|
no flash
|
|
|
no flash
|
|
 |
-Viewing All-
Israel/Australia, 2008, Tatia Rosenthal
This stop-motion animated film, based on the stories of contemporary Israeli writer Etgar Keret (who co-wrote the screenplay), is not a wacky, manic, mindless, family-friendly fantasy like most cartoon features. On the contrary, it’s a thoughtful, grown-up slice of real life, with a dollop of surrealism. The title refers to the price of a self-help manual that promises to reveal the meaning of life. The book is purchased by an aimless young man who lives with his father in a ramshackle apartment building, where he and his neighbors—ranging from a profane angel who used to be a homeless person to a supermodel obsessed with hairlessness—pursue their own dreams of happiness and fulfillment. Geoffrey Rush and Anthony LaPaglia supply some of the voices. “An artful film that expresses deep thoughts, lightly.” –Entertainment Weekly. Adults only! Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 78 min. www.9dollars99movie.com
| Oct 02 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
| Oct 03 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
| Oct 04 (Sun) - 8:40PM |
USA, 2009, Jonathan Parker
This funny, knowing, yet affectionate spoof of the downtown New York art scene tells of a serious composer of difficult, dissonant music (Adam Goldberg) who is resentful of his painter brother’s commercial success. But in time he too becomes the darling of his bro’s Chelsea gallery owner (Marley Shelton of Grindhouse). From the director of Bartleby; original music by Pulitzer Prize-winner David Lang. “The first film since Art School Confidential to seriously confront issues befuddling artists torn between their drives for personal expression and a demanding marketplace.” –Variety. Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 96 min. www.untitled-themovie.com
Show Times| Jan 23 (Sat) - 7:10PM |
| Jan 24 (Sun) - 8:55PM |
New 35mm Color Print!
Britain, 1971, Richard Fleischer
Unavailable on DVD in the U.S., this little-known serial-killer chiller, which has been restored and re-released in a new print, is being hailed as a lost masterpiece. Based on a true case, the film stars Richard Attenborough as Richard Christie, a meek, bald, bespectacled man who, during the 1940s, became one of Britain’s most notorious mass murderers. Richard Fleischer’s matter-of-fact procedural, shot on the same street of row houses where the actual crimes took place, “will work its way into your nightmares, guaranteed” (Glenn Kenny). “Five stars (highest rating)…(An) underseen gem.” –Time Out New York (6/25/09). Adults only! With John Hurt. Cleveland revival premiere. 111 min.
| Oct 30 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
| Oct 31 (Sat) - 9:30PM |
USA, 1979, Steven Spielberg
In between Close Encounters and Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven Spielberg made this mammoth, much-maligned WWII farce about the panic that ensues in Los Angeles in the days after Pearl Harbor when a Japanese sub is spotted off the California coast. Uneven as comedy, it soars as awesome big-screen spectacle. The hip, all-star cast includes John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Robert Stack, John Candy, Penny Marshall, Toshiro Mifune, Christopher Lee, Elisha Cook Jr., Warren Oates, Slim Pickens, and Lionel Stander, among many others. Music by John Williams. 35mm color & scope studio archive print! 120 min.
| Mar 20 (Fri) - 9:30PM |
| Mar 21 (Sat) - 7:00PM |
2009 BRITISH TELEVISION ADVERTISING AWARDS
Britain, 2008, various directors Why does this annual collection of award-winning British television, internet, and cinema commercials draw thousands of viewers to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis every year? (2008 attendance was over 20,000!) Well, because it’s pretty darn entertaining. And with almost 100 adverts included, you’re bound to discover many that you like. Cleveland premiere. Beta SP. 80 min. Note: the 2008 BTAA winners will show at the Cleveland Museum of Art Nov. 13-15; go to www.clevelandart.org/film for details. Special thanks to Peter Bigg, BTAA administrator.
| Dec 03 (Thu) - 6:30PM |
| Dec 04 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
At 33rd Cleveland Int’l Film Festival
Tower City Cinemas, Downtown Cleveland
24 CITY
ER SHI SI CHENG
China/Hong Kong/Japan, 2008, Jia Zhang-ke
Once again the Cinematheque partners with the Cleveland Film Society on the presentation of a film at the Cleveland Int’l Film Festival (March 19-29 at Tower City Cinemas). 24 City is the most recent work by longtime Cinematheque favorite Jia Zhang-ke (Platform, The World, Still Life) and continues his career-long obsession with chronicling the human cost of China’s transformation from Communism to capitalism. The focus here is on an airplane and munitions factory being demolished for luxury apartments, and on the plant’s former workers, who speak movingly about their lives. But because Jia is not a conventional filmmaker, he throws some fictional storylines into the mix, along with some well-known Chinese actors (Joan Chen, et al.). Cleveland premiere. Mandarin with subtitles. 35mm. 107 min. Special admission $10 (Cleveland Film Society members and seniors & students $8) when ticket code CINE is used online at www.clevelandfilm.org, over the phone at 877-304-FILM, or in person at the CIFF Store in Tower City Cinemas or at the theatre box office. Student & senior tickets sold only on day of show. No Cinematheque passes, twofers, or radio winners. CINE code can also be used for discount price to any CIFF film screening!
Show Times| Mar 20 (Fri) - 2:15PM |
| Mar 22 (Sun) - 6:50PM |
35 RHUMS
France/Germany, 2008, Claire Denis
Claire (Beau Travail) Denis’ exquisite, achingly tender and poignant new film is one of the most acclaimed movies of the year. On 12/6/09 it had an overall metacritic.com score of 94 out of 100, and critics have used words like “sublime” and “profound” to describe it. A radiant and loving tribute to the gentle domestic dramas of Japan’s Yasujiro Ozu (see Late Spring), the film tells of a widowed father who realizes that his beloved college-age daughter will soon leave him and live on her own, thus fracturing a family that is refreshingly functional by movie standards. “French art house cinema at its unpretentious best.” –Hollywood Reporter. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 100 min. Presentation of this film supported by a generous grant from La Maison Française de Cleveland. www.cinemaguild.com/35shots/
Show Times| Feb 05 (Fri) - 9:40PM |
| Feb 06 (Sat) - 7:25PM |
| Feb 07 (Sun) - 8:45PM |
OTTO E MEZZO
Italy, 1963, Federico Fellini Federico Fellini’s semi-autobiographical fantasy is one of the landmarks of world cinema! Marcello Mastroianni plays a hugely successful Italian film director who finds himself at a creative impasse just as he is about to embark on his most elaborate project yet, expected by everyone to top all of his others. To escape the fans, media vultures, and industry sycophants who swarm around him like flies, he retreats into private fantasies and nostalgic reveries – all impeccably realized by maestro Fellini. Voted ninth best movie of all time in the most recent (2002) Sight and Sound magazine poll of international film critics. Subtitles. 35mm. 135 min.
Show Times| Nov 21 (Sat) - 7:00PM |
| Nov 22 (Sun) - 8:15PM |
UN CONTE DE NOËL
France, 2008, Arnaud Desplechin
Perhaps the best movie of 2008! A dysfunctional French family, headed by Catherine Deneuve, reunites for a cacophonous, confrontational, but often comic Christmas at their large, splendid old house. Encompassing sibling resentment, infidelity, and cancer as well as traditional holiday rituals like shopping, tree trimming, and Midnight Mass, this expansive movie teems with interesting, intersecting characters and shows affection for all of them. The film is also a smorgasbord of New Wave techniques and other bits of movie-movie inventiveness; could it be an allegory about the state of cinema today? Unmissable! With Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Devos, and Chiarra Mastroianni. 35mm color & scope print! Subtitles. 150 min.
Show Times| Mar 14 (Sat) - 7:00PM |
| Mar 15 (Sun) - 3:30PM |
A CITY OF SADNESS (BEI QING CHENG SHI)
Cinematheque Elite
New 35mm Color Print!
Hong Kong/Taiwan, 1989, Hou Hsiao-hsien
Here, from Asia, is a new 35mm color print of one of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s major early films, winner of the top prize at the 1989 Venice Film Festival! It’s a sweeping historical epic that follows a large Taiwanese family during the tumultuous years 1945-1949, when the island was returned to China after five decades of Japanese rule, civil war raged on the Chinese mainland, and the Taiwanese people rebelled against Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT) government. This was the first movie to address the long-taboo 228 Incident of 1947, when KMT troops massacred thousands of Taiwanese people. Subtitles. 35mm. 157 min. Special admission $12, Cinematheque members and CIA students & staff $8; no passes, twofers, or radio winners. Thanks to Bernardo Rondeau, Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
| Oct 08 (Thu) - 7:00PM |
| Oct 11 (Sun) - 8:40PM |
Sunday, March 1, at 3:00 pm
David Lean 101
35mm Studio Archive Print!
A PASSAGE TO INDIA
Britain, 1984, David Lean
David Lean’s exquisite final film, based on E.M. Forster’s novel, tells of a sheltered but well-educated British woman (Judy Davis) who travels to colonial 1924 India to see her fiancé, a local magistrate. Hoping to experience the “real India,” she gets more than she anticipated during a life-changing visit to the Marabar Caves, where she claims her Indian guide raped her. Nominated for 11 Oscars (and winning two), the movie co-stars Alec Guinness, James Fox, Victor Banerjee, and Oscar winner Peggy Ashcroft. 35mm color print from the Sony Pictures studio archive! 163 min.
Show Times| Mar 01 (Sun) - 3:00PM |
Saturday, February 7, at 7:20 pm &
Sunday, February 8, at 6:45 pm
A SECRET
UN SECRET
France, 2007, Claude Miller
Mathieu Amalric, Ludivine Sagnier, and Julie Depardieu star in the ravishingly photographed new film by veteran French helmer Claude Miller, one of the most acclaimed movies of 2008. Set in post-WWII Paris, the film focuses on a Jewish teenager who stumbles upon some skeletons in his family’s closet—transgressions that link them to the Holocaust. “A remarkable film with an unusual story.” –Boxoffice. French, Yiddish, and German with subtitles. 35mm. 105 min. www.strandreleasing.com See previous blurb for an earlier film by Claude Miller.
Show Times| Feb 07 (Sat) - 7:20PM |
| Feb 08 (Sun) - 6:45PM |
Cinema with a Smile
USA, 1964, Blake Edwards
In the second—and best—of the “Pink Panther” films, bumbling Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) tries to prove that a French maid (Elke Sommer) is innocent of murder. This film introduced series stalwarts Commissioner Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) and Kato/Cato (Burt Kwouk). With George Sanders. “(The) second Inspector Clouseau comedy is far and away the funniest...Gaspingly hilarious.” –Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide. 35mm color & scope print! 101 min.
| Aug 01 (Sat) - 9:15PM |
| Aug 02 (Sun) - 1:00PM |
A WOMAN IN BERLIN (ANONYMA: EINE FRAU IN BERLIN)
Germany/Poland, 2008, Max Färberböck
The long-suppressed subject of the mass rape of German women during the 1945 invasion of Berlin by the victorious Red Army is the focus of this powerful new drama from the director of Aimée & Jaguar. Based on the anonymous diary of an actual WWII rape victim, the film tells of a much-violated German civilian (Nina Hoss of Yella and Jerichow) who enters into a complex love-hate relationship with a Russian officer in order to secure some protection. “NYT Critics’ Pick…That the film manages to be understated, calm and intelligent in spite of its wrenching subject matter is perhaps its most impressive accomplishment.” –The NY Times. With Irm Hermann and Rüdiger Vogler. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 131 min. www.strandreleasing.com
| Oct 17 (Sat) - 7:00PM |
| Oct 18 (Sun) - 3:45PM |
Thursday, February 5, at 7:00 pm &
Saturday, February 7, at 9:25 pm
ABSURDISTAN
Germany, 2008, Veit Helmer
Veit Helmer, helmer of the 1999 Cinematheque cult hit Tuvalu, resurfaces with another absurdist comic fable mostly devoid of dialogue. Set in a remote and forgotten desert mountain village in the former Soviet Union, the movie chronicles a standoff between the sexes: the local women decide to withhold sex until their lazy men fix the pipeline that carries the village’s water supply. “A delightful fable…A treat for the eyes and funny bone.” –Variety. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 88 min. www.firstrunfeatures.com
Show Times| Feb 05 (Thu) - 7:00PM |
| Feb 07 (Sat) - 9:25PM |
USA, 2007, Julie Taymor
Largely undervalued by film critics and overlooked by audiences, Julie Taymor’s most recent film contains some of the decade’s most dazzling screen sequences. (The music ain’t bad either.) 33 Beatles songs advance a rather superficial (and sometimes too literal-minded) story of love and rebellion during the turbulent 1960s, but the movie sweeps you along with a boldness and inventiveness sadly lacking in most contemporary movies. Evan Rachel Wood stars, with special appearances by Bono, Eddie Izzard, Joe Cocker, Salma Hayek, and others. 35mm color & scope print! 133 min. Followed by a surprise short subject.
| Jun 20 (Sat) - 7:05PM |
Canada/Britain/France, 2009, Jennifer Baichwal
The new documentary from the maker of Manufactured Landscapes uses interviews with people who have survived lightning strikes as a springboard to a consideration of accidents, chance, fate, and our collective quest to make sense out of tragedy. Novelist Paul Auster and musician Fred Frith are among those interviewed. “An undeniably provocative head-trip, laced with the most spectacular lightning-storm footage I’ve ever seen.” –Salon. Cleveland premiere. Some subtitles. 35mm. 76 min. www.zeitgeistfilms.com/actofgod
Show Times| Jan 21 (Thu) - 6:30PM |
| Jan 22 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
Germany/USA/Israel, 2008, Paul Schrader
Paul Schrader’s new film is one of the strangest and boldest movies of his long career. Jeff Goldblum (superb) plays Adam Stein, a German-Jewish clown, clairvoyant, and cabaret performer in pre-war Berlin. Subsequently sent to the death camps, he survives because a German commander (Willem Dafoe) finds him entertaining and useful. By the 1960s Stein is a guilt-ravaged patient at an Israeli psychiatric hospital for Holocaust survivors, though his ability to charm and seduce remains intact. From a novel by Yoram Kaniuk that has been likened to Catch-22 and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “One cannot recommend this film strongly enough.” –Village Voice. Adults only! Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 106 min.
| May 16 (Sat) - 7:25PM |
| May 17 (Sun) - 4:00PM |
USA, 2008, Antonio Campos
Made when he was only 24 (and had already been to Cannes twice with short films), the first feature by wunderkind Antonio Campos was also shown at Cannes and at the New York Film Festival. Shot in 35mm ‘scope and evoking Kubrick, Haneke, and Van Sant, the movie is a chilly, chilling portrait of a shy, web-obsessed young man at an East Coast prep school who accidentally videotapes the horrific death (by overdose) of two female students. Commissioned to make a movie memorializing his late classmates, the nascent filmmaker ends up creeping out everybody even more. “Almost frighteningly accomplished…High school as horror show.” –Village Voice. “Stands to be an essential document of what it was like to be a young person in the late ’00s.” –The Onion (A.V. Club). Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 107 min. www.ifcfilms.com/films/afterschool
| Jan 23 (Sat) - 9:10PM |
| Jan 24 (Sun) - 6:45PM |
New 35mm Color & Scope Print!
USA, 1979/2003, Ridley Scott
A cargo spaceship accidentally takes on an unwanted stowaway—a nasty, shape-shifting E.T. that thrives on human flesh—in this visually-stunning sci-fi/horror classic, seen here in a new 35mm print of the 2003 director’s cut! Ridley Scott’s film before Blade Runner stars Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, and Ian Holm. Adults only! Cleveland revival premiere. 116 min.
| Sep 19 (Sat) - 7:20PM |
| Sep 20 (Sun) - 8:30PM |
New 35mm Color Print!
USA, 1986, James Cameron
This sci-fi action-adventure-horror film (with feminist overtones) finds Warrant Officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) returning to the planet that spawned the deadly E.T. of the first film. Relentless action makes James Cameron’s sequel the equal of (if not superior to) Ridley Scott’s original. Cleveland revival premiere! 137 min.
| Sep 19 (Sat) - 9:35PM |
| Sep 24 (Thu) - 8:10PM |
Italy, 1973, Federico Fellini
This essential Fellini movie that won the 1974 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film really should have been included in our Nov-Dec “Nine by Fellini” series. It wasn’t because we had recently shown it—last April. But now we’re making amends. Amarcord means “I Remember,” and the movie is a magnificent dream/memory piece in which Fellini recalls his youth in the small Italian seaside town of Rimini during the Fascist era. It overflows with colorful characters and funny, bawdy, melancholy vignettes. The movie’s cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno supervised this new restoration, and Nino Rota composed the lilting music. Subtitles. 35mm. 123 min. www.janusfilms.com/amarcord
Show Times| Jan 09 (Sat) - 5:00PM |
| Jan 10 (Sun) - 4:00PM |
New, Restored 35mm Color Print!
