Cinematheque Film Schedule

France | 2013 | Alain Guiraudie

One of the most talked about and debated films from this year's Cleveland Int'l Film Festival is also one of the most acclaimed movies of the past year, with a 95% "fresh" rating on RottenTomatoes.com. Alain Guiraudie's breakthrough work is a lean thriller set at an isolated lake in rural France, where gay men sunbathe in the buff and cruise for love and companionship. One young man finds himself inexorably drawn to a mysterious, gorgeous...

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

Oscar winner Jared Leto co-stars with Sarah Polley in this ambitious, expansive sci-fi film (set in 2092) that the audience loved when we showed it in January. Leto plays 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 (and maybe did). This fluid, nonlinear mindbender, a cult classic in the making, won...

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

Oscar winner Jared Leto co-stars with Sarah Polley in this ambitious, expansive sci-fi film (set in 2092) that the audience loved when we showed it in January. Leto plays 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 (and maybe did). This fluid, nonlinear mindbender, a cult classic in the making, won...

United States | 2013 | Godfrey Reggio

Godfrey (the Qatsi trilogy) Reggio’s latest collaboration with composer Philip Glass is another hypnotic, wordless film that proffers a series of visually stunning images (including many faces) in b&w and scope to ponder man’s relationship with technology. “A wondrous work.” –Austin Chronicle.

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 newly restored after the filmmaker’s recent death. It wowed our audience in February....

United States | 2013 | Godfrey Reggio

Godfrey (the Qatsi trilogy) Reggio’s latest collaboration with composer Philip Glass is another hypnotic, wordless film that proffers a series of visually stunning images (including many faces) in b&w and scope to ponder man’s relationship with technology. “A wondrous work.” –Austin Chronicle.

France | 1968 | Alain Resnais

This little-known major work from Alain Resnais, the director of Hiroshima, Mon Amour and Last Year at Marienbad who died in March, is a sci-fi nightmare that deals with Resnais’ usual themes of time and memory. A man who attempted suicide finds himself a guinea pig in a time-travel experiment gone awry; he can’t escape his life’s unhappy moments. “Five stars (highest rating)…A masterpiece…You can see why Michel Gondry cited this as a major influence...

Belgium, Netherlands | 2012 | Felix Van Groeningen

Our audience loved this Belgian bluegrass movie when we showed it last winter. It was one of the five nominees for this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and was also nominated for five 2013 European Film Awards—the most nominations for any movie—including Best Film, Director, Actress (Veerle Baetens, who won), Actor, and Screenplay. This Once-like movie chronicles the love affair between a female tattoo artist and a Belgian banjo player, and the child...

France | 1968 | Alain Resnais

This little-known major work from Alain Resnais, the director of Hiroshima, Mon Amour and Last Year at Marienbad who died in March, is a sci-fi nightmare that deals with Resnais’ usual themes of time and memory. A man who attempted suicide finds himself a guinea pig in a time-travel experiment gone awry; he can’t escape his life’s unhappy moments. “Five stars (highest rating)…A masterpiece…You can see why Michel Gondry cited this as a major influence...

France | 2013 | Alain Guiraudie

One of the most talked about and debated films from this year's Cleveland Int'l Film Festival is also one of the most acclaimed movies of the past year, with a 95% "fresh" rating on RottenTomatoes.com. Alain Guiraudie's breakthrough work is a lean thriller set at an isolated lake in rural France, where gay men sunbathe in the buff and cruise for love and companionship. One young man finds himself inexorably drawn to a mysterious, gorgeous...

China | 2013 | Stephen Chow, Derek Kwok

The new action comedy from Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer) is a spectacular, special-effects-laden fantasy based on a 16th-century classic of Chinese literature. It tells of an aspiring demon hunter who tries to protect a village from all manner of monsters—be they giant fish, pig, or monkey. “Showcases Chow at his weirdest and most entertaining.” –The A.V. Club.

United Kingdom | 2013 | Ben Wheatley

The fourth feature by fast-rising filmmaker Ben Wheatley (Down Terrace, Kill List, Sightseers) is an hallucinatory historical drama set in civil war-torn 17th-century England. It’s a mash-up of Witchfinder General, Winstanley, Monty Python, and David Lynch that tells of four soldiers who are enlisted by an apprentice alchemist/conjurer to scour a meadow for buried treasure. “Breathtakingly lovely and genuinely unsettling…There’s a ten-minute sequence of pure psychedelic freefall and freakout which is one of the most...

