Cinematheque Film Schedule

United States | 1930 | Albert Rogell

This two-strip Technicolor rarity is a tale of crazed colonialism. Set in German East Africa, it tells of a rich, sadistic, villainous plantation owner (Jean Hersholt) who imports an aristocratic bride (Eleanor Boardman) from the old country, only to find her falling instead for a British officer. Preceded at showtime by Hearst Metrotone News, Vol. 1, No. 269 (1930) and Victor Saville’s jazz short Me and the Boys (1929). All films digitally restored by the...

France, Italy, United Kingdom | 2003 | Bernardo Bertolucci

The perennial preoccupations of Italy’s late movie master Bernardo Bertolucci—sex, socialism, and cinema—are all present in this late work set in Paris during the May ‘68 uprising. Sensuously shot, the film tells of an American student (Michael Pitt) who goes to live with an affluent, free-spirited brother and sister (Louis Garrel, Eva Green) who are fellow film enthusiasts but also have a predilection for mind games and kinky sex. Original NC-17 version. 115 min.

United States | 1968 | Gordon Quinn, Gerald Temaner

In 1968, two founders of Chicago’s pioneering documentary film cooperative Kartemquin Films (Hoop Dreams) enlisted earnest young nuns to travel around the Windy City asking passers-by, “Are you happy?” The varied responses provide a fascinating snapshot of a volatile era riven by Vietnam and racial unrest. This newly restored movie also features Philip Glass’s first credited film score. “A thought-provoking time capsule.” –NY Times. Cleveland revival premiere. DCP. 66 min.

Romania | 2018 | Corneliu Porumboiu

A Romanian bureaucrat whose soccer-playing days ended when he was injured in a game during the Ceauşescu era muses endlessly about ways the game can be changed and improved. He shares his ideas with a childhood friend, now the acclaimed director of 12:08 East of Bucharest and Police, Adjective, in a droll documentary that may be about much more than football. “This relatively short film contains worlds.” –NY Times. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 70 min.

United States | 1968 | Gordon Quinn, Gerald Temaner

In 1968, two founders of Chicago’s pioneering documentary film cooperative Kartemquin Films (Hoop Dreams) enlisted earnest young nuns to travel around the Windy City asking passers-by, “Are you happy?” The varied responses provide a fascinating snapshot of a volatile era riven by Vietnam and racial unrest. This newly restored movie also features Philip Glass’s first credited film score. “A thought-provoking time capsule.” –NY Times. Cleveland revival premiere. DCP. 66 min.

Turkey, United States | 2017 | Shevaun Mizrahi

The multi-ethnic elderly residents of a Turkish retirement home are lovingly captured in a series of poetic vignettes in this dream-like meditation on youth and old age, time and loneliness, memory and mortality. Among the denizens of this anteroom to the afterlife are a centenarian survivor of the 1915 Armenian genocide; a photographer who is going blind; and a sex addict who proposes to the female filmmaker. Subtitles. DCP. 80 min.

United States | 1930 | Albert Rogell

This two-strip Technicolor rarity is a tale of crazed colonialism. Set in German East Africa, it tells of a rich, sadistic, villainous plantation owner (Jean Hersholt) who imports an aristocratic bride (Eleanor Boardman) from the old country, only to find her falling instead for a British officer. Preceded at showtime by Hearst Metrotone News, Vol. 1, No. 269 (1930) and Victor Saville’s jazz short Me and the Boys (1929). All films digitally restored by the...

Romania | 2018 | Corneliu Porumboiu

A Romanian bureaucrat whose soccer-playing days ended when he was injured in a game during the Ceauşescu era muses endlessly about ways the game can be changed and improved. He shares his ideas with a childhood friend, now the acclaimed director of 12:08 East of Bucharest and Police, Adjective, in a droll documentary that may be about much more than football. “This relatively short film contains worlds.” –NY Times. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 70 min.