Italy, 1973, Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini recalls his youth in the Italian seaside town of Rimini during the Fascist era in this beloved dream/memory piece that is full of colorful characters and funny, bawdy, melancholy vignettes. (The title means “I remember.”) The movie’s cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno supervised this new restoration. Won the 1974 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. 123 min. www.janusfilms.com/amarcord/
Show Times| Apr 04 (Sat) - 7:20PM |
| Apr 05 (Sun) - 3:45PM |
AMERICAN CASINO
USA, 2009, Leslie Cockburn
This lacerating investigation of the 2008 sub-prime mortgage meltdown starts on Wall Street and then moves to Main Street. Conditions in Baltimore and Southern California will shock you, and victims’ stories will break your heart. “An intimate, terrifying document that renders an incomprehensible slice of recent history in human terms.” –Salon.com Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 89 min. www.americancasinothemovie.com
| Dec 18 (Fri) - 7:00PM |
| Dec 19 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
USA/Canada, 2009, Cherien Dabis
This touching portrait of post-9/11 America focuses on a Palestinian divorcée who has moved with her teenage son from the West Bank to the promised land of small-town Illinois. The authentic insights in this movie derive from the fact that the film’s young Arab-American writer-director lived in the Midwest during the first Gulf War. With Hiam Abbass. “There's nothing bitter or cynical about Amreeka, which is directed with impish wit, an observant visual competence, and an open, conciliatory spirit.” –Village Voice. Cleveland premiere. Some subtitles. 35mm. 96 min. www.amreeka.com
Show Times| Jan 07 (Thu) - 8:40PM |
| Jan 10 (Sun) - 6:45PM |
AN EVENING OF BUSTER KEATON SHORT FILMS
A Special Event! Live Musical Accompaniment!
USA, 1920-22, Edward F. Cline, Buster KeatonThree of Buster Keaton’s funniest silent shorts—One Week (1920), in which he tries to assemble a pre-fab house; The Play House (1921), in which he plays every part; and Cops (1922), in which he is chased by an entire police force—will be wedded to ragtime melodies by Scott Joplin in this special program that features Cleveland Institute of Music doctoral student Shuai Bertalan-Wang on piano. The program was organized by CWRU Associate Professor of Film Studies Robert Spadoni (who will introduce the films) and is co-sponsored by the CWRU Department of English and the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities. 35mm. Total approx. 80 min. CWRU students & staff, Case Friends of English, and kids 12 & under $6.
Show Times| Nov 13 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
France/Britain/Belgium, 2007, François Ozon
This English-language film by veteran French helmer François Ozon (The Swimming Pool, 8 Women, Ricky) is an overstuffed period satire set in Edwardian England, where a poor grocer’s daughter (Romola Garai of Atonement and TV’s 2009 Emma) finds fame and fortune as a shallow and self-absorbed writer of trashy romance novels. With Sam Neill and Charlotte Rampling. Cleveland theatrical premiere. 35mm. 134 min. www.ifcfilms.com/films/angel
Show Times| Jan 16 (Sat) - 7:30PM |
| Jan 17 (Sun) - 8:20PM |
New 35mm Color Print
Japan, 1984, Hiroshi Teshigahara
One of our all-time favorites returns! The Japanese director of Woman in the Dunes lets his cameras prowl in and around, over and above some of Barcelona’s most beautiful and intricate buildings—all designed by the great Catalan architect Antonio Gaudi—in this mesmerizing, meditative art film. Music by Tōru Takemitsu. Subtitles. 72 min.
Show Times| Mar 27 (Fri) - 7:00PM |
| Mar 28 (Sat) - 7:00PM |
USA, 2008, Sacha Gervasi
Often described as a “real-life Spinal Tap,” this sweet and funny documentary profiles longtime Canadian heavy-metal band Anvil as they embark on a disastrous European tour and then try to scrape together enough money to record their 13th album. Founded in the 1970s, Anvil influenced Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, and others, but never hit the big time themselves. Yet the two boyhood friends who started the group refuse to forsake their dreams of superstardom.
| Sep 05 (Sat) - 9:15PM |
| Sep 06 (Sun) - 7:00PM |
New 35mm Restoration!
Venezuela, 1959, Margot Benacerraf
The latest forgotten classic to be resurrected and re-released by Milestone Films (after I Am Cuba, South, Killer of Sheep, The Exiles, etc.) is a stunningly photographed semi-documentary shot on the titular barren peninsula in northern Venezuela by a female filmmaker who is still alive. Co-winner (with Hiroshima, Mon Amour) of the critics’ prize at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival (but never released in America), the movie is a heroic celebration of the poor laborers who live and work in Araya—most of them salineros who toil in salt marshes, harvesting, drying, and stacking the “white gold” that is the region’s #1 resource. Mythologizing its peasant subjects with low-angle shots and poetic narration, the film recalls the ethnographic docu-narratives of Robert Flaherty, as well as Eisenstein’s Que Viva México! and Visconti’s La Terra Trema. “Majestic…Overwhelming beauty!” –The New Yorker. Cleveland revival premiere! Subtitles. 82 min. www.arayafilm.com
Show Times| Jan 30 (Sat) - 5:15PM |
| Jan 31 (Sun) - 4:00PM |
Thursday, February 5, at 8:50 pm &
Friday, February 6, at 7:30 pm
ASHES OF TIME REDUX
DUNG CHE SAI DUK REDUX
Hong Kong/China, 2008, Wong Kar Wai
Wong Kar Wai’s trippiest and most ethereal film—a 1994 martial arts movie with an all-star cast (Maggie Cheung, Leslie Cheung, Brigitte Lin, and both Tony Leungs)—gets a welcome makeover and an official U.S. release. Wong assembled this “definitive” version after culling release prints of various lengths, recutting and rearranging action, and digitally tweaking Christopher Doyle’s sensuous colors. The result may not resolve the mysteries of the narrative (a swordsman arranges hits for paying customers), but the flashy, abstract visuals, the mood of regret and romantic longing, and the obsession with time represent the essence of Wong’s unique poetry. Subtitles. 35mm. 93 min. www.sonyclassics.com/ashesoftimeredux/
Show Times| Feb 05 (Thu) - 8:50PM |
| Feb 06 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
AZUR ET ASMAR
France/Belgium/Italy/Spain, 2006, Michel Ocelot
This gorgeous new animated fantasy from the director of Kirikou and the Sorceress is set in medieval times and tells of two boys—one Aryan, one Arab, raised as brothers—who grow up to become rivals in the search for an elusive fairy princess. Moviegoers loved this funny, dazzling fable when it showed in January at the art museum, so we’re bringing it back to Cleveland. In English. Rated PG. 35mm. 99 min. www.gkids.tv/azur/
Show Times| Mar 20 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
| Mar 21 (Sat) - 9:20PM |
The Films of Terrence Malick
USA, 1974, Terrence Malick
Voted one of the 100 best movies ever made in a 1995 poll conducted by England’s Time Out magazine, Terrence Malick’s indelible directorial debut stars Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek as amoral, vacuous young lovers who embark on a senseless killing spree across the Midwest during the 1950s. 35mm. 95 min.
Show Times| Jan 07 (Thu) - 6:45PM |
| Jan 08 (Fri) - 9:35PM |
USA, 2008, Lance Hammer
This bracing, beautiful first film by Lance Hammer may be the best American movie of 2008. Shot in the Mississippi Delta during winter, it’s a low-key, laconic drama that follows three poor African-Americans in the same family (a man, woman, and child) as they deal with the sudden death of a fourth—working through grief and anger toward a kind of reconciliation. “An extraordinary debut.” –Variety. 35mm color & scope print! 96 min. ballastfilm.com
| Mar 05 (Thu) - 7:00PM |
| Mar 07 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
BEESWAX
USA, 2009, Andrew Bujalski Identical twin sisters are the main characters in the new comedy (and best movie yet) by Andrew Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation), co-founder of the mumblecore movement of talky, low-budget films about twenty-something tweeners. One twin is a serious, wheelchair-bound co-owner of a vintage clothing store in Austin; the other is a sunny, free-spirited, absent-minded teacher and drifter. The relationship between these two siblings is explored against the backdrop of a legal dispute with the store’s co-owner. “Critics’ Pick…Beeswax, at first glance a modest, ragged slice of contemporary life, turns out to be a remarkably subtle, even elegant movie.” –The NY Times. Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 100 min. www.beeswaxfilm.com
| Nov 28 (Sat) - 9:35PM |
| Nov 30 (Mon) - 6:30PM |
BETTY BLUE: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT
37º2 LE MATIN
France, 1986, Jean-Jacques Beineix
Cut by 65 minutes when first released in the U.S., Betty Blue is an ode to l’amour fou that chronicles the torrid summertime fling between a beach bum/handyman and a sexy young woman who becomes his lover and muse. The third film from the director of Diva is only now being released here in its original version. Béatrice Dalle plays Betty, an alluring but unstable force of nature who lives large and loves strong en route to a total meltdown. No one under 18 admitted! Subtitles. 35mm. 185 min. cinemalibrestudio.com
| Oct 15 (Thu) - 6:30PM |
| Oct 16 (Fri) - 8:45PM |
BIG FAN
USA, 2009, Robert Siegel The first movie written and directed by the writer of The Wrestler has been likened to Martin Scorsese’s King of Comedy. It’s a black comedy about a 35-year-old Staten Island parking-garage attendant (comedian Patton Oswalt) who prides himself on being the New York Giants’ biggest fan. Living at home with his mom, this couch potato finds meaning in his stunted life by cheering on his team and calling sports-talk radio—until a chance encounter with an actual Giants player takes his existence in disturbing new directions. With Kevin Corrigan and Michael Rapaport. “An unblinking look at the hidden (or perhaps not so hidden) pathology of American sports mania…Grade A-” –Entertainment Weekly. Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 86 min. www.bigfanmovie.com
| Nov 21 (Sat) - 5:15PM |
| Nov 22 (Sun) - 6:30PM |
Japan, 2007, Hitoshi Matsumoto
“I hurt myself laughing at this amazingly inventive mockumentary, and because it's so good, I refuse to give away much more than an insistent recommendation.” So wrote Aaron Hillis in The Village Voice about this wild new Japanese fantasy that tells of a middle-aged Tokyo man—a longtime employee of the Department of Baddie Prevention—who is weary of his ability to grow to the size of a skyscraper and save Japan from assorted monsters. So are his countrymen, who no longer give him the respect he deserves. “Tears-down-the-face funny…A genuine, jaw-dropping oddity.” –Variety. Subtitles. 35mm. 113 min.
sixshooterfilmseries.com/bigmanjapan/
| Jul 16 (Thu) - 7:00PM |
| Jul 17 (Fri) - 8:55PM |
New 35mm Color & Scope Print!
USA, 1956, Nicholas Ray
Here’s a new 35mm color & Cinemascope print of “one of the best, most radical, and least-known American films of the 1950s” (Village Voice). It has never been released on video or DVD. Set in a David Lynchian “Anytown USA,” Nicholas Ray’s subversive movie tells of a teacher and suburban family man (James Mason, superb) whose addiction to the “miracle drug” cortisone turns him into a belligerent monster (prophet?) who rages against fifties conformity and repression. With Walter Matthau. “The cinema is Nicholas Ray.” –Jean-Luc Godard. Cleveland revival premiere. 95 min.
| Apr 18 (Sat) - 9:40PM |
| Apr 19 (Sun) - 7:00PM |
Cinematheque Elite
BIRDSONG
EL CANT DELS OCELLS
Spain, 2008, Albert Serra
The familiar story of the Three Magi’s journey is rendered in a radically stripped-down and human way in this gently comic, largely uneventful, but radiant new film. Albert Serra’s second feature is as minimalist as his previous Cervantes “adaptation,” Honor de Cavalleria (Quixotic) (shown at the Cinematheque last April), but it rewards the patient viewer with wonder and spirituality. It’s also undistributed in America, so see it now, while you can. “No European filmmaker to have emerged in the past five years (has made such a) distinct impression…(Birdsong) is about as important a work as has been made in the past three years.” –Robert Koehler, Cinemascope. Ohio premiere. Catalan and Hebrew with subtitles. 35mm. 98 min. Special admission $10, Cinematheque members and CIA students & staff $7; no passes, twofers, or radio winners. Special thanks to Mathilde Trichet, Capricci Films.
Show Times| Mar 12 (Thu) - 7:00PM |
| Mar 14 (Sat) - 5:00PM |
USA, 2009, Scott Sanders
In this hilarious and affectionate spoof of 1970s blaxploitation pictures (the best movie of 2009 according to Andrew Dotta of CWRU’s Observer), Afro-wearing action hero and kung fu fighter Black Dynamite takes on The Man—going all the way to the “Honky House” at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—after his brother is murdered on the streets. “Blends satire, nostalgia, and cinema deconstruction into a one-of-a-kind comedy high…Grade A.” –Entertainment Weekly. 35mm. 90 min. www.blackdynamitemovie.com
Show Times| Jan 16 (Sat) - 10:05PM |
| Jan 17 (Sun) - 6:30PM |
BLISS
MUTLULUK
Turkey/Greece, 2007, Abdullah Oguz
A Turkish teenage rape victim is escorted by her male cousin to Istanbul, where (unbeknownst to her) he plans to carry out her honor killing for her family. The journey becomes a singular, surprising trek across a stunningly beautiful and conflicted country that is at once traditional and modern. “Critics’ Pick…Consistently gripping, visually intoxicating…Stands as a landmark of contemporary Turkish cinema.” –The NY Times. Subtitles. 35mm. 105 min. www.firstrunfeatures.com
| Dec 10 (Thu) - 8:20PM |
| Dec 11 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
In the Realm of Oshima: Classics
SHONEN
Japan, 1969, Nagisa Oshima
In “Oshima’s finest film” (Donald Richie), a 10-year-old boy is trained by his parents to simulate being hit and injured by passing cars—a ruse that allows them to extort immediate compensation from the rattled, frightened drivers. This Oshima stunner—shown here in a new 35mm color & scope print—is based on a real-life case. Subtitles. 105 min.
Show Times| Apr 17 (Fri) - 9:35PM |
| Apr 18 (Sat) - 5:00PM |
Britain, 1947, John Boulting
“One of the finest British thrillers ever” (Time Out London) was written by Graham Greene and Terrence Rattigan, adapting Greene’s novel. A young Richard Attenborough plays a ruthless, razor-wielding thug named Pinkie Brown who will do anything to cover up a murder he has committed and passed off as a suicide—even marry a young waitress to keep her from squawking. But what to do with the blowsy music hall entertainer (Hermione Braddeley) who knows something ain’t right…? As of 12/6/09, this movie had a rare 100% “fresh” rating (unanimous favorable reviews) on rottentomatoes.com! Cleveland revival premiere. 92 min. www.rialtopictures.com
Show Times| Feb 27 (Sat) - 5:15PM |
| Feb 28 (Sun) - 4:00PM |
Hannah and Her Predecessors
USA, 1984, Woody Allen
Woody Allen plays a small-time, big-hearted Broadway talent agent whose efforts to revive the career of an aging, overweight, adulterous, alcoholic Italian crooner—while taking care of the singer’s brassy Mafia girlfriend (Mia Farrow)—land him in hot water with the local mob. Terrific! 35mm. 86 min.
| Oct 23 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
| Oct 25 (Sun) - 9:05PM |
BRONSON
Britain, 2008, Nicolas Winding Refn
Hailed by one British critic as “a Clockwork Orange for the 21st century,” the new thriller from the Danish director of The Pusher Trilogy is an English-language fantasia inspired by the career of real-life convict Michael Peterson (played here by Tom Hardy). Peterson, nicknamed “Charles Bronson” after the Death Wish star, is an ornery and violent cog in the British penal system. Thanks to his penchant for fighting and rioting, he has managed to stretch a seven-year sentence for armed robbery into a prison term of 34 years (so far), 30 of them in solitary confinement. Filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn renders Bronson’s story “as a kind of sociopathic vaudeville” (The Village Voice ), with an intoxicating mix of bold theatricality, flashy cinematics, and muscular action—all set to music by Verdi, Wagner, the Pet Shop Boys, et al. “A fast, ferocious, wickedly funny portrait of one man's acceptance of his bone-deep animalism.” –Slant Magazine. Adults only! Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 92 min. www.magnetreleasing.com/bronson/
| Dec 19 (Sat) - 7:20PM |
| Dec 20 (Sun) - 8:25PM |
BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID
Paul Newman, 1925-2008
New 35mm Color & Scope Print!
USA, 1970, George Roy Hill
Paul Newman and Robert Redford play charismatic, clownish outlaws who make wisecracks and romance Katherine Ross while outrunning the law in this charming Western that could have been called The Mild Bunch. Won numerous Oscars and became a huge and influential popular hit. New 35mm color & scope print! 112 min.
| Jun 06 (Sat) - 7:20PM |
| Jun 07 (Sun) - 8:50PM |
New 35mm Color & Scope Restoration!
USA, 1963, George Sidney
Dick Van Dyke, Janet Leigh, and Ann-Margret (at her most sex-kittenish) star in this delightful youth-oriented musical inspired by Elvis Presley’s cataclysmic 1958 induction into the U.S. Army. In the show (now enjoying a revival on Broadway) it is fictional, pompadoured pop idol Conrad Birdie who is drafted. But before he goes, he decides to visit a small Ohio town and select one girl on whom he will bestow “One Last Kiss”—and do it on the Ed Sullivan Show! Songs include “Kids,” “Put on a Happy Face,” and “A Lot of Livin’ To Do.” With the hilarious Paul Lynde. Cleveland revival premiere. 112 min.
Show Times| Jan 16 (Sat) - 5:15PM |
| Jan 17 (Sun) - 4:00PM |
CAPTAIN ABU RAED
Jordan, 2007, Amin Matalqa Abu Raed, a middle-aged janitor at the Amman airport, gains new respect when he dons an airline pilot’s cap he finds in the trash one day and starts regaling the kids in his impoverished neighborhood with made-up travel stories. However, one young skeptic detects that Abu Raed is a fraud, and the sad domestic situation that has killed this child’s ability to believe is the real subject of this acclaimed new movie, the first feature film produced in Jordan in over 50 years. Winner of the Audience Award in the World Cinema section of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. “A humanistic triumph…A stirring tribute to the invisible people in our world who might end up changing our lives.” –The Hollywood Reporter. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 102 min. www.captainaburaed.com
| Nov 28 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
| Nov 29 (Sun) - 8:30PM |
For Valentine’s Day!
