Cinematheque Film Schedule

Italy | 2016 | Edoardo De Angelis

Two 17-year-old Italian girls, conjoined twins with beautiful faces and voices, make a living by singing at weddings and first communions. Born into abject poverty and attached at the hip, the two are growing apart in other ways. Should they accept a surgeon’s offer to separate them? And will their assorted handlers (who exploit and profit from them) even allow the operation? A moving, unusual fable of sisterhood. “A mood piece humming with energy and...

Japan | 1970 | Yasuharu Hasebe

Meiko Kaji stars in perhaps the best of the five youth-oriented exploitation movies that comprised Japan’s popular, sexy, psychedelic “Stray Cat Rock” series (1970-71). She plays the leader of a tough girl gang that takes on an intolerant male gang when the boys plan to rid the town of mixed race individuals (some of them offspring of U.S. military personnel). Fast cutting, split screens, garish fashions, and rock ‘n’ roll! Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. DCP....

France | 1928 | Carl Theodor Dreyer

Voted the ninth best movie of all time in a 2012 poll of international film critics and film curators conducted by Britain’s Sight & Sound magazine, this visually stunning re-creation of the trial and execution of the 15th-century French freedom fighter who became a Catholic saint is a masterpiece of spiritual cinema. Based on the actual transcripts of Joan’s interrogation by the French clerical court (she was accused of heresy), this silent film is justly...

Italy, West Germany | 1969 | Luchino Visconti

The rise of Nazism during the 1930s is seen through the eyes of a dissolute, aristocratic German family (modeled on the Krupps) who manufacture steel and armaments when they’re not engaged in immoral, internecine power struggles of their own. Luchino Visconti’s lavish, lurid wallow in pre-WWII decadence originally earned an “X” rating in America. With Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin, Helmut Griem, Helmut Berger, and Charlotte Rampling. No one under 17 admitted! In English. Archival...

France | 1928 | Carl Theodor Dreyer

Voted the ninth best movie of all time in a 2012 poll of international film critics and film curators conducted by Britain’s Sight & Sound magazine, this visually stunning re-creation of the trial and execution of the 15th-century French freedom fighter who became a Catholic saint is a masterpiece of spiritual cinema. Based on the actual transcripts of Joan’s interrogation by the French clerical court (she was accused of heresy), this silent film is justly...

France, Sweden, United Kingdom | 1986 | Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Tarkovsky’s final film (he died from cancer in 1986 at age 54) is a solemn, magnificent fable about the loss of spirituality in the modern world. Shot is Sweden with Ingmar Bergman’s longtime cinematographer Sven Nykvist and his frequent star Erland Josephson, the movie tells of a man celebrating his birthday with friends when nuclear war breaks out. To avert the apocalypse, the man makes a pact with the Almighty—forswearing everything he has if...

Japan | 1972 | Shunya Itô

Japan’s five-film “Stray Cat Rock” series (see 11/30 at 6:45) was followed by the four-film “Female Convict Scorpion” series (1972-73) of women-in-prison movies, all starring the ruthless Meiko Kaji. Jailhouse 41 is probably the best of the bunch, and was hailed by Video Watchdog in 2004 as “the breakout rediscovery of the new millennium.” It’s a brutal, relentless action thriller in which the vengeful Kaji leads an all-female jailbreak. Overflowing with sex and violence, the...

United States | 2016 | Theo Anthony

This witty, widely acclaimed new documentary shrewdly integrates a look at Baltimore’s rat population with an overview of the city’s shameful history of racial and economic segregation. According to one on-screen observer, “There’s never been a rat problem in Baltimore, it’s always been a people problem.” “A brilliantly imaginative and formally experimental essay on how Baltimore has dealt with its rat problem and manipulated its black population.” –NY Times. “It’s one of the most imaginative...

United States | 2016 | Theo Anthony

This witty, widely acclaimed new documentary shrewdly integrates a look at Baltimore’s rat population with an overview of the city’s shameful history of racial and economic segregation. According to one on-screen observer, “There’s never been a rat problem in Baltimore, it’s always been a people problem.” “A brilliantly imaginative and formally experimental essay on how Baltimore has dealt with its rat problem and manipulated its black population.” –NY Times. “It’s one of the most imaginative...

Japan | 1972 | Shunya Itô

Japan’s five-film “Stray Cat Rock” series (see 11/30 at 6:45) was followed by the four-film “Female Convict Scorpion” series (1972-73) of women-in-prison movies, all starring the ruthless Meiko Kaji. Jailhouse 41 is probably the best of the bunch, and was hailed by Video Watchdog in 2004 as “the breakout rediscovery of the new millennium.” It’s a brutal, relentless action thriller in which the vengeful Kaji leads an all-female jailbreak. Overflowing with sex and violence, the...

Canada | 2016 | Ann Marie Fleming

In this delightful new animated coming-of-age tale, Rosie Ming, a young Canadian poet, is invited to perform at a poetry festival in Iran. The motherless Rosie lives at home with her over-protective Chinese grandparents and has never been anywhere by herself. But once in Iran, she finds herself in the company of writers and Persians who tell stories that force her to confront her past (especially the Iranian father who abandoned her) and reveal the...

