Streaming: Recent Releases & Restorations 2021

January 1–October 10, 2021

Enjoy newly released films and restored classics selected by our curators, now available in your own home.

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  • A Place of Rage

  • Son of Monarchs

  • What We Left Unfinished

  • Tove

  • The Cloud-Capped Star

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

Available Films

  • Streaming: A Place of Rage

    Pratibha Parmar
    United Kingdom, 1991

    Free Streaming Presentation
    September 10–October 10, 2021

    A fierce and loving assessment of the social movements of the 1960s from the vantage point of the 1990s culture wars, featuring three influential Black feminist intellectuals: Angela Y. Davis, Alice Walker, and June Jordan. 

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  • Streaming: Acasă, My Home

    Radu Ciorniciuc
    Romania, Germany, Finland, 2020

    January 15–March 31, 2021

    A family living freely in marshlands outside Bucharest is forcibly relocated to the city in this intimate documentary on the cost of social integration. Winner of a Special Jury Award for Cinematography at Sundance. “Lyrical and provocative” (Hollywood Reporter).

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  • Streaming: Atlantis

    Valentyn Vasyanovych
    Ukraine, 2019

    January 29–March 31, 2021

    Unfolding as a series of carefully constructed tableaus set in a near-future Eastern Ukraine, Atlantis presents a magnificent cinematic accounting of the costs of war. “Sensitively observed and meticulously crafted. . . . A remarkable piece of filmmaking” (Screen).

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  • Streaming: BAMPFA Student Committee Student Film Festival


    Free Streaming Program Available April 8–May 31, 2021

    A selection of outstanding student films from around the Bay Area.

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  • Streaming: Center Stage

    Stanley Kwan
    Hong Kong, 1991

    4K Digital Restoration
    April 2–June 6, 2021

    Maggie Cheung stars in Stanley Kwan’s modernist biopic on the life and tragic early death of Chinese film star Ruan Lingyu. “A masterpiece . . . the greatest Hong Kong film I've seen” (Jonathan Rosenbaum).

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  • Streaming: Identifying Features

    Fernanda Valadez
    Mexico, Spain, 2020

    January 25–April 11, 2021

    An elegantly constructed anti-macho western. “Fernanda Valadez finds a personal tragedy within a national one—the murder or disappearance of thousands of people, the mass collateral damage of the ongoing drug war” (Carlos Aguilar, AV Club).

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  • Streaming: If I go, where do I go?

    Amit Dutta
    India, 2021

    Streaming Premiere!
    April 30–August 31, 2021

    At ninety-one, Krishna Baldev Vaid (1927–2020), a pioneer of Hindi experimental writing living in New York, feels at a loss for words. Yet he is eager to access the “dance of language,” to which he has devoted his life. With shorts The Scent of Earth and Ten Questions from a Critic.

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  • Streaming: Lost Course

    Jill Li
    Hong Kong, 2019

    March 5–May 9, 2021

    Jill Li’s formidable documentary is a comprehensive account of the 2011 grassroots uprising and its aftermath in Wukan, a fishing village in Guangdong Province in southern China. “Engrossing, revealing and bittersweet” (Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter).

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  • Streaming: Mandabi

    Ousmane Sembène
    Senegal, 1968

    January 22–May 31, 2021

    A comic fable about a middle-aged man in Dakar whose life changes when he receives a money order from Paris. African master Ousmane Sembène’s approach is “spare, laconic, slightly ironic, and never patronizing” (New York Times).

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  • Streaming: maɬni—towards the ocean, towards the shore

    Sky Hopinka
    United States, 2019

    April 9–June 30, 2021

    Honoring connections to nature and the cycles of life, Sky Hopinka’s poetic experimental documentary follows two Native Americans from the Pacific Northwest as they share their personal rituals and relationships to life, identity, language, and homeland.

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  • Streaming: My Darling Supermarket

    Tali Yankelevich
    Brazil, Denmark, 2019

    April 9–June 30, 2021

    Tali Yankelevich’s portrait of the Veran supermarket in São Paulo records the dreams and philosophies of the workers who populate the meticulously stocked aisles. “An existentialist delight” (Los Angeles Times).

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  • Streaming: Son of Monarchs

    Alexis Gambis
    United States, Mexico, 2020

    July 30–October 10, 2021

    An intricately constructed meditation on migration, the environment, science, and identity, Son of Monarchs follows biologist Mendel as he shuttles between New York City and Michoacán, Mexico, revealing the inspiration for his research and the source of a haunting trauma.

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  • Streaming: Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue

    Jia Zhangke
    China, 2020

    April 2–August 31, 2021

    Three of China’s greatest living authors share their stories and memories in Jia Zhangke’s tribute to storytelling, and to the connection between intellectual thought and working-class labor. “A spiritual depiction of China. Illuminating” (South China Morning Post).

