Cinematheque Film Schedule

France | 2017 | Raymond Depardon

Every year in France, 92,000 people are placed under psychiatric care without their consent. Within 12 days of their confinement, each of these individuals is entitled to a hearing before a judge during which they can advocate for their release. For the first time ever, a filmmaker (veteran documentarian Raymond Depardon) has been given access to these closed-door sessions, and what his compassionate camera records is fascinating, heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious, always human. “Rarely has a...

Philippines | 1975 | Lino Brocka

Sometimes called the greatest Filipino film ever made, Lino Brocka’s breakthrough drama was revived in 2013 as a “Cannes Classic” and has a 100% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes. A provincial fisherman moves to Marcos-era Manila to find his girlfriend who has disappeared there. But he is unprepared for the harsh, squalid, sordid living conditions in the big city. In this movie, Brocka, who died in a 1991 car crash at age 51, added a...

Czechoslovakia | 1946-1965 |

Five essential animated shorts spanning Trnka’s 20-year film career illustrate his versatility and political courage. Program includes: Springman and the SS (Pérák a SS, 1946, co-directed by Jiří Brdečka, no dialogue, 35mm), a biting anti-Nazi satire; the whimsical cutout animation Merry Circus (Veselý circus, 1951, no dialogue, 35mm); the dystopian Space Age satire Cybernetic Grandma (Kybernetická babička, 1962, subtitles, DCP); the bawdy Boccaccio adaptation Archangel Gabriel and Mistress Goose (Archandĕl Gabriel a paní Husa, 1964,...

France, South Korea | 2017 | Hong Sang-soo

In this sunny new comedy from South Korea’s prolific Hong Sang-soo (On the Beach at Night Alone), Isabelle Huppert plays Claire, a French schoolteacher with a Polaroid camera. On her first visit to Cannes, Claire meets Manhee (Kim Min-hee), a South Korean film sales agent who has just been fired by her female boss of five years. Claire and Manhee team up and prowl around the seaside resort city, taking pictures and uncovering the circumstances...

France, Italy | 1968 | Sergio Corbucci

“The greatest spaghetti western ever made,” according to Repo Man director Alex Cox, was never released in America until March of this year. (However, in 2012 we presented one screening of an English-dubbed version of it in a 35mm print from Europe.) Klaus Kinski (Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo) plays a vicious bounty hunter who locks horns with a mute gunslinger (Jean-Louis Trintignant of L’Amour and The Conformist) in the snowy mountains of Utah during the Great...

United States | 1933 | William A. Seiter

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy play henpecked husbands who sneak away to attend their fraternal lodge’s annual convention in Chicago. This hilarious comedy—often cited as the duo’s best feature—is a subversive spoof of men’s fraternal organizations. Fellow screen comedian Charlie Chase is hilarious as an obnoxious conventioneer fond of practical jokes. “Sons of the Desert” was adopted as the name of the international L&H Appreciation Society, still active. Preceded at 4:15 by Lewis R. Foster’s...

France, South Korea | 2017 | Hong Sang-soo

In this sunny new comedy from South Korea’s prolific Hong Sang-soo (On the Beach at Night Alone), Isabelle Huppert plays Claire, a French schoolteacher with a Polaroid camera. On her first visit to Cannes, Claire meets Manhee (Kim Min-hee), a South Korean film sales agent who has just been fired by her female boss of five years. Claire and Manhee team up and prowl around the seaside resort city, taking pictures and uncovering the circumstances...

France, Italy | 1968 | Sergio Corbucci

“The greatest spaghetti western ever made,” according to Repo Man director Alex Cox, was never released in America until March of this year. (However, in 2012 we presented one screening of an English-dubbed version of it in a 35mm print from Europe.) Klaus Kinski (Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo) plays a vicious bounty hunter who locks horns with a mute gunslinger (Jean-Louis Trintignant of L’Amour and The Conformist) in the snowy mountains of Utah during the Great...

Sweden | 1951 | Ingmar Bergman

In Ingmar Bergman’s “breakthrough” film (Pauline Kael), a Stockholm ballerina scarred by tragedy thinks back on an idyllic summer love affair. “This evocation of past happiness is one of Bergman’s most moving films.” –Dictionary of Films. Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 96 min.

United States | 1973 | Bill Gunn

In this African American art-exploitation classic that was remade by Spike Lee in 2014 as Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, a prominent black archaeologist turns into a vampire after he is stabbed with a ceremonial dagger from an ancient, bloodthirsty African civilization. Duane Jones (Night of the Living Dead) stars. “[A] landmark 1973 indie that used vampirism as an ingenious metaphor for black assimilation, white cultural imperialism and the hypocrisies of organized religion.” –Scott Foundas....

