Cinematheque Film Schedule

Canada | 2011 | Aaron Yeger

The Roma people (Gypsies) comprise Europe's largest minority. The Nazis targeted them for extermination (along with the Jews) during Hitler's "Final Solution." Yet, 70 years after the end of WWII, this diasporic ethnic group still faces prejudice, institutionalized discrimination, and ethnic hatred from nationalists and resurgent white supremacists. This acclaimed new documentary profiles the Roma’s current—and historic—plight. "Profoundly unsettling and deeply moving." -Village Voice.

Montenegro, Serbia, United States | 2013 | Meerkat Media Collective

This raucous music documentary focuses on the small Serbian village of Guča, home of the world's largest trumpet festival and competition. Among the 50,000 musicians and music fans descending upon the town for the 50th annual event are a Serbian brass band defending its title, a talented group of Roma Gypsies, and, for the first time ever, an upstart American band from NYC. How will Americans be received in a country that was bombed by...

Britain | 2013 | Richard Ayoade

Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowska star in the acclaimed new film by British comic actor and director Richard Ayoade, whose previous (and first) theatrical feature, Submarine, was one of the highlights of 2010. Based on a Dostoyevsky novella, The Double tells of a mousy office clerk, Simon James, who is startled to discover that his new co-worker, James Simon, looks exactly like him, but is as confident, charismatic, and popular as Simon is shy, timid,...

United States | 1950-57 | various directors

12 classic WB cartoons, four with Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner. Program includes Chuck Jones’ The Wearing of the Grin (1951), Ready..Set..Zoom! (1955), Heaven Scent (1956), Zoom and Bored (1957), Whoa, Be-Gone! (1958), and Fastest with the Mostest (1960); Robert McKimson’s A Fractured Leghorn (1950), Rabbit’s Kin (1952), and Little Boy Boo (1954); and Friz Freleng’s Big House Bunny (1950), Bunker Hill Bunny (1950), and Greedy for Tweety (1957).

Canada | 2011 | Aaron Yeger

The Roma people (Gypsies) comprise Europe's largest minority. The Nazis targeted them for extermination (along with the Jews) during Hitler's "Final Solution." Yet, 70 years after the end of WWII, this diasporic ethnic group still faces prejudice, institutionalized discrimination, and ethnic hatred from nationalists and resurgent white supremacists. This acclaimed new documentary profiles the Roma’s current—and historic—plight. "Profoundly unsettling and deeply moving." -Village Voice.

Montenegro, Serbia, United States | 2013 | Meerkat Media Collective

This raucous music documentary focuses on the small Serbian village of Guča, home of the world's largest trumpet festival and competition. Among the 50,000 musicians and music fans descending upon the town for the 50th annual event are a Serbian brass band defending its title, a talented group of Roma Gypsies, and, for the first time ever, an upstart American band from NYC. How will Americans be received in a country that was bombed by...

Canada, France, United States | 2013 | Chuck Workman

In his new feature, Academy Award winner Chuck Workman (long known for his clip reels for the annual Oscars telecast) tackles a question asked by the late, legendary French film critic André Bazin: what is cinema? For answers, Workman conducted interviews with great living filmmakers like David Lynch and Mike Leigh and intercut their responses with archival interviews with deceased directors (Hitchcock, Bresson, et al.) as well as with 100+ film clips. What Is Cinema?...

Germany | 1924 | Fritz Lang

Germany has Bayreuth, but Cleveland has a new digital restoration of Fritz Lang's epic film version of the medieval Nordic legend that inspired Wagner's "Ring Cycle." This two-part silent fantasy, the most elaborate and expensive German movie of its day, was co-written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou, with music by Gottfried Huppertz. (The three would also collaborate on Lang's next film, Metropolis.) Siegfried, the saga's magical first part, follows the pure,...

United States | 2014 | April Wright

Five thousand drive-in theaters dotted the U.S. during the 1950s. Today only 400 survive. (Fortunately, northeast Ohio still has more than its share.) This new documentary traces the evolution of this venerable American institution from their postwar heyday, through the challenges posed by multiplexes and home video, to today’s tempting offers from predatory real estate developers. Includes shots of “ozoners” in North Ridgeville, Wadsworth, Warren, and Barberton, among others. With Roger Corman.

