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

tue. jul. 3

beach house @ el rey


wed. jul. 4

tobacco @ airliner
americana 2 PM, willie nelson's 4th of july picnic, jabberwalk, red dawn @ mondo america bbq party @ silent movie theatre
bart davenport, kim fowley @ hm157


thu. jul. 5

the omega man, the last man on earth @ egyptian
jules and jim, vivre sa vie @ aero
god equals genocide, catholic spit @ boom tomb room
goldfinger, from russia with love @ lacma


fri. jul. 6

allah-las (NOON) FREE @ grand performances @ california plaza
stagecoach (gates at 6:30, film at sunset) @ oscars outdoors
the loons @ soda bar (SD)
pangea @ echo
the battle of algiers, pepe le moko @ new beverly
the pretty things: midnight to six 1965-1970, the small faces: all or nothing 1965-1968 @ egyptian
sherlock jr., the cameraman @ aero
the do-deca-pentathlon 7:30 9:45 PM @ silent movie theatre
never too young to die MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theatre
tras-os-montes @ ucla film archive
you me & us @ the smell
contempt, mississippi mermaid @ lacma
freak scene: the new freak champions of underground comix 7-10 PM @ sync space
bill and ted's excellent adventure MIDNIGHT @ vista theatre


sat. jul. 7

the big lebowski 9 PM @ devil's night drive-in
dazed and confused 8:30 PM @ eat see hear outdoor movie festival @ fidm / grand hope park
the battle of algiers 2:40 7:30 PM, pepe le moko 5:00 9:50 PM @ new beverly
north shore @ aero
the do-deca-pentathlon 1:30 PM @ silent movie theatre
ana @ ucla film archive
getting up: the tempt one story 5 PM @ downtown film fest los angeles @ downtown independent
we are legion 7 PM @ downtown film fest los angeles @ downtown independent
freak scene: the new freak champions of underground comix 8-10 PM @ sync space


sun. jul. 8

in the heat of the night, invasion of the body snatchers (1956) @ aero
forbidden zone 1:30 PM @ silent movie theatre
the do-deca-pentathlon 7:00 9:15 PM @ silent movie theatre
driftwood singers @ bootleg
cure FREE 7 PM @ reel grit @ afi


mon. jul. 9

how to make a piece of art that is not a piece of art FREE 6 PM @ documental @ unurban
it's a mad mad mad mad world (70mm) 7 PM @ the last 70mm film festival @ ampas samuel goldwyn
the do-deca-pentathlon 7:30 9:45 PM @ silent movie theatre
jaime, the sand rose @ ucla film archive


tue. jul. 10

tom brosseau @ largo
infinite body, dunes @ the smell
the do-deca-pentathlon @ silent movie theatre
go ask alice 9:45 @ silent movie theatre
driftwood singers FREE @ echo


wed. jul. 11

the do-deca-pentathlon 5:00 10:00 PM @ silent movie theatre
piccadilly @ silent movie theatre
damsels in distress, kicking and screaming (1995) @ new beverly
who framed roger rabbit FREE 8 PM @ silver lake picture show @ silver lake polka dot plaza


thu. jul. 12

allah-las @ hammer
a star is born (1954) @ aero
the do-deca-pentathlon 7:30 9:45 PM @ silent movie theatre
you only live twice, a view to a kill @ lacma
sunset boulevard FREE 8:30 PM @ old pasadena film festival @ one colorado courtyard
damsels in distress, kicking and screaming (1995) @ new beverly
cosmonauts FREE (RSVP) @ standard downtown
spiral jetty 7 PM, casting a glance @ moca grand ave.


fri. jul. 13

sonny & the sunsets @ echo
codeine, exploding flowers @ echoplex
venice beach biennial
711 ocean drive, hackers @ new beverly
the man who wasn't there, a simple plan @ egyptian
taxi driver, the collector @ aero
zidane: a 21st century portrait 7:45 PM @ silent movie theatre
seven men from now, decision at sundown @ ucla film archive
beauty and the beast (1946), la nuit fantastique @ lacma
battle royale MIDNIGHT @ nuart
john c. reilly & friends @ largo
lost in translation FREE 8:30 PM @ old pasadena film festival @ distant lands


sat. jul. 14

the princess bride (gates at 6:30, film at sunset) @ oscars outdoors
venice beach biennial
sonny & the sunsets, allah-las FREE @ levitt pavilion @ mcarthur park
grass widow, dirt dress, pangea @ glass house
silent serials @ spielberg @ egyptian
the moderns 8 PM @ egyptian
party girl 10 PM @ silent movie theatre
laura FREE 8:30 PM @ old pasadena film festival @ one colorado courtyard
jaws FREE 8:30 PM @ old pasadena film festival @ pasadena central park


sun. jul. 15

venice beach biennial
jason and the argonauts 4 PM @ aero
the leopard @ aero
zidane: a 21st century portrait 2 PM @ silent movie theatre
the renderers @ bootleg


mon. jul. 16

zidane: a 21st century portrait 10 PM @ silent movie theatre
the queen of versailles FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc ray stark
sleeping beauty (70mm) 7 PM @ the last 70mm film festival @ ampas samuel goldwyn


tue. jul. 17

all the king's men 1 PM @ lacma
the golem (w/ live score) @ silent movie theatre
hara-kiri: death of a samurai (3D) FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc ray stark
margaret (extended cut) FREE (RSVP) @ lacma
vampyros lesbos 10 PM @ sacrificial cinema @ 120 n. santa fe


wed. jul. 18

le folie almayer @ aero


thu. jul. 19

2001: a space odyssey @ aero
zidane: a 21st century portrait 7:30 9:45 PM @ silent movie theatre
on her majesty's secret service @ lacma
lawrence of arabia (director's cut) @ ampas samuel goldwyn
whatever happened to baby jane? FREE 8:30 PM @ old pasadena film festival @ one colorado courtyard


fri. jul. 20

the connection 7:30 10:00 PM @ new beverly
collaborator 7:00 9:00 PM @ spielberg @ egyptian
spaceballs @ egyptian
casablanca, the african queen @ aero
klovn 7:30 9:45 PM @ silent movie theatre
rolling thunder MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theatre
ai weiwei: never sorry FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc ray stark
the devil probably, the phantom of liberty @ lacma
fancy space people @ hm157
pee wee's big adventure 9:45 PM @ silent movie theatre


sat. jul. 21

the princess bride 8:30 PM @ devil's night drive-in
the karate kid (gates at 6:30, film at sunset) @ oscars outdoors
the loons FREE @ burger records
three stooges, little rascals & classic cartoons @ heritage square
invasion of the body snatchers (1978) @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
the connection 5:00 7:30 10:00 PM @ new beverly
the great outdoors MIDNIGHT @ new beverly
collaborator 7:00 9:00 PM @ spielberg @ egyptian
foxfur, spacedisco one, lost in the thinking @ egyptian
citizen kane @ aero
klovn 6:30 8:45 PM @ silent movie theatre
american commando ninja 11 PM @ silent movie theatre
ride lonesome, comanche station @ ucla film archive
the dining dead @ pehrspace
ai weiwei: never sorry FREE (RSVP) @ lacma
high noon FREE 8:30 PM @ old pasadena film festival @ one colorado courtyard
poltergeist FREE 8:30 PM @ old pasadena film festival @ pasadena central park
a divided community: 3 personal stories of resistance by momo yashima 2 PM @ japanese american national museum
saccharine trust (6:15) FREE @ al's bar reunion at bloom's stage @ bloom fest
breaking away 8:30 PM @ bike movie weekend @ silent movie theatre
blue jungle, cosmonauts @ chronos


sun. jul. 22

the connection 5:00 7:30 PM @ new beverly
collaborator 4:00 PM @ spielberg @ egyptian
captain blood 5:30 PM @ egyptian
snow white and the seven dwarfs 4 PM @ aero
laura, bonjour tristesse @ aero
klovn 7:00 9:15 PM @ silent movie theatre


mon. jul. 23

the connection 8:00 PM @ new beverly
collaborator 7:00 9:00 PM @ spielberg @ egyptian
klovn 7:30 9:45 PM @ silent movie theatre
dark horse FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc ray stark


tue. jul. 24

the connection 8:00 PM @ new beverly
collaborator 7:00 9:00 PM @ spielberg @ egyptian


wed. jul. 25

the connection 8:00 PM @ new beverly
collaborator 7:00 9:00 PM @ spielberg @ egyptian
dr. strangelove @ aero
klovn 7:30 9:45 PM @ silent movie theatre
searching for sugar man FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc ray stark
la confidential FREE 8 PM @ silver lake picture show @ silver lake polka dot plaza
paperhead @ los globos
point break 8 PM @ silent movie theatre


thu. jul. 26

the connection 8:00 PM @ new beverly
collaborator 7:00 9:00 PM @ spielberg @ egyptian
the big gundown, the hills run red @ egyptian
the deer hunter @ aero
searching for sugar man FREE (RSVP) @ silent movie theatre
klovn 10:15 PM @ silent movie theatre
paperhead @ burger records


fri. jul. 27

king tuff, jaill @ echo
the psychic paramount @ satellite
the good the bad and the ugly @ egyptian
breakfast at tiffany's, two for the road @ aero
saddle the wind, the twilight zone: mr. denton on doomsday @ ucla film archive
upsilon acrux @ the smell
remorques, the wages of fear @ lacma
jon brion @ largo
vicky cristina barcelona FREE 8:30 PM @ old pasadena film festival @ distant lands


sat. jul. 28

jaws 2:00 8:00 PM @ alex theatre
nick waterhouse (6:00) FREE @ getty center
the dark crystal (gates at 6:30, film at sunset) @ oscars outdoors
the princess bride 8:30 PM @ eat see hear outdoor movie festival @ paul revere middle school
titanic (1953) @ heritage square
the big lebowski @ cinespia @ hollywood forever
the mercenary, death rides a horse @ egyptian
insight: the hate syndrome, a carol for another christmas @ ucla film archive
brannigan's law, heller keller @ the smell
a streetcar named desire FREE 8:30 PM @ old pasadena film festival @ one colorado courtyard
psycho (1960) FREE 8:30 PM @ old pasadena film festival @ pasadena central park
cosmonauts, the meek @ think tank gallery


sun. jul. 29

sabata, if you meet sartana pray for your death @ egyptian
horizons west, the man from the alamo @ ucla film archive
the mantles, sea lions @ echo
merx FREE 6 PM @ permanent records
saccharine trust (4:00) @ beyond baroque


tue. jul. 31

bonjour tristesse 1 PM @ lacma
deep time @ satellite
psychomania, the witchmaker @ new beverly


wed. aug. 1

beggars of life @ silent movie theatre
black thorns in the black box FREE @ hammer


thu. aug. 2

sarah & geoff seelinger films FREE 7 PM @ 7 dudley cinema @ beyond baroque


fri. aug. 3

north by northwest (gates at 6:30, film at sunset) @ oscars outdoors
the shining @ aero
look here, patterns @ ucla film archive
drive MIDNIGHT @ nuart


sat. aug. 4

steamboat bill jr. (gates at 6:30, film at sunset) @ oscars outdoors
horse feathers @ heritage square
once upon a time in the west @ aero


sun. aug. 5

danger: knife in the dark 7 PM, playhouse 90: the comedian @ ucla film archive


mon. aug. 6

2001: a space odyssey (70mm) 7 PM @ the last 70mm film festival @ ampas samuel goldwyn
the killer is loose, the rise and fall of legs diamond @ ucla film archive


wed. aug. 8

woods, peaking lights @ echo


thu. aug. 9

bell gardens, cosmonauts @ alex's bar


fri. aug. 10

young frankenstein (gates at 6:30, film at sunset) @ oscars outdoors


sat. aug. 11

back to the future (gates at 6:30, film at sunset) @ oscars outdoors
friday 8:30 PM @ eat see hear outdoor movie festival @ hollywood recreation center
sunrise (w/ live score) 10 PM @ hm157