United States | 2015 | Lewis Klahr

Thirteen years in the making, this magnum opus by longtime California collage artist Lewis Klahr is an emotionally fraught, 12-part, stop-motion dreamscape that poetically fuses images and pop culture ephemera from the 1960s with Greek mythology. “Offers a dizzying display of largely found images and sounds—culled from old comics, ads, magazine layouts, songs and noises—that together form a kind of cinematic archaeology of the American unconscious…One of the finest cinematic achievements of the year and...

United States | 1973 | Bill Gunn

In this African American art-exploitation classic that was remade by Spike Lee in 2014 as Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, a prominent black archaeologist turns into a vampire after he is stabbed with a ceremonial dagger from an ancient, bloodthirsty African civilization. Duane Jones (Night of the Living Dead) stars. “[A] landmark 1973 indie that used vampirism as an ingenious metaphor for black assimilation, white cultural imperialism and the hypocrisies of organized religion.” –Scott Foundas....

Czechoslovakia | 1959 | Jiří Trnka

Three years in production, Trnka’s final feature is one of his grandest visions—a bewitching adaptation of Shakespeare’s dreamy romantic fantasy, narrated in English. 35mm color print. 72 min. Preceded at 5:00 by Trnka’s 20-min. slapstick sagebrush spoof Song of the Prairie (Arie prerie, 1949, no dialogue, DCP).

France, Italy, Portugal | 1999 | Raúl Ruiz

Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Béart, Vincent Perez, John Malkovich, and Chiara Mastroianni head an all-star cast in this luxurious, acclaimed epic by the late Chilean-born surrealist Raúl Ruiz. Ruiz attempts the impossible here: a film version of Marcel Proust’s seven-volume novel In Search of Lost Time/Remembrance of Things Past. The miracle is that he succeeds so well, turning Proust’s elegy to lost time into a baroque kaleidoscope of characters and incidents—both real and fictional—appearing before the...

Sweden | 1951 | Ingmar Bergman

In Ingmar Bergman’s “breakthrough” film (Pauline Kael), a Stockholm ballerina scarred by tragedy thinks back on an idyllic summer love affair. “This evocation of past happiness is one of Bergman’s most moving films.” –Dictionary of Films. Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 96 min.

United States | 1980 | Bill Gunn

Two pioneering African American artists, writer Ishmael Reed and filmmaker Bill Gunn (Ganja & Hess; see 6/7 at 8:45), collaborated on this unique “experimental soap opera” that aspired to capture working-class African American life in NYC at the start of the 1980s. Funded by an NEA grant and shot on video for public television, the film ended up being broadcast only in New York and San Francisco in 1982, and faded into oblivion after that....

United States | 1982 | Frank Henenlotter

This horror-comedy, one of the earliest midnight movie hits, has been recently restored by none other than the Museum of Modern Art! Shot independently in NYC, it’s an often disgusting spectacle that follows once-conjoined twin brothers—one normal, one deformed—as they seek revenge on the doctors who separated them against their will. “[It’s] like Herschell Gordon Lewis directing Freaks on the set of Taxi Driver.” –American Genre Film Archive. Adults only! Cleveland revival premiere. DCP. 91...

Sweden | 1953 | Ingmar Bergman

Originally distributed in America as a Swedish sex film (it even played drive-ins and was seized by the LAPD vice squad), this early Ingmar Bergman drama chronicles a summertime love affair that turns sour when the season and setting change. 20-year-old Harriet Andersson, in the first of her many Bergman roles, plays the wild, impulsive girl whose unfettered sexuality leaves tragedy in its wake. Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. 96 min.

Sweden | 1953 | Ingmar Bergman

Originally distributed in America as a Swedish sex film (it even played drive-ins and was seized by the LAPD vice squad), this early Ingmar Bergman drama chronicles a summertime love affair that turns sour when the season and setting change. 20-year-old Harriet Andersson, in the first of her many Bergman roles, plays the wild, impulsive girl whose unfettered sexuality leaves tragedy in its wake. Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. 96 min.

Italy | 1988 | Ermanno Olmi

Despite winning the top prize at the 1988 Venice Film Festival and four Italian “Oscars” (including best film and best director), this major work from the director of Il Posto and The Tree of Wooden Clogs was never distributed in the U.S. until now. Based on a novella by Joseph Roth, the movie stars Rutger Hauer as a drunken, homeless exile in Paris who is given 200 francs by an elderly stranger who asks only...

