a highly-opinionated selection of things happening around town, and sometimes out of town. this month's page here.
tue. may 3
sea lions @ the echo
max fleischer shorts 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
wed. may 4
charles bradley @ the echo
strangers on a train, rope @ egyptian
mark mcguire @ showcave
jazzmania 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
thu. may 5
tamaryn @ troubadour
corin tucker band @ satellite
cloudland canyon @ silverlake lounge
a place in the sun, suddenly last summer @ egyptian
the arbor FREE @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges theater
fri. may 6
the loons @ soda bar (SD)
tamaryn @ troubadour
rachel fannan @ the echo
daylong valleys of the nile @ dem passwords
the pinochet case, salvador allende @ ucla film archive
the wooden lightbox: a secret art of seeing 8 PM @ echo park film center
annie hall, manhattan @ new beverly
hadewijch @ lacma
nasa space universe @ satan's basement
sat. may 7
cleopatra (70mm) @ egyptian
dead again, henry v @ aero
annie hall 3:40 7:30 PM, manhattan 5:35 9:25 PM @ new beverly
hadewijch @ lacma
sun. may 8
precious life 7 PM @ la jewish film fest @ laemmle's town center
mon. may 9
a small act 7 PM @ la jewish film fest @ ucla melnitz hall
tue. may 10
silver bullets FREE @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges theater
summer children @ egyptian
mighty joe young 1 PM @ lacma
mordecai richler: the last of the wild jews 5 PM @ la jewish film fest @ laemmle's town center
wed. may 11
madrid, robinson crusoe island @ ucla film archive
soundtrack for a revolution 7 PM FREE @ ampas linwood dunn
agent ribbons (10:00), mike watt & the missingmen @ bootleg
gimme 5s FREE @ taix
white fence, audacity, soft pack FREE (w/ RSVP) @ detroit bar
who's afraid of virginia woolf? @ egyptian
jeff the brotherhood, greenhornes @ the echo
another year, happy-go-lucky @ new beverly
thu. may 12
two-lane blacktop, ride in the whirlwind @ egyptian
bill brand: perceptive frame 8 PM @ echo park film center
another year, happy-go-lucky @ new beverly
badlands @ lacma
who do you love @ la jewish film fest @ laemmle's town center
fri. may 13
celebrating orphan films (day 1) @ ucla film archive
allah-las @ bordello
mia doi todd @ eagle rock center for the arts
cockfighter, the shooting @ egyptian
the blues brothers, raising arizona @ new beverly
love exposure @ silent movie theatre
LA font (10:00) @ casey's
sat. may 14
celebrating orphan films (day 2, all day) @ ucla film archive
the blues brothers, raising arizona @ new beverly
the island (1980) MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
days of heaven @ lacma
love exposure 2:30 8:00 PM @ silent movie theatre
LA font (4:30) @ echo park art walk @ feeding birds
sun. may 15
black angels, sleepy sun @ el rey
mia doi todd @ mccabe's
fancy space people @ part time punks @ the echo
giant @ egyptian
love exposure 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
mon. may 16
the detroit publishing story: my postcard collection 6 PM @ 7 dudley cinema
lord jim @ ucla film archive
swimsuit @ the smell
the clock: 24-hour screening (begins 11 AM) @ lacma
primer (w/ q&a between screenings) @ new beverly
tue. may 17
black angels, sleepy sun @ detroit bar
mitchhedberg.com relaunch & charity comedy show 8 PM @ steve allen theater
swimsuit @ take off
uncle boonmee who can recall his past lives, tropical malady @ new beverly
the magnificent ambersons 1 PM @ lacma
love exposure 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
wed. may 18
lt. watada 7 PM FREE @ ampas linwood dunn
the thin man, hide-out @ egyptian
love exposure 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
the rock-afire explosion @ downtown independent
thu. may 19
2001: a space odyssey (70mm) @ egyptian
the unknown, the unholy three @ aero
pxl this 20 8 PM @ echo park film center
the garden of the finzi-continis @ ampas samuel goldwyn
love exposure 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
the big sleep @ bogey & the buddha @ vidiots annex
bellflower FREE @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges theater
fri. may 20
grass widow, dirt dress @ blue star
broadcast news, real life @ egyptian
dracula (1931), mark of the vampire @ aero
nancy jean tucker presents new experimental animation FREE 8 PM @ echo park film center
the conformist (time TBA) @ new beverly
the new world (extended director's cut) @ lacma
lavender diamond @ eagle rock center for the arts
sat. may 21
strawberry festival
silver lake jubilee
aloe blacc @ detroit bar
alice doesn't live here anymore 2 PM @ ucla film archive @ autry museum
freaks, the devil-doll @ aero
the conformist (time TBA) @ new beverly
rejoice & shout (preview screening) @ lacma
the shining @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
sun. may 22
strawberry festival
silver lake jubilee
turkks, dunes, cheveaux @ bootleg
aloe blacc @ music box
krautrock night @ part time punks @ the echo
looking for mr. goodbar @ ucla film archive
agent ribbons @ bardot
girl shy 5 PM, never weaken @ egyptian
mon. may 23
you are here FREE @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges theater
tue. may 24
the time machine 1 PM @ lacma
wed. may 25
the professionals @ ucla film archive
woman rebel 7 PM, burma VJ FREE @ ampas linwood dunn
rear window 8 PM @ last remaining seats @ orpheum theatre
sleepy sun @ pappy & harriet's, pioneertown
agent ribbons @ sainte rocke (hermosa)
thu. may 26
agent ribbons FREE @ origami vinyl
heroes & heroines @ cat club
rebecca, the 39 steps @ egyptian
my perestroika 8 PM @ echo park film center
mia doi todd @ the echo
film socialisme FREE @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges theater
bottle rocket, rushmore @ niche.LA video art
fri. may 27
an american werewolf in london MIDNIGHT @ nuart
psycho, the birds @ egyptian
jon brion @ largo
mt. eerie @ eagle rock center for the arts
tremellow (12:30 AM) @ 5 star bar
sat. may 28
vinyl in the woods record fair FREE @ henry miller library (big sur)
allo darlin' @ the echo
to catch a thief, notorious @ egyptian
back to the future 5 PM, back to the future part ii, back to the future part iii @ aero
sister nancy @ echoplex
vertigo @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
lolita @ devil's night drive-in
sun. may 29
neil hamburger @ satellite
vertigo (70mm) @ egyptian
lawrence of arabia (70mm) @ aero
young frankenstein @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
crawdaddys @ rhino records pop-up shop
tue. may 31
ricky jay & david mamet 7 PM @ hammer
eternal summers FREE (5:00) @ origami vinyl
eternal summers @ the echo
the candidate 1 PM @ lacma
rock & roll: three los angeles films FREE @ melnitz movies @ ucla james bridges theater
wed. jun. 1
so's your old man 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
gwaed ar y se 11 PM @ an evening of welsh horror @ silent movie theatre
after hours, something wild @ new beverly
beginners FREE 7 PM @ hammer museum
fri. jun. 3
taxi driver MIDNIGHT @ nuart
hawbuckin' hobos @ beyond baroque
sat. jun. 4
damon and naomi @ spaceland
sun. jun. 5
14 iced bears @ part time punks @ echoplex
tue. jun. 7
sharp ease, crass tribute band @ the smell
cerebral ballzy @ the echo
wed. jun. 8
captain blood 8 PM @ last remaining seats @ million dollar theatre
autolux (live set), master mystery (serial screening) @ into the night: music and magic @ skirball
battleship potemkin 8 PM @ silent movie theatre
fri. jun. 10
the goonies MIDNIGHT @ nuart
partch: at the edge of the world 8:30 PM @ redcat
sat. jun. 11
our man in havana 3 PM FREE @ getty center
i am cuba! 6:30 PM FREE @ getty center
partch: at the edge of the world 8:30 PM @ redcat
house of wax (3-D) 8 PM @ vincent price birthday celebration @ downtown independent
sun. jun. 12
memories of underdevelopment NOON @ getty center
lucia 3 PM FREE @ getty center
king tuff @ spaceland
wed. jun. 15
king kong (1933) 8 PM @ last remaining seats @ los angeles theatre
thu. jun. 16
meat puppets @ the echo
essential killing 8 PM @ an evening with jerry skolimowski @ silent movie theatre
fri. jun. 17
tremellow @ venue TBA
trmrs @ blue star
deep end 8 PM, the shout @ silent movie theatre
sat. jun. 18
watts ensemble @ bootleg
make music pasadena
identification marks: none 8 PM, walkover @ silent movie theatre
mon. jun. 20
tremellow @ beauty is pain
thu. jun. 23
tremellow @ showcave
black lips, cerebral ballzy @ detroit bar
fri. jun. 24
andre williams @ satellite
paperhead, trmrs @ hm157
holly golightly & the brokeoffs @ hotel cafe
black lips, cerebral ballzy @ music box
valley girl MIDNIGHT @ nuart
sat. jun. 25
danton 6:30 PM FREE @ getty center
sun. jun. 26
sleep @ the wiltern
holly golightly & the brokeoffs FREE @ pappy & harriet's, pioneertown
dangerous liaisons NOON FREE @ getty center
sunset boulevard 2:00 7:00 PM @ last remaining seats @ palace theatre
wed. jun. 29
safety last! 8 PM @ last remaining seats @ orpheum theatre
thu. jun. 30
animals & men, dunes, kit @ the smell
fri. jul. 1
trmrs @ troubadour
audacity @ blue star
fri. jul. 8
sonny & the sunsets @ the echo
mon. jul. 18
w-h-i-t-e @ pehrspace
fri. jul. 22
ty segall, audacity @ eagle rock center for the arts
thu. jul. 28
thurston moore @ troubadour
fri. jul. 29
thurston moore @ troubadour
sat. jul. 30
nodzzz, ducktails, woods, etc @ woodsist festival @ fernwood (big sur)
sun. jul. 31
thee oh sees, woods, white fence, etc @ woodsist festival @ henry miller library (big sur)
sun. aug. 7
thrones @ troubadour
tue. sept. 20
low @ el rey
WHAT IT IS:
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Ellen Burstyn shines in this portrait of a single mother with a young son in post-Vietnam America, seeking a living and following a hope westward to Monterey, California. Like an old-time California gold prospector, Alice dreams of success as a singer but marks time as a diner waitress, until she meets a good man (Kristofferson) who sets her on a new path. Tender and wise, the film presents tale of yet another pilgrim’s response to the promise of the west, but the story turns on feminine values—a surprising turn in Martin Scorsese’s first feature following Mean Streets (1972).
