Cinematheque Film Schedule

France, Italy | 1969 | Pier Paolo Pasolini

According to The Time Out Film Guide, Pigsty “is not only an exquisitely revolting satire, it is also Pasolini’s most fascinating piece of cinema.” A kind of warm-up for his even more unsavory Salò, Pigsty tells two outré stories about consumption. One, set during the Middle Ages, follows a cannibalistic bandit; the other, set during Germany’s post-WWII “economic miracle,” focuses on the affluent son of an ex-Nazi industrialist who grows unnaturally enamored of pigs. The...

Belgium, Netherlands | 2012 | Felix Van Groeningen

This Belgian bluegrass (!) movie was nominated for five 2013 European Film Awards (the most nominations for any movie this year) including Best Film, Director, Actress (Veerle Baetens, who won), Actor, and Screenplay. It is also Belgium's official entry for this year's foreign film Oscar. The movie chronicles the love affair between a female tattoo artist and a Belgian banjo player, and the child who changes and challenges their relationship. Includes superb performances of traditional...

Belgium, Canada, France, Germany | 2009 | Jaco Van Dormael

Jared Leto and Sarah Polley star in this ambitious, expansive sci-fi film from the director of Toto the Hero. It tells of 118-year-old Nemo Nobody, the last mortal man in a world that has achieved immortality, who reflects on the key moments in his life and on the alternate paths he could have taken. A cult classic in the making, Mr. Nobody won Magritte Awards (Belgian Oscars) for Best Film and Best Director and the...

France, Italy | 1969 | Pier Paolo Pasolini

Legendary opera diva Maria Callas makes her only screen appearance in Pasolini's “primitive” version of Euripides' tragedy. Callas proves an imposing, imperious presence as the "barbarian" sorceress who becomes Jason's wife, then wreaks terrible revenge when he betrays her.

China, Hong Kong | 2012 | Johnnie To

The new nail biter by HK crime movie master Johnnie To—about a captured drug lord who helps a narcotics cop pursue an even bigger fish—was one of the best reviewed movies of 2013: "the best Hong Kong action movie since Infernal Affairs" (San Francisco Chronicle); "close to greatness" (Time Out New York); "arguably [To's] best film" (Village Voice).

Japan | 2012 | Takeshi Kitano

Actor-director Beat Takeshi's funny-violent sequel to his 2010 yakuza thriller Outrage chronicles a nationwide war between two rival Japanese gangs that is ignited by an all-out police crackdown on organized crime. Voted third best Japanese film of 2012 by the Japanese movie magazine Kinema Junpo.

Portugal | 2012 | Pedro Costa, Victor Erice, Aki Kaurismäki, Manoel de Oliveira

Portugal, 2012, Four of Europe's greatest filmmakers contribute segments to this portmanteau film about the northern Portuguese city of Guimarães, 2012 European Cultural Capital. Aki Kaurismäki tells a typically droll tale of a sad sack cafe owner. Pedro Costa revisits Portugal's colonial past. Victor Erice looks at the city's age-old but fast-vanishing textile industry. And Manoel de Oliveira (now 105 and still directing movies!) focuses on a group of picture-taking tourists.

Norway, United States | Haiti | 2013 | Jeremy Seifert

A filmmaker who’s also a young father investigates the potential health risks of GMO's (genetically modified organisms) that now infiltrate much of the world's non-organic food supply. This documentary also looks at how corporations manufacture, manipulate, and control seeds. With Dennis Kucinich. “Fantastic.” -Village Voice.

Norway, United States | Haiti | 2013 | Jeremy Seifert

A filmmaker who’s also a young father investigates the potential health risks of GMO's (genetically modified organisms) that now infiltrate much of the world's non-organic food supply. This documentary also looks at how corporations manufacture, manipulate, and control seeds. With Dennis Kucinich. “Fantastic.” -Village Voice.

Italy | 2013 | Paolo Sorrentino

The acclaimed new movie from the director of last year's Cinematheque hit This Must Be the Place (with Sean Penn as a retired rock star) is one of the five nominees for this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. It previously won the Golden Globe Award in that category, as well as the 2013 European Film Awards for Best Film, Director, and Actor! The Great Beauty finds filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino back in his native...

