Cinematheque Film Schedule

United States | 1981 | Noel Marshall

Where’s Minnesota dentist/hunter Walter Palmer when you really need him? Lions and tigers and other wild animals terrorize the family of a wildlife preservationist in this all-too-real thriller made by Tippi Hedren and her then husband Noel Marshall. Filmed at the Shambala animal sanctuary in California and touted as “the most dangerous movie ever made,” the film (which also stars Marshall and Hedren and their children, including Melanie Griffith) caused injuries to 70 cast and...

Mexico | 2015 | Alonso Ruiz Palacios

“The foreign-language discovery of 2015 so far, and pretty close to the best film I’ve seen all year” (Andrew O’Hehir, Salon) is a comedy that pays tribute to the early films of the French New Wave and other 1960s b&w classics. A mischievous Mexican teen is sent to stay with his equally feckless college student brother in 1999 Mexico City during a student strike. These two güeros (light-skinned Mexicans), along with the dynamic (and sexy)...

Canada, France | 2013 | Xavier Dolan

The fourth feature by Canadian enfant terrible Xavier Dolan, made between Laurence Anyways and Mommy, is a tense, stylish psychological thriller about a young gay man (Dolan) who travels to Canada’s homophobic heartland for his partner’s funeral. Once there he realizes that his lover’s grieving mother is unaware of her late son’s sexual orientation, though her knowing other son threatens and brutalizes the visitor. “Taut, creepy, compelling, and sexy.” -Time Out London.

United States | 1981 | Noel Marshall

Where’s Minnesota dentist/hunter Walter Palmer when you really need him? Lions and tigers and other wild animals terrorize the family of a wildlife preservationist in this all-too-real thriller made by Tippi Hedren and her then husband Noel Marshall. Filmed at the Shambala animal sanctuary in California and touted as “the most dangerous movie ever made,” the film (which also stars Marshall and Hedren and their children, including Melanie Griffith) caused injuries to 70 cast and...

United States | 1984 | Tom Schiller

So strange and unclassifiable that it was never released theatrically, this 1980s sci-fi comedy written and directed by longtime Saturday Night Live writer and filmmaker Tom Schiller (and produced by Lorne Michaels) stars Zach Galligan, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Mort Sahl, among others. Set in a surreal future where the iron-fisted Port Authority controls NYC (they regulate travel into Manhattan, administer a test for would-be artists, etc.), the film follows an art student who...

United States | 1974/2015 | Les Blank

Shot between 1972 and 1974 but never released due to creative differences between filmmaker Les Blank and the movie’s subject Leon Russell, this long forgotten documentary is finally seeing the light of day. Regarded by Blank as his greatest feature, the movie captures singer-songwriter and Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Famer Russell at work and at play in his Oklahoma recording compound, a kind of commune visited by other artists and musicians. With Willie Nelson...

United States | 2015 | Brett Morgen

This authorized, comprehensive biography of Nirvana front man and late grunge superstar Kurt Cobain is one of the most acclaimed films of 2015. Cleveland theatrical premiere.

Mexico | 2015 | Alonso Ruiz Palacios

“The foreign-language discovery of 2015 so far, and pretty close to the best film I’ve seen all year” (Andrew O’Hehir, Salon) is a comedy that pays tribute to the early films of the French New Wave and other 1960s b&w classics. A mischievous Mexican teen is sent to stay with his equally feckless college student brother in 1999 Mexico City during a student strike. These two güeros (light-skinned Mexicans), along with the dynamic (and sexy)...

United States | 1984 | Tom Schiller

So strange and unclassifiable that it was never released theatrically, this 1980s sci-fi comedy written and directed by longtime Saturday Night Live writer and filmmaker Tom Schiller (and produced by Lorne Michaels) stars Zach Galligan, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Mort Sahl, among others. Set in a surreal future where the iron-fisted Port Authority controls NYC (they regulate travel into Manhattan, administer a test for would-be artists, etc.), the film follows an art student who...

