Cinematheque Film Schedule

Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Switzerland | 2018 | Benjamin Naishtat

A respectable provincial lawyer in 1975 Argentina becomes complicit in the questionable, corrupt behavior that soon would define the country’s military coup and “Dirty War,” when thousands of dissidents “disappeared.” Shot in the style of 70s action melodramas, this gripping, darkly comic political thriller has a 100% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes. “Naishtat’s subtle, twisting, state-of-the-nation drama works effectively as a noir-like thriller, and as an exploration of a country that has lost its moral...

France | 2018 | Stéphane Brizé

Ace French actor Vincent Lindon collaborates again with the director of Mademoiselle Chambon and Cannes winner The Measure of a Man, playing a fiery union leader who fights to save 1100 jobs at his auto parts factory when management decides to close it—despite record profits and worker sacrifices. “Tough, bracing.” -NY Times. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 113 min.

France | 2018 | Stéphane Brizé

Ace French actor Vincent Lindon collaborates again with the director of Mademoiselle Chambon and Cannes winner The Measure of a Man, playing a fiery union leader who fights to save 1100 jobs at his auto parts factory when management decides to close it—despite record profits and worker sacrifices. “Tough, bracing.” -NY Times. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 113 min.

Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Switzerland | 2018 | Benjamin Naishtat

A respectable provincial lawyer in 1975 Argentina becomes complicit in the questionable, corrupt behavior that soon would define the country’s military coup and “Dirty War,” when thousands of dissidents “disappeared.” Shot in the style of 70s action melodramas, this gripping, darkly comic political thriller has a 100% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes. “Naishtat’s subtle, twisting, state-of-the-nation drama works effectively as a noir-like thriller, and as an exploration of a country that has lost its moral...

United States | 1968 | Frank Perry

Burt Lancaster, wearing only swim trunks, stars is this strange, surreal, 1960s cult classic based on a John Cheever short story. He plays a wealthy advertising man attending a pool party in his upscale, suburban Connecticut neighborhood who decides to return to his own house by swimming through his neighbors’ many backyard pools. Each dip refreshes and revives dormant memories from his past. “[Lancaster’s] finest performance.” -Roger Ebert. “Largely loony but oddly compulsive.” –Time Out....

Italy, Netherlands, United States | 1986 | Franco Zeffirelli

Named Best Foreign Film of 1986 by the National Board of Review, Franco Zeffirelli’s visually and sonically sumptuous film of Verdi’s opera preserves Plácido Domingo’s stellar performance as Shakespeare’s Moor who’s undone by jealousy. Lorin Maazel conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro alla Scala. “Nearly flawless.” –Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide. Subtitles. 122 min.

Austria | 2019 | Richard Ladkani, Sean Bogle, Matthew Podolsky

Winner of the Audience Award in the World Cinema/Documentary competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, this suspenseful documentary about the heroic efforts to save the vaquita porpoise from extinction plays like a preposterously plotted and scripted eco-thriller. Found mostly in the Gulf of California, the vaquita is the world’s smallest whale and most endangered sea mammal. (There may be fewer than 15 left.) Many have died as collateral damage in the nets of fishermen...

Iran | 1977 | Abbas Kiarostami

Kiarostami’s first full-length feature stars Shohreh Aghdashloo, 2004 Oscar nominee for House of Sand and Fog. The Report focuses on an Iranian civil servant who is accused of taking bribes at work. Meanwhile, his marriage disintegrates at home. (Kiarostami says this latter aspect is autobiographical.) Cleveland theatrical premiere. Subtitles. Blu-ray. 110 min.

Austria | 2019 | Richard Ladkani, Sean Bogle, Matthew Podolsky

Winner of the Audience Award in the World Cinema/Documentary competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, this suspenseful documentary about the heroic efforts to save the vaquita porpoise from extinction plays like a preposterously plotted and scripted eco-thriller. Found mostly in the Gulf of California, the vaquita is the world’s smallest whale and most endangered sea mammal. (There may be fewer than 15 left.) Many have died as collateral damage in the nets of fishermen...

United States | 1968 | Frank Perry

Burt Lancaster, wearing only swim trunks, stars is this strange, surreal, 1960s cult classic based on a John Cheever short story. He plays a wealthy advertising man attending a pool party in his upscale, suburban Connecticut neighborhood who decides to return to his own house by swimming through his neighbors’ many backyard pools. Each dip refreshes and revives dormant memories from his past. “[Lancaster’s] finest performance.” -Roger Ebert. “Largely loony but oddly compulsive.” –Time Out....

