Foster and Lyle Talbot) on the lam. This fast-paced, noir-stained predecessor to THE PETRIFIED FOREST was adapted from a George Abbott play and still packs a wallop. With Glenda Farrell, Frank McHugh and Ruth Donnelly. THE HIDDEN ROOM OBSESSION 1949, Eagle-Lion Films, 96 min, UK, Dir: Edward Dmytryk British psychologist Clive Riordan (Robert Newton), fed up with his wife’s philandering, makes her latest lover disappear in a deviously devised “perfect crime.” Made in England by the blacklisted Edward Dmytryk, THE HIDDEN ROOM is an unjustly neglected masterpiece, packed with wit and suspense, anchored by Robert Newton’s brilliant and subtle performance as the vengeful cuckold. Costarring Sally Gray and Phil Brown. I'm Not Angry (Iran, 2014) Asabani nistam! The title of director Reza Dormishian’s second feature echoes the prescribed mantra given to Navid (Mohammadzadeh) by his psychiatrist (along with antidepressants) to recite when events feel overwhelmed. For Navid, a university student expelled for political activity, however, his explosive rage has deeper sources. Jarring in tone and visually arresting, I’m Not Angry captures the seething frustrations of a generation with a blunt frankness that led to its being pulled from competition at the Fajr Film Festival. Producer: Reza Dormishian. Director: Reza Dormishian. Screenwriter: Reza Dormishian. Cinematography: Ali Azhari. Editor: Haydeh Safiyari. Cast: Baran Kosari, Navid Mohammadzadeh, Reza Behoudi, Misagh Zare, Bahram Afshari. DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 110 min. JANE B. FOR AGNÈS V. 1988, Cinelicious Pics, 97 min, France, Dir: Agnès Varda Jane Birkin started as an actress during London’s Swinging ’60s, sang duets with Serge Gainsbourg (whom she married), earned plaudits for humanitarian work … and is the subject of this delightful documentary. Birkin and director Varda are longtime friends, and this film emerges as a portrait of two talented artists who have challenged limitations placed on women in culture and society. In French with English subtitles. Discussion between screenings with director Agnès Varda. JEOPARDY 1953, Warner Bros., 69 min, USA, Dir: John Sturges Barbara Stanwyck and Barry Sullivan play a vacationing couple whose fishing trip to Baja turns into a nightmare when the husband is trapped under a rotting pier with the tide rising. Their only hope is a fugitive killer (Ralph Meeker), whose aid comes at a high cost for the terrified, if resourceful, wife. A suspense gem directed and played with all the stops out, especially when Stanwyck and Meeker go toe-to-toe! KUNG-FU MASTER! LE PETIT AMOUR 1988, Cinelicious Pics, 80 min, France, Dir: Agnès Varda Nope, French New Wave pioneer Agnès Varda hasn’t come up with a martial arts flick; instead, this is a thought-provoking, poetic and occasionally humorous tale of forbidden love. Jane Birkin stars as Mary-Jane, a divorced mother of two drawn to a 14-year-old schoolmate of her daughter (played by Birkin’s real-life daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg). Varda’s real-life son, Mathieu Demy, plays the boy, graduating from video games (the inspiration for the film’s title) to the complexities of an adult relationship. In French with English subtitles. Discussion following KUNG-FU MASTER! with director Agnès Varda and actor Mathieu Demy. LA CHIENNE North American Premiere (Restored version) France, 1931, 91 min The Franco-American Cultural Fund (FACF), Janus Films, La Cinémathèque Française and Les Films du Jeudi present, for the first time in North America, a new digitally restored version of Jean Renoir’s only foray into pulp thriller. La Chienne is the tale of the degradation, victimization, and ultimate liberation of one Maurice Legrand, a mousy, middle-aged bank accountant who manages a double life – with deadly consequences. Henpecked at home by his overbearing wife, Maurice retreats into his painting hobby whenever he can. As chance would have it, he meets Lulu, a charming but street-smart femme fatal, and quickly falls for her. Believing her to be the love of his life, Maurice sets her up in an apartment ostensibly used to store his paintings, without realizing that Lulu is in fact a streetwalker in love with Dédé, her abusive pimp. It’s a cushy gig for Lulu, but the loathsome Dédé wants more, and figures out a way to put all those paintings to better use. In 1930 French cinema was reeling from an influx of Hollywood “talkies”. Young Jean Renoir was not yet the legendary writer/director he would become, but he was quick to adopt and adapt to the new technology of synchronized sound. The success of his talking short