United States | 1974/2015 | Les Blank

Shot between 1972 and 1974 but never released due to creative differences between filmmaker Les Blank and the movie’s subject Leon Russell, this long forgotten documentary is finally seeing the light of day. Regarded by Blank as his greatest feature, the movie captures singer-songwriter and Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Famer Russell at work and at play in his Oklahoma recording compound, a kind of commune visited by other artists and musicians. With Willie Nelson...

United States | 2014 | Debra Granik

Acclaimed indie filmmaker Debra Granik follows up her powerful dramas Down to the Bone and Winter’s Bone with a frank and surprising documentary about a Missouri Vietnam vet. Sixty-something Ron Hall is a Harley riding, trailer park residing good ol’ boy with ample tattoos and facial hair. He also suffers from PTSD, is learning Spanish, and loves dogs, his granddaughter, and his Mexican wife. Won the documentary award at the 39th Cleveland Int’l Film Festival....

1982 | Kathleeen Collins

The second movie written and directed by celebrated playwright, professor, and indie filmmaker Kathleen Collins, who died in 1988 at age 46, was one of the first feature films by an African American woman. It was also almost a lost film. Never released theatrically (though we showed it in 1993), this seriocomic tale of two married black professionals (a philosophy professor and a philandering painter) at a crossroads in their life together was rescued from...

1982 | Kathleeen Collins

The second movie written and directed by celebrated playwright, professor, and indie filmmaker Kathleen Collins, who died in 1988 at age 46, was one of the first feature films by an African American woman. It was also almost a lost film. Never released theatrically (though we showed it in 1993), this seriocomic tale of two married black professionals (a philosophy professor and a philandering painter) at a crossroads in their life together was rescued from...

1962 | John Huston

“Huston’s most remarkable film” (Time Out Film Guide) stars Montgomery Clift as the young Sigmund Freud, living in Vienna and refining his psychoanalytic theories as he treats a seriously neurotic young woman (Susannah York). Never released on video or DVD in the U.S., and shown here in its uncut version, Freud features striking dream sequences that make it “an extraordinary, uncanny film noir” (TOFG). The original script was written by Jean-Paul Sartre!

Portugal | 2014 | Pedro Costa

One of the film events of the year! The first feature in eight years from the director of Ossos, In Vanda’s Room, and Colossal Youth finds Portuguese auteur Pedro Costa returning to Fontainhas, the decrepit immigrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Lisbon that was the setting forhis previous movies. Ventura, the elderly émigré worker from Cape Verde who was the central figure in Colossal Youth, is also the star of this movie. He wanders down...

Poland | 1973 | Andrzej Wajda

The late 19th-century wedding between an urban poet and a peasant girl is crashed by phantoms from Poland’s tortured past. This film version of a famous Polish play was brought to the screen by the country’s greatest filmmaker, Andrzej Wajda (Ashes and Diamonds, Man of Iron, Katyn, and many others).

Portugal | 2014 | Pedro Costa

One of the film events of the year! The first feature in eight years from the director of Ossos, In Vanda’s Room, and Colossal Youth finds Portuguese auteur Pedro Costa returning to Fontainhas, the decrepit immigrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Lisbon that was the setting forhis previous movies. Ventura, the elderly émigré worker from Cape Verde who was the central figure in Colossal Youth, is also the star of this movie. He wanders down...

United States | 2015 | Sascha Jenkins

This new documentary charts the influence of hip-hop on the fashion world—chronicling how African American style migrated from Southern churches to northern cities, and on to international runways and the malls of Middle America. Includes lots of music, vintage film clips, and interviews with Pharrell Williams, Kanye West, Sean Combs, and others. “Snazzy.” –Variety.

Poland | 1958 | Tadeusz Konwicki

The first film directed by an important Polish writer, critic, and filmmaker who died earlier this year won the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival. The movie focuses on a nameless man and woman, both lonely and damaged by WWII, who meet one day on the deserted sand dunes of a Baltic beach and try to relate to each other.

