On View

Past Film Series

Current Film Series

  • Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy

    September 28–29, 2024

    Explicit, beautiful, and visceral, Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy comprises a unique ensemble portrait of queer Los Angeles youth navigating 1990s nihilism amidst the fallout from the Reagan/Bush era, the culture wars, and the mounting death toll from AIDS.

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  • Silent Cinema Pioneers: From Alice Guy-Blaché to Lois Weber

    September 14–25, 2024

    A chance to see works by four pioneering directors of the silent era: Alice Guy-Blaché, Louis Feuillade, Cecil B. DeMille, and Lois Weber. Professor Anne Nesbet will give short lectures for the film programs on September 18 and 25, both of which are presented with live piano accompaniment by Judith Rosenberg. Also screening is Pamela B. Green’s 2018 documentary on Guy-Blaché, which helps reclaim her place in film history.

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  • Cities & Cinema: Los Angeles

    September 6–October 3, 2024

    From Chinatown to La La Land to restored independent films, this series considers a diverse selection of works that foreground the history, architecture, and neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Special guests include May HaDuong, Director of the UCLA Film & Television Archive, and Los Angeles–based Italian journalist Luca Celeda.

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  • The Films of Lynne Ramsay

    August 22–25, 2024

    BAMPFA is honored to present a retrospective of Lynne Ramsay's extraordinary films this August.

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  • Something Different: The Films of Věra Chytilová

    July 26–August 30, 2024

    This is a series of films roiling with unruly energy and feminist fury from Věra Chytilová, “one of the Czech New Wave’s most rebellious, irreverent and boundary-breaking talents” (Sight & Sound).

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  • Hiroshi Shimizu: Notes of an Itinerant Director

    July 19–August 28, 2024

    One of the great directors of the Golden Age of Japanese cinema, Hiroshi Shimizu depicts the struggles of people on the margins with a light touch, avoiding melodrama and inflecting even the most serious stories with humor and profound humanity.

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  • Made in Italy: Morricone, Leone, and More

    July 12–August 31, 2024

    BAMPFA celebrates the legacy of composer Ennio Morricone (1928–2020) with a series of films he scored for great Italian directors, including Marco Bellocchio, Liliana Cavani, Sergio Leone, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Elio Petri, Gillo Pontecorvo, and Lina Wertmüller.

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  • Film Noir Classics: America’s Dark Dreams

    June 14–August 8, 2024

    From The Maltese Falcon (1941) to The Killing (1956), BAMPFA’s series offers viewers a chance to see many archival 35mm prints and digital restorations of film noir masterpieces and revel in the plot twists of these vastly entertaining and suspenseful mysteries, melodramas, and crime thrillers.

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  • Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Cinema

    June 8–August 31, 2024

    All of Hayao Miyazaki’s feature films—environmental allegories, fantasy epics, and intimate family adventures—populated by a bestiary of snarling, grotesque demons and cute, cuddly sprites (appearances can be deceiving) are presented here in their original Japanese versions.

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  • Les Blank: A Life Well Spent

    June 7–July 27, 2024

    This summer, BAMPFA showcases many of Les Blank’s films in recent digital restorations. We also host filmmakers who collaborated with Blank, as well as several individuals who were subjects in his films.

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  • 67th San Francisco International Film Festival at BAMPFA

    April 25–28, 2024

    BAMPFA is an official partner of the 67th San Francisco International Film Festival presented by SFFILM.

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  • Viva Varda!

    March 23–May 5, 2024

    A towering figure of world cinema, Agnès Varda (1928–2019) had a long and wonderfully productive career as a photographer, filmmaker, and visual artist. This series provides an opportunity to view many of her major accomplishments. Varda’s short films, showcased here in two programs, are a must-see to gain a full appreciation of her bold and creative approach to filmmaking.

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  • Nicolás Pereda Selects: Recent Films from Mexico

    March 20–May 2, 2024

    Impressed with the wealth of great Mexican movies in the last decade, we asked filmmaker Nicolás Pereda to select some of his favorites, along with a program of his own short films, to screen at BAMPFA this spring.

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  • Barry Jenkins Presents The Underground Railroad

    March 15–17, 2024

    Barry Jenkins presents his brilliant adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning magnum opus in person at BAMPFA this March. In this essential reckoning with America’s history of slavery and white supremacy, Jenkins renders Whitehead’s uncanny, antebellum American South with profound sensitivity and exquisite artistry.

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  • In Focus: The Fatal Alliance—A Century of War on Film

    March 6–March 27, 2024

    We welcome film historian David Thomson back to BAMPFA for this lecture/screening series following the publication of his new book, The Fatal Alliance: A Century of War on Film. Thomson offers a lecture before each film and leads the post-screening discussions.

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  • Sembène 100

    March 3–April 21, 2024

    A centennial tribute featuring new digital restorations and rare 35mm prints in honor of the great filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, whose cinema is about Senegal coming into its own as a nation. Rebellious and committed, Sembène paved the way for generations of African filmmakers.

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  • Tell No Lies: Decolonizing Cinema in Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique

    March 2–April 24, 2024

    Tell No Lies explores the birth of African cinema through a selection of diverse films on the liberation struggles of the former Portuguese colonies of Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique, as well as contemporary films that continue to consider the legacy of colonialism.

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  • Edward Yang’s Taipei Stories

    March 1–May 11, 2024

    Replete with new restorations, Edward Yang’s Taipei Stories offers the opportunity to see all seven of the director’s brilliantly constructed, emotionally resonant films—cornerstones of the Taiwanese New Wave with enduring universal appeal.

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  • Cauleen Smith—In Space, In Time

    February 8–11, 2024

    BAMPFA presents three nights of work by Los Angeles–based Cauleen Smith, including two programs of rarely shown short films and a screening of her seminal, recently restored feature Drylongso. 

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  • Documentary Voices 2024

    February 7–April 24, 2024

    Our annual series features an international array of recent and historical documentaries and nonfiction films.

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  • Preservation Spotlight: David Schickele’s Bushman

    February 3–24, 2024

    BAMPFA presents the Bay Area premiere of the recently completed restoration of Bushman (US, 1971), directed by Bay Area independent filmmaker David Schickele (1937–1999).We will be joined by special guests, including Schickele’s family, who have been instrumental to the preservation of Bushman, as well as original members of the cast and crew and the preservation team.

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  • Skip Norman Here and There

    January 25–February 29, 2024

    Bringing together Skip Norman’s work as a cinematographer and a filmmaker, from his collaborations with his DFFB cohort to films made in the United States, Skip Norman Here and There is a rare opportunity to reconsider the work of a groundbreaking Black filmmaker.

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  • In Focus: Werner Herzog and the Documentary Form

    Lecture & Screening Series

    January 24–February 28, 2024

    This lecture & screening series focuses on six nonfiction works spanning Werner Herzog’s iconoclastic career. We are delighted to welcome film critic and journalist Michael Fox, who will offer a short lecture before each film and lead the post-screening discussions.

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  • Masc: Trans Men, Butch Dykes, and Gender Nonconforming Heroes in Cinema

    January 19–February 25, 2024

    Masc is a cinematic celebration giving recognition and dignity to the courageous queer, gender nonconforming visionaries who have blazed these trails and who continue to show the way forward and inspire us all.

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  • Yasujiro Ozu: The Elegance of Simplicity

    December 3, 2023–February 25, 2024

    One of Japan's greatest filmmakers, Yasujiro Ozu was born in 1903 and died in 1963. To mark the 120th anniversary of his birth and the 60th anniversary of his death, archives around the world are celebrating his work. BAMPFA presents a selected retrospective spanning the course of the director’s career from the silent era to his six crowning films made in color.

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  • Infinite Horizons: The Films of Werner Herzog

    November 9, 2023–February 28, 2024

    A major retrospective of German filmmaker Werner Herzog, which launched in November 2023, continues through February 2024. Herzog’s great facility for storytelling and his fascination with eccentric characters, whose lives and endeavors he observes, allow him to illuminate the human condition in his narrative and nonfiction films. 