On purge bébé (1931), gave him the freedom to make his first real masterpiece, La Chienne, co-written with Andrè Girard. With its theme of anarchy destabilizing a seemingly ordered bourgeoisie world, the film set a template for a string of masterworks in the coming decade, including La Grande Illusion (1937), La Bête humaine (1938) and of course, Rules of the Game (1939), which so inflamed the French bourgeoisie that the film was quickly shelved, only to be recognized as a monumental classic in the 1960’s. Based on the novel by Georges de la Fouchardière, La Chienne was remade as Scarlet Street, by Fritz Lang in 1945, but where Lang’s film is moody and obsessive, Renoir’s is layered, ironic and more unsettlingly raw. The film received some unwelcome publicity when just two weeks after principal photography ended, the young Lulu, Janie Marèse, was killed in a car accident while her costar Georges Flamant – a man Renoir cast for his alleged first hand knowledge of criminal behavior – was at the wheel. Michel Simon, who played Maurice, had fallen in love with her and never forgave Renoir. “…hugely influential, not only in France, where it spawned poetic realism and early attempts at neo-realism, but also in America, laying the foundation for what we now know as classic film noir.” – James Travers FRENCH FILM SITE “All of the performances are close to flawless, but it's Renoir's unseen presence one remembers most vividly.” – Vincent Canby NEW YORK TIMES LADIES IN RETIREMENT 1941, Sony Repertory, 91 min, USA, Dir: Charles Vidor Ida Lupino scores as a timid housekeeper who becomes enmeshed in murder and madness. Ida tends to an aged actress (Isobel Elsom) and persuades her to take in her two eccentric sisters (Elsa Lanchester and Edith Barrett). All bets are off when a mysterious stranger (future Lupino spouse Louis Hayward) arrives to stir the pot further. There is nothing retiring about this suspenseful Victorian noir, which has been unjustly overlooked and underappreciated. Lake Los Angeles Lake Los Angeles will be the third film of Mike Ott's Antelope Valley trilogy, following Littlerock (2010) and Pearblossom Hwy (2012). This time, we follow the story of Francisco, a middle-aged Cuban immigrant working at a holding house, and Cecilia, a 10 year old Mexican girl who ends up there with no family members to fend for her. When Cecilia ends up on her own, she turns the desert into a fantastical world- creating characters and stories to make the hopelessness of the empty landscape a survivable habitat. ?Through navigating what was supposed to be both Francisco and Cecilia's promise land, they find a common hope in each other while journeying through the hauntingly beautiful and desolate world that is Lake Los Angeles. Running time: 85 minutes. Directed by Mike Ott. Late Autumn (1960), 128 mins. The great actress and Ozu regular Setsuko Hara plays a mother gently trying to persuade her daughter to marry in this glowing portrait of family love and conflict—a reworking of Ozu’s 1949 masterpiece Late Spring. LET US LIVE 1939, Sony Repertory, 68 min. Dir. John Brahm. Compelling proto-noir concerning a pair of innocent taxi drivers (Henry Fonda and Alan Baxter) railroaded to the death house for a robbery-homicide. An early standout performance by Fonda receives stellar support from costar Maureen O’Sullivan, along with a well-crafted script (by Anthony Veiller and Allen Rivkin), photography (Lucien Ballard) and superior direction by noir maestro John Brahm. Melbourne (Iran, 2014) Writer-director Nima Javidi’s remarkable debut feature opens as a young couple in Tehran prepares for an imminent trip abroad. A patient accumulation of familiar detail—the hurried list checking, the small annoyances of packing—hints at their hopeful expectations for the future, which would seem to include the baby sleeping in their back bedroom. Then everything turns upside down. Before we know it, Javidi plunges us into one the most nerve-wracking, nail-biting, what-would-you-do ethical thrillers in recent memory. It’s a ride you don’t want to miss. Inan Independents. Producer: Javad Norouzbeigi. Director: Nima Javidi. Screenwriter: Nima Javidi. Cinematography: Hooman Behmanesh. Editor: Sepideh Adovahab. Cast: Payman Maadi, Negar Javaherian, Mani Haghighi, Shirin Yazdanbaksh, Elham Korda. DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 91 min. MILLENNIUM MAMBO QIAN XI MAN PO 2001, 119 min, Taiwan/France, Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien At the center of this portrait of Taipei night life is Vicky (Shu Qi), a party girl stuck in a rut of self-destructive thrills and an on-again, off-again