United Kingdom | 2013 | Ben Wheatley

The fourth feature by fast-rising filmmaker Ben Wheatley (Down Terrace, Kill List, Sightseers) is an hallucinatory historical drama set in civil war-torn 17th-century England. It’s a mash-up of Witchfinder General, Winstanley, Monty Python, and David Lynch that tells of four soldiers who are enlisted by an apprentice alchemist/conjurer to scour a meadow for buried treasure. “Breathtakingly lovely and genuinely unsettling…There’s a ten-minute sequence of pure psychedelic freefall and freakout which is one of the most...

China | 2013 | Stephen Chow, Derek Kwok

The new action comedy from Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer) is a spectacular, special-effects-laden fantasy based on a 16th-century classic of Chinese literature. It tells of an aspiring demon hunter who tries to protect a village from all manner of monsters—be they giant fish, pig, or monkey. “Showcases Chow at his weirdest and most entertaining.” –The A.V. Club.

Spain | 2013 | Eugenio Mira

Elijah Wood and John Cusack star in this highly stylized, Hitchcockian/De Palmaesque thriller about a young concert pianist, just getting over a debilitating bout of stage fright, who discovers a threatening note written on his sheet music ("play one wrong note and you die") just before a performance. Screenplay by Damien Chazelle, writer-director of Whiplash and Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench. "A pulse-pounding experiment in terror." -Rolling Stone.

United States | 1955 | Otto Preminger

Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak star in Otto Preminger's jazz-infused drama, about a drummer and ex-addict who licks his heroin habit in prison but struggles to stay clean on the outside. The movie’s focus on drug addiction (a taboo subject in 1955) caused the film to be denied a seal of approval by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Music by Elmer Bernstein.

United States | 1977 | Martin Scorsese

Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli star in Martin Scorsese's stylish salute to classic Hollywood musicals, made between Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. This underrated epic charts the relationship between a frustrated sax player and a brassy singer as their fortunes change during the post-WWII big band era. We will show the restored version that includes the complete Kander & Ebb song "Happy Endings." "[A] masterly romantic drama." -Jazz in the Movies.

United States | 1977 | Martin Scorsese

Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli star in Martin Scorsese's stylish salute to classic Hollywood musicals, made between Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. This underrated epic charts the relationship between a frustrated sax player and a brassy singer as their fortunes change during the post-WWII big band era. We will show the restored version that includes the complete Kander & Ebb song "Happy Endings." "[A] masterly romantic drama." -Jazz in the Movies.

France | 2009 | Alain Guiraudie

The film that Alain Guiraudie made before Stranger by the Lake (see 5/1 & 4) was “the revelation of Lincoln Center’s recent Guiraudie retrospective,” according to the Anthology Film Archives. (Their April-June program book also calls it “one of the greatest films in recent memory.”) The King of Escape is an outlandish sex farce in which an obese, gay, rural tractor salesman becomes the unlikely love object of his boss’s teenage daughter. They run away...

Spain | 2013 | Eugenio Mira

Elijah Wood and John Cusack star in this highly stylized, Hitchcockian/De Palmaesque thriller about a young concert pianist, just getting over a debilitating bout of stage fright, who discovers a threatening note written on his sheet music ("play one wrong note and you die") just before a performance. Screenplay by Damien Chazelle, writer-director of Whiplash and Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench. "A pulse-pounding experiment in terror." -Rolling Stone.

Germany, Saudi Arabia | 2012 | Haifaa al-Mansour

This historic and acclaimed crowd-pleaser was the first feature film shot entirely in Saudi Arabia and also the first feature film by a female Saudi director. It tells of an 11-year-old Riyadh girl, Wadjda, who longs for a bicycle so that she can race one of her friends, a neighborhood boy. But bike-riding by girls is frowned upon in her country, so when Wadjda's mother refuses to buy the bicycle, the determined moppet sets out...

Mexico, United States | 2013 | Shaul Schwarz

Narcocorridos are ballads that celebrate the exploits of Mexico’s narco traffickers and drug lords. This music that openly glorifies violence, drugs, and money is shockingly popular among many Mexicans and Latinos. Narco Cultura, which features performances by narcocorrido artists and footage from the front lines of the drug wars, lifts the curtain on this explosive and disturbing music subculture. “As overwhelming as it is absorbing.” –Variety.