Poland | 1965 | Tadeusz Konwicki

In this Kafkaesque drama, a mysterious man (Zbigniew Cybulski, “the Polish James Dean”) jumps from a train and ends up in a small Polish town where he claims to have lived during the German occupation of WWII. The townspeople aren’t certain whether they remember him, but his mere presence stirs up uncomfortable memories for them.

Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Indonesia, Israel, Netherlands, Norway, United Kingdom, United States | 2014 | Joshua Oppenheimer

In Joshua Oppenheimer’s blistering follow-up to his take-no-prisoners 2012 documentary The Act of Killing, an Indonesian optician confronts the rightwing thugs who murdered his older brother during the country’s brutal anti-communist purge of the 1960s. “Staggering…A superior work of confrontational boldness…Essential.” –Time Out New York.

France | 2014 | Mia Hansen-Løve

The new film from the acclaimed French director of Father of My Children and Goodbye First Love (both shown at the Cinematheque) follows the life of a pioneering, teen DJ (modeled after the director’s brother, who wrote the script) during the heady days of the early 1990s club and rave scene in France. With Greta Gerwig, Golshifteh Farahani, Brady Corbet, et al. A 2014 New York Film Festival selection. “[A] graceful, deeply affecting movie.” –Hollywood...

Canada, France | 2014 | Amer Shomali, Paul Cowan

How did 18 cows owned by Palestinians during the First Intifada become “a threat to the national security of the state of Israel”? This funny, whimsical mix of claymation and documentary details an absurdist, stranger-than-fiction 1987 episode that saw the Israeli army hunting for a herd of hidden dairy cows that Palestinians in the town of Beit Sahour had purchased and raised in order to avoid buying Israeli milk. “Beautiful and important and very strange.”...

United Kingdom | 1984 | Bill Forsyth

Singular Scottish writer and director Bill Forsyth made this rarely shown film right after his delightful Gregory’s Girl and brilliant Local Hero. It’s a quirky comedy-drama about a Glasgow radio host (Bill Paterson) who becomes embroiled in an ice cream war between two rival Italian families operating ice cream trucks in the city. Never released on DVD in the U.S.

France | 2014 | Mia Hansen-Løve

The new film from the acclaimed French director of Father of My Children and Goodbye First Love (both shown at the Cinematheque) follows the life of a pioneering, teen DJ (modeled after the director’s brother, who wrote the script) during the heady days of the early 1990s club and rave scene in France. With Greta Gerwig, Golshifteh Farahani, Brady Corbet, et al. A 2014 New York Film Festival selection. “[A] graceful, deeply affecting movie.” –Hollywood...

Poland | 1960 | Andrzej Wajda

The great Andrzej Wajda followed his celebrated WWII trilogy (A Generation, Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds) with a contemporary portrait of Poland’s modern youth. Condemned by Communist Party officials, this unflattering film focuses on a dissolute doctor who is unwilling to commit to his girlfriend. Zbiegniew Cybulski, Roman Polanski, and Jerzy Skolimowski (who co-wrote the script) play three of the physician’s cynical, aimless friends.

Austria, France | 2014 | Hubert Sauper

For his latest look at life in contemporary Africa, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Hubert Sauper (Darwin’s Nightmare) designed and built a lightweight plane that he piloted into remote corners of newly independent South Sudan. There he interviewed politicians, tribal lords, and impoverished citizens of the war-torn, oil rich nation, along with foreign do-gooders and profiteers who are temporarily living and working there. The result is a sad, infuriating, often surreal snapshot—and one of the best reviewed movies...

Taiwan | 1992 | Tsai Ming-liang

Never released theatrically in the U.S. until earlier this year, the first film from the master Taiwanese filmmaker of The Hole and What Time Is It There? is another of Tsai’s studies of urban alienation and aimlessness. The director’s longtime muse, Lee Kang-sheng, plays a disaffected cram school student who becomes fixated on a pair of motorcycle-riding petty hoods and starts stalking them around Taipei. “As a first film, it is incredibly accomplished.” -L.A. Times.

