Cinematheque Film Schedule

United States | 1936 | Edward H. Griffith

James Stewart (in his third Hollywood screen appearance and first lead role) teams up with his future Shop Around the Corner co-star Margaret Sullavan in this touching romantic melodrama about two young newlyweds—a journalist and an actress—whose marriage and family life are strained by ambitious careers that take them in different directions (even to different continents). Ray Milland co-stars in this movie that is based on a 1935 novel by Ursula Parrott, a hugely popular...

United States | 1978-2021 | various directors

On June 13, 1978, the once Akron-based rock band the Cramps performed a live show at Napa State Hospital, a psychiatric institution in northern California. Opening for them was the Mutants, an eclectic septet of art school students from nearby San Francisco. This legendary punk show was captured on primitive b&w videotape by Target Video, a SF artists collective. In this program we show Joe Target Rees’ newly remastered video recordings of both sets (the...

United States | 2023 | Sam Pollard

The fascinating history and profound influence of baseball’s Negro leagues, which flourished from the 1920s until MLB became integrated in the 1940s, are explored in this vivid new documentary executive-produced by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson (Summer of Soul). Packed with archival materials, the movie continuously fills the bases with interesting characters and stories. “Essential…The film is must viewing for baseball and history buffs alike.” –Hollywood Reporter. DCP. 103 min.

United States | 1953 | Phil Tucker

Decades before AI, humankind is threatened by Ro-Man—an alien who looks like a gorilla in a diving helmet, sent by his supreme leader to wipe out Earth’s population with a death ray. Ro-Man does pretty well at this, but for some reason, a California family proves immune to his people-zapper. Shot for next to nothing in four days in L.A.’s Bronson Canyon, this legendary, ludicrous laugher has been restored to its original 3-D “glory.” The...

United States | 2023 | Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson’s latest feature is another impeccably designed and stylized fantasy—this time an amalgam of 1950s obsessions, images, myths, and music, all rendered in a distinctive color palette heavy on turquoise and orange. Set in a small, remote desert town in the American Southwest, the film tells of a youth astronomy convention that is upstaged by the arrival of an actual space alien. Tom Hanks and Margot Robbie join Anderson’s all-star stock company. DCP. 105...

Italy | 2022 | Davide Ferrario

Umberto Eco, the brilliant Italian writer of The Name of the Rose (who’s seen in archival interviews),and his vast private library (30,000+ volumes!) are the main subjects of this riveting new documentary that moviegoers loved when we premiered it in July. Many people asked us to bring it back, so we are. An Eco echo, if you will. Subtitles. DCP. 80 min.

United States | 1953 | Phil Tucker

Decades before AI, humankind is threatened by Ro-Man—an alien who looks like a gorilla in a diving helmet, sent by his supreme leader to wipe out Earth’s population with a death ray. Ro-Man does pretty well at this, but for some reason, a California family proves immune to his people-zapper. Shot for next to nothing in four days in L.A.’s Bronson Canyon, this legendary, ludicrous laugher has been restored to its original 3-D “glory.” The...

United States | 1978-2021 | various directors

On June 13, 1978, the once Akron-based rock band the Cramps performed a live show at Napa State Hospital, a psychiatric institution in northern California. Opening for them was the Mutants, an eclectic septet of art school students from nearby San Francisco. This legendary punk show was captured on primitive b&w videotape by Target Video, a SF artists collective. In this program we show Joe Target Rees’ newly remastered video recordings of both sets (the...

Belgium, France | 2022 | Daphné Baiwir

Brian De Palma brought Stephen King’s first novel Carrie to the screen in 1976. Since then, there have been more than 60 other movies, TV programs, or series based on King’s works, making him the world’s most adapted living author. In this clip-filled new documentary, moviemakers ranging from Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile) and Mick Garris (The Stand) to Mike Flanagan (Gerald’s Game) and Greg Nicotero (Misery) comment on the enduring screen...

United States | 1920 | Fred Niblo

Colorado’s Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra is America’s foremost ensemble dedicated to providing musical accompaniment for silent movies. Their live scores to The Wedding March and Sunrise at the Cinematheque in February 2022 (part of the first Cleveland Silent Film Festival) were enthusiastically received. This week, the five-member band returns to Cleveland to play for three programs in the 2023 Cleveland Silent Film Festival. The first of these is The Mark of Zorro, a Douglas...

United States, USSR | 1924/29 | unknown/Dziga Vertov

The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra (see 9/7) accompanies two very different silent films about the birth of the modern industrial city. First up is The Heart of Cleveland, a 1924 short film produced for the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company. The movie follows two farm children, living without modern conveniences outside of Cleveland, who fly to the big city to witness the wonders of electricity. It features glorious aerial shots of Cleveland during its industrial...