United States | 2019 | James June Schneider, Paul Bishow, Sam Lavine

This new documentary revisits the transformative period of 1976-1983, when punk rock erupted in Washington DC. Situating DC punk within the larger narratives of punk and rock ‘n’ roll, Punk the Capital recounts the building of a movement that redefined a genre and became a model for social and political engagement. Features bands like Bad Brains and Minor Threat and such people as Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye. Filmmaker James June Schneider and Jeff Nelson,...

Iran | 1977-1982 | Abbas Kiarostami

Five short films by the late, great Iranian director. Program includes: How To Make Use of Leisure Time: Painting (Az Oghat-e Faraghat-e Khod Chegouneh Estefadeh Konim: naghashi, 1977), a primer on painting wood; Solution (Rah Hal-e Yek, 1978), a lyrical tale of a man and a new tire; Toothache (Behdasht-e Dandan/Dandan Dard, 1980), an instructional film (with animated sequences) about dental hygiene; Orderly or Disorderly (Be Tartib Ya Bedun-e Tartib, 1981), a meditation on order...

Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Romania | 2018 | Radu Jude

The searing new black comedy from the director of Aferim! tells of a theater director who meets resistance when she decides to re-enact a controversial atrocity from 1941, the murder of tens of thousands of Jews in and around Odessa by collaborationist Romanian troops. “Brilliantly multifaceted.” –L.A. Times. “Of viciously pointed relevance anywhere populism is on the rise…A fiercely intelligent, engaging and challenging wake-up call.” –Variety. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 140 min.

Iran | 1977-1982 | Abbas Kiarostami

Five short films by the late, great Iranian director. Program includes: How To Make Use of Leisure Time: Painting (Az Oghat-e Faraghat-e Khod Chegouneh Estefadeh Konim: naghashi, 1977), a primer on painting wood; Solution (Rah Hal-e Yek, 1978), a lyrical tale of a man and a new tire; Toothache (Behdasht-e Dandan/Dandan Dard, 1980), an instructional film (with animated sequences) about dental hygiene; Orderly or Disorderly (Be Tartib Ya Bedun-e Tartib, 1981), a meditation on order...

United States | 2018 | Rick Alverson

A reserved young photographer (Tye Sheridan) drives across 1950s America with a traveling lobotomist (Jeff Goldblum) to promote the doctor’s recently debunked procedure. This transfixing, weirdly beautiful new road movie evokes Kubrick, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Roy Andersson. With Denis Lavant, Udo Kier, and Hannah Gross. "Gorgeously rendered…An unsettling trip through the 20th century American psyche.” –Rolling Stone. Cleveland premiere. DCP. 106 min.

United States | 1919 | D.W. Griffith

Lillian Gish gives one of her greatest performances in perhaps D.W. Griffith’s most poetic and poignant silent masterpiece (shown here in a color-tinted print with a music track). Gish plays a sad, delicate waif living with her abusive father in the rough and tumble Limehouse district of East London. She finds refuge and relief with a sensitive, spiritual Chinese man (Richard Barthelmess). 66 min.

United States | 2018 | Rick Alverson

A reserved young photographer (Tye Sheridan) drives across 1950s America with a traveling lobotomist (Jeff Goldblum) to promote the doctor’s recently debunked procedure. This transfixing, weirdly beautiful new road movie evokes Kubrick, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Roy Andersson. With Denis Lavant, Udo Kier, and Hannah Gross. "Gorgeously rendered…An unsettling trip through the 20th century American psyche.” –Rolling Stone. Cleveland premiere. DCP. 106 min.

United States | 2018 | Nina Paley

Events from the Book of Exodus are retold and turned into musical numbers in the irreverent, award-winning new animated feature by indie artist, cartoonist, filmmaker, and free culture/“copyleft” activist Nina Paley (Sita Sings the Blues). As the Israelites escape Egypt for the Promised Land, Moses, Pharaoh, and other Jews and Egyptians sing songs by Louis Armstrong, Led Zeppelin, Gloria Gaynor, et al. Paley also points out the patriarchal origins (and legacy) of Passover, which commemorates...

Netherlands | 2015-18 | various directors

Six inventive, often hilarious animated short films showcased at the Netherlands’ premiere film festival for children, Cinekid, have been bought to the U.S. by the New York International Children’s Film Festival (NYICFF). We show them today. Among the highlights are Emily (2018), about an elderly florist; Mr. Paper Goes Out for a Walk (Meneer Papier gaat uit wandelen, 2018), winner of the Audience Award at Cinekid 2018; and Heads Together (Kop Op, 2017), winner of...

