a highly-opinionated selection of things happening around town, and sometimes out of town. this month's page here.
mon. aug. 1 possession @ silent movie theater back to the future 7 PM @ arclight santa monica tue. aug. 2 possession 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater disorder FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc stark jane eyre (1944) 1 PM @ lacma enter the dragon 7:45 PM @ arclight beach cities save the green planet! 8 PM @ the frog wed. aug. 3 queen of the underground: the films of sarah jacobson 10:30 PM @ silent movie theater predator @ arclight hollywood the african queen @ arclight culver city pin: a plastic nightmare FREE (RSVP) 9:30 PM @ non plus ultra moment trigger @ la cita thu. aug. 4 kamikazee '89 @ aero earthless, mind meld @ alex's bar (LB) noroit @ bob baker marionette theater bang! the bert berns story @ don't knock the rock @ silent movie theater king jack FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc stark fri. aug. 5 miss sharon jones (w/q&a) 7:30 9:55 PM @ nuart rococo jet @ folktale fest @ human resources on the silver globe @ silent movie theater the renderers FREE @ la luz de jesus itasca FREE @ the lost knight sat. aug. 6 smash-up: story of a woman (RSVP) 7:45 PM @ film noir series @ starlight studios the flakes @ pickwick gardens saccharine trust, mike watt & the missingmen, urinals @ non plus ultra plastic crimewave sound FREE @ permanent hp on the silver globe 4 PM @ silent movie theater loulou, under the sun of satan @ ucla film archive plug + mechanical eye 8 PM @ epfc sun. aug. 7 qui @ smell celine and julie go boating 8 PM @ bob baker marionette theater ladies of leisure 1 PM @ silent movie theater raza 7 PM @ ucla film archive flying hair, plastic crimewave syndicate @ cafe nela mon. aug. 8 on the silver globe @ silent movie theater los punks: we are all we have FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc stark butch cassidy and the sundance kid 7 PM @ arclight santa monica mad max 2: the road warrior @ arclight hollywood tue. aug. 9 lisa prank @ junior high mark sultan (10:55) @ los globos the people vs fritz bauer FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc stark beauty and the beast (1946) 1 PM @ lacma 2001: a space odyssey 7:45 PM @ arclight beach cities the last starfighter 8 PM @ arclight sherman oaks starship troopers @ arclight culver city harakiri 8 PM @ the frog wed. aug. 10 david hockney and huell howser FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ l.a. louver thu. aug. 11 thee oh sees @ teragram boiling point @ egyptian merry-go-round @ bob baker marionette theater sidemen: long road to glory @ don't knock the rock @ silent movie theater the iron giant @ laemmle noho 7 bart davenport (10:00) @ el cid fri. aug. 12 pa negre @ ucla film archive gal pals @ bootleg the good the bad and the ugly @ laemmle fine arts wand, rearranged face @ non plus ultra sat. aug. 13 cold beat (5:05), vial (6:25), etc @ berserktown @ teragram a woman of the world 2 PM @ silent movie theater leave her to heaven, nightmare alley @ ucla film archive bollywood marathon (NOON-MIDNIGHT) @ machine & epfc the professionals (w/ q&a) 7:15 PM @ laemmle fine arts colleen green, winter (7:55), dirty girls (8:15; screening), etc @ junior high dead dawn, susan @ blindspot mind meld, kid congo & the pink monkeybirds FREE @ permanent hp sun. aug. 14 posse (1975) 7 PM, tough guys @ ucla film archive adventures in rajasthan 7 PM @ epfc the searchers (w/ q&a) 2:15 PM @ laemmle fine arts the misfits 5:15 PM @ laemmle fine arts beverly hills cop 7 PM @ arclight santa monica indiana jones and the last crusade 8 PM @ arclight pasadena tue. aug. 16 cool ghouls (10:30), molochs (9:30) @ resident the devil @ silent movie theater history of the world part i @ arclight hollywood dirty harry @ arclight sherman oaks wed. aug. 17 big trouble in little china @ arclight culver city lust caution 8 PM @ the frog thu. aug. 18 mind meld (10:30), numb.er (8:50) FREE @ echo park rising @ echo julian porte (8:30), alex and derek (9:15) FREE @ echo park rising @ spacedust featherwolf (6:45) FREE @ echo park rising @ lost knight future shoxxx (5:00) FREE @ echo park rising @ short stop hausu 7 PM @ broad ugly dirty and bad @ egyptian shot! the psycho-spiritual mantra of rock @ don't knock the rock @ silent movie theater ghost world 8 PM @ epfc fri. aug. 19 the blank tapes (7:45), lucas fitzsimons (7:00) FREE @ echo park rising @ spacedust walter (4:40), ducktails (8:50) FREE @ echo park rising @ echo winter (5:05), mexico 68 (6:00), prettiest eyes (7:00) FREE @ echo park rising @ liberty stage colleen green (11:00) @ echo park rising FREE @ taix champagne room the heroes of telemark @ ucla film archive sat. aug. 20 black sea (6:15), the creation factory (8:30) FREE @ echo park rising @ spacedust billy changer (5:50), globelamp (6:40) FREE @ echo park rising @ echo molochs (7:20), sex stains (8:10), weirdos (9:00) FREE @ echo park rising @ echoplex drinking flowers (4:30) FREE @ echo park rising @ liberty stage blank tapes (11:30) FREE @ echo park rising @ lost knight media jeweler (10:45) FREE @ echo park rising @ lost room trabants (8:00) FREE @ echo park rising @ lot 1 bart davenport (3:15), adult books (11:15) FREE @ echo park rising @ taix champagne room walter (7:30) FREE @ echo park rising @ the whisperer jackass trilogy 5 PM @ egyptian lonely are the brave, strangers when we meet @ ucla film archive sun. aug. 21 molochs (4:15), flytraps (5:45) FREE @ echo park rising @ short stop billy changer (7:00) FREE @ echo park rising @ spacedust creation factory (8:50) FREE @ echo park rising @ echo flying hair (8:30), meatbodies (10:15) FREE @ echo park rising @ echoplex dead dawn (7:00) FREE @ echo park rising @ little joy high cameras (8:20) FREE @ echo park rising @ the whisperer trembling before g-d 7 PM @ ucla film archive the son of the sheik @ silents under the stars @ paramount ranch the goonies (35mm) 3 PM @ arclight hollywood mon. aug. 22 the fifth element 7 PM @ arclight santa monica the baby of macon 8 PM @ the frog tue. aug. 23 flying hair @ echo the third part of the night @ silent movie theater the intervention FREE (RSVP) 7 PM @ usc stark pan's labyrinth (35mm) @ arclight sherman oaks the poseidon adventure @ arclight beach cities susan @ all star lanes pouty @ junior high girl band @ bootleg wed. aug. 24 cosmos @ silent movie theater once upon a time in the west @ arclight culver city thu. aug. 25 almodovar vis-a-vis mona hatoum 8 PM @ epfc flash gordon (1980) @ laemmle noho 7 starship troopers @ arclight hollywood fri. aug. 26 earth @ regent cosmos @ silent movie theater jon brion @ largo sat. aug. 27 ty segall and the muggers (8:00), tame impala (9:00), air (7:55), shellac (6:40), sheer mag (10:00), etc @ fyf fest @ exposition park cosmos 4 PM @ silent movie theater titicut follies (w/ q&a) 7 PM @ silent movie theater the juggler, paths of glory @ ucla film archive new works salon xxxv 8 PM @ epfc the mormons (10:30) @ cafe nela sun. aug. 28 charles bradley and his extraordinaires (5:50), black lips (7:05), beach house (9:45), julia holter (4:00), etc @ fyf fest @ exposition park neil hamburger @ satellite titicut follies 4 PM @ silent movie theater cosmos 7 PM @ silent movie theater 20,000 leagues under the sea 7 PM, the vikings @ ucla film archive lawrence of arabia 3 PM @ cinerama dome mon. aug. 29 titicut follies @ silent movie theater cosmos 10 PM @ silent movie theater indiana jones and the last crusade 7 PM @ arclight santa monica sansho the bailiff 8 PM @ the frog tue. aug. 30 titicut follies @ silent movie theater cosmos 10 PM @ silent movie theater 2001: a space odyssey @ arclight sherman oaks bullitt (35mm) @ arclight hollywood mad max 2: the road warrior 7:45 PM @ arclight beach cities wed. aug. 31 titicut follies @ silent movie theater cosmos 10 PM @ silent movie theater predator @ arclight culver city upsilon