USA, 1942, Michael Curtiz
Celebrate Valentine’s Day with one of the most romantic movies ever made! Voted Cleveland’s favorite film in a 1998 poll conducted by the Cleveland Museum of Art, this iconic classic stars Humphrey Bogart as a cynical nightclub owner in WWII Morocco and Ingrid Bergman as an old flame who turns up one day with her husband, a Resistance fighter wanted by the Nazis. Dooley Wilson sings “As Time Goes By.” 35mm. 102 min. See related film Play It Again, Sam on 2/14 at 6:45 pm.
Show Times| Feb 13 (Sat) - 5:15PM |
| Feb 14 (Sun) - 4:00PM |
Thursday, February 19, at 9:00 pm &
Saturday, February 21, at 7:35 pm
The French Crime Wave
CASQUE D’OR
France, 1952, Jacques Becker
This rarely shown Jacques Becker masterpiece was recently voted one of the 100 best movies of all time in a poll of French film critics and historians conducted by Cahiers du Cinéma magazine. A supremely sensual Simone Signoret plays “Golden Marie,” a gangster’s moll in 1898 Paris who lures an honest carpenter into her world of pimps, prostitutes, and petty crooks—with tragic results. “One of the most physically beautiful and sensuous films ever made.” –Leonard Maltin. Subtitles. 35mm. 96 min.
Show Times| Feb 19 (Thu) - 9:00PM |
| Feb 21 (Sat) - 7:35PM |
CHERRY BLOSSOMS (KIRSCHBLÜTEN – HANAMI)
Germany/France, 2008, Doris Dörrie
Winner of the Roxanne T. Mueller Award for Best Film at this year’s Cleveland Int’l Film Festival, the new movie from the director of Men tells of a Bavarian husband and wife who decide to visit their grown children in Berlin and Tokyo—only to discover that their presence is a burden to them. Doris Dörrie takes the plot and theme of Ozu’s celebrated 1953 Japanese classic Tokyo Story into new and unexpected directions, resulting in one of the most poignant and touching movies of the year. First time in Cleveland in 35mm! Subtitles. 127 min. www.strandreleasing.com
| May 02 (Sat) - 7:05PM |
| May 03 (Sun) - 3:45PM |
| Jun 14 (Sun) - 4:00PM |
Cinema with a Smile
USA, 1931, Charles Chaplin
Chaplin’s iconic “Little Tramp” befriends a blind flower girl and a drunken millionaire in one of his funniest and most poignant masterpieces, which always places high on lists of the 100 best movies ever made. Silent with music track. 35mm. 86 min.
www.kino.com
| Jul 11 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
| Jul 12 (Sun) - 1:15PM |
Classic 3-D Double Feature!
THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON
USA, 1954, Jack Arnold
IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE
USA, 1953, Jack Arnold
Digital 3-D movies are all the rage right now. But if you think old 3-D movies were crappy, and that the rudimentary anaglyph (red/green) process didn’t work, you’re wrong. Tonight we demonstrate how good early 3-D was with back-to-back screenings of two classic Jack Arnold thrillers shot in the process. First up is The Creature from the Black Lagoon, one of the best monster movies of the 1950s, in which a prehistoric, amphibious fish/man kills off members of an archaeological expedition while lusting after the bathing-suited woman in their party. After intermission comes one of the best 1950s space-invaders movies, It Came from Outer Space, in which aliens crash land in the U.S. desert and assume the bodies of local residents. Based on a Ray Bradbury story, it inspired Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Both 35mm. Total 160 min. See both films for one price (3-D glasses included); kids 12 & under $6.
| Mar 27 (Fri) - 8:35PM |
| Mar 28 (Sat) - 8:35PM |
CLOUD 9
WOLKE NEUN Germany, 2008, Andreas Dresen Notorious on the film festival circuit for its frank scenes of senior-citizen sex and nudity, this acclaimed, award-winning German film follows a 67-year old seamstress, married for 30 years, who begins an extramarital affair with one of her customers, a silver fox in his mid-70s. “Moving…Steps quietly into the gap between physical decline and the persistence, at full blast, of unfulfilled longing and desire.” –NPR. “Not since David Lean’s Brief Encounter has a drama so thoughtfully explored a woman’s point of view on her extramarital affair.” ¬–Film Journal Int’l. No one under 18 admitted! Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 98 min. www.musicboxfilms.com
| Nov 28 (Sat) - 7:35PM |
| Nov 29 (Sun) - 6:30PM |
Special Offsite Event!
The Cinematheque at the Capitol Theatre
USA, 2009, Chris Smith
By popular demand, we present another Cinematheque night at the newly restored Capitol Theatre in the Gordon Square Arts District at 1390 W. 65th Street at Detroit Avenue on Cleveland’s West Side. This time we will show the new film from the director of American Movie and The Yes Men. Collapse is a gripping, Errol Morris-style portrait of real-life doomsayer Michael C. Ruppert, a former L.A. police officer turned rogue reporter whose self-published newsletter “From the Wilderness” predicted the recent financial meltdown. In a series of compelling monologues recorded in what looks like a bunker, Ruppert, an articulate apocalyptic prophet who says he deals not in conspiracy theory but conspiracy fact, foresees the downfall of the U.S. industrial and economic infrastructure now that we have reached “peak oil” consumption. “Unnervingly persuasive much of the time, and merely riveting when it's not.” –Variety. Cleveland premiere. Blu-ray. 82 min. Regular Cinematheque admission prices ($8; members and CIA students & staff $6) apply. No Cleveland Cinemas passes or discounts will be honored for this special screening. Free parking available behind theatre and at other lots in the neighborhood. Special thanks to Jon Forman and Dave Huffman, Cleveland Cinemas. www.collapsemovie.com
| Jan 13 (Wed) - 7:30PM |
Special Outdoor Screening!
USA, 1916-1929, various directors
Bring a folding chair and a sense of humor to the Cleveland Institute of Art’s outdoor courtyard tonight. (It’s right off the student lounge.) That’s where, weather permitting, we will show five two-reel comedies featuring five of the foremost solo clowns of the American silent screen: Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Harry Langdon, and Charley Chase. It’s a rare chance to compare the comic personas (and talents) of five brilliant performers largely responsible for one of the greatest eras in cinema history, while laughing a lot in the process! Space limited! In case of rain, films will show in Aitken Auditorium. Recorded music. 16mm. Approx. 100 min.
| Aug 15 (Sat) - 9:10PM |
CRUDE
USA, 2009, Joe Berlinger
Suffering the effects of catastrophic environmental damage caused by decades of oil drilling, the Cofán Indians of the Ecuadorian Amazon bring a class action lawsuit against petroleum giant Chevron. This new documentary from the director of Brother’s Keeper and Paradise Lost—“a Herculean work of investigative journalism,” according to the Village Voice—was three years in the making. It’s a riveting legal drama that touches upon global politics, the environmental movement, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, multinational corporate clout, and the fate of disappearing indigenous cultures. “Critics’ Pick…Thorough and impassioned…Intelligently and artfully made.” –The NY Times. 35mm. Some subtitles. 105 min. www.crudethemovie.com
| Dec 05 (Sat) - 7:15PM |
| Dec 06 (Sun) - 8:15PM |
In the Realm of Oshima: Classics
SEISHUN ZANKOKU MONOGATARI
Japan, 1960, Nagisa Oshima
Oshima’s breakthrough second feature was the Breathless of the Japanese New Wave, and caused a sensation. Shot in lurid colors, this freewheeling movie follows two rebellious, amoral, motorcycle-riding teen lovers as they perform sexual shakedowns on middle-aged men. New 35mm color & scope print! Subtitles. 96 min.
Show Times| Apr 05 (Sun) - 7:00PM |
CESKÝ SEN
Czech Republic, 2004, Vit Klusák, Filip Remunda
We keep hearing how funny and entertaining this 2004 movie is, so we’ve finally booked it. It’s a documentary about an elaborate anti-consumerist hoax staged by two Czech film students, who advertised the construction of a new (but totally made-up) Wal-Mart-stye megastore on the outskirts of Prague. They even built a fake façade. Called the “Czech Dream,” this superstore promised free gifts, low prices, and a huge selection of goods. Two thousand bargain-hungry shoppers showed up for the grand opening, but what happened next might surprise you. “Plays like Jackass directed by Lars Von Trier.” –BBC. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 87 min. www.ceskatelevize.cz/specialy/ceskysen/en/
| Apr 03 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
| Apr 04 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
Filmmaker Khashyar Darvich in Person!
USA, 2007, Khashyar Darvich
A sold-out sensation when shown at the Cleveland Museum of Art in January, this new nonfiction movie documents an extraordinary gathering. A few years ago the Dalai Lama invited 40 of the West’s most innovative thinkers (from scientists to theologians) to come to his Himalayan compound and brainstorm solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. What happened was surprising. Narrated by Harrison Ford. California-based filmmaker Khashyar Darvich, a Baldwin Wallace grad, will answer audience questions after both screenings. 35mm. Subtitles. 81 min. www.dalailamafilm.com
Show Times| Mar 07 (Sat) - 7:30PM |
| Mar 08 (Sun) - 4:00PM |
The Films of Terrence Malick
USA, 1978, Terrence Malick
Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, and Sam Shepard star in Malick’s lyrical and haunting second feature—a stormy drama of love and jealousy involving two itinerant farm workers and an ailing young landowner in early 20th-century Texas. Oscar-winning cinematographer Néstor Almendros shot much of this gorgeous movie during the “magic hour” just before sunset. Music by Ennio Morricone. 35mm color print from the Paramount Pictures studio archive! 94 min.
| Jan 14 (Thu) - 6:45PM |
| Jan 15 (Fri) - 9:40PM |
In the Realm of Oshima: Classics
KOSHIKEI
Japan, 1968, Nagisa Oshima
Full of gallows humor (literally), this savage black comedy is both an impassioned screed against capital punishment and an exposé of Japan’s prejudice toward the country’s mistreated Korean minority. Inspired by a true case in which a Korean high school student who raped and murdered two girls was executed five years later (after he reached maturity), Oshima’s film focuses on a fictional miscreant who is hanged for the same crime—but doesn’t die. The failed execution does wipe out his memory, though, rendering him suddenly “innocent.” To remind him of his offense and restore his guilt, his crime must be re-enacted—so that he can be hanged all over again! “Probably the most powerful film against capital punishment ever made.” –Pacific Film Archive. Subtitles. 35mm. 117 min.
Show Times| Apr 16 (Thu) - 8:40PM |
| Apr 17 (Fri) - 7:15PM |
In the Realm of Oshima: Classics
SHINJUKU DOROBO NIKKI
Japan, 1968, Nagisa Oshima
Oshima evokes Godard in this agit-prop collage film that begins when a young man is caught shoplifting at a bookstore by a young woman who pretends to be working at the shop. For most of the rest of the movie, the two of them try to achieve sexual satisfaction amid the political and cultural upheavals of 1968. New 35mm color print! Subtitles. 94 min.
| Apr 16 (Thu) - 6:45PM |
| Apr 19 (Sun) - 8:55PM |
Filmmaker Eileen Yaghoobian in Person!
Canada, 2009, Eileen Yaghoobian
Shown at the SXSW Film Festival, this new documentary surveys North America’s underground rock-poster scene. The film focuses on an assortment of independent, renegade graphic artists who raid American pop culture for their attention-getting designs that range from vulgar to visceral. Filmmaker Eileen Yaghoobian will answer audience questions after both screenings; poster designer Art Chantry will also appear in person—on Friday night only. “Died Young, Stayed Pretty considers a subculture acutely aware of its own obsolescence: artists committed to the design, hand printing and stapled-to-a-telephone-pole distribution of rock posters. They are resigned to their marginalization in a culture where the cutting edge of marketing—and music—has mostly gone digital.” –The NY Times. “An outlaw movie about outlaw artists.” –NPR. Cleveland premiere. DVD. 95 min. www.diedyoungstayedpretty.com Promotional support provided by AIGA Cleveland; thanks to Tim Pell. AIGA members $6.
| Sep 25 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
| Sep 26 (Sat) - 9:40PM |
DILLINGER IS DEAD (DILLINGER È MORTO)
New 35mm Color Print!
Italy, 1969, Marco Ferreri
Never before released in America, this 1960s provocation from the director of such notorious 1970s classics as La Grande Bouffe and The Last Woman stars Michel Piccoli as an industrial designer who one day discovers a handgun that might have belonged to gangster John Dillinger. Cleaning the weapon while preparing dinner at home, he soon sees it as a way to liberate himself from his stifling bourgeois married life and the toxic consumer culture at large. With Anita Pallenberg. “(An) unjustly neglected masterpiece…A cult classic awaiting its cult.” –Janus Films. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 90 min. www.janusfilms.com
| Apr 30 (Thu) - 9:10PM |
| May 02 (Sat) - 5:15PM |
Germany/Italy/Israel/France, 2007, Amos Gitai
Juliette Binoche stars in this recent, mostly English-language movie by veteran Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai (Free Zone, Kadosh). She plays a French woman who travels to Gaza with her Israeli-policeman half-brother (Liron Levo) after the death of her father. In Gaza she searches for her daughter whom she abandoned years earlier, while her sibling forcibly removes Israeli settlers from the territory. With Jeanne Moreau, Hiam Abbass, and opera star Barbara Hendricks. “(Gitai’s) strongest entry since Kippur…Magisterial.” –Variety. Cleveland theatrical premiere. Some subtitles. 35mm. 115 min. www.ifcfilms.com/films/disengagement
Show Times| Feb 27 (Sat) - 9:35PM |
| Feb 28 (Sun) - 6:30PM |
DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB
Cinema with a Smile
Britain, 1964, Stanley Kubrick
Convinced that the Commies have infiltrated and polluted “our precious bodily fluids,” wacko General Jack D. Ripper single-handedly launches a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Frantically, the Army brass—including gung-ho General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott)—and milquetoast President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers, in one of three roles) try to avert Armageddon. For its 45th anniversary, Kubrick’s hilarious black comedy will be shown in a razor-sharp new 35mm print made from a restored, digitally-created 4K negative. With Slim Pickens, Keenan Wynn, James Earl Jones, et al. Cleveland revival premiere. 93 min.
| Aug 07 (Fri) - 9:00PM |
| Aug 09 (Sun) - 3:15PM |
Chad/France/Belgium/Austria, 2006, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
One of the most acclaimed African films of the decade! When general amnesty for war criminals is offered after Chad’s 40-year civil war, an angry young man decides to locate his father’s killer and extract his own revenge. This was one of the seven films commissioned by Vienna’s New Crowned Hope celebration of Mozart’s 250th year; the movie’s theme echoes that of Mozart’s opera La Clemenza di Tito. “Gently and quietly told, it unfolds with the simplicity of a parable and the gravity of a Bible story.” –The NY Times. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 96 min. www.africanfilm.com/DrySeason.htm
| Jun 25 (Thu) - 7:00PM |
| Jun 28 (Sun) - 8:55PM |
Cinema with a Smile
USA, 1933, Leo McCarey
All four Marx Brothers—Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo—star in the team’s most antic, irreverent, and hilarious romp. It’s an anti-establishment satire about two pint-sized, neighboring states, Fredonia and Sylvania, who go to war for no good reason. The celebrated “mirror” scene is perhaps the most amazing sequence in Marx Bros. history. With Margaret Dumont. 35mm print from the Universal Pictures studio archive! 70 min.
| Aug 29 (Sat) - 7:00PM |
| Aug 30 (Sun) - 8:30PM |
Friday, February 20, at 7:30 pm &
Saturday, February 21, at 9:30 pm
DUST
STAUB
Germany, 2007, Hartmut Bitomsky
Those motes and particles that have haunted projector beams for over a century at last have their moment on the big screen! Or so The NY Times’ A.O. Scott wittily observed in his review of this new documentary about, yes, dust. Though it may sound dry as dirt, it isn’t. This wry film swirls around a topic that impacts workers ranging from custodians and curators to doctors and demolition experts, looking not only at dust’s physical properties but at its philosophical implications. Take it from us: we have seen the future, and it is dust. “Eccentric and profoundly informative.” –The NY Times. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 90 min. www.icarusfilms.com/new2008/dust.html
Show Times| Feb 20 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
| Feb 21 (Sat) - 9:30PM |
Special Free Screening!
USA, 2008-09, various directors
The annual showcase of film, video, and animation made by Cleveland Institute of Art students once again gets unleashed on the big screen! The innovative and original short films in this program will delight, amaze, shock, and possibly insult filmgoers of all ages. .E.M.I.T features student pieces in genres ranging from 3-D animation to experimental video. A broad range of artistic expression is found not only in the variety of techniques on display but also in the issues and subjects explored. DVD. Approx. 90 min. Admission free to all!
| Sep 03 (Thu) - 8:00PM |
EARTH DAYS
USA, 2009, Robert Stone
The dawn of the modern environmental movement—from the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s explosive Silent Spring to the first Earth Day celebration in 1970—is documented in this wide-ranging and very entertaining new nonfiction film. Full of choice archival film clips, the movie also interviews such “green” pioneers as Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich, former Secretary of the Interior Steward Udall, Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand, and Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart. “Rapturous and enlightening…Grade A.” –Entertainment Weekly. Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 102 min. www.earthdaysmovie.com
| Dec 12 (Sat) - 7:20PM |
| Dec 13 (Sun) - 9:00PM |
EASY RIDER
40th Anniversary!
