Cinematheque Film Schedule

West Germany | 1975 | R. W. Fassbinder

In Fassbinder’s Sirkian “women’s picture” (made for TV), Margit Carstensen plays an anxious housewife who has two young children, a husband who ignores her, and in-laws who hate her. On the verge of mental collapse, she turns to Valium, then alcohol.

United States | 2013 | Stephen Silha, Eric Slade, Dawn Logsdon

The life and work of West Coast poet and experimental filmmaker James Broughton (1913-1999) is celebrated in this new documentary. A bisexual who fathered the only child of legendary film critic Pauline Kael, Broughton was a sensualist with a huge appetite for life—well seen in his sunny, sexy 1967 16mm short The Bed. But he made other films as well, beginning in the pre-Beat Era 1940s and continuing into the 1980s. Throughout his colorful life,...

United States | 2013 | Bill Plympton

Bill Plympton's new hand-drawn animated feature, which contains no dialogue, tells of a deliriously happy pair of newlyweds who separate when a conniving femme fatale produces fake evidence that the wife has been unfaithful. Then things get weird—serial adultery occurs, a hit man is hired, souls are transferred into new bodies. Plympton's freewheeling style and outrageous, ever-morphing figures are as distinctive and dazzling as ever.

France, Taiwan | 2013 | Tsai Ming-liang

The first feature in five years by Taiwanese master Tsai Ming-liang (The Hole; Goodbye, Dragon Inn) stars his regular muse Lee Kang-sheng as a homeless family man in modern-day Taipei. Though he makes a little money by holding an advertising placard on a busy street, he and his two young children squat nightly in an assortment of abandoned buildings and desolate industrial spaces. Tsai’s minimalist, deadpan style of observant long takes, spare dialogue, and little...

United States | 1948 | William Dieterle

A favorite of Spanish surrealist Luis Buñuel, this supernatural fantasy about a painter’s infatuation for a mysterious, ethereal young woman who ages much faster than he does was revived at the 2013 Telluride Film Festival (where it was programmed by film scholar David Thomson). Joseph Cotten, Jennifer Jones, Ethel Barrymore, and Lillian Gish star in the film, a lavish David O. Selznick production that Pauline Kael called “a deluxe exercise in mystical romanticism.” From the...

Latvia, United States | 2014 | Signe Baumane

In this new film that Variety hails as a “modern milestone in animated storytelling,” Latvian artist and animator Signe Baumane tells five fantastical tales based on the lives of five courageous women in her family. These women, representing three generations on two continents (and including Baumane herself), have battled mental illness—mostly depression—for decades. Baumane tackles this sober subject with invention and humor, combining hand-drawn figures with paper-maché props and stop motion. “[A] sardonically hilarious, sneakily...

West Germany | 1975 | R. W. Fassbinder

In Fassbinder’s Sirkian “women’s picture” (made for TV), Margit Carstensen plays an anxious housewife who has two young children, a husband who ignores her, and in-laws who hate her. On the verge of mental collapse, she turns to Valium, then alcohol.

Latvia, United States | 2014 | Signe Baumane

In this new film that Variety hails as a “modern milestone in animated storytelling,” Latvian artist and animator Signe Baumane tells five fantastical tales based on the lives of five courageous women in her family. These women, representing three generations on two continents (and including Baumane herself), have battled mental illness—mostly depression—for decades. Baumane tackles this sober subject with invention and humor, combining hand-drawn figures with paper-maché props and stop motion. “[A] sardonically hilarious, sneakily...

France, Taiwan | 2013 | Tsai Ming-liang

The first feature in five years by Taiwanese master Tsai Ming-liang (The Hole; Goodbye, Dragon Inn) stars his regular muse Lee Kang-sheng as a homeless family man in modern-day Taipei. Though he makes a little money by holding an advertising placard on a busy street, he and his two young children squat nightly in an assortment of abandoned buildings and desolate industrial spaces. Tsai’s minimalist, deadpan style of observant long takes, spare dialogue, and little...

United States | 2013 | Bill Plympton

Bill Plympton's new hand-drawn animated feature, which contains no dialogue, tells of a deliriously happy pair of newlyweds who separate when a conniving femme fatale produces fake evidence that the wife has been unfaithful. Then things get weird—serial adultery occurs, a hit man is hired, souls are transferred into new bodies. Plympton's freewheeling style and outrageous, ever-morphing figures are as distinctive and dazzling as ever.