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  • Artists on Film

    October 22–November 5, 2023

    Three recent feature films and two historical short films provide in-depth, intimate access to the creative process of painters Peter Bradley and Mike Henderson, sculptor Brian Wall, and traditional Japanese wood-carver Master Seki Koun, as well as a number of his apprentices.

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  • Chinese Musicals from 1957 to 1963

    October 19–28, 2023

    We are delighted to welcome  the Hong Kong film scholar Paul Fonoroff back to BAMPFA with a series highlighting Mandarin-language musicals from 1957 to 1963, during the genre’s postwar rebirth.

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  • Mill Valley Film Festival at BAMPFA 2023

    October 7–15, 2023

    BAMPFA is pleased to partner with the Mill Valley Film Festival to present selected screenings from MVFF46 in the Barbro Osher Theater.

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  • African Film Festival 2023

    October 1–November 16, 2023

    This year’s edition of the African Film Festival invites audiences to learn from and bear witness to the stories, visions, and histories of people across Africa and the African diaspora, whether through moments of the past that still mark our present day or through the events and struggles that color and define our current lives.

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  • The People Are Present: Films of Želimir Žilnik

    September 28–29, 2023

    Celebrated Yugoslav filmmaker Želimir Žilnik, who, since the 1960s, has been at the forefront of politically engaged cinema in Europe, joins us in person for two programs of his docu-fiction films.

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  • Cambodian Cinema: Rising from the Ashes

    September 24–October 6, 2023

    This series focuses on the especially challenging situation of film preservation in Cambodia, a country whose cultural heritage was ravaged by the Pol Pot regime of genocide and destruction in the 1970s. Thanks to the efforts of filmmaker Rithy Panh, who cofounded the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center in 2005, there is a sense of renewal and important work being done by archivists, industry professionals, and young filmmakers documenting Cambodian life today and telling individuals’ stories.

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  • Dawn Porter in Person

    September 21–23, 2023

    This September BAMPFA is honored to welcome award-winning filmmaker Dawn Porter to discuss her work and career and to present her documentaries Gideon’s Army (2013) and The Lady Bird Diaries (2023).

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  • Illuminations: Jerome Hiler

    September 13–October 28, 2023

    Local filmmaker Jerome Hiler presents two programs of his “formally and visually astonishing” experimental films, along with his two features reflecting his passion for music and medieval stained glass. 

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  • Georgian Filmmaker Salomé Jashi in Person

    September 10–17, 2023

    BAMPFA welcomes Georgian filmmaker Salomé Jashi (born 1981 in Tbilisi) for her first visit to the Bay Area with this retrospective of her films, for which she serves as both director and cinematographer. Working in the terrain of nonfiction, she uses film’s creative power as a vehicle for her nuanced social and political critique. Jashi’s films (including Taming the Garden, The Dazzling Light of Sunset, and Bakhmaro) have a beautiful visual quality, distinguished by her striking frame compositions, sense of color, and decision to film on location in different regions of Georgia.

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  • Alternative Visions 2023

    September 6–November 15, 2023

    Our annual showcase of historical and current experimental film includes presentations by filmmakers including Peggy Ahwesh, Ernie Gehr, Jacqueline Goss, and Lindsay McIntyre, plus an exciting array of short films and guest-curated programs. 

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  • Rialto Pictures Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Salute

    September 2–November 29, 2023

    It would not be possible for BAMPFA to showcase many essential films from the history of cinema without the stellar work of Rialto Pictures, a boutique distributor based in New York. This salute features digital restorations of many landmark films, including two by Jean-Luc Godard, Contempt and Alphaville; two French thrillers, Army of Shadows and Le cercle rouge, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville; two Italian classics starring Alberto Sordi, Federico Fellini’s The White Sheik and Dino Risi’s Una vita difficile; Carol Reed’s exceptional The Third Man; a masterpiece from postrevolutionary Iran, The Runner; and Akira Kurosawa’s stunning film adaption of King Lear, the monumental Ran.

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  • The Art of Animation: Storytelling in the Digital Age

    August 3–31, 2023

    We welcome the coauthors of the recently published Making the Cut at Pixar: The Art of Editing Animation, Bill Kinder and Bobbie O’Steen, as our guests for this series that showcases an impressive lineup of feature-length animated films. Made since 1999, these films benefit from methodologies of storytelling developed during the digital era. Kinder and O’Steen offer insights into every stage of production on an animated film, from storyboards to virtual cameras and final animation.

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  • Free Outdoor Screenings: The Art of Animation

    August 3–31, 2023

    Bring a blanket or lawn chair to BAMPFA’s huge outdoor LED screen for three free screenings.

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  • Preston Sturges: More Than Comedy

    July 27–August 26, 2023

    Look again at the hilarious, utterly idiosyncratic films of writer-director Preston Sturges, and discover what makes them classic comedies—and something more than comedies. Author and film critic Stuart Klawans joins us in person for three screenings and a book signing.

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  • Out of the Vault: The Enchanted Yuliya Solntseva

    July 21–August 27, 2023

    Presenting prints from the BAMPFA collection, this series highlights the work of Yuliya Solntseva, as both an actress and a director, including collaborations with her husband, the Ukranian director Oleksandr Dovzhenko.

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  • Luis Buñuel’s Magnificent Weapon

    July 7–November 19, 2023

    From the eye slice in his revolutionary collaboration with Salvador Dalí, Un chien Andalou, to the explosive finale of his last film, That Obscure Object of Desire, this retrospective offers the opportunity to see films from throughout Luis Buñuel’s career.

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  • Shitamachi: Tales of Downtown Tokyo

    June 16–July 29, 2023

    Take a cinematic tour of Tokyo’s gritty working-class district, Shitamachi, with classic and contemporary films by Yasujiro Ozu, Akira Kurosawa, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Kinuyo Tanaka, and others, including many compelling but lesser-known works.

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  • Claudia Cardinale Once Upon a Time

    June 9–July 22, 2023

    Coproduced by Cinecittà, Rome, and featuring new restorations, Claudia Cardinale Once Upon a Time focuses on her great performances from the late 1950s through the 1960s in films imbued with an intelligence and depth that surpass the confines of the scripted characters.

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  • Ambassador of Cinema: Tom Luddy’s Lasting Influence at BAMPFA

    June 1–July 15, 2023

    This series pays tribute to the breadth of cinematic expression that Tom Luddy—the celebrated film producer, curator, and festival director who led BAMPFA’s film program during its formative years—helped introduce to Bay Area filmgoers, including many of his known favorites and several films that he helped produce.

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  • 66th San Francisco International Film Festival at BAMPFA

    April 14–23, 2023

    BAMPFA is proud to partner with the SFFILM Festival, an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and a major cultural event in the Bay Area.

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  • Odessa’s Uncompromising Eccentric: The Films of Kira Muratova

    April 1–May 14, 2023

    We are honored to collaborate with Ukraine’s Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Center on this series celebrating “Odessa’s uncompromising eccentric” (Jane Taubman), with guest curator Stanislav Menzelevskyi introducing three screenings.

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  • Kelly Reichardt in Person

    March 24–31, 2023

    We are delighted to welcome Kelly Reichardt, the very first guest in BAMPFA’s long-running Afterimage series in 2009, back to present her most recent film, Showing Up, and to launch a spotlight series of three more films that she has released in the intervening years.

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  • Out of the Vault: Billy Woodberry in Person

    March 22–29, 2023

    Filmmaker Billy Woodberry presents two nights of his moving-image work and the annual Les Blank Lecture on documentary film.

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  • Monique Wittig: Twenty Years Later / Monique Wittig: Vingt ans après

    March 18, 2023

    Filmmakers respond to Les Guérillères, Monique Wittig’s 1969 novel—for Oriana, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz sets her film in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, while Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames takes place in New York after a “social-democratic war of liberation.” With shorts by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (Mouth to Mouth) and Vivienne Dick (Staten Island).