Italy | 1970 | Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pasolini's documentary captures his preparations for an Africa-set film version of the Ancient Greek play Orestes (about a man who kills his mother). Though the movie was never made, the documentary survives as a fascinating time capsule of 1970 Africa and as a portrait of Pasolini himself. With jazz great Gato Barbieri. "Key to an understanding of the particular Freudian-Marxist-Christian worldview that was Pasolini's." -J. Hoberman.

Italy | 2013 | Paolo Sorrentino

The acclaimed new movie from the director of last year's Cinematheque hit This Must Be the Place (with Sean Penn as a retired rock star) is one of the five nominees for this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. It previously won the Golden Globe Award in that category, as well as the 2013 European Film Awards for Best Film, Director, and Actor! The Great Beauty finds filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino back in his native...

United States | Pakistan | 2013 | Omar Mullick, Bassam Tariq

The humanitarian work of Pakistan’s foremost philanthropist Abdul Sattar Edhi and his Karachi social-welfare organization the Edhi Foundation is best seen in the lives of the orphaned and runaway children that have been rescued from war, brutality, and poverty, given temporary shelter, and sometimes returned to their families. This acclaimed and deeply moving new documentary introduces us to some of the spirited “lost boys” who have been saved by Edhi. “An emotional, aesthetically striking experience…Cuts...

Italy | 2013 | Paolo Sorrentino

The acclaimed new movie from the director of last year's Cinematheque hit This Must Be the Place (with Sean Penn as a retired rock star) is one of the five nominees for this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. It previously won the Golden Globe Award in that category, as well as the 2013 European Film Awards for Best Film, Director, and Actor! The Great Beauty finds filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino back in his native...

France, Italy, West Germany | 1971 | Pier Paolo Pasolini

Giovanni Boccaccio's ribald medieval tales of love, lust, sex, deceit, malefaction, and murder are rollickingly, bawdily brought to the screen in the first part of Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Trilogy of Life" (three adults-only films based on three celebrated story cycles). Franco Citti, Ninetto Davoli, and Pasolini himself star. Music by Ennio Morricone. The trilogy continues with The Canterbury Tales and Arabian Nights on the next two Sundays.

United States | Pakistan | 2013 | Omar Mullick, Bassam Tariq

The humanitarian work of Pakistan’s foremost philanthropist Abdul Sattar Edhi and his Karachi social-welfare organization the Edhi Foundation is best seen in the lives of the orphaned and runaway children that have been rescued from war, brutality, and poverty, given temporary shelter, and sometimes returned to their families. This acclaimed and deeply moving new documentary introduces us to some of the spirited “lost boys” who have been saved by Edhi. “An emotional, aesthetically striking experience…Cuts...

Portugal | 2012 | Pedro Costa, Victor Erice, Aki Kaurismäki, Manoel de Oliveira

Portugal, 2012, Four of Europe's greatest filmmakers contribute segments to this portmanteau film about the northern Portuguese city of Guimarães, 2012 European Cultural Capital. Aki Kaurismäki tells a typically droll tale of a sad sack cafe owner. Pedro Costa revisits Portugal's colonial past. Victor Erice looks at the city's age-old but fast-vanishing textile industry. And Manoel de Oliveira (now 105 and still directing movies!) focuses on a group of picture-taking tourists.

France, West Germany | 1964 | Jacques Demy

Our Valentine’s Day presentation! A French shopgirl (Catherine Deneuve, luminous) loves a mechanic but marries another man in Jacques Demy's groundbreaking, all-singing musical—a romantic, candy-colored concoction with a bittersweet aftertaste.

Canada, Switzerland | 2012 | Peter Mettler

This enthralling, transcendental new essay film traverses the globe to explore the nature of time. Moving from the giant particle accelerator outside Geneva to the lava flows of Hawaii, from decaying Detroit to the tree where Buddha found enlightenment, filmmaker Peter Mettler limns the links between destruction and renewal, mysticism and modern science. “[Recalls] the work of Terrence Malick, Werner Herzog and the late Chris Marker…Immersive and hypnotic…A ravishingly beautiful experience.” –Hollywood Reporter.

France, West Germany | 1964 | Jacques Demy

Our Valentine’s Day presentation! A French shopgirl (Catherine Deneuve, luminous) loves a mechanic but marries another man in Jacques Demy's groundbreaking, all-singing musical—a romantic, candy-colored concoction with a bittersweet aftertaste.