Germany | 2023 | Christian Petzold

Winner of the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize (second place) at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, the new movie by German master Christian Petzold (Undine, Transit, Barbara) is set in a summer home on the Baltic Sea, where a dour, struggling novelist and his more easygoing friend discover an unexpected house guest (Paula Beer) staying on the property. The woman’s presence ignites the men’s desires and passion. As the sexual heat rises, wildfires begin to...

United States | 1930 | Lewis Milestone

Few people know that director Lewis Milestone shot two versions of his WWI classic All Quiet on the Western Front: the celebrated sound version that won an early Academy Award for Best Picture, and a dialogue-free “silent” version made for the international market and for U.S. theaters not yet equipped for sound. (During the transition from silent pictures to talkies, Hollywood sometimes prepared two versions of new movies.) Tonight, the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra...

Sweden | 2021 | Stig Björkman

The celebrated American writer who has penned over 100 books during her distinguished career (including Blonde, about Marilyn Monroe) is the subject of this new documentary by a veteran Swedish filmmaker and critic who has known Oates for many years. Laura Dern, who starred in the 1985 Oates adaptation Smooth Talk, reads excerpts from the author’s works. “An unruly genius.” –New Yorker. Cleveland premiere. DCP. 94 min.

China | 2022 | Li Ruijun

A box office hit in China before it was unceremoniously pulled from movie theaters and streaming services, this exquisite rural drama tells of two lonely, middle-aged outcasts—a poor farmer and a sickly spinster—who are forced by their families to marry. Surprisingly, they make a go of it, becoming true partners in love and work—at least for a while. “Critic’s Pick…A touching portrait of love and resiliency.” –NY Times. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 134 min.

United States | 2022 | Morrisa Maltz

Lily Gladstone (Certain Women, Killers of the Flower Moon) plays a grieving Oglala Lakota woman who embarks on a road trip from her home in Minneapolis to a cousin’s wedding in South Dakota and then, guided by her grandmother’s photo album, to Texas. The gentle journey and real people she meets along the way restore her spirit. The lyrical, luminously-photographed movie (a mix of fiction and documentary) that holds her story evokes both Terrence Malick...

Germany | 2023 | Christian Petzold

Winner of the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize (second place) at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, the new movie by German master Christian Petzold (Undine, Transit, Barbara) is set in a summer home on the Baltic Sea, where a dour, struggling novelist and his more easygoing friend discover an unexpected house guest (Paula Beer) staying on the property. The woman’s presence ignites the men’s desires and passion. As the sexual heat rises, wildfires begin to...

United States | 1984 | Richard Myers

In this touching and very personal work, northeast Ohio filmmaker Richard Myers revisits the 15-episode 1941 Republic Pictures serial of his youth, Jungle Girl, the first sound serial to have a female lead. Myers’ mixes surrealistic scenes from his movie-fired imagination with excerpts from an audio interview with the serial’s star Frances Gifford, whose career was cut short by a catastrophic car accident in 1947. (She refused to be filmed by Myers.) “[A] gentle dream/memory...

United Kingdom | 2023 | Charlotte Regan

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, this British charmer focuses on a dreamy, resourceful 12-year-old girl who lives alone in a flat in a working-class section of London after the death of her mother. Her enchanted, rather happy idyll of independence ends with the sudden arrival of her estranged father (Harris Dickinson of Triangle of Sadness) whom she has never met. “Packed full...

United States | 1959 | Howard Hawks

Grafton Nunes, film scholar and former President + CEO of the Cleveland Institute of Art, introduces and discusses Howard Hawks’ landmark western, one of the great director’s greatest films. John Wayne plays a Texas sheriff trying to prevent a killer from being sprung from jail by his slick cronies before the U.S. Marshal can arrive. For help guarding his prisoner, he assembles a ragtag bunch of greenhorns and misfits: a guitar-strumming, gun-slinging kid (Ricky Nelson),...

United Kingdom | 2023 | Charlotte Regan

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, this British charmer focuses on a dreamy, resourceful 12-year-old girl who lives alone in a flat in a working-class section of London after the death of her mother. Her enchanted, rather happy idyll of independence ends with the sudden arrival of her estranged father (Harris Dickinson of Triangle of Sadness) whom she has never met. “Packed full...

Belgium, Canada, France, United States | 2022-23 | various directors

Seven short films from January’s 2023 Sundance Film Festival—fiction, nonfiction, and animation—make up the latest edition of this popular annual program. Sundance is widely considered the premier American showcase for new short films, serving for almost 40 years as the launchpad for many now-prominent independent filmmakers—from Dee Rees and Todd Haynes to Don Hertzfeldt and Jay and Mark Duplass. Four countries are represented in this year’s collection, and two festival award winners are included: Crystal...

