Cinematheque Film Schedule

Canada, France, Germany, Palestine, Qatar, Turkey | 2019 | Elia Suleiman

The first feature in ten years by Palestinian moviemaker Elia Suleiman is a droll, stylized comedy in which the wry filmmaker, playing himself, silently observes the absurdities and incongruities of daily life not only in his native Nazareth, but also in Paris and New York. Casting his Keatonesque gaze on a series of Tati-like tableaux, the homeland-less director discovers that the whole world—with its fixation on surveillance and security, on mistrust and military might—now looks...

Canada, United States | 2019 | Brett Story

Named one of the ten best films of 2019 by Variety, Vox, and Vulture, this collection of interviews with New York City residents during August 2017 (one of the hottest months on record) finds them unsettled about a panoply of things -- rising rents and temperatures, an unpredictable new President, marching white nationalists, and distressing reports about distant hurricanes and wildfires, among them. The result is an indelible portrait of urban unease and anxiety two...

United States | 2008 | Aaron Rose, Joshua Leonard

This documentary profiles Margaret Kilgallen and a host of other outsider artists from the 1990s -- Harmony Korine, Mike Mills, Ed Templeton, Barry McGee -- all of whom emerged from the graffiti, punk, and skateboard subcultures. (Kilgallen is the subject of a solo exhibition, that’s where the beauty is., at moCa Cleveland through May 17.) Tethered together by the gritty Alleged Gallery in Lower East Side Manhattan, these talented misfits coalesced into a DIY art...

Austria, Hungary, West Germany | 1984 | István Szabó

Hungarian master István Szabó followed up his 1981 Oscar-winner Mephisto (which we showed in February) with another grand and lavish historical epic starring Klaus Maria Brandauer. (It was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and won the BAFTA, Britain's "Oscar.") Set in pre-WWI Austria, this visually stunning film tells of an ambitious but morally compromised man who must suppress his peasant background and his homosexuality to assure his rise through...

South Korea | 2000 | Bong Joon-ho

Bong Joon-ho’s debut feature is an outrageous black comedy made as a sardonic rejoinder to the Belgian children’s classic A Dog of Flanders, beloved in South Korea. Bong’s movie focuses on an out-of-work academic who decides to do something about the constant, irritating yapping of dogs in his apartment complex. “Beautifully directed, unsentimental and darkly funny.” –Time Out. Subtitles. 110 min.

Czechoslovakia | 1968 | Juraj Herz

Banned for 20 years after its release, this masterpiece of the 1960s Czech New Wave evokes 1920s German Expressionism. A family man running a crematorium in 1930s Czechoslovakia becomes a little too enthusiastic about ending human suffering and “freeing” people for the afterlife. He eventually finds complete fulfillment during the Nazi occupation of his country, and formulates his own Final Solution. “One of cinema’s most trenchant and disturbing portraits of the banality of evil.” –Janus...

Brazil | 1976 | Bruno Barreto

This sexy comedy that made Sonia Braga (Bacurau) an international star was Brazil's all-time box office champ for 35 years! Braga plays a married woman who can find fulfillment only by living with two men -- a decent but dull pharmacist and the ghost of her deceased first husband, a scoundrel who was great in bed. From a novel by Jorge Amado. New digital restoration! Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. 110 min. Dona Flor and Her Two...

Czechoslovakia | 1968 | Juraj Herz

Banned for 20 years after its release, this masterpiece of the 1960s Czech New Wave evokes 1920s German Expressionism. A family man running a crematorium in 1930s Czechoslovakia becomes a little too enthusiastic about ending human suffering and “freeing” people for the afterlife. He eventually finds complete fulfillment during the Nazi occupation of his country, and formulates his own Final Solution. “One of cinema’s most trenchant and disturbing portraits of the banality of evil.” –Janus...

United Kingdom, United States | 1951 | Albert Lewin

“(A) masterpiece…The supreme encounter between Surrealism and Hollywood.” So says critic Jonathan Rosenbaum about this luscious, ethereal fantasy which has been digitally restored to its original Technicolor glory. James Mason plays the fabled 17th-century Dutch sailor, doomed to sail the seven seas in a ghost ship forever—unless he can find a loving woman willing to sacrifice her life for him. Ava Gardner (never more radiant) plays a sultry American nightclub singer and femme fatale in...

United Kingdom, United States | 1951 | Albert Lewin

“(A) masterpiece…The supreme encounter between Surrealism and Hollywood.” So says critic Jonathan Rosenbaum about this luscious, ethereal fantasy which has been digitally restored to its original Technicolor glory. James Mason plays the fabled 17th-century Dutch sailor, doomed to sail the seven seas in a ghost ship forever—unless he can find a loving woman willing to sacrifice her life for him. Ava Gardner (never more radiant) plays a sultry American nightclub singer and femme fatale in...