sun. aug. 12

escape in the fog, behind locked doors @ ucla film archive


mon. aug. 13

grandaddy @ fonda
hippie revolution films FREE 6 PM @ documental @ unurban
spartacus (70mm) 7 PM @ the last 70mm film festival @ ampas samuel goldwyn


tue. aug. 14

primary FREE @ hammer
antibalas @ echoplex


thu. aug. 16

bell gardens FREE 7 PM @ pershing square


fri. aug. 17

austrian experimental cinema: 1. action! @ ucla film archive
gummo MIDNIGHT @ nuart


sat. aug. 18

ghostbusters 8:30 PM @ eat see hear outdoor movie festival @ la cienega park (beverly hills)
sixteen candles, valley girl @ street food cinema @ exposition park
austrian experimental cinema: 2. daily business @ ucla film archive


sun. aug. 19

let us continue 7 PM, seven days in may @ ucla film archive
seapony @ echo


thu. aug. 23

the war room FREE @ hammer


fri. aug. 24

julia holter @ echo
the public menace, adventure in manhattan @ ucla film archive
weekend at bernie's MIDNIGHT @ nuart


sat. aug. 25

weird science @ street food cinema @ exposition park
austrian experimental cinema: 3. concrete forms @ ucla film archive


sun. aug. 26

hallmark hall of fame: a storm in summer 7 PM, we two @ ucla film archive
neil hamburger @ satellite


tue. aug. 28

spin FREE @ hammer
mike watt & the missing men @ bootleg


fri. aug. 31

jon brion @ largo


sun. sept. 2

easy rider FREE 8 PM @ biker movie night @ satellite


mon. sept. 3

pangea @ pehrspace


wed. sept. 5

the graduate FREE 8 PM @ silver lake picture show @ silver lake polka dot plaza


thu. sept. 6

negativland @ echo
portrait of the poet as experimental filmmaker FREE 7 PM @ 7 dudley cinema @ beyond baroque
austrian experimental cinema: 4. from a to z and back @ ucla film archive


fri. sept. 7

austrian experimental cinema: 5. cinema revisited @ ucla film archive


sat. sept. 8

the twilight zone: the shelter, the new people, night gallery: class of '99 @ ucla film archive
pee wee's big adventure @ devil's night drive-in


sun. sept. 9

planet of the apes (1968) 7 PM, suspense: nightmare at ground zero @ ucla film archive
thee oh sees, sic alps @ el rey


mon. sept. 10

cinema abstractions & avant garde films FREE 6 PM @ documental @ unurban


fri. sept. 14

the yellow canary, assault on a queen @ ucla film archive


sat. sept. 15

austrian experimental cinema: 6. passing time @ ucla film archive


wed. sept. 19

playhouse 90: requiem for a heavyweight, westinghouse desilu playhouse: the man in the funny suit @ ucla film archive


fri. sept. 21

austrian experimental cinema: 7. visiting our neighbors @ ucla film archive


sat. sept. 22

the clock (noon saturday through noon sunday) FREE @ lacma
austrian experimental cinema: 8. whose reality? @ ucla film archive
ken boothe @ los globos


sun. sept. 23

only angels have wings 7 PM @ ucla film archive


tue. sept. 25

beach house @ wiltern


wed. sept. 26

beach house @ wiltern


fri. sept. 28

army of darkness MIDNIGHT @ nuart
jon brion @ largo


thu. oct. 4

mark cantor's jazz films FREE 7 PM @ 7 dudley cinema @ beyond baroque


sat. oct. 6

eagle rock music festival
luckman jazz orchestra: tribute to kenny dorham @ luckman theatre


sun. oct. 7

the motorcycle diaries FREE 8 PM @ biker movie night @ satellite





WHAT IT IS:



Adventure in Manhattan (1936)
Directed by Edward Ludwig
A hotshot reporter (McRae), adept at predicting big crimes, is foiled by the schemes of a master criminal and by an unwitting actress, Claire Peyton (Arthur), whose play the evil mastermind is producing as part of an elaborate heist plot. Arthur acquits herself handsomely, deftly embodying the shifting moods of this elaborately-plotted, comedic crime drama.
Columbia Pictures Corp. Producer: Everett Riskin. Screenwriter: Sidney Buchman, Harry Sauber, Jack Kirkland. Cinematographer: Henry Freulich. Editor: Otto Meyer. Cast: Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, Reginald Owen, Thomas Mitchell, Victor Kilian. 35mm, b/w, 73 min.


AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY
Named by ArtReview as the most powerful artist in the world, Ai Weiwei is China's most celebrated contemporary artist, and its most outspoken domestic critic. In April 2011, when Ai disappeared into police custody for three months, he quickly became China’s most famous missing person, having first risen to international prominence in 2008 after helping design Beijing’s iconic Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium and then publicly denouncing the Games as party propaganda. Since then, Ai Weiwei’s critiques of China’s repressive regime have ranged from playful photographs of his raised middle finger in front of Tiananmen Square to searing memorials of the more than 5,000 school children who died in shoddy government construction in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Against a backdrop of strict censorship, Ai has become a kind of Internet champion. Through his frequent witty use of his blog and twitter, he is able to organize, inform, and inspire his followers, becoming an underground hero to millions of Chinese citizens.
First-time director Alison Klayman gained unprecedented access to the charismatic artist, as well as his family and others close to him, while working as a journalist in Beijing. In the years she filmed, government authorities shut down Ai’s blog, beat him up, bulldozed his newly built studio, and held him in secret detention; while Time magazine named him a runner-up for 2011’s Person of the Year. This compelling documentary is the inside story of a passionate dissident for the digital age who inspires global audiences and blurs the boundaries of art and politics. Running time: 91 minutes.  Directed by Alison Klayman. Produced by Alison Klayman & Adam Schlesinger. Followed by a Q&A with Alison Klayman


AMERICANA
A true labor of love for director/star David Carradine, this small-town tale of a troubled, wandering veteran attempting to restore an old merry-go-round ride is a feast of character subtleties, and is the perfect way to kick off the day’s films.
Dir. David Carradine, 1983, 35mm, 91 min.


AMERICAN COMMANDO NINJA
“Recoil in terror as you realize that the filmmakers could only afford ONE blank bullet for the entire end sequence.” — Rinkworks.com
“I don’t even know what to say about this movie.” — Letterboxd.com
The Cinefamily would like to apologize for our lack of ninja film screenings since our inception in 2007. However, we FUCKING PROMISE that American Commando Ninja makes up for the loss by a factor of about ten billion! This mid-’80s SOV (shot-on-video) masterstroke contains a plot so vague and unfocused you’ll think you’ve gone blind: a “really good” (read: non-American, non-commando, barely a ninja) guy must travel the globe to fight a gang of bad ninjas who have “germ warfare” and “hocus pocus.” That’s it. That’s the plot!!!! “Hold on,” you ask, “how do they fill the running time?” By making you laugh so hard you’ll wish you brought a suicide capsule to end the onslaught of belly aches. If this movie were a child, you’d want to shake it really hard and say “What the hell is the matter with you?!” Don’t forget to bring your favorite golden analog nuggets to play after the screening for an off-the-wall VHS party: we’re gonna rev up the VCR, grab what you guys give us, and let the good times roll. Only the Cinefamily brings your parents basement to YOU! VIVA LA VIDEO NIGHTS!!!
Dir. Lo Gio, 1988, analog presentation, 86 min.


ANA
Directed by António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro
More than a decade after their first feature, Reis and Cordeiro returned once more to the Trás-os-Montes region, using the breathtaking landscape as the evocative setting for an intergenerational portrait of family as a variation of the poetically non-linear time explored in their earlier film. Ripe with floating symbols of the ancient and modern world, Ana is a meditation on history and human civilization and the infinitesimally small but profound role of the individual within the larger movement of longue durée. The film’s minimal and Rilke-inspired dialogue reveals Reis and Cordeiro’s interest in a deeper, non-verbal mode of communication, not only between generations but also between the land and those passing through it. At the center of the sweeping cycle of life described by Ana is the haunting figure of Cordeiro’s own mother, cast as an aging matriarch whose intimacy with her children, grandchildren and with the windswept landscapes around her is tinged with the melancholy of her imminent, final departure. Cinematographer: Acácio de Almeida, Elso Roque. Cast: Ana Maria Martins Guerra, Manuel Ramalho Eanes, Octávio Lixa Filgueiras. 35mm, color, in Portuguese with English subtitles, 114 min.


Assault on a Queen (1966)
Directed by Jack Donohue
In this Ocean’s Eleven-style caper (with a Duke Ellington score), Frank Sinatra stars as a former submarine officer leading small band of misfit adventurers. When the gang’s attempt to locate lost treasure leads them to a sunken World War II German U-Boat, they recover and refurbish the vessel with an eye to high-jacking the Queen Mary on the open sea.
Paramount Pictures. Producer: William Goetz. Screenwriter: Rod Serling. Based on the novel by Jack Finney. Cinematographer: William H. Daniels. Editor: Archie Marshek. Cast: Frank Sinatra, Virna Lisi, Tony Franciosa, Richard Conte, Alf Kjellin. 35mm, color, 106 min.


AUSTRIAN EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA: 1. ACTION!
The camera's rolling and we’ve boarded a rollercoaster of visual and sound voyages. This opening program combines an excitingly eclectic range of artistic modes and represents both an introduction to what have become the hallmarks of Austrian experimental cinema and the perfect place to begin 10 adventures into cinema and its history. Whether reconstructing found footage, using sophisticated multiple points of view, restaging documentaries or undertaking structural explorations, these techniques all become rhythmic tools for our aural and visual pleasure. Total running time: 73 min.
Film ist. 1: Movement and Time (2002). Directed by Gustav Deutsch. 16mm, b/w, 15 min. 
Schönberg (1990). Directed by Gerhard Ertl. 16mm, b/w, 3 min. 
Yes? Oui? Ya? (2002). Directed by Thomas Draschan. 16mm, color, 4 min.
Mirror Mechanics (2005). Directed by Siegfried A. Fruhauf. 35mm, b/w, 7 min.
Subrosa (2004). Directed by Karoe Goldt. Digital video, color, 3 min.
Arnulf Rainer (1960). Directed by Peter Kubelka. 35mm, b/w, 6 min.
Die Geburt der Venus (Birth of Venus) (1970-1972). Directed by Moucle Blackout. 35mm, b/w, 5 min. 
Sunset Boulevard (1991). Directed by Thomas Korschil. 16mm, color, silent, 8 min. 
Wisla (1996). Directed by Josef Dabernig. 16mm, b/w, 8 min. 
Body Politics (1974). Directed by VALIE EXPORT. Digital video, b/w, silent, 3 min. 
Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (2005). Directed by Peter Tscherkassky. 35mm, b/w, 17 min.


AUSTRIAN EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA: 2. DAILY BUSINESS
Observations of everyday events and life are transposed with irony and humor through choreographic touches, performative actions or documentary real time. Static scenes become mini cinematographic voyages: a kiss enhanced through repetition and recreation, bicycles loaded into an elevator or being repaired, workers finishing their day, or bodybuilding as an artistic performance in itself. The ordinary is subtly tweaked to create wry visual motifs for our undisguised pleasure. Total running time: 68 min.
Hernals (1967). Directed by Hans Scheugl. 16mm, color, 11 min.
Byketrouble (1998). Directed by Carola Dertnig. Video, color, 5 min
Pièce Touchée (1989). Directed by Martin Arnold. 16mm, b/w, 16 min. 
Nach "Pièce Touchée" (1998). Directed by Albert Sackl. 16mm, b/w, silent, 9 min.
Hotel Roccalba (2008). Directed by Josef Dabernig. 35mm, b/w, 10 min
Bodybuilding (1965-1966). Directed by Ernst Schmidt Jr. 16mm, color, 9 min. 
Livingroom (1991). Directed by Sabine Hiebler, Gerhard Ertl. 16mm, color, 5 min.
Danke, es hat mich sehr gefreut (1987). Directed by Mara Mattuschka. 16mm, b/w, 2 min.


