Cinematheque Schedule

China | 2018 | Hu Bo (aka Hu Qian)

One of the cinema events of the year! The only full-length movie by Chinese novelist turned filmmaker Hu Bo saw its legend enhanced when the 29-year-old artist killed himself after finishing his movie. Set in a northern Chinese industrial city, Hu’s nearly four-hour work focuses on four individuals—a bullied teen, a female classmate having an affair with a school administrator, a pensioner being forced out of his home, and a local gangster—whose dead-end lives overlap...

United States | 1954 | Robert Aldrich

Robert Aldrich’s first western was also the first of three oaters he made with Burt Lancaster. (We show the other two over the next two weekends.) Lancaster plays an Apache warrior who refuses to stop fighting after the surrender of Geronimo, facing the U.S. army and authorities alone. It’s a potent race relations drama that was compromised by a studio-imposed ending. 87 min.

Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom | 2018 | Terry Gilliam

After almost three decades of trying, Terry Gilliam has finally brought his longtime dream project to the big screen! The Man Who Killed Don Quixote relates the fantastic tale of a director (Adam Driver) who is shooting a commercial in rural Spain when he encounters a crazy old cobbler (Jonathan Pryce) who believes that he is Don Quixote. When this shoemaker insists that the young filmmaker is Sancho Panza, the two of them set off...

United States | 2018 | Khalik Allah

The latest movie by filmmaker and photographer Khalik Allah is a work of indelible portraiture—part documentary, part prayer. It’s a loving, lyrical ode to Jamaica and its people (Allah’s mother was born there) and it ranges from red light districts to lush rain forests. Has a 100% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes! DCP. 77 min.

United States | 1953 | Roy Rowland

The only feature film written by Dr. Seuss is a bizarre, colorful, Freudian musical in which a tyrannical piano teacher, Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conreid), forces 500 kidnapped boys to simultaneously play a single huge piano. “One of the best surrealistic fantasies ever made.” –Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film. DCP. 89 min.

United States | 1956 | Robert Aldrich

Joan Crawford plays a lonely, middle-aged typist who latches onto a much younger man (Cliff Robertson) as her last stab at love. But he turns out to be a classic “Mr. Wrong.” Maybe only Crawford could have pulled off this sensational, over-the-top melodrama. With Vera Miles. DCP. 108 min.

Iceland, United States | 1990 | Nietzchka Keene

Singer and fashion icon Björk made her big screen debut in this visually stunning medieval fantasy loosely based on a Brothers Grimm fairy tale and shot in scenic Iceland. (It evokes both Carl Dreyer’s Day of Wrath and Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring.) She plays one of two sisters who flee after their mother is burned for witchcraft. They find refuge with a widower and his son until sorcery again threatens their safety. “Dark and...

United Kingdom | 2018 | Mark Cousins

Film critic and cinema historian turned moviemaker Mark Cousins (The Story of Film: An Odyssey) charts some of the unknown territory of Orson Welles’ vast imagination. Granted unprecedented access to hundreds of sketches, drawings, and paintings by Welles—tantalizing, never-before-seen glimpses into the filmmaker’s rich inner life—Cousins sheds new light on the life experiences, dreams, desires, and obsessions that fueled this giant’s creativity. “Genuinely eye-opening.” –Rolling Stone. DCP. 115 min.