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  • Lizzie Borden’s New York Feminisms Trilogy

    March 17–19, 2023

    Filmmaker Lizzie Borden presents her New York Feminisms Trilogy: Regrouping, Born in Flames, and Working Girls.

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  • Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cinema of Now

    March 10–May 12, 2023

    Apichatpong Weerasethakul presents several programs and the Townsend Center for the Humanities’s Una’s Lecture during this retrospective of the artist’s haunting, beautiful, and resonant works. 

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  • Orchestrating Time: The Films of William Kentridge

    March 9–April 2, 2023

    South African artist William Kentridge’s work in animation and live action film is a central element of his interdisciplinary approach. Featured here are many of his short works, including the film cycle Drawings for Projection (1989–2020) and several filmed versions of his staged operas, notably Dmitri Shostakovich’s The Nose and Alban Berg’s Lulu.

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  • Pioneers of Queer Cinema

    March 3–May 3, 2023

    Pioneers of Queer Cinema celebrates the groundbreaking achievements born from visionary queer filmmakers, ranging from landmark to little-known works.

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  • Pratibha Parmar in Person

    February 9—23, 2023

    The completion of Parmar’s new documentary, My Name Is Andrea, an essential and timely corrective to the historical record concerning the late writer and activist Andrea Dworkin, provides a welcome opportunity to invite Parmar to share her work at BAMPFA.

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  • Tales of Cinema: Hong Sangsoo

    February 3–18, 2023

     “Hong Sangsoo’s films seize the material of everyday life in the service of exploring psychology and metaphysics in elegant, subtly profound ways” (Lincoln Center) as revealed in three double-bills and a recent film.

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  • Documentary Voices 2023

    February 1–April 12, 2023

    Our annual series features an international array of recent and historical documentaries and nonfiction films.

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  • Joel Coen in Person

    January 21–29, 2023

    This carte blanche series provides the very special opportunity to see eight films selected by Joel Coen, four films of his own making and four films he admires.

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  • The Algerian War of Independence: Cinema as History

    January 18–February 26, 2023

    Over the course of the six decades since the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62), filmmakers have reacted to the history of this revolutionary period with powerful responses and insightful perspectives. This selection of films deal with the backstory and history of the Algerian War of Independence from a variety of perspectives.

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  • Out of the Vault: Everything’s Ephemeral

    January 14–February 16, 2023

    Three programs of 16mm ephemeral films from the BAMPFA collection—one of place, one of poetry, and one of play—ask us to pause and listen for quiet rhythms, to look closer at what is in front of us, and to celebrate the moment.

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  • The Cinema of the Absurd: Eastern European Film, 1958–89

    January 12–February 25, 2023

    A series of stark, scathing, and playful films from the former socialist republics of Eastern Europe, where absurdity was a fact of life under authoritarian rule—and a source of cinematic creativity.

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  • Limited Engagements & Special Screenings

    Ongoing

    Recent releases, restored classics, and special guests grace the Barbro Osher Theater.

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  • Elegy to Seijun Suzuki

    December 8, 2022–January 15, 2023

    To celebrate the publication of William Carroll’s recent book Suzuki Seijun and Postwar Japanese Cinema, BAMPFA is delighted to participate in a tour, organized by the author, of imported 35mm prints of films spanning several decades of Suzuki’s brilliant and varied career.

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  • Camera Man: Buster Keaton

    December 4–21, 2022

    Keaton’s ingenious gags and stunts in his silent two-reelers and features confirm his timeless appeal as a commentator on the human condition who was drawn to the dreamlike and the all-too-real. 

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  • The New Lebanese Cinema of the 1970s and 1980s

    November 10–December 10, 2022

    This small series features new restorations of works by three filmmakers from Lebanon who bear witness to its difficult history: Borhane Alaouié, Jocelyne Saab, and Heiny Srour. 

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  • Georgian Cinema: Highlights from the BAMPFA Collection

    October 29–November 27, 2022

    Among the treasured special collections within our film archive are the rare and distinctive holdings of Georgian cinema produced during the Soviet era and since the country’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. This series features works by leading Georgian auteurs.

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  • Pier Paolo Pasolini

    October 22–November 27, 2022

    This retrospective of the influential Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) features 35mm restorations, many done by Cineteca di Bologna in partnership with Cinecittà.

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  • Mill Valley Film Festival at BAMPFA

    October 8–16, 2022

    BAMPFA is pleased to partner with the Mill Valley Film Festival to present selected screenings from MVFF45 in the Barbro Osher Theater.

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  • In Dialogue with China: Family, Memory, Resistance, and Change

    October 6–27, 2022

    Presented in conjunction with the Townsend Center’s In Dialogue with China: Art, Culture, Politics, these films show how three contemporary Chinese filmmakers—Chan Tze Woon, Li Dongmei, and Luo Li—use inventive and subtle techniques to approach themes of family, memory, change, and resistance.

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  • Rithy Panh in Person

    September 24–25, 2022

    This fall BAMPFA is honored to have Rithy Panh present two of his recent films in person, his haunting and personal investigation into the Cambodian genocide, The Missing Picture, and Irradiated, an exploration of the man made cataclysms and atrocities of the twentieth century. 

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  • Elaine May: Age of Irony

    September 9–30, 2022

    Highly regarded as a comedian, screenwriter, playwright, and actress, Elaine May had a more tempestuous ride as a film director—often at odds with the Hollywood studio executives. Her films are championed by many for their ironic humor, sense of spontaneity, authenticity, and experimentation with form.

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  • Undoing Time: Cinema and Histories of Incarceration

    September 8–November 16, 2022

    Including historical and contemporary documentaries, essay films, and works of fiction, this series reflects on the inherent racism and inhumanity of the prison industrial complex while celebrating courageous voices and acts of resistance from inside and outside of prison walls.

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  • Alternative Visions 2022

    September 7–November 30, 2022

    This year our annual series showcases current and historical experimental films by local filmmakers, as well as works by artists from Brazil, Canada, Iran, Poland, Rwanda, and the United Kingdom.

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  • African Film Festival 2022

    September 7–October 29, 2022

    After two years of pandemic-related cancellations or virtual screenings, we are proud to welcome the African Film Festival back to BAMPFA. This year, open your eyes to new horizons, new heroes, and new narratives.

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  • Free Outdoor Screenings—Indelible Moments: May I Have This Dance

    August 4–25, 2022

    Bring a blanket or lawn chair to BAMPFA’s huge outdoor LED screen for three free screenings.

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  • From the Front Page to the Front Lines: The Essential Sam Fuller

    July 29–August 31, 2022

    Ten essential films from Samuel Fuller’s influential oeuvre confront prejudice and inequity head-on, chronicling the grit, resilience, and soulful struggle of misfits, foot soldiers, petty criminals, detectives, and reporters surviving in the face of moral misgivings or psychological trauma.

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  • Forever Kinuyo Tanaka

    July 8–August 28, 2022

    Celebrated for her performances in films by iconic directors, Tanaka also made a significant contribution to the golden age of Japanese cinema as a director. This series features new restorations of all six of Tanaka’s films, along with works representative of the scope of her acting career.

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  • Indelible Moments: May I Have This Dance

    June 12–August 25, 2022

    A selection of films in which a dance scene crystallizes the experience of the movie, a moment leaving its imprint more than the plotline or even the characters.

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  • Film Preservation: Celebrating The Film Foundation

    June 4–August 27, 2022

    This series showcases an impressive range of world cinema that has been preserved thanks to a concerted effort by The Film Foundation and the World Cinema Project over more than thirty years.

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  • The Films of Márta Mészáros

    June 3–July 20, 2022

    “Since my first film I have attempted in a very deliberate and stubborn way to portray women capable of making independent decisions,” wrote acclaimed Hungarian filmmaker Márta Mészáros, who at age ninety is the subject of this major retrospective featuring new digital restorations of her films. 