United States | 1945 | Edgar G. Ulmer

Edgar G. Ulmer (Detour) transposes Hamlet to a Los Angeles sanitarium, where a young man whose father has recently died has visions that his widowed mother’s new suitor (oily Warren William) is not to be trusted. Preceded at showtime by News of the Day, Vol. 17, No. 288 (1945) and Dave Fleischer’s Betty Boop cartoon Grampy’s Indoor Outing(1936). All films digitally restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. DCP. Total 102 min.

Denmark, Sweden | 2018 | Pernille Fischer Christensen

The Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren was apparently as feisty and vibrant as her most famous character, Pippi Longstocking. Born in 1907, Lindgren defied her society’s conventions by giving birth out of wedlock and supporting her child as a single mother. This “gorgeous piece of heritage filmmaking” (Variety) dramatizes how a tumultuous youth produced a revered national treasure. (Lindgren died in 2002 at age 94.) Subtitles. DCP. 123 min.

Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, United States | 2018 | various directors

15 new animated short films from six different countries—including four movies that qualified for Academy Award consideration, six by student filmmakers, and two by Columbus animator Nancy Kangas—comprise the latest edition of this popular program. For 20 years now, the Animation Show of Shows has been presenting new and innovative short films to appreciative audiences around the world. 38 of the films showcased in the ASOS over the years went on to receive Academy Award...

United States | 1945 | Edgar G. Ulmer

Edgar G. Ulmer (Detour) transposes Hamlet to a Los Angeles sanitarium, where a young man whose father has recently died has visions that his widowed mother’s new suitor (oily Warren William) is not to be trusted. Preceded at showtime by News of the Day, Vol. 17, No. 288 (1945) and Dave Fleischer’s Betty Boop cartoon Grampy’s Indoor Outing(1936). All films digitally restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. DCP. Total 102 min.

France, Italy | 1957 | Luchino Visconti

Marcello Mastroianni, Maria Schell, and Jean Marais star in Visconti’s lovely, captivating film about a lonely young man, new in town, who befriends and falls in love with a despairing young woman who is waiting for the return of her former lover. It’s based on a Dostoevsky story that also inspired Bresson’s Four Nights of a Dreamer. Music by Nino Rota. Imported print! Subtitles. Approx. 100 min.

Denmark, Sweden | 2018 | Pernille Fischer Christensen

The Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren was apparently as feisty and vibrant as her most famous character, Pippi Longstocking. Born in 1907, Lindgren defied her society’s conventions by giving birth out of wedlock and supporting her child as a single mother. This “gorgeous piece of heritage filmmaking” (Variety) dramatizes how a tumultuous youth produced a revered national treasure. (Lindgren died in 2002 at age 94.) Subtitles. DCP. 123 min.

Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, United States | 2018 | various directors

15 new animated short films from six different countries—including four movies that qualified for Academy Award consideration, six by student filmmakers, and two by Columbus animator Nancy Kangas—comprise the latest edition of this popular program. For 20 years now, the Animation Show of Shows has been presenting new and innovative short films to appreciative audiences around the world. 38 of the films showcased in the ASOS over the years went on to receive Academy Award...

France | 2018 | Claude Lanzmann

The late Claude Lanzmann’s last-released feature consists of four long interviews with four female Holocaust survivors, all conducted during the 1970s. (He was unable to include them in his monumental, nine-hour 1985 epic Shoah, which chronicles, in granular detail, the mass extermination of European Jews during WWII.) Lanzmann’s “four sisters” come from four different regions of Eastern Europe, but they are united in their willingness to share the horrors they witnessed, experienced, and, improbably, lived...

United States | 2018 | RaMell Ross

Tied for the best film of 2018 according to NY Times film critic A.O. Scott, this lyrical, intimate portrait of a place and its people follows two young African American men from rural Hale County, Alabama, over the course of five years. As one attends college and the other fathers a son, the movie captures the mundane and the monumental, the quotidian and the sublime. “Pure cinematic poetry...Poses a quietly radical challenge to assumptions about...