France | 1934 | Jean Vigo

Tim Harry, who died in December, worked for us for 27 years—20 of them as the Cinematheque’s Assistant Director. Tim, who loved music and Paris, and wrote poetry in his free time, had a special fondness for this lyrical, funny, rhapsodic French classic by the great Jean Vigo, who also died well before his time at age 29. L’Atalante, Vigo’s final film, is a romantic masterpiece about a river barge captain who takes a wife....

South Korea | 2000 | Bong Joon-ho

Bong Joon-ho’s debut feature is an outrageous black comedy made as a sardonic rejoinder to the Belgian children’s classic A Dog of Flanders, beloved in South Korea. Bong’s movie focuses on an out-of-work academic who decides to do something about the constant, irritating yapping of dogs in his apartment complex. “Beautifully directed, unsentimental and darkly funny.” –Time Out. Subtitles. 110 min.

Hungary | 1980 | István Szabó

In 1944 Budapest, a married Hungarian resistance fighter and the spouse of another revolutionary pose as husband and wife and live together to avoid arrest by the occupying Nazis. They must earn each other’s trust during a tense, perilous, and duplicitous time. István Szabó’s gripping chamber drama, made a year before his Oscar-winning Mephisto, was the first movie of his to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. New 4K restoration!...

United States | 2018 | Derek E. Morton

Cleveland’s 96-year-old Robert P. Madison is a living legend—pioneering African-American architect and entrepreneur, decorated WWII veteran, civil rights fighter and civic leader. How this Howard- and Harvard-educated great-grandson of slaves came to found Ohio’s first black architectural firm (America’s 10th) is one of the subjects addressed in this recent movie about Madison’s truly remarkable life. Robert Madison will speak after the screening. Blu-ray. 58 min. This film will be rescheduled.

United States | 2019 | D.W. Young

Susan Orlean, Fran Lebowitz, Gay Talese, and Parker Posey appear in this acclaimed new documentary that takes a fascinating look at New York’s rarefied rare book world—its quaint shops and colorful dealers—while also evincing a general love of book stores and the printed page. “A documentary for people who treasure the sheer look and feel of books.” –Christian Science Monitor. Cleveland premiere. 99 min. The Booksellers, a Cinematheque streaming exclusive, can be watched online from 4/17...

Portugal | 2019 | Pedro Costa

Winner of the top prize at last year’s Locarno Film Festival, the enthralling new film from the director of Horse Money and Colossal Youth transports us once again to Lisbon’s Fontainhas neighborhood, an urban shantytown populated by immigrants. Vitalina Varela is a 55-year-old Cape Verdean woman who arrives in Portugal three days after her husband’s funeral—having waited for more than 25 years to emigrate. As Varela adjusts to the dark, dank apartment that her husband...

Hungary | 1981 | Marcell Jankovics

A major rediscovery! Marcell Jankovics’ little-known but visually dazzling animated feature has been described as “part-Nibelungenlied, part-Yellow Submarine.” Based on ancient Hungarian myths and legends, it’s a swirling, psychedelic stunner about a man with superhuman powers, born to a horse, who journeys to the Underworld to battle three dragons that have seized control of his kingdom. The film will be preceded at showtime by two Hungarian animated shorts by Jankovics: 1974 Oscar nominee Sisyphus and...

Hungary | 1981 | Marcell Jankovics

A major rediscovery! Marcell Jankovics’ little-known but visually dazzling animated feature has been described as “part-Nibelungenlied, part-Yellow Submarine.” Based on ancient Hungarian myths and legends, it’s a swirling, psychedelic stunner about a man with superhuman powers, born to a horse, who journeys to the Underworld to battle three dragons that have seized control of his kingdom. The film will be preceded at showtime by two Hungarian animated shorts by Jankovics: 1974 Oscar nominee Sisyphus and...

South Korea | 2009 | Bong Joon-ho

In one of Bong’s most celebrated thrillers, a devoted, single-minded single mother sets out to prove that her developmentally disabled son did not commit a murder he is accused of. When the police and her own lawyer prove apathetic and ineffective, she tracks down the real killer herself. “Thrilling…Breathtaking…A must-see marvel…Grade A.” –Entertainment Weekly. Subtitles. ‘Scope. 129 min.

Portugal | 2019 | Pedro Costa

Winner of the top prize at last year’s Locarno Film Festival, the enthralling new film from the director of Horse Money and Colossal Youth transports us once again to Lisbon’s Fontainhas neighborhood, an urban shantytown populated by immigrants. Vitalina Varela is a 55-year-old Cape Verdean woman who arrives in Portugal three days after her husband’s funeral—having waited for more than 25 years to emigrate. As Varela adjusts to the dark, dank apartment that her husband...