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  • 65th San Francisco International Film Festival at BAMPFA

    April 22–May 1, 2022

    BAMPFA is proud to partner with the SFFILM Festival, an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and a major cultural event in the Bay Area.

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  • Souleymane Cissé

    March 31–April 17, 2022

    An overdue tribute to one of the giants of world cinema, Malian director Souleymane Cissé, a former projectionist, jailed dissident, and fiercely antiauthoritarian, proudly African filmmaker whose work includes Brightness, The Wind, Baara, and The Young Girl.

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  • Streaming: Free Films for Members

    Ongoing

    Our ongoing series of free films for members.

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  • Wayne Wang in Person

    March 11–April 17, 2022

    From defining Asian American identity on-screen in Chan Is Missing and The Joy Luck Club to adapting the writing of Paul Auster and working with Jennifer Lopez, Wayne Wang is a filmmaking original. This series features new restorations of his work.

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  • Limited Engagements & Special Screenings 2022

    Ongoing

    Recent releases, restored classics, and special guests grace the Barbro Osher Theater.

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  • Chinese Portraits

    March 5–17, 2022

    A collection of narrative and documentary works on artists, writers, and ordinary citizens in China, presented in conjunction with the Townsend Center’s In Dialogue with China: Art, Culture, Politics.

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  • Federico Fellini 100

    March 4–May 14, 2022

    Romantic. Elegant. Fantastical. We welcome back to the BAMPFA screen one of the greats, Federico Fellini, a “larger-than-life maestro who created an inimitable cinematic style combining surreal carnival with incisive social critique” (Criterion).

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  • Contemporary Indigenous Media

    February 10–April 14, 2022

    In our first series to explore the breadth of Indigenous media currently being made in the Americas, we place works in relation to one another across geographies and stylistic approaches, with filmmakers from South and North America in conversation.

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  • Recent Films of Nathaniel Dorsky

    February 5–6, 2022

    We are delighted to present eight recent additions to our film collection: new silent 16mm films by local filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky, most made during the COVID-19 pandemic, photographed in San Francisco across different seasons.

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  • Streaming: Animation! Speaking with the Makers

    January 29–March 13, 2022

    In this hybrid series, shown in-theater and via BAMPFA’s streaming platform, we interview filmmakers who specialize in animation and ask them to discuss how they develop their stylistic approaches, and how they distill time, gesture, and mood, frame by frame, into the basic unit of animation.

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  • Animation! Speaking with the Makers

    January 29–February 26, 2022

    In this hybrid series, shown in-theater and via BAMPFA’s streaming platform, we interview filmmakers who specialize in animation and ask them to discuss how they develop their stylistic approaches, and how they distill time, gesture, and mood, frame by frame, into the basic unit of animation.

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  • Documentary Voices 2022

    January 26–April 20, 2022

    Our annual series features an international array of recent and historical documentaries and nonfiction films.

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  • Djibril Diop Mambéty

    January 21–February 20, 2022

    Djibril Diop Mambéty’s debut, Touki Bouki, was “unlike anything in the history of African cinema” (N. Frank Ukadike). Made nearly twenty years later, Hyenas and Le franc likewise showcase “his signature mix of wild narrative style” and “impeccable political commitment,” which, along with The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun, championed Senegalese outsiders (Greg Thomas).

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  • Ball of Fire: Barbara Stanwyck

    January 14–February 26, 2022

    Barbara Stanwyck was the screen archetype of the independent woman, with her wits about her, alert, and often on the make. This spotlight showcases many of her best roles and demonstrates her remarkable talent.

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  • F. W. Murnau: Voyages into the Imaginary

    January 8–February 27, 2022

    This series, featuring the lyrical cinema of one of the most admired and influential directors of the silent era, F. W. Murnau, showcases restored versions of his extant work with live piano accompaniment.

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  • Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope

    December 3, 2021–February 27, 2022

    Fifty years after the founding of American Zoetrope, we celebrate the studio and its co-creator, Francis Ford Coppola. Along with Coppola’s works, the series features films by George Lucas, Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa, and more.

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  • Big Screen: Highlights from a Year of Virtual Cinema

    December 2, 2021–February 16, 2022

    Now that we are back in the Barbro Osher Theater, we want to share some highlights from the past year of virtual cinema as an affirmation of the importance of seeing films on the big screen and with an audience. 

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  • Marguerite Duras: The Seamless Past and Present

    November 11–28, 2021

    The celebrated French author and filmmaker Marguerite Duras is the focus of this trio of works, including the Bay Area premiere of Suzanna Andler. Also featured are Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima mon amour and a new restoration of Le navire Night.

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  • Afterimage: Walter Murch in Conversation

    November 6–20, 2021

    Walter Murch, whose accomplishments have earned him respect and praise as “the film editor’s editor” and “a sound and image guru,” is our guest for Afterimage, sharing his wisdom on editing and sound design in three in-depth conversations.

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  • The Black Film Ambassador: The Ecstatic World of Albert Johnson

    October 30–November 26, 2021

    Dedicated to a pillar of the Bay Area film scene, film critic, curator, and educator Albert Johnson (1925–1998) the films in this series gesture toward the breadth of his interests and provide a welcome opportunity to celebrate his brilliant legacy.

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  • New Time: The Future Is Feminist

    October 24, 2021–January 29, 2022

    Conceived in dialog with BAMPFA’s major exhibition New Time, The Future Is Feminist brings together a diverse range of works made since 2000 by women filmmakers representing an array of feminist voices and aesthetics, variously observational, confrontational, collaborative, analytical, or poetic.

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  • Kazuo Miyagawa: Cinematographer and Visual Stylist

    October 23–November 28, 2021

    One of film’s most talented cinematographers, Kazuo Miyagawa worked with many of the great Japanese directors, including Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, Kon Ichikawa, and Masahiro Shinoda, all represented in this series, which foregrounds his artistry on the big screen.

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  • Limited Engagements & Special Screenings 2021

    October 21–November 27, 2021

    Recent releases, restored classics, and special guests grace the Barbro Osher Theater.

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  • Mill Valley Film Festival at BAMPFA

    October 8–17, 2021

    BAMPFA is pleased to partner with the Mill Valley Film Festival to present selected screenings from MVFF44 in the Barbro Osher Theater.

     

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  • Tutorials: Streaming from Home

    If you would like to watch a film from BAMPFA’s rotating selection of streaming films, you can learn how to get started with these helpful tutorials.

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  • Alternative Visions 2021

    September 8–November 17, 2021

    Our annual showcase Alternative Visions continues with 1990s Japanese experimental films by women, with guest curators Wakae Nakane and Miryam Sas in conversation. Collage animator Janie Geiser also presents a program of her recent films, created from a haunting array of visual and auditory fragments. 

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  • Free Films on BAMPFA’s Outdoor Screen

    August 12–September 9, 2021

    This summer BAMPFA is thrilled to partner with the Downtown Berkeley Association to present three inspiring documentaries on our outdoor screen, welcoming audiences back to the museum to celebrate the vision of artists and activists, from the Bay Area and beyond.

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  • Streaming: Recent Films of Amit Dutta

    April 30–August 31, 2021

    Indian filmmaker and writer Amit Dutta has created his own distinctive cinema through deep explorations of India’s artistic, literary, and cultural traditions. We present the premiere of a portrait of Krishna Baldev Vaid, along with other recent work and the landmark Nainsukh.

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  • Streaming: Éric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons

    April 23–July 31, 2021

    Shot on location in various regions of France in the 1990s, when Éric Rohmer was at the height of his powers, this four-film cycle probes the psychological and philosophical mysteries of love—elusive, imagined, or manifest.

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  • Streaming—Out of the Vault: Sara Kathryn Arledge & Media Burn

    March 5–July 11, 2021

    Highlighting works from BAMPFA collections, we celebrate the publication of two new books: Serene for the Moment: Sara Kathryn Arledge, edited by Irene Georgia Tsatsos; and Media Burn: Ant Farm and the Making of an Image, by Steve Seid.