AUSTRIAN EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA: 3. CONCRETE FORMS
Though the title doesn’t mention architecture explicitly, this discipline is omnipresent in all its diversity in both the objectification of structures and descriptions of space. From the Adriatic coast to California, utopian concrete masses take on a form of their own, or even as humorous vehicles to sell shoes. Sound-driven works, from a younger generation of collaborative audiovisual artists in particular, accompany abstract and animated forms with vigor and intelligence. Total running time: 90 min.
Quadro (2002). Directed by Lotte Schreiber. Digital video, b/w, 10 min.
Besenbahn (2001). Directed by Dietmar Offenhuber. Digital video, color, 10 min.
Humanic Spot-Würfel 1 (Humanic Spot Cubes 1) (1971). Directed by Axel Corti. Digital video, color, 1 min.
John Lautner—The Desert Hot Springs Motel (2007). Directed by Sasha Pirker. Digital video, color, 10 min. 
Void.seqz 5 (2009). Directed by n:ja (Anna Rautgasser). Digital video, color, 5 min. 
Humanic Spot-Würfel 2 (Humanic Spot-Cubes 2) (1971). Directed by Axel Corti. Digital video, color, 1 min.  
Hyperbulie (1973). Directed by VALIE EXPORT. Video, b/w, 7 min.
Random (1963). Directed by Marc Adrian. 35mm, b/w, 5 min.
Chronomops (2004). Directed by Tina Frank. Digital video, color, 2 min.
Humanic Spot-Und immer weiderdie Würfel (Humanic Spot-Cubes Again) (1973). Directed by Axel Corti. Digital video, color, 1 min.
The_future_of_human_containment (2002). Directed by Michaela Schwenter. 35mm, b/w, 5 min.
Sea Concrete Human (Malfunctions #1) (2001). Directed by Michael Palm. 35mm, b/w and color, 29 min.
Machination 84 (2010). Directed by lia. Digital video, color, 5 min. 


AUSTRIAN EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA: 4. FROM A TO Z AND BACK
Inspired by the first film images ever shot in La Ciotat to sophisticated references to Hitchcock, this program questions media, the passage of time and different technologies used to create moving images. From the horizontal to the vertical and at differing speeds, intensities or fluctuations, various modes of cinematographic dislocation are explored. And in doing so nearly every possible manner of moving from one place to another is employed, whether traditional or virtual. Total running time: 71 min.
L'Arrivée (1997-1998). Directed by Peter Tscherkassky. 35mm, b/w, 2 min.
Luukkaankangas–Updated, Revisited (2005). Directed by Dariusz Kowalski. Digital video, color, 7 min.
Mir Mig Men (2002). Directed by Karoe Goldt. Digital video, color, 5 min.
Perfekt 2 (1982). Directed by Dietmar Brehm. 16mm, b/w, 12 min.
Film–An Exercise in illusions II (1983). Directed by Lisl Ponger. 35mm, color, silent, 4 min.
Adjungierte Dislokationen (Adjunct Dislocations) (1973). Directed by VALIE EXPORT. Digital video, b/w, 10 min.
5/67 TV (1967). Directed by Kurt Kren. 16mm, b/w, silent, 4 min.
Alpine Passage (2006). Directed by Michaela Schwentner. Digital video, color, 8 min.
Vertigo Rush (2007). Directed by Johann Lurf. 35mm, color, 19 min.


AUSTRIAN EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA: 5. CINEMA REVISITED
Revisiting classical cinema in order to reinvent and create entirely new artistic visions is an attribute of Austrian avant-garde audiovisual production over the past twenty-five years, and it also represents a source of fascination for today’s curious filmgoers. Here, images of Barbara Stanwyck are reappropriated, Anna Magnani’s voice accompanies scenes of Italian suburbia, Mickey Rooney and July Garland are vivisectioned, Barbara Hershey is attacked by the apparatus, and the poetry of early cinema is resurrected in all its beauty in Film Is. All this, in addition to material taken from hundreds of other sources, contributes to the creation of unique cinematographic languages. Total running time: 81 min.
Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy (1998). Directed by Martin Arnold. 16mm, b/w, 15 min. 
Borgate (2008). Directed by Lotte Schreiber. Digital video, color, b/w, 15 min.
Outer Space (1999). Directed by Peter Tscherkassky. 35mm, b/w,10 min.
Film Is. 7–Comic (2002). Directed by Gustav Deutsch. 35mm, color, b/w, 19 min.
Mosaik Mècanique (Notes on Film 03) (2008). Directed by Norbert Pfaffenbichler. 35mm, b/w, 9 min. 
Picture Again (2003). Directed by Linda Christanell. 16mm, color, silent, 10 min. 
Zwölf Boxkämpfer jagen Viktor quer über den großen Sylter Deich 140 9 (2009). Directed by Johann Lurf. 35mm, color, 3 min.
The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog (2009). Directed by Johann Lurf. 35mm, color, 3 min.


AUSTRIAN EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA: 6. PASSING TIME
The passage of time and a certain amount of distance were probably necessary before visual artists began questioning the reality and aftermath of Nazism. This program introduces several rarely screened works that directly confront recent Austrian history, and they had obvious and radical social, political and artistic repercussions for the Viennese Actionists and the student protests of May ’68. Time has passed over dark horizons to become permeated with transforming cities or history in neighbouring countries through the use of judiciously chosen found footage. Total running time: 79 min.
NS Trilogie Part II: Feeling Kazet (1997). Directed by Linda Christanell. 16mm on digital video, color, 14 min.
Nightstill (2007). Directed by Elke Groen. 35mm, color, 9 min.
Kunst & Revolutionary Art & Revolution (1968). Directed by Ernst Schmidt Jr. 16mm, b/w, color, silent, 2 min.
55/95 (1994). Directed by Gustav Deutsch. 16mm, b/w, 1 min.
Ein drittes Reich (A Third Reich) (1975). Directed by Alfred Kaiser. 16mm, b/w, 29 min.
Tito-Material (1998). Directed by Elke Groen. 16mm, color, 5 min.
Cityscapes (2007). Directed by Michaela Grill, Martin Stiewert. 35mm, b/w, 16 min.
20/68 Schatzi (1968). Directed by Kurt Kren. 16mm, b/w, silent, 3 min.


AUSTRIAN EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA: 7. VISITING OUR NEIGHBORS
Small or isolated countries have always had a disproportionate interest in the world surrounding them. The key issue in these works is analyzing the observation of “exotic” images, editing and re-editing material of the past and present. Fictional and documentary approaches and reconstructed found footage question social interactions within a 1950s farming community, moral and visual colonialism, the view of foreignness and a collective experience with migrants and refugees. Formally, they function by transposing sounds and images, and aesthetically through the displacement of communities and individuals. Total running time: 100 min.
An diesen Abenden (On Those Evenings) (1952). Directed by Herbert Vesely. 35mm, b/w, 23 min.
Pool (1990). Directed by Dietmar Brehm. 16mm, color, silent, 4 min.
Sonne halt! Sun Stop! (1959-1960). Directed by Ferry Radax. 35mm, b/w, 25 min.
Key West (2002). Directed by Thomas Aigelsreiter. Digital video, b/w, 5 min.
Film Ist. 9–Eroberung Film Is. 9–Conquest (2002). Directed by Gustav Deutsch. 35mm, b/w, 18 min.
Passagen (Passages) (1996). Directed by Lisl Ponger. 35mm, color, 11 min.
Unsere Afrikareise (Our Trip to Africa) (1961-1966). Directed by Peter Kubelka. 16mm, color, 13 min.


AUSTRIAN EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA: 8. WHOSE REALITY?
These four “choreographed” documentaries play out in the interstices between inside and outside, public and private, visible and invisible, being in control and out of control, and they explore different aspects of the political arena. From a performance to an essay on the status of refugees and illegal immigrants in Fortress Europe, surveillance, public spaces and hyper-real public housing are questioned and traditional family models are undermined. Total running time: 73 min.
6/64 Mama und Papa (1964). Directed by Kurt Kren. 16mm, color, silent, 4 min.
Body Trail (2008). Directed by Michael Palm, Willi Dorner. Digital video, b/w, 8 min.
Forst (2005). Directed by Ascan Breuer, Ursula Hansbauer and Wolfgang Konrad. Digital video, color, 50 min.
Somewhere, Late Afternoon (2007). Directed by Ella Raidel and Hongjohn Lin. Digital video, color, 11 min.


BEGGARS OF LIFE
The curious and melodramatic adventures of an everyday hobo. This rarely seen Wellman film stars Richard Arlen, Wallace Beery and young Louise Brooks in her finest early role outside of Hawks' A Girl in Every Port. William Wellman---USA---1928---80 mins.


Behind Locked Doors (1948)
Directed by Budd Boetticher
Returning from the navy where he produced documentaries, Boetticher signed on with Poverty Row champ Eagle-Lion Productions. His second outing for the company, this gripping little thriller presages Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor (1962) with a detective (Carlson) working undercover as a patient at an insane asylum to root out a corrupt judge in hiding. Boetticher turns its B budget to his advantage building claustrophobic tension as inmates wail in the night.
Eagle-Lion Films. Producer: Eugene Ling. Screenwriter: Malvin Wald. Cinematographer: Guy Roe. Editor: Norman Colbert. Cast: Lucille Bremer, Richard Carlson, Douglas Fowley, Ralf Harolde, Tom Brown Henry. 16mm, b/w, 62 min.


THE BIG GUNDOWN
1966, Sony Repertory, 80 min, Italy, Dir: Sergio Sollima
Ruthless Texas lawman Lee Van Cleef pursues fugitive Cuchillo (Tomas Milian), a peasant who has been framed for a child's murder. Working from a story by screenwriter Franco Solinas (THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS), director Sergio Sollima infuses the standard spaghetti Western formulas with a conscious sense of class-driven politics - and plenty of brutal action. In Italian with English subtitles.


Black Thorns in the Black Box
Organized according to the branches of Medieval concepts of music—musica mundana, musica humana, and musica instrumentalis—this film and video program explores how the mystic obscurity of Black Metal music has permeated all known spheres of creation. Curated by Amelia Ishmael and Bryan Wendorf. Films by Annie Feldmeier Adams, Gast Bouschet & Nadine Hilbert, Una Hamilton Helle, Devin Horan, Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, Ruth Jarman & Joe Gerhardt of Semiconductor, Chris Kennedy, Marianna Milhorat, Jimmy Joe Roche, Shazzula for Cultus Sabbati, and Michaël Sellam.


BONJOUR TRISTESSE
1958, Sony Repertory, 94 min, USA, Dir: Otto Preminger
In Otto Preminger’s haunting film (adapted by Arthur Laurents from Francoise Sagan’s novel), the underrated Jean Seberg plays a precociously spoiled teen whose wealthy reprobate father (David Niven) decides to settle down by marrying repressed Deborah Kerr, with catastrophic results. Exquisitely filmed (by Georges Perinal) in CinemaScope and shifting between black-and-white and deeply saturated color, Preminger’s film sensitively manifests the mysteries of growing up. When Seberg’s character finally makes the difficult transition from teenager to adult, it is with a tragic resonance that gives poignant meaning to the film’s title.


BREAKING AWAY
Inspirational, funny, filled with heartwarming touches of both Americana and ‘70s coming-of-age travails, and featuring killer moments of choreographed bike racing, Breaking Away is one of the greatest underdog tales from a decade positively overflowing with them! Boasting a very believable ensemble cast of young adults discovering themselves amongst the boredom of collegetown Indiana, the film follows Dennis Christopher as a recent high school grad who, along with his three rough-‘n-tumble friends (Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern and Jackie Earle Haley), manages to avoid a violent confrontation against a group of preppie university snobs by holding a rivalrous bike tournament. Along the way, this high-spirited, subtle study in the pains of being young pulls off a tremendous balancing act between small-town romance, generation-gap comedy (thanks to hilarious interplay between Christopher and “dad” Paul Dooley), naturalistic teen angst, flights of fancy, and suspenseful cycling sequences. Dennis Christopher and Toby Yates (son of producer/director Peter Yates) will both be here at the Cinefamily for a Q&A after the film!
Dir. Peter Yates, 1979, 35mm, 100 min.