United States | 2017 | Sean Baker

Shot on 35mm but unavailable to show in that format until now, Sean Baker’s follow-up to his wonderful Tangerine was one of 2017’s very best films. Set at a candy-colored motel near Walt Disney World, the movie focuses on a mischievous six-year-old girl who lives in the motel with her young single mother, a rebel willing to break the rules (and the law) to pay the rent. As the compassionate hotel manager, Willem Dafoe earned...

Italy | 1954 | Luchino Visconti

Visconti’s first color film, one of his greatest works, signified a turn from neorealism to sumptuous historical romance, but his proclivity for the opulent and the operatic endured. Set in 1866 Venice during the Risorgimento (Italian unification), the film chronicles the compromising, turbulent love affair between a married Italian countess (Alida Valli) and a young officer (Farley Granger) in the occupying Austrian army. Music by Anton Bruckner, adapted by Nino Rota. “A lush, melodramatic...

United States | 2017 | Sean Baker

Shot on 35mm but unavailable to show in that format until now, Sean Baker’s follow-up to his wonderful Tangerine was one of 2017’s very best films. Set at a candy-colored motel near Walt Disney World, the movie focuses on a mischievous six-year-old girl who lives in the motel with her young single mother, a rebel willing to break the rules (and the law) to pay the rent. As the compassionate hotel manager, Willem Dafoe earned...

United States | 2018 | RaMell Ross

Tied for the best film of 2018 according to NY Times film critic A.O. Scott, this lyrical, intimate portrait of a place and its people follows two young African American men from rural Hale County, Alabama, over the course of five years. As one attends college and the other fathers a son, the movie captures the mundane and the monumental, the quotidian and the sublime. “Pure cinematic poetry...Poses a quietly radical challenge to assumptions about...

United States | 2018 | Douglass M. Stewart Jr.

Ray Bradbury, Douglas Trumbull, Richard Edlund, and others appear in this new documentary about the life and work of Chesley Bonestell (1888-1986), an American artist and designer whose visionary, pre-NASA paintings of planets and space travel influenced sci-fi art, illustration, and movies. They also helped to inspire the U.S. space program. DCP. 96 min.

United States | 2015 | Patrick Wang

Acclaimed in France but unreleased in America until late last year, Patrick Wang’s second feature (made between In the Family and A Bread Factory) focuses on a family of four—two parents and two children, age 10 and 13—as they struggle to come to grips with the sudden death of a fifth. Has a 100% critics rating on RottenTomatoes.com. Cleveland premiere. DCP. 103 min.

Italy | 1954 | Luchino Visconti

Visconti’s first color film, one of his greatest works, signified a turn from neorealism to sumptuous historical romance, but his proclivity for the opulent and the operatic endured. Set in 1866 Venice during the Risorgimento (Italian unification), the film chronicles the compromising, turbulent love affair between a married Italian countess (Alida Valli) and a young officer (Farley Granger) in the occupying Austrian army. Music by Anton Bruckner, adapted by Nino Rota. “A lush, melodramatic...

United States | 2018 | Ricky D’Ambrose

A young man living in Brooklyn, NY, suddenly disappears. His friends scour maps, subway schedules, postcards, diary entries, and expense reports for clues. Maybe his research for a biography of a controversial, sinister social/political theorist is to blame. Ricky D’Ambrose’s enigmatic, haunted debut is a L’Avventura for our paranoid age. “It’s refreshing to see a filmmaker thinking so far outside the box.” –NY Times. DCP. 60 min.

Belgium, France, West Germany | 1978 | Chantal Akerman

Chantal Akerman’s first narrative feature after her 1975 landmark Jeanne Dielman is an elegantly shot drama in which a detached young film director (Aurore Clément) has a series of brief encounters (sexual and otherwise) while traveling around Europe promoting her new film. Subtitles. DCP. 127 min.

France, United Kingdom | 1996 | Isaac Julien

Interviews, archival materials, and dramatic reconstructions limn the life and work of the Martinique-born, Paris-educated author, intellectual, and activist who lived from 1925 to 1961 and wrote the revolutionary manifesto The Wretched of the Earth. “A fine introduction.” –Time Out Film Guide. Cleveland revival premiere. DCP. 70 min.