Producer: David Susskind, Audrey Maas. Screenwriter: Robert Getchell. Cinematographer: Kent L. Wakeford. Editor: Marcia Lucas. Cast: Ellen Burstyn, Kris Kristofferson, Diane Ladd,Valerie Curtin, Jodie Foster. Presented in English dialogue. 35mm, Color, 112 min.
ANOTHER YEAR
Over the course of a tumultuous year, contented medical counselor Gerri (Ruth Sheen) and her geologist husband, Tom (Jim Broadbent), see their friends and relations through a series of happy events and heartbreaks -- including a birth and a death. Imelda Staunton and Oliver Maltman co-star in this character-driven ensemble dramedy from writer-director Mike Leigh (Happy-Go-Lucky, Vera Drake, Secrets & Lies).
2010, UK, 35mm, 129 minutes. written and directed by Mike Leigh; starring Jim Broadbent, Lesley Manville, Ruth Sheen, Peter Wight, Oliver Maltman, David Bradley.
THE ARBOR
Instead of making a conventional documentary or adapting Dunbar’s play THE ARBOR for the screen, director Clio Barnard has crafted a truly unique work that transcends genre and defies categorization. Following two years conducting audio interviews with Dunbar’s family, friends and neighbors, Barnard filmed actors lip-synching the interviews, flawlessly interpreting every breath, tick and nuance. The film focuses in particular on... the playwright’s troubled relationship with her daughter Lorraine, who was just 10 when her mother died. Barnard re-introduces Lorraine to her mother’s play and private letters, prompting her to reflect on the extraordinary parallels between their lives. Interwoven with these interviews are staged scenes of Dunbar’s play filmed on The Arbor, the street where she lived.
Official Selection Tribeca Film Festival (WINNER Best New Documentary Filmmaker), BFI London Film Festival. Dir. Clio Barnard, 94 mins.
Badlands
1973/color/95 min. | Scr/dir: Terrence Malick; w/ Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates.
Malick's directorial debut follows the star-crossed romance of an aimless small-town couple—hard-bitten garbage man Sheen and fifteen-year-old Spacek—on the lam and joyriding across an eerily vacant pastoral landscape. Based on the true story of Charles Starkweather and his teenage girlfriend Caril Fugate, two Midwesterners behind a 50s killing spree, the film captures the melancholy stillness of South Dakota's vast plains, accentuated by the haunting score by George Tipton. Casting a dream-like spell with an undercurrent of dread, Badlands was likened to a fairy tale by Malick in interviews. Many of the characteristic features of the director's style—dazzling natural-light cinematography, contemplative narration, startling elliptical edits, the theme of innocence lost—are already fully-formed in this other-worldly road movie. "Badlands stills prompts awe. You feel Malick laying hands on a way of seeing, and you marvel at the lyric casualness with which he observes violence, outrage and the deadpan American urge to be famous, and to get away into the distance of horizon and legend before the humdrum cops hunt you down."—David Thomson.
In person: Sissy Spacek
Battleship Potemkin
(brand-new 35mm restoration!)
On the heels of their incredible job on Fritz Lang's Metropolis comes Kino's brand-new restoration of Battleship Potemkin, still one of most important experiences in film history 85 years after its original release! It is Odessa, 1905. Enraged with the deplorable conditions on board the armored cruiser Potemkin, the ship's loyal crew contemplates the unthinkable: mutiny. Seizing control of the Potemkin and raising the red flag of revolution, the sailors' revolt becomes the rallying point for a Russian populace ground under the boot heels of the Czar's Cossacks. When ruthless White Russian cavalry arrive to crush the rebellion on the sandstone Odessa Steps, the most famous and quoted film sequence in cinema history is born. For eight decades, Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 masterpiece has remained one of the most influential silent films of all time -- yet each successive generation has seen Battleship Potemkin subjected to censorship and recutting, its unforgettable power diluted in unauthorized public domain editions from dubious sources. This all-new restoration -- available for the first time in 35mm -- restores dozens of missing shots, all 146 original title cards, and Edmund Meisel's definitive 1926 score, returning the film to a form as close to its creator's bold vision as has been seen since the film's triumphant Moscow premiere!
Dir. Sergei Eisenstein, 1925, 35mm, 75 min.
Beginners
In this comic drama, Oliver (Ewan McGregor) comes to terms with his father’s (Christopher Plummer) death. Through Oliver’s evolving consciousness, accelerated by meeting the irreverent Anna (Mélanie Laurent), Beginners illustrates how often life’s darkest moments can simultaneously be deeply funny and transformative. A Q&A with director Mike Mills will follow the screening. (2011. Dir. Mike Mills. 104 min.)
BILL BRAND: PERCEPTIVE FRAME
Echo Park Film Center welcomes pioneering hand-made filmmaker Bill Brand to present his newest films and a sampling of his work from the past 40 years. Brand's films, videos and installations continually redefine the cinematic frame. They push the boundaries of perception literally changing the way we see. The films range widely in form and subject from monuments of minimalist purity to experiments in post-modern excess. In this program he will take us inside MASSTRANSISCOPE, his NYC subway zoetrope to reveal its 1980 inception and its recent restoration after 20 years in the dark. He will screen his classic 16mm structural film RATE OF CHANGE (1972), a study in pure color; SPLIT DECISION (1979), a wildly complex and playful tour de force of optical printing and early computer technology; SUSIE'S GHOST (2011), a mysterious poetic vision of loss, and his most current work-in-progress shot in Montevideo, Uruguay. FILMMAKER IN ATTENDANCE!
BILL FRISELL TRIO PLAYS SELECTED WORKS OF BUSTER KEATON
Incomparable guitarist Bill Frisell along with his bandmates Tony Scherr and Kenny Wollesen will create a live score to the Buster Keaton classics Go West, The High Sign and One Week. Rediscover the timeless charm of Keaton’s magic reimagined with live music in an afternoon of film and music the whole family can enjoy.