United States | 1919 | Irvin V. Willat

One of the most shocking of all First World War-era “revenge” silent films has been newly constituted from the two existing prints and restored with color tints and a new music score. The movie focuses on a working class American of German descent who is so persecuted by his fellow citizens during the war that he enlists and goes to sea to fight his former countrymen. With Wallace Beery. “The most outspoken of all the...

Italy | 1988 | Ermanno Olmi

Despite winning the top prize at the 1988 Venice Film Festival and four Italian “Oscars” (including best film and best director), this major work from the director of Il Posto and The Tree of Wooden Clogs was never distributed in the U.S. until now. Based on a novella by Joseph Roth, the movie stars Rutger Hauer as a drunken, homeless exile in Paris who is given 200 francs by an elderly stranger who asks only...

United States | 1982 | Frank Henenlotter

This horror-comedy, one of the earliest midnight movie hits, has been recently restored by none other than the Museum of Modern Art! Shot independently in NYC, it’s an often disgusting spectacle that follows once-conjoined twin brothers—one normal, one deformed—as they seek revenge on the doctors who separated them against their will. “[It’s] like Herschell Gordon Lewis directing Freaks on the set of Taxi Driver.” –American Genre Film Archive. Adults only! Cleveland revival premiere. DCP. 91...

United States | 2017 | Jairus McLeary, Gethin Aldous

Spend part of Father’s Day in California’s Folsom State Prison with some tough, tattooed men whose crimes and incarceration may be traceable to absent or withholding dads. This rapturously reviewed documentary finds these maximum-security inmates participating in an intense, four-day group therapy session designed to help them control their rage and get in touch with their feelings. They are also called on to help three troubled strangers from the outside world who have voluntarily joined...

United States | 1997 | Paul Thomas Anderson

A young L.A. dishwasher (Mark Wahlberg) becomes an adult movie superstar during the porn industry’s 1970s-1980s heyday in Paul Thomas Anderson’s entertaining, accomplished breakthrough film The stellar cast includes Don Cheadle, Heather Graham, Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, and Burt Reynolds. Adults only! 35mm scope. 155 min.

Sweden | 1955 | Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar Bergman’s wise and witty love roundelay, set in and around a Swedish country house at the turn of the last century, focuses on four men and four women who pair off in various combinations during one sensual midsummer weekend. This magnificent valentine to lovers, fools, and dreamers was the basis for Stephen Sondheim’s musical A Little Night Music. With Gunnar Björnstrand, Eva Dahlbeck, and Harriet Andersson. Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 108 min.

Japan | 1954 | Kenji Mizoguchi

Critic Robin Wood once called this sublime Japanese drama “the greatest movie I have ever seen.” Set in 11th-century Japan, Kenji Mizoguchi’s masterpiece focuses on an aristocratic family that is divided, exiled, and sold into slavery. They struggle to reunite over many years. This deeply moving saga boasts epic sweep and great formal beauty, and advocates persuasively for empathy, justice, and mercy. Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. 124 min.

France, Luxembourg, West Germany | 1969 | Barbet Schroeder

The first two features directed by Barbet Schroeder (a producer and occasional actor associated with the French New Wave) were hippie-era dramas with original music by Pink Floyd. Part head trip and part travelogue, these color movies were shot by the great Néstor Almendros (Days of Heaven) and we show both of them tonight. In More, drug addiction poisons an idyllic summer sojourn on Ibiza for a recent German college graduate and his American girlfriend...

France | 1972 | Barbet Schroeder

Barbet Schroeder’s second collaboration with Pink Floyd and ace cinematographer Néstor Almendros (see previous blurb) stars his future wife, Bulle Ogier. She plays a French woman who ventures into the remote wilds of New Guinea in search of a mysterious hidden valley and the plumage of a rare exotic bird. Along the way she makes contact with other hippie seekers and a tribe of “uncivilized” natives. “Succulent.” –Time Out Film Guide. Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles....

Sweden | 1955 | Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar Bergman’s wise and witty love roundelay, set in and around a Swedish country house at the turn of the last century, focuses on four men and four women who pair off in various combinations during one sensual midsummer weekend. This magnificent valentine to lovers, fools, and dreamers was the basis for Stephen Sondheim’s musical A Little Night Music. With Gunnar Björnstrand, Eva Dahlbeck, and Harriet Andersson. Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 108 min.