USA, 1969, Dennis Hopper
After scoring some cash in a drug deal, freedom-loving hippie bikers Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper head out on the highway, looking for adventure—and for the “real” America. This landmark road movie changed Hollywood when it unearthed and tapped a huge, underserved youth audience. Jack Nicholson’s supporting turn as an ACLU lawyer (and lush) made him a star, the rock soundtrack was as influential as the movie, and Terry Southern co-wrote the screenplay. With Karen Black and Phil Spector. New, restored 35mm color print! 94 min.
| Dec 18 (Fri) - 8:50PM |
| Dec 20 (Sun) - 6:30PM |
In the Realm of Oshima: Classics
AI NO BOREI
Japan/France, 1978, Nagisa Oshima
Oshima’s follow-up to In the Realm of the Senses (see 4/9) also deals with possessed lovers—but is less sexually explicit. A ghost story set in 1895, the movie tells of a middle-aged wife and mother who conspires with her much-younger lover to murder her rickshaw-driver husband. Oshima won the Best Director prize at Cannes for this film. New 35mm color print! Subtitles. 106 min.
Show Times| Apr 11 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
| Apr 13 (Mon) - 9:00PM |
Canada, 2008, Astra Taylor
Slavoj Zizek, Cornel West, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Judith Butler, and four other academic/intellectual superstars riff on life while ambling (or riding) through spaces and places that have particular resonance for them. This peripatetic, stimulating new documentary takes philosophy off the college campus and into the streets and world, where it belongs. “Part of the fun of Examined Life comes from watching these very intelligent people try to make themselves intelligible.” –The NY Times. Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 88 min. www.zeitgeistfilms.com/examinedlife/
| Sep 17 (Thu) - 6:30PM |
| Sep 18 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
| Sep 19 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
Portugal/Spain, 2007, Carlos Saura
Carlos Saura concludes his Iberian music trilogy—begun with Flamenco (1995) and Tango (1998)—with this bold, visually-dazzling tribute to fado, Portugal’s melancholy musical genre immortalized by Amália Rodrigues, Mariza, Cesária Évora, Lura, and others seen in the film. Mirrors, projections, camera movements, and dancers enhance the mesmerizing vocal and instrumental performances captured in this dazzling movie, a major crowd-pleaser when shown at The Cleveland Museum of Art in April. 35mm. Subtitles. 92 min.
www.zeitgeistfilms.com
| Jul 17 (Fri) - 7:00PM |
| Jul 18 (Sat) - 9:20PM |
FELLINI SATYRICON
Italy/France, 1969, Federico Fellini
The decadence and excesses of Ancient Rome receive the orgiastic La Dolce Vita treatment in Fellini’s surreal, opulent adaptation of Petronius. One of the maestro’s strangest and most sumptuous visions. Adults only! 35mm color & scope print! Subtitles. 129 min.
| Dec 05 (Sat) - 9:20PM |
| Dec 06 (Sun) - 3:45PM |
IL CASANOVA DI FEDERICO FELLINI
Italy, 1976, Federico Fellini
Never released on Region 1 DVD, Fellini’s fantasy about the love life of fabled 18th-century libertine Casanova (Donald Sutherland) is one of the maestro’s most opulent films, with Oscar-winning costumes and a memorable Nino Rota score. 35mm print from the Universal Pictures studio archive! Adults only! In English. 164 min. This is the first of nine Fellini films that the Cinematheque will screen in November and December. Complete details will be released in mid-October.
| Nov 01 (Sun) - 6:30PM |
| Nov 02 (Mon) - 7:00PM |
FELLINI’S ROMA
Italy/France, 1972, Federico Fellini
Fellini plays tour guide in this singular, impressionistic tribute to the Eternal City—a lyrical blend of documentary, autobiography, history, myth, and fantasy. Among the memorable set pieces is a campy, opulent “ecclesiastical fashion show.” Subtitles. 35mm. 128 min.
| Dec 12 (Sat) - 9:25PM |
| Dec 13 (Sun) - 6:30PM |
Australia, 2007, Anna Broinowski
Norma Khouri is the author of the 2004 best-seller Forbidden Lies (Honor Bound in the U.S.), a sensational account of the “honor killing” of a Jordanian Muslim woman by her father after she fell in love with a Christian. She may also be a fraud. An Australian journalist has outed Khouri as a Chicago con artist whose “nonfiction” book is all made up. In this new documentary, which is one of the year’s best-reviewed films, Khouri defends herself against these charges and takes the filmmaker on a fact-finding mission to the Middle East. The result is a dizzying journey that messes with your mind and raises more questions than it answers. “Riveting, near flawless.” –The Hollywood Reporter. “Cool-headed, lighthearted and outrageously entertaining.” –The NY Times. Cleveland theatrical premiere. 35mm. 106 min.
roxie.com/releasing/forbiddenlies.cfm
| Jul 10 (Fri) - 7:00PM |
| Jul 11 (Sat) - 9:15PM |
FRONTIER OF DAWN (FRONTIÈRE DE L’AUBE)
France, 2008, Philippe Garrel
Elegantly, sensuously shot in black and white (like his 2005 epic of 1968 Regular Lovers), the new film by Philippe Garrel (I Don’t Hear the Guitar Anymore) is a haunting love story in which a young photographer (Louis Garrel, the director’s son) is sucked into a whirlpool of passion. First he falls for a tempestuous actress (Laura Smet, daughter of Nathalie Baye and Johnny Halliday), then for a less volatile woman (Clémentine Poidatz), who promises him a child. “NY Times Critics’ Pick…A romantic cry from the heart…(Garrel is) one of the most important French filmmakers of the post-New Wave generation.” –The NY Times. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 106 min.
www.ifcfilms.com
Presentation of this film supported by a generous grant from La Maison Française de Cleveland.
| Jul 09 (Thu) - 7:00PM |
| Jul 10 (Fri) - 9:10PM |
USA, 2009, Jared Hess
The new comedy from the writer-director of Napoleon Dynamite is another outrageous spoof of Middle America populated by clueless doofuses. A home-schooled misfit (Michael Angarano) who aspires to be a sci-fi writer is dismayed when his pulpy fiction “Yeast Lords: The Bronco Years” is ripped off by a famous, full-of-himself fantasy novelist (Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement) and also cannibalized in a bad movie by inept local filmmakers. With Sam Rockwell and Mike White. “(A) wildly inventive, audacious, and genre-swirling comedy.” –The New Yorker. Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 90 min. www.foxsearchlight.com/gentlemenbroncos
Show Times| Jan 30 (Sat) - 7:00PM |
| Jan 31 (Sun) - 8:45PM |
Cinematheque Elite
Carl Theodor Dreyer: Danish Prints
Denmark, 1964, Carl Dreyer
Undistributed theatrically in America for decades (and shown here in a 35mm print from Denmark), Carl Dreyer’s revered last film is a shattering chamber piece about a middle-aged woman who rejects a string of lovers in an uncompromising quest for perfect love. A majestic work of great rigor, beauty, and purity. “The last masterpiece of one of the greatest of directors.” –David Thomson. Subtitles. 35mm. 116 min. Special admission $10, Cinematheque members and CIA students & staff $7; no passes, twofers, or radio winners.
| May 08 (Fri) - 9:05PM |
| May 10 (Sun) - 7:00PM |
Japan, 2006, Hirokazu Kore-eda
Made between his masterpieces Nobody Knows and Still Walking (which opens in New York this weekend), this comic period film by Hirokazu Kore-eda (Maborosi, After Life) is a samurai film like no other. Set in 1702, the movie tells of a good-hearted warrior who dutifully but reluctantly comes to Edo (old Tokyo) to avenge the death of his father. But since he is a poor swordsman who shuns violence, he’s not sure how to proceed. “A humanistic, charmingly off-kilter samurai story…Kore-eda keeps the tone mostly light and frothy.” –Variety. Cleveland theatrical premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 127 min.
| Aug 29 (Sat) - 8:30PM |
| Aug 30 (Sun) - 4:00PM |
Hannah and Her Predecessors
USA, 1986, Woody Allen
Woody Allen’s most acclaimed film of the 1980s is a dramedy about a NYC theatrical family. Hannah (Mia Farrow) is a successful actress and mother and the serene center of the clan. Orbiting around her are two troubled siblings (Barbara Hershey, Dianne Wiest), a philandering husband (Michael Caine), a hypochondriac ex-husband (Allen), an elderly father and mother, and other friends and relatives. The great supporting cast includes Carrie Fisher, Max von Sydow, J.T. Walsh, Richard Jenkins, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and John Turturro. Winner of three Oscars, including Best Original Screenplay. Cleveland revival premiere. New 35mm color print! 106 min.
| Oct 09 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
| Oct 10 (Sat) - 5:15PM |
USA, 2009, Kevin Rafferty
This "preposterously entertaining" (The NY Times) new documentary recounts the fabled 11/23/68 football game between undefeated Yale and undefeated Harvard, their longtime arch rival. Yale's quarterback was legendary Brian Dowling, a St. Ignatius grad and inspiration for Doonesbury's B.D. Players interviewed in the film include Tommy Lee Jones (whose college roommate was Al Gore) and Cleveland's Fran and Jim Gallagher. "The best football movie I've ever seen." -J. Hoberman, The Village Voice. Beta SP. 105 min. www.kino.com/harvardbeatsyale
Show Times| May 14 (Thu) - 7:00PM |
Britain, 1957, Cy Endfield
This gripping trucking melodrama, seen here in a 35mm print from England, boasts an incredible cast that includes Stanley Baker, Herbert Lom, Peggy Cummins (Gun Crazy), Patrick McGoohan (The Prisoner), William Hartnell (Doctor Who), Jill Ireland, Gordon Jackson (Upstairs, Downstairs), David McCallum, and Sean Connery. Shot in VistaVision by Geoffrey Unsworth (2001) and unavailable on Region 1 DVD (we will show the original 108-min. version, 17 minutes longer than the U.S. cut), this “Brit noir” tells of an ex-con who gets a dangerous job as a gravel hauler and soon uncovers murderous rivalry and corruption within the ranks of his fellow truckers. Special admission $10, Cinematheque members and CIA students & staff $7; no passes, twofers, or radio winners. Special thanks to Bruce Goldstein, Film Forum, and Nick Varley, Park Circus Films, Glasgow.
| Oct 10 (Sat) - 9:30PM |
| Oct 11 (Sun) - 6:30PM |
Back by Popular Demand!
Britain, 1957, Cy Endfield
The audience whooped it up when we showed this hard-driving trucking melodrama in October. So, while the British print is still in the U.S. (it returns to England soon), we’re giving others another chance to take this thrilling ride. Unavailable on Region 1 DVD and released in America in a print shorn of 17 minutes, Hell Drivers is a b&w “Brit noir” about an ex-con (Stanley Baker) who takes a dangerous job as a gravel hauler. He soon uncovers rivalry, corruption, and murder within the ranks of his fellow truckers. The incredible supporting cast includes Herbert Lom, Peggy Cummins (Gun Crazy), Patrick McGoohan (The Prisoner), William Hartnell (Doctor Who), Jill Ireland, Gordon Jackson (Upstairs, Downstairs), David McCallum, and Sean Connery. Cy Endfield was a blacklisted American director who emigrated to England and made such movies as Zulu and Mysterious Island there. 35mm VistaVision. 108 min. Special thanks to Nick Varley, Park Circus Films, Glasgow.
Show Times| Nov 14 (Sat) - 9:30PM |
Cinema with a Smile
USA, 1940, Howard Hawks
The greatest newspaper comedy of all time has some of the fastest, funniest dialogue ever written and delivered. Cary Grant plays an unscrupulous newspaper editor who will do anything to keep his star reporter (and ex-wife) Rosalind Russell from leaving the paper to marry a boring boob (Ralph Bellamy). Unmissable! 35mm print from the Sony Pictures studio archive! 92 min.
| Aug 15 (Sat) - 5:15PM |
| Aug 16 (Sun) - 1:15PM |
HOPPITY GOES TO TOWN aka MR. BUG GOES TO TOWN
New 35mm Color Print!
USA, 1941, Dave Fleischer
Max and Dave Fleischer, the brothers best known for their Betty Boop, Popeye, and Superman cartoons, also produced two full-length animated films. Hoppity Goes to Town, their second and final feature, flopped when it was released in 1941; it opened in the shadow of Disney’s Dumbo and a few days before Pearl Harbor. Nevertheless it’s a delightful film that dramatizes two dilemmas: the possibility that grasshopper Hoppity will lose his longtime love Honey Bee to evil C. Bagley Beetle, and the prospect that Bugville itself will be destroyed by a new Manhattan skyscraper. Songs by Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser. 78 min. Kids 12 & under $5.
| Jun 26 (Fri) - 6:30PM |
| Jun 27 (Sat) - 4:45PM |
Hitchcock for Halloween!
USA, 1953, Alfred Hitchcock
This rarely-revived film from Hitchcock’s greatest decade is a moody, atmospheric tale of sin and guilt shot in Quebec. A priest with a past (Montgomery Clift) hears a confession from a murderer, then faces a crisis of conscience when he himself is collared for the crime. With Anne Baxter and Karl Malden. 35mm. 95 min. Film introduced on Thursday night by Hitchcock expert Phil Skerry, Professor Emeritus of English and Film at Lakeland Community College and author of the book Psycho in the Shower, which he will sell and sign after the show.
| Oct 29 (Thu) - 6:30PM |
| Oct 31 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
I VITELLONI
Italy, 1953, Federico Fellini Fellini’s first great film is a poignant, semi-autobiographical tale of five twenty-something layabouts living in a small, provincial Italian seaside town. (“Vitelloni” means “overgrown calves.”) The young men spend their days loafing, playing, drinking, womanizing, and daydreaming; they all have vague ambitions that they will probably never realize. This is Fellini in neorealist mode; the movie has been likened to American Graffiti and reputedly inspired Scorsese’s Mean Streets. With Alberto Sordi; music by Nino Rota. Subtitles. 35mm. 105 min.
| Nov 05 (Thu) - 8:20PM |
| Nov 07 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
Italy/France, 2008, Paolo Sorrentino
This movie and Gomorrah were the two most acclaimed Italian films of 2008. Though both are tales of violence, corruption, and the Mafia, Il Divo derives from the flamboyant, operatic style of Coppola, Scorsese, and Fellini, while Gomorrah harks back to Italian neorealism. Il Divo is a black comedy centered around the life, career, and scandals of seven-time Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti, the ultimate Teflon politician, now 90. As played by Toni Servillo, Andreotti is a crafty, impassive man who, flanked by gun-carrying bodyguards, moves unscathed through a minefield of potentially crippling scandals (suspicious assassinations, “suicides” of journalists and political rivals, etc.). Servillo won both the David (Italian Oscar) and the Felix (European Oscar) for his performance. “So wildly inventive and witty that it will become a touchstone for years to come…A masterpiece.” –Variety. First time in Cleveland in 35mm! Subtitles. 110 min.
musicboxfilms.com/ildivo/
| Jul 24 (Fri) - 7:00PM |
| Jul 26 (Sun) - 2:50PM |
Austria, 2007, Ulrich Seidl
The second fiction feature by Austria’s shock-doc master Ulrich Seidl (Dog Days, Jesus You Know) takes an unflinching (but sardonically funny) look at modern Europe through two mirrored stories. Olga, a nurse and single mother unable to support herself in her impoverished Ukraine, decides to seek more lucrative work in Vienna. Pauli, an unemployed Austrian security guard, finds work transporting poker and gumball machines to Eastern Europe. Seidl’s images are meticulously framed and strikingly photographed in his trademark manner, and he continues to emphasize the tawdry and the grotesque. (If Diane Arbus had made movies, they might have looked like this.) “Masterful” –Variety. No one under 18 admitted! Subtitles. 35mm. 135 min. www.importexportmovie.co.uk
| Oct 22 (Thu) - 8:10PM |
| Oct 23 (Fri) - 9:20PM |
| Oct 25 (Sun) - 6:30PM |
USA, 1950, Nicholas Ray
This rarely-revived Humphrey Bogart film noir became the Film Forum’s best-ever one-week repertory run when the NYC movie house showed it last July. Bogie plays a lonely, weary, self-destructive Hollywood screenwriter who, when he is accused of murder, finds that the attractive girl-next-door is willing to be his alibi. But the more this woman (played by Bogart’s soon-to-be ex-wife Gloria Grahame) witnesses her neighbor’s violent outbursts, the more she doubts his innocence—and her own safety. “One of the screen’s most adult and touching love affairs…An achingly poetic meditation on pain, distrust and loss of faith…Never were despair and solitude so romantically alluring.” –Time Out Film Guide. Cleveland revival premiere. 91 min.
| Jan 23 (Sat) - 5:15PM |
| Jan 24 (Sun) - 4:00PM |
Cinematheque Elite
EN LA CIUDAD DE SYLVIA
Spain, 2007, José Luis Guerin
Here’s a rare chance to see an acclaimed recent foreign film that’s not distributed in the U.S.! A handsome young artist hangs out in a Strasbourg café watching—and sketching—the gorgeous girls he sees. It turns out he’s looking for a woman, Sylvia, whom he met seven years earlier, and when he finds her (or does he?) he follows her through the city’s labyrinthine, picturesque streets. This almost wordless tribute to “the one that got away” is either sensuous and romantic or creepy and disturbing (depending, perhaps, on whether you’re a man or a woman), and has echoes of Vertigo. Shown at the 2007 New York Film Festival. “Pure pleasure and pure cinema…Celebrates the love of looking.” –J. Hoberman, Village Voice. “Best film of 2008.” –V.A. Musetto, NY Post. Ohio premiere! Subtitles. 35mm. 84 min. Special admission $12, Cinematheque members and CIA students & staff $8; no passes, twofers, or radio winners.