BELLFLOWER
Best friends Woodrow (Evan Glodell) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson) spend all of their free time building Mad Max-inspired flamethrowers and muscle cars in preparation for a global apocalypse. But when Woodrow meets a charismatic young woman (Jessie Wiseman) and falls hard in love, he and Aiden quickly integrate into a new group of friends, setting off on a journey of love and hate, betrayal, infidelity and extreme violence more devastating and fiery than any of their apocalyptic fantasies. Director/Screenwriter: Evan Glodell; Starring: Evan Glodell, Jessie Wiseman, Tyler Dawson, Rebekah Brandes, Vincent Grashaw; Cinematographer: Joel Hodge; Producers: Vincent Grashaw, Evan Glodell; An Oscilloscope Laboratories release; 105 minutes, Blu-ray. Evan Glodell, Taylor Dawson and Jessie Wiseman in person for a Q&A following the screening!
Burma VJ
Directed by Anders Østergaard
Produced by Lise Lense-Møller
Inside Burma, hidden from the repressive military regime that has ruled the country for many decades, courageous journalists secretly videotape events around them and smuggle the tapes out of the country to foreign news agencies. Digital. 89 mins.
Academy Award nominee: Documentary Feature
The Candidate
1972/color/109 min. | Scr: Jeremy Larner; dir: Michael Ritchie; w/ Robert Redford, Peter Boyle, Melvyn Douglas
A senate candidate's ideals weaken as his position in the polls gets stronger.
Celebrating Orphan Films
In-person: Dan Streible, founder, Orphan Film Symposium.
UCLA Film & Television Archive is pleased to partner with Los Angeles Filmforum and New York University's Orphan Film Symposium to present an eclectic mix of screenings and discussions at the Billy Wilder Theater. Join archivists, film historians, artists, technical experts and scholars as they discuss their efforts in finding, researching and presenting these rare gems.
The Orphan Film Project consists of ongoing collaborations among archivists, scholars, filmmakers, curators and collectors with a shared passion for saving and screening neglected films from outside the commercial mainstream: home movies, outtakes, news film, sponsored works, silent-era cinema, fragments and experimental films.
Program:
Newly preserved Super 8 films by animator Helen Hill, shot around New Orleans before and after Katrina (2004-05), presented by Center for Home Movies.
The missing reel from The Passaic Textile Strike (1926), rediscovered in NYU Tamiment Library's Communist Party USA Collection.
Selections from the University of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collections, including Fox Movietone newsreel outtakes and Light Cavalry Girl, a Chinese propaganda film featuring a troupe of young women on motorcycles.
A presentation on Saul Bass by Jan-Christopher Horak (Director, UCLA Film & Television Archive).
Heidi Rae Cooley (University of South Carolina) presents The Augustus (ca. 1930s-'50s), a remarkable compilation from Augusta, Georgia by amateur filmmaker and traveling salesman Scott Nixon.
An overview of 1960s newsreels from private collections, including a screening of the last theatrically released Hearst Metrotone Newsreel. Presented by Blaine Bartell (UCLA Film & Television Archive).
A panel featuring preservationists Bill Brand (BB Optics), Ross Lipman (UCLA Film & Television Archive), and Mark Toscano (Academy Film Archive) and a screening of the David Wojnarowicz’s A Fire in My Belly (1987) from NYU Fales Library.
Experimental films preserved by BB Optics and NYU Moving Image Archiving and Preservation students, including works by pioneering computer artist Lillian Schwartz.
The Unshod Maiden (1932), a butchered reduction of Lois Weber’s Shoes (1916), presented by Shelley Stamp (UC Santa Cruz).
New York Street Scenes (Hearst Metrotone News, 1960) preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive, presented by Roger L. Brown (UCLA Moving Image Archive Studies), with NYC Street Scenes and Noises (Fox Movietone News, 1929).
Color (1958) by Lidia García Millán, the first color experimental film made in Uruguay.
And Then They Forgot God (1971), an outré religious telefilm featuring Joseph Campanella, Beverly Garland and Adam West, presented by journalist Paul Cullum.
Home movies shot in Hawaii in the 1940s and '50s by African American aviator and entertainer Marie Dickerson Coker. Presented by Leah M. Kerr (Director of Collections, Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum) and Trisha Lendo (UCLA Film & Television Archive).
Ron and Chuck in Disneyland Discovery (1969), a queer courtship narrative covertly filmed in Disneyland, guerilla-style, by pioneer filmmaker Pat Rocco. From the Outfest Legacy Collection at UCLA Film & Television Archive.
A rare presentation of 28mm films: home movies, circa 1920, found in New Hampshire, and projected on an authentic 1918 motor-driven Pathéscope New Premier 28mm projector. Presented by Dino Everett (Archivist, Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive, University of Southern California).
Muzak (1972), a sponsored film featuring interviews with executives of America's "efficiency through music" corporation. Courtesy of the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Rare local television screenings presented by the panel of Dan Einstein (UCLA Film & Television Archive), Stephanie Sapienza (CPB), and Mark J. Williams (Dartmouth).
Much more to be announced!
The Clock: 24-Hour Screening
Monday, May 16 | 11:00 am through Tuesday, May 17 | 11:00 am
Join us for the West Coast premiere of artist Christian Marclay's The Clock, a 24-hour single-channel montage constructed from thousands of moments of cinema and television history depicting the passage of time. Marclay has excerpted each of these moments from their original contexts and edited them together to create a functioning timepiece synchronized to local time wherever it is viewed—marking the exact time in real time for the viewer for 24 consecutive hours. The sampled clips come from films of all genres, time periods, and cultures, some lasting only seconds, others minutes, and have been culled from hundreds of films, famous and obscure, into a seamless whole. The result, a melding of video and reality, unfolds with a seemingly endless cast of cameos. This free screening will allow The Clock to be seen in the way Marclay intended, by making it available in its entirety.
COCKFIGHTER
1974, Concorde-New Horizons, 83 min, USA, Dir: Monte Hellman
Monte Hellman, adapting the novel by Charles Willeford (Miami Blues), follows stubborn loner Warren Oates, who had been disqualified from receiving a Cockfighter of the Year award due to his boisterous, intoxicated behavior during a match. Oates takes a vow of silence until he wins again, and we follow him on his lonely odyssey, trying to regain his lost sense of worth as he partners up with fast-talking gambler Omar (Richard B. Shull) and plans for the future with his sweetheart (Patricia Pearcy). Filmed on Georgia locations (cockfighting reportedly was still legal there) by Nestor Almendros, director Hellman creates another austere slice-of-life road saga, remaining true to the seedy milieu but bringing a compassion and insight to the characters indicative of his agile and elegant strengths as a filmmaker. With an exceptional cast that includes Harry Dean Stanton, Millie Perkins, Troy Donahue, Laurie Bird, Ed Begley, Jr., Steve Railsback and a cameo by novelist Charles Willeford. Discussion between films with director Monte Hellman.
Danton (1982)
Acting as a metaphor for revolutionary events unfolding in Poland in the early 1980s, this powerful historical drama from filmmaker Andrzej Wajda follows Georges Jacques/Danton and Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre, allies in the French Revolution.
Days of Heaven
1978/color/95 min. | Scr/dir: Terrence Malick; w/ Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard, Linda Manz.
Malick's ambitious sophomore effort is considered by many to be the most beautifully-shot film of all time. Days of Heaven tells a story of love and adultery amid the infinite wheat fields of the Texas Panhandle in the mid-1910's. Escaping his troubled life in the steel mills of Chicago, Gere jumps a train to the American West with his girlfriend (Adams) and twelve-year-old sister (Manz) in tow. The three quickly find work among the teeming hordes tending to the vast harvest of withdrawn millionaire Shepard. Surveying his crews and crops from the perch of his Victorian mansion (a tour-de-force of art direction by Jack Fisk), Shepard becomes smitten with Adams and an uneasy love triangle ensues. The crystalline cinematography of Néstor Almendros, an Oscar winner for this film, creates expansive vistas that evoke the canvases of Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth. Shot on 70mm and often during twilight, the diffusely-glowing "magic hour," the film's visual grandeur can only be appreciated on the big screen. A masterfully-appointed period film with breathtaking immediacy, Days of Heaven was Malick's last film before his twenty-year hiatus. "Malick's control of the sound and image give his film an uncanny physical presence. Days of Heaven is a uniquely palpable film: the breath of wind, the texture of the grain, light snow melting on a woman's hair-we see, we hear, but somehow, we touch, too… A story of human lives touched by the cosmos and then passed over-momentary intersections between the eternal and the immediate...the most graceful, most moving and most original American movie in recent memory."—Dave Kehr.