Japan | 1954 | Kenji Mizoguchi

Critic Robin Wood once called this sublime Japanese drama “the greatest movie I have ever seen.” Set in 11th-century Japan, Kenji Mizoguchi’s masterpiece focuses on an aristocratic family that is divided, exiled, and sold into slavery. They struggle to reunite over many years. This deeply moving saga boasts epic sweep and great formal beauty, and advocates persuasively for empathy, justice, and mercy. Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. 124 min.

France | 2017 | Bruno Dumont

Master French filmmaker Bruno Dumont continues to confound expectations. The austere, unsparing director of such somber, quasi-religious parables as The Life of Jesus and Humanité turned to silly, sometimes stomach-churning slapstick in his last two works, Li’l Quinquin and Slack Bay. Now he has transformed the early life of one of France’s most beloved heroines and icons into a musical! Dumont imagines how a young, 15th-century peasant girl who saw religious visions and resented the...

France | 2017 | Bruno Dumont

Master French filmmaker Bruno Dumont continues to confound expectations. The austere, unsparing director of such somber, quasi-religious parables as The Life of Jesus and Humanité turned to silly, sometimes stomach-churning slapstick in his last two works, Li’l Quinquin and Slack Bay. Now he has transformed the early life of one of France’s most beloved heroines and icons into a musical! Dumont imagines how a young, 15th-century peasant girl who saw religious visions and resented the...

United Kingdom, United States | 2008 | Christopher Nolan

The Joker (an indelibly creepy Heath Ledger, who won the Oscar) wreaks havoc throughout Gotham City, and a no-nonsense Batman (Christian Bale) does damage control, in one of the best—and darkest—comic book movies ever made. Michael Caine, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Gary Oldman co-star in this modern action classic, shown here on real film, as director Christopher Nolan prefers. 35mm scope. 152 min.

Germany | 2017 | Rüdiger Suchsland

This new documentary suggests that the Third Reich was essentially an immersive movie starring the German nation, produced and directed by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. It supports this thesis with a wealth of film clips selected from the more than 1000 feature films the Nazis produced between 1933 and 1945—musicals, melodramas, romances, costume dramas, and war films, some of them insanely lavish. With Hans Albers, Zarah Leander, et al. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 105 min.

Japan | 1954 | Kenji Mizoguchi

Kenji Mizoguchi’s exquisite, heartbreaking adaptation of a 17th-century puppet theater play by Chikamatsu Monzaemon (Japan’s Shakespeare) tells of two illicit lovers who flee their wrathful society, but later return to face the music. Masterfully photographed by Kazuo Miyagawa; one of the great director’s best films. Subtitles. DCP. 102 min.

Canada, United Kingdom, United States | 2011 | Rupert Wyatt

Twentieth Century Fox’s three-part reboot of its popular Planet of the Apes series was not only hugely popular and profitable, but also constitutes one of the most acclaimed film series of this century. We show all three movies tonight and tomorrow. The first installment introduces us to Caesar, a chimpanzee raised by humans (and played in all three films by Andy Serkis in an amazing motion capture performance). Super intelligent because of an anti-Alzheimer’s drug...

United States | 1941 | Alfred Hitchcock

A rarely shown outlier in Alfred Hitchcock’s filmography (since it’s not a thriller), this delightfully screwball romantic comedy stars Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery as a quarrelsome couple who discover that their three-year marriage isn’t legal. Will they make it right or just call the whole thing off? Not to be confused with the 2005 Brangelina movie, which is not a remake. “An underrated, endearing farce…Inspired performances and crackling dialogue.” –VideoHound’s Golden Movie Retriever. 35mm....

Canada, United Kingdom, United States | 2014 | Matt Reeves

The second film in the acclaimed Planet of the Apes reboot series is set ten years after the events of the first movie (see 6/29 at 9:00). The “virus” that has rendered apes intelligent and humans mostly dead leads to an uneasy truce between Caesar’s simian minions and surviving homo sapiens. With Gary Oldman, Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke, Keri Russell, and Terry Notary. “It's incredible. It sets the standard for blockbuster action movies, and manages...

Canada, New Zealand, United States | 2017 | Matt Reeves

The thrilling, epic conclusion to the Planet of the Apes reboot series (see previous blurb and 6/29 at 9:00) finds simian leader Caesar (Andy Serkis) facing off against a ruthless, rogue U.S. military Colonel (Woody Harrelson). At stake is the future of their respective species—and of the planet itself. “May have the body of an action film, but it has the soul of an art-house drama and the brains of a political thriller.” –Washington Post....