France, Italy | 1963 | Pier Paolo Pasolini

Originally included in the four-part anthology film Ro.Go.Pa.G. (with segments directed by ROssellini, GOdard, PAsolini, and Gregoretti), this 35-min. movie is one of Pasolini’s key works. A funny but scabrous attack on institutional Christianity, the film was seized by authorities for “insulting the religion of the state” and Pasolini spent four months in prison for making it. Orson Welles stars in the movie (the title refers to ricotta cheese), playing a pompous film director shooting...

United States | 2006 | Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen, Nicole Newnham

Co-produced by Robert Edsel (who wrote the book The Monuments Men that inspired George Clooney’s new film), this superb documentary traces the fate of European art treasures that were systematically looted by the Nazis during WWII and, in many cases, rescued and preserved by heroic museum directors, curators, and art historians. The film also serves as a superbly succinct history of the war in Europe, for those too young to know anything about the epic...

France, Italy | 1966 | Mauro Bolognini, Vittorio De Sica, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Franco Rossi, Luchi

Five major Italian filmmakers—including Pasolini, De Sica, and Visconti—contribute segments to this five-part rarity that does not deal with witches of the supernatural variety. Silvana Mangano stars in all five episodes, playing everything from a famous movie star to an unhelpful good Samaritan. She is supported in individual stories by other famous actors: Alberto Sordi, Totò, and even a very young Clint Eastwood! Pasolini’s amusing 30-min. segment, The Earth as Seen from the Moon (La...

France, Italy | 1972 | Pier Paolo Pasolini

The second part of Pasolini's sexy, scatological, slapstick-laden "Trilogy of Life" (see 2/9 at 4pm) finds an all-star cast (Pasolini, Franco Citti, Laua Betti, Hugh Griffith, Tom Baker, et al.) bringing some of Chaucer's randy tales of horny students, willing wives, and clueless old men to exuberant life. The director takes liberties with some stories. Music by Ennio Morricone. No one under 18 admitted!

France, Italy | 1966 | Mauro Bolognini, Vittorio De Sica, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Franco Rossi, Luchi

Five major Italian filmmakers—including Pasolini, De Sica, and Visconti—contribute segments to this five-part rarity that does not deal with witches of the supernatural variety. Silvana Mangano stars in all five episodes, playing everything from a famous movie star to an unhelpful good Samaritan. She is supported in individual stories by other famous actors: Alberto Sordi, Totò, and even a very young Clint Eastwood! Pasolini’s amusing 30-min. segment, The Earth as Seen from the Moon (La...

Canada, Switzerland | 2012 | Peter Mettler

This enthralling, transcendental new essay film traverses the globe to explore the nature of time. Moving from the giant particle accelerator outside Geneva to the lava flows of Hawaii, from decaying Detroit to the tree where Buddha found enlightenment, filmmaker Peter Mettler limns the links between destruction and renewal, mysticism and modern science. “[Recalls] the work of Terrence Malick, Werner Herzog and the late Chris Marker…Immersive and hypnotic…A ravishingly beautiful experience.” –Hollywood Reporter.

United States | 1978 | John Hanson, Rob Nilsson

Winner of the Camera d'Or for best first film at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival, this landmark American independent film—shot in b&w in bitterly cold, wintry North Dakota—chronicles the efforts of Great Plains farmers to organize the populist Nonpartisan League in the early 1900s. "Extraordinary filmmaking." -Time Out Film Guide.

France, United States | 1964 | John Frankenheimer

Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield, Jeanne Moreau, and Michel Simon star in this terrifically exciting WWII thriller, in which members of the French Resistance try to stop a train loaded with stolen French art treasures from leaving for Nazi Germany. Has a 100% "fresh" rating on RottenTomatoes.com.

United States | 1990 | Paul Brickman

Charles Korsmo is a law professor at Case Western Reserve University. But before he became a lawyer and teacher, he was Charlie Korsmo, a very successful child actor in a number of high profile Hollywood films—Dick Tracy (second-billed to Warren Beatty as the “Kid”), Hook (playing Jack “Jackie” Banning), What About Bob?, et al. Tonight Korsmo appears in person to answer audience questions about his short-lived screen career—and his decision to leave acting—after a screening...