CAPTAIN BLOOD
1935, Warner Bros., 119 min, USA, Dir: Michael Curtiz
Director Michael Curtiz directs one of the best swashbucklers ever made, and the film that made Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland stars. Dr. Peter Blood (Flynn), a man unjustly convicted of treason, is exiled to Port Royal, sold into slavery and bought by the lovely Lady Arabella (de Havilland). He and fellow convicts manage to escape and take over a Spanish galleon, and the pirate Captain Blood is born! Lionel Atwill and villainous Basil Rathbone are standouts in the exceptional supporting cast. There will be a clip show and presentation on the art direction preceding the film.


A Carol for Another Christmas (ABC, 12/23/64)
Directed by Joseph Mankiewicz
Produced as one of a series of specials supporting the United Nations, Serling’s updating of "A Christmas Carol," invoking nuclear Armageddon, presents a flint-hearted, politically isolationist tycoon (Hayden) taken on a Dickensian tour by three spirits who enlarge his worldview. A high point is Peter Sellers (Hayden’s co-star in Dr. Strangelove) as a demigod presiding over a Christmas seemingly from hell.
Producer: Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Screenwriter: Rod Serling. Cinematographer: Arthur J. Ornitz. Editor: Nathan Greene, Robert Lawrence. Cast: Sterling Hayden, Eva Marie Saint, Ben Gazzara, Britt Ekland, Pat Hingle. Beta SP, b/w, 84 min.


CASTING A GLANCE
16mm, color and sound, 80 minutes, 2007
Of this film, James Benning writes, "Between May 15, 2005, and January 14, 2007, I made sixteen trips to Spiral Jetty. Created in 1970, the Jetty is a 1,500-foot-long spiral-shaped jetty extending into the Great Salt Lake in Utah constructed of rock, mud, salt crystal, and algae. The resulting film maps the Jetty back onto its own thirty-seven-year history – looking at and listening to its recurring changes."  "Benning … [is] a giant of American experimental cinema whose conceptually minimalist works tend to open up vast spaces for reflection." Dennis Lim, New York Times


CINEMA ABSTRACTIONS & AVANT GARDE FILMS - Rare films that evoke this quote: "Early in life I experimented with peyote, LSD and so on. But in many ways my films are ahead of my own experience. The new art and other forms of expression reveal the influence of mind-expansion. And finally we reach the point where there virtually is no separation between science, observation and philosophy." - Jordan Belson.  Many of the filmmakers have been featured in the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and Bryan Konefsky's Experiments In Cinema.


THE CLOCK
LACMA presents another special twenty-four-hour screening of Christian Marclay's The Clock beginning Saturday, September 22, at noon and ending at noon on Sunday, September 23. The Clock is a twenty-four-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 twenty-four 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. By making the film available in its entirety, this free screening will allow The Clock to be viewed in the way Marclay intended.


COLLABORATOR
2011, Tribeca Film, 87 min, USA, Dir: Martin Donovan
Dramatist Robert Longfellow (Martin Donovan, here also directing) returns to his native Los Angeles to escape the scathing reviews of his latest Broadway play, spend time with his mother, consider a second career as a script doctor and re-connect with actress and former flame Emma (Olivia Williams). But when Robert’s bonkers neighbor (David Morse) holds him hostage at gunpoint and the situation becomes a media frenzy, the two childhood acquaintances spend a booze and pot-fueled night verbally sparring about the American Left, the American Right and all things in between.


THE COLLECTOR
1965, Sony Repertory, 119 min, USA, Dir: William Wyler
In one of his earliest and most chilling roles, Terrence Stamp stars as Freddie Clegg, a low-life bank clerk with a penchant for collecting butterflies. Freddie’s hobby transforms into obsession and spirals out of control when his collection expands to include females… of the human species! Featuring Samantha Eggar in an outstanding performance. Based on John Fowles’ best-selling novel.


Comanche Station (1960)
Directed by Budd Boetticher
As a trader who frees a woman from the Comanches and an outlaw scheming to collect the reward for her, dead or alive, Randolph Scott and Claude Akins circle each other like planets in a collapsing orbit. Comanche Station crystalizes the power of the Ranown films: Every move seems fixed, predetermined by fate but the forces propelling them grow ever more complex beneath the surface.
Columbia Pictures Corp. Producer: Harry Joe Brown. Screenwriter: Burt Kennedy. Cinematographer: Charles Lawton Jr. Editor: Edwin Bryant. Cast: Randolph Scott, Nancy Gates, Claude Akins, Skip Homeier, Richard Rust. 35mm, color, 74 min.


CURE
Kiyoshi Kurosawa's CURE presented by Drafthouse Film's COO - James Emanuel Shapiro.
CURE is referred to as Japan's answer to SILENCE OF THE LAMBS or SEVEN.
From Japanese Cinema academic Tom Mes: "Director Kurosawa proves to be an absolute master at creating a bleak atmosphere that chills the viewer to the very bone.... In what is without doubt one of the purest horror films made in recent times, Kiyoshi Kurosawa unleashes a shadow. It is the shadow of apocalypse, an apocalypse which is not seen or heard, but sensed. And it's creeping ever closer."


Danger: Knife in the Dark (CBS, 12/7/54)
Directed by John Frankenheimer
In this claustrophobic live television drama, Paul Newman stars as a tormented convict who must take a stand against the violent inmate who murdered his best friend.
Screenwriter: Rod Serling. Cast: Paul Newman, Walter Burke, John Connell. Beta SP, b/w, 30 min.


DARK HORSE
Writer and director Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness, Life During Wartime) examines the irretrievability of youth and the mercilessness of time passing in Dark Horse, a melancholy and idiosyncratic comedy starring Justin Bartha (The Hangover), Selma Blair (Hellboy), Mia Farrow (Rosemary’s Baby), Jordan Gelber (“Boardwalk Empire”), Donna Murphy (Spider-Man 2), Academy Award® winner Christopher Walken (The Deer Hunter), Zachary Booth (The Blue Eyes) and Aasif Mandvi (“The Daily Show”).
In his mid-30s, Abe (Jordan Gelber) clings to the trappings of his adolescence, including the extensive collection of toys and action figures adorning his boyhood bedroom. Still living with his parents  Jackie (Christopher Walken) and Phyllis (Mia Farrow), Abe works for his increasingly disappointed Dad and spends evenings ruthlessly trouncing his Mom at backgammon. His older brother Richard’s (Justin Bartha) success as a California doctor only feeds Abe’s resentment and rage at his family over his failures.
When Abe meets Miranda (Selma Blair), whose personal and professional disasters have sent her scrambling back to the safety of her parents’ suburban home, he sees what he thinks is a chance at true love. Abe throws himself into pursuing the overmedicated Miranda, convincing her to marry him after a whirlwind courtship. But, as the couple haltingly prepares to start a new life together, the film swerves into Abe’s subconscious, where his crippling self-doubt and dark fears begin to undermine his
nearly realized dream of a fuller life.
Tempering his trademark lacerating humor with unexpected tenderness, Solondz creates a poignant and provocative portrait of a besieged man-child and his fractured family—the story of a longtime dark horse struggling to come from behind.  Running time: 84 minutes.  Written and Directed by Todd Solondz. Produced by Ted Hope and Derrick Tseng. Followed by a Q&A with Todd Solondz


DEATH RIDES A HORSE
1967, MGM/Park Circus, 114 min, Italy, Dir: Giulio Petroni
Spaghetti Western stalwart Lee Van Cleef stars as an ex-convict chasing a group of thugs for money; John Philip Law is after the same gang for revenge. A one-of-a-kind blend of Western, horror and film noir with a clever flashback structure, and one of the most hallucinatory and haunting of all Italian oaters. In English.


Decision at Sundown (1957)
Directed by Budd Boetticher
The Ranown Westerns scripted by Burt Kennedy tend to center on the journey. Charles Lang’s contributions to the cycle begin at the terminus. Bent on revenge, Bart Allison (Scott) rides into Sundown on the wedding day of the man he’s been hunting. Not inclined to stand on ceremony (although he shaves first), Allison disrupts the service triggering a stand-off that draws the entire town into the conflict.
Colombia Pictures Corp. Producer: Harry Joe Brown. Screenwriter: Charles Lang. Based on the novel by Vernon L. Fluharty. Cinematographer: Burnett Guffey. Editor: Al Clark. Cast: Randolph Scott, John Carroll, Karen Steele, Valerie French, Noah Beery Jr. 35mm, color, 77 min.


THE DEVIL, PROBABLY
1977/color/95 min.
Scr:/dir; Robert Bresson; w/ Antoine Monnier, Tina Irissari, Henri de Maublanc.
The most controversial film of Robert Bresson's career, Le Diable probablement was prohibited to viewers under the age of eighteen in France, not because of sex or violence but because it was seen as encouraging suicide. At the Berlin Film Festival, where it was denied the Grand Prize, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and British critic Derek Malcolm threatened to walk off the jury if their support for it was not made public. (Fassbinder declared “the questions Bresson asks will never be unimportant.”) Played by Antoine Monnier—a non-actor in his only film role who was also the great-grandson of Henri Matisse and who inspired the title of Dennis Cooper’s debut novel—the single-minded protagonist of Bresson’s film wanders around Paris looking for a reason not to kill himself—politics, religion, environmentalism, drugs, psychoanalysis—and ultimately finds none. Made when Bresson was in his seventies, The Devil, Probably is an indelible portrait of tormented youth. “Bresson's best film since Pickpocket  . . . One comes out of the film with a sense of exultation. When a civilization can produce a work of art as perfectly achieved as this, it is hard to believe that there is no hope for it.”—Richard Roud. New 35mm print!


A Divided Community: 3 Personal Stories of Resistance by Momo Yashima
This documentary tells the story of Yosh Kuromiya, Frank Emi, and Mits Koshiyama, who challenged the United States government’s decision to draft Japanese Americans while they and their families were being held in America’s concentration camps. A panel discussion with Professor Emeritus Art Hansen, Attorney Deborah Lim (author of THE LIM REPORT), Yosh Kuromiya, and Momo Yashima will follow the screening. 


Escape in the Fog (1945)
Directed by Budd Boetticher
Boetticher was never too sentimental about the programmers he churned out at Columbia when he was starting out: “They were nothing pictures. But they gave me a chance to work with some great people: Nina Foch, Otto Krueger, people like that.” Here, Boetticher works with both Foch and Krueger in a tight war-time programmer about a San Francisco spy ring with a supernatural twist.
Columbia Pictures. Producer: Wallace MacDonald. Screenwriter: Aubrey Wisberg. Cinematographer: George Meehan. Editor: Jerome Thoms. Cast: Otto Kruger, Nina Foch, William Wright, Konstantin Shayne, Ivan Triesault. 35mm, color, 65 min.


FOXFUR
2012, 55 min, USA, Dir: Damon Packard
This long-awaited film by mad underground auteur Damon Packard (REFLECTIONS OF EVIL) features a sweet but mentally unbalanced young woman obsessed with crystals, dolphins, Pleiadians, David Icke and Richard C. Hoagland. Soon she becomes increasingly disillusioned with New Age philosophy, in particular with the Billy Meier Pleiadian contacts, and is evicted from her room, forced into the insane outside world subject to the effects of "The Dead Zone,” where everything turns in circles and the true original experience of life no longer exists. World Premiere! Discussion with director Damon Packard and cast between features.


Gasland
Directed by Josh Fox. Produced by Trish Adlesic, Fox, Molly Gandour
When Josh Fox is approached by a company wishing to drill for natural gas on his property, he begins a disturbing investigation into the environmental repercussions of the process. In region after region across the country, he documents evidence of serious pollution and contamination caused by drilling methods that have been exempted from the standards required by the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. Digital. 107 mins. Academy Award nominee: Documentary Feature.