relationship with her no-good boyfriend (Tuan Chun-hao). She narrates the events in hindsight from ten years after their occurrence, giving poignancy to pretty but vacant lives adrift in a new millennium. With Jack Kao as Vicky’s gangster-protector. In Mandarin and Japanese with English subtitles. My Name is Negahdar Jamali and I Make Westerns (Iran, 2013) Utterly unexpected and thoroughly charming, director Kamran Heidari’s debut documentary about an amateur filmmaker in southwestern Iran explodes preconceived notions and illuminates the universal power of popular culture. Since he was a teen, Negahdar Jamali has obsessively made low-budget westerns modeled on his idols John Ford and Sergio Leone in the arid plains surrounding his hometown of Shiraz. Ignored by the official film ministry and harangued by his long-suffering wife, Jamali perseveres with a dreamer’s passion. Producer: Merdad Monavarian. Director: Kamran Heidari. Cinematography: Kamran Heidari. Editor: Bahman Kiarostami. Cast: Negahdar Jamali. DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 65 min. In-person: Kamran Heidari. NED RIFLE Hal Hartley’s cinematic universe — born out of the scrappy ‘80s underground, flourishing brightly in the ‘90s Golden Age of American Indies and blooming even further onto the modern landscape — is dense with deadpan poetics, insouciant attitude and a nicotine-stained East Coast whimsy that will live forever. As we geared up for Ned Rifle, Hal’s latest, we realized it absolutely was the time to bring his previous works to the Cinefamily screen. Join Hal as he regales us with tales from across his entire career, followed by the L.A. premiere of Ned Rifle, and a Q&A with co-stars Aubrey Plaza & James Urbaniak! (4/3 ONLY) Kickstarter-funded and cast from Hartley’s career-spanning pool of favorite faces, NED RIFLE is a truly independent cinema, tailor-made on a level that big studio flicks will still never match. The story beginning with Henry Fool (starring Thomas Jay Ryan) and continuing with Fay Grim (starring Parker Posey) concludes with the two namesakes’ son in the driver’s seat. Liam Aiken plays the soft-spoken teenaged holy warrior on a totally un-ironic mission to kill his father, who may or may not be an extremely well-educated agent of Satan. Along for the ride is Parks & Rec’s Aubrey Plaza, who, totally in line with Hartley’s ongoing vision, beautifully plays up an unsettling ability to deliver a line with total sincerity, laced with arsenic sarcasm. Dir. Hal Hartley, 2014, DCP, 85 min. THE NINTH GUEST 1934, Sony Repertory, 65 min. Dir. Roy William Neill. A spine-tingling “locked-room” mystery about eight guests invited to spend a night in a penthouse apartment. The trapped ensemble is compelled by a disembodied host to deduce the identity of the ninth guest by morning … or else! Stylishly directed by the underrated Roy Neill (THE BLACK ROOM, THE SCARLET CLAW), this rare horror-mystery stars Donald Cook, Genevieve Tobin, Vince Barnett and Samuel S. Hinds. NOT ON DVD. NO ABRAS NUNCA ESA PUERTA and SI MUERO ANTES DE DESPERTAR NEVER OPEN THAT DOOR and IF I SHOULD DIE BEFORE I WAKE 1952, Argentine Estudios San Miguel, 151 min, Argentina, Dir: Carlos Hugo Christensen Be here for the U.S. premiere of this stunning anthology film adapted from the short stories of noir master Cornell Woolrich. Originally conceived by its makers as a single film, the titles were released separately. Tonight marks the first time they have been screened in a single, unified presentation, in newly struck prints funded by the Film Noir Foundation, complete with - for the first time ever - English subtitles. In Spanish with English subtitles. NOT ON DVD. The Outer Limits: I, Robot (1964, Park Circus, 51 min. Dir. Leon Benson). A robot wrongly accused of killing its creator is tried for murder, as defense attorney Howard da Silva and newspaper reporter Leonard Nimoy (who also would appear in the episode’s 1995 remake) struggle to uncover the truth. Adapted from Amazing Stories magazine. The Outer Limits: Production and Decay of Strange Particles (1964, Park Circus, 51 min. Dir. Leslie Stevens). Leonard Nimoy is one of a team of physicists whose experiments on subatomic particles trigger a chain reaction that takes control of the scientists one by one, and threatens to engulf the world. The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) Director William A. Wellman used a restrained narrative style and classical visual composition to create this starkly realistic take on vigilante justice. Two cowboy drifters witness a lynching of innocent travelers in cattle country. Henry Fonda's performance as an outsider of humble origins responding to injustice recalls his young Mr. Lincoln and Tom Joad [The Grapes of Wrath (1940)]. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won acclaim worldwide, although initial box office in the U.S. was slow. A re-release the following year was more successful. Twentieth Century Fox. Producer: Lamar Trotti. Director: William A. Wellman. Screenwriter: Lamar Trotti. Based on the novel by Walter Van Tilburg. Cinematography: Arthur C. Miller. Editor: Allen McNeil. Cast: Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Mary Beth Hughes, Anthony Quinn, Harry Morgan. 35mm, b/w, 75 min. PEPPERMINT SODA (1977, Dir: Diane Kurys) Presented by Hedi El Kholti "The only thing more impressive than the wit and talent Diane Kurys demonstrates in her writing and direction of "Peppermint Soda" — an expert, utterly charming movie that miraculously happens to be her first — is Miss Kurys's memory. Here is a letter-perfect recollection of what it's like to be a 13-year-old, in this case a French schoolgirl, with skinny legs and a bossy sister and a mother who doesn't understand she may be ruining her daughter's life if she keeps on refusing to let the kid wear stockings." -Janet Maslin, The New York Times Winner of the Prix Louis Delluc in 1977 as France’s best film of the year, Peppermint Soda follows the lives of two teenage sisters, Anne and Frédérique, through a full school year in Paris in the early 1960s. Through vignette, and with a light hand, Kurys shows the sisters' struggles with their studies, family, and friends, as well as their physical and emotional transformations. A PERFECT MAN / Un homme idéal France, 2015, 97 min Directed by: Yann Gozlan It starts out innocently enough. After all, where’s the harm in rescuing a dead man’s diary – a work that was destined, without his intervention, for a landfill? And anyway, he’s the one who recognized the diary’s potential as a novel, so why shouldn’t he sign the work as his own? Thus begins the meteoric rise of young Mathieu Vasseur, a heretofore-unpublished author eking out a living at his uncle’s moving company. Mathieu rides the wave as literature’s “Next Big Thing,” with growing concern over the mounting pressure of expectation for a second novel. But Mathieu has more urgent matters to attend to, including Alice, a woman the old Mathieu could have only dreamed about, and his desperation to keep his secret safe will leave him feeling like a man dispossessed of his own life. No matter – if this is the cost of genius, so be it. With a tip of the hat to Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley, this sun-drenched thriller is elevated by the immersive performance of Pierre Niney, who has had a meteoric rise of his own, culminating in a 2015 Best Actor César for Yves Saint Laurent. For this, his second film, Gozlan set out to make a character driven thriller with a strong element of suspense tied to the themes of identity and the creative impulse. PERFUMED NIGHTMARE "One of the most original and poetic works of cinema made anywhere in the seventies." – Werner Herzog Filipino director Kidlat Tahimik reprises his famous semi- autobiographical fable Perfumed Nightmare (1977, 93 min.), a work of rare brilliance. Raised in “a cocoon of American dreams,” the young Kidlat, a bus driver in a town near Manila, dispenses with documentary convention and himself assumes the role of protagonist on a journey of self-discovery. As president of the local Werner von Braun fan club, Kidlat dreams of Cape Canaveral and American technological prowess, but grows disenchanted with Western cultural colonialism as he travels from the countryside to France and Germany. Staged and improvised accounts of Kidlat’s seriocomic experiences commingle with newsreels of politicians, footage of puberty rituals, and lyrical interludes extolling the beauty of the Philippine landscape— creating an astonishingly original cinematic texture. In person: Kidlat Tahimik RIDE THE PINK HORSE 1947, Universal, 101 min, USA, Dir: Robert Montgomery In this adaptation of the novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, a surly vet (director/actor Robert Montgomery) ventures into a New Mexico resort town during fiesta to settle a score with a vacationing mobster. A strange, oddly paced film that plays as much like a Japanese samurai movie as film noir. With Thomas Gomez, Wanda Hendrix and Andrea King. RIVER OF FUNDAMENT Written and directed by Matthew Barney Music composed and directed by Jonathan Bepler Produced by Matthew Barney and Laurenz Foundation A radical reinvention of Norman Mailer’s novel Ancient