In person: Oscar-nominated production designer and longtime Malick collaborator Jack Fisk.
DEAD AGAIN
1991, Paramount, 107 min, USA, Dir: Kenneth Branagh
“How many times can you die for love?” Historical supernaturalism meets neo-noir in Kenneth Branagh’s richly textured mystery about a private detective caught up in an unsolved murder haunting its way through time. Mike Church (Branagh) is investigating the disappearance of an unknown woman he gives the name “Grace.” Upon finding Grace (Emma Thompson), a terrified amnesiac with nightmares of a woman killed in the 1940s, Mike seeks the help of a hypnotist (Sir Derek Jacobi) to get to the bottom of Grace’s strange fears, but only finds himself further entrenched in a labyrinth of double identity and deadly consequence. With Robin Williams as Cozy Carlisle, the disgraced psychologist relegated to a butcher shop after one too many doctor-patient trysts. Shot on location at some of Los Angeles’ historic landmarks, including the Orpheum Theater, High Tower, and the Shakespeare Bridge.
Deep End
Having left his native Poland in anger over the censorship of his previous film Rece do gory, Jerzy Skolimowski ventured to England and produced the rarely-seen Deep End, a kind of disturbing anti-Harold and Maude that stands as one of the most unpredictable films of Mod-era British cinema. Deep End begins as a charmingly surreal comic coming-of-age tale, as seemingly innocent as the schoolboy crush that 15-year-old public bath attendant Mike harbors for his beguiling older coworker Susan -- but when Mike starts taking Susan’s flirtatious behavior seriously, and in turn can’t properly process adult sexuality, Deep End takes a sharp turn for the turbulent. Skolimowski’s off-the-cuff handling of dialogue and cinematography ratchets up the sense of squalor as Mike compulsively follows Susan through Soho’s back-end brothels and peep shows, all set to the driving rhythm of Can’s indelible psychedelic soundtrack. Alternately hilarious and horrifying, Deep End doesn’t stop playing with your expectations until the very last frame; this long-considered-lost swinging-London psychodrama has become an off-kilter classic, recently landing a spot on Time Out’s list of the 100 Best British Films.
Dir. Jerzy Skolimowski, 1970, 35mm, 90 min.
THE DETROIT PUBLISHING STORY - MY POSTCARD COLLECTION - A History of the American Picture Postcard ('10, 90m) at 6pm. At the turn of the next to last century postcards became an enormous fad in the United States, millions of postcards were sent daily, sometimes many a day, like we make phone calls or email today. The collectors began saving them and the results are a fascinating pictorial history of life in America a century ago. John Collier’s colorful documentary on the history of the American picture postcard with beautiful photographs of “Turn-of-the-Century America”, 1880-1924 goes farther to describe American history than any other art form., The photographs served as the basis for picture postcards of the time. Prominent subjects include buildings and views in towns and cities, colleges and universities, battleships and yachts, resorts, natural landmarks, industry and national parks. They covered America with images, over 18,000 different views and in a kind of holding up a mirror to themselves they reveal much about themselves, their thoughts and society of the time.
THE DEVIL-DOLL
1936, MGM Repertory, 78 min, USA, Dir: Tod Browning
Director Tod Browning and star Lionel Barrymore reunite for a bizarre tale of a prison escapee who shrinks humans to doll-size in order to execute a crime spree. Co-written by actor-director Erich von Stroheim!
ESSENTIAL KILLING
An Evening With Jerzy Skolimowski
It’s a rare thing when a film director whose career spans six decades makes a feature with the same kind of intensity, excitement, importance and uniqueness as they would their debut -- and Jerzy Skowlimowski nails this exact situation with Essential Killing, one of the best of his entire career. In one of his most fearless, primal performances -- during which he has no spoken dialogue -- Vincent Gallo is an unnamed prisoner of war captured in a Middle Eastern country by American forces; en route to being processed at a European outpost, the transport truck containing Gallo crashes in the Polish wilderness, spilling him out into the bone-snappingly harsh winter. What follows is a harrowing portrait of the extremes humans can reach in order to survive: as an injured and increasingly maddened Gallo devises further ruses to duck the encroaching soldiers on his trail, he must kill anyone who stands in his way -- but wouldn’t you, if you were in his shoes? Skolimowski brilliantly avoids any partisan politics inherent in the subject matter by never explicitly stating if Gallo is, in fact, Taliban, instead immersing the viewer in a densely poetic and aurally fractured trip that leaves you chilled, thrilled and fulfilled -- lingering in your mind for weeks afterwards.
Dir. Jerzy Skolimowski, 2010, 35mm, 83 min.
THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS
The 1971 Academy Award-winning Foreign Language Film "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis" chronicles the gradual disintegration of the Jewish community living in Ferrara, Italy at the beginning of World War II.
The film adaptation of Giorgio Bassani's 1962 semiautobiographical novel was one of acclaimed Italian director Vittorio De Sica’s final movies. Oblivious to the threats surrounding them, a wealthy Jewish family ignores the Fascism closing in on their community by remaining within the walls of their luxurious garden. Ultimately, the walled garden is no shelter from Mussolini’s anti-Semitic decrees and the horrors of the Holocaust, and the Finzi-Continis’ inaction and isolation contribute to their downfall.
The film is shot almost entirely in soft focus, creating a dreamlike quality, and De Sica purposefully never shows the actual size or dimensions of the garden. The music by Vittorio’s son, Manuel De Sica, takes the audience from romantic bliss to sheer tragedy.
Starring Dominique Sanda, Lino Capolicchio, Helmut Berger, Fabio Testi, Romolo Valli.
Directed by Vittorio De Sica. Produced by Gianni Hecht Lucari and Arthur Cohn. Screenplay by Ugo Pirro and Vittorio Bonicelli; based on the novel by Giorgio Bassani. A Gianni Hecht Lucari-Arthur Cohn Production; Cinema 5, Ltd. 1971. 94 minutes. Courtesy of Arthur Cohn. In Italian with English subtitles.
Special guest: Oscar-winning producer Arthur Cohn
GIRL SHY
1924, Sony Repertory, 82 min, USA, Dir: Harold Lloyd
Shy, stuttering bachelor Harold Meadows (Lloyd) spends his days secluded in a tailoring shop, writing the ultimate guide for bashful young men, "The Secret of Making Love." When Harold meets and falls in love with rich Mary, he must somehow stall her impending marriage. One of Lloyd's most popular feature-length films, featuring fantasy sequences enacting the chapters from his character's hopelessly misguided book, and his famous breathtaking race across town in order to halt the wedding. Many scenes were filmed in and around recognizable (and now not-so-recognizable) Hollywood landmarks, including the Garden Court Apartments, the Mary Moll residence (future site of the Roosevelt Hotel, built in 1927), the extant Johnny Grant Building and many more. A true early Hollywood experience, Harold Lloyd-style! Photos: © 2011 The Harold Lloyd Trust.
GWAED AR Y SE
Gruff Rhys & Andy Votel present An Evening of Welsh Horror, Rare Cymraeg Folk & Terrifying Soundtracks!
(feat. the lost '70s horror film "Gwaed ar y se"!)
Our friends over at Finders Keepers, one of the most consistently incredible reissue record labels in the UK, bring to the Cinefamily a late-night dose of secret Welsh culture, hosted by Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals, Neon Neon)! The evening features live DJ sets of Welsh tunes by both Gruff and Finders Keepers impresario Andy Votel, and culminates in what is possibly the first-ever U.S. screening of the impossibly rare '70s Welsh horror film Gwaed ar y ser (aka Blood On The Stars)! Gruff loves the film: "It's kind of a Wicker Man meets Celebrity Big Brother cum slasher movie about this group of sinister kids who are going around killing the minor celebrities of Wales in the '70s, occasionally with snakes. They electrocute and kill the leading harp player by connecting her harp to the mains; they blow up the most famous rugby player by putting a bomb inside the ball -- I think they blow up Barry John, he’s a rugby legend! The light entertainment TV personalities I used to see on telly every day were being murdered in front of my face, I had to be carried out of the cinema screaming. Now that’s definitely a B-movie. I mean, it’s beyond B-movie. Maybe it’s a C or D. I got a copy of it a few years ago, it hasn’t really been shown anywhere since 1976 and it’s still incredible!"