Getting Up: The Tempt One Story
This poignant documentary, which premiered at Slamdance earlier this year, captures the real-life dramatic story of graffiti artist Tempt 1 – the celebrated West Coast tagger effectively silenced in 2003 when he was diagnosed with ALS, aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease. (The degenerative nerve disorder that left him unable to move, speak and breathe.) But with the invention of a device, and a little help from his friends, the artist makes a stirring comeback.


GO ASK ALICE
Ever felt adrift in high school without friends to relate to, role models to look up to, or scenes to belong to? Your teenage years were nuthin’ compared to the bum trip taken by the put-upon pubescent heroin(e) of Go Ask Alice, one of the most whizz-bang TV movie anti-drug screeds of all time. Based upon the notorious, widely-published 1970s “diary” of an anonymous teenage girl hooked on a variety of pills, potions and other party accessories, this perfectly rendered slice of pop propaganda zips by at a breakneck pace, with 15-year-old Alice morphing from shy wallflower to burnt-out wasteoid all before the second commercial break. Practically an R-rated film containing only the thinnest broadcast network restraint, this one’s full of highly disturbing stuff like Blue Velvet-esque hints of weird sex, drug pushers barely old enough for Little League slow pitch, screaming meth-head freakouts, and a classic Seventies fuck-you ending that’ll leave you permanently scarred. Did we forget to mention ol’ Bill Shatner guest-starring as Alice’s dad? As well, we’ve got vintage anti-drug PSAs, sublimely stoned short subjects and other surprises — plus the added bonus of Go Ask Alice presented in a beautiful, homeroom-ready 16mm print!
Dir. John Korty, 1973, 16mm, 74 min.


THE GOLEM
“Gary Lucas’s project with ‘The Golem’ is one of the best combinations of live music with a silent film I’ve ever seen. He brings this historic story to life and makes the 90 minutes a very powerful and compelling performance piece.” — Knitting Factory founder Michael Dorf
“Hauntingly brilliant and meticulously timed.” — Village Voice
Grammy-nominated Gary Lucas, whom Rolling Stone calls “one of the best and most original guitarists in America”, comes to the Cinefamily to perform his time-honored solo live score to The Golem, the brilliant 1920 silent horror exemplar of German expressionism! A baroque nightmare of fantastic imagery, The Golem is the only surviving film from actor/filmmaker Paul Wegener’s series based on the 16th Century Bohemian folk legend of Prague. Played by Wegener himself, the astounding titular monster is molded from clay and brought to life by the Hebrew incantations of a rabbi wishing to defend a Jewish ghetto facing exile. Steeped in 1920s controversy stemming from false accusations of occult endorsement and Weimar anti-Semitism, this dark, moody fable of a lumbering, lovelorn automaton became the inspiration for Boris Karloff’s portrayal of Frankenstein’s monster over a decade later. Since debuting his live score in 1989, Gary has accompanied the film all across the globe in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Amsterdam, Berlin, Florence, Budapest, Toronto, St. Louis, Miami, Tel Aviv, Vienna, Krakow—and, of course, in Prague, home of The Golem. Dirs. Carl Boese & Paul Wegener, 1920, 86 min.


Hallmark Hall of Fame: A Storm in Summer (NBC, 2/6/70)
Directed by Buzz Kulik
Serling’s teleplay for "Hallmark Hall of Fame" poignantly examines prejudice through the eyes of an elderly Jewish delicatessen owner who reluctantly becomes summer host to an underprivileged African American youth from Harlem, leading to a deep and lasting bond following a tragic turn in the boy’s life. Garnering numerous awards, the teleplay marked Serling’s successful return to the incisive character dramas that distinguished his early work in television.
Producer: Alan Landsburg, Maurice Rifkin. Screenwriter: Rod Serling. Cast: Peter Ustinov, N’gai Dixon, Peter Bonerz, Anne Collings, John Evans. Beta SP, color, 90 min.


HARA-KIRI: DEATH OF A SAMURAI
From visionary auteur Takashi Miike (13 Assassins) comes the story of a mysterious samurai who arrives at the doorstep of his feudal lord, requesting an honorable death by ritual suicide in his courtyard. The lord threatens him with the brutal tale of Motome, a desperate young ronin who made a similar request with ulterior motives, only to meet a grisly end. Undaunted, the samurai begins to tell a story of his own, with an ending no one could see coming. With stunning cinematography and gripping performances, Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai is a thrilling exploration of revenge, honor, and individuality in the face of oppressive power. Running time: 128 minutes. In Japanese, with English subtitles.  Directed by Takashi Miike. Screenplay by Kikumi Yamagishi. Produced by Toshiaki Nakazawa and Jeremy Thomas


THE HILLS RUN RED
1966, MGM/Park Circus, 89 min, Italy, Dir: Carlo Lizzani
Ex-Confederate soldiers Thomas Hunter and Nando Gazollo turn to crime, but when a heist sends Hunter to jail and Gazollo ends up with the loot, the newly incarcerated Hunter vows revenge. When he gets out of jail, he discovers that his old partner has killed his family and teamed up with psycho Henry Silva - luckily, mysterious gunman Dan Duryea proves to be a useful ally in Hunter's quest for revenge. In English.


HIPPIE REVOLUTION FILMS – Rare films on music, politics and communes. The hippies were heirs to a long line of bohemians that includes William Blake, Walt Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Hesse, Rimbaud, Oscar Wilde, Huxley and utopian movements like the Rosicrucians and the Theosophists, and most direcly the Beats.


Horizons West (1952)
Directed by Budd Boetticher
Of all the ruthless individualists that populate Boetticher’s films, few are as ambitious as Robert Ryan’s bitter Civil War vet. Driven by contempt and shame—”I’m one of the vanquished”—Dan Hammon (Ryan) betrays the simple ranching life he left behind to build a criminal empire on the range. Boetticher brings a powerful spatiality to Hammon’s rise, up from the literal depths of a smuggler’s valley, in revolt against the world.
Universal Pictures. Producer: Albert J. Cohen. Screenwriter: Louis Stevens. Cinematographer: Charles P. Boyle. Editor: Ted J. Kent. Cast: Robert Ryan, Julia Adams, Rock Hudson, Judith Braun, John McIntire. 35mm, color, 81 min.


HOW TO MAKE A PIECE OF ART THAT IS NOT A PIECE OF ART - Gerry Fialka screens rare film clips and leads discussion that will delve deep into flipping that line into HOW TO MAKE A PIECE OF NON-DUCHAMP-CLONED ART THAT IS NOT NON-DUCHAMP-CLONED ART ala culture jammers and renegade artists. "The English language is the only language where a double negative is a no-no." - Alfred E. Newman.


IF YOU MEET SARTANA PRAY FOR YOUR DEATH
1968, Harry Guerro, 95 min, Italy, Dir: Gianfranco Parolini
A stagecoach robbery leads to a complicated series of double crosses and gunfights, all revolving around the brutally efficient title character (Gianni Garko). This was the first in a series of films (some sanctioned by the original producers, some not) that popularized the irresistible Sartana. Klaus Kinski costars.


Insight: The Hate Syndrome (Syndicated, 5/14/66)
Directed by March Daniels
In this rare episode of the long-running religious anthology series, Serling explores anti-Semitism via a dark morality tale about a violent confrontation between an elderly Hebrew teacher and an unstable former pupil who has become a neo-Nazi.
Screenwriter: Rod Serling. Cast: Eduard Franz, James Beggs, Harold Stone, Ellwood Kieser. Digital video, color, 30 min.


JAIME
Directed by António Reis
While working at Lisbon’s famed Miguel Bombarda sanatorium, psychologist Margarida Cordeiro discovered a series of arresting drawings by a recently deceased former patient and paranoid schizophrenic named Jaime Fernandes. Keeping a respectful yet never tentative distance from the asylum world as a realm of unfathomable mystery, Reis and Cordeiro linger over Fernandes’ drawings, assembling a profoundly moving portrait of a gifted artist and powerful emblem of Portugal’s virtual imprisonment during the repressive Salazar regime. Cinematographer: Acácio de Almeida. Editor: António Reis, Margarida Cordeiro. 35mm, color, in Portuguese with English subtitles, 35 min.


The Killer is Loose (1956)
Directed by Budd Boetticher
This gritty noir inverts and interrogates the essential set up of Boetticher’s Ranown Westerns. Here, the solitary figure seeking vengeance is a straight psychopath, a veteran-turned-bank-thief whose wife was killed in a raid lead by Joseph Cotten’s detective. Cotten’s hand-wringing persona underscores the film’s post-war gender anxieties while Boetticher’s camera punches through the facade of suburban California to expose the simmering resentment and violence underneath.
United Artists. Producer: Robert L. Jacks. Screenwriter: Harold Medford. Based on the novelette by John and Ward Hawkins. Cinematographer: Lucien Ballard. Editor: George Gittens. Cast: Joseph Cotten, Rhonda Fleming, Wendell Corey, Alan Hale, Michael Pate. 35mm, b/w, 73 min.


KLOVN
In a giddy Scandinavian NC-17-flavored take on “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, Klown (based upon the popular long-running TV show of the same name) follows two wildly inappropriate friends (internationaly celebrated comedians Frank Hvam and Casper Christensen) as they run amok through the Danish countryside, plowing through social taboos and unspeakable debaucheries. Our odd-couple pals have opposing agendas for their upcoming camping trip: Frank kidnaps his nephew in a thick-headed attempt to prove his fatherhood potential, while Casper is determined to visit a mysterious world-renowned brothel as the final stop on his “Tour de Pussy.” As these confrontational, consistently unpredictable Dogme-95-meets-the-Farrelly-Brothers plotlines collide, Klown will leave you hurting from nonstop laugh fits, and genuinely shocked by several denouements you’ll never have seen coming. When we had a special one-off screening of Klown a few months ago, it received some of the most prolonged, intense outbursts of audience laughter we’ve EVER clocked; come be a historic part of this genially depraved comedy phenomenon!
Dir. Mikkel Norgaard, 2010, 35mm, 89 mins.

	
LA FOLIE ALMAYER
ALMAYER'S FOLLY
2011, Shellac Distribution, 127 min, Belgium, France, Dir: Chantal Akerman
Freely adapted from Joseph Conrad's first novel, Chantal Akerman's hypnotic drama follows a European trader's faded dreams of finding fortune in Malaysia, and his broken relationship with his half-Malay daughter. Gorgeously shot in the dense, overlush jungle, the film showcases Akerman's aesthetic tendancies for long takes and docudrama-style spontaneity. Official selection of the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival.


LA NUIT FANTASTIQUE
1942/b&w/91 min.
Scr: Louis Chavance, Maurice Henry, Henri Jeanson, Marcel L'Herbier; dir; Marcel L’Herbier; w/ Fernand Gravey, MIcheline Presle, Saturnin Fabre, Charles Granval, Bernard Blier.
Denis is a student working nights in the teeming and cavernous Les Halles marketplace. One evening when he falls asleep, a vision of a young woman in a gauzy white dress enters his mind. As he tries to pursue her through the mists and mirages of Paris after hours, he begins to lose sight of what is dream and what is reality. Featuring the first-ever screenplay by Louis Chavance (Le Corbeau), Marcel L’Herbier’s expressionistic nocturne was pure escapism for French audiences living under the Occupation while also paying tribute to the country’s legacy of cinematic magic from Méliès to Epstein to L’Herbier contemporary, Jean Cocteau. One of the most adventurous and avant-garde commercial filmmakers of the French silent era, L’Herbier is less known for his sound films though La Nuit Fantastique was a favorite of André Bazin.