France | 1930 | Jean Grémillon

In the first sound film by the mostly unknown-and-unappreciated-in-America French master Jean Grémillon, a convict returns home from prison to discover that his daughter has turned to prostitution. Can he save her—and himself? This painterly movie with sparse dialogue “has the most impressive use of sound I know of,” according to film critic Fred Patton.

Germany | 1924 | Fritz Lang

Germany has Bayreuth, but Cleveland has a new digital restoration of Fritz Lang's epic film version of the medieval Nordic legend that inspired Wagner's "Ring Cycle." This two-part silent fantasy, the most elaborate and expensive German movie of its day, was co-written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou, with music by Gottfried Huppertz. (The three would also collaborate on Lang's next film, Metropolis.) Siegfried, the saga's magical first part, follows the pure,...

Canada, France, United States | 2013 | Chuck Workman

In his new feature, Academy Award winner Chuck Workman (long known for his clip reels for the annual Oscars telecast) tackles a question asked by the late, legendary French film critic André Bazin: what is cinema? For answers, Workman conducted interviews with great living filmmakers like David Lynch and Mike Leigh and intercut their responses with archival interviews with deceased directors (Hitchcock, Bresson, et al.) as well as with 100+ film clips. What Is Cinema?...

France | 1996 | Eric Rohmer

In this Eric Rohmer comedy that wasn’t released theatrically in America until just this year, a recent university graduate (Melvil Poupaud) vacationing on the Brittany coast becomes involved with two young local women while waiting for his sort-of girlfriend to join him. Part 3 of Rohmer’s “Tales of the Four Seasons” has a 93% “fresh” rating on RottenTomatoes.com. “The sunniest and funniest of Rohmer’s seasonal tales...Wonderfully witty...As suspenseful and manipulative as a classical farce.” –Time...

France | 1932 | Raymond Bernard

We commemorate the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War with a little-known-in-America French masterpiece that is often called that country’s All Quiet on the Western Front. The film follows a patriotic student as he idealistically joins the French army, then experiences the harrowing, unheroic realities of trench warfare. Battle scenes from this WWI classic were repurposed in John Ford's The World Moves On (1934) and Howard Hawks' The Road to Glory...

India | 2012 | Ashim Ahluwalia

Here's a new kind of Indian movie, neither Bollywood nor Bengali art film. Set in the netherworld of Mumbai/Bombay's exploitation-movie industry during the 1980s, the film focuses on two brothers who secretly produce and peddle sleazy sex-horror flicks. Enter Pinky—an alluring and mysterious young ingenue who just may be their ticket out of the grindhouse ghetto. Part noir melodrama, part authentic period piece, this visually stunning work from a director steeped in American avant-garde cinema...

France | 1932 | Jean Grémillon

Jean Gremillon's second sound film offers an unflinching take on race and class. (Gaumont cut the film by a whopping 39 minutes when first released, and the footage has never been restored.) On an ocean liner where there's always music or a masked ball to occupy the wealthy passengers, the desirable Daïnah, mixed-race wife (métisse) of the ship's black magician, has a fateful encounter with a white engine mechanic (Charles Vanel). “One of the most...

France | 1996 | Eric Rohmer

In this Eric Rohmer comedy that wasn’t released theatrically in America until just this year, a recent university graduate (Melvil Poupaud) vacationing on the Brittany coast becomes involved with two young local women while waiting for his sort-of girlfriend to join him. Part 3 of Rohmer’s “Tales of the Four Seasons” has a 93% “fresh” rating on RottenTomatoes.com. “The sunniest and funniest of Rohmer’s seasonal tales...Wonderfully witty...As suspenseful and manipulative as a classical farce.” –Time...

India | 2012 | Ashim Ahluwalia

Here's a new kind of Indian movie, neither Bollywood nor Bengali art film. Set in the netherworld of Mumbai/Bombay's exploitation-movie industry during the 1980s, the film focuses on two brothers who secretly produce and peddle sleazy sex-horror flicks. Enter Pinky—an alluring and mysterious young ingenue who just may be their ticket out of the grindhouse ghetto. Part noir melodrama, part authentic period piece, this visually stunning work from a director steeped in American avant-garde cinema...

United States | 1925 | Fred Newmeyer, Sam Taylor

Harold Lloyd's most popular comedy of the 1920s finds the clueless, bespectacled boy-next-door doing whatever it takes to become popular on campus—even joining the college football team! Lloyd was one of the three great "clowns" of the American silent screen (along with Chaplin and Keaton), and The Freshman remains one of his funniest films! New music score by Carl Davis.