France, Italy | 1976 | Luchino Visconti

Lina Wertmüller’s favorite leading man Giancarlo Giannini, Laura Antonelli, and Jennifer O’Neill (Summer of ’42) star in Luchino Visconti’s final film, one of the maestro’s most acclaimed works. The movie is an elegant, sumptuous adaptation of a Gabriele D’Annunzio novel, about a 19th-century Italian aristocrat who neglects his wife for his mistress—until his spouse takes her own lover. Imported print! Subtitles. 125 min.

France | 1938 | Marcel Pagnol

The great French comic actor Raimu gives perhaps his finest performance in Marcel Pagnol’s hilarious tale of a baker who refuses to bake any more bread after his wife runs off with a handsome shepherd. The distressed townspeople are compelled to take action. “A perfect film.” –Orson Welles. Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 133 min.

France, United Kingdom | 1996 | Isaac Julien

Interviews, archival materials, and dramatic reconstructions limn the life and work of the Martinique-born, Paris-educated author, intellectual, and activist who lived from 1925 to 1961 and wrote the revolutionary manifesto The Wretched of the Earth. “A fine introduction.” –Time Out Film Guide. Cleveland revival premiere. DCP. 70 min.

United States | 1977 | Larry Clark

Sometimes called the best jazz movie ever made, this little-known indie feature was the UCLA diploma film of a Cleveland-born African-American filmmaker who became a key member of the 1970s-1980s L.A. Rebellion film movement. (It also produced Charles Burnett and Julie Dash.) The film tells of a saxophonist (Nathaniel Taylor), recently released from prison, who shuns the jazz clubs and record labels owned by whites in order to reconnect with his jazz legend grandfather (Clarence...

France | 1938 | Marcel Pagnol

The great French comic actor Raimu gives perhaps his finest performance in Marcel Pagnol’s hilarious tale of a baker who refuses to bake any more bread after his wife runs off with a handsome shepherd. The distressed townspeople are compelled to take action. “A perfect film.” –Orson Welles. Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 133 min.

Italy | 1948 | Luchino Visconti

Sicilian fishermen battle nature and unscrupulous wholesalers in this operatic neorealist rarity by Luchino Visconti. Shot on location with a non-professional cast, this epic drama is loosely based on Giovanni Verga’s novel The House by the Medlar Tree. “It is difficult to remain unmoved.” –Holt Foreign Film Guide. Imported DCP! Subtitles. 165 min.

France, West Germany | 1987 | Wim Wenders

“A sublimely beautiful, deeply romantic film for our times” is what Variety calls Wim Wenders’ exhilarating, magical tale of an angel (the late Bruno Ganz) in 1980s West Berlin whose love for a beautiful trapeze artist (Solveig Dommartin) compels him to become human. Peter Falk co-stars in this beloved classic whose expressive mix of black and white and color looks spectacular in this new restoration. It also sounds great in our auditorium! Subtitles. DCP. 130...

United States | 2018 | Brady Corbet

Natalie Portman stars in Brady Corbet’s portentous fable of this young millennium—about a young singer who survives a traumatic national tragedy to become a pop music superstar. Features songs by Sia and music by Scott Walker. With Jude Law, Raffey Cassidy, Stacy Martin, and Christopher Abbott; narration by Willem Dafoe. DCP. 114 min.

United States | 2018 | Sebastián Silva

A young man accompanies a friend to a birthday party at a cabin in the Catskills but soon realizes that he is the only black person at a fraught weekend of white bro drinking and debauchery. This new comedy-drama from the Chilean director of The Maid has echoes of Get Out. With Christopher Abbott, Michael Cera, and Caleb Landry Jones. “Fast and lean…A devilish roller coaster ride for audiences. It’s funny, disturbing, cringeworthy, nerve-wracking.” –Vanity...