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  • Streaming—Max von Sydow: The Best Stradivarius

    March 5–May 10, 2021

    Our tribute to the towering Swedish actor Max von Sydow, who died a year ago, features some of his great work with Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal, The Passion of Anna), Jan Troell (The Emigrants), and Bille August (Pelle the Conqueror), among others. Distinguished guest presenters in pre-recorded conversations will include Liv Ullmann, Jan Troell, and UC Berkeley’s very own professor Linda H. Rugg.

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  • Streaming: The New Brazilian Cinema

    January 21–March 31, 2021

    In conjunction with Film Quarterly, we present recent films from the flourishing Brazilian cinema scene, highlighting works by Black, Indigenous, and queer filmmakers.

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  • Streaming: Documentary Voices 2021

    January 21–April 25, 2021

    Our annual series highlights recent international documentary films that bring a critical eye and ear, as well as an artistic vision, to questions about history and contemporary life. Conversations with filmmakers complement the programs.

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  • Streaming: Free Films for Members 2021

    Ongoing

    Our ongoing series of free films for members.

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  • Streaming: Recent Releases & Restorations 2021

    Limited Streaming Engagements

    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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  • Streaming—Existence Is Longing: Wong Kar Wai

    December 11, 2020–February 28, 2021

    This streaming retrospective features recent 4K restorations of films by Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar Wai, works of exquisite beauty, narrative complexity, and sublime emotion.

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  • Streaming—Free Films for Members: The Global Film Initiative Collection

    December 11, 2020–January 10, 2021

    This installment in our ongoing series of free films for members travels from a struggling cinematheque in Uruguay to the streets of Tbilisi and the steppes of Kyrgyzstan.

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  • Streaming—East Meets West: The Films of Ulrike Ottinger

    November 20, 2020–August 31, 2021

    German artist Ulrike Ottinger’s cinematic work encompasses ethnography, history, and fantasy. “Watching her films is like traveling through an undiscovered country of marvels” (Village Voice). 

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  • Streaming: Picture a STEMinist

    October 28, 2020–January 21, 2021

    Three recent documentaries chronicle the achievements and challenges of exceptional women working in science and technology. Livestreamed talks with women in STEM complement the films.

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  • Streaming—Free Films for Members: Spotlight on Shirley Clarke

    October 24–November 28, 2020

    The fall installment in our members-only free streaming series features three programs by Shirley Clarke, one of American cinema’s true independents. 

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  • Documentary Voices 2021

    September 1–November 10, 2021

    This fall our ongoing series Documentary Voices returns to BAMPFA’s Barbro Osher Theater with a selection of classic and contemporary nonfiction films that bring history to light in a variety of engaging and inventive ways.

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  • Streaming—Exit West: Immigration on Film

    September 8–November 20, 2020

    The films in this miniseries reflect on the experiences of people living in transit, from African and Middle Eastern refugees trying to reach Europe to Latin American and Asian immigrants in the United States. Several filmmakers will join us online to discuss their work.

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  • Streaming—Ism, Ism, Ism: Experimental Cinema in Latin America

    September 8–November 12, 2020

    Discover the vital history and vibrant present of experimental filmmaking in Latin America with three programs of short works, introduced by curator and author Jesse Lerner and complemented by livestreamed conversations with filmmakers.

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  • Streaming: Alternative Visions 2020

    September 1–November 4, 2020

    Our annual experimental cinema showcase moves online this year with streaming programs of contemporary and historical avant-garde works and special guest presentations on handmade film, Latin American animation, and more.

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  • Streaming: Romanian Cinema

    July 13–November 8, 2020

    A four-film sampler of twenty-first-century Romanian cinema: Cristi Puiu’s slacker thriller Stuff and Dough, Radu Muntean’s chronicle of revolutionary chaos The Paper Will Be Blue, Alexandru Solomon’s sardonic meta-movie The Great Communist Bank Robbery, and Lucian Pintilie’s family tragicomedy Niki and Flo.

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  • Streaming: Madeline Anderson

    July 13–October 31, 2020

    Three documentaries by boundary-breaking filmmaker Madeline Anderson—Integration Report 1, A Tribute to Malcolm X, and I Am Somebody—deliver on-the-ground reports from the front lines of the civil rights movement and the labor struggles of the sixties.

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  • Streaming: Patricio Guzmán’s Chile Trilogy

    May 8–August 16, 2020

    In Nostalgia for the Light, The Pearl Button, and The Cordillera of Dreams, Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán explores his country’s traumatic history through cinematic meditations on landscape, geography, and time.

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  • Streaming: Free Films for Members 2020

    May 30–December 28, 2020

    We’re grateful to our members for standing with BAMPFA during our temporary closure. To show our appreciation, we’re offering a series of free streaming films just for members.

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  • Streaming: Three Films by István Szabó

    May 20–August 2, 2020

    Now available for streaming, three award-winning, recently restored films by Hungarian master István Szabó: Confidence, Mephisto, and Colonel Redl, parables of life under political oppression and individual morality in the face of momentous events.

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  • Pina Bausch on Screen

    April 22–May 9, 2020

    In conjunction with a Cal Performances appearance by Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, we feature films about, by, and influenced by Bausch, whose work transformed the visual and emotional vocabulary of dance.

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  • Streaming: Recent Releases & Restorations 2020

    Limited Streaming Engagements

    April 17–December 31, 2020

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

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  • The Cinema of the Absurd: Eastern European Film 1960–1989

    March 26–May 15, 2020

    A series of stark, scathing, and playful films from the former socialist republics of Eastern Europe, where absurdity was a fact of life under authoritarian rule—and a source of cinematic creativity.

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  • GLAS Animation Festival at BAMPFA 2020

    March 20–22, 2020

    BAMPFA welcomes filmmakers Pia Borg and Caroline Leaf and hosts a special lecture by Simón Wilches-Castro on Latin American animation, all part of the fifth annual GLAS Animation Festival.

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  • Afterimage: Souleymane Cissé

    March 12–15, 2020

    BAMPFA is honored to host one of the giants of African cinema, Malian filmmaker Souleymane Cissé, who presents three of his films and is joined in conversation by Nigerian writer and scholar Akin Adesokan.

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  • East Meets West: The Films of Ulrike Ottinger

    March 8–June 28, 2020

    In conjunction with the MATRIX exhibition of her photographs, Ulrike Ottinger returns to BAMPFA for a series of her films, which encompass ethnography, history, and fantasy. “Watching her films is like traveling through an undiscovered country of marvels” (Village Voice).

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  • Francis Ford Coppola and 50 Years of American Zoetrope

    Starting March 5, 2020

    Fifty years after the founding of American Zoetrope, we celebrate the studio and its co-creator, Francis Ford Coppola. Along with Coppola’s works, the series features films by George Lucas, Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa, and more.

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  • African Film Festival 2020

    March 4–May 8, 2020

    This year’s edition of the African Film Festival welcomes new voices and veteran filmmakers from both the African continent and the diaspora, spotlighting stories, communities, and struggles rarely seen in Western cinema.

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  • Documentary Voices 2020

    February 5–April 29, 2020

    Our annual series showcases an international array of recent and historical nonfiction films.

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  • In Focus: Federico Fellini

    Lecture/Screening Series

    January 29–April 1, 2020

    Explore Federico Fellini’s work in depth with this lecture/screening series complementing our Fellini retrospective.

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  • Federico Fellini at 100

    January 16–May 21, 2020

    A centennial celebration of one of the greats of international art cinema, a master of memory, dreams, fantasy, and desire.

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  • Fritz Lang’s Indian Epic

    January 11 and 25, 2020

    Lang’s late-period two-part epic is a fantasia of flamboyant set pieces and exotic colors shown off to full effect in this recent restoration.

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  • Next Door to Darkness: The Films of David Lynch

    January 10–February 29, 2020

    A retrospective of David Lynch’s big-screen work—a journey into a universe both banal and bizarre, incomparably strange and unsettlingly familiar.