Evenings, this epic film is the latest work by world-renowned art visionary Matthew Barney in collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler. Barney and Bepler fuse narrative cinema, live performance, sculpture and opera, reconstructing Mailer’s hypersexual story of Egyptian gods and the seven stages of death alongside the rise and fall of the American car industry. Alluring, authentic and intense, this vast, multidimensional experience is interspersed with remarkable live performances filmed over six years. The film’s cast includes Paul Giamatti, Elaine Stritch, Aimee Mullins, Milford Graves and Maggie Gyllenhaal. SAFE IN HELL 1931, Warner Bros., 73 min. Dir. William A. Wellman. Trailer Only Darryl F. Zanuck and Wild Bill Wellman could have conjured up this lurid pre-Code thriller. New Orleans prostitute Dorothy MacKaill is accused of murdering the pimp who turned her out. To avoid extradition, she is smuggled to a wayward Caribbean isle by her boyfriend (Donald Cook) and ends up being targeted as the singular object of lust by a group of international criminals and assorted lowlifes inhabiting a sleazy seaside hotel. SHOGUN ASSASSIN To celebrate Light in the Attic’s brand-new Record Store Day release of the classic Shogun Assassin soundtrack, we’re unleashing the most brutally badass Japanese hero to ever paint the screen red. Seized by the police during the U.K.’s notorious "Video Nasty" scare, the film remains one of the most deliriously entertaining and action-packed exploitation flicks of all time, slicing through pop culture and influencing everything from GZA's Liquid Swords album to Big Trouble in Little China and Kill Bill. This ballet of bloodied bodies and slashed limbs is the Americanized condensation of the legendary Lone Wolf and Cub series, and it distills all the anger, energy and violence of the world's most famous samurai into a frenzied grindhouse melee with English dubbing (featuring Sandra Bernhard!) and an added heavy synthesizer score by Paul Revere and the Raiders singer Mark Lindsay. Tomisaburo Wakayama (Zatoichi, The Bad News Bears Go to Japan) stars as Ogami Itto, traveling the countryside with his young son and a deadly, tricked-out cart on a blood-thirsty mission of vengeance against the Shogun that murdered his wife. Essential viewing. Dirs. Robert Houston & David Weisman, 1980, 35mm, 85 min. SHREDDER ORPHEUS The next great Neon No-Wave rediscovery is here, and it f’ing shreds! Shredder Orpheus is a skatepunk nightmare dialed to eleven, a heroic cult vision of hallucinatory ambition — along with a heavy dose of forbidden-zone poetry, courtesy of the late, great Steven Jesse Bernstein: the Bukowski of the ‘80s Pacific Northwest. When the Devil’s “Euthanasia Broadcast Network” unleashes an evil television signal that corrupts and kills its viewers, only rock star Orpheus (writer/director Robert McGinley) and his band of Shredders can penetrate the underworld and free the airwaves. Armed with his trusty tricked-out deck and a futuristic Hendrix-designed guitar, our hero must battle legions of gothed-out, post-apocalyptic zonkers to get to the truth. Don’t miss your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see this unique blend of sick skateboarding, sci-fi social commentary, slashin’ songs, spaced-out comedy and ultra-wild décor — with the filmmaker behind it all IN PERSON to discuss! Dir. Robert McGinley, 1989, 35mm, 88 min. THE SLEEPING TIGER 1954, Astor Pictures, 89 min, Dir: Joseph Losey Psychologist Clive Esmond (Alexander Knox) boards a criminal youth (Dirk Bogarde) in his home, in order to test his methods of behavior modification through psychoanalysis. Just wait until the doctor’s wife (Alexis Smith) gets her hands on the young stud. Losey’s first British-made film is an early example of what would become his métier - characters engaged in wicked sex and class warfare. A SUMMER AT GRANDPA’S DONG DONG DE JIA QI 1984, 98 min, Taiwan, Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien The first part of acclaimed director Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s coming-of-age trilogy follows 11-year-old Tung-Tung (Wang Chi-kuang), who travels with his little sister to his grandparent’s country home after his mother is hospitalized. Told from the boy’s perspective, this slice-of-childhood-life is not quite as idyllic as the title suggests; while playtime is never far away for these kids, neither is an adult world with problems just beyond their understanding. Jury Prize winner at the 1985 Locarno Film Festival. In Mandarin and Taiwanese with English subtitles. SURVIVING DESIRE Ahhh, if only people really