HADEWIJCH
2009/color/120 min. | Scr/dir: Bruno Dumont; w/ Julie Sokolowski, Yassine Salime, Karl Sarafidis.| An IFC Films release.
Like Carl Dreyer and Robert Bresson, the French filmmaker Bruno Dumont is an austere stylist who employs extreme close-ups to probe and reveal the inner spirituality of his characters. Exploring the fine line between martyrdom, fanaticism, faith, and delusion, Dumont's provocative new film focuses on Céline, a naive young novice and fervent devotee of the medieval mystic Hadewijch, who is expelled from the convent for engaging in extreme acts of piety. Forced to return to the secular world of her wealthy parents, lost and vulnerable, Céline drifts around Paris, her vow of chastity intact, until a chance encounter with Yassine, a young Muslim from the suburbs, opens the door to a dangerous new world. "Every shot in the movie is an exquisitely rendered tableau that conveys the mysteries of life as contemplated by Céline."—Stephen Holden, The New York Times.
HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
London teacher Poppy Cross (Sally Hawkins, in a Golden Globe-winning role) is eternally cheerful, but when someone steals her beloved bike, she takes up driving and gets paired with Scott (Eddie Marsan), an instructor who's her polar opposite. The relationship is strained till Poppy's bright personality attracts a co-worker, making Scott unexpectedly jealous. Director Mike Leigh's effervescent tale also copped a Golden Globe nod for Best Picture.
2008, UK, 35mm, 118 minutes. written and directed by Mike Leigh; starring Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Alexis Zegerman, Sinead Matthews, Kate O’Flynn.
HAWBUCKIN' HOBOS
Cultural anthropologist GERRY FIALKA explores America’s affection for free spirit and the open road. Utilizing rare audio and film clips, Fialka arouses insight into music experimenter/hobo HARRY PARTCH and folk singer/labor and peace activist UTAH PHILLIPS.
Identification Marks: None
It’s ironic that a fiercely driven film student itching to make a first feature would methodically scrounge university-issued scraps of film stock in order to produce an epic meditation on aimlessness -- but that’s exactly what a young Jerzy Skolimowski did in the early ‘60s, gaming the system at the famous Lodz Film School to produce Identification Marks: None, a landmark independent work made at the height of state-supported Polish cinema. Skolimowski plays Andrzej Leszczyc, a bored college student who’s through with bumming about, and turns himself into the draft board after having ditched them for years. As we follow Andrzej through episodic tableaux covering the final hours before his conscription, the narrative uncoils almost exclusively in graceful, effortless long takes; while these shots were originally conceived as a crafty work-around to the film’s minuscule means, they serve as an entrancing enhancement, bringing a hyper-realistic focus to Andrzej’s encounters with all manner of eccentric street life, and his drifting through the hollowed-out shell of a gray, overcast Communist society few of us Americans can still truly fathom.
Dir. Jerzy Skolimowski, 1965, 35mm, 73 min.
THE ISLAND
It's easy to see why this eccentric hybrid of horror and adventure fare confounded audiences when it was released. The Island is a very bizarre proposition, a sort of riff on the 'Bermuda Triangle' mystery that is done on a big-budget Hollywood scale but also includes an occasional lashing of the nastiness one associates with grindhouse fare. Peter Benchley's script is both dark and witty, offsetting some gruesome acts of violence and a morbid take on how pirates really operate with oddball bits of humor (like one of the pirates' victims attempting to fight back by using the martial arts on them!) and plenty of sarcastic dialogue. Director Michael Ritchie plays up the odd, dark humor of the piece, adding touches like underscoring the scenes where the pirates attack unsuspecting innocents with rousing orchestral fanfares. The cast, led by strong performances from Michael Caine and David Warner, keep their heads down and play the material straight. It's tough to say exactly what audience the often-surreal end result was intended for but The Island is strangely watchable for those can keep up with its oddball whims: Henri Decae's photography is lovely, the production values are lavish, the cast all fit their roles nicely and Ritchie brings the same flair for action he showed in Prime Cut to the setpieces here. In short, The Island is not for everybody but fans of big-budget oddities are likely to be fascinated by the well-funded eccentricity at play here.
1980, USA, 35mm, 113 minutes. directed by Michael Ritchie; written by Peter Benchley from his novel; starring Michael Caine, David Warner, Angela Punch McGregor, Frank Middlemass, Don Henderson.
JAZZMANIA
(West Coast restoration premiere!)
The turbulent career of stunning silent starlet Mae Murray is something to behold! Hoofing her way from stage to screen in the 1910s, Murray quickly went from being a Ziegfeld Follies girl (billed by Ziegfeld himself as “The Girl With The Bee-Stung Lips”) to one of the greatest stars in one of the most unusual of all film genres, to blacklisted film industry outcast -- all within fifteen years. Made shortly after Murray’s ascendancy to the position of Queen of the Silent Musical (it’s true, silent musicals did exist, as platforms for epic amounts of dancing), Jazzmania only has a few musical sequences, but is bursting with charm and effervescence. Murray plays the eccentric, happy-go-lucky monarch of a far-off fictional European kingdom (one noted for its high-flying reverie), who flees to America after a nasty coup d’état, and who falls for a dashing foreign correspondent (Rod La Rocque). As she enjoys the high life while in American exile, her loyal countrymen plead with her to return, to restore order -- will she succeed? Directed by Murray’s husband/creative partner Robert Z. Leonard, this rare slice of frothy fun will have you steppin’ out in style!
Dir. Robert Z. Leonard, 1923, 35mm, 80 min. (Restored 35mm print courtesy of the George Eastman House, with financial support from The Film Foundation)
Lt. Watada
Directed and produced by Freida Mock
Driven by his strong belief in the illegality of the Iraq War, United States Army lieutenant Ehren Watada made the difficult decision to refuse deployment to Iraq. Digital. 39 mins.
Lord Jim (1965)
Directed by Richard Brooks
Marked by a scandal in which he and others abandoned a ship thought to be sinking, merchant seaman “Jim” seeks and finds a second chance at heroism in the South Seas outpost of Patusan, leading the natives by courage and example in facing down corrupt leaders and marauding invaders. Handsomely produced, and one of Brooks’ most penetrating literary adaptations, the film finds its perfect Jim in ethereal Peter O’Toole, a spirit adrift, seeking moral bearings.
Columbia Pictures. Based on the novel by Joseph Conrad. Producer: Richard Brooks. Screenwriter: Richard Brooks. Cinematographer: Freddie Young. Editor: Alan Obiston. Cast: Peter O'Toole, James Mason, Eli Wallach, Curt Jurgens, Paul Lukas. 70mm, Color, 143 min.
Love Exposure
"Japan's eroto-theosophical answer to the allegorical journeys of Alejandro Jodorowsky" -- Film Four
"It’s too bad words like 'masterpiece' and 'epic' have been so overused by excitable film critics, because Sion Sono’s Love Exposure is an actual epic masterpiece that is going to dominate the filmscape for decades." - New York Asian Film Festival
Ask yourself this question: when was the last time a movie really mattered to you, and shattered your world? Every so often, a film comes screaming out of the ether that magically reveals a larger truth about this thing we stumble through called life, and the latest cinematic salve is the unforgettable, uncategorizable, unmissable Love Exposure, the brand-new behemoth from Sion Sono (Suicide Club, Strange Circus) that gleefully tackles life's biggest issues: love, death, sex, revenge, religion and up-skirt panty photography. Winner of festival awards across the globe, and breaker of art house attendance records in Japan, Love Exposure has only been seen in the U.S. at a handful of sell-out screenings, with its initially daunting 237 minutes leaving audiences desperate for another installment. Purportedly based on the life of one Sono's friends, the film tells the epic story of Yu, a teenager who loses his Catholic faith when his mother dies and his bible-thumping priest father demands that the innocent boy confess to sins that he hasn't committed. As he manufactures sins to keep his father pleased, Yu trains in the 'art' of panchira (clandestine panty snapshots!), and all bets are off when he crosses paths with Yoko, the woman of his dreams (his "Virgin Mary"), at a streetfight. As he pursues his heart, Yu finds himself tripped up by apocalyptic religious cults, Catholic guilt and the call of pornography -- and must use his love to fight his way out of darkness. The Cinefamily is proud to present one of the top Japanese films of the few years -- if not the last decade!