United States | 2013 | Aaron Schimberg

Step aside, David Lynch and Guy Maddin. Make room for Aaron Schimberg and his mysterious, malignant new amalgam of American Gothic, surrealism, frontier tall tale, and outsider art. Shot in black-and-white16mm, Go Down Death (which is based on folk tales by the fictional Jonathan Mallory Sinus) is an apocalyptic fable set in a crumbling village haunted by disease, superstition, and the supernatural, where prostitutes and johns inhabit a dingy brothel and soldiers and shape-shifting doctors...

Italy | 2012 | Marco Bellocchio

Toni Servillo (The Great Beauty, Il Divo) and Isabelle Huppert star in the new film by master Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio (Good Morning, Night; My Mother's Smile). Inspired by the controversial Englaro case that polarized Italy in 2009 (the father of a young woman who had been in a coma for 17 years tried to get her legally taken off of life support), the movie tells four separate stories that revolve around euthanasia or reflect...

United Kingdom | 2013 | Jon S. Baird

James McAvoy, playing against type, is unforgettable as an amoral, sociopathic Scottish cop who will do anything (sex, drugs, back-stabbing, etc.) to win a departmental promotion. This lurid new adaptation of a novel by Irvine West (Trainspotting) co-stars Jamie Bell, Eddie Marsan, Imogen Poots, and Jim Broadbent. "There’s in-yer-face cinema, and then there’s in-yer-face, down-yer-throat and throw-it-back-up-all-over-the-pavement cinema...You’ll be scraping this film out from under your fingernails for weeks." -Time Out London. "A hugely entertaining...

Italy | 2012 | Marco Bellocchio

Toni Servillo (The Great Beauty, Il Divo) and Isabelle Huppert star in the new film by master Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio (Good Morning, Night; My Mother's Smile). Inspired by the controversial Englaro case that polarized Italy in 2009 (the father of a young woman who had been in a coma for 17 years tried to get her legally taken off of life support), the movie tells four separate stories that revolve around euthanasia or reflect...

United Kingdom | 2013 | Jon S. Baird

James McAvoy, playing against type, is unforgettable as an amoral, sociopathic Scottish cop who will do anything (sex, drugs, back-stabbing, etc.) to win a departmental promotion. This lurid new adaptation of a novel by Irvine West (Trainspotting) co-stars Jamie Bell, Eddie Marsan, Imogen Poots, and Jim Broadbent. "There’s in-yer-face cinema, and then there’s in-yer-face, down-yer-throat and throw-it-back-up-all-over-the-pavement cinema...You’ll be scraping this film out from under your fingernails for weeks." -Time Out London. "A hugely entertaining...

United States | 1925 | Fred Newmeyer, Sam Taylor

Harold Lloyd's most popular comedy of the 1920s finds the clueless, bespectacled boy-next-door doing whatever it takes to become popular on campus—even joining the college football team! Lloyd was one of the three great "clowns" of the American silent screen (along with Chaplin and Keaton), and The Freshman remains one of his funniest films! New music score by Carl Davis.

France | 1937 | Jean Grémillon

The great Jean Gabin plays a dashing French Legionnaire who falls for a toxic femme fatale in this superb but neglected Grémillon melodrama that Village Voice film critic Elliott Stein called "the revelation" of a 17-film Gabin retrospective in NYC in 2002.

United States | 2013 | Aaron Schimberg

Step aside, David Lynch and Guy Maddin. Make room for Aaron Schimberg and his mysterious, malignant new amalgam of American Gothic, surrealism, frontier tall tale, and outsider art. Shot in black-and-white16mm, Go Down Death (which is based on folk tales by the fictional Jonathan Mallory Sinus) is an apocalyptic fable set in a crumbling village haunted by disease, superstition, and the supernatural, where prostitutes and johns inhabit a dingy brothel and soldiers and shape-shifting doctors...

United States | 2013 | Sam Fleischner

A 13-year-old Mexican-American boy with Asperger's syndrome wanders into the NYC subway system, losing himself for days in the cacophony, strangeness, and menace of the underground. Back home in Rockaway Beach, his undocumented mother frantically tries to locate him—as Hurricane Sandy approaches the city. This acclaimed, impressionistic, suspenseful indie drama may one day be remembered as one of the great New York movies. "Critic's Pick…A small miracle of a film." -The NY Times.