United Kingdom | 1986-2015 | Stephen and Timothy Quay, Christopher Nolan

Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Inception) has assembled this program of three stop-motion animated classics by the Brothers Quay—all in newly struck 35mm prints—and supplemented them with a new short film of his own about the filmmakers (Quay, 2015). Born in Pennsylvania but living and working in London, twins Stephen and Timothy Quay have spent decades animating ordinary objects (dolls, pencils, combs, etc.) and incorporating them into creepy, textured dreamscapes redolent of European fairy tales....

Australia, France, Japan, Poland, Singapore, United States | 2014-15 | various directors

World of Tomorrow, a mind-bending new animated film by Don Hertzfeldt, is one of the highlights of this all-new touring program of award-winning shorts from this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The show’s other five works—Frankie Shaw’s SMILF;Atsuko Hirayanagi’s Oh Lucy!; Kitty Green’s The Face of Ukraine: Casting Oksana Baiul; Paul Cabon’s Storm Hits Jacket; and Paulina Skibińska’s Object—range from live action to documentary to “poetic,” but each movie won one of the festival’s short film...

United Kingdom | 1986-2015 | Stephen and Timothy Quay, Christopher Nolan

Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Inception) has assembled this program of three stop-motion animated classics by the Brothers Quay—all in newly struck 35mm prints—and supplemented them with a new short film of his own about the filmmakers (Quay, 2015). Born in Pennsylvania but living and working in London, twins Stephen and Timothy Quay have spent decades animating ordinary objects (dolls, pencils, combs, etc.) and incorporating them into creepy, textured dreamscapes redolent of European fairy tales....

Poland | 1975 | Andrzej Wajda

This rarely shown, Oscar nominated epic by Poland’s greatest living filmmaker follows three men—a Pole, a Jew, and a German—who band together to open a textile factory in ruthless, corrupt, industrialized late 19th-century Łódź. From a novel by Nobel prize winner Władysław Reymont. With Daniel Olbrychski.

Australia, France, Japan, Poland, Singapore, United States | 2014-15 | various directors

World of Tomorrow, a mind-bending new animated film by Don Hertzfeldt, is one of the highlights of this all-new touring program of award-winning shorts from this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The show’s other five works—Frankie Shaw’s SMILF;Atsuko Hirayanagi’s Oh Lucy!; Kitty Green’s The Face of Ukraine: Casting Oksana Baiul; Paul Cabon’s Storm Hits Jacket; and Paulina Skibińska’s Object—range from live action to documentary to “poetic,” but each movie won one of the festival’s short film...

Austria, France | 2014 | Hubert Sauper

For his latest look at life in contemporary Africa, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Hubert Sauper (Darwin’s Nightmare) designed and built a lightweight plane that he piloted into remote corners of newly independent South Sudan. There he interviewed politicians, tribal lords, and impoverished citizens of the war-torn, oil rich nation, along with foreign do-gooders and profiteers who are temporarily living and working there. The result is a sad, infuriating, often surreal snapshot—and one of the best reviewed movies...

Taiwan | 1992 | Tsai Ming-liang

Never released theatrically in the U.S. until earlier this year, the first film from the master Taiwanese filmmaker of The Hole and What Time Is It There? is another of Tsai’s studies of urban alienation and aimlessness. The director’s longtime muse, Lee Kang-sheng, plays a disaffected cram school student who becomes fixated on a pair of motorcycle-riding petty hoods and starts stalking them around Taipei. “As a first film, it is incredibly accomplished.” -L.A. Times.

Poland | 1960 | Aleksander Ford

Poland’s first superproduction, made to compete with the colossal historical spectacles coming out of the U.S. and the rest of Europe at the time, became the country’s all-time box office champ. Based on a novel by Nobel laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz (Quo Vadis), the film recreates the events leading up to 1410’s decisive Battle of Grunwald, when the Poles and Lithuanians defeated the invading German-Prussian warrior-monks of the Teutonic Order.