Dir. Sion Sono, 2008, HDCAM, 237 min.
Lucia (1969)
Directed by Humberto Solas, Lucia tells three stories of three periods of Cuban history from the vantage point of three women, each Lucia.
Madrid (2002)
Directed by Patricio Guzmán
Guzmán, who studied cinema in Madrid, where he also fled in 1973 after the coup, sets aside politics (sort of) to compose this charming, playful, savory ode to his second home. Eschewing the obvious tourist attractions, Guzmán guides us through the city’s maze of streets, sharing personal anecdotes that resonate with the rich history and rhythms of the neighborhoods he visits. His affection for the city and Madrileños themselves shine through in every shot.
Screenwriter: Patricio Guzmán. Presented in Spanish dialogue with English subtitles. DigiBeta, Color, 41 min.
MASTER MYSTERY
(from IMDB)
Justice Department agent Quentin Locke must investigate a powerful cartel protected by a robot (here referred to as "The Automaton") and using a gas weapon "The Madagascar Madness". Dir. Harry Grossman, Burton L. King; 1920; 15 episodes @ ~ 4 hours. Starring: Harry Houdini, Marguerite Marsh and Ruth Stonehouse.
Max Fleischer Shorts!
Some of the wildest, funniest and most surreal WTF cartoons ever made came from the studio of one Max Fleischer. The greatest rival during the 1930s to the then-newly minuted throne of Walt Disney, Fleischer’s Betty Boop and Popeye became more popular than Mickey and Minnie, and though Uncle Walt gets the credit, Fleischer made sound cartoons, three-dimensional cartoons, and even feature-length cartoons before Disney did! This month, our resident animation historian Jerry Beck presents a spectacular collection of the funniest Fleischer flicks, presented in jaw-dropping 35mm and restored from the original negatives by the UCLA Film & Television Archive! The program includes pre-code Betty Boop classics including Boop-Oop-A-Doop (where Betty is almost raped by a lecherous circus ringmaster), Bimbo's Initiation ("Wanna be a member?") and the coked-up Cab Calloway version of “Snow White”. We’ll also screen some Koko the Clown, several follow-the-bouncing-ball sing-a-longs, and Color Classic cartoons using Fleischer's patented "Stereo-Optical” 3-D process, without needing glasses! Restored 35mm prints courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Memories of Underdevelopment (1968)
Combining drama with documentary footage, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's Memories of Underdevelopment tells the story of Sergio, a wealthy, introspective author who decides to remain in Cuba.
Mordecai Richler: The Last of the Wild Jews
Documentary/Canada/52 minutes/2010
Directed by Francine Pelletier
Mordecai Richler was one of a generation of gifted, angry Jewish writers among peers like Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Norman Mailer and others. A natural agitator, provocateur, and the author of such classic novels as The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Barney's Version, he left an indelible mark on society.
MY PERESTROIKA
My Perestroika is an intimate look at the last generation of Soviet children. Five classmates go from living sheltered childhoods to experiencing the hopes of Gorbachev’s reforms and the confusion of the USSR’s dissolution, to searching for their places in today’s Moscow. With candor and humor, the punk rocker, single mother, entrepreneur and married teachers paint a picture of the challenges, dreams and disappointments of those raised behind the Iron Curtain. Through first-person testimony, vérité footage and vintage home movies, this beautifully crafted documentary reveals a Russia rarely seen on film.
NANCY JEAN TUCKER PRESENTS NEW EXPERIMENTAL ANIMATION
Come join us for a night of dreams, adventure and mayhem by watching the newest stop-motion creations from our Adult Animation Class. Nine brave and eager students will premiere their cinematic creations with the world: Al Herrmann, Liz Hogan, Sinqua Walls, Michelle Luna, Sarah McGrail, Steve Abee, Alyssa Diaz, and Colleen McGuinness, PLUS a program of animated shorts from some amazing artists including Joel Fox, Amy Lockhart, Jed McGowan, Christine Adolph, Cosmo Segurson, and more. Curated by Nancy Jean Tucker. FREE! FILMMAKERS IN ATTENDANCE!
Never Weaken
(1921, 19 min.) Lloyd's final short film, and the third of five "thrill" pictures featuring his stunt climbing work (here he stumbles upon the girders of a high-rise building), follows a typically lovelorn Harold, who decides to commit suicide - and spends the majority of the film failing hilariously - when he hears his crush is to marry another. Scenes were filmed immediately adjacent to where the Egyptian Theatre was built in 1922, and where the Pig 'n Whistle was later built in 1927.
THE NEW WORLD
2005/color/172 min./digital/Scope | Scr/dir: Terrence Malick; w/ Colin Farrell, Christian Bale, Q'orianka Kilcher, Christopher Plummer.
Malick's most recent film, screening in an extended director's cut never before seen in theaters, envisions the immortal romance of English explorer John Smith and teenaged "wild child" Pocahontas (echoes of Badlands). Arriving on the rugged shores of 17th-century America, a vast land seemingly unchanged in the previous five millennia, a band of English settlers are confronted with unforgiving wilderness and an intricate network of tribal cultures. Mutinous explorer Smith (Farrell) is quickly sacked by a Powhatan chief who spares his life only when his young daughter, Pocahontas (Kilcher), intervenes. Contrasting the disorder and desperation of the English settlement of Jamestown with the primal harmony Smith finds among the Powhatan, Malick crafts an epic ode to a paradise lost. As Smith's bond with Pocahontas intensifies, tensions spill over between the natives and their gun-toting visitors. Masterfully orchestrating dazzling battle scenes and moments of fleeting intimacy, interweaving the tumult of human activity with the visceral splendor of nature, Malick's new American classic is worthy of Whitman. "A new watermark… an American creation myth that re-contextualizes our past, present and future as fable, as opera, as verse. It is this era's 2001: A Space Odyssey—a musical-philosophical-pictorial charting of history's slipstream and the individual's role within it. It is nothing less than a generation-defining event."—Matt Zoller Seitz.
In person: Oscar-nominated production designer and longtime Malick collaborator Jack Fisk and Oscar-nominated costume designer Jacqueline West.
We'll be screening the film's extended director's cut, never before seen in theatres!
Partch: At the Edge of the World
"Weird and wonderful sonorities, truly unlike anything else on Earth or any neighboring celestial body" —LA Weekly
An amazing array of custom-built instruments returns to REDCAT’s stage for a concert that celebrates the inimitable music of American composer Harry Partch. Under the direction of John Schneider, the ensemble Partch performs works by the legendary and definitively inventive composer, from whom it takes its name, on one-of-kind instruments such as Cloud Chamber Bowls, Kithara, Chromelodeon, HypoBass, Adapted Guitars, and more. This year the ensemble has assembled a program that features excerpts from Lyrics of Li Po, The Wayward, and Summer 1955, including Ulysses at the Edge of the World, written for jazz great Chet Baker, and a screening of a rare 1958 film that documents Harry Partch giving a tour of his Chicago music studio and conducting a recording session for Daphne of the Dunes.
The Pinochet Case (El caso Pinochet) (2001)
Directed by Patricio Guzmán
In 1998 at the request of a Spanish magistrate with the initial support of the British government, Augusto Pinochet became the first head of state to be charged with crimes against humanity under the concept of universal jurisdiction. For Guzmán these events offered not only a chance to document the unprecedented international judicial proceedings against Pinochet, but to examine the concept of justice itself. Intercutting interviews with lawyers and Pinochet’s victims, Guzmán follows the process through which painful memories are translated into dry legalese in pursuit of an ambiguous, uncertain closure.
Screenwriter: Patricio Guzmán. Adaptation: Yves Jeanneau. Cinematographer: Jacques Bouquin. Editor: Claudio Martinez. Presented in Spanish and English dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, Color, 109 min.