Show Times| Apr 09 (Thu) - 9:10PM |
| Apr 11 (Sat) - 7:40PM |
In the Realm of Oshima: Classics
AI NO KORIIDA
Japan/France, 1976, Nagisa Oshima
Set in 1936 (as Japan prepares for war), Oshima’s best-known and most notorious film details an all-consuming, S&M-saturated sexual relationship between a hotel maid and her employer. Banned at the 1976 New York Film Festival, this unflinching meditation on love and death, power and subjugation remains strong stuff. No one under 18 admitted! New 35mm color print! Subtitles. 110 min.
Show Times| Apr 09 (Thu) - 7:00PM |
| Apr 10 (Fri) - 9:20PM |
IT IS FINE! EVERYTHING IS FINE.
A Special Event!
Crispin Glover in Person!
USA, 2007, Crispin Hellion Glover, David Brothers
Tonight we welcome back to the Cinematheque actor-filmmaker Crispin Glover, who will answer audience questions after screenings of the first two movies he has directed (they’re also the first two parts of his projected It trilogy). A book signing will follow the second film’s Q&A. The night begins with Glover’s most recent feature, a psychological horror film written by Steven C. Stewart, a wheelchair-bound man with cerebral palsy who died before the movie was released. Stewart, who appeared in Glover’s previous What Is It? (see next blurb), stars in the picture as a version of himself—a severely handicapped individual who speaks unintelligibly but fantasizes about seducing and murdering beautiful women. (Two of them are played by longtime Fassbinder star Margit Carstensen and Playboy playmate Jami Ferrell). With Bruce Glover (Crispin’s dad). “Crispin Hellion Glover’s cultivated weirdness comes into full bloom…Ultimately a very tender film.” –Variety. No one under 18 admitted! Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 74 min. Special admission $12, Cinematheque members and CIA students & staff $8; no passes, twofers, or radio winners. Or see both Crispin Glover movies tonight (see next blurb) for only $20, members/CIA $16. www.crispinglover.com
Show Times| Nov 20 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
Cinema with a Smile
USA, 1934, Norman Z. McLeod
In his greatest comedy, W.C. Fields plays a beleaguered grocery store owner who decides to buy an orange grove and move his family West. The side-splitting “Mr. Muckle” and “Carl LaFong” sequences are among the screen’s funniest. 35mm print from the Universal Pictures studio archive! 73 min.
| Aug 29 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
| Aug 30 (Sun) - 7:00PM |
JAPANESE SUMMER: DOUBLE SUICIDE
In the Realm of Oshima: Discoveries
JAPANESE SUMMER: DOUBLE SUICIDE
MURI SHINJU: NIHON NO NATSU
Japan, 1967, Nagisa Oshima
The fabled Japanese lovers’ ritual of double suicide is turned on its head in this ultra-rare (but important) Oshima movie. Here the man is a gangster looking for someone to kill him and the woman is a nymphomaniac searching for someone to love her; beyond that they don’t really care that much for each other. New 35mm color & scope print! Subtitles. 98 min.
Show Times| Mar 15 (Sun) - 8:50PM |
Germany, 2008, Christian Petzold
James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice is transposed to a desolate town in northeastern Germany in this “taut, brilliantly acted thriller” (The Village Voice) about a handsome ex-soldier who goes to work for a successful Turkish businessman and falls for his boss’s bored, beautiful wife. “A tightly constructed ‘dramatic thriller’ in which the tension comes as much from what the characters are thinking as from what they end up doing…Confirms writer-helmer Christian Petzold (Yella) as a world-class talent who remains underappreciated beyond Germany.” –Variety. Cleveland premiere. German and Turkish with subtitles. 35mm. 93 min.
www.cinemaguild.com/jerichow/
| Aug 14 (Fri) - 7:00PM |
| Aug 16 (Sun) - 3:10PM |
France/USA/Mexico/Belgium, 2008, Erick Zonca
Oscar winner Tilda Swinton, usually seen in supporting roles, gives a ferocious, unforgettable lead performance in this harrowing, Cassavetes-esque new film from the French director of The Dreamlife of Angels. Swinton plays a self-absorbed alcoholic who recklessly agrees to take part in a child-snatching scheme in order to make some easy money. “NY Times Critics’ Pick…Ms. Swinton demands to be seen…I was grateful to watch an actress at the height of her expressive powers claw toward greatness.” –Manohla Dargis, The NY Times. Adults only! Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 138 min.
www.magpictures.com
| Jul 23 (Thu) - 7:00PM |
| Jul 24 (Fri) - 9:10PM |
JULIET OF THE SPIRITS
GIULIETTA DEGLI SPIRITI Italy/France, 1965, Federico Fellini Fellini’s first color feature, made right after 8½, is a psychosexual phantasmagoria in which he trades his own fantasies for those of his wife (Giulietta Masina). Masina plays a neglected, middle-aged Roman housewife who, when she suspects her husband is cheating on her, consults psychics and seers and escapes into her imagination. Nino Rota’s memorable music has been used in other films like Paranoid Park. Subtitles. 35mm. 145 min.
| Nov 29 (Sun) - 3:30PM |
| Nov 30 (Mon) - 8:30PM |
KÆRLIGHED PÅ FILM
Denmark, 2007, Ole Bornedal
The new thriller from the director of Nightwatch and last year’s Cleveland Int’l Film Festival favorite The Substitute is a lurid mix of film noir and black comedy. A man who inadvertently caused a fatal car crash visits the tragedy’s only survivor, a comatose young woman, in the hospital. Mistaken by her wealthy family for the boyfriend they have never met, he obligingly plays the part and enjoys the perks (did somebody say sponge baths?) until the real boyfriend shows up. “As exciting as a trip through a well-equipped, scary fun house.” –The NY Times. Adults only! Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm color & scope print! 100 min. www.kochlorberfilms.com
Show Times| Apr 24 (Fri) - 9:30PM |
| Apr 25 (Sat) - 9:35PM |
Poland, 2007, Andrzej Wajda
The new film by Poland’s greatest filmmaker, Andrzej Wajda, is the kind of electrifying, large-scale historical drama that he does so well. Katyń unearths a long-buried WWII atrocity that was initially blamed on the Nazis (though Stalin was the real culprit)—the systematic slaughter of 15,000 Polish military officers and intellectuals (including Wajda’s father) in Poland’s Katyń Forest in 1940. 2008 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film. “This tenacious artist has now given his father a proper memorial and has reasserted, with power and grace, the history and identity of his nearly effaced country.” –The New Yorker. Subtitles. 121 min. www.kochlorberfilms.com
| May 29 (Fri) - 9:25PM |
| May 30 (Sat) - 7:05PM |
Austria/France/Germany/Britain, 2006, Raul Ruiz
33 minutes longer than the “international version” of Klimt previously shown at the Cinematheque, this extended cut of Raul Ruiz’s portrait of Austrian Art Nouveau painter Gustav Klimt (John Malkovich) is a sensual, ravishing, eye-popping phantasmagoria. It’s unavailable on DVD. With Saffron Burrows. In English. 35mm. 130 min.
Show Times| Apr 25 (Sat) - 7:05PM |
Canada, 2008, Ron Mann
The Flaming Lips provide the original music for the latest documentary by veteran counter-culture chronicler Ron Mann (Grass, Comic Book Confidential). Mann’s new movie looks at the world of mushrooms and mushroom lore, encompassing those who search for them (mycologist Larry Evans, “the Indiana Jones of mushroom hunters”) to those who cook them or use them to expand their consciousness. “A playfully informative look at various types of fleshy fungi and the folks who avidly consume them.” –Variety. Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 73 min. www.sphinxproductions.com/films/mushrooms/
| Sep 10 (Thu) - 8:35PM |
| Sep 11 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
| Sep 12 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
Italy, 1960, Federico Fellini
One of the landmark films of the modern era, Fellini’s expansive survey of “the sweet life” focuses on a gossip columnist (Marcello Mastroianni) who is both attracted and repelled by the decadence and excesses of Rome’s fashionable but soulless jet-set. Contains many iconic sequences, including Anita Ekberg in the Trevi Fountain. With Anouk Aimée. 35mm scope print! Subtitles. 175 min.
Show Times| Nov 15 (Sun) - 3:00PM |
Nine by Fellini
A Special Event!
Lou Giannetti introduces the movie
Italy, 1954, Federico Fellini
Dr. Louis D. Giannetti, CWRU Professor Emeritus of English and Film and author of the best-selling college text Understanding Movies, introduces one of his favorite Fellini films. La Strada (The Road) is a moving fable that chronicles the tragicomic relationship between a brutish, itinerant circus strongman (Anthony Quinn) and the love-starved, simple-minded waif (Giulietta Masina, Fellini’s wife) he purchases and employs as a clown and slave. Subtitles. 35mm. 115 min.
Show Times| Nov 08 (Sun) - 3:30PM |
Thursday, February 26, at 8:40 pm &
Sunday, March 1, at 7:00 pm
The French Crime Wave
35mm Studio Archive Print!
LA VÉRITÉ (THE TRUTH)
France/Italy, 1960, Henri-Georges Clouzot
Brigitte Bardot delivers her best performance in this rarity from the director of Diabolique and The Wages of Fear. She plays Dominique, a modern, uninhibited young woman on trial for the murder of her sister’s fiancé (he was also Dominique’s lover). Flashbacks re-create the events that led to this tragedy, and in time it becomes apparent that what’s really on trial is Dominique’s carefree, liberated, “immoral” lifestyle—a threat to the established social order. 35mm print from the Sony Pictures studio archive! Subtitles. 130 min. Show Times| Feb 26 (Thu) - 8:40PM |
| Mar 01 (Sun) - 7:00PM |
Mexico/Japan/USA, 2008, Fernando Eimbcke
One of the very best movies at this year’s Cleveland Int’l Film Festival, the new film from the director of the acclaimed Duck Season is a deadpan delight. Embracing the lackadaisical rhythms and laconic dialogue of Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismäki, Eimbcke follows a young Mexican teen who saunters into a nearby town for help after the crashes his family’s car into a telephone pole. There he stumbles upon a bunch of comic slackers and misfits. “A surprisingly refreshing experience, especially in a season of infernal cinematic busyness.” –Salon.com Subtitles. 35mm color & scope print! 89 min. www.filmmovement.com
| Sep 04 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
| Sep 06 (Sun) - 8:50PM |
BANSHUN
Japan, 1949, Yasujiro Ozu
One of the most perfect films by Japan’s great Yasujiro Ozu (and thus one of the best movies ever made), this poignant and piercingly beautiful drama delineates the attempts of an elderly widower (Chishu Ryu) to marry off his devoted grown daughter (Setsuko Hara) who is reluctant to leave him. Subtitles. 35mm. 108 min. For a contemporary variation on this movie and story, see 35 Shots of Rum.
Show Times| Feb 04 (Thu) - 8:20PM |
| Feb 05 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
Sunday, February 22, at 2:00 pm
David Lean 101
35mm Color & Scope Print!
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
Britain, 1962, David Lean
Recently named the #1 film you must see on the big screen, David Lean’s most celebrated epic stars Peter O’Toole as T.E. Lawrence, a British adventurer who united Arab tribes against the Turks during WWI. Stunning desert landscapes and an all-star cast (Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Omar Sharif, et al.) helped earn the film seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Director, and Cinematography. Presented with the support of Case Western Reserve University’s “Friends of English,” a support group of alumni and friends of the CWRU English Department. Dr. Louis D. Giannetti, CWRU Professor Emeritus of English and Film, will introduce the movie starting at 2:00 pm. Restored 35mm color & scope print! 227 min. CWRU Friends of English and CWRU students & staff with I.D. $6; special thanks to Lou Giannetti, Rob Spadoni, and Harriet Wadsworth.
Show Times| Feb 22 (Sun) - 2:00PM |
France, 1962, Alain Cavalier
Jean-Louis Trintignant, Romy Schneider, and Henry Serre (Jim in Jules and Jim) star in this never-before-released-in-America New Wave thriller, a major rediscovery! Produced by Louis Malle and set at the time of the polarizing Algerian War, Alain Cavalier’s directorial debut follows the dissatisfied wife of a factory owner as she gravitates away from her mysterious husband (a closeted right-wing militant) toward his sensitive, leftist, bohemian college friend. The beautiful b&w cinematography is by Pierre Lhomme (Army of Shadows ). The title means “The Combat on the Island.” Cleveland revival premiere. New 35mm print! Subtitles. 104 min. www.thefilmdesk.com
| Sep 25 (Fri) - 9:55PM |
| Sep 26 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
| Sep 27 (Sun) - 6:30PM |
New 35mm Color Restoration!
USA, 1945, John M. Stahl
Here’s a new, restored 35mm print of perhaps the greatest color film noir—a full-blooded melodrama about a beautiful, father-fixated femme fatale (Gene Tierney) who brings death and destruction to those who compete for her husband’s affection. With Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain, and Vincent Price. “A masterpiece of post-WWII American cinema.” –Time Out New York (3/5-11/09). Cleveland revival premiere! 110 min.
| Jun 05 (Fri) - 7:00PM |
| Jun 06 (Sat) - 9:35PM |
LÉON MORIN, PRIEST (LÉON MORIN, PRÊTRE)
New 35mm Print!
France/Italy, 1961, Jean-Pierre Melville
This extraordinary film by Jean-Pierre Melville (Army of Shadows) is only now being released in America. A handsome young priest (Jean-Paul Belmondo) serving in a French village during the German Occupation tries to convert the widow of a Jewish Communist (Emmanuelle Riva) to Christianity. She in turn tries to get him to break his vow of celibacy. “Film of the week…Jean-Pierre Melville’s masterpiece.” –Time Out New York. “Miraculous cinema, even for heretics.” –Time Out Film Guide (4/16-22/09). Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. 117 min.
www.rialtopictures.com/leon.html
| Aug 21 (Fri) - 9:30PM |
| Aug 22 (Sat) - 7:30PM |
LÅT DEN RÄTTE KOMMA IN
Sweden, 2008, Tomas Alfredson
When was the last time a vampire movie was voted the best foreign-language film of the year? Well, that’s what happened last December when film-critic associations in Boston, Chicago, Florida, Toronto, Kansas City, San Francisco, and Washington, DC bestowed this honor on Let the Right One In, an elegant and unusual coming-of-age story that chronicles the relationship between a bullied 12-year-old boy and the pale, mysterious girl who moves in next door. A new classic! Adults only! Subtitles. 35mm. 114 min. www.lettherightoneinmovie.com
Show Times| Mar 05 (Thu) - 8:55PM |
| Mar 07 (Sat) - 9:40PM |
LIVERPOOL
Cinematheque Elite
Argentina/France/Netherlands/Germany/Spain, 2008, Lisandro Alonso Undistributed in the U.S. (the print is temporarily touring select venues in North America, so catch it while you can), this film-festival favorite by Argentinean minimalist Lisandro Alonso (Los Muertos) follows a taciturn merchant sailor who takes shore leave to visit his elderly mother in his desolate, snowy Tierra del Fuego hometown. A leisurely, laconic movie of quiet moods and elegant landscapes, it also boasts a haunting metaphysical dimension heightened by its ends-of-the-earth locale. “Five stars (highest rating)…(An) enigmatic masterpiece.” –Time Out New York. Ohio premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 84 min. Special admission $10, Cinematheque members and CIA students & staff $7; no passes, twofers, or radio winners. Special thanks to Adam Sekuler, Northwest Film Forum, Seattle.
| Dec 05 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
| Dec 06 (Sun) - 6:30PM |
LOVE LETTERS AND LIVE WIRES: HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE GPO FILM UNIT
Cinematheque Elite
Britain, 1936-39, various directors
“Industrial films” do not have to be boring and unimaginative, as evidenced by this new compilation of eight of the best short movies produced by the UK’s legendary GPO (General Post Office) Film Unit during the 1930s. All have been lovingly restored by the British Film Institute. The program, which is in the U.S. temporarily, contains eight animated works (Len Lye’s N or NW and Trade Tattoo, Norman McLaren’s Love on the Wing, and Lotte Reiniger’s The Tocher) and four live-action movies, including the campy telephone-etiquette musical The Fairy of the Phone and the most famous of all GPO Film Unit films, Harry Watt and Basil Wright’s lyrical documentary Night Mail, with verse by W.H. Auden and music by Benjamin Britten. Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 80 min. Special admission $10, Cinematheque members and CIA students & staff $7; no passes, twofers, or radio winners.
| Oct 22 (Thu) - 6:30PM |
| Oct 24 (Sat) - 5:15PM |
New 35mm Color & Scope Print!
