Cinematheque Film Schedule

France | 2014 | François Ozon

The subversive new film by François Ozon (Swimming Pool, In the House) begins with the untimely death of a beautiful young wife and mother. At the funeral, her best friend vows to watch over the deceased’s infant daughter and widowed husband (Romain Duris). But she soon discovers that the husband leads a shocking secret life. From a Ruth Rendell story. “An air of Hitchcockian menace and free-floating sexual perversity is by now nothing new for...

France | 2014 | Mélanie Laurent

The second film directed by French actress Mélanie Laurent (best known for her role in Inglorious Basterds)charts the relationship between a 17-year-old French schoolgirl and a rebellious and charismatic new transfer student. Their platonic friendship soon grows toxic, and tenderness gives way to terror. “A compelling, superbly acted portrait of an adolescent friendship perched on the brink of obsession.” –Variety. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 91 min.

France | 2014 | Mélanie Laurent

The second film directed by French actress Mélanie Laurent (best known for her role in Inglorious Basterds)charts the relationship between a 17-year-old French schoolgirl and a rebellious and charismatic new transfer student. Their platonic friendship soon grows toxic, and tenderness gives way to terror. “A compelling, superbly acted portrait of an adolescent friendship perched on the brink of obsession.” –Variety. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 91 min.

France | 2014 | François Ozon

The subversive new film by François Ozon (Swimming Pool, In the House) begins with the untimely death of a beautiful young wife and mother. At the funeral, her best friend vows to watch over the deceased’s infant daughter and widowed husband (Romain Duris). But she soon discovers that the husband leads a shocking secret life. From a Ruth Rendell story. “An air of Hitchcockian menace and free-floating sexual perversity is by now nothing new for...

Japan | 1966 | Seijun Suzuki

Loosely inspired by the French opera, this sardonic sex comedy tells of a seductive young Japanese woman who moves from her sordid small town to Osaka, where she takes a string of demeaning, exploitative jobs: bar hostess, fashion model, kept woman, porn actress. Suzuki’s eye and methods are as unorthodox and outrageous as ever.

Japan | 1966 | Seijun Suzuki

Seijun Suzuki’s wildest color film is a breathtaking action masterpiece about a lone yakuza caught up in gang warfare. But the plot is just a pretext for Suzuki’s true purpose—the shattering of genre conventions with flashy camerawork, dark comedy, and expressionistic flourishes. In this movie, wind and lightning erupt out of nowhere to enhance dramatic effect. Seasons are scrambled. A nightclub is rendered all white in order to offset the inevitable pools of blood that...

France, United Kingdom, United States, West Germany | 1984 | Wim Wenders

Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, Wim Wenders’ drama stars Harry Dean Stanton as an amnesiac, missing and wandering for four years, who seeks reconciliation with his young son and estranged wife (Nastassja Kinski). Written by L. M. Kit Carson and Sam Shepard; music by Ry Cooder; cinematography by Robby Müller.

France, United Kingdom, United States, West Germany | 1984 | Wim Wenders

Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, Wim Wenders’ drama stars Harry Dean Stanton as an amnesiac, missing and wandering for four years, who seeks reconciliation with his young son and estranged wife (Nastassja Kinski). Written by L. M. Kit Carson and Sam Shepard; music by Ry Cooder; cinematography by Robby Müller.

France, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom, United States, West Germany | 1982 | Wim Wenders

A respected European filmmaker (Patrick Bauchau) shooting an American remake of a low-budget science fiction film finds himself, his cast, and his crew stranded on a remote Portuguese location while the movie’s nutty producer (Allen Garfield) drives around L.A. in a motor home looking for money to finish the picture. Wim Wenders’ bleak and funny view of the movie industry—made while the production of his own American film Hammett was stalled—won the top prize at...

Japan | 1966 | Seijun Suzuki

Seijun Suzuki’s wildest color film is a breathtaking action masterpiece about a lone yakuza caught up in gang warfare. But the plot is just a pretext for Suzuki’s true purpose—the shattering of genre conventions with flashy camerawork, dark comedy, and expressionistic flourishes. In this movie, wind and lightning erupt out of nowhere to enhance dramatic effect. Seasons are scrambled. A nightclub is rendered all white in order to offset the inevitable pools of blood that...

Japan | 1963 | Seijun Suzuki

In this visually dazzling yakuza thriller, two lovesick killers, torn between lust and loyalty, rebel against their own gangs.