PRECIOUS LIFE
Mohammad Abu Mustafa, a 4-month-old Palestinian boy living in the barricaded Gaza Strip, was born without an immune system and faces certain death if he does not receive a bone marrow transplant at an Israeli hospital -- an unlikely prospect. Learning of the story, a well-known journalist tries to generate public sympathy for the boy's plight, knowing full well the grim outcome if he's unable to find the funds to make the miracle happen. Dir. Shlomi Eldar, 2010.
The Professionals (1966)
Directed by Richard Brooks
A group of mercenaries (Marvin, Ryan, Strode and Lancaster, as explosives expert Bill Dolworth) accept a lucrative assignment to recover a Texas millionaire’s wife (Cardinale) from a Mexican bandit (Palance). But the mission doesn’t go as expected, and little about the setup is at it initially seems. A superbly written story of honor and adventure, set in the furor of the Mexican Revolution, the film features some of Brooks’ best dialogue. “Go to hell,” instructs Mrs. Grant when she is “rescued.” “Yes ma’am,” replies Dolworth, “I’m on my way.”
Columbia Pictures. Producer: Richard Brooks. Screenwriter: Richard Brooks. Cinematographer: Conrad Hall. Editor: Peter Zinner. Cast: Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, Woody Strode, Claudia Cardinale. 35mm, Color, 117 min.
PXL THIS 20
PXL THIS 20, the 20th annual toy camera film festival featuring Pixelvision films made with the Fisher-Price PXL-2000 camcorder screens in our hallowed cinematic halls. PXL THIS, the second oldest film festival in LA, celebrates visionary moving image artists from 4-years-olds to professionals.
Rejoice & Shout
2010/color & b&w/115 min. | Scr/dir: Don McGlynn.
Don McGlynn's uplifting documentary on the history of Gospel is packed with evocative photos, rare audio recordings, and stirring film and TV performances. Culled from hundreds of hours of music, Rejoice and Shout traces Gospel through its many musical styles: the spirituals and early hymns; the four-part harmony-based quartets; the integration of blues and swing into Gospel; and the emergence of Soul, Rap and Hip Hop. Featuring the crème de la crème of Gospel music, including Smokey Robinson, Andrae Crouch, Mavis Staples, Ira Tucker, Marie Knight, Willa Ward and Ira Tucker Jr. A Magnolia Pictures release.
RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND
1966, 83 min, USA, Dir: Monte Hellman
In Monte Hellman’s flipside (originally released as a co-feature) to THE SHOOTING, cowhands Jack Nicholson (who also scripted) and Cameron Mitchell find themselves mistaken for bandits and hunted to extinction. Nicholson plays it totally straight here - his naturalistic dialogue was based on Old West diaries. With Rupert Crosse and Harry Dean Stanton and cinematography by Nestor Almendros. Discussion between films with director Monte Hellman.
Robinson Crusoe Island (La isla de Robinson Crusoe) (1999)
Directed by Patricio Guzmán
Guzmán was 13-years-old and living in Valparaiso, Chile when he discovered Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe. In 1999, he made Robinson Crusoe Island on the real Robinson Island off the coast of Chile, which he had long believed fictitious. A meditation on the legend and odyssey of Crusoe as contrasted with the actual island, the film is also a travelogue of Guzman's adventures there.
Screenwriter: Patricio Guzmán. Presented in Spanish and English dialogue. DigiBeta, Color, 45 min.
THE ROCK-AFIRE EXPLOSION
In the early '80s, kids all over the country dragged their parents to Showbiz Pizza (created by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell) for the rides, games, and the animatronic rock band The Rock-afire Explosion. Created by 23-year-old prodigy Aaron Fechter, The Rock-afire Explosion amazed children and adults alike before being mysteriously pulled from showrooms and replaced by the now popular Chuck-E-Cheese in the early nineties. Still profoundly affected by his experience at Showbiz Pizza, small-town disc-jockey Chris Thrash sought out Fechter nearly twenty years later and purchased a full Rock-afire band of his own. After some clever modding on Thrash's part, the band was once again performing for millions, this time on YouTube, to the likes of Lil Wayne and MGMT! The Rock-afire Explosion reveals how Thrash revived this fallen robotic gem, alongside the heart-wrenching rise and fall of Fechter's former 300-employee, $20 million-per-year venture. Dir. Brett Whitcomb, 2008, digital presentation, 70 min.
ROCK & ROLL: THREE LOS ANGELES FILMS
Directors Peter Bo Rappmund and Thom Andersen in person!
The final Melnitz Movies screening of the 2010-2011 series showcases three exceptional works by Los Angeles filmmakers.
HAND HELD DAY (1975)
Director: Gary Beydler
6 minutes, 16mm
Beydler's magical HAND HELD DAY is his most unabashedly beautiful film, but it's no less complex than his other works. The filming approach is simple, yet incredibly rich with possibilities, as Beydler collapses the time and space of a full day in the Arizona desert via time-lapse photography and a carefully hand-held mirror reflecting the view behind his camera.
Over the course of two Kodachrome camera rolls, we simultaneously witness eastward and westward views of the surrounding landscape as the skies, shadows, colors, and light change dramatically. Beydler's hand, holding the mirror carefully in front of the camera, quivers and vibrates, suggesting the relatively minuscule scale of humanity in the face of a monumental landscape and its dramatic transformations. Yet the use of the mirror also projects an idealized human desire to frame and understand what we see around us, without destroying or changing any of its inherent fascination and beauty. (Mark Toscano)
PSYCHOHYDROGRAPHY (2010) - Los Angeles premiere!
Director: Peter Bo Rappmund
63 minutes, Blu-ray
An analysis of the flow of water from mountain to aqueduct, city to sea. Shot at and around the Eastern Sierra Nevada, Owens Valley, Los Angeles Aqueduct, Los Angeles River and Pacific Ocean. HD video constructed entirely from single frame photography.
GET OUT OF THE CAR (2010)
Director: Thom Andersen
34 minutes, 16mm
GET OUT OF THE CAR is a city symphony film in 16mm composed from advertising signs, building facades, fragments of music and conversation, and unmarked sites of vanished cultural landmarks (including El Monte Legion Stadium and the Barrelhouse in Watts). The musical fragments compose an impressionistic survey of popular music made in Los Angeles (and a few other places) from 1941 to 1999, with an emphasis on rhythm’n’blues and jazz from the 1950s and corridos from the 1990s. The music of Richard Berry, Johnny Otis, Leiber and Stoller, and Los Tigres del Norte is featured prominently.
Salvador Allende (2004)
Directed by Patricio Guzmán
Guzmán himself narrates this portrait of the political leader whose life and work have had such a profound influence on his own life and career. Through rare archival footage and contemporary interviews with supporters and enemies alike, Guzmán cuts through the popular mythology surrounding Allende to craft a multi-layered biography of the doctor-turned-socialist-activist-turned-reformist-president who remains a powerful figure of hope for many around the world.
Screenwriter: Patricio Guzmán. Cinematographer: Julia Munez. Editor: Claudio Martinez. Presented in Spanish, French, and English dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, Color, 100 min.
THE SHOOTING
1966, 82 min, USA, Dir: Monte Hellman
A western like no other, Monte Hellman’s existential masterpiece follows a wary bounty hunter (Warren Oates) hired to escort a snarling little vixen (Millie Perkins) across the desert - searching for what? Along the way, they’re shadowed by demonic gunfighter Jack Nicholson (pure malevolence) as they all ride closer to some hellish reckoning. With former TV Western star Will Hutchins. "Bizarre, hallucinatory and absolutely hypnotic." - Tom Milne. Discussion between films with director Monte Hellman.
The Shout
A gonzo gothic fantasy played straight, The Shout (winner of the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival) showcases Skolimowski at his most formally audacious. Alan Bates is unspeakably chilling as Crossley, a dark stranger who emerges from the dunes of a sleepy English seaside village to wreak havoc on an avant-garde composer of musique concrète (John Hurt) and his wife (Susannah York). Insinuating himself as an unwanted resident of their house, Bates regales his hosts with tales of black magic and the “terror shout,” his ability to shriek so loud and penetrating that any creature within earshot will be struck dead. As Hurt finds it impossible to resist the promise of sonic novelty, and York as develops an irresistible desire for the lurking sorcerer, Skolimowski twists the narrative in impossible directions, while also finding time for extended synthesizer montages, left-field Francis Bacon references, inexplicable role reversals, wild symbology, frame stories within flashbacks, and at least one false ending -- in other words, it’s a total blast!