France, Italy, West Germany | 1973 | Luchino Visconti

The grandest, longest, and most indulgent of Luchino Visconti’s sumptuous historical spectacles traces the career of Bavaria’s “mad” King Ludwig II (Helmut Berger) from his 1864 coronation to his 1886 death. During that time he loved operas, castles, sweets, women, and men. Released in multiple shorter versions over the years, the film will be seen here in its intended original cut. With Romy Schneider, Silvana Mangano, Gert (Goldfinger) Fröbe, and Trevor Howard (as Richard Wagner)....

Canada | 2016 | Ann Marie Fleming

In this delightful new animated coming-of-age tale, Rosie Ming, a young Canadian poet, is invited to perform at a poetry festival in Iran. The motherless Rosie lives at home with her over-protective Chinese grandparents and has never been anywhere by herself. But once in Iran, she finds herself in the company of writers and Persians who tell stories that force her to confront her past (especially the Iranian father who abandoned her) and reveal the...

United States | 2007 | Paul Thomas Anderson

Three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis claims that he will retire from acting after starring in Paul Thomas Anderson’s new fashion-world film Phantom Thread, due at the end of this year. Thus the time seems right to revive the other PTA film in which Day-Lewis starred (and won an Oscar). In There Will Be Blood, the British-Irish thespian plays a silver prospector who becomes a ruthless California oil baron during the boom of the late 19th...

Japan | 1973 | Toshiya Fujita

In this manga-inspired action classic that was a major influence on Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, a 19th-century woman raped and brutalized by a criminal gang gives birth to a daughter who is raised to be her avenging angel. Meiko Kaji plays the grown-up, sword-wielding assassin. Adults only! Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 96 min.

Belgium, France, Germany, Lebanon | 2017 | Alain Gomis

Winner of six 2017 Africa Movie Academy Awards (the most ever for any film), this riveting drama focuses on a single Congolese mother in modern-day Kinshasa who ekes out at living as a nightclub singer. But when her teenage son is hospitalized after an accident, she desperately scours the city for financial help, even turning to a local mob boss who has eyes for her. Great soundtrack. A 2017 New York Film Festival selection. “A...

Belgium, France, Germany, Lebanon | 2017 | Alain Gomis

Winner of six 2017 Africa Movie Academy Awards (the most ever for any film), this riveting drama focuses on a single Congolese mother in modern-day Kinshasa who ekes out at living as a nightclub singer. But when her teenage son is hospitalized after an accident, she desperately scours the city for financial help, even turning to a local mob boss who has eyes for her. Great soundtrack. A 2017 New York Film Festival selection. “A...

Japan | 1973 | Toshiya Fujita

In this manga-inspired action classic that was a major influence on Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, a 19th-century woman raped and brutalized by a criminal gang gives birth to a daughter who is raised to be her avenging angel. Meiko Kaji plays the grown-up, sword-wielding assassin. Adults only! Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 96 min.

United States | 2017 | Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina

Lee Unkrich, Oscar-winning director of Pixar’s Toy Story 3 and co-director of Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo, appears in person to answer questions after his latest animated feature. Coco tells of a young Mexican boy who aspires to be a popular singer-songwriter. But his family has a mysterious, longstanding ban on music, so he ventures into the Land of the Dead to learn why. Music by Michael Giacchino; voices by Gael García...

Italy | 1974 | Luchino Visconti

Burt Lancaster, unforgettable in Visconti’s The Leopard, also stars in the Italian director’s penultimate film. He plays a retired and retiring American professor and art collector whose solitary, civilized life in an opulent Roman palazzo is disrupted when he rents the upper floor of his house to a vulgar Italian Countess (Silvana Mangano) and her loud, reckless, boorish clan. But once the shock subsides, the old academic finds himself lured back to life by his...

France, Germany | 2005 | Christian Carion

The Christmas truce of December 1914 saw German, French, and Scottish soldiers dropping their weapons and leaving the trenches to celebrate the holiday together, with songs and spirits, in no-man’s-land. This remarkable event is dramatized in this humane, moving World War I movie, an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film. With Daniel Brühl, Diane Kruger, and Ian Richardson. Subtitles. 116 min.

France, Germany | 2005 | Christian Carion

The Christmas truce of December 1914 saw German, French, and Scottish soldiers dropping their weapons and leaving the trenches to celebrate the holiday together, with songs and spirits, in no-man’s-land. This remarkable event is dramatized in this humane, moving World War I movie, an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film. With Daniel Brühl, Diane Kruger, and Ian Richardson. Subtitles. 116 min.

United States | 1946 | Frank Capra

Want to learn how to analyze a film? Interested in the history and stories behind one of the most beloved holiday movies of all time? If so, then join us tonight when Arizona State University film professor (and Akron native) Joe Fortunato brings one of his popular “Fortunato Film School” presentations to Ohio for the first time! (They are regular attractions at Phoenix’s FilmBar and Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.) The evening will begin with a...