Brazil, United States | 2012 | Petra Costa

In this lavishly praised new film, a Brazilian actress goes to NYC to discover what happened to her older sister Elena, who left Brazil for New York two decades earlier to become a dancer and movie star. Incorporating interviews, letters, diary entries, and rare video clips, this dreamy film is a delicate inquiry into one family's most intimate memories, secrets, and sorrows. "An elegiac cinematic essay that is both haunting and unforgettable." -The Hollywood Reporter.

Brazil, United States | 2012 | Petra Costa

In this lavishly praised new film, a Brazilian actress goes to NYC to discover what happened to her older sister Elena, who left Brazil for New York two decades earlier to become a dancer and movie star. Incorporating interviews, letters, diary entries, and rare video clips, this dreamy film is a delicate inquiry into one family's most intimate memories, secrets, and sorrows. "An elegiac cinematic essay that is both haunting and unforgettable." -The Hollywood Reporter.

Belgium, France, Morocco | Tunisia | 2012 | Nabil Ayouch

This powerful, affecting, and cinematic drama (which has a 100% “fresh” rating on RottenTomatoes.com as of 6/5) imagines how four young friends living in the slums of Morocco morphed into suicide bombers who participated in the notorious Casablanca bombings of 2003, during which 45 died. A multiple prizewinner at various international film festivals, this was also Morocco's official entry for this year's Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. "One of the most forceful entries in...

France | 1938 | Jean Grémillon

In this noirish psychological suspense drama, a mild-mannered French businessman (Raimu) decides to cut his ties to local mobsters and clean up his act when his wife (Madeleine Renaud) gives birth to their first child. But his good intentions go awry when he inadvertently kills a man, and an innocent person (Pierre Blanchar) is convicted of the crime, rendering the shopkeeper confused and guilt-ridden. One of Grémillon’s greatest movies! Imported 35mm print from the Institut...

Belgium, France, Morocco | Tunisia | 2012 | Nabil Ayouch

This powerful, affecting, and cinematic drama (which has a 100% “fresh” rating on RottenTomatoes.com as of 6/5) imagines how four young friends living in the slums of Morocco morphed into suicide bombers who participated in the notorious Casablanca bombings of 2003, during which 45 died. A multiple prizewinner at various international film festivals, this was also Morocco's official entry for this year's Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. "One of the most forceful entries in...

United States | 2013 | John Maloof, Charlie Siskel

Vivian Maier (1926-2009), the mysterious Chicago woman who turned out to be one of America's great street photographers (100,000 unpublished photos and negatives, shot over five decades, were discovered after her death), is the subject of this new documentary that probes her secret life and prodigious output. "More connect-the-dots detective thriller than traditional doc...Unmasks a brilliant photographer who hid in plain sight for decades working as an eccentric French nanny." -Entertainment Weekly.

United States | 2013 | John Maloof, Charlie Siskel

Vivian Maier (1926-2009), the mysterious Chicago woman who turned out to be one of America's great street photographers (100,000 unpublished photos and negatives, shot over five decades, were discovered after her death), is the subject of this new documentary that probes her secret life and prodigious output. "More connect-the-dots detective thriller than traditional doc...Unmasks a brilliant photographer who hid in plain sight for decades working as an eccentric French nanny." -Entertainment Weekly.

France | 1938 | Jean Grémillon

In this noirish psychological suspense drama, a mild-mannered French businessman (Raimu) decides to cut his ties to local mobsters and clean up his act when his wife (Madeleine Renaud) gives birth to their first child. But his good intentions go awry when he inadvertently kills a man, and an innocent person (Pierre Blanchar) is convicted of the crime, rendering the shopkeeper confused and guilt-ridden. One of Grémillon’s greatest movies! Imported 35mm print from the Institut...

United States | 2013 | Sam Fleischner

A 13-year-old Mexican-American boy with Asperger's syndrome wanders into the NYC subway system, losing himself for days in the cacophony, strangeness, and menace of the underground. Back home in Rockaway Beach, his undocumented mother frantically tries to locate him—as Hurricane Sandy approaches the city. This acclaimed, impressionistic, suspenseful indie drama may one day be remembered as one of the great New York movies. "Critic's Pick…A small miracle of a film." -The NY Times.