France | 1972 | Dominique Benicheti

Hailed as a masterpiece when first released in 1972, then forgotten for 40 years, this serene ode to rural France and life’s simple pleasures chronicles the daily existence of an 80-ish blacksmith (the filmmaker's cousin) who lives on a farm with his elderly wife of many years. Painstakingly shot in color, scope, and stereo over a five-year period, the movie has been restored after the filmmaker’s recent death and is now being rediscovered around the...

France, United States | 1964 | John Frankenheimer

Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield, Jeanne Moreau, and Michel Simon star in this terrifically exciting WWII thriller, in which members of the French Resistance try to stop a train loaded with stolen French art treasures from leaving for Nazi Germany. Has a 100% "fresh" rating on RottenTomatoes.com.

France, Italy | 1975 | Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pasolini's notorious final film (made before his brutal 1975 murder) is one of the most controversial, revolting, and disturbing movies ever made. Transposing the Marquis de Sade's 1785 novel to Mussolini's Italy, the film is set at a palatial villa where beautiful young people are humiliated, abused, and tortured by sadistic and powerful members of the upper class. Intended as a parable about fascism, it's an explicit, dispiriting downer and remains banned in several countries...

France, Italy | 1974 | Pier Paolo Pasolini

The final part of Pasolini's "Trilogy of Life" (see 2/9 at 4pm) is the longest and most intricate. Filmed in Yemen, Eritrea, Iran, and Nepal, this opulent work follows a young man as he searches for his beloved slave girl who has been kidnapped. But this main narrative is dissected and amplified by a series of other erotic tales. With Ninetto Davoli and Franco Citti; music by Ennio Morricone. No one under 18 admitted!

France | 1972 | Dominique Benicheti

Hailed as a masterpiece when first released in 1972, then forgotten for 40 years, this serene ode to rural France and life’s simple pleasures chronicles the daily existence of an 80-ish blacksmith (the filmmaker's cousin) who lives on a farm with his elderly wife of many years. Painstakingly shot in color, scope, and stereo over a five-year period, the movie has been restored after the filmmaker’s recent death and is now being rediscovered around the...

United States | 1978 | John Hanson, Rob Nilsson

Winner of the Camera d'Or for best first film at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival, this landmark American independent film—shot in b&w in bitterly cold, wintry North Dakota—chronicles the efforts of Great Plains farmers to organize the populist Nonpartisan League in the early 1900s. "Extraordinary filmmaking." -Time Out Film Guide.

Israel | 2013 | Aharon Keshales, Navot Papushado

Hailed by Quentin Tarantino as "the best film of the year," this darkly funny and gruesome Israeli thriller follows two men, a rogue cop and a vengeful father, who relentlessly pursue a presumed pedophile and child murderer. "Grippingly suspenseful...Mind-bending plot twists and generous doses of mordant humor...Fiendishly clever...Mesmerizing from start to finish." -The Hollywood Reporter.

China | 2013 | Jia Zhangke

Here’s another chance to see one of the most acclaimed films of 2013! Jia Zhangke’s new work marks a radical change of pace for the acclaimed Chinese director of Still Life and The World. A Touch of Sin is an angry contemporary drama that re-creates four under-reported but actual incidents from recent Chinese history—two killing sprees, one murder, and a suicide—all involving dissatisfied or exploited workers. “An explosive indictment of the Chinese economic miracle and...

China | 2013 | Jia Zhangke

Here’s another chance to see one of the most acclaimed films of 2013! Jia Zhangke’s new work marks a radical change of pace for the acclaimed Chinese director of Still Life and The World. A Touch of Sin is an angry contemporary drama that re-creates four under-reported but actual incidents from recent Chinese history—two killing sprees, one murder, and a suicide—all involving dissatisfied or exploited workers. “An explosive indictment of the Chinese economic miracle and...

Israel | 2013 | Aharon Keshales, Navot Papushado

Hailed by Quentin Tarantino as "the best film of the year," this darkly funny and gruesome Israeli thriller follows two men, a rogue cop and a vengeful father, who relentlessly pursue a presumed pedophile and child murderer. "Grippingly suspenseful...Mind-bending plot twists and generous doses of mordant humor...Fiendishly clever...Mesmerizing from start to finish." -The Hollywood Reporter.