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  • Agnès Varda: An Irresistible Force

    December 20, 2019–February 28, 2020

    Vive la Varda! We pay tribute to a founding mother of the French New Wave, who died at age ninety in 2019—an inspiring and vital artist to the end.

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  • Afterimage: J. Hoberman on Movie Culture in the Age of Reagan

    December 11–12, 2019

    Film critic and historian J. Hoberman presents two films and offers his insights on the intersection between politics and pop culture in Ronald Reagan’s America. 

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  • Perspectives on History: Romanian Cinema Since 1989

    December 6, 2019–February 27, 2020

    Thirty years after the fall of the Ceauşescu regime, this series samples the best in Romanian cinema from the last three decades.

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  • Strange: Surrealist Tendencies in Cinema

    November 6–10, 2019

    Encounter uncanny landscapes, enigmatic characters, and other mysteries and wonders in these screenings presented in conjunction with the exhibition Strange.

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  • Soviet Silent Cinema: Peter Bagrov on Treasures from the BAMPFA Collection

    Lecture/Screening Series

    November 6–10, 2019

    Film archivist Peter Bagrov joins us to share his deep expertise on Soviet cinema with this series of silent classics and rarities from the BAMPFA collection.

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  • Jacques Tati: Comedy as Choreography

    October 25–November 30, 2019

    Revel in the modernist comedy of Jacques Tati—both his slapstick exploits as Monsieur Hulot and his astonishing talent behind the camera.

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  • 42nd Mill Valley Film Festival at BAMPFA

    October 5–12, 2019

    BAMPFA is pleased to partner with the Mill Valley Film Festival to present selected screenings from MVFF42 in the Barbro Osher Theater.

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  • Zheng Junli: From Shanghai’s Golden Age to the Cultural Revolution

    October 3–November 16, 2019

    Anchored by new restorations from the China Film Archive, this series explores the extraordinary career of Zheng Junli, an actor, director, film theorist, and victim of the Cultural Revolution.

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  • In Focus: The British New Wave

    Lecture/Screening Series

    October 2–23, 2019

    Film historian David Thomson expands on our British New Wave retrospective with a series of four illuminating presentations on the writers, directors, and actors of sixties Britain.

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  • Looking Back at the British New Wave

    September 21–November 30, 2019

    Look back at 1950s and ’60s British cinema and rediscover the England of Angry Young Men and working-class heroes, boundary-crossing writing and innovative direction, and electrifying acting by the likes of Richard Burton, Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay, and Julie Christie.

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  • No Regrets: A Celebration of Marlon Riggs

    September 19–November 25, 2019

    In his lucid and provocative video essays, Marlon Riggs grappled with African American culture, representation, and identity. This retrospective presents all of his films, in dialogue with works by other filmmakers.

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  • Out of the Vault: Native American Reelism

    September 12–November 14, 2019

    Drawn from the BAMPFA collection, three programs of films by and about Native Americans explore geographical belonging and dislocation, political and social action, and questions of representation.

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  • Berkeley Film Foundation: Celebrating Ten Years of Local Filmmaking

    September 12–October 27, 2019

    The Berkeley Film Foundation is an essential lifeline for East Bay filmmakers. We celebrate BFF’s tenth anniversary with a diverse selection of films—many with makers in person—including two free screenings on BAMPFA’s  outdoor screen.

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  • Alternative Visions 2019

    September 4–November 13, 2019

    Our annual series of avant-garde and artist-made films returns with a stellar roster of in-person guests, as well as programs of strange and wonderful surrealist works from around the world.

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  • War and Peace

    September 1–27, 2019

    Back by popular demand! Sergei Bondarchuk’s Academy Award–winning adaptation of Tolstoy’s revered novel was hailed by Roger Ebert as “the definitive epic of all time”; it demands to be seen on the big screen.

     

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  • In Focus: Abbas Kiarostami

    Lecture/Screening Series

    August 28–September 25, 2019

    Complementing our Abbas Kiarostami retrospective, special guest lecturers offer varied perspectives on the great Iranian director’s work.

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  • Abbas Kiarostami: Life as Art

    August 2–December 21, 2019

    Iran’s most influential director, Kiarostami made films that blended fiction and documentary, minimalism and spontaneity, poetic vision and humanist spirit. We present a near-complete retrospective of his work.

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  • Against Authority: The Cinema of Masaki Kobayashi

    July 20–August 18, 2019

    A rare chance to see 35mm prints of films by a key figure in mid-twentieth-century Japanese cinema, including his masterwork, the three-part antiwar epic The Human Condition.

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  • View Finders: Women Cinematographers

    July 12–November 21, 2019

    Showcasing the artistic visions of female cinematographers around the world, this series asks whether there is such a thing as a “female gaze.”

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  • Jean-Pierre Léaud at 75

    July 4–August 30, 2019

    This series surveys the career of a French New Wave icon, from his youthful roles as François Truffaut’s alter ego Antoine Doinel to his embodiment of a dying Louis XIV.

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  • Fritz Lang’s America

    June 21–August 11, 2019

    This lineup of Lang’s films made and set in the United States amounts to a noir tour of the psychosocial landscape of twentieth-century America, a land of systemic corruption, thwarted aspiration, and frustrated desire.

     

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  • Cine Manifest: A Radical 1970s Film Collective

    June 20–30, 2019

    Active in the 1970s, the Bay Area–based political film collective Cine Manifest is little known today, but their works still speak to our own troubled times. Former members join us to reminisce and present their works in person.

     

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  • It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll: Free Outdoor Screenings

    June 13–August 8, 2019

    Three free events on our outdoor screen take the rock 'n' roll music to the streets.

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  • It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll

    June 13–August 31, 2019

    Rock ’n’ roll is the soundtrack to summer at BAMPFA as we celebrate the roots and resonance of rock in cinema. Three free events on our outdoor screen take the music to the streets.

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  • Looking Again at Orson Welles

    June 9–July 10, 2019

    An intriguing new documentary on Welles’s multifaceted creative career is the inspiration for this series revisiting several of his landmark films.

     

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  • Julio Bracho and Mexican Cinema’s Golden Age

    June 7–July 18, 2019

    From raucous music-hall comedy to tough urban noir, this selection of digitally restored works showcases the range and artistry of a master craftsman of midcentury Mexican cinema.

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  • War and Peace

    June 1–15, 2019

    Sergei Bondarchuk’s Academy Award–winning adaptation of Tolstoy’s revered novel, following good-hearted Pierre, battle-scarred Andrei, and tempestuous Natasha through the tumult of the Napoleonic Wars, was hailed by Roger Ebert as “the definitive epic of all time”; it demands to be seen on the big screen. Part I moves between ballroom and battlefield, hinging on the disastrous Battle of Austerlitz.

     

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  • Hirokazu Kore-eda: Reprise Screenings

    May 2–18, 2019

    Missed a screening in our recent In Focus series devoted to Kore-eda, or want to revisit a favorite film? Here’s a second chance to explore the acclaimed Japanese director’s work.

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  • Boundless: Pema Tseden’s Cinema of Tibet

    April 25–May 12, 2019

    Three films from a leading figure in Tibet’s emergent cinema, whose works have received acclaim worldwide and brought both the cultural vibrancy and the social concerns of contemporary Tibet to a global audience.

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  • 62nd San Francisco International Film Festival at BAMPFA

    April 11–21, 2019

    BAMPFA is proud to partner with the San Francisco International Film Festival, an annual global showcase of cinematic discovery and a major cultural event in the Bay Area.

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  • GLAS Animation Festival at BAMPFA

    March 23–24, 2019

    Two programs from the GLAS Animation Festival showcase short works by Dennis Tupicoff and Jim Trainor, with the artists in person.

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  • Remembering Nelson Pereira dos Santos

    March 15–May 8, 2019

    A tribute to a founding member of Brazil’s Cinema Novo movement, whose fiery but loving dissections of postcolonial society helped put the Global South on the cinematic map.