United States | 2018 | Nina Paley

Events from the Book of Exodus are retold and turned into musical numbers in the irreverent, award-winning new animated feature by indie artist, cartoonist, filmmaker, and free culture/“copyleft” activist Nina Paley (Sita Sings the Blues). As the Israelites escape Egypt for the Promised Land, Moses, Pharaoh, and other Jews and Egyptians sing songs by Louis Armstrong, Led Zeppelin, Gloria Gaynor, et al. Paley also points out the patriarchal origins (and legacy) of Passover, which commemorates...

Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Romania | 2018 | Radu Jude

The searing new black comedy from the director of Aferim! tells of a theater director who meets resistance when she decides to re-enact a controversial atrocity from 1941, the murder of tens of thousands of Jews in and around Odessa by collaborationist Romanian troops. “Brilliantly multifaceted.” –L.A. Times. “Of viciously pointed relevance anywhere populism is on the rise…A fiercely intelligent, engaging and challenging wake-up call.” –Variety. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 140 min.

United States | 2019 | Rashid Johnson

Set in contemporary Chicago but largely shot in Cleveland last year, the film directorial debut of celebrated visual artist Rashid Johnson is an adaptation of Richard Wright’s seminal 1940 novel about the black experience in America. Ashton Sanders (Moonlight) plays Bigger Thomas, a young African American man from the inner city who takes a job as live-in chauffeur for a wealthy white businessman, thus experiencing a seductive new world of money and power and entering...

United States | 2018 | Bo Burnham

Snubbed by Oscar (no nominations!) despite winning multiple festival, critic, and guild awards across the U.S., Bo Burnham’s debut feature remains one of the very best movies released last year. Elsie Fisher, in a breakout performance, plays a shy, awkward teen trying to make a graceful exit from awful eighth grade in order to start high school afresh as a confident new person. Funny, painful, perceptive, and touching. DCP. 94 min.

United States | 1986 | David Lynch

The discovery of a severed human ear in a field leads a curious college student into a perverse, shocking netherworld of sex and violence far removed from the picture-perfect surface trappings of his seemingly placid small town. David Lynch supervised both the 4K image restoration and the 5.1 digital surround soundtrack of his horror-noir classic. With Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Isabella Rossellini, and Dennis Hopper. Adults only! DCP. 120 min.

United States | 1963 | Shirley Clarke

Winner of the 1964 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, Shirley Clarke’s portrait film captures the four-time Pulitzer Prize winning poet at home in Vermont, reading at Eastern colleges, and receiving the Congressional Gold Medal from President Kennedy. Preceded at 5:00 by three experimental short films by Clarke, made before her influential indie features The Connection and Portrait of Jason: two versions of her abstract expressionist Bridges-Go-Round (1959), one with a soundtrack of electronic...

United States | 1973 | Daryl Duke

The late renegade thespian Rip Torn gives perhaps his greatest screen performance in this authentically raw, rarely revived music-movie classic. Torn plays a low-wattage country-western star (and all-around brash bastard) who recklessly overindulges in drink, drugs, and dames while touring the rural South in a big Cadillac. Torn even does his own singing. “A brilliant, nasty little chrome-plated razor blade of a movie…A ‘road picture’ that is not, for once, a sentimental odyssey, but...

United States | 1986 | David Lynch

The discovery of a severed human ear in a field leads a curious college student into a perverse, shocking netherworld of sex and violence far removed from the picture-perfect surface trappings of his seemingly placid small town. David Lynch supervised both the 4K image restoration and the 5.1 digital surround soundtrack of his horror-noir classic. With Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Isabella Rossellini, and Dennis Hopper. Adults only! DCP. 120 min.

Iran | 1989 | Abbas Kiarostami

Made between two of his greatest features, Where Is the Friend’s House? and Close-Up, Abbas Kiarostami’s nonfiction movie was sparked by his own son’s scholastic problems. He interviews Iranian first- and second-graders about their homework load (a problem compounded by illiterate parents) and also their school’s emphasis on punishment rather than encouragement. The result is lyrical, moving, and quietly radical. Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 78 min

Iran | 2008 | Abbas Kiarostami

In Abbas Kiarostami’s unique study of spectatorship, the expressive faces of over 100 prominent Iranian actresses (and France’s Juliette Binoche) react to a narrated film based on the 800-year-old Persian love story of Princess Shirin. Or so it seems. In reality, Kiarostami shot the actresses as they peered at a piece of cardboard and followed his instructions to recall past loves and emote. He later married their expressions to the non-existent movie we hear but...

United States | 2018 | Bo Burnham

Snubbed by Oscar (no nominations!) despite winning multiple festival, critic, and guild awards across the U.S., Bo Burnham’s debut feature remains one of the very best movies released last year. Elsie Fisher, in a breakout performance, plays a shy, awkward teen trying to make a graceful exit from awful eighth grade in order to start high school afresh as a confident new person. Funny, painful, perceptive, and touching. DCP. 94 min.