spoke this way, casually weaving philosophy and unmasked declarations of intent with poetic asides about laundry detergent. If you’ve ever wished more movies were built around passages from Dostoyevsky, this one’s your jam. Clocking in at a cool 53 minutes, Hal Hartley’s absurdist graph of dysfunctional love circa 1993 maps a tryst, from the classroom to the bookstore, to the bedroom and then back to the classroom, and finally down into the gutter, between a burnt-out college English professor (Hartley’s longtime male muse Martin Donovan) and his favorite student (Mary B. Ward). She writes her fantasies and accusations into a short story about her self-hating egotist lover, but is she really just writing about herself? Is ignorance the necessary condition of human happiness? Is it wrong to physically harm students because they don’t like the Classics? In this dryly funny, willfully surreal ode to heartbreak, the answers — if there are any — lie in the questions themselves. The afternoon’s program also includes the 1991 Hal Hartley shorts Ambition and Theory of Achievement! Dir. Hal Hartley, 1992, digital presentation, 53 min. THE SUSPECT 1944, Universal, 85 min, USA, Dir: Robert Siodmak Timid tobacconist Philip Marshall (Charles Laughton) develops a friendship with a poor young woman (Ella Raines), igniting his wife’s shrewish jealousy. Despite the Edwardian-era decorum, THE SUSPECT is a classic noir - one of Siodmak’s best - featuring Laughton’s memorable portrait of a repressed and lonely man who will do anything to protect the unexpected joy he’s found too late in his life. Costarring Stanley Ridges and Rosalind Ivins. THESE THREE Lillian Hellman’s successful play THE CHILDREN'S HOUR had to be significantly altered in order to meet the requirements of the Production Code when it was first adapted for the big screen in 1936. Still, this moving film about three friends who suddenly find their lives disrupted by a malicious lie retains all the power of the original play. Masterfully directed by William Wyler, with a stellar cast that includes Merle Oberon, Miriam Hopkins and Joel McCrea, THESE THREE marked the director’s first full collaboration with the famous cinematographer Gregg Toland. Thanks to the talent of everyone involved, almost 80 years after its initial release, this movie remains a powerful and poignant masterpiece. “A stunning piece of mise en scène, stylistic and expressive, all in the form.” Axel Madsen “I have seldom been so moved by any fictional film as by THESE THREE.” Graham Greene Total Running Time: 80 min. Format: 35mm Thom Andersen: The Thoughts That Once We Had Thom Andersen in person! One of America's foremost practitioners of the essay film with a major new work inspired by the writings of Gilles Deleuze on cinema. Andersen's The Thoughts That Once We Had (2014, 108 min.) is a richly layered journey through cinematic history, masterfully edited as it playfully moves across decades and genres, and suffused at every turn by the renowned filmmaker and critic's lifelong passion for the movies. Andersen's newly remastered Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) is a modern classic, ranked among the 50 greatest documentaries of all time in Sight & Sound magazine's critics poll. His other works include The Tony Longo Trilogy (2014), Reconversao (2012), Get Out of The Car (2010), Red Hollywood (1996) and Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (1974). A Time to Live and a Time to Die (Taiwan, 1985) Tong nian wang shi A beautifully attenuated observation of the immigrant experience and ephemeral youth, director Hou Hsiao-hsien's semi-autobiographical tale follows teenage Ah-hsiao (like Hou himself, an immigrant from the Chinese mainland) over 20 years during which childhood gives way to reckless adolescent involvement with street gangs, then to the assumption of responsibility within the family. Delicate and restrained, the film is often cited for its similarity to the austere masterworks of Yasujiro Ozu. Producer: Lin Teng-fei, Hsu Hsin-chih, Chang Hwa-kun. Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien. Screenwriter: Hou Hsiao-hsien. Cinematography: Mark Lee (Ping-bin). Editor: Wang Chi-yang. Cast: Yu An-shun, Tien Feng, Mei Fang, Tang Ju-yun, Hsiao Ai, Hsin Shu-fen. 35mm, color, in Mandarin with English subtitles, 136 min. Track of the Cat (1954) For several years, director William A. Wellman wanted to adapt this brooding novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark (who also wrote The Ox-Bow Incident). When the studio compelled him to shoot the film in color, he filmed the snowy northern California setting in such monochromatic color as to simulate his preferred black-and-white look. The story centers on a slightly unhinged family of backwoods pioneers. Son Robert Mitchum is haunted by a marauding mountain lion, a symbol of evil in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe. With this dark film, Wellman became one of the first Hollywood auteurs to explore 1950s baroque obsessions. This Cold War western has been referred to as “CinemaScope's first genuine weirdie.” Wayne-Fellows Productions, Inc. Producer: John Wayne, Robert Fellows. Director: William A. Wellman. Screenwriter: A.I. Bezzerides. Based on the novel by Walter Van Tillburg Clark. Cinematography: William H. Colthier. Editor: Fred MacDowell. Cast: Robert Mitchum, Teresa Wright, Diana Lynn, Tab Hunter, Beulah Bondi. 35mm, color, 103 min. TWO MEN IN TOWN / Deux hommes dans la ville International Premiere (restored version) France, 1973, 100 min COLCOA is pleased to present the International Premiere of this digitally restored thriller, the final paring of Alain Delon and Jean Gabin. Four years earlier the old-school sensei and the new wave upstart shared the screen in the hugely successful The Sicilian Clan, and audiences wanted more. Here, Delon plays a reformed safecracker determined to walk the straight and narrow even as the machinery of state and the cruelties of fate conspire against him. Gabin plays Germain, a world-weary social worker fighting to give Gino a fair shake and a second chance in life. Things look promising as Gino lands a job and rekindles an old romance, until the vindictive Inspector Goitreau returns - with nods to Les Miserables’ Inspector Javert - intent on inflaming Gino’s pent up rage. In an early role, a young Gérard Depardieu plays a swaggering tough from Gino’s criminal days. It’s difficult to imagine a more personal film for writer/director Jose Giovanni, himself a convicted felon who had faced execution by guillotine. After early stints as a lumberjack and coal miner, and working for the French resistance during the war, Giovanni came to Paris and turned to crime. A botched robbery led to several months on death row before his sentence was commuted. He was released from prison 8 years later. From these experiences, Giovanni adapted his own novel into the screenplay for Jacques Becker’s acclaimed prison drama Le trou (1960), launching his career. Known for his characters’ authentic street dialogue and for his exposés of the French criminal justice system, Giovanni directed some of the brightest stars of the day in films that include Le Rapace (1968), Scoumoune (1972), The Gypsy (1975) and Le Ruffian (1983). THE UNDERWORLD STORY 1950, Warner Bros., 90 min, USA, Dir: Cy Enfield Another unjustly neglected noir by director Cy Enfield, in which the always entertaining Dan Duryea plays a cynical reporter who digs dangerously close to a corrupt publisher’s family secrets. Costarring Herbert Marshall, Gale Storm and Howard da Silva, and featuring dazzling cinematography by the great Stanley Cortez (NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS). THE UNFAITHFUL 1947, Warner Bros., 109 min, USA, Dir: Vincent Sherman Ann Sheridan plays a woman whose sexual indiscretion leads to murder and a tangled web of deceit. Isn’t that always the way? Legendary noir scribe David Goodis applies his typically thorny plotting to this reimagining of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Letter, transposed to post-WWII Los Angeles. Featuring Zachary Scott, Lew Ayres and Eve Arden. VINCENT 1981, Paul Brownstein Productions, 88 min, USA, Dir: Leonard Nimoy Leonard Nimoy directs and stars as both Vincent Van Gogh and his brother Theo in this filmed production of his tour-de-force one-man show. Using Van Gogh’s paintings as a backdrop, Nimoy brings both the art and the man to life in a moving portrait based on the correspondence between the two brothers. WITNESS TO MURDER 1954, Park Circus/UA, 83 min, USA, Dir: Roy Rowland This distaff version of REAR WINDOW (released before the Hitchcock classic) stars Barbara Stanwyck as an independent career woman who watches neighbor George Sanders strangle a victim in his swanky digs. It's the word of a single woman against that of a renowned author (and closet Nazi) - so guess who the LAPD believes? Featuring the chiaroscuro camerawork of noir shadow-meister John Alton. WIZARDS 1977, 20th Century Fox, 82 min, USA, Dir: Ralph Bakshi A post-apocalyptic vision like none before, where twin wizards - the wicked Blackwolf and the good-hearted Avatar - battle for rule over an epic, fantasy wasteland. Discussion between films with director Ralph Bakshi.