France, 1966, Jean-Luc Godard
Never before released theatrically in America, Anna Karina’s last collaboration with her then husband is “the least seen, most quintessential movie of Godard’s great period” (J. Hoberman). Karina plays a private eye who gets embroiled in indecipherable international intrigue while investigating the disappearance (death?) of her lover. This tribute to B-movies is an anti-capitalist tract masquerading as pop-art mosaic, full of songs, slogans, splashy colors, and showy compositions. With Jean-Pierre Léaud. “Not the celluloid holy grail, but it’s close enough.” –Village Voice. Cleveland theatrical premiere. Subtitles. 90 min. www.rialtopictures.com
Show Times| Apr 10 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
| Apr 11 (Sat) - 9:25PM |
Sweden/Denmark/Germany, 2009, Lukas Moodysson
Gael García Bernal and Michelle Williams star in the new film (and first in English) from the acclaimed Swedish director of Show Me Love, Together, and Lilya 4-Ever. It’s a tale of globalization, economic inequity, and international interconnectedness that revolves around two affluent New Yorkers—a successful game designer and his surgeon wife—their 8-year-old daughter, their Filipino nanny and her far-flung family, and a Bangkok prostitute. “As affecting as it is heartfelt.” –The Wall Street Journal. Cleveland theatrical premiere. 35mm. 125 min. www.ifcfilms.com/films/mammoth
Show Times| Feb 27 (Sat) - 7:10PM |
| Feb 28 (Sun) - 8:45PM |
Canada, 2006, Jennifer Baichwall
This provocative documentary focuses on Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky as he takes large-scale, formally-composed, vibrantly-colored pictures of China’s factories, mines, and other work environments—thus rendering ravaged countryside and industrial wastelands as “beautiful” landscapes. Some subtitles. 35mm. 90 min. Introduced by Ray Watkins, CWRU postdoctoral fellow in English; shown as part of the Humanities Week “Cultures of Green” Film Festival, co-sponsored by CWRU’s Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities. CWRU students & staff (with I.D.) $6.
| Oct 26 (Mon) - 7:00PM |
In the Realm of Oshima: Classics
Britain/Japan, 1983, Nagisa Oshima
David Bowie, Tom Conti, and Takeshi Kitano star in Nagisa Oshima’s drama about East-West relations in a Japanese POW camp during WWII. Japanese pop star Ryuichi Sakamoto (who also composed the music) plays a fanatical camp commandant who becomes smitten with one of his prisoners (Bowie), a blonde, androgynous British officer. Mostly in English. New 35mm color print! 122 min. www.janusfilms.com
Show Times| Apr 02 (Thu) - 6:45PM |
| Apr 03 (Fri) - 9:20PM |
Cinematheque Elite
USA, 1975, Robert Kramer, John Douglas
Milestone is right! This epic account of the various paths taken by 1960s hippies, activists, and radicals in the years after the end of that galvanizing decade is, as NY Times critic Richard Eder wrote in 1975, “the most honest, complex and moving film exploration yet made of what has happened to the survivors of what came to be called the Movement.” Focusing on over 50 characters now acting locally after once thinking globally, this legendary, almost-never-shown landmark boasts scripted and unscripted scenes that blend fiction and documentary and embrace causes ranging from nudism and communal living to organic farming, pottery-making, and homosexual love. We will show Milestones in a newly restored 35mm color print from France, where it received a special screening at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. With Grace Paley. “Quite frankly, one of the most amazing films I have ever seen.” –Melissa Anderson, Time Out New York. “I have the sense that any attempt to grasp the essence of the '60s will have to pass through Milestones, as sad and compassionate a movie as I have ever seen.” –A. O. Scott, The NY Times (2008). Adults only! 215 min. Special admission $12, Cinematheque members and CIA students & staff $8; no passes, twofers, or radio winners. Special thanks to Adam Sekuler, Northwest Film Forum, Seattle.
| Aug 23 (Sun) - 6:30PM |
MISHIMA: A LIFE IN FOUR CHAPTERS
New 35mm Color Print!
USA, 1985, Paul Schrader
Here’s a new 35mm color print of one of the most original, ambitious, and ravishing American films of the 1980s! Paul Schrader’s take on the life of celebrated Japanese writer and militarist Yukio Mishima, who committed ritual suicide in 1970 after he and his private militia seized Japan’s army headquarters in Tokyo, combines biographical re-creation with stylized visualizations of three episodes from Mishima’s novels. It all underscores Mishima’s lifelong obsession with beauty and death. With Ken Ogata; music by Philip Glass. “Schrader’s brilliant, baroque biopic comes close to being the filmmaker’s crowning achievement.” –Time Out New York. Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. 121 min. www.paulschrader.org
| May 15 (Fri) - 9:15PM |
| May 17 (Sun) - 6:45PM |
Five from Cahiers du cinéma’s Top 100
USA, 1955, Fritz Lang
Never released in the U.S. on video or DVD, Fritz (Metropolis, M) Lang’s highly-atmospheric adventure saga is set on the storm-swept Cornwall coast during the 18th century. An orphan boy falls in with a band of smugglers and buccaneers, who help him locate a valuable diamond. This was Lang’s only film in Cinemascope—a process he derided in Godard’s Contempt as “only good for funerals and snakes.” Moonfleet tied for #30 on Cahiers du cinéma’s list of the 100 best films of all time. With Stewart Granger, Jon Whiteley, George Sanders, and Viveca Lindfors. 35mm color & scope print! 89 min.
| Jun 20 (Sat) - 5:15PM |
| Jun 21 (Sun) - 7:00PM |
MOSCOW, BELGIUM (AANRIJDING IN MOSCOU)
Belgium, 2008, Chrsitophe Van Rompaey
In this acclaimed new movie, a 43-year-old mother of three whose art-teacher husband is cheating on her begins an unlikely affair with a 29-year-old truck-driver. The new relationship is going well when hubby decides to return… “Highly enjoyable romantic comedy.” –The Hollywood Reporter. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 102 min. www.moscow-belgium.com
| Jun 13 (Sat) - 7:15PM |
| Jun 14 (Sun) - 8:45PM |
MR. HULOT’S HOLIDAY (LES VACANCES DE MONSIEUR HULOT)
Cinema with a Smile
France, 1953, Jacques Tati
Here’s a new 35mm print (from France) of one of the funniest slapstick comedies ever made! It’s also the movie in which Jacques Tati introduced his lovable alter ego, Monsieur Hulot, who would be featured in three subsequent films. The gangly, pipe-smoking Hulot is a polite, well-meaning, but bumbling bachelor who suffers one hilarious mishap after another. Here Hulot spends his summer vacation at a quaint seaside resort on the Breton coast. Misfortune, however, does not take a holiday. Subtitles. 90 min.
Special thanks to Delphine Selles, French Cultural Services, New York.
| Jul 02 (Thu) - 7:30PM |
| Jul 05 (Sun) - 1:15PM |
Saturday, February 28, at 7:00 pm
New 35mm Studio Archive Print!
NAPOLÉON
France, 1927, Abel Gance
Never released in America on DVD (who’d want to watch it on TV anyway?), Abel Gance’s monumental re-creation of the rise of Napoléon is one of the most thrilling silent films ever made. It overflows with technical innovations—and climaxes in a three-panel (originally three-screen) “triptych.” Our plans to show this movie last August were scotched when Universal Pictures’ sole 35mm copy was destroyed in a catastrophic studio fire. Fortunately, they recently replaced it with a new print. Napoléon exists worldwide in copies of various lengths; we will show the American release version of Kevin Brownlow’s color-tinted and toned 1980 restoration, which has music by Carmine Coppola (Francis’ father). A road-show sensation in the early 1980s, it has rarely been revived since. Unmissable! 35mm. 235 min. Show Times| Feb 28 (Sat) - 7:00PM |
France/USA, 2009, Fatih Akin, Mira Nair, Brett Ratner, et al.
Natalie Portman, Bradley Cooper, Shia LaBeouf, Orlando Bloom, Robin Wright Penn, Andy Garcia, Hayden Christensen, Julie Christie, James Caan, Christina Ricci, and Chris Cooper are just a few of the stars who appear in the 11 segments that constitute this omnibus film. (Each episode is directed by a prominent international filmmaker.) Like its predecessor Paris, je t’aime, New York, I Love You tells a series of short stories of love, romance, and sex in the city—each one set in a different New York neighborhood, from Soho to Central Park, Brooklyn to Brighton Beach. “These tales are as highly designed as fashion layouts. But they're as relaxing to thumb through as those NYT Magazine trend pieces.” –Entertainment Weekly. Cleveland premiere. 35mm. Some subtitles. 103 min. www.newyorkiloveyouthemovie.com
Show Times| Jan 08 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
| Jan 09 (Sat) - 9:30PM |
| Jan 10 (Sun) - 8:45PM |
BAM GUA NAT
S. Korea, 2008, Hong Sang-soo
A self-absorbed 40-year-old Korean painter who has impulsively flown to France to avoid a possible drug rap in Seoul finds himself a fish out of water in contemporary Paris. Though he happens to cross paths with an old girlfriend, and eventually falls for a two young art students, he spends much of his time wandering through the city, worrying about the wife he left behind, and generally behaving badly in a midlife-crisis kind of way. This wry and delightful comedy by internationally acclaimed Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo (Woman on the Beach) is perhaps his most enjoyable movie yet. A 2008 New York Film Festival selection. “Unexpectedly charming.” –The NY Times. Subtitles. 35mm. 144 min. www.ifcfilms.com/films/night-and-day
Show Times| Feb 25 (Thu) - 8:10PM |
| Feb 26 (Fri) - 9:00PM |
In the Realm of Oshima: Discoveries
NIGHT AND FOG IN JAPAN
NIHON NO YORU TO KIRI
Japan, 1960, Nagisa Oshima
Oshima’s inflammatory indictment of the Japanese Left and the ineffectual student movement was withdrawn from circulation by Shochiku, the studio that produced and distributed it, when a Socialist Party leader was assassinated a few days after its release. (Oshima was so angry that he left the studio and set up his own independent production company.) Set at a wedding where former left-wing “comrades” turn against each other, this is one of the most politically and stylistically radical movies ever made. New 35mm color & scope print! Subtitles. 107 min.
Show Times| Mar 08 (Sun) - 8:40PM |
Special Offsite Event!
The Cinematheque at the Capitol Theatre
USA, 2008, Greta Gerwig, Joe Swanberg
Our second show at the Capitol tonight (see previous blurb) will take place in one of the theatre’s smaller houses upstairs (not wheelchair accessible). Nights and Weekends is a recent Amerindie movie that stars its co-writers and co-directors, Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig, both fixtures in the ultra-low-budget “mumblecore” movement—as are the movie’s supporting players Jay Duplass (co-director of Puffy Chair and Baghead ) and Lynn Shelton (director of Humpday). With an 88% “fresh” rating on RottenTomatoes.com, the film is an unvarnished, naturalistic account of a bumpy long-distance relationship between two twenty-something young people who live separately in Chicago and New York. “Swanberg and Gerwig have a gift for constructing the kind of moments rarely seen in contemporary American independent film.” –The Onion A.V. Club. No one under 18 admitted! Cleveland premiere. DVD. 80 min. Regular Cinematheque admission prices—including our standard second-film discount—apply. See previous blurb for prices, location, and restrictions. www.nightsandweekendsmovie.com
Show Times| Nov 19 (Thu) - 9:20PM |
NINE
Special Advance Screening!
USA/Italy, 2009, Rob Marshall
As a post-script to our "Nine by Fellini" series, we're pleased to be able to present a special advance screening of this new Felliniesque musical. Based on the Tony Award-winning Broadway show inspired by Fellini's 8½, Rob (Chicago) Marshall's movie explores the loves, dreams, and fantasies of a successful but blocked Italian film director. Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, and Sophia Loren star. Rated PG-13. Cleveland premiere. 117 min. Admission free but only Cinematheque members and Cleveland Institute of Art students, faculty, and staff will be admitted until 3:15 pm. After that, admission is open to all. Screening courtesy of The Weinstein Company.
| Dec 20 (Sun) - 3:30PM |
NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD: THE WILD, UNTOLD STORY OF OZPLOITATION!
Australia/USA, 2008, Mark Hartley
This rambunctious survey of sex films, road movies, action flicks, and horror shows made during the Australian New Wave of the 1970s and 1980s features interviews with everyone from Quentin Tarantino, Dennis Hopper, and John Waters to Down Under directors like George Miller, Russell Mulcahy, and Fred Schepisi. There are gobs of tantalizing film clips—some from movies you might have seen at the Cinematheque: Mad Max, Razorback, Dead-End Drive In. Adults only! 35mm. 103 min. www.magpictures.com
| Sep 26 (Sat) - 7:35PM |
| Sep 27 (Sun) - 8:35PM |
A Special Event!
Filmmaker Gary Hustwit in Person!
USA/Britain, 2009, Gary Hustwit
Tonight filmmaker Gary Hustwit (Helvetica) will answer questions after a screening of his new film Objectified, a wide-ranging look at manufactured objects (from toothbrushes to telephones) and the people who design them. Featuring interviews with industrial design superstars like Karim Rashid, Jonathan Ive of Apple, and Dieter Rams of Braun, Hustwit’s movie looks beyond form, function, and material to investigate our relationship with consumer goods and ponder the challenges of sustainability. Co-presented by The Cleveland Institute of Art, AIGA Cleveland, and IDSA Northern Ohio. Cleveland premiere. Digital projection. 75 min. Special admission $20; Cinematheque, AIGA & IDSA members, all students, and CIA staff $15. No passes, radio winners, or twofers. To purchase advance tickets, go to www.objectifiedfilm.com/special-screening-in-cleveland/
| May 07 (Thu) - 7:30PM |
Netherlands, 2008, Heddy Honigmann
The new film from the great Dutch documentarian Heddy Honigmann (Forever, The Underground Orchestra) captures the extremes of wealth and poverty in her native Peru. Filming and interviewing street performers, shoeshine boys, servers, small business owners, and others in Lima ignored by the wealthy and the powerful, Honigmann celebrates the spirit and resiliency of these hardworking have-nots who struggle daily in an impoverished country best known for earthquakes, political corruption, and human rights violations. “Lucid, quietly moving and quietly angry…Makes the invisible visible.” –The NY Times. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 93 min.
| Aug 27 (Thu) - 8:25PM |
| Aug 28 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
New 35mm Print!
Britain, 1947, Carol Reed
This film noir masterpiece was made by Carol Reed two years before his better-known The Third Man. James Mason plays a wounded IRA gunman who stumbles through the streets of Belfast looking for help while trying to avoid the police. A suspense classic with metaphysical overtones, it’s one of the great British films. Cleveland revival premiere. 115 min.
Show Times| Feb 20 (Sat) - 5:00PM |
| Feb 21 (Sun) - 4:00PM |
Britain, 2008, Terence Davies
In his first film in eight years, Britain’s Proustian film poet Terence Davies (Distant Voices, Still Lives; The Long Day Closes) once again looks back at his childhood in Liverpool. Growing up there in the late forties and fifties, Davies tried to reconcile Catholicism and his homosexuality, and discovered that movies offered escape from his drab, working-class, industrial surroundings. Davies’ evocative essay is constructed from archival film and audio clips, period pop songs, poems, classical music, and his own wry, melancholy voiceover narration. “A short, beautiful, characteristically sublime memory piece by the great British auteur.” –Entertainment Weekly. Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 74 min. www.oftimeandthecity.com
Show Times| Apr 25 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
| Apr 26 (Sun) - 4:15PM |
OLIVER TWIST (Polanski Version)
The Roman Polanski Version!
Britain/Czech Republic/France/Italy, 2005, Roman Polanski
Criminally underseen in theatres, Roman Polanski’s powerful follow-up to his prized The Pianist is a Dickens adaptation penned by that previous movie’s Oscar-winning screenwriter, Ronald Harwood. Ben Kingsley (playing Fagin) and a cast of unknowns re-enact the familiar tale of a homeless orphan boy who falls in with a gang of juvenile pickpockets in 19th-century London. “Altogether remarkable, a near-masterpiece.” –Peter Rainer. 35mm color & scope print! 130 min.
Shown in conjunction with the 103rd International Dickens Fellowship Conference, held this year in Cleveland; conference registrants $6 with I.D. Special thanks to Charla Coatoam.
| Jul 31 (Fri) - 7:00PM |
Cinematheque Elite
Carl Theodor Dreyer: Danish Prints
Denmark, 1955, Carl Dreyer
One of the all-time great movies by one of the all-time great filmmakers (Denmark’s Carl Dreyer of The Passion of Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath) is not distributed theatrically in the U.S. So this rare chance to see it in a 35mm print from Denmark should not be missed. Ordet examines a crisis of faith in a rural farm family whose members represent a variety of religious beliefs—from the widowed father’s stern Christianity to his saintly daughter-in-law’s more loving and tolerant brand, from one son’s agnosticism to another’s fanatical identification with Jesus. When a member of the family dies, the crisis comes to a head. The stirring climax of this mesmerizing film is one of the screen’s greatest affirmations of love; Carlos Reygadas borrowed it for his acclaimed Silent Light, shown 4/18 & 19. Subtitles. 125 min. Special admission $10, Cinematheque members and CIA students & staff $7; no passes, twofers, or radio winners.
| Apr 30 (Thu) - 6:45PM |
| May 01 (Fri) - 9:10PM |
Cinema with a Smile
USA, 1923, Buster Keaton, Jack Blystone
Buster Keaton’s first great comedy feature is set in the 1830s and tells of a young New Yorker who returns to his Southern home and gets caught up in a longstanding blood feud between the Canfields and the McKays. Great gags and breathtaking stunts make this one of the high points of Keaton’s extraordinary career! Silent with music track. 35mm. 74 min.
| Jul 25 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
| Jul 26 (Sun) - 1:15PM |
Norway/Germany/France, 2007, Bent Hamer
In this “gentle existential farce” (The Village Voice) that evokes Buster Keaton in its droll, poetic comic vignettes, a longtime train engineer forced into unwanted retirement finds himself suddenly navigating a baffling world full of eccentric individuals and irregular behavior. From the director of Kitchen Stories and Factotum. “A film of subtle, insinuating charm.” –The Onion (A.V. Club). Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 90 min. www.sonyclassics.com/ohorten/
| Sep 04 (Fri) - 9:20PM |
| Sep 05 (Sat) - 7:25PM |
For Valentine’s Day!