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  • Streaming: Tell Them We Were Here

    Griff Williams, Keelan Williams
    United States, 2021

    May 7–July 31, 2021

    Featuring Sadie Barnette, Amy Franceschini, Jim Goldberg, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Alicia McCarthy, Tucker Nichols, Nigel Poor, and Michael Swaine, this documentary reflects on a Bay Area art scene less concerned with money and power than with imagination, innovation, community, and care.

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  • Streaming: The Cloud-Capped Star

    Ritwik Ghatak
    India, 1960

    Digital Restoration
    June 25–October 10, 2021

    Directed by the visionary Bengali filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak, The Cloud-Capped Star tells the story of a family that has been uprooted by the partition of India and comes to depend on their eldest daughter, the self-sacrificing Neeta (Supriya Choudhury).

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  • Streaming: The Fever

    Maya Da-Rin
    Brazil, France, Germany, 2019

    March 25–June 30, 2021

    Acclaimed documentarian Maya Da-Rin’s first narrative film is an atmospheric exploration of the divide between urbanity and the Amazonian wilderness. “Gives us an elusive but powerful sense of the limits of our own vision” (New York Times).

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  • Streaming: The Inheritance

    Ephraim Asili
    United States, 2020

    March 12–June 30, 2021

    Experimental filmmaker Ephraim Asili calls his feature debut a “speculative reenactment” of Black activism and artistry in his hometown Philadelphia, from the Black Arts Movement to MOVE. “Playful, erudite, and boundary-blurring” (James Lattimer, Cinema Scope).

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  • Streaming: The Mirror

    Andrei Tarkovsky
    USSR, 1974

    February 5–May 2, 2021

    Juxtaposing fragments of childhood memory with the collective memories and nightmares of the twentieth century, Andrei Tarkovsky invented “a new language, true to the nature of film . . . life as a dream” (Ingmar Bergman).

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  • Streaming: The Passionate Thief

    Mario Monicelli
    Italy, 1960

    February 10–May 2, 2021

    In Monicelli’s beloved comedy, struggling actress Anna Magnani just wants to have a nice time on New Year’s Eve but is unwittingly dragged into a night of attempted thievery by her broke friend Totò and handsome pickpocket Ben Gazzara.

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  • Streaming: The Story of a Three Day Pass

    Melvin Van Peebles
    France, 1968

    May 14–August 31, 2021

    In an exuberant, inventive, and poignant film about an American soldier’s sojourn in Paris, Melvin Van Peebles brilliantly balances French New Wave style with profound social critique and psychological substance.

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  • Streaming: There Is No Evil

    Mohammad Rasoulof
    Iran, 2020

    May 18–August 15, 2021

    If you are an Iranian man—a military conscript, or a certain functionary—you might be called upon to execute a fellow citizen convicted of some crime or another. Mohammad Rasoulof’s searing new drama tells of four such men.

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  • Streaming: Tove

    Zaida Bergroth
    Finland, 2020

    July 2–October 10, 2021

    An exploration of love, art, and personal freedom, Zaida Bergroth’s engaging biopic spans ten years in the life of Tove Jansson, creator of the internationally beloved Moomin characters, and meticulously recreates her fascinating bohemian milieu.

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  • Streaming: What We Left Unfinished

    Mariam Ghani
    United States, Afghanistan, Qatar, 2019

    August 6–October 10, 2021

    Mariam Ghani’s astute, entertaining, and illuminating documentary tracks Afghan film history through the lens of the country’s complicated political history.

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  • Streaming: Yiddish

    Nurith Aviv
    France, Israel, 2020

    February 17–June 30, 2021

    Seven young scholars share their love for Yiddish, and for the avant-garde Yiddish poetry written between the world wars. “Pulsates with the sounds of forgotten rhythms” (Genica Baczynski, L’Humanité). 

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  • Streaming: You Will Die at Twenty

    Amjad Abu Alala
    Sudan, France, Egypt, Germany, Norway, Qatar, 2019

    January 25–April 11, 2021

    In this visually entrancing film, a young man faced with a prophecy of an early death tries to experience a normal adolescence. “Beautifully composed . . . the film lovingly depicts the remote east-central region of Sudan as a quasi-magical place of sand, sky, and the colors of the Nile” (Variety).

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  • Streaming—Black Life: Losing Ground

    Kathleen Collins
    United States, 1982

    Free Streaming Presentation
    May 28–July 6, 2021

    Kathleen Collins’s nuanced portrayal of a strained marriage expands beyond the domestic sphere to explore existential and aesthetic questions. One of the first features directed by a Black woman, it “still feels fresh, over three decades later” (Indiewire).

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