Czechoslovakia | 1971 | Juraj Herz

A woman on the verge of spinsterhood, living in a small Czech town early in the 20th century, agrees to marry her cousin, an ex-soldier. But soon buried secrets rise to the surface of her consciousness, and she discovers that married life is not what she had hoped it would be. Herz’s theatrical follow-up to his masterpiece The Cremator is an exciting rediscovery. Subtitles. DCP. 101 min. This film will be rescheduled.

Argentina | 2018 | Mariano Llinás

Shot over a ten-year period, La Flor is one of the most celebrated and discussed movies of the past two years. However, being 14 hours long, it presents an almost insurmountable challenge to movie theatres that want to show it. Consisting of six episodes of varying lengths ranging from 47 minutes to over five hours (unlike TV miniseries with episodes of uniform duration), La Flor is a playful experiment in narrative that places the same...

Israel | 2019 | Yaron Zilberman

Winner of the 2019 Ophir Award (Israel’s Oscar) for Best Film (and nominated for nine others) and also Israel’s official submission for the 2020 Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, this gripping thriller follows an Israeli law student turned right-wing extremist during the months before he assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. (Rabin was targeted for his advocacy of the Oslo peace accords between Israelis and Palestinians.) “A chilling portrait of how fanaticism...

United States | 2018 | Rob Garver

Since the film in the 44th Cleveland International Film Festival that we were to have been a community partner on is not available to be streamed in the online festival, we’ve decided to bring back the Cinematheque’s partnership presentation from CIFF 43! In his 2001 obituary for Pauline Kael, Roger Ebert argued that this brilliant, controversial film critic for The New Yorker from the late 1960s through the early 1990s “had a more positive influence...

Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom | 2019 | Halina Dyrschka

Subject of a recent blockbuster exhibition at NYC’s Guggenheim Museum, Swedish mystic and painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was an abstract artist before the term had even been coined. She was a trailblazing visionary inspired by spiritualism, modern science, and the natural world, and in 1906, began to produce a series of huge, colorful, strange, and sensual paintings without precedent. Long excluded from art histories, Hilma af Klint is now being rediscovered around the world,...

Brazil, France | 2019 | Juliano Dornelles, Kleber Mendonça Filho

The films of Sergio Leone, George Miller, John Carpenter, and Alejandro Jodorowsky are evoked in this singular genre mash-up and political parable set deep in the Brazilian sertão (or outback). A village whose 94-year-old matriarch has died suddenly finds itself cut off from the world. (It disappears from Google Maps and GPS systems, and all cellphones there stop working.) Things get even weirder with the sudden appearance of flying saucer-like drones and heavily armed American...

Czechoslovakia | 1971 | Juraj Herz

Resentful Viktoria administers slow-acting poison to her sweet, better-liked, more fortunate sister Klára (both women are played by the same actress) in this hallucinatory psychodrama and horror film from Juraj Herz (The Cremator). A cat named Morgiana witnesses the whole ordeal. From a novel by Russian fantasist Aleksandr Grin. Imported color print from the Czech Film Archive! Subtitles. 99 min. This film will be rescheduled.

Argentina, Brazil, France, Lebanon, Mexico, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, United States | 2017 | Lucrecia Martel

Voted the best film of the 2010s by a group of critics, programmers, and filmmakers surveyed by Film Comment magazine, the latest film by Argentinean master Lucrecia Martel is set in a remote, tropical, colonialist outpost somewhere in South America during the 18th century. An ineffectual functionary working for the Spanish crown waits in vain for a transfer to Buenos Aires or back home. Martel’s singular movie, which we premiered locally two years ago and...

Brazil, France | 2019 | Juliano Dornelles, Kleber Mendonça Filho

The films of Sergio Leone, George Miller, John Carpenter, and Alejandro Jodorowsky are evoked in this singular genre mash-up and political parable set deep in the Brazilian sertão (or outback). A village whose 94-year-old matriarch has died suddenly finds itself cut off from the world. (It disappears from Google Maps and GPS systems, and all cellphones there stop working.) Things get even weirder with the sudden appearance of flying saucer-like drones and heavily armed American...

United States | 1955 | Melvin Frank, Norman Panama

This very funny musical spoof of Medieval swashbucklers was the most lavish and expensive comedy produced up to that time. Danny Kaye plays a carnival entertainer who falls in with a gang of rebels dedicated to protecting the infant King of England while also trying to overthrow the evil pretender to the throne. Basil Rathbone, Glynis Johns, Angela Lansbury, Charles Middleton, and John Carradine co-star. “One of the best comedies ever made.” –Leonard Maltin’s Movie...

USSR | 1985 | Elem Klimov

Here’s a new digital restoration of one of the great films of the 1980s: a savage WWII drama in which a sensitive adolescent turns into an emotionally-numbed killer after witnessing the Nazis’ wholesale destruction of his beloved Byelorussian village in 1943. Klimov’s epic has an hallucinatory, nightmarish quality that is not soon shaken. “The best war movie I’ve ever seen.” –J.G. Ballard. Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 143 min. This film will be rescheduled.