acrux @ complex thu. sep. 1 the bigamist 7 PM @ broad syl johnson: any way the wind blows @ don't knock the rock @ silent movie theater north by northwest @ arclight hollywood fri. sep. 2 high school @ silent movie theater upset @ junior high sat. sep. 3 pandoras, loons, flamin' groovies @ bootleg high school 3 PM @ silent movie theater von haze, warlocks @ hi hat sun. sep. 4 high school 5 PM @ silent movie theater sex stains @ echo mon. sep. 5 high school @ silent movie theater tue. sep. 6 high school @ silent movie theater los olvidados 1 PM @ lacma wed. sep. 7 high school @ silent movie theater upsilon acrux, peter kolovos @ smell fri. sep. 9 upset @ echo sat. sep. 10 law and order 5 PM @ silent movie theater big dick @ bootleg walter FREE @ permanent hp sun. sep. 11 the indian fighter 7 PM, last train from gun hill @ ucla film archive tue. sep. 13 the spirit of the beehive 1 PM @ lacma wed. sep. 14 triptides @ resident thu. sep. 15 cosmonauts @ echoplex fri. sep. 16 hospital @ silent movie theater raising bertie @ ucla film archive sat. sep. 17 the chicago maternity story, home for life @ ucla film archive bombon @ gal palace sun. sep. 18 kraftwerk @ hollywood bowl the strange love of martha ivers 7 PM, out of the past @ ucla film archive mon. sep. 19 black sabbath @ hollywood bowl tue. sep. 20 fanny and alexander 1 PM @ lacma wed. sep. 21 heron oblivion @ teragram thu. sep. 22 heron oblivion @ teragram ticket to write: the golden age of rock music journalism @ don't knock the rock @ silent movie theater fri. sep. 23 moon duo, strawberry alarm clock, christian bland & the revelators, etc. @ desert stars festival @ pappy & harriet's heron oblivion @ teragram taylor chain i, taylor chain ii, the last pullman car @ ucla film archive sat. sep. 24 heron oblivion, triptides, asteroid #4, etc. @ desert stars festival @ pappy & harriet's basic training 4 PM @ silent movie theater sun. sep. 25 dead c, burning star core @ echo neil hamburger @ satellite mon. sep. 26 the interrupters @ ucla film archive tue. sep. 27 kwaidan 1 PM @ lacma wed. sep. 28 target video: stand up & scream @ regent thu. sep. 29 imitation of life 7 PM @ broad fri. sep. 30 the bad and the beautiful, two weeks in another town @ ucla film archive jon brion @ largo mae shi, media jeweler @ smell sat. oct. 1 essene 4 PM @ silent movie theater thu. oct. 6 charles bradley and his extraordinaires @ shrine the clean @ echo survive @ echoplex fri. oct. 7 mystic braves @ troubadour sat. oct. 8 allah-las @ regent aliens @ frights feast film @ eagle rock rec center juvenile court 4 PM @ silent movie theater sun. oct. 9 budos band @ echoplex mon. oct. 10 fred and toody @ bootleg thu. oct. 13 tobacco @ echoplex triptides, temples @ teragram fri. oct. 14 temples, sonics, mind meld, etc @ desert daze the julie ruin @ roxy true widow @ echo sat. oct. 15 thee oh sees, black angels, godspeed you black emperor, wand, audacity, l.a. witch, etc @ desert daze flickers from the silver screen FREE 1:15 PM @ gordon r howard museum the julie ruin @ roxy bride of frankenstein, creature from the black lagoon @ frights feast film @ eagle rock rec center primate 4 PM @ silent movie theater crawdaddys @ redwood sun. oct. 16 television, white fence, survive, dead meadow, brian jonestown massacre, meatbodies, etc @ desert daze tue. oct. 18 winter @ bootleg sat. oct. 22 the thing (1982) @ frights feast film @ eagle rock rec center welfare 4 PM @ silent movie theater sun. oct. 23 jowe head, sex stains @ part time punks @ echo fri. oct. 28 jon brion @ largo sat. oct. 29 meat 4 PM @ silent movie theater sun. oct. 30 neil hamburger @ satellite thu. nov. 10 afi fest fri. nov. 11 afi fest sat. nov. 12 afi fest om @ casbah (SD) sun. nov. 13 afi fest om @ regent mon. nov. 14 afi fest tue. nov. 15 afi fest wed. nov. 16 afi fest thu. nov. 17 afi fest fri. nov. 18 jon brion @ largo WHAT IT IS: ADVENTURES IN RAJASTHAN EPFC’s All India Weekend continues with a journey full of rare musical encounters and exquisite dancing. Through words and images, Yuval Ron and Carolyne Aycaguer will share an introduction to the tribal musical culture and the special inhabitants of the Rajasthan desert. A screening of Lacho Drom, Tony Gatlif’s stunning 1993 documentary about the music of the Romani people, follows Yuval and Carolyne’s presentation. ALMODÓVAR vis-a-vis MONA HATOUM HIGH HEELS (1991), Pedro Almodovar’s sardonic melodrama, twists the relationship between a mother, her drag impersonator, and a daughter in love with both. A celebrated actress returns to her hometown to visit the daughter who she left years earlier. A maze of murder and maternal longing, what follows is an idiosyncratic, yet moving portrait of self and familial space. A rumination of maternal and daughternal narratives, Mona Hatoum’s MEASURES OF DISTANCE (1988) very literally layers voices of a mother speaking to her daughter, a daughter translating her mother’s words, and actual text written over the conversations. Hatoum’s video masterwork addresses the isolationism of a daughter who was forced to leave Lebanon, and her Palestinian family, behind when war prevented Hatoum to return home from a trip to London. Both portraits invert the selflessness of maternal melodramas for the disorienting role of daughters and mothers as individuals, not archetypes. The Bad and the Beautiful Kirk Douglas portrays Jonathan Shields, a driven, highly successful producer of Hollywood pictures, who forms and regularly damages close relationships. Three such friends (an actress, a writer and a director) recall various betrayals, alongside Shields' enormous charm and success, and must then decide what good movies are worth! For his part, Douglas convincingly portrays this tornado of a man, who possibly—arguably—creates more than he destroys. 35mm, b/w, 118 min. DIR: Vincente Minnelli. SCR: Charles Schnee. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Dick Powell, Walter Pidgeon. (1952) BANG! THE BERT BERNS STORY Music meets the Mob in this biographical documentary narrated by Steven Van Zandt. You may have never heard of Bert Berns, but you know the enduring songs he has written and produced: “Twist & Shout”, “Cry to Me”, “Tell Him”, “Piece of My Heart”, “Cry Baby”, “Hang On Sloopy”, “I Want Candy”, “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love”. Berns sessions made legends of Solomon Burke, The Isley Brothers, The Drifters, Ben E. King, Wilson Pickett, Van Morrison, and Neil Diamond, and his songs became chart-topping covers for the likes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals and Janis Joplin. His premature death at 38 cut short a seven-year streak of hits, rooted in his early Brill Building and 1650 Broadway days, through his tenure at Atlantic Records to the formation and success of his own labels Bang Records and Shout Records. The documentary film BANG! The Bert Berns Story, which had its highly acclaimed World Premiere at SXSW, beats a peripatetic pace through the history of 60s R&B-fueled rock as driven by the man who propelled the most emotive, dynamic and sublime soundtrack of the era. Together with his co-director Bob Sarles, filmmaker Brett Berns brings his late father’s story to the screen with interviews with those who knew him best and rare performance footage. Included in the film are interviews with Cissy Houston, Ronald Isley, Ben E. King, Solomon Burke, Van Morrison, Keith Richards and Paul McCartney. Dir. Brett Berns & Bob Sarles, 2016, DCP, 94 min. Q&A moderated by Michael Des Barres. BASIC TRAINING As dozens of plainclothes youth, their hair still long and their blue-jeaned gait still casual, stream out of a bus and into an unmarked building, we are invited to take part in Basic Training, Frederick Wiseman’s immersive portrait of the nine weeks of Army training camp that each new enlisted and drafted recruit must endure. Intense discussions on the ethics of combat precede automatic