LAURA
1944, 20th Century Fox, 88 min, Dir: Otto Preminger
Investigating a murder, chain-smoking Detective McPherson (Dana Andrews) falls in love with the dead woman - only to find out that it wasn't she who was murdered. Even in a genre known for its convoluted twists, LAURA is a one-of-a-kind film noir. The brilliant cast includes Gene Tierney as the gorgeous Laura, Clifton Webb as Waldo Lydecker and Vincent Price as Laura's fiancé, Shelby Carpenter. The famous haunting and nostalgic musical theme by David Raskin is unforgettable. The film is said to have been an inspiration for David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks.”


THE LEOPARD
IL GATTOPARDO
1963, 20th Century Fox, 185 min, Dir: Luchino Visconti
Adapting Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s literary masterwork, director Luchino Visconti focuses on philosophical, melancholic Prince Salina (Burt Lancaster), a Sicilian nobleman well aware of the inevitability of the violent Garibaldi-led upheavals then occurring in his country. He is determined to see his family survive, in whatever form, and he watches approvingly as his nephew Tancredi (Alain Delon) becomes engaged to the smolderingly beautiful and sweet-natured Angelica (Claudia Cardinale), the daughter of a wealthy, wily merchant. With a sublime score by the incomparable Nino Rota. If you have never seen it on the big screen, now is your chance! "…One of Visconti's achievements is to make that rare thing, a great film of a great book…The cinema at its best can give us the illusion of living another life, and that's what happens here…miraculous and emotionally devastating…" - Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times. In Italian with English subtitles.


Let Us Continue (1964)
The United States Information Agency commissioned this short, produced by Hearst Metrotone, in the wake of the Kennedy assassination in order to introduce allies to Lyndon B. Johnson’s positions on major issues. Controversy surrounded the production when it was leaked that the agency requested the deletion of the image of a rabbi in the film in order to avoid possible objections from Arab countries.
Screenplay: Rod Serling. Cast: E.G. Marshall. Beta SP , b/w, 26 min.


Look Here (NBC, 3/16/58)
In this special television interview, journalist Martin Agronsky captures Serling in the back yard of his luxurious Pacific Palisades home where he candidly reflects on the limitations faced by a television writer and the compromises of working in the Hollywood system. Beta SP, b/w, 30 min.


Lost in the Thinking
(2005, 38 min). In this HEARTS OF DARKNESS-style documentary, director Damon Packard, along with an art professor, an art therapist and a performance artist, brainstorm what their next project should be. Packard’s suggestion: HALLOWEEN 3 1/2.


THE MAKIOKA SISTERS
The Makioka Sisters chronicles the life and affairs of four sisters in late '30s Japan. An older, conservative sister tries to continue family traditions and pretensions to status, while the younger sisters discover the new freedoms becoming available to them. "This Kon Ichikawa film has a triumphant simplicity about it. You don't just watch the film--you coast on its rhythms and glide past the precipitous spots" (Pauline Kael, The New Yorker). The cast includes Juzo Itami, who would later emerge as a prominent director with The Funeral, Tampopo and A Taxing Woman. In Japanese with English subtitles.  1983, Japan, 35mm, 140 minutes. 35mm print made in 2011! directed by Kon Ichikawa; starring Keiko Kishi, Yoshiko Sakuma, Sayuri Yoshinaga, Yûko Kotegawa; in Japanese with English subtitles.


The Man from the Alamo (1953)
Directed by Budd Boetticher
When a group of farmers at the besieged Alamo learn their families back home are threatened by raiders, they draw lots to see who will leave their post to protect their loved ones knowing that whoever goes will be branded a coward forever. Like the stoic figures of Boetticher’s later Ranown Westerns, Glenn Ford’s unlucky winner bears the burden of a painful past with grim resolve on the path to redemption.
Universal Pictures. Producer: Aaron Rosenberg. Screenwriter: Steve Fisher, D. D. Beauchamp. Based on a story by Niven Busch. Cinematographer: Russell Metty. Editor: Virgil Vogel. Cast: Glenn Ford, Julia Adams, Chill Wills, Hugh O’Brian, Victor Jory. 16mm, color, 79 min.


MARGARET
(EXTENDED CUT)
2011/color/186 min./digital
Scr/dir: Kenneth Lonergan; w/ Anna Paquin, Mark Ruffalo, Matt Damon, Matthew Broderick, Jeanie Berlin.
Anna Paquin stars as a teenager who witnesses—and maybe causes—the death of a pedestrian hit by a bus on a busy Manhattan intersection in Kenneth Lonergan’s long-awaited follow up to his Academy Award–nominated debut, You Can Count on Me. An indelible coming-of-age story that became a cause célèbre with critics and audiences when it was released in late 2011, Margaret features rich, complex performances from a powerhouse cast that includes Mark Ruffalo, Matt Damon, and Matthew Broderick. "Ambitious, affecting, unwieldy and haunting, it’s an eccentric, densely atmospheric, morally hyper-aware masterpiece."— Ann Hornaday, Washington Post.
In person: Kenneth Lonergan and Anna Paquin


MARK CANTOR's JAZZ FILMS
Screening and discussing sonic cinema, seminal historian CANTOR pulls from his stellar collection of over 4,000 separate titles to feature rarities in jazz, blues, Swing, Western Swing, pop, rhythm and blues, country-western, vernacular dance & vaudeville with Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Stan Getz, Sarah Vaughan, Benny Goodman, Ernie Andrews, Art Blakey, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Buddy Collette, Erroll Garner, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Louis Armstrong, Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, Dinah Washington and many more. "Mark Cantor has one of the very best collections of jazz films in the world. He was an invaluable asset to our Jazz series whose generous advice helped us unearth some extraordinary footage. Mark is an essential resource to anyone making a film about jazz." - Ken Burns. Film archivist and historian Mark Cantor has been active as a researcher and preservationist in the area of music on film for the past thirty years. During that time he has assembled one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of popular music on film existing in the United States.....more than four thousand titles in total. Along with the public exhibitions of jazz and blues films, Mr. Cantor has served as a consultant in the production of a large number of documentaries and feature film presentations. As a well-known authority on the subject of music on film, Mr. Cantor is contacted on a regular basis by filmmakers, television producers, newspersons and writers for information relating to jazz music and its documentation on film. He regularly publishes articles on jazz film in the Journal of the International Association of Jazz Record Collectors.


THE MERCENARY
1968, MGM/Park Circus, 110 min, Italy, Dir: Sergio Corbucci
Mercenary Franco Nero takes a job transporting silver across the Mexican border into the United States, but his thirst for money turns political when a local revolutionary (Tony Musante) enlists his aid overthrowing the Mexican government. In Italian with English subtitles.


MISSISSIPPI MERMAID
1969/color/123 min./Scope
Scr/dir: Francois Truffaut; w/ Jean-Paul Belmondo, Catherine Deneuve, Michel Bouquet, Marcel Berbert.
Jean-Paul Belmondo plays a wealthy plantation owner on the tropical island of Réunion and Catherine Deneuve is the mail-order bride who arrives by ocean liner one day . . . or is she? In this Hitchcockian thriller, Truffaut applies the dreamlike style of Vertigo to the tale of a man so obsessed with a woman that he accepts her duplicity at any cost. Though it pays homage to the Master of Suspense, Truffaut’s film also effuses the earthy warmth and exuberance of Jean Renoir, to whom it is dedicated. Based on a novel by Cornel Woolrich (using his William Irish pseudonym), Mississippi Mermaid dazzles with star turns by Belmondo—who scales the façade of a three-story building in a single, jaw-dropping take—and Deneuve, an icy, enigmatic vision in Yves St. Laurent. 


NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE
Pack your bags and prepare for the RIDE OF YOUR LIFE, as gymnast heartthrob Lance Stargrove (a pre-”Full House” John Stamos!) avenges the death of his superspy father (former James Bond-er George Lazenby), meets-cute with the sexy Danja Deering (Prince protégé Vanity), and fights to save the world from hermaphrodite megavillain/sultry chanteuse Velvet Von Ragner (Gene Simmons of Kiss, in the role he was born to play.) The ‘80s pizza party masterpiece that you’ve waited a lifetime to discover, Never Too Young To Die delivers on its promise of outrageous action, radical style, loud tunes and big hair, while simultaneously re-examining gender roles in modern cinema. Not to be missed and not on DVD, this Reagan-era time-bomb is screening from what may be the only remaining 35mm print in the known universe!  Dir. Gil Bettman, 1986, 35mm, 97 min.


The New People (pilot) (ABC, 9/22/69)
Directed by George McCowan
In this precursor to "Lost," a group of American exchange students is marooned on a Pacific island. Pocked with abandoned buildings for a canceled atomic test, the unsettling locale becomes home for the young survivors, who are forced to confront their prejudices as they form a new society.
Screenwriter: Rod Serling. Cast: Tiffany Bolling, Nancy DeCarl, Richard Kiley. 16mm, color, 51 min.


Night Gallery: Class of '99 (NBC, 9/22/71)
Directed by Jeannot Szwarc
In a future society, a domineering professor (Price) serves as proctor over a diverse group of college students for a final exam where bigotry is encouraged and evaluated—with an unexpected twist.
Screenwriter: Rod Serling. Cast: Vincent Price, Brandon de Wilde, Randolph Mantooth. Beta SP, color, 25 min.


ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS
Directed by Howard Hawks
Jean Arthur and her character, Bonnie Lee, hold their own superbly in this thrilling story of masculine honor. As recently-arrived showgirl, Annie falls for Geoff Carter (Grant), the cynical director of an air courier operation in the Andes. Arthur’s Bonnie reveals an emotional maturation that rivals the film’s aeronautic exploits and its face-offs between the men whose emotional baggage leads to danger and even tragedy.
Columbia Pictures Corp. Producer: Howard Hawks. Screenwriter: James Furthman. Based on a story by Howard Hawks. Cinematographer: Joseph Walker, Elmer Dyer. Editor: Viola Lawrence. Cast: Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Richard Barthelmess, Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell. 35mm, b/w, 121 min.


PARTY GIRL
He-He-Hello!? Outrageous outfits, glam glitter, devious dancing, lush love affairs, the Dewey Decimal System, and freaky falafel?! OH, YES, HONEY — YES! CinemaDiscotheque gives you heavy party inspiration for July with Party Girl, the definitive ‘90s club anthem of debauchery, delight and d-d-d-dancing. Watch as Parker Posey RULES the New York party scene in platform heels and faux cheetah fur coats. It’s a feast for not only those craving a little Big Apple-style excitement, but also die-hard fans of library politics, as Party Girl takes a kaleidoscopic journey into the twisted mind of Posey’s persona-defining role: a 24-year-old young lady slacker livin’ a dream life of sequins, music, costumes, card catalogues, microfiche and sexy, sexy falafel vendors. At heart, Party Girl is a cathartic cinematic experience, after which you you won’t be able to stop yourself from throwing off your too-cool-for-school attitude and joining in on the dance afterparty, featuring a live set from DJ Short Shorts, drinks on the back patio, and Party Girl director Daisy von Scherler Mayer in person!
Dir. Daisy von Scherler Mayer, 1995, 35mm, 94 min.


PATTERNS
Directed by Fielder Cook
Newly hired to a corporate position, Fred Staples (Heflin) is horrified to find he’s part of his boss’s plot to sideline and destroy an honorable but ineffectual co-worker. Weighing decency and ambition, Fred tries to walk a humane line, but learns some surprising lessons about being part of a machine. Among the most gripping and incisive workplace dramas, the film puts Serling’s characteristically verbal dramaturgy on brilliant display.
United Artists Corp. Producer: Michael Myerberg, Jed Harris. Screenwriter: Rod Serling. Cinematographer: Boris Kaufman. Editor: David Kummins, Carl Lerner. Cast: Van Heflin, Everett Sloane, Ed Begley, Beatrice Straight, Elizabeth Wilson. 16mm, b/w, 83 min.


THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY
1974/b&w/104 min.
Scr: Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carrière; dir: Luis Buñuel; w/ Michel Piccoli, Monica Vitti, Michael Lonsdale, Jean-Claude Brialy, Adriana Asti, Julien Bertheau, Adolfo Celi
In Luis Buñuel’s penultimate and favorite of his films, characters wander from one exquisitely surreal and provocative vignette to another—the most famous among them being a dinner party scene where guests sit on toilets instead of chairs and excuse themselves to secluded quarters where they can eat in private. Along the way, Buñuel’s mordant late masterpiece skewers bourgeois mores and social conventions with caustic elegance. According to Buñuel, the phrase “phantom of liberty” came to him initially to describe the predicament of the Spaniards facing Napoleonic “liberation” in the opening scene of the film and also as a play on Marx’s phrase “the specter of Communism,” but gradually he felt the idea referred equally to the illusory freedom of the artists.


PICCADILLY
“A ‘film noir’ before the term was in use, ‘Piccadilly’ is one of the true greats of British silent films, on a par with the best work of Anthony Asquith or Alfred Hitchcock in the period.”  - BFI
International superstar and fashion icon Anna May Wong lights up the Cinefamily screen in Piccadilly, her final silent role before the advent of the talkie.  This extravagant show biz spectacle — an opulent affair which quickly set itself apart from more staid British films of the era — features Wong as an alluring dance star, whose glamorous on-stage numbers captivate a suave club owner to the point of bodily distraction!  Frequently turned down for juicy starring roles in Hollywood’s silent era due to inherent attitudes against non-Caucasian actors, Wong traveled to Europe for starring turns in prestige pictures, of which Piccadilly ranks amongst the classiest.  Boasting awe-inspiring cinematography and atmospheric setpieces depicting a wide rainbow of both swanky and squalid London locales, this uptown Jazz Age mini-masterpiece is presented in a beautifully tinted blue-and-amber 35mm print!
Dir. E.A. Dupont, 1929, 35mm, 109 min.


Playhouse 90: Requiem for a Heavyweight (CBS, 10/11/56)
Directed by Ralph Nelson
Serling’s virtuosity depicting men under pressure reached its zenith with this live teleplay, later adapted as a feature film. The drama seethes with pathos in its portrait of the indignity that befalls a small-time boxer, used up and discarded by his exploitative handlers. The intense scenario offeredwrenching parts to its leading cast, and coaxed a heartbreaking turn from Jack Palance as a man cruelly left with seemingly no future.
Producer: David J. Eagle, Martin Manulis, Alvin Rakoff. Screenwriter: Rod Serling. Cinematographer: Albert Kurland. Cast: Jack Palance, Keenan Wynn, Kim Hunter, Ed Wynn, Max Baer. 35mm, b/w, 85 min.


Playhouse 90: The Comedian (CBS, 2/14/57)
Directed by John Frankenheimer
In this high-intensity live television drama, Mickey Rooney stars as comic Sammy Hogarth—beloved by audiences; a terror to his handlers and intimates. Stopping at nothing to bolster his popularity, Sammy regularly savages his brother and whipping-boy, Lester (Tormé), in scathing onstage monologues—until an emotional dam breaks. Serling crafts a gripping portrait of the raw egoism so readily applauded in modern life.
Screenwriter: Rod Serling. Cast: Mickey Rooney, Edmond O'Brien, Mel Tormé. Beta SP, b/w, 72 min.


PORTRAIT OF THE POET AS EXPERIMENTAL FILMMAKER - Historian/Lit Critter Gerry Fialka screens films and discusses the interconnections between film and poetry. These artforms expand our notions of reality both inner and outer. How is the interior dialogue (consciousness) the essence of the human condition? How does it inform content vs. form issues? Explore Poe, the Symbolists, Hollis Frampton, Walt Whitman, William Farley, Jack Kerouac, Charles Olson, Henry Ferrini, Robert Creeley, and Beat films up to contemporary New Media makers. Drawing on witty and insightful analysis of poet/experimental filmmakers Jean Cocteau, James Broughton, Maya Deren, Marie Menken, Abigail Child, Bob Branaman, Jack Smith, Yoko Ono and Stan Brakhage, Fialka reviews first-person lyrical visions. This multi-media event includes rare film clips of Diane DiPrima, Amiri Baraka, Bukowski, Beckett, Burroughs and Gary Snyder, as well as live readings accompanied by film projections that stir up new metaphors via self-reflexive synthesis. Come into deeper awareness of synesthesia and the non-physical via spoken word and moving image art. "All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling." - Oscar Wilde. Radically change the paradigms of sense ratio shifting. Turn the eye into an ear ala McLuhan's percepts. Fialka's observations provoke the rascality retrieval of Man (Cine-poem) Ray and Curtis Harrington, who transformed Poe into cinema. "Poets understand texts better than most information technologists." - Jerome McGann. "You don't have to be a communist to be anti-capitalist. It is enough to be a poet." - Jonas Mekas, seminal experimental filmmaker.


THE PRETTY THINGS: MIDNIGHT TO SIX 1965-1970
2010, Reelin' in the Years Productions, 120 min, USA, Dir: David Peck
Don't miss the rare opportunity to see this unreleased documentary! Featuring 20 full-length performances, including the Pretty Things’ historic, riot-inducing R&B period; their highly influential, rock-opera/psychedelic “SF Sorrow” period; and their proto-heavy metal “Parachute” period. Between songs are new interviews with the original band members (Phil May, Dick Taylor, John Stax, Skip Alan, Wally Waller and Jon Povey) who tell stories and recount the fascinating, tumultuous and controversial history of the band. The only documentary ever to focus on the Pretty Things, one of the most significant yet unsung rock groups in history.


PRIMARY
Focusing on the 1960 Democratic Party presidential primary, Primary is a groundbreaking documentary that follows John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey as they crisscross Wisconsin, each trying to convince voters that he is the one who can beat Richard Nixon. (1960, Dir. R. Drew, 60 min.)


The Public Menace (1935)
Directed by Erie C. Kenton
The title of this film ostensibly refers to a gangster who escapes police custody and causes mayhem, but it applies just as well to Jean Arthur’s “Cassie,” a cruise-ship manicurist who lost her US Citizenship on a fluke and regains it by marrying ace reporter George Murphy. Handing the reporter hot tips about the criminal (who escapes custody while on shipboard), Cassie charmingly creates chaos, inevitably leading to romance.
Columbia Pictures Corp. Screenwriter: Ethel Hill, Lionel Houser. Cinematographer: Henry Freulich. Editor: Gene Milford. Cast: Jean Arthur, George Murphy, Douglass Dumbrille, George McKay, Robert Middlemass. 35mm, b/w, 73 min.


THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES
The Queen of Versailles is a character-driven documentary about a billionaire family and their financial challenges in the wake of the economic crisis. With epic proportions of Shakespearean tragedy, the film follows two unique characters, whose rags-to-riches success stories reveal the innate virtues and flaws of the American Dream. The film begins with the family triumphantly constructing the biggest house in America, a 90,000 sq. ft. palace. Over the next two years, their sprawling empire, fueled by the real estate bubble and cheap money, falters due to the economic crisis. Major changes in lifestyle and character ensue within the cross-cultural household of family members and domestic staff. Running time: 100 minutes.  Directed by Lauren Greenfield. Produced by Danielle Renfrew Behrens


REMORQUES
1941/b&w/84 min.
Scr: Jacques Prévert, André Cayatte; dir: Jean Grémillon; w/ Jean Gabin, Madeleine Renaud, Michèle Morgan, Charles Blavette.
In his final French role before the Liberation, Jean Gabin stars as a dutiful tugboat captain on the wind-lashed Brittany coast. Barely eking out a living commanding the Cyclone and its crew, Gabin divides his time between his perilous work and an invalid wife. But when he rescues a beautiful and mysterious woman during a violent storm, he begins to question his fidelity. Jean Grémillon’s ethereal, poetic realist romance suffered numerous production setbacks, including the outbreak of war and the loss of its producer who fled the Nazis. When it was finally completed two years after filming first began, the film became a huge hit in occupied France. Co-written by Jacques Prévert and boasting sumptuous production design by Alexandre Trauner, a Carné regular like the screenwriter and a fixture in the later films of Billy Wilder, Remorques projects a striking vision of a world where nature suffuses human activity and lends a lingering lyricism to such ordinary events as a walk along the beach or in the country.  “It remains an outstanding film and one of Grémillon’s best.”—Bertrand Tavernier


Ride Lonesome (1959)
Directed by Budd Boetticher
Boetticher, Kennedy and Scott fire on all pistons in their third outing together in as many years. As Jim Kitses put it, with Ride Lonesome and Comanche Station Boetticher’s narrative and visual form “approach perfection.” Scott plays a bounty hunter using his prisoner to lure in the man’s brother (van Cleef), a killer he’s been after for years. Boetticher ratchets up the tension until the film’s iconic, stunning conclusion.
Colombia Pictures Corp. Producer: Harry Joe Brown. Screenwriter: Burt Kennedy. Cinematographer: Charles Lawton Jr. Editor: Jerome Thoms. Cast: Randolph Scott, Karen Steele, Pernell Roberts, James best, Lee Van Cleef. 35mm, color, 74 min.


The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960)
Directed by Budd Boetticher
Boetticher’s last film before beginning production on the fateful Arruza finds him working in broader registers than his previous films. The rise of Prohibition-era mobster Legs Diamond plays like a spoof of gangster cool: Diamond woos a woman, wins a dance contest and pulls a jewel heist all on a single day. It’s a narcissistic come on that makes this smooth operator’s crash all the more shocking, a ruthless individualist left twisting in the wind.
Warner Bros. Producer: Milton Sperling. Screenwriter: Joseph Landon. Cinematographer: Lucien Ballard. Editor: Folmar Blangsted. Cast: Ray Danton, Karen Steele, Elaine Stewart, Jesse White, Simon Oakland. 16mm, b/w, 103 min.


SABATA
1969, MGM/Park Circus, 111 min, Italy, Dir: Gianfranco Parolini
A consortium of "respectable" men rob a safe to finance the building of a railroad, only to find themselves up against the soft-spoken gunman Sabata (Lee Van Cleef). In English.


Saddle the Wind (1958)
Directed by Robert Parrish
Brothers and cattlemen in the old West, stoic Robert Taylor and hotheaded, younger John Cassavetes face off from opposite sides of an ideological chasm: is the West a place of honor or of violence? Saloon singer Julie London witnesses their struggle, knowing it must end sadly but wishing otherwise. The open prairie forms a surprising but fitting crucible for Serling’s distinctive brand of moral drama.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. Producer: Armand Deutsch. Screenwriter: Rod Serling. Based on a story by Thomas Thompson. Cinematographer: George J. Folsey. Editor: John McSweeney, Jr. Cast: Robert Taylor, Julie London, John Cassavetes, Donald Crisp, Charles McGraw. 35mm, color, 84 min.


THE SAND ROSE
Directed by António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro
Marking a stylistically and philosophically turn away from the earlier features, The Sand Rose is Reis and Cordeiro’s most abstract, conceptual and literary work. The film’s collage structure gathers texts from multiple sources—including Kafka and Montaigne—and crafts a world of theatrical artifice far from the documentary inspired naturalism of Ana and Trás-os-Montes. Reis and Cordeiro’s least known film has lingered in obscurity and never recovered from the unfairly negative reviews that resulted in its severely limited release. Reis died less than two years later, just as he and Cordeiro were about to begin an ambitious adaptation of Juan Rulfo’s "Pedro Parámo." Producer: Acácio de Almeida, José Mazeda. Cinematographer: Acácio de Almeida. Cast: Ana Umbelina, Balbina Ferro, Cristina DeJesus. 35mm, color, in Portuguese with English subtitles, 95 min.