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  • In Focus: Hirokazu Kore-eda

    Lecture/Screening Series

    March 13–April 24, 2019

    This lecture/screening series is a chance to explore the stylistically restrained yet psychologically probing work of one of the most acclaimed directors working today.

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  • Delphine Seyrig: Resistant Muse

    March 8–April 27, 2019

    A tribute to an actress who contributed her profound intelligence, professional expertise, and sublime beauty to some of the most memorable films of the twentieth century, including Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman and Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad.

     

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  • African Film Festival 2019

    March 2–May 10, 2019

    This year’s edition of the annual festival highlights the best of both new African cinema and films of the black diaspora, including a two-film tribute to the great Bill Gunn.

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  • Painters Painting

    March 1–April 28, 2019

    Inspired by BAMPFA’s Hans Hofmann retrospective, we screen a selection of exceptional films about painters and painting, from Van Gogh to Basquiat, Giotto to Joan Mitchell.

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  • Afterimage: Ulrike Ottinger

    March 1–May 17, 2019

    The German filmmaker joins us for a weeklong residency. From fantastical feminist fictions to ethnographic explorations, her films reflect a keen and wide-ranging eye for the marvelous.

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  • Out of the Vault: Black Interiors

    February 21–April 4, 2019

    Delve into rarely seen educational, ethnographic, and experimental films from the BAMPFA’s collection with The Black Aesthetic.

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  • James Ivory in Person

    February 20–23, 2019

    The celebrated writer and director best known as half of the Merchant Ivory duo visits BAMPFA with early films that offer perspectives on postcolonial India.

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  • Rhythms from Life: Jia Zhangke

    February 6–17, 2019

    We survey the work of the internationally celebrated director whose films depict China’s relentless socioeconomic transformation and the people it leaves behind.

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  • Life Goes On: The Films of Mia Hansen-Løve

    January 25–February 14, 2019

    Mia Hansen-Løve’s profoundly humanist films are keenly attuned to the rhythms of life. The director joins us to present her work along with a selection of films she admires.

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  • Documentary Voices 2019

    January 23–April 24, 2019

    Our annual series of nonfiction films showcases inventive approaches to the documentary form.

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  • In Focus: Writing for Cinema

    January 16–February 27, 2019 View

  • Out of the Vault

    January 13–April 4, 2019

    Delve into BAMPFA’s collection of avant-garde film with screenings of work by Frank Stauffacher, Warren Sonbert, and Nathaniel Dorsky, plus programs guest curated by The Black Aesthetic.

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  • Movie Matinees for All Ages 2019

    Ongoing

    Treat the family to an afternoon at the movies.

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  • Limited Engagements & Special Screenings 2019

    Ongoing

    Recent releases, restored classics, and special guests grace the Barbro Osher Theater.

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  • Japanese Film Classics from the BAMPFA Collection

    December 12, 2018–January 27, 2019

    This series showcases 35mm archival prints from BAMPFA’s outstanding Japanese cinema collection, from Mizoguchi to Miyazaki.

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  • Fritz Lang & German Expressionism

    December 7, 2018–February 23, 2019

    Our tribute to this essential director presents his German films alongside other enthralling works of German Expressionist cinema.

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  • The Puppet Master: The Films of Jiří Trnka

    December 1–19, 2018

    A selection of enchanting stop-motion films by a Czech puppeteer with the heart of a poet.

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  • Bergman 100: Full Circle

    December 1–30, 2018

    The final installment in our yearlong celebration of the films of Ingmar Bergman features some of his greatest works, including the full-length TV version of his magnum opus, Fanny and Alexander.

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  • Afterimage: Corneliu Porumboiu

    November 8–16, 2018

    The Romanian filmmaker who has been called “one of our great contemporary observers of the human comedy” (Variety) visits BAMPFA to present and discuss his work.

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  • Jean Vigo Regained

    November 2–23, 2018

    This series showcases new restorations of all four of Vigo’s playful and poetic films, plus rushes and outtakes that illuminate his innovative technique.

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  • Bergman 100: Late Works

    Salon Screenings in Theater 2

    October 28–November 30, 2018

    Presented in the intimate setting of BAMPFA’s Theater 2, three of Ingmar Bergman’s late works for television show his abiding interest in themes of desire, spirituality, and mortality.

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  • Afterimage: Agnieszka Holland

    October 25–28, 2018

    Born in Poland, educated in Prague, and active internationally, the illustrious director for film and television joins us to discuss her work.

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  • 1968 and Global Cinema

    October 19–November 29, 2018

    In conjunction with a new book, this series focuses on the radical cinema that emerged from the political and social upheavals of the late sixties.

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  • First-Person Cinema: Marie Menken, Margaret Tait, and Ute Aurand

    October 17–21, 2018

    German film artist Ute Aurand joins us to present her lyrical works alongside shorts by American underground filmmaker Marie Menken and Scottish film poet Margaret Tait.

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  • Chinese Cinema Classics: Screen Idols and Stardom Reexamined

    October 5–14, 2018

    Critic, collector, and Chinese film expert Paul Fonoroff is our guest for this series of films featuring some of pre-World War II China’s greatest screen stars.

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  • Mark Morris Presents: In the Age of Pepperland

    September 28–November 25, 2018

    Choreographer Mark Morris selects a series of films that reflect the irrepressible creativity of the late sixties and inspired his dance work Pepperland.

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  • Luchino Visconti: Cinema of Struggle and Splendor

    September 14–November 30, 2018

    A retrospective of a key artist of the Italian cinema, who combined the profound humanism of neorealism with the drama, beauty, and epic sweep of opera to create films rich in resonance and throbbing with life.

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  • Frederick Wiseman: On Documentary

    September 13–October 12, 2018

    BAMPFA is honored by a visit from Wiseman, whose incisive, wide-ranging explorations of complex institutions have set a standard for nonfiction filmmaking.

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  • Alternative Visions 2018

    September 5–November 28, 2018

    This expansive season of our avant-garde showcase extends from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present, with many filmmakers and other luminaries in person.

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  • Between Politics and Poetry: Makhmalbaf Film House

    September 1–October 20, 2018

    This series focuses on Iran’s Makhmalbaf family of filmmakers—Mohsen; his wife, Marziyeh Meshkini; and their daughters Samira and Hana—whose works offer thoughtful portraits of life on the margins, whether in Tehran, Tajikistan, Kurdistan, or post-Taliban Afghanistan.

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  • Bergman 100: Discoveries & Rarities

    September 1–November 4, 2018

    This installment in our yearlong centennial tribute to Ingmar Bergman highlights diverse facets of his remarkable cinematic output, from his documentaries about the island of Fårö to his international productions of the 1970s.

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  • In Focus: Ingmar Bergman

    Lecture/Screening Series

    August 29–November 28, 2018

    Explore Ingmar Bergman’s work in depth with this series featuring an expert lecture and discussion at each screening.

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  • Andrei Tarkovsky: Sculpting in Time

    August 4–30, 2018

    A tribute to the revered Russian director whose visionary films infuse images of the world with metaphysical mystery.

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  • Subtle Subversion: The Films of Alain Tanner

    July 26–August 19, 2018

    Championing dreamers and dropouts, political radicals and disaffected youth, Tanner’s films from the late 1960s to the early 1980s feel just as urgent today.

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  • Bergman 100: An Emerging Style

    Salon Screenings in Theater 2

    July 20–August 19, 2018

    Enjoy rarely screened works by Ingmar Bergman in an intimate, salon-style setting.

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  • Jacques Becker

    July 12–August 31, 2018

    From hardboiled crime sagas to breezy portraits of postwar Parisian life, the films of this classic French director are ripe for rediscovery.

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  • Aki Kaurismäki: Films from the Other Side of Hope

    July 6–August 5, 2018

    Pay a visit to Kaurismäki’s unique cinematic universe, where melodrama meets minimalism and bitter reality is tempered with deadpan comedy.