United States | 2022 | Sam Green

The immersive new film from the Oscar-nominated director of The Weather Underground explores the phenomenon of sound through 32 specific sonic experiences—from a tree falling in the forest to old answering-machine audio tapes. Featuring original music by JD Samson of Le Tigre, this sensory work meditates on the power of sound to bend time, cross borders, and profoundly shape our perception of the world. It sounds great on our 7.1 Dolby Digital sound system!“The greatest...

Belgium, Canada, France, United States | 2022-23 | various directors

Seven short films from January’s 2023 Sundance Film Festival—fiction, nonfiction, and animation—make up the latest edition of this popular annual program. Sundance is widely considered the premier American showcase for new short films, serving for almost 40 years as the launchpad for many now-prominent independent filmmakers—from Dee Rees and Todd Haynes to Don Hertzfeldt and Jay and Mark Duplass. Four countries are represented in this year’s collection, and two festival award winners are included: Crystal...

United States | 1969 | Woody Allen

Woody Allen plays an inept bank robber in this joke-filled mockumentary that Allen regards as his motion picture directorial debut. (He wrote, directed, and starred in it.) Music by Marvin Hamlisch. “Very special and eccentric and funny.” –NY Times. Blu-ray. 85 min.

United Kingdom, United States | 2023 | Savanah Leaf

In one of the most rapturously-reviewed films of 2023, a single, pregnant Bay Area Black woman who’s in recovery struggles with the System to retrieve her other two children from foster care. An A24 release. “A wondrous 97-minute feature…Director [Savanah Leaf] and star [Tia Nomore] are obviously poised for greatness.” –IndieWire. Cleveland premiere. DCP. 97 min.

France | 1937 | Jean Grémillon

Jean Gabin stars in this major film by a great but neglected filmmaker of French cinema’s golden age. A blend of film noir and poetic realism, the film tells of an officer in the French Foreign Legion who is a Casanova until he falls hard for a femme fatale. “Grémillon belongs in the hierarchy of classic French cinema alongside René Clair, Jean Renoir, and Marcel Carné…Jean Gabin gives the most affecting performance of his long...

Chile | 2023 | Maite Alberdi

Winner of the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize in the Documentary Competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Maite Alberdi’s follow-up to The Mole Agent is one of the most moving portraits of Alzheimer’s disease ever made. Focusing on two prominent Chileans who have been together for 23 years (he’s a journalist and TV commentator, she’s an actress who once served as Chile’s Minister of Culture and the Arts), this intimate portrait shows the couple...

United States | 1971 | Woody Allen

To impress his activist ex-girlfriend, a bumbling, neurotic New Yorker (Woody Allen) becomes involved in a political revolution inside a Latin American banana republic. Louise Lasser co-stars in this zany collection of one-liners, sight gags, and absurd situations. “Four stars (highest rating)…Hilarious.” –Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide. 35mm. 82 min.

France, Germany | 2023 | Ira Sach

Slapped (perhaps unfairly) with a commerce-killing NC-17 rating by the Motion Picture Association, Ira Sachs’ universally acclaimed new film focuses on a gay couple—a German filmmaker played by Franz Rogowski and a British printer played by Ben Whishaw—whose marriage is threatened when one of them begins a relationship with a woman (Adèle Exarchopoulos of Blue Is the Warmest Color). “A smart, lustrous film, and a bracingly honest one.” –Time. Adults only! Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. DCP....

France, Luxembourg | 2022 | Julien Chheng, Jean-Christophe Roger

The first feature-length follow-up to France’s 2012 Oscar-nominated, animated charmer Ernest and Celestine finds the unlikely duo (troubadour bear Ernest and mouse Celestine) traveling to Ernest’s home country to get his one-of-a-kind, beloved violin repaired. But they are shocked to discover that music has been banned there! Winner of the 2023 Grand Prize at the New York Int’l Children’s Film Festival. Cleveland premiere. DCP. 80 min.

Italy, United Kingdom | 1968 | Franco Zeffirelli

“The most exciting film of Shakespeare ever made” is what Roger Ebert called Franco Zeffirelli’s lush, romantic period piece that boldly cast two teenagers, Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, as the Bard’s star-crossed lovers. Michael York co-stars; Nino Rota composed the music. 4K DCP. 138 min.

United States | 1971 | Woody Allen

To impress his activist ex-girlfriend, a bumbling, neurotic New Yorker (Woody Allen) becomes involved in a political revolution inside a Latin American banana republic. Louise Lasser co-stars in this zany collection of one-liners, sight gags, and absurd situations. “Four stars (highest rating)…Hilarious.” –Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide. 35mm. 82 min.