Dir. Jerzy Skolimowski, 1978, 35mm, 86 min.
A SMALL ACT
When Swedish citizen Hilde Back sponsors the education of Kenyan student Chris Mburu, she not only educates one child, but she sparks a lifelong love of learning. As an adult, Chris establishes a scholarship program in his home village. Later, when political violence threatens Kenya's educational system, Chris is determined to change it. One person's power to make an impact on the world is powerfully illustrated in this heartwarming documentary. Dir. Jennifer Arnold, 2009, 88 mins.
So's Your Old Man
“The humor is undated, the routines are inventive and the throwaway sight gags are brilliant (casually handing over an axe to aid someone disciplining a child, or extending a lighted cigar while trying to shake hands).” – Ronald J. Fields, “W.C. Fields: A Life on Film”
Woody Allen once called W.C. Fields one of only six comedic “geniuses” in the history of film -- and we’re not about to argue with his placement amongst Allen’s ranks of Keaton, Chaplin, Peter Sellers, and Marx siblings Groucho and Harpo. Sharply directed by Gregory La Cava (My Man Godfrey), So’s Your Old Man finds Fields as a glasscutter involved in a silly scheme to market his “indestructible” car windshield invention; a barmy comedy of errors ensues when his car bearing the glass in question is accidentally replaced with an average ol’ auto! Even though Fields was best known for his signature drawl, the silent W.C. (in one of his earliest feature roles) carries So’s Your Old Man with the kind of priceless mannerisms and booze-mad brazenness that established the cantakerous, yet loveable persona we continue to cherish today. Also playing before the feature is the short A Blonde’s Revenge, starring Cinefamily’s favorite cross-eyed comedy wonder Ben Turpin! Plus, W.C. Fields biographer James Curtis will be joining us to introduce the film!
So's Your Old Man Dir. Gregory La Cava, 1926, 35mm, 67 min. (Archival 35mm print courtesy of the Library of Congress)
A Blonde's Revenge Dirs. Edward F. Cline & Del Lord, 1926, 35mm. (Archival 35mm print courtesy of the Library of Congress)
Soundtrack for a Revolution
Directed by Bill Guttentag, Dan Sturman
Produced by Joslyn Barnes, Jim Czarnecki, Guttentag, Sturman, Dylan Nelson
The story of the civil rights movement is told through the music that informed and inspired its participants. As current singers perform songs from the era, interviews and archival footage evoke the movement’s passionate and dramatic history. Digital. 82 mins.
SUMMER CHILDREN
1965, 90 min, USA, Dir: James Bruner
Cassavetes meets Ozu meets BEACH BLANKET BINGO in this truly unique - and previously considered lost - film by director James Bruner and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. West (Stuart Anderson) borrows his father's yacht and takes a group of his friends to Catalina Island for a weekend of fun. Yet over the course of one night, the merriment sours as West and another young man begin to vie competitively for the feelings of Diana (Valora Noland). Shot in elegant black-and-white by cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and tonally akin to European arthouse films of the 1960s, SUMMER CHILDREN goes beyond the beach party genre of the era and explores the nuanced feelings and emotions of young people on the verge of adulthood. The film was in limbo for decades after a deceptive distributor added nude scenes and marketed it as an exploitation film, titled "A Hot Summer Game," and lost track of the original print elements. It wasn't until the early 2000s that the original negatives resurfaced in a New York vault. Don't miss this opportunity to see a long-lost-and-found gem on the big screen! Discussion following with Academy Award-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC, restoration producer and “film detective” Edie Robinette-Petrachi, and original producer and executive producer Jack Robinette. Free to current American Cinematheque members.
The Time Machine
1960/color/103 min. | Scr: David Duncan; dir: George Pal; w/ Rod Taylor, Alan Young, Yvette Mimieux.
A turn-of-the-century inventor sends himself into the future to save humanity.
THE UNHOLY THREE
1925, MGM Repertory, 86 min, USA, Dir: Tod Browning
One of director Tod Browning's earliest evocations of death, perversity and deformity, this silent masterpiece follows a crime syndicate comprised of a dwarf, a strongman and a ventriloquist (as the latter, Lon Chaney dresses up as a woman in one of the many instances of transvestism in Browning’s ouevre). Live music will accompany the silent film.
THE UNKNOWN
1927, MGM Repertory, 63 min, USA, Dir: Tod Browning
Armless circus performer Lon Chaney falls for stunning, scantily clad bareback rider Joan Crawford (who, conveniently, is pathologically terrified of men's hands) in this typically haunting Tod Browning melodrama. Burt Lancaster once praised Chaney's performance in this film as the most emotionally compelling work ever committed to celluloid. Live music will accompany the silent film.
WHO DO YOU LOVE
Alessandro Nivola stars as Leonard Chess, the visionary nightclub owner and co-founder of Chess Records who brought the blues, with all its grit and passion, to mainstream America in the 1950s and '60s. Jerry Zaks directs this biopic that follows Chess from his humble beginnings as an immigrant working in a junkyard to his discovery of some of America's best-loved blues artists. David Oyelowo co-stars as Muddy Waters.
WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
1966, Warner Bros., 131 min, USA, Dir: Mike Nichols
Winner of five Oscars, including Elizabeth Taylor for Best Actress and Sandy Dennis for Best Supporting Actress, director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Ernest Lehman adapt Edward Albee’s scorching play about a bitter, middle-aged alcoholic couple’s war of words. Taylor and real-life spouse Richard Burton play two people chained to their own mediocrity in the halls of academia. When they invite unwitting new professor George Segal and his naïve wife (Dennis) over for cocktails, the sordid game of verbal invective and elaborate emotional contortions begins, not abating until similar buried resentments are unleashed in their seemingly normal houseguests. Discussion following with actor George Segal and cinematographer Haskell Wexler.
Woman Rebel
Directed and produced by Kiran Deol
During the decade-long civil war in Nepal, many women joined the ranks of the Maoist guerrilla fighters. Digital. 36 mins.
THE WOODEN LIGHTBOX: A SECRET ART OF SEEING
Canadian Artist Alex Mackenzie is on tour to present this exploration and reconfiguration of cinematic apparatus and emulsion. Using the early development of cinema as a marker for cultural, technological and economic change, these film cycles draw from turn of the century cinematic prototypes and long forgotten ideas surrounding the moving image and its early promise. At the core of this approach is the use of a homebuilt hand-cranked projector in an expanded cinema format to present a striking array of handmade and processed emulsion. The vast potential of the film frame is drawn out through imagery both archaic and contemporary in shape and form. Hypnosis, panorama, motion studies, expectation, magic, the dreamworld and sleight of eye conspire in this intimate and immersive framework. FILMMAKER ALEX MacKENZIE IN ATTENDANCE!
YOU ARE HERE
YOU ARE HERE is a Borgesian fantasy composed of multiple worlds, circling and weaving around each other in always-unexpected ways. At the center of this narrative labyrinth is a reclusive woman (Tracy Wright) who searches for meaning in the mysterious documents that ke...ep appearing to her. Her investigation begins when she finds a tape recording of a man giving a bizarre lecture: calming and sinister at the same time, he instructs how to “get where you need to go”. Is this a random find, or a message to her? Another strange document presents itself, and another...swiftly her home becomes an archive brimming with enigmatic texts, images and sounds. She forms deep connections with the people contained in these documents - the lecturer, a prisoner, an inventor - each of them, like her, struggling with the unknowable laws of their own worlds. But the organized becomes the organizer when her meticulous system turns on her; the archive is a trickster threatening to pull her mind apart. As realities collapse and intersect around her, she must make a final choice: is she a free agent, or just a tool of the archive? Director/Screenwriter: Daniel Cockburn; Starring: Tracy Wright, R.D. Reid, Anand Rajaram; Cinematographer: Cabot McNenly; Producers: Daniel Cockburn, Daniel Bekerman; 78 minutes, HDcam