USA, 1972, Herbert Ross
Woody Allen wrote and stars in—but did not direct—this comedy from his great 1970s period. Because of that, it is usually omitted from Allen retrospectives, even though it co-stars his regular collaborators Diane Keaton and Tony Roberts and stands as one of his funniest films. Allen plays an insecure and inept-in-love film critic who summons ultra-cool Humphrey Bogart (especially the Bogie in Casablanca; see previous blurb) to coach him through his fumbling attempts at romance. “(Allen) at his best.” –Time Out Film Guide. 35mm color print from the Paramount Pictures studio archive! 87 min.
Show Times| Feb 14 (Sun) - 6:45PM |
In the Realm of Oshima: Discoveries
PLEASURES OF THE FLESH
ETSURAKU
Japan, 1965, Nagisa Oshima
This bizarre Oshima comedy, a little-known precursor to his In the Realm of the Senses (see 4/9 & 10), tells of a teacher who once committed a murder and is now being blackmailed by an imprisoned embezzler. The teacher, who is safeguarding the embezzler’s money until he gets out of jail, decides instead to squander the cash on sexual indulgences and kill himself when it runs out. One of Martin Scorsese’s top ten “essential” Oshima films. New 35mm color & scope print! Subtitles. 90 min.
Show Times| Mar 15 (Sun) - 7:00PM |
Canada, 2008, Bruce McDonald
This avant-horror comedy by veteran Canadindie filmmaker Bruce McDonald (The Tracey Fragments, Dance Me Outside) stars Stephen McHattie as a former big-city shock jock now working for a small radio station in a church basement in rural Pontypool, Ontario. On Valentine’s Day he receives reports that locals aboveground are turning into babbling, violent, flesh-eating zombies—and the virus infecting them seems to be carried by the English language! What’s a talk show host to do? “(A) witty, economically gory little tour de force…28 Days Later written by linguist Noam Chomsky…The perfect antidote to swine flu hysteria…Grade: A.” –Entertainment Weekly. Cleveland premiere. 35mm color & scope print! 96 min.
www.ifcfilms.com
| Aug 27 (Thu) - 6:30PM |
| Aug 28 (Fri) - 9:25PM |
PRIVATE PROPERTY
NUE PROPRIÉTÉ Belgium/France/Luxembourg, 2006, Joachim Lafosse This tense family drama was Sight & Sound magazine’s May 2008 “film of the month.” Isabelle Huppert is superb as a single mother who retains possession of her family’s home, a large farmhouse, after a painful divorce. But when she contemplates selling the property, her twentysomething twin sons turn on her with a vengeance. “An impeccably acted character drama…Shows how strong and how terrifying the bonds within families can be...Etches the line between love and hate with a savagery that is almost unprecedented.” –The L.A. Times. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 95 min. www.newyorkerfilms.com
| Jul 26 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
| Jul 27 (Sun) - 9:00PM |
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK: THE ADAPTATION
Back by Popular Demand!
Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala present
USA, 1989, Eric Zala
Many have asked for this, and tonight and tomorrow we are pleased to bring back the shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark that we first showed in 2007. Coming with it are Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala, two of the three filmmakers who made this almost inconceivably ambitious feature when they were teenagers growing up in Mississippi in the 1980s. Shooting on VHS in their basements and backyards, and working with a cast of friends, family, and pets, Strompolos, Zala and Jayson Lamb did everything on this labor-of-love. They acted, built sets, sewed costumes, scrounged props, performed stunts, and risked physical injury. They started production when they were 12 years old and worked on it for the next seven years! But the result (which Harry Knowles of Ain’t It Cool News has called “the best damn fan film I’ve ever seen”) has won them international attention and acclaim, and even a face-to-face meeting with Raiders director Steven Spielberg, who proclaimed their movie wonderful. The hundreds of moviegoers who saw it at the Cinematheque in 2007 would heartily agree. So don’t miss Strompolos and Zala when they bring it back to Cleveland. (Strompolos produced the movie and plays Indiana Jones in it; Zala directed the film and plays Belloq.) You can see the movie only when “the Raiders guys” appear with it. It’s not on DVD and, given rights issues, may never be. Video. 100 min. Special admission $12, Cinematheque members and CIA students & staff and kids 12 & under $8; no passes, twofers, or radio winners. For advance tickets, call (216) 421-7450 or purchase them at the Cinematheque boxoffice starting on 11/2. Thanks to Chris Stults, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus. Strompolos and Zala will also give a free lunchtime talk and PowerPoint presentation between noon and 1 pm on Friday, December 4, in the CIA’s Ohio Bell Auditorium, 11141 East Blvd. The two men will reveal how they made their film against great odds—and equally incredibly, how it came to be discovered and shown all over the world, engendering the praise of Eli Roth, Quentin Tarantino, and ultimately Steven Spielberg himself. Talk sponsored by CIA’s T.I.M.E.-Digital Arts department. Special thanks to Kristen Baumlier, Sarah Paul, and Lane Cooper. http://www.theraider.net/films/raiders_adaptation/index.php
Show Times| Dec 03 (Thu) - 8:15PM |
| Dec 04 (Fri) - 9:15PM |
Hungary, 1971, Miklós Jancsó
There are only 30 shots in this amazing and unique film, in which an 1890s revolt by landless Hungarian farm workers is rendered as a kind of folk tale with songs and choreographed dances. Featuring symbolic color and ample nudity, this balletic masterpiece “does not conform to narrative or psychological conventions, but opens up other areas which are usually only found in the screen musical” (The Holt Foreign Film Guide). Jancsó won the Best Director prize at Cannes for the movie, which critic Jonathan Rosenbaum says “may well be the greatest Hungarian film of the 60s and 70s.” New 35mm color print! Subtitles. 88 min.
| Jun 06 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
| Jun 07 (Sun) - 7:00PM |
Austria, 2008, Götz Spielmann
One of the five films nominated for this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, this terrific thriller focuses on an ex-con working as a bouncer at a Vienna brothel. He dreams of running away and starting over with one of the establishment’s Ukrainian hookers. But when the robbery that would bankroll his new beginning goes awry, he hides out at his grandfather’s farm—only to discover that the cop investigating the case lives next door. And he has an alluring wife... Economical, emotionally cool, and elegantly precise in the manner of Michael Haneke, Revanche (“revenge”) announces the arrival of another Austrian “auteur of the first rank” (Andrew Sarris). Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 121 min. www.janusfilms.com/revanche/
| Oct 02 (Fri) - 9:10PM |
| Oct 03 (Sat) - 7:10PM |
| Oct 04 (Sun) - 3:45PM |
Thursday, February 26, at 6:45 pm &
Friday, February 27, at 9:15 pm
The French Crime Wave
RIPTIDE
aka SUCH A PRETTY LITTLE BEACH
UNE SI JOLIE PETITE PLAGE
France, 1948, Yves Allégret
A melancholy young man (Gérard Philipe) checks into an off-season hotel on the Normandy coast. What has brought him to this desolate place in the dead of winter, amid gloom and rain? And who is that other mysterious guest at the hotel who seems to know a lot about the young man? Time Out New York called this moody, poetic film noir “the biggest revelation” of Film Forum’s “French Crime Wave” series. It’s not distributed in the U.S., so don’t miss this 35mm print from France! Subtitles. 97 min.
Show Times| Feb 26 (Thu) - 6:45PM |
| Feb 27 (Fri) - 9:15PM |
USA/Britain, 2006, Stephen Kijak
Cult singer-composer Scott Walker is one of the music world’s enigmas. Born in Ohio in 1943, Walker became a teen pop idol in the 1960s as a member of the Walker Brothers (“The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore”). He moved to England and there evolved into a reclusive but influential oracle of experimental rock. His dark, funereal, sometimes apocalyptic songs (e.g., 2006’s The Drift) are admired by David Bowie, Brian Eno, Sting, Ute Lemper, and Colin and Jonny Greenwood. All (including Walker) are interviewed in this revealing film. Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 98 min. www.scottwalkerfilm.com
Show Times| Apr 02 (Thu) - 9:10PM |
| Apr 04 (Sat) - 9:45PM |
Philippines/France, 2008, Brillante Mendoza
The new film from the winner of the “Someone To Watch” award at the 32nd Cleveland Int’l Film Festival is a raw, rambunctious drama set in and around a dilapidated, X-rated Philippine movie house owned (and occupied) by a three-generation family. You can smell the fetid atmosphere and feel the sexual heat in this decrepit facility where the family’s dramas dwarf the action on the screen and patrons’ morals are as loose as the plaster. A 2008 New York Film Festival selection. “Merry, filthy, unstoppably hormonal.” –The Boston Globe. No one under 18 admitted! Cleveland premiere! Subtitles. 35mm. 90 min. www.serbis-themovie.com
| May 23 (Sat) - 7:20PM |
| May 24 (Sun) - 9:15PM |
Macedonia/Germany/Italy/Bulgaria/Spain, 2007, Milcho Manchevski
The latest film from the director of Before the Rain is a sensuously-photographed supernatural mystery/thriller in which a Macedonian doctor who has survived a serious car crash starts encountering strange phenomena and weird people who seem to be telling him something (though in cryptic phrases or unfamiliar languages). Macedonia’s official entry for the 2008 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. “You won’t be bored…Well acted and very sexy.” –The NY Times. Adults only! Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 130 min.
| Jun 04 (Thu) - 7:00PM |
| Jun 05 (Fri) - 9:10PM |
SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS (TENI ZABYTYKH PREDKOV)
New 35mm Color Print!
USSR, 1964, Sergei Paradjanov
This tragic romance set in the Carpathian Mountains gave the world its first glimpse of the extravagant visual poetry and unbridled imagination of Sergei (The Color of Pomegranates) Paradjanov, a “troublemaker” who would be imprisoned by Soviet authorities on trumped-up charges a few years later. A roiling brew of mythology, religious iconography, and pagan magic, this delirious folk spectacle tells of a peasant lad who falls for the daughter of the man who killed his father, but ends up unhappily married to a sorceress. “Ethnographic cinema run wild…Overwhelmingly beautiful…Ecstatic.” –J. Hoberman, The Village Voice. Ukrainian with subtitles. 92 min. www.kino.com
| Jun 27 (Sat) - 9:55PM |
| Jun 28 (Sun) - 7:00PM |
SHALL WE KISS? (UN BAISER S’IL VOUS PLAîT)
France, 2007, Emmanuel Mouret
A woman refuses a casual goodnight kiss after a first date with a man she just met. She explains her reluctance by telling him the story of another “innocuous” kiss between another pair of friends—and its life-changing repercussions. This wry, witty, delightful French film—one of the best movies of the year, and not the “trifle” so many critics have described—boasts a loquacious original screenplay that evokes Rohmer and Woody Allen, and a flashback/Scheherazade structure (and use of classical music) that recalls Oliveira. With Virginie Ledoyen and writer-director Mouret. Subtitles. 35mm. 102 min.
www.shallwekiss.com
| Jul 25 (Sat) - 7:05PM |
Jesuits in Film: Series Kickoff
Howard Gray, S.J. introduces
CHINMOKU
Japan, 1971, Masahiro Shinoda
Martin Scorsese is planning to remake this little-known but celebrated Japanese film about the persecution of Jesuit missionaries in 17th-century Japan. Based on a novel by Shusaku Endo, the movie follows two Portuguese Jesuits as they infiltrate Japanese Christian communities created by earlier missionaries but which have since been driven underground. The men aspire to re-establish the Church on the isolated island. Silence has color cinematography by the great Kazuo Miyagawa (Rashomon, Ugetsu, Yojimbo) and music by Tôru Takemitsu. This is the first movie in a six-film series, “Jesuits in Film,” sponsored by The Cardinal Suenens Center at John Carroll University. The other five movies will show free of charge on the JCU campus. (Go to www.jcu.edu/suenens/jesuitfilms.htm for titles, times, and locations.) Silence will be introduced by Jesuit historian Howard Gray, S.J. of Georgetown University, Washington, DC. Subtitles. 35mm. 129 min. JCU students, faculty & staff $6; special thanks to Doris Donnelly.
Show Times| Feb 11 (Thu) - 6:30PM |
SILENCE AND CRY (CSEND ÉS KIÁLTÁS)
Hungary, 1967, Miklós Jancsó
After the defeat of Hungary’s first Communist regime in 1919, a refugee from the Red army hides from the ruthless “White” police in a peasant farmhouse. Miklós Jancsó’s signature long sequence-shots lend this political drama a singular abstract power. New 35mm scope print! Subtitles. 73 min.
| May 30 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
| May 31 (Sun) - 7:00PM |
STELLET LICHT
Mexico/France/Netherlands/Germany, 2007, Carlos Reygadas
One of the most acclaimed movies of the past two years finally gets a U.S. release! Carlos Reygadas’ stunningly-shot third film (after the auspicious Japón and Battle in Heaven ) is set in an exotic, modern-day Mexican Mennonite community where the inhabitants wear traditional dress and speak Plautdietsch, a form of archaic German. There a married farmer and father openly carries on an affair with another woman. But he feels anguish over his inability to reconcile his “sinful” behavior with his spiritual beliefs. The film’s fixation on guilt, suffering, and transcendence evokes the rigorous work of the great Dane Carl Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc, Day of Wrath, Ordet). Unmissable! “The kind of gorgeous, multilayered art film they just don’t make anymore.” –New York Magazine. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 136 min. www.stelletlicht.com
Show Times| Apr 18 (Sat) - 7:05PM |
| Apr 19 (Sun) - 3:30PM |
USA, 1971, Douglas Trumbull
Douglas Trumbull, who did the special effects for Space Odyssey and Blade Runner, made his directorial debut with this poetic sci-fi film. Set in 2001, after Earth has been ravaged by a nuclear holocaust (!), the movie follows the human and robot crew of an orbiting greenhouse that carries the only surviving specimens of flora that could refoliate the planet someday. With Bruce Dern; co-written by Michael Cimino and Steven Bochco. 35mm color print from the Universal Pictures studio archive! 89 min. Introduced by Robert Spadoni, CWRU associate professor of English; shown as part of the Humanities Week “Cultures of Green” Film Festival, co-sponsored by CWRU’s Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities. CWRU students & staff (with I.D.) $6.
| Oct 27 (Tue) - 7:00PM |
Mexico/USA, 2009, Cary Fukunaga
Winner of the directing and cinematography award in the dramatic competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, this tense, vivid saga follows a small group of illegal immigrants from Central America as they travel toward the American border on top of a train. The movie’s main character is a beautiful, teenage Honduran girl who hooks up with a young Mexican gang member outrunning his violent past. One of the best movies of 2009! Subtitles. 35mm color & scope print! 96 min.
| Jul 02 (Thu) - 5:30PM |
| Jul 05 (Sun) - 3:05PM |
In the Realm of Oshima: Discoveries
SING A SONG OF SEX aka A TREATISE ON JAPANESE BAWDY SONGS
NIHON SHUNKA-KÔ
Japan, 1967, Nagisa Oshima
This unknown-in-America movie is one of Oshima’s greatest early works. Four Japanese high school boys who have come to Tokyo to take their university entrance exams spend the rest of the day (and night) talking, thinking, and fantasizing about sex—prompted largely by a professor who takes them to bars, teaches them a dirty folk song, and arranges an overnight stay for them with some girls they know. A provocative meditation on the new sexual freedoms of the sixties! New 35mm color & scope print! Subtitles. 103 min.
Show Times| Mar 13 (Fri) - 9:10PM |
USA, 2008, Nina Paley
The ancient Indian tale of the Ramayana, which details a woman’s abandonment by her husband, is wedded to the true story of the filmmaker’s break-up with her own spouse—and to 1920s jazz/pop standards sung by Annette Hanshaw (1901-1985)—in this witty, delightful, independently-produced animated musical. Has a 100% “fresh” rating (unanimous favorable reviews) on RottenTomatoes.com! Cleveland theatrical premiere. 35mm. 82 min. www.shadowdistribution.com
| May 02 (Sat) - 9:35PM |
| May 03 (Sun) - 7:00PM |
Thursday, February 19, at 7:00 pm &
Friday, February 20, at 9:20 pm
New 35mm Color Print!