France, Luxembourg | 2022 | Julien Chheng, Jean-Christophe Roger

The first feature-length follow-up to France’s 2012 Oscar-nominated, animated charmer Ernest and Celestine finds the unlikely duo (troubadour bear Ernest and mouse Celestine) traveling to Ernest’s home country to get his one-of-a-kind, beloved violin repaired. But they are shocked to discover that music has been banned there! Winner of the 2023 Grand Prize at the New York Int’l Children’s Film Festival. Cleveland premiere. DCP. 80 min.

Chile | 2023 | Maite Alberdi

Winner of the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize in the Documentary Competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Maite Alberdi’s follow-up to The Mole Agent is one of the most moving portraits of Alzheimer’s disease ever made. Focusing on two prominent Chileans who have been together for 23 years (he’s a journalist and TV commentator, she’s an actress who once served as Chile’s Minister of Culture and the Arts), this intimate portrait shows the couple...

Australia | 2023 | Ian White

Nick Cave’s first band the Birthday Party startled audiences with its confrontational performances, primal screams, outlaw gothic horror, and anarchic lifestyle. The group’s original members narrate this new documentary that features never-before-seen footage from band members and electrifying concert clips. It’s a front-row seat to “one of the all-time premier live bands” (Henry Rollins). Cleveland premiere. DCP. 98 min.

France, Germany | 2023 | Ira Sach

Slapped (perhaps unfairly) with a commerce-killing NC-17 rating by the Motion Picture Association, Ira Sachs’ universally acclaimed new film focuses on a gay couple—a German filmmaker played by Franz Rogowski and a British printer played by Ben Whishaw—whose marriage is threatened when one of them begins a relationship with a woman (Adèle Exarchopoulos of Blue Is the Warmest Color). “A smart, lustrous film, and a bracingly honest one.” –Time. Adults only! Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. DCP....

France, Germany | 1938 | Jean Grémillon

In this thriller from the overlooked Jean Grémillon (see 9/21 at 6:45), Raimu (whom Orson Welles once called “the greatest actor who ever lived”) plays a successful French shop owner whose amiability and respectability mask some serious criminal activity. Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 103 min.

France | 2022 | Cyril Leuthy

Jean-Luc Godard, the French New Wave innovator who became an ever-rebellious titan of world cinema, died last September at age 91. This new documentary, which includes interviews with many of Godard’s friends, collaborators, and critics, looks back at the late master. The movie divides Godard’s first 40 years of filmmaking into six chapters, each inspired by a phase of his career—from his 1960 breakthrough Breathless to his late magnum opus Histoire(s) du cinema, an eight-part...

United States | 1928 | Paul Leni

Batman’s nemesis the Joker was largely inspired by the grotesque, disfigured main character in this lavish period romance by German Expressionist filmmaker Paul Leni (Waxworks, The Cat and the Canary). Set in 17th-century England, the silent film charts the romantic and political travails of Gwynplaine (Conrad Veidt), the son of a disgraced nobleman, who has had a hideous, mirthless grin permanently carved on his face by his father’s enemies, forcing him to work as a...

United States | 1968 | Franklin J. Schaffner

Astronauts crash-land on a mysterious planet where intelligent apes rule over human beings. This sci-fi landmark, co-written by Rod Serling, spawned four sequels, two TV series, a remake, a reboot trilogy, and more! Charlton Heston stars. DCP. 112 min.

United States | 1968 | Franklin J. Schaffner

Astronauts crash-land on a mysterious planet where intelligent apes rule over human beings. This sci-fi landmark, co-written by Rod Serling, spawned four sequels, two TV series, a remake, a reboot trilogy, and more! Charlton Heston stars. DCP. 112 min.

France | 2022 | Cyril Leuthy

Jean-Luc Godard, the French New Wave innovator who became an ever-rebellious titan of world cinema, died last September at age 91. This new documentary, which includes interviews with many of Godard’s friends, collaborators, and critics, looks back at the late master. The movie divides Godard’s first 40 years of filmmaking into six chapters, each inspired by a phase of his career—from his 1960 breakthrough Breathless to his late magnum opus Histoire(s) du cinema, an eight-part...

United States | 1972 | Woody Allen

Woody Allen and a distinguished supporting cast (John Carradine, Louise Lasser, Tony Randall, Lynn Redgrave, Burt Reynolds, Gene Wilder, et al.) act out nonsensical answers to questions about human sexuality (“Do Aphrodisiacs Work?”, “What Happens During Ejaculation?”, et al.) in this seven-part anthology comedy that contains some of Allen’s wildest and most outrageously funny conceits. Includes spoofs of Antonioni movies and 1966’s Fantastic Voyage. “Allen achieves his finest hour here.” –Time Out Film Guide. Adults...