Austria | 2014 | Ulrich Seidl

What do people do in the privacy of their own basements? You may not want to know! The latest ethnographic exposé and shocker from inveterate button pusher Ulrich Seidl (Animal Love, Import/Export, the Paradise trilogy) shows that certain subterranean dens are furnished with more than workbenches, washing machines, and wet bars—at least in Austria.

1927 | Harry Langdon

New Hampshire-based pianist Jeff Rapsis is one of the busiest silent film musicians in New England (and beyond)! Tonight he makes his Cleveland debut by scoring and accompanying two silent comedy classics in a special holiday program. Three’s a Crowd was the directorial debut of Harry Langdon, the baby-faced comedian who is considered the fourth great clown (after Chaplin, Keaton, and Harold Lloyd) of the American silent screen. Langdon also stars in the picture, a...

Japan | 1967 | Seijun Suzuki

The film that got director Seijun Suzuki fired from Nikkatsu studio (for making “incomprehensible” movies) is frequently cited as his greatest achievement. Its ardent fans include Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch, Wong Kar-wai, and John Woo, and it has been variously hailed as an absurdist masterpiece, an avant-garde classic, and a stylistic precursor to the Japanese New Wave. The movie is an extreme and flamboyant yakuza thriller in which the hitman regarded as Tokyo’s Number...

United States, West Germany | 1985 | Wim Wenders

Wim Wenders pays tribute to one of his idols—master Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963)—in this self-described “diary on film.” Wenders journeys to Japan to interview Ozu’s perennial star Chishu Ryu and his longtime cameraman Yuharu Atsuda, while also musing on aspects of modern Japanese life. Wonderful!

1933 | Yasujiro Ozu

Composer and pianist Jeff Rapsis (see 12/11 at 7:30) accompanies one of Yasujiro Ozu’s last—and best—silent films. Winner of Japan’s Kinema Junpo Award for best film of 1933, Passing Fancy is a touching tale of a poor, widowed, illiterate, middle-aged (but warm-hearted) brewery worker, his feisty 8-year-old son whom he is raising alone, and a young woman who comes between them.

Japan | 1967 | Seijun Suzuki

The film that got director Seijun Suzuki fired from Nikkatsu studio (for making “incomprehensible” movies) is frequently cited as his greatest achievement. Its ardent fans include Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch, Wong Kar-wai, and John Woo, and it has been variously hailed as an absurdist masterpiece, an avant-garde classic, and a stylistic precursor to the Japanese New Wave. The movie is an extreme and flamboyant yakuza thriller in which the hitman regarded as Tokyo’s Number...

Austria | 2014 | Ulrich Seidl

What do people do in the privacy of their own basements? You may not want to know! The latest ethnographic exposé and shocker from inveterate button pusher Ulrich Seidl (Animal Love, Import/Export, the Paradise trilogy) shows that certain subterranean dens are furnished with more than workbenches, washing machines, and wet bars—at least in Austria.

United States | 1995 | Alfonso Cuarón

Before he made Y Tu Mamá También, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Children of Men, and Gravity, the great Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón made this lovely, little-seen adaptation of a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden). It tells of a privileged 10-year-old girl, raised in India by her British father, who is sent to live in a lavish New York City boarding school when her father goes off to World War...

United States | 2015 | Sean Baker

In this delightful, energetic comedy set in Tinseltown on Christmas Eve, a trans woman sex worker (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez), back on the streets after 28 days in prison, goes ballistic when she learns that her pimp boyfriend cheated on her while she was locked up (and with a heterosexual female no less). She storms off looking for this “bitch,” and in the process others (her trans BFF, an Armenian cab driver, an Asian donut shop...

Japan | 1964 | Seijun Suzuki

Seijun Suzuki’s soft-porn masterpiece is a lurid, anti-American tale of prostitutes and black marketeers in the bombed-out slums of postwar Tokyo. In another’s hands, this subject might have called for black and white cinematography and a gritty newsreel aesthetic (à la Italian neorealism). But Suzuki employs garish colors and cinemascope to heighten the harshness of his vision—“like the blush and lipstick in a funeral home that somehow make the dead look even deader” (David Chute)....

1982 | Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar Bergman’s sumptuous family epic is a magnificent summation of the themes (love and loneliness; dreams and nightmares; pain and ecstasy; God and emptiness; reality and illusion; theater and cinema) that preoccupied the great filmmaker throughout his long career. Set in early 20th-century Sweden, the film focuses on a young brother and sister who must leave the bosom of their warm and loving theatrical family for a severe, Spartan existence with a stern minister, their...