Germany, Saudi Arabia | 2012 | Haifaa al-Mansour

This historic and acclaimed crowd-pleaser was the first feature film shot entirely in Saudi Arabia and also the first feature film by a female Saudi director. It tells of an 11-year-old Riyadh girl, Wadjda, who longs for a bicycle so that she can race one of her friends, a neighborhood boy. But bike-riding by girls is frowned upon in her country, so when Wadjda's mother refuses to buy the bicycle, the determined moppet sets out...

United States | 2011 | Tom Jarmusch

This portrait of Cleveland by an ex-resident focuses not on new developments, fancy restaurants, or venerable arts institutions but on the poor, struggling individuals and outcasts who try to subsist in a decaying, racially divided, economically-stratified city. City boosters may not approve of Jarmusch’s unvarnished vision or gritty poetry, but this, too, is Cleveland. Jarmusch will answer audience questions after the screening. With Harvey Pekar. “No symphony of a singing metropolis, Sometimes City is more...

United States | 1994 | Jean Bach

This Oscar-nominated documentary tells the story behind Art Kane's famous group photograph that the film is named after. That picture, shot in front of a Harlem brownstone on 8/12/58, captured 57 jazz greats including Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins, Marian McPartland, Art Blakey, Charles Mingus, and Thelonious Monk. Quincy Jones narrates the film, which features interviews, home movies, and vintage performances.

United States | 1988 | Clint Eastwood

Forest Whitaker plays Charlie Parker, the innovative saxophonist and bebop pioneer who battled heroin addiction during his short life, in Clint Eastwood's heartfelt portrait, one of the great jazz movies.

2013 | James Franco, Travis Mathews

James Franco reimagines and recreates the deleted/destroyed 40 minutes of gay s&m sex in William Friedkin's 1980 thriller Cruising in this "documentary" about the casting and creation of Franco's own film. The result is a meta-movie that meditates on straight actors' comfort with (and acceptance of) explicit homosexual activities that surround them. "A sly conceptual coup d'art and a deeply sincere exploration of masculinity and its discontents." -The NY Times.

United States | 1994 | Jean Bach

This Oscar-nominated documentary tells the story behind Art Kane's famous group photograph that the film is named after. That picture, shot in front of a Harlem brownstone on 8/12/58, captured 57 jazz greats including Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins, Marian McPartland, Art Blakey, Charles Mingus, and Thelonious Monk. Quincy Jones narrates the film, which features interviews, home movies, and vintage performances.

2013 | James Franco, Travis Mathews

James Franco reimagines and recreates the deleted/destroyed 40 minutes of gay s&m sex in William Friedkin's 1980 thriller Cruising in this "documentary" about the casting and creation of Franco's own film. The result is a meta-movie that meditates on straight actors' comfort with (and acceptance of) explicit homosexual activities that surround them. "A sly conceptual coup d'art and a deeply sincere exploration of masculinity and its discontents." -The NY Times.

Mexico, United States | 2013 | Shaul Schwarz

Narcocorridos are ballads that celebrate the exploits of Mexico’s narco traffickers and drug lords. This music that openly glorifies violence, drugs, and money is shockingly popular among many Mexicans and Latinos. Narco Cultura, which features performances by narcocorrido artists and footage from the front lines of the drug wars, lifts the curtain on this explosive and disturbing music subculture. “As overwhelming as it is absorbing.” –Variety.

United States | 1954 | Anthony Mann

James Stewart plays the legendary bandleader in this colorful biopic with lots of terrific musical numbers (e.g., Louis Armstrong and Gene Krupa play "Basin Street Blues"). This was the first non-Western collaboration between Stewart and director Anthony Mann; they made it between The Naked Spur and The Far Country, both of which we showed in 2011. June Allyson co-stars—the second of three times she played Stewart’s wife on screen.

United States | 2013 | Jon Moritsugu

The first feature film in a more than a decade from underground cinema icon Jon Moritsugu (Scumrock, Mod Fuck Explosion, Hippy Porn) is another lo-fi aberration. Shot in garish colors on cheap digital video, Moritsugu’s new movie tells of a shipment of tainted pork that turns a brainless hottie into a genius and allows a buxom botanist to start communicating with her plants. “Anyone who longs for the old, weird films of John Waters or...