weapons training, the severity of this message somewhat undone by the ridiculous moral tales in their marching cadences, and a moment of levity during a dental hygiene video. Embedded deeply within the rank-and-file at Fort Knox, Wiseman’s observant camera follows each detail and process as new intakes learn the proper way to scrub a urinal, sergeants hammer through marching drills, and the highest-ranking officers deliver motivational speeches to the impressionable minds that stare a potential Vietnam deployment squarely in the face. Dir. Frederick Wiseman, 1971, 16mm, 80 min. THE BIGAMIST Like Cindy Sherman, Ida Lupino made her mark on both sides of the camera, a defiant siren of film noir, but also one of the first female auteurs, directing and producing independent features that delved into hot-button cultural topics like abortion and polyamory. For The Bigamist, Lupino positioned herself opposite Joan Fontaine, in a subtle and gorgeously photographed potboiler about a traveling salesman who takes on two wives. In Matthias Müller’s short Home Stories, the filmmaker distills gestures of the classic Hollywood melodrama, collecting the moonlit sighs and dramatic departures, shot in 16mm off of a television screen. Tickets to Doll Parts include same-night access to the full museum, including the Cindy Sherman: Imitation of Life special exhibition, before the film program. BOILING POINT 1990, Film Movement, 96 min, Japan, Dir: Takeshi Kitano When gangsters attack the coach of a small-time baseball team, two players decide to seek revenge in this action-packed and mordantly funny crime film from writer-director Takeshi Kitano. To purchase the requisite firepower, the pair (Masahiko Ono and Minoru Iizuka) travel to Okinawa, where they are befriended by Uehara (Kitano), an unhinged yakuza with his own axes to grind. In Japanese with English subtitles. CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING Like a richly-rendered Borges story, Céline and Julie Go Boating is so welcomingly sensual, you’ll be just as tempted to laze in its warm beauty as you will to decipher its labyrinthine puzzles. Jacques Rivette’s gorgeous 1974 exploration of the nature of narrative is one of the most mischievously immersive products of the French New Wave, casually bending time and space, enticing its audience to another realm with its play and luster. Librarian Julie (Dominique Labourier) and cabaret magician Céline (Godard regular Juliet Berto) are the mysteriously linked protagonists who spontaneously form a friendship of the caliber of famous duos from the likes of Daisies and Mulholland Dr; the other realm in question is a Parisian household from a bygone era, revealed in fragmented film-within-a-film memories brought on by magical candies. Rivette’s biggest commercial hit in France, but sadly unreleased on DVD in this country, Céline and Julie is a rarity that demands to be beheld on the big, mesmerizing screen. Dir. Jacques Rivette, 1974, 35mm, 193 min. THE CHICAGO MATERNITY STORY This galvanizing, rock-fueled documentary (Black Sabbath features prominently on the soundtrack) follows the mid-1970s grassroots fight to save the Chicago Maternity Center after 75 years of serving the community with maternity care and safe at-home births. One woman’s experience with the center, from consultations to delivery, puts the human face on protester demands and the corporatization of American medicine. Digital Video, b/w, 60 min. DIR: Jerry Blumenthal, Suzanne Davenport, Sharon Karp, Gordon Quinn, Jennifer Rohrer. (1976) COSMOS Zulawski’s final film–a begrudgingly apt swan song–follows a freshly-failed law student’s descent into a bed and breakfast’s vortex of pulsating ids. Based on Witold Gombrowicz’s surreal novel of the same name, the story leaps from free-associative monologues (sometimes in the voice of Donald Duck) declaring Sartre a “mistaken crosseye” to an indulgent obsession with a dead sparrow in the woods, as our Byronic protagonist broods around the property, falls in love, and lusts to touch a hairlip. Dense and deliberate, eerie tableau vivants see Zulawski’s characters writhing on the floor in intense episodes of pain/ecstasy, building a mystery–but one that the audience nonetheless may not, and need not, fully parse. Dir. Andrzej Zulawski, 2015, DCP, 103 min. DAVID HOCKNEY AND HUELL HOWSER Celebrating three unique California icons, David Hockney, Huell Howser and Yosemite National Park, with a screening of epiosdes from Howser's beloved public television series: Visiting with Huell Howser and California’s Gold. Episodes: * Visiting With Huell Howser (David Hockney’s Pearblossom Highway #2): Huell Howser and David Hockney visit the exact location where Hockney captured images for his most famous photographic collage Pearblossom Highway #2. * Visiting With Huell Howser (David Hockney's studio): Filmed in the late 1980s, Howser takes us inside Hockney's Los Angeles studio and gives us an intimate view of the artist's studio practice. * California’s Gold (Yosemite Firefall): Howser traces the history behind Yosemite National Park’s “firefall,” a bygone spectacle in which burning embers were sent down Glacier Point, creating a 3,000 ft. glittering cascade. THE DEVIL Hitting an off-the-charts level of subversive allegory, Zulawski’s second feature is a blood-splattered rampage through a war-charred 1790s Poland that turns the historical epic inside out, and dances on its carcass. Immediately banned in the director’s Communist Poland for over a decade and a half, The Devil writhes with nonstop demonic energy as it follows a nobleman who, after escaping from prison, swan dives into insanity and mass murder. Returning home to his once-rich family—now reduced to savagery—and manipulated by a black-cloaked Satanic stranger at the center of a web of political treachery, the nobleman eventually enacts a Hamlet-like pyrrhic revenge on just about everyone in sight. But The Devil’s most spectacularly intense violence is all emotional, with near-constant outbursts of grief, and desperation of a seizure-like intensity that is downright mesmerizing. You won’t be able to look away, and with the way Zulawski’s gloriously restless camerawork captures all the detail, you’ll never want to. Dir. Andrzej Zulawski, 1972, DCP, 119 min. DISORDER What happens when the man hired to protect you may be the real threat? Matthias Schoenaerts (Rust and Bone) stars as Vincent, a troubled Afghanistan veteran who, after being discharged from the army, becomes bodyguard to the wife (Diane Kruger) and young son of a wealthy Lebanese businessman at their luxurious villa on the French Riviera. But trapped in a perpetual mental warzone, the unstable Vincent must determine which dangers to the family are real and which are the product of his PTSD-fueled paranoia if he is going to keep them safe. Director Alice Winocour (Augustine) masterfully keeps the tension simmering in this pulse-pounding psychological thriller. Running time: 99 minutes. In French, with English subtitles. ESSENE Named after the ascetic community purported to have scribed the Dead Sea Scrolls, Essene finds Wiseman immersed in a Benedictine monastery in rural Michigan, whose members struggle to reconcile their individual idiosyncrasies with the community’s collective needs. He films the brethren in prayer, at study, holding mass, and maintaining the grounds, granted access even to private counseling sessions. In a departure from earlier works, he returns to a few subjects, allowing them to become characters in their own right, including one monk on the brink of a nervous breakdown. Wiseman’s presence is all but invisible here, including one virtuosic 360-degree handheld shot around the abbot in the middle of a mass service. Dir. Frederick Wiseman, 1972, 16mm, 86 min. FLICKERS FROM THE SILVER SCREEN Annual vintage horror show with silent films, talkies, theater slides, and music, going back to the 1890s. THE HEROES OF TELEMARK This handsomely mounted adventure film tells the true story of Norwegian Resistance fighters who successfully sabotaged a Nazi plot to develop an atomic bomb. Kirk Douglas, as a scientist recruited to this mission, must coordinate with the hot-headed Resistance fighter Richard Harris, locking horns over strategy and authority in their race against time. Spectacular locations and widescreen compositions grace this late masterwork by Anthony Mann. 35mm, color, 131 min. DIR: Anthony Mann. SCR: Ivan Moffat, Ben Barzman. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Richard Harris, Ulla Jacobsson, Michael Redgrave. (1965) HIGH SCHOOL The eternally youthful vibes of Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” guide us through establishing shots of suburban Philadelphia and onto the campus of Northeast High School, the setting for Wiseman’s sophomore filmmaking effort. From the hip-as-heck teacher who asks her students to tune into the poetry of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Dangling Conversation” to the brutal body politics of a homegrown fashion show, High School captures a day-in-the-life of the students and faculty at an upper-middle-class establishment, wandering from homeroom to the gymnasium to capture—with always-impeccable framing—the microdramas inherent in this most American of institutions. 35mm Restoration courtesy of the Library of Congress. Dir. Frederick Wiseman, 1968, 35mm, 75 min. HOME FOR LIFE The first film produced under the Kartemquin banner mobilizes multiple nonfiction modes to draw us into the experiences of two new residents of a Chicago nursing home as they adjust to their new lives. Through their separate circumstances, depicted frankly but with a deep sense of dignity, the larger challenges of age and care for the aged are brought into sharp, poignant view. 16mm, b/w, 82 min. DIR: Gerald Temaner, Gordon Quinn. (1966) Preceded by: * Parents (1968) This fly-on-the-wall document of a parish youth group discussing their parents and the generation gap is a fascinating time capsule from the era of the “rap session” even as it captures the eternal restlessness of adolescence. Digital Video, b/w, 20 min. DIR: Gordon Quinn, Gerald Temaner. HOSPITAL In pre-HIPAA 1970, inside the four walls of the Metropolitan Hospital in New York’s East Harlem, Frederick Wiseman made a film that depended on a degree of access to doctors and patients that is unfathomable today. We see overtaxed doctors handle everything from stoned hippies to neglected children to alcoholics–lots of alcoholics. Wiseman’s attentive gaze never leans on simplification, even as he stares stereotypes in the face. Doctors aren’t villains–they’re flawed and overworked, and sometimes they go the extra mile for their patients while other times they discuss lunch alongside deep suffering. The alcoholics and druggies and various other oft-underprivileged patients that burst through the ER doors aren’t villains either– they are people at the mercy of a limited institution for care. This newly restored 35mm print is an invitation into the bowels of a place where the American movie-going public will likely never be invited again. 35mm Restoration courtesy of the Library of Congress. Dir. Frederick Wiseman, 1970, 35mm, 84 min. The Indian Fighter The first picture from Kirk Douglas' own Bryna Productions (named for his mother) was this Western adventure, in which Douglas, as a frontier scout guiding a wagon train through Sioux country, must keep the peace despite the Sioux chiefs' well-founded suspicions of the white men's motives, and the plot of two rogue settlers to steal the Indians' newly discovered gold. 35mm, color, 88 min. DIR: André De Toth. SCR: Frank Davis, Ben Hecht. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Elsa Martinelli, Walter Abel, Walter Matthau. (1955) The Interrupters As the tragic gun violence afflicting Chicago continues to make news, Hoop Dreams (1994) director Steve James’ extraordinary portrait of the people working literally door-to-door and block by block to end it remains as urgent as ever. At its center are three “Violence Interrupters” working for the innovative intervention program CeaseFire. As they endeavor to overcome their own violent pasts, they use their hard won credibility to convince others they can do the same. Heartbreaking and, at times, harrowing, The Interrupters is essential nonfiction filmmaking. DCP, color, 125 min. DIR: Steve James. (2011) In-person: Steve James, Gordon Quinn. THE INTERVENTION A weekend getaway for four couples takes a sharp turn when one of the couples discovers the entire trip was orchestrated to host an intervention on their marriage. Starring Clea DuVall, Melanie Lynskey, Natasha Lyonne, Vincent Piazza, Jason Ritter, Ben Schwartz, Alia Shawkat, & Cobie Smulders. Running time: 90 minutes. Written and Directed by Clea DuVall. Followed by a Q&A with Clea DuVall, Sev Ohanian, and Director of Photography Polly Morgan JACKASS Trilogy * JACKASS: THE MOVIE, 2002, Paramount, 87 min. Documentary/Comedy. Dir. Jeff Tremaine. * JACKASS NUMBER TWO, 2006, Paramount, 92 min. Documentary/Comedy. Dir. Jeff Tremaine. * JACKASS 3D, 2010, Paramount, 94 min. Documentary/Comedy. Dir. Jeff Tremaine. WARNING: Do not attempt this marathon at home! The brilliantly brain-dead, irresponsible ode to camaraderie known as “Jackass” quietly debuted on MTV at the height of the Boy Band boom, and hasn’t yet lost an ounce of its power to shock, amaze and guffaw us to the ground. Despite the small-screen origins of “Jackass,” its three theatrical features demand to be seen on the big screen, where a packed crowd can vicariously rock to every ingenious stunt, devilish prank and life-threatening punchline. Forget reality TV - this is art. “God help me, thumbs up.” - Roger Ebert, on JACKASS: THE MOVIE. Marathon features audience participation challenges between the films, plus cast and crew Q&A! The Juggler Filmed in newly-established Israel, The Juggler concerns German Jewish concentration camp survivor Hans Müller (Kirk Douglas), once a famous juggler in Germany, who has immigrated to Israel to begin life anew, though facing the hurdle of severe psychological trauma. A rare American feature to treat Jewish experience and the Holocaust so directly, it also offered Douglas the space for a tour-de-force performance of international resonance. 35mm, b/w, 86 min. DIR: Edward Dmytryk. SCR: Michael Blankfort. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Milly Vitale, Paul Stewart, Joey Walsh. (1953) JUVENILE COURT An attentive and non-judgemental look at the youth courts system in Memphis, Juvenile Court showcases Wiseman’s inimitable observational abilities. Dealing with cases concerning everything from armed robbery and sexual assault to drug addiction, abuse, and foster care, Wiseman approaches each moment with his trademark respect for his chosen subject. Imbued with remarkably instinctual cinematography, rife with poignant imagery–a piece of tissue sticking to a young girl’s eye as she attempts to wipe the tears away, a badly burned young boy’s pained whisper as he tries to answer sensitive questions–and expertly crafted, Juvenile Court is a captivating document of the devastatingly human turmoil and confusion that finds its home in the supposedly ordered courtroom. Dir. Frederick Wiseman, 1973, 16mm, 144 min. KAMIKAZE '89 A blindsiding exercise in pure aesthetics, this once-lost ‘80s curio–newly restored on 35mm!