United States | 2014 | Paola di Florio, Lisa Leeman

This film traces the life and career of India’s Hindu Swami Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952), who introduced millions of westerners to yoga and meditation through his many U.S. lectures and founded the Self-Realization Fellowship. His best-selling book Autobiography of a Yogi was a favorite of George Harrison and Steve Jobs.

Italy | 1967 | Giulio Petroni

Lee Van Cleef and John Phillip Law star in this violent spaghetti Western that is quoted numerous times in Tarantino’s Kill Bill and was revived at the 2013 Telluride Film Festival. A young gunslinger teams up with a mysterious older shootist to avenge a gang of criminals who transgressed against both of them at different times.

United States | 2013 | Maureen Gosling, Chris Simon

Chris Strachwitz, founder of Arhoolie Records (which tracks down and records regional blues, zydeco, bluegrass, and jazz musicians, and other roots music), is profiled in this toe-tapping new documentary co-directed by Les Blank’s longtime collaborator, Maureen Gosling. With Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt, Richard Thompson, et al.

United States | 2013 | Deedle LaCour, Matt Riggle

This new music doc traces the four-decade history of the pioneering SoCal pop-punk bands Descendents and All. Both led by drummer Bill Stevenson, they were a major influence on better-known acts that followed them (Foo Fighters, Blink-182, Green Day, et al.) Includes new interviews with Dave Grohl, Mike Watt, et al., as well as vintage performance footage. “An upbeat, unpretentious documentary about an upbeat, unpretentious bunch of musicians.” –The Hollywood Reporter.

West Germany | 1976 | R. W. Fassbinder

Anna Karina stars in one of Fassbinder’s most elegant and stylish films—a variation on Renoir’s The Rules of the Game in which a disabled woman (Margit Carstensen) invites her estranged parents (and their respective lovers) to a country house for an uncomfortable weekend of truth-telling games.

United States | 2014 | Paola di Florio, Lisa Leeman

This film traces the life and career of India’s Hindu Swami Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952), who introduced millions of westerners to yoga and meditation through his many U.S. lectures and founded the Self-Realization Fellowship. His best-selling book Autobiography of a Yogi was a favorite of George Harrison and Steve Jobs.

Italy | 1967 | Giulio Petroni

Lee Van Cleef and John Phillip Law star in this violent spaghetti Western that is quoted numerous times in Tarantino’s Kill Bill and was revived at the 2013 Telluride Film Festival. A young gunslinger teams up with a mysterious older shootist to avenge a gang of criminals who transgressed against both of them at different times.

United States | 1940 | Mitchell Leisen

Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray star in this romantic dramedy written by Preston Sturges. (It was his last script before graduating to director.) It’s a touching tale about a female shoplifter facing Christmas in jail who is granted bail by the prosecuting attorney—and ends up spending the holiday with the lawyer’s family.

United States | 2014 | Judy Irving

The first film in 11 years from the director of The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill is another bird-centric doc set in the Bay Area. This time the focus is on Gigi, a brown pelican that alighted on the roadway of the Golden Gate Bridge in 2008, snarling traffic and becoming a YouTube sensation. She was eventually captured and sent to rehab, where it was determined that she was four months old and starving. Irving...

United States | 1940 | Mitchell Leisen

Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray star in this romantic dramedy written by Preston Sturges. (It was his last script before graduating to director.) It’s a touching tale about a female shoplifter facing Christmas in jail who is granted bail by the prosecuting attorney—and ends up spending the holiday with the lawyer’s family.

United States | 2014 | Judy Irving

The first film in 11 years from the director of The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill is another bird-centric doc set in the Bay Area. This time the focus is on Gigi, a brown pelican that alighted on the roadway of the Golden Gate Bridge in 2008, snarling traffic and becoming a YouTube sensation. She was eventually captured and sent to rehab, where it was determined that she was four months old and starving. Irving...

Germany | 1975 | R. W. Fassbinder

An older, lower middle class woman whose husband commits a murder/suicide at the factory where he works suddenly finds herself politicized—and also exploited by opportunists and operators on all sides of the political spectrum. Fassbinder’s scathing, equal-opportunity satire proved controversial to both the Left and the Right. It was even shot with two endings: a “happy” one, as originally written, for America, and a “radical” one, as originally shot, for Germany. We will show both.