United Kingdom | 1964 | Guy Hamilton

Probably the most famous and iconic of all James Bond films (third in the series) stars Sean Connery as Agent 007, Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore, Gert Frobe as precious metals magnate Auric Goldfinger, and Harold Sakata as hat-throwing hit man Oddjob. Shirley Bassey sings the classic theme song. The story concerns international criminal masterminds who plot to tamper with the U.S. stockpile of gold bullion at Fort Knox in order to wreak havoc on...

United States | 1954 | Anthony Mann

James Stewart plays the legendary bandleader in this colorful biopic with lots of terrific musical numbers (e.g., Louis Armstrong and Gene Krupa play "Basin Street Blues"). This was the first non-Western collaboration between Stewart and director Anthony Mann; they made it between The Naked Spur and The Far Country, both of which we showed in 2011. June Allyson co-stars—the second of three times she played Stewart’s wife on screen.

United Kingdom | 1964 | Guy Hamilton

Probably the most famous and iconic of all James Bond films (third in the series) stars Sean Connery as Agent 007, Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore, Gert Frobe as precious metals magnate Auric Goldfinger, and Harold Sakata as hat-throwing hit man Oddjob. Shirley Bassey sings the classic theme song. The story concerns international criminal masterminds who plot to tamper with the U.S. stockpile of gold bullion at Fort Knox in order to wreak havoc on...

United States | 2013 | Jon Moritsugu

The first feature film in a more than a decade from underground cinema icon Jon Moritsugu (Scumrock, Mod Fuck Explosion, Hippy Porn) is another lo-fi aberration. Shot in garish colors on cheap digital video, Moritsugu’s new movie tells of a shipment of tainted pork that turns a brainless hottie into a genius and allows a buxom botanist to start communicating with her plants. “Anyone who longs for the old, weird films of John Waters or...

United States | 2013 | Robert Berger, Patrick Daniels, Karlyn Michelson

The black box transcripts from six real-life airline emergencies between 1985 and 1996 are brought to heart-pounding life in this 3D film version of an acclaimed stage play. Set entirely within the planes’ cockpits, the film features a cast of actors playing pilots, co-pilots, and flight attendants doing everything they can to avert disaster. A 2013 New York Film Festival presentation. "A curious hybrid of documentary and experimental theater…Also one of the most terrifying movies...

United States | 2013 | Greg D. Williams

23 million Americans live in long-term recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. This important and inspiring new documentary chronicles a grassroots social justice movement in which courageous citizens, leaders, volunteers, corporate executives, and public figures come out from the shadows to advocate for others with their disease. Addicts, they argue, should receive treatment and rehabilitation—not just lectures, stigmatization, discrimination, and prison time.

United States | 1959 | Bert Stern

Celebrated commercial photographer Bert Stern shot this classic record of the 1958 Newport (Rhode Island) Jazz Festival. The movie, “a must for jazz aficionados” (Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide), features thrilling performances by Thelonious Monk, Louis Armstrong, Sonny Stitt, Anita O'Day, Gerry Mulligan, Chuck Berry, Jack Teagarden, and Mahalia Jackson, among many others. “Often hailed as one of the first and most influential of live concert films…A dazzling array of jazz and rock ‘n’ roll giants.”...

United States | 1959 | Bert Stern

Celebrated commercial photographer Bert Stern shot this classic record of the 1958 Newport (Rhode Island) Jazz Festival. The movie, “a must for jazz aficionados” (Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide), features thrilling performances by Thelonious Monk, Louis Armstrong, Sonny Stitt, Anita O'Day, Gerry Mulligan, Chuck Berry, Jack Teagarden, and Mahalia Jackson, among many others. “Often hailed as one of the first and most influential of live concert films…A dazzling array of jazz and rock ‘n’ roll giants.”...

United States | 2013 | Greg D. Williams

23 million Americans live in long-term recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. This important and inspiring new documentary chronicles a grassroots social justice movement in which courageous citizens, leaders, volunteers, corporate executives, and public figures come out from the shadows to advocate for others with their disease. Addicts, they argue, should receive treatment and rehabilitation—not just lectures, stigmatization, discrimination, and prison time.