SIX IN PARIS
PARIS VU PAR…
France, 1965, various directors
Six French New Wave filmmakers—including Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, and Jean Rouch—each tell a story set in a different district of Paris in this classic omnibus film that was shot in 16mm, in liberating cinéma-vérité style. Godard (working with Albert Maysles) visualizes an anecdote from his feature A Woman Is a Woman. Rohmer amuses with a vignette about a salesman who fears he has murdered a tramp. But Chabrol steals the show with his darkly comic account of an endlessly-bickering bourgeois couple (played by Chabrol and his then-wife Stéphane Audran) who drive their child to distraction. Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. 98 min. www.newyorkerfilms.com
Show Times| Feb 19 (Thu) - 7:00PM |
| Feb 20 (Fri) - 9:20PM |
USA, 2007, Monty Miranda
Winner of the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the SXSW Film Festival, this funny, whimsical slacker comedy focuses on a failed 20-something playwright who discovers that he has a talent for robbing banks. “One of the funniest movies I saw at the (SXSW) festival.” –Ain’t It Cool News. Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 88 min. www.skillslikethis.com
| Jun 26 (Fri) - 9:55PM |
| Jun 27 (Sat) - 8:10PM |
Paul Newman, 1925-2008
USA, 1977, George Roy Hill
This hilariously profane, knock-‘em sock-‘em comedy (written by a woman, Nancy Dowd) tells of a struggling minor-league hockey coach (Paul Newman) who decides to improve the fortunes of his sorry club by recruiting some goons and playing dirty—which is what the public wants anyway. New 35mm print! 122 min.
| May 29 (Fri) - 7:00PM |
| May 31 (Sun) - 8:35PM |
USA/Mexico, 2008, Alex Rivera
This “unusually thoughtful science fiction film” (The NY Times) is set in a futuristic Mexico walled off from the U.S., where giant corporations control water rights and underpaid workers relay their manual labor to First World factories via electronic “nodes” implanted in their bodies. The movie follows Memo, a young computer hacker who migrates from Oaxaca to Tijuana after his father is killed by a military drone guarding against “aqua-terrorists.” In the north Memo finds work and falls in with an attractive journalist. But she, too, is intent on exploiting him. “Adventurous, ambitious and ingeniously futuristic, Sleep Dealer is a welcome surprise.” –The L.A. Times. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 90 min.
www.sleepdealer.com
| Jul 31 (Fri) - 9:30PM |
| Aug 01 (Sat) - 5:15PM |
Five from Cahiers du cinéma’s Top 100
USA, 1958, Vincente Minnelli
Famously cited in Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt, this well-acted adaptation of a James Jones novel tells of a writer (Frank Sinatra) who returns to his small Indiana hometown after WWII. There he befriends a gambler (Dean Martin) and a vulnerable waif with a reputation as a loose woman (Shirley MacLaine), while struggling to decide between a life of freedom or conformity. Tied for #50 on Cahiers du cinéma’s list of the 100 best films of all time. 35mm color & scope print! 136 min.
| Jun 18 (Thu) - 7:00PM |
| Jun 21 (Sun) - 8:50PM |
Britain, 2008, Shane Meadows
Over the past decade Shane Meadows (This Is England, Dead Man’s Shoes) has quietly become one of Britain’s foremost filmmakers. (Now if only American audiences would take note!) Meadows’ latest is another scruffy, poetic, kid-centered dramedy, this time set in a section of North London, where a troubled young runaway befriends a shy Polish teen who lives with his laborer father. The two bond while doing odd jobs together and competing for the affections of a beautiful French waitress. “Five Stars (highest rating)! A film you simply never want to end!” –Time Out New York. Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 71 min. www.somers-town.com
| Oct 16 (Fri) - 7:15PM |
| Oct 17 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
| Oct 18 (Sun) - 8:10PM |
ARUITEMO ARUITEMO
Japan, 2008, Hirokazu Kore-eda
Hailed by Time Out New York as “a new classic,” the latest masterpiece from the Japanese director of Maborosi and Nobody Knows evokes Ozu (see 2/4 & 5) and Renoir. It tells of an art restorer and his sister who, accompanied by their own young children, visit their elderly parents and their childhood home to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the death of their brother, who drowned saving another child. “Pitch-perfect and profoundly moving.” –Philadelphia Inquirer. Overall metacritic.com rating as of 12/6/09: 89 out of 100. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 114 min. www.ifcfilms.com/films/still-walking
Show Times| Feb 12 (Fri) - 9:35PM |
| Feb 13 (Sat) - 7:20PM |
Germany/Denmark/Netherlands, 2009, Hans-Christian Schmid
Kerry Fox and Anamaria Marinca (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) star in the new drama from the director of Requiem. It’s a political thriller about a Hague lawyer who’s prosecuting a Bosnian Serb Army commander for war crimes. But when her key witness perjures and kills himself, she must travel to Sarajevo and quickly find another person to testify against the military leader. “Harrowing, provocative and deeply probing yet quite involving.” –The L.A. Times. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 105 min. www.filmmovement.com
Show Times| Feb 11 (Thu) - 9:15PM |
| Feb 12 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
USA, 2007, Lynn Hershman-Leeson
Tilda Swinton and Thomas Jay Ryan star in the most recent feature by CIA alum Lynn Hershman-Leeson. It’s a mix of documentary and dramatization that re-enacts the bizarre case of Steve Kurtz, professor of art at SUNY Buffalo and co-founder of the activist art collective Critical Art Ensemble (CAE). In 2004, while Kurtz was working on an installation of genetically modified food for MASS MoCA, his wife suddenly died of heart failure in her sleep. The paramedics who responded took note of the petri dishes and other scientific paraphernalia in Kurtz’s home, and shortly thereafter the FBI arrested him on bioterrorism charges. Beta SP. 75 min. Special admission $5; admission free for CIA/CWRU students & staff with I.D. Co-sponsored by CIA’s Bickford Visiting Artists Fund. Steve Kurtz speaks on 3/20 at 2:30 pm in Aitken Auditorium; admission free.
| Mar 19 (Thu) - 5:00PM |
SURVEILLANCE
USA, 2008, Jennifer Chambers Lynch Executive-produced by her father David Lynch (who also sings the end-title song), Jennifer Lynch's first film since her outré 1993 amputation-drama debut Boxing Helena is bizarre, violent, sexy, twisted, and darkly funny. (You were expecting High School Musical 4?) Set largely at a podunk police station on the American prairie, the movie focuses on two FBI agents (Bill Pullman, Julia Ormond) as they interview the shaken survivors of a highway serial killer who's still at large. With Pell James. "A sicko Rashomon." -The Village Voice. No one under 18 admitted! 35mm color & scope print! 97 min. www.magnetreleasing.com/surveillance/
| Aug 08 (Sat) - 9:30PM |
Cinematheque Elite
Uncut Print from England!
Italy, 1977, Dario Argento
Here, from England, is a beautiful 35mm color and ‘scope print of the uncut version of Dario Argento’s stylish horror masterpiece, six minutes longer than U.S. prints. Jessica Harper plays an American student who arrives at a European ballet academy only to discover that it is run by a coven of witches! Argento’s bold colors, baroque production design, and striking camerawork are enhanced by an influential rock score by Goblin. With Joan Bennett, Alida Valli, and Udo Kier. Adults only! 98 min. Special admission $10, Cinematheque members and CIA students & staff $7; no passes, twofers, or radio winners. Print from the National Media Museum, Bradford, West Yorkshire; thanks to Dylan Skolnick, Cinema Arts Centre, Huntington, NY.
| Sep 17 (Thu) - 8:20PM |
| Sep 20 (Sun) - 6:30PM |
Added Film!
Estonia, 2007, Veiko Õunpuu
A singular mix of Antonioni, Cassavetes, Kaurismäki, and Ulrich Seidl, this melancholy, miserablist black comedy is set in a drab, Soviet-era Estonian high-rise, where four apartment dwellers—a tormented writer who spies on his estranged wife, a promiscuous nightclub worker, an architect, and a single mother—grope for love and happiness beyond the concrete walls that entomb their lonely lives. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 123 min. www.strandreleasing.com For other films showing 8/27-30, go to www.cia.edu/cinematheque or refer to our July-August calendar.
| Aug 30 (Sun) - 1:30PM |
| Aug 31 (Mon) - 7:00PM |
USA, 2008, Charlie Kaufman
The first movie written and directed by Charlie Kaufman (author of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) is another mind-blowing meta-movie. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a theatre director with marital problems and an obsession with aging and death. When he wins a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, he embarks on his magnum opus—re-creating his life inside a cavernous warehouse and casting actors to play himself and his loved ones. With Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton, and Jennifer Jason Leigh. 35mm scope print! 124 min. www.sonyclassics.com/synecdocheny/
| Mar 02 (Mon) - 7:00PM |
In the Realm of Oshima: Classics
GOHATTO
France/Britain/Japan, 1999, Nagisa Oshima
Gays in the 19th-century military is the subject of Oshima’s most recent film (made after a 14-year absence), also probably his last. Set in 1865 Kyoto at a school for samurai warriors, this visually-stunning masterpiece tells of an androgynous young recruit who unleashes the pent-up sexual desires of the other men in the strict, monastic order. Veteran swordsmen lust after the boy, and conflict, chaos, and carnage follow. With Takeshi Kitano and Tadanobu Asano. Adults only! Subtitles. 100 min.
Show Times| Apr 26 (Sun) - 6:30PM |
TAXIDERMIA
Hungary/Austria/France, 2006, György Pálfi György Pálfi’s second feature (after the auspicious and unique Hukkle) is a grotesque comic parable and not-for-the-squeamish gross-out that exposes the bodily functions and bizarre proclivities of three generations of Magyar men in one family. It first introduces us to a horny, hair-lipped army runt who likes to spice up his sex life with fireworks. He sires a giant who becomes a champion “speed-eater” during the Communist 1950s and who in turn begets a scrawny taxidermist enamored of big housecats. “Taxidermia sets a benchmark for body horror in the cinema…A full-frontal sensory assault… Ghastly funny on par with anything the Monty Pythons dreamed up…The climax one-ups David Cronenberg's worst nightmare.” –Variety. No one under 18 admitted! Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 91 min. www.taxidermia-themovie.com
| Nov 05 (Thu) - 6:30PM |
| Nov 06 (Fri) - 8:30PM |
TETRO
USA/Italy/Spain/Argentina, 2009, Francis Ford Coppola Francis Coppola’s new movie is his best film in years—a visually stunning drama of fathers and sons in which a failed, ravaged playwright living in Argentina (Vincent Gallo) is suddenly visited by his much-younger half brother (Alden Ehrenreich), whom he had abandoned years earlier. The two long-estranged men wrestle with their relationship while dealing with a shared legacy: living in the shadow of their larger-than-life father (Klaus Maria Brandauer), a famous orchestra conductor. This is Coppola’s first original screenplay since The Conversation (1974) and it’s poetic, richly layered, and maybe autobiographical. With Maribel Verdú (Y tu mamá también, Pan’s Labyrinth) and Carmen Maura. Some subtitles. 35mm. 127 min. www.tetro.com
| Nov 21 (Sat) - 9:35PM |
| Nov 22 (Sun) - 3:45PM |
Germany, 2008, Uli Edel
One of the five films nominated for this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, this gripping historical epic delineates the anti-fascist origins of the radical left-wing group the Red Army Faction—aka the Baader Meinhof Gang—that terrorized West Germany with bombings, kidnappings, and murders during the 1970s. The all-star cast includes Moritz Bleibtreu (Run Lola Run) as the fiery young Andreas Baader, Martina Gedeck as the older journalist and mother Ulrike Meinhof, and Bruno Ganz as the German official trying to outwit and capture them. Adults only! “Critics’ Pick…A taut, unnerving, forcefully unromantic fictional film.” –The NY Times. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 150 min. www.baadermeinhofmovie.com
Show Times| Nov 07 (Sat) - 9:30PM |
| Nov 08 (Sun) - 6:30PM |
| Nov 12 (Thu) - 8:15PM |
Five from Cahiers du cinéma’s Top 100
USA, 1954, Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Humphrey Bogart plays a drunken, broken-down Hollywood director who molds a slum-dwelling Spanish flamenco dancer (Ava Gardner) into a movie star. This witty, caustic drama from the writer-director of All About Eve tied for #30 on Cahiers du cinéma’s list of the 100 best films of all time. 35mm color print! 128 min.
| Jun 11 (Thu) - 7:00PM |
| Jun 12 (Fri) - 9:00PM |
THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS (LES PLAGES D’AGNÈS)
France, 2008, Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda (b. 1928), the only major female filmmaker associated with the French New Wave, looks back on her life and career in this wise, playful, and nostalgic memoir, a banquet of tasty morsels for movie buffs. Varda’s photography/filmmaking career took her from France to America and back, and along the way she brushed elbows with many celebrities—from Godard and Gérard Depardieu to Harrison Ford and Jim Morrison. Special attention is paid to her longtime partner in love and art, filmmaker Jacques Demy (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg), who died in 1990. “Grade A…(A) lithe and leaping documentary scrapbook.” –Entertainment Weekly. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 35mm. 110 min. www.cinemaguild.com/beachesofagnes/ Presentation of this film supported by a generous grant from La Maison Française de Cleveland.
| Oct 09 (Fri) - 9:40PM |
| Oct 10 (Sat) - 7:20PM |
| Oct 11 (Sun) - 4:00PM |
USA, 2008, Ellen Kuras, Thavisouk Phrasavath
One of the five nominees for this year’s Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, the directorial debut of celebrated cinematographer Ellen Kuras is a lyrical, impressionistic saga shot over 23 years. The movie traces the journey of a Laotian refugee (co-director and subject Thavisouk Phrasavath) who left war-torn Laos when he was 12 and eventually made his way to Brooklyn, NY. The film movingly conveys the plight of a people who were caught up in a secret war and abandoned by their U.S. protectors. “Lyrical, expansive, unbearably beautiful.” –New York Magazine. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 96 min. www.thebetrayalmovie.com
Show Times| Apr 23 (Thu) - 8:50PM |
| Apr 24 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
Archival 35mm Scope Print!
USA, 1930, Raoul Walsh
Filmed in an early 70mm process called “Grandeur” (and shown here in a restored 35mm ‘scope print from the 20th Century Fox studio archive), this early covered-wagon Western is famous not only for its pictorial beauty and epic action scenes but for giving a young actor named John Wayne his first starring role, nine years before John Ford’s Stagecoach. With Ward Bond. “Still one of the most impressive of all super-Westerns.” –William K. Everson. Cleveland theatrical revival premiere! 130 min. Special thanks to Caitlin Robertson.
| Aug 08 (Sat) - 7:00PM |
USA, 2009, Richard Kelly
The new movie from the director of Donnie Darko and Southland Tales (both of which premiered in Cleveland exclusively at the Cinematheque) is another elegantly-shot, dread-filled fantasy with a convoluted plot and a cryptic metaphysical bent. Set in 1976, this sure-to-become-a-cult-film tells of a mysterious box that is delivered to the suburban home of a Virginia couple (Cameron Diaz, James Marsden) with the warning that pushing the button on the device will net them a million dollars—and also cause the death of someone they don’t know. With Frank Langella as the disfigured deliverer of the box. From Richard Matheson’s short story “Button, Button.” 35mm. 115 min. thebox-movie.warnerbros.com
Show Times| Jan 30 (Sat) - 8:50PM |
| Jan 31 (Sun) - 6:30PM |
THE BOYS: THE SHERMAN BROTHERS’ STORY
USA, 2009, Gregory V. Sherman, Jeffrey C. Sherman
You would expect a Disney documentary about the studio’s longtime sibling songwriting team of Robert B. and Richard M. Sherman (Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang ) to be a saccharine trip down memory lane. But this new biography by two of the brothers’ sons is anything but—a thorough and fascinating portrait that reveals that these two Oscar and Grammy winners, who penned such upbeat songs as “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and “it’s a small world,” couldn’t stand each other and didn’t socialize outside of work for 40 years. Full of rare archival footage, extensive film clips, and interviews with A-list celebrities. “First-rate cinema archaeology.” –The Village Voice. Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 101 min.
www.theboysdoc.com
| Aug 08 (Sat) - 5:00PM |
In the Realm of Oshima: Discoveries
THE CATCH
SHIIKU
Japan, 1961, Nagisa Oshima
A black American airman captured by small-minded Japanese villagers during the final days of WWII soon becomes a scapegoat for their shortcomings. Unknown in America, Nagisa Oshima’s first independent production is a revelation—introducing many of his major subjects and attitudes. New 35mm scope print! Subtitles. 97 min.
Show Times| Mar 06 (Fri) - 7:30PM |
In the Realm of Oshima: Classics
aka CEREMONIES
GISHIKI
Japan, 1971, Nagisa Oshima
“Oshima’s most celebrated film” (Noël Burch) is an expansive black comedy that spans the end of WWII to the 1970s. Japan’s postwar economic rise and its concomitant moral erosion are reflected in the sundry activities of the powerful and decadent Sakadura clan as they gather for ceremonies ranging from weddings and anniversaries to funerals. New 35mm color & scope print! Subtitles. 122 min.
Show Times| Apr 23 (Thu) - 6:30PM |
| Apr 26 (Sun) - 8:30PM |
Saturday, February 21, at 5:30 pm
The French Crime Wave
THE CLOCKMAKER
aka THE WATCHMAKER OF ST PAUL
L’HORLOGER DE ST PAUL
France, 1973, Bertrand Tavernier
Philippe Noiret plays a lonely Lyons watchmaker who re-examines his life when a police inspector informs him that his son is wanted for the murder of a factory owner. Bertrand Tavernier’s acclaimed directorial debut is based on a novel by Georges Simenon. With Jean Rochefort. 35mm color print from France! Subtitles. 105 min.
Show Times| Feb 21 (Sat) - 5:30PM |
USA, 2009, Louie Psihoyos
Winner of the Audience Award for best documentary feature at Sundance, Silverdocs, and Hot Docs, this riveting eco-thriller follows Flipper-trainer-turned-marine-crusader Richard O’Barry as he and a hand-picked team of divers and activists plant secret cameras and high-tech equipment in a heavily-guarded cove off the coast of Japan. Their mission? To document and expose the longstanding covert slaughter of dolphins there. “As rousing as anything from Hollywood.” –New York Magazine. 94% “fresh” rating on RottenTomatoes.com! Cleveland premiere. 35mm. 92 min. www.takepart.com/thecove/
Show Times| Nov 06 (Fri) - 10:20PM |
| Nov 07 (Sat) - 7:35PM |
| Nov 08 (Sun) - 9:20PM |
Five from Cahiers du cinéma’s Top 100
Britain/Ireland/USA, 1987, John Huston
John Huston’s last film is a masterful, well-acted adaptation of a story from James Joyce’s Dubliners. Set in 1904, the movie focuses on an Irish married couple (Donal McCann and Huston’s daughter Angelica) who ruefully examine their love and life together after attending a festive holiday party. Tied for #58 on Cahiers du cinéma’s list of the 100 best films of all time. 35mm. 83 min.
| Jun 26 (Fri) - 8:10PM |
| Jun 27 (Sat) - 6:25PM |