–delivers the eyecandy of a leopard-besuited Rainer Werner Fassbinder in his final acting role before his untimely death at the age of 37. As excessive as the seismic German auteur was in his career and personal life, Kamikaze ‘89 promises shades of Blade Runner and Liquid Sky (what exactly was up in 1982?), all set to an organic, instrumental score from Tangerine Dream’s Edgar Froese. It’s Godard’s mysterious, sci-fi-infused trickery of Alphaville meets the fantastical exorbitance of Cannon Group’s The Apple, as directed by Fassbinder’s friend Wolf Gremm. What’s happening here? It kind of doesn’t matter in this dystopian, Orwellian futurescape that we’d sooner immerse ourselves in than really try to parse. Dir. Wolf Gremm, 1982, 35mm, 106 min. KING JACK Jack is a scrappy fifteen year-old kid stuck in a run-down small town. Trapped in a violent feud with a cruel older bully and facing another bout of summer school, Jack’s got all the problems he can handle. So when Jack’s aunt falls ill and his runty younger cousin must stay with him for the weekend the last thing Jack wants to do is look after him. Unfortunately no one really cares what Jack wants. Set over a hazy summer weekend, King Jack is a tough and tender coming of age story about friendship and finding happiness in rough surroundings. Running time: 80 minutes. Written and Directed by Felix Thompson. Followed by a Q&A with Felix Thompson. Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door German director Thomas Jahn’s freewheeling crime/action thriller, punctuated with very dark humor, follows two terminal cancer patients (Inglourious Basterd’s Til Schweiger, Jan Josef Liefers) who have met after both being told their prognosis by their respective doctors. Getting drunk and stealing a classic Mercedes leads to bizarre repercussions when they figure out the car holds a million dollars belonging to a mob boss in its trunk. The pair decide to spend the money doing things they’ve always wanted to do but soon find themselves pursued by both gangsters and police on a roller coaster of unexpected plot twists. Dir. Thomas Jahn, 1997, 87 min. The Last Pullman Car A century of industrial expansion and contraction, bad transportation policy, union building and busting, and racial politics comes to bear when Steelworkers Local 1834 starts a fight to keep the Pullman Standard Chicago Car Works open in the face of global competition. From factory floor to the state legislature, directors Gordon Quinn and Jerry Blumenthal trace the workers’ struggle against the odds to “keep mass transit rolling.” Digital Video, color, 57 min. DIR: Gordon Quinn, Jerry Blumenthal. (1983) In-person: Gordon Quinn. Last Train from Gun Hill When U.S. Marshal Matt Morgan's Native American wife is raped and murdered, and the perpetrator is proven to be the son of his friend, he must supplant the urge for revenge with justice in his aim to put the young man on a train to stand trial. But this is not so easy; he must oppose the young man's father, and make it to the train on time. 16mm, color, 93 min. DIR: John Sturges. SCR: James Poe. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn, Carolyn Jones, Earl Holliman. (1959) LAW AND ORDER Watching Law & Order, one feels almost as if the black and white 16mm film is the only signifier of time having passed; Wiseman’s attention to the structures of law enforcement and their interaction with race and class seems not to have aged one bit, even 47 years later. The made-for-TV, Emmy-winning doc (best news documentary in 1969) is the filmmaker’s foray into the riots-era Kansas City, MO police department of 1968. As his camera roves, it captures myriad situations that officers are called upon to resolve – some appropriately within their jurisdiction, and others seemingly dumped upon them because civilians didn’t know where else to turn; one such a case is a domestic dispute over child-custody which results in the officer telling the child’s father that he simply must hire a lawyer if anything’s to be done. Wiseman’s hard look at the relations between officers and civilians is sympathetic and genuine, attuned to the limitations of the staid categories of law and order, and the humanity and chaos that spill out of them. Dir. Frederick Wiseman, 1969, 16mm, 81 min. Lonely are the Brave Cowboy Jack Burns manipulates his way into a rural jail to affect an escape for his friend who's accused of abetting Mexican border-crossers. When the principled friend refuses to leave, Jack breaks out himself, futilely attempting escape to Mexico on horseback, but bedeviled by unromantic cars and helicopters—pursued, it seems, by modernity itself. An elegiac take on the drifter (a Kirk Douglas staple), the film has long been a favorite of its star. 35mm, b/w, 106 min. DIR: David Miller. SCR: Dalton Trumbo. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Gena Rowlands, Walter Matthau, Michael Kane. (1962) LOS OLVIDADOS (THE YOUNG AND THE DAMNED) A young boy named Pedro lives in the festering slums of Mexico City, where he and other destitute youths are drawn into a brutal cycle of violence and crime. 1950, 80 min, 35mm, Mexico. Directed by Luis Buñuel; written by Luis Alcoriza and Luis Buñuel; with Estela Inda, Miguel Inclan, Alfonso Mejia, Roberto Cobo. LOS PUNKS: WE ARE ALL WE HAVE Punk rock is thriving in the backyards of South Central and East Los Angeles. A cobbled-together family of Hispanic teens and young adults comprise the scene: bands, fans, production, marketing, and security interwoven into a sub-culture of thrash and noise and pits. The sense of belonging is palpable; emotional bonds fostered among good families and those broken, poverty and wealth, adolescence and maturity, with the music emanating a magnetic chorus for all to sing together. Los Punks: We Are All We Have is a documentary feature film honestly and sincerely portraying this vibrant ‘DIY’ community. Running time: 79 minutes. Directed by Angela Boatwright. Followed by a Q&A with Angela Boatwright and members of the L.A. backyard punk scene. Loulou In a crowded nightclub, Nelly (Isabelle Huppert), bourgeois-bred and married, takes her passions out for an air. She finds herself with Depardieu’s happy, drunken lout, leaves with him, and stays with him. Director Maurice Pialat explores a woman's multifarious desires for sexual liberation, Gérard Depardieu graciously playing along, calibrating his hypersexual character to suit Nelly's perceptions, both of them in it, not forever after, but until desire is played out. 35mm, color, in French with English subtitles, 110 min. DIR: Maurice Pialat. SCR: Arlette Langmann. CAST: Isabelle Huppert, Gérard Depardieu, Guy Marchand. (France, 1980) MERRY-GO-ROUND Originally conceived as part of the “Girls of Fire” tetralogy (later retitled Scenes From a Parallel Life), which began with Duelle & Noroît, Merry-Go-Round would ultimately stretch Rivette and all those involved to their limits (Last Tango in Paris’ Maria Schneider eventually walked off set). Described by Rivette as a simple story wherein “two people get together because a third, who has arranged to meet them, does not show up,” Merry-Go-Round feels like waking up from a dream that might have been a nightmare. With periodic interludes to alternate realities and dreamscapes, this sometimes maddeningly circuitous film, posing as an espionage thriller loaded with symbolism and macguffins at every turn—mysterious phone calls, anonymous notes, empty graves, sand dunes, and a seemingly endless string of X-marks-the-spots—but ultimately reveals itself to be far more interested in the game of looking than resolution itself. Bolstered by Rivette’s perverse version of a Greek chorus (an improv jazz clarinetist and a double bass player), Merry-Go-Round is bursting with passion and energy, and is one of cinema’s greatest experiments. Dir. Jacques Rivette, 1981, Digital Presentation, 160 min. MISS SHARON JONES Sharon Jones is a true soul survivor. She’s been called “the female James Brown” for the energy she brings to the stage backed by her band The Dap-Kings. That energy is the fuel for a study of contrasts in Miss Sharon Jones!, as we follow her on an emotional journey as she goes through chemotherapy and struggles to mount a comeback show at New York’s Beacon Theater. This story