SARAH & GEOFF SEELINGER FILMS
Venice artists screen & discuss their experimental films which illuminate the space with found happenings, the driftwood of consciousness and contemplation of family life.
Sarah's works are meditations of discovery both external and internal. She works with moments, rhythms and sounds of early morning walks along the shore of Venice beach. Her videos offer contemplative space with found happenings, collective consciousness, observation and profundity in footsteps. Often her videos harken to "actualities", simple events happening before the camera that evoke wonder of the ordinary, and illuminate the visual and auditory spectacle often missed in the midst of experienced phenomena.
Geoff's works play with moments close to home. From a patio above the garage, neighborhood and kids spaces, he explores the margins between documented fragments, perception and imaginary realms. Everyday family moments, as well as mundane events resonate through abstractions that loosen the hold of cinematic reality. Much of his work, explores the possibilities of the PXL2000 toy camera with grainy black and white half resolution image captures which magnify interpretive possibilities. Like a slinky, animated forms suggest fluidity between planes, as coils of time expand, contract and knot, toward contemplation of family life, personal delights, ominous threats and complexities of the narrow physical place that we occupy in daily life.


SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN
In 1968, there emerged from Detroit a charismatic Mexican-American singer/songwriter named Rodriguez, who had attracted a local following with his mysterious presence, soulful melodies and prophetic lyrics. A kind of Chicano Bob Dylan, Rodriguez was the greatest ’70s U.S. rock icon who never was, but his debut album “Cold Fact” was a commercial disaster, marking the end of his recording career before it had even started — and the beginning of widespread rumors of his suicide. Many years later, in South Africa (of all places), bootlegs of “Cold Fact” circulated, as Rodriguez’s musical message connected with an entire generation of liberal youth totally at odds with Apartheid. Upon the belated South African CD release of his second album, two fans take it as a sign to look into the mystery of how Rodriguez died, and what happened to all of the profits from his album sales. Thus begins a wild obstacle ride documented in the heartbreaking, humorous, shocking and hopeful Searching For Sugar Man — an incredible story of hope, inspiration, and the resonating power of music.
Dir. Malik Bendjelloul, 2012, 85 min.


Seven Days in May (1964)
Directed by John Frankenheimer
In this tense Cold War thriller, the President of the United States (March) is targeted by a powerful Air Force general (Lancaster) after signing a controversial nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. With a covert military coup imminent, only the suspicions of a lone colonel (Douglas) stand in the way of the catastrophic overthrow of the U.S. government.
Paramount Pictures. Producer: Edward Lewis. Screenwriter: Rod Serling. Cinematographer: Ellsworth Fredricks. Editor: Ferris Webster. Cast: Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Fredric March, Ava Gardner, Edmond O’Brien. 35mm, b/w, 120 min.


Seven Men from Now (1956)
Directed by Budd Boetticher
A masterpiece on its own, Boetticher’s first film starring Randolph Scott with a script by Burt Kennedy set the template for the Ranown cycle to follow. A man stricken by grief, thirsting for revenge, hunts his wife’s killers through a rugged landscape that grows increasingly barren until his quest culminates in a rock-hewn arena of death. André Bazin called it an “exemplary western” and Sergio Leone must have memorized every shot of its ferocious finale. Warner Bros. Producer: Andrew V. McLaglen, Robert E. Morrison. Screenwriter: Burt Kennedy. Based on a story by Burt Kennedy. Cinematographer: William H. Clothier. Editor: Everett Sutherland. Cast: Randolph Scott, Gail Russell, Lee Marvin, Walter Reed, John Larch. 35mm, color, 78 min.


Silent Serials
Few examples of silent serials have survived, but, using wildly entertaining clips and complete individual chapters, RetroFormat presents an enormously fun look at a virtually lost era. With complete episodes from GRANT THE REPORTER (1912), WHAT HAPPENED TO MARY (1914), THE PERILS OF PAULINE (1914), THE HAZARDS OF HELEN (1915), A WOMAN IN GREY (1919), CAPTAIN KIDD (1919) and much more, starring Pearl White, Eddie Polo, Charles Hutchison, Ruth Roland.  120 min.


THE SMALL FACES: ALL OR NOTHING 1965-1968
2009, Reelin' in the Years Productions, 120 min, USA, Dir: David Peck
The Small Faces were one of the most influential rock groups of the 1960s. This first official documentary film features 27 complete performances filmed between 1965 and 1968, including nine songs from their legendary masterpiece “Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake.” Archival interviews with Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane, along with new interviews with Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones, tell the fascinating story of this underappreciated yet groundbreaking group, who were finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012. Panel discussion between films with producers David Peck, Tom Gulotta, Phil Galloway and Rob Bowman and music historian Bart Mendoza.


SPACEDISCO ONE
2007, 58 min, USA, Dir: Damon Packard
In this sequel of sorts to both LOGAN’S RUN and 1984, George Orwell's Winston Smith runs into the daughters of Logan 5 and Francis 7 as they're busy running amok in a park, shooting laser beams at one another. A roller-skating rink in space, “Battlestar Galactica” references and a Ministry of Truth (also known as Universal CityWalk) are all part of this psychedelic sci-fi odyssey.


SPIN
Using unauthorized satellite footage, filmmaker Brian Springer’s Spin captures alarming behind-the-scenes maneuverings of politicians and newscasters—who presume they’re off camera—during the 1992 presidential election. (1995, Dir. B. Springer, 57 min.)


Spiral Jetty
16mm, color and sound, 35 minutes, 1970
In his essay, "The Spiral Jetty" (1972), Robert Smithson writes, "The film recapitulates the scale of the Spiral Jetty. Disparate elements assume a coherence. Unlikely places and things were stuck between sections of film that show a stretch of dirt road rushing to and from the actual site in Utah. A road that goes forward and backward between things and places that are elsewhere. You might even say that the road is nowhere in particular. The disjunction operating between reality and film drives one into a sense of cosmic rupture." 
"The popular allure of [Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty] was enhanced … by the 16-millimeter color movie he shot of its construction: trucks and loaders lumbering like barosaurs across a prehistoric panorama to his narrative. Cunning and prescient, he grasped that in the modern age a sculpture in the middle of nowhere could have a life separate from itself, through reproductions and other simulacra, which is how most people would see the work." – Michael Kimmelman, New York Times


SUNRISE
The Cabeza de Vaca Orchestra will be performing a newly composed site-specific score to Muranu’s classic silent film Sunrise. Featuring songs by Nora Keyes, micro Arcestras, pyramids and HM157 itself, the Cabeza de Vaca Orchestra will turn one of the most beautiful silent films of all time into a lovely dance between musician and film.


Suspense: Nightmare at Ground Zero (CBS, 8/18/53)
Directed by Robert Mulligan
In this eerily atmospheric live television drama directed by Robert Mulligan (To Kill a Mockingbird), a henpecked artist hired by the U.S. Army to supply mannequins for an atomic test plots a horrific solution to dispose of his nagging wife.
Screenwriter: Rod Serling. Cast: O.Z. Whitehead, Louise Larabee, Calvin Thomas. Beta SP, b/w, 30 min.


TRAS-OS-MONTES
“For me, this film reveals a new cinematographic language.”—Jean Rouch
Directed by António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro
Reis and Cordeiro’s undisputable masterpiece exploded the meaning and possibilities of ethnographic cinema with its lyrical exploration of the still resonant myths and legends embodied in the people and landscapes of Portugal’s remote Trás-os-Montes region. Evoking a kind of geologically Bergsonian time, with past and present layered upon one another, Trás-os-Montes interweaves evocative recreations of the ancient worlds and encounters with atavistic peasantry, following the pilgrim’s path traced by Reis and Cordeiro as they led their skeletal crew from village to village in search of the poetic essence of the Portuguese language and imagination. Painstakingly researched and shot over the course of one year, Reis and Cordeiro became intimate with every person included in their ambitious film, carefully selecting the different voices, faces and gestures that would together provide an extraordinary composite, associative and mythological response to the question of how to define a “national cinema.” Cinematographer: Acácio de Almeida. Cast: Ilda Almeida, Rosalía Comba, Luis Ferreira. 35mm, color, in Portuguese with English subtitles, 111 min.


The Twilight Zone: "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" (CBS, 10/16/59)
Directed by Allen Reisner
Twilight on the prairie. A showdown in a dusty western town takes an uncommon turn when Fate himself plays a hand, lending help to a washed-up gunslinger. But of course... there's a twist. Screenwriter: Rod Serling. Cast: Dan Duryea, Martin Landau, Jeanne Cooper. 16mm, b/w, 25 min.


The Twilight Zone: The Shelter (CBS, 9/29/61)
Directed by Lamont Johnson
Best neighbors become worst nightmares when an imminent nuclear attack sends one family scurrying to their fallout shelter—as their friends howl for mercy, then for blood, outside the implacably sealed door.
Screenwriter: Rod Serling. Cast: Larry Gates, Joseph Bernard, Jack Albertson. 16mm, b/w, 25 min.


TWO FOR THE ROAD
1967, 20th Century Fox, 111 min, USA, Dir: Stanley Donen
Director Stanley Donen and screenwriter Frederic Raphael tell the story of the ups and downs of a marriage via an ingenious, twisty structure more akin to film noir than romantic comedy in this offbeat character study. Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn give two of the best performances of their careers as a husband and wife who can't stand each other - and can't stand to be apart.


THE WAR ROOM
James Carville, George Stephanopoulos, and Bill Clinton strategize how to beat George H.W. Bush in the 1992 presidential election despite numerous setbacks. (1993, Dirs. C. Hegedus, D. A. Pennebaker, 96 min.)


Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse: The Man in the Funny Suit (CBS, 4/15/60)
Directed by Ralph Nelson
Comedian Ed Wynn, his son, actor, Keenan Wynn, and Rod Serling appear as themselves in this backstage docudrama about the making of "Playhouse 90: Requiem for a Heavyweight.” As rehearsals for the live "Requiem" falter, production concerns mount when it appears that comedian Ed Wynn (best known as “The Perfect Fool”) might be miscast in his first dramatic role.
Screenwriter: Raph Nelson. Cast: Keenan Wynn, Ed Wynn, Desi Arnaz. 16mm, b/w, 60 min.


We Two (pilot) (1972)
Directed by Carl Reiner
Frustrated over a diminishing degree of control on the "Night Gallery" television series, Serling developed this pilot for CBS based on "A Storm In Summer," with a deli owner taking temporary custody of a ghetto youth, leading to complications when the boy is accused of assault. Serling reportedly balked at network desires to impose a laugh track, and the unsold, unaired pilot has only rarely been seen.
Producer: Herbert Hirschman. Screenwriter: Rod Serling. Cast: Herschel Bernardi, Damon Ketchens, Archie Hahn, Jim Backus, Jeff Corey. Betacam SP, color, 30 min.


The Yellow Canary (1963)
Directed by Buzz Kulik
Director Buzz Kulik and Serling collaborated on numerous classic "Twilight Zone" episodes and the 1972 dramatic TV special "A Storm in Summer."  Here, they create high drama around a profligate rock musician (Boone) on a mission to find his kidnapped son. Estranged from his wife (Eden) and most of his friends, the self-centered philanderer must martial his manhood to solve the crime, put his life in order and save his child.
Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp. Producer: Maury Dexter. Screenwriter: Rod Serling, from the novel by Whit Masterson. Cinematographer: Floyd Crosby. Editor: Jodie Copelan. Cast: Pat Boone, Barbara Eden, Steve Forrest, Jack Klugman, Jesse White. 35mm, b/w, 93 min.


ZIDANE: A 21ST CENTURY PORTRAIT
Turner Prize-winning artist and filmmaker Douglas Gordon teams up with French artist Philippe Parreno to create a work glorious in its simplicity. Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait was made by training 17 cameras, under the supervision of acclaimed cinematographer Darius Khondji (Seven, Funny Games), solely on footballer Zinédine Zidane over the course of a single match between Real Madrid and Villareal. Zidane himself recounts, in voice-over, what he can and cannot remember from his matches. Magnificently edited and accompanied by a majestic score from Scottish rock heroes Mogwai, this is not only the greatest soccer movie ever made, but also one of the finest studies of man in the workplace, an ode to the loneliness of the athlete and the poise and resilience of the human body.
Dirs. Douglas Gordon & Philippe Parreno, 2006, 35mm, 91 min.