Germany, Hungary, Switzerland | 1994 | Béla Tarr

25 years after it debuted, Béla Tarr’s seven-hour Hungarian epic is finally being acknowledged as what we long thought it was: one of the great, essential movies. (In 2012, it was voted the 36th best movie of all time in an international poll of film professionals conducted by Sight & Sound magazine.) But because Sátántangó was never widely distributed in the U.S., opportunities to see it have been rare. That’s why this 25th anniversary restoration...

Japan | 1957 | Akira Kurosawa

Shakespeare’s Macbeth is transposed to civil-war-torn medieval Japan in one of Akira Kurosawa’s greatest films. Toshiro Mifune stars in this moody, Noh-inspired account of prophecy, ambition, and murder that’s populated by witches, ghosts, and samurai. Subtitles. 110 min.

Germany, Hungary, Switzerland | 1994 | Béla Tarr

25 years after it debuted, Béla Tarr’s seven-hour Hungarian epic is finally being acknowledged as what we long thought it was: one of the great, essential movies. (In 2012, it was voted the 36th best movie of all time in an international poll of film professionals conducted by Sight & Sound magazine.) But because Sátántangó was never widely distributed in the U.S., opportunities to see it have been rare. That’s why this 25th anniversary restoration...

Germany, Hungary, Switzerland | 1994 | Béla Tarr

25 years after it debuted, Béla Tarr’s seven-hour Hungarian epic is finally being acknowledged as what we long thought it was: one of the great, essential movies. (In 2012, it was voted the 36th best movie of all time in an international poll of film professionals conducted by Sight & Sound magazine.) But because Sátántangó was never widely distributed in the U.S., opportunities to see it have been rare. That’s why this 25th anniversary restoration...

Germany, Hungary, Switzerland | 1994 | Béla Tarr

25 years after it debuted, Béla Tarr’s seven-hour Hungarian epic is finally being acknowledged as what we long thought it was: one of the great, essential movies. (In 2012, it was voted the 36th best movie of all time in an international poll of film professionals conducted by Sight & Sound magazine.) But because Sátántangó was never widely distributed in the U.S., opportunities to see it have been rare. That’s why this 25th anniversary restoration...

Germany, Hungary, Switzerland | 1994 | Béla Tarr

25 years after it debuted, Béla Tarr’s seven-hour Hungarian epic is finally being acknowledged as what we long thought it was: one of the great, essential movies. (In 2012, it was voted the 36th best movie of all time in an international poll of film professionals conducted by Sight & Sound magazine.) But because Sátántangó was never widely distributed in the U.S., opportunities to see it have been rare. That’s why this 25th anniversary restoration...

Germany, Hungary, Switzerland | 1994 | Béla Tarr

25 years after it debuted, Béla Tarr’s seven-hour Hungarian epic is finally being acknowledged as what we long thought it was: one of the great, essential movies. (In 2012, it was voted the 36th best movie of all time in an international poll of film professionals conducted by Sight & Sound magazine.) But because Sátántangó was never widely distributed in the U.S., opportunities to see it have been rare. That’s why this 25th anniversary restoration...

Germany, Hungary, Switzerland | 1994 | Béla Tarr

25 years after it debuted, Béla Tarr’s seven-hour Hungarian epic is finally being acknowledged as what we long thought it was: one of the great, essential movies. (In 2012, it was voted the 36th best movie of all time in an international poll of film professionals conducted by Sight & Sound magazine.) But because Sátántangó was never widely distributed in the U.S., opportunities to see it have been rare. That’s why this 25th anniversary restoration...

Germany | 1927 | Fritz Lang

Roger Ebert called Boston’s Alloy Orchestra “the best in the world at accompanying silent films.” Tonight this internationally known trio of musicians—Terry Donahue, Roger Miller, Ken Winokur—perform their signature score, lending their distinctive mix of clarinet, accordion, electronics, and junk metal percussion to Fritz Lang’s visionary sci-fi spectacle. It’s been six years since the Alloy performed in Cleveland, and tonight marks the band’s first appearance in our new Peter B. Lewis Theater. We will show...

France | 1924 | Jaque Catelain

The Alloy Orchestra’s newest score is for a forgotten but recently unearthed and restored silent melodrama produced (and perhaps co-directed) by visionary French filmmaker Marcel L’Herbier (L’Inhumaine). Anticipating Tod Browning’s Freaks by eight years, this visually dazzling movie follows a young couple who run away to join the circus, only to run afoul of the cruel and despotic owner when the wife refuses his advances. Fortunately, the circus’ fiercely loyal sideshow attractions (the “freaks”) take...