finds its perfect match in director Barbara Kopple, another soulful talent and two-time Oscar winner for Harlan County, USA and American Dream, whose career also includes studies of performers in Wild Man Blues and Shut Up and Sing! Kopple’s supreme skill at observational filmmaking shines through as she captures the highs and lows of Jones’ efforts to battle cancer and keep her band together. We watch as the band completes its 2014 album Give the People What They Want. By the end of this film, what you’ll want is more Sharon Jones. Dir. Barbara Kopple, 2015, DCP, 93 min. NEW WORKS SALON XXXV: Braunschweiler, Levin, O’Dwyer, Vargas, Verdin The New Works Salons series is a casual forum for the presentation and discussion of new works in film, video, sound, and performance, with local and visiting artists in-person to introduce their work, curated by Rick Bahto. This program features: Marco Braunschweiler will show the first three films in his Monkey Series, an in-progress album of 15–18 videos that loosely follows the narrative structure of James Joyce’s Ulysses, along with a selection of other short video works. New York-based artist Mikael Levin’s At Work; Me, My Brother, Our Father. For this short video, Mikael Levin filmed himself printing in his darkroom, filmed his brother painting in his studio, and re-edited old footage of his father writing in his beachside cottage. We see each engaged in his work; method and workspace giving form to the interiority of the creative process. (Mikael Levin, Brooklyn, NY 2016; Eli Levin, Apodaca, NM 2013; Meyer Levin, Beit Yanai, Israel 1970). Deirdre O’Dwyer will show a new hand-drawn animation about the artist Tom Tierney (1928–2014), who published at least 400 paper-doll books in his lifetime. The film is a remembrance of his hands, set to his own voice. O’Dwyer drew this film, tracing iPhone footage of a conversation between Tom Tierney and Sarah Jacoby, another fan he welcomed into his home and studio in Smithville, Texas, in January 2014. Walter Vargas will show his new video A cooking experiment (for Internet consumption only), and Pedro Verdin will show prologue to the ending, a video documenting two conversations occurring simultaneously in Northern California. NOROIT On a foggy island off the shore of nowhere, in an unnamed 12th Century castle, a merry band of sartorially-inclined pirates coexist outside of relative or urgent time in Jacques Rivette’s adventurous Noroît, the endlessly anachronistic sister film to 1976’s Duelle. The title—a spin on a phrase meaning “the wind from the North West”—is as playful as the bodily improv and unrehearsed performance that drive this singular, sumptuous work, which hinges on ebbing relationships in a predominantly matriarchal collective of thieves. The omnipresent full moon, hanging like the threat of death each night, serves as a visual reminder of the flat, planar time in which Rivette freely experiments with the conventions of both Western theater and kabuki tradition, housed in the arc of a Jacobean revenge tragedy. With live, improvised music as spontaneous as the dynamic and deranged performances from a sublime cast of captivating female leads, this third film in Rivette’s “Dream Cycle” abstracts its narrative beyond verbal expression and into a realm where physical acts are the most potent form of communication. Dir. Jacques Rivette, 1976, digital presentation, 145 min. ON THE SILVER GLOBE A three-hour spaceman journey straight into the center of Andrzej Zulawski’s poetic heart, On the Silver Globe is the director’s most phantasmagorical film. In 1976, Zulawski embarked on the largest-scale film production in Polish history, and over the course of two intense years, executed an eye-popping, grandiloquent sci-fi epic concerning astronauts who crash-land on the moon and kickstart their own bizarre, primitive society. Sadly, the Polish government deemed the film subversive, shut the production down just before shooting was completed, and destroyed its film print materials, sets, and impossibly lush costumes. Ten years later, using secret footage, Zulawski was able to piece together a version of the film that came as close as possible to his original vision — and the results will defy your mind, as even in its reconstituted form, On the Silver Globe is a true brainquake that effortlessly takes you to dizzying heights, and just keeps on elevating. Dir. Andrzej Zulawski, 1977/1988, DCP, 166 min. Pà negre The consequences of the Spanish Civil War in the rural areas of Catalunya are recalled in all their human and political brutality. The eyes of the children, innocent victims of a long and arbitrary war, intensify the drama of this rare, beautiful feature spoken in Catalan, which has received multiple awards in Spain. 35mm, color, in Catalan with English subtitles, 108 min. DIR/SCR: Agusti Villaronga. CAST: Francesc Colomer, Marina Comas, Nora Navas. (2010) Paths of Glory Kirk Douglas gives a powerful performance as an honorable French Army officer who, on orders from his superiors, must lead his men on a doomed mission to wrest control of a German-held hill in WWI France. A quintessential Douglas role pitting the hero against dire circumstance, the film also represented a fortuitous pairing of Douglas' and director Stanley Kubrick's moral temperaments. 35mm, b/w, 90 min. DIR: Stanley Kubrick. SCR: Stanley Kubrick, Calder Willingham. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, Adolphe Menjou, George Macready. (1958) THE PEOPLE VS. FRITZ BAUER Germany, 1957. Attorney General Fritz Bauer receives crucial evidence on the whereabouts of SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Adolf Eichmann. The lieutenant colonel, responsible for the mass deportation of the Jews, is allegedly hiding in Buenos Aires. Bauer, himself Jewish, has been trying to take crimes from the Third Reich to court ever since his return from Danish exile. However, with no success so far due to the fierce German determination to repress its sinister past. Because of his distrust in the German justice system, Fritz Bauer contacts the Israeli secret service Mossad, and, by doing so, commits treason. Bauer is not seeking revenge for the Holocaust ?? he is concerned with the German future. Running time: 105 minutes. In German, with English subtitles. PIN: A PLASTIC NIGHTMARE Ready for a Canadian psychosexual Polanski-esque brainbomb you’ll never be able to unsee? Pin: A Plastic Nightmare, with its strong echoes of Psycho, has an absurd central obsession: a skinless, plastic medical dummy that’s the catalyst to truly bizarre power games of incest, repression and murderous schizoid behavior. An overly strict doctor/ventriloquist mimes the voice of “Pin” for his patients; they, and the doctor’s preppy children are awestruck by the magic. However, the spell is a tad more complicated for the doctor’s son Leon, when he witnesses a lonely nurse sexually violate “Pin” after hours -- resulting in the kid’s brain splitting in two. A decade later, following their parents’ unexpected fatal auto accident, the magical delusion of “Pin” lingers on for Leon when the dummy "moves in" at their now-unsupervised house. (1988) PLUG + MECHANICAL EYE Please join us as we celebrate 2 sister microcinemas bringing the love to the people many miles away. We are honored to host Caitlin Horsmon (from Plug Cinema in Kansas City Missouri) and Charlotte Taylor (from Mechanical Eye in Asheville, North Carolina) as they wind their way through Los Angeles. POSSE Kirk Douglas produced and directed this whimsical revisionist Western concerning a U.S. marshal who pursues and nabs a notorious train robber (Bruce Dern) for political gain in his pursuit of a Senate seat. But Marshal Nightingale's ego is his Achilles' heel, which his prisoner knows, and uses to his advantage. Their delightful cat-and-mouse game capitalizes on the actors' generational difference, and on Douglas' own self-deprecating sense of humor. 35mm, color, 93 min. DIR: Kirk Douglas. SCR: William S. Roberts, Christopher Knopf. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Bruce Dern, Bo Hopkins, James Stacy. (1975) POSSESSION Capturing the energy generated when two people whose lives are so intensely fused and woven are forcibly split, Possession is an emotional nuclear explosion. If all we were given were its operatic and shamanistic performances by leads Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill, it’s impossible-to-describe music by Andrzej Korzynski, and its masterful, hyper-kinetical ballet of camera choreography — all delivered with the force of a long-suppressed traumatic memory — then Possession would already be the best film about divorce ever filmed. But when the angels and demons of our inner nature are literally incarnated in phantasmagorical form — the kind requiring the talents of Oscar-winning creature FX master Carlo Rambaldi (who, instead of making a cutey-pie “E.T.”, concocts a tentacled Lovecraftian octo-sex-demon) — you have the kind of explosively cathartic and entertaining experience that leads to movie-lover nirvanic bliss. Dir. Andrzej Zulawski, 1981, 35mm restoration, 123 min. PRIMATE Wiseman’s visit to the Yerkes National Primate Research Center is a meticulous study of the processes used to test and document the behavior of various apes, including orangutans, chimps, and gorillas. Equal parts interspecies anthropological study and a slow-cooking horror-show, you’re just as likely to smile at nurses giving baby chimps little milk bottles and changing their diapers as you are to gasp at the harvesting of a gibbon’s brain. Wiseman balances long takes of surgery and observation with quick close-ups of the various instruments and machines used, representing increasingly experimental (think mad-scientist) procedures in excruciating detail, without sacrificing the sense of elapsed time. Dir. Frederick Wiseman, 1974, 16mm, 105 min. QUEEN OF THE UNDERGROUND: THE FILMS OF SARAH JACOBSON Before leaving this world all too soon at age 32, Sarah Jacobson left an indelible mark on underground filmmaking as an outspoken feminist proponent of the D.I.Y. ethos. A student of George Kuchar’s unbridled non-conformist enthusiasm, she had the freshly xeroxed news from the underground to back up her 8mm manifestos. Armed with soundtracks featuring the likes of Mudhoney and Heavens to Betsy, Jacobson took her subversive films on the road, producing and promoting them with the help of her cool mom and a network of punk zine tape traders. Her debut, I Was A Teenage Serial Killer, is a raw, angry 19-year-old’s rebel yell for feminist vengeance that gender-flips the slasher movie script with bristling vitality. Her feature, Mary Jane’s Not A Virgin Anymore, visits the world of a punk rock movie theater to tell the story of an intellectual young woman’s sexual awakening. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to push popcorn with a rogue’s gallery of punks, drunks, poseurs, collector freaks and future best friends, or even if you have, this is your movie. Justly praised by Roger Ebert and Kim Gordon alike, these films are more than just totally 90’s time capsules, they’re also the ultimate cinematic retort to every condescending straight white catcalling male slob you’ve ever gotten mixed up with. I Was A Teenage Serial Killer, dir. Sarah Jacobson, 1992, 16mm, 27min. Mary Jane’s Not A Virgin Anymore, dir. Sarah Jacobson, 1997, 16mm, 98min. Raising Bertie The inexorable changing of the seasons, beautifully shot by cinematographer Jon Stuyvesant, lends a poetic undercurrent to director Margaret Byrne’s intensely personal six-year portrait of three young African American boys growing into adulthood in rural Bertie County, North Carolina. All students at The Hive, an alternative school for struggling kids, until its funding gets cut, Byrne’s subjects fight to define themselves and build futures in an environment where opportunities are hard to find. DCP, color, 100 min. (2016) DIR: Margaret Byrne. In-person: Margaret Byrne. Preceded by: * Trick Bag (1974) Bringing their cameras to parks, street corners, factory gates and homes around Chicago, Kartemquin filmmakers sound the state of race relations in the city in this remarkable document that reverberates into the contemporary moment. 16mm, b/w, 21 min. DIR: Kartemquin Films, Rising Up Angry, Columbia College. Raza Adapted from a novel by Francisco Franco (writing under a pseudonym) and produced with the support of the state apparatus without acknowledging Franco's authorship, this film illustrates the experiences of a Galician family whose divided loyalties are finally aligned with the Nationalists as Franco rises to power. Adapted after 1945 for a new release with Fascist elements replaced by anti-communist ones, this original version was long thought lost, but can now be appreciated as the ultimate ideological appeal by the new government to Nationalist sentiment. 35mm, b/w, in Spanish with English subtitles, 113 min. DIR: José Luis Sáenz de Heredia. SCR: J.L. Sáenz de Heredia, Antonio Román. CAST: Alfredo Mayo, Ana Mariscal, José Nieto. (Spain, 1941) SHOT! THE PSYCHO-SPIRITUAL MANTRA OF ROCK SHOT! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock is an odyssey into the colorful and bohemian tales of rock ‘n’ roll’s history. A cinematic adventure that delves deep into the mind of one of rock’s greatest living photographers: Mick Rock. Told through the poignant lens of rock ‘n’ roll mythology, icon-maker, psychedelic explorer, poet and custodian of dreams, Mick Rock navigates his story from the glam rock shimmer of London to the snarl of NYC punk, and deep into the new millennium. Dir. Barnaby Clay, 2016, DCP, 95 min. Q&A Moderated by Michael Des Barres SIDEMEN: LONG ROAD TO GLORY Sidemen : Long Road To Glory is an intimate look at the lives and legacies of three legendary bluesmen; piano player Pinetop Perkins, drummer Willie ‘Big Eyes’ Smith and guitarist Hubert Sumlin, all Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf sidemen. The film captures some of the last interviews and final live performances, before their deaths in 2011. The historic live shows are accompanied by performances and personal insights from many of the blues and rock stars these legendary musicians inspired including; Bonnie Raitt, Gregg Allman, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Tim Reynolds, Shemekia Copeland, Robby Krieger, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Joe Perry, Joe Bonamassa and Johnny Winter. Dir. Scott Rosenbaum, 2016, DCP, 77 min. Strangers When We Meet A pas-de-deux of lonely suburban souls, Strangers When We Meet pairs a successful, married architect (Kirk Douglas) with an attractive married neighbor (Kim Novak), both misunderstood by their spouses. They begin a furtive affair, around which discussions of fulfillment, forgiveness, authenticity and desire grow like tendrils. Modern in its attitudes, the film also develops a theme of disaffection and world-weariness worthy of Douglas Sirk. 35mm, color, 117 min. DIR: Richard Quine. SCR: Evan Hunter. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Kim Novak, Ernie Kovacs, Barbara Rush. (1960) SYL JOHNSON: ANY WAY THE WIND BLOWS Fans of 1960s R&B music know Syl Johnson as an influential African-American artist who cut under-appreciated classics like “Come On Sock It To Me” and “Is It Because I’m Black.” Despite enormous talent and a dynamic stage presence, mainstream success never happened for Syl. He drifted into obscurity while his smooth, sexy-voiced rival Al Green (“Let’s Stay Together”) zoomed to stardom. Syl eventually quit music and opened a chain of fast-food fish restaurants after disco crushed the memory of soul. Story over, right? Not so fast. Payback’s a bitch, and Syl—a righteously aggrieved curmudgeon—took his revenge in a most satisfying way. The opening seconds of his 1967 song “Different Strokes”—primal grunts over a stark drumbeat with Minnie Riperton’s laughter swirling overhead—became one of the most sampled breakbeats in hip-hop, and Syl turned into a litigation machine. And he was a natural! Syl got so much money from RZA and the Wu-Tang Clan that he now calls his home “The House That Wu Built.” While he chased down more people to sue, a new generation of fans discovered his classic records through the reissue record label Numero Group, and Syl’s on-stage career was reborn. With a funky, energetic soundtrack, an original score by Yo La Tengo, and interviews with hip-hop icons RZA, Prince Paul, Jazzy Jay, and Peanut Butter Wolf, this documentary is a buoyant and satisfying celebration of an unsung legend who stuck around around long enough to finally enjoy his redemption. Dir. Robert Hatch-Miller, 2015, DCP, 85 min. TARGET VIDEO: STAND UP & SCREAM Stand-Up & Scream is a 90 min. digital film produced by Joe Rees & the Targetvideo77 group featuring documented footage of selected events that shaped the influential punk rock social/policial scene from 1978-1983. The film includes raw, intense performances by Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, Bad Brains, the Germs, the Damned, Crime, Mutants, the Bags, X, Flipper, Screamers, the Dils, Negative Trend, Sleepers, the Ramones, Offs, the Cramps, CH3, the Jim Carroll Band, Crucifix, Toxic Reasons, Middle Class, Circle Jerks, Mau Maus, Noh Mercy, Iggy Pop, John Lydon, the Avengers, KGB and more! With Q&A. Taylor Chain I: A Story in a Union Local The down-and-dirty politics and persuasion of a labor dispute take center stage in this brutally honest document of a seven-week strike at a chain manufacturing plant in Indiana. Digital Video, b/w, 34 min. DIR: Jerry Blumenthal, Gordon Quinn. (1980) Taylor Chain II: A Story of Collective Bargaining Three years after they first visited the workers at Taylor Chain, Kartemquin filmmakers returned to find the factory’s future increasingly uncertain and tensions high as a radically reduced workforce begins talks with a new management team. Digital Video, color, 31 min. DIR: Jerry Blumenthal, Gordon Quinn. (1983) THE THIRD PART OF THE NIGHT Emerging right out of the gate with a debut as emotionally potent and stylistically inventive as any of his dazzling later works, Andrzej Zulawski’s masterful fever dream The Third Part of the Night is an elliptical wonder on par with the most mind-stretching intellectual Moebius strips of Tarkovsky and David Lynch. Based on the real-life experiences of Zulawski’s father during the Nazi occupation of Poland, the film follows a fugitive who, after witnessing the murder of his wife and child, is hurled into a life that literally is not his own. Littered with trapdoors, doubles, and wormholes, Zulawski creates a cinematic world on the verge of collapse, where doppelgangers and dread abound alongside the true untold story of a Nazi vaccine laboratory, where Jews and members of the resistance were “employed” as feeders for parasites infected with typhus (thus protecting them from persecution). It’s a history that’s mind-bogglingly fascinating on its own; in Zulawski’s hands, it’s one of the most unique war films ever created. Dir. Andrzej Zulawski, 1971, DCP, 105 min. TICKET TO WRITE: THE GOLDEN AGE OF ROCK MUSIC JOURNALISM “We were rock stars!” explains former Creem editor Jaan Uhelszki. From 1966-81, music magazines gave counter culture its literary wit—and the writers were as flamboyant as the rock stars. Music critics like Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer, Ben Fong-Torres, Gene Sculatti, Sandy Pearlman, Susan Whitall, Bill Holdship, and Sylvie Simmons developed followings of thousands of music listeners who loyally read their writing in the pages of Crawdaddy, Rolling Stone, Creem, Circus, Hit Parader, Trouser Press, New York Rocker, Who Put the Bomp, Mojo and countless other zines, alt-weeklies, and student rags. However, when MTV emerged in 1981, the magazines saw their market share collapse as America shifted from print media to cable television—young people wanted their MTV. Follow the rise and fall of the rock n’ roll magazine! Dir. Raul Sandelin, 2016, Digital Presentation, 85 min. Q&A with filmmakers and rock journalist guest panel! TITICUT FOLLIES The first feature-length effort by lawyer-turned-documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, Titicut Follies is a cinéma-vérité portrait of the appalling patient conditions inside Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, a correctional institution in Massachusetts. Over the course of 29 days–what would become the typical amount of time for the filmmaker to spend in each of the American institutions he depicted over the course of his 50 years of filmmaking–Wiseman and his synchronized-sound 16mm camera unflinchingly capture the unsanitary living environment and basic human rights violations nakedly unfolding before him. Banned upon its 1967 release due to questions of ethics and patients’ rights, Titicut never shies away from the painful, harsh realities of existence inside a mental institution, marking newcomer Wiseman almost instantly as the quintessential observational filmmaker of contemporary institutional life in America. 35mm Restoration courtesy of the Library of Congress. Dir Frederick Wiseman, 1967, 35mm, 84 min. Frederick Wiseman in person (8/27 screening only) TOUGH GUYS Old-time hoods Harry Doyle (Burt Lancaster) and Archie Long (Kirk Douglas) are released from prison after serving a thirty-year sentence for train robbery. Finding a disorienting world on the outside, and one decidedly inhospitable to older people, they do what the situation (and the genre) demand and begin planning their next heist, in this buoyant reunion of two charismatic stars. 35mm, color, 103 min. DIR: Jeff Kanew. SCR: James Orr, Jim Cruickshank. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Charles Durning, Dana Carvey. (1986) Two Weeks in Another Town Jack Andrus (Kirk Douglas) is a washed-up actor whose reckless living effectively ended his career. Summoned to Rome by Maurice Kruger (Edward G. Robinson), his onetime director and friend, Jack is unenthused about the opportunity to coach actors in dubbing films to English. But when Kruger is taken ill and Jack is given the opportunity to direct, he comes alive, stepping up creatively, and taking time to experience integrity, friendship and love. 35mm, color, 107 min. DIR: Vincente Minnelli. SCR: Charles Schnee. CAST: Kirk Douglas, Edward G. Robinson, Daliah Lavi, George Hamilton. (1962) UGLY, DIRTY AND BAD BRUTTI, SPORCHI E CATTIV 1976, Film Movement, 115 min, Italy, Dir: Ettore Scola Ettore Scola earned a Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival for this tragicomic portrait of a very dysfunctional family. Patriarch/slumlord Giacinto Mazzatella (Nino Manfredi) lives in a Roman ghetto, sharing a tiny shack with a legion of relatives. Giacinto has money from an accident settlement, but doesn’t share it with his family; when he starts spending it on a prostitute, his wife and sons plot against him. This gleefully offensive film was also released as DOWN AND DIRTY. In Italian with English subtitles. Under the Sun of Satan For the film that would win him the Palme d’Or at Cannes, director Maurice Pialat adapted a novel by Bernanos—an author more famously filmed twice by Bresson. The result is a fearless, beautiful, intense film about a priest (Gérard Depardieu), haunted by doubts and dogged by Satan as he struggles to the save the soul of Sandrine Bonnaire’s country waif, a girl both desired and despised, and a murderer, who is always shot in a golden light. 35mm, color, in French with English subtitles, 97 min. DIR: Maurice Pialat. SCR: Maurice Pialat. CAST: Gérard Depardieu, Sandrine Bonnaire, Maurice Pialat. (France, 1987)