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  • Michelangelo Antonioni

    June 15–August 31, 2018

    This comprehensive retrospective is a rare chance to explore the full range of an Italian modernist master’s formally dazzling work.

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  • Sunday Summer Cinema: Dancing in the Streets

    June 10–October 14, 2018

    This series of family-friendly dance films on our outdoor LED screen will have you moving and grooving all summer!

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  • The Luminous Legacy of Greta Garbo

    June 7–July 13, 2018

    Bask in the radiance of one of cinema’s greatest stars with this big-screen celebration of Garbo’s subtle skill and timeless allure.

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  • Early Music on Film 2018

    June 2–16, 2018

    In conjunction with the Berkeley Festival, this series features live musical performances along with films meant to be heard, not just seen.

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  • Bergman 100: A Summer Interlude

    June 1–July 15, 2018

    Our yearlong celebration of Ingmar Bergman’s cinema continues this summer, showcasing films that launched his international reputation in the 1950s.

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  • R. W. Fassbinder’s Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day

    Bay Area Premiere of Digital Restoration

    May 11–13, 2018

    Fassbinder’s long-unseen television miniseries is “a brilliantly layered chamber drama about an eccentric family and their economic and cultural environment” (Film Comment).

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  • Auteur, Author: Films and Literature 2018

    Presented in Collaboration with the Bay Area Book Festival

    April 25–29, 2018

    BAMPFA partners with the Bay Area Book Festival to present films that celebrate, adapt, or creatively reinterpret the written word and its practitioners.

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  • The Anxiety of Identity: The Films of Lucrecia Martel

    April 20–May 10, 2018

    The Argentine director pays a visit to BAMPFA for this retrospective of her atmospheric, compelling films.

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  • 61st San Francisco International Film Festival at BAMPFA

    April 5–15, 2018 View

  • Bergman 100: The Early Years

    Salon Screenings in Theater 2

    March 16–May 6, 2018

    Screenings in Theater 2 invite you to enjoy Ingmar Bergman’s early works in an intimate, salon-style setting.

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  • African Film Festival 2018

    March 8–May 6, 2018

    This annual festival showcases the best of African cinema and films from the diaspora.

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  • Bergman 100: The Silence of God

    March 1–May 9, 2018

    This installment in our yearlong tribute to Ingmar Bergman focuses on his metaphysical investigations, as well as his collaboration with actor Max von Sydow.

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  • Documenting Vietnam

    Self-Portraits of America at War

    February 28–April 29, 2018

    Powerful and innovative documentaries reveal the impact of the Vietnam War on the way Americans perceived themselves.

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  • Sergei Eisenstein: Films That Shook the World

    February 9–April 21, 2018

    This major retrospective celebrates one of cinema’s most pioneering and influential figures, whose theory of montage shaped the way films are made and understood.

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  • Bergman 100: A Tribute to Liv Ullmann

    February 1–24, 2018

    We begin a yearlong centennial celebration of the great director Ingmar Bergman with a visit from one of his closest collaborators, actress Liv Ullmann.

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  • Reverse Angle: Cinema Looks at Itself

    January 20–April 1, 2018

    This rich array of fiction, nonfiction, and experimental works interrogates film as a medium and asks what cinema’s social and cultural role is or could be.

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  • Movie Matinees for All Ages 2018

    Ongoing

    Treat the family to a Saturday afternoon at the movies.

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  • In Focus: Eisenstein and His Contemporaries

    Lecture/Screening Series

    January 17–May 2, 2018

    Explore the work of celebrated Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein in the context of his times with screenings and lectures by Eisenstein expert Anne Nesbet.

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  • Documentary Voices 2018

    January 17–April 18, 2018

    Our annual documentary series spotlights politically engaged works ranging from Colombia to Portugal to the Canadian North.

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  • Ida Lupino: Hard, Fast, and Beautiful

    January 13–February 24, 2018

    A talented actress turned groundbreaking director, Lupino left an indelible impression on cinema from both sides of the camera.

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  • Limited Engagements & Special Screenings 2018

    Ongoing

    Recent releases, restored classics, and special guests grace the Barbro Osher Theater.

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  • Polish Animation: 70 Years

    December 3–20, 2017

    This survey ranges from the subversive experiments of the Soviet era to the surreal, comic, and lyrical works of Polish animators today.

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  • Hayoun Kwon in Person

    November 12–15, 2017

    The artist presents works that explore personal memories and political realities in imaginative and inventive ways.

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  • What's a Human Anyway? Films from the Global Lens Collection

    November 11–December 21, 2017

    From Tajikistan to Uruguay, Mali to Vietnam, these films offer perspectives on human experience that are both distinctly local and universal.

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  • The Art of Cinematography

    November 5–December 29, 2017

    Revel in cinema as a visual art with this international lineup of celebrated classics and lesser-known discoveries.

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  • In the Mood for Maggie Cheung

    November 3–December 16, 2017

    Moving effortlessly between genres and languages, this iconic contemporary actress imbues each of her characters with uncommon wit, strength, and grace.

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  • A Choice of Weapons: The Films of Gordon Parks

    November 3–December 1, 2017

    This series focuses on celebrated photographer Gordon Parks’s groundbreaking and powerful work as a filmmaker.

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  • In Focus: Filmmakers on the Language of Cinema

    November 1–15, 2017

    Filmmakers Peter Mettler, Emiko Omori, and Elliot Davis shed light on the distinctive visual language of cinema in this lecture/screening series.

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  • Afterimage: Peter Mettler

    November 1–5, 2017

    Mettler joins us to discuss his evocative films, which use the imagistic quality of cinema to express metaphysical concerns.

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  • Afterimage: Kevin Jerome Everson

    October 25–26, 2017

    Everson's films examine formal practices and structures of history while chronicling everyday African American life. Author Michael B. Gillespie joins him in conversation.

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  • Fallen Idols: Graham Greene on Screen

    October 6–28, 2017

    Films written by Greene or based on his fiction illustrate his famous axiom: “human nature is not black and white but black and grey.”

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  • A Golden Age of Chinese Cinema, 1947–52

    September 30–October 21, 2017

    Rare films imported from the China Film Archive reveal an exceptionally fertile period in the nation’s cinema history.

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  • Chantal Akerman by Chantal Akerman

    September 24–October 29, 2017

    We pay tribute to the late filmmaker with a selection of her most autobiographical works, which combine formal rigor with empathy and insight.

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  • Alternative Visions 2017

    September 20–December 3, 2017

    BAMPFA's avant-garde showcase is a chance to explore the rich history of experimental cinema.

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  • Owsley Brown, A Filmmaker’s Journey

    September 15–October 29, 2017

    The local documentary maker presents his films reflecting on the power of music and the creative harmonies of our shared world.

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  • Reflection and Resistance: James Baldwin and Cinema

    September 14–November 16, 2017

    This series explores James Baldwin’s encounter with cinema and his contributions to American intellectual life.

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  • Canyon Cinema 50

    September 13–November 29, 2017

    A tribute to Canyon’s fifty-year history of providing access to artist-made films and expanding the idea of what cinema can be.

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  • Amit Dutta’s Cinematic Museum

    September 3–10, 2017

    Examining India’s contemporary artists and classical painters, Dutta’s process-oriented films attest to the ardor of art history.

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  • Marlon Brando: The Fugitive Kind

    September 1–October 28, 2017

    BAMPFA showcases the indelible roles of an actor who transformed male performance on film, from A Streetcar Named Desire to The Godfather.

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  • Terence Davies: Cinema, Memory, Emotion

    August 19–27, 2017

    We celebrate the release of the British writer-director's latest film, a biography of Emily Dickinson, with a selection of his beautifully nuanced works.

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  • Screen Play

    A Free Outdoor Festival of Theater on Film

    July 29 & August 19, 2017

    BAMPFA's outdoor screen comes to life this summer with vibrant film adaptations of noted stage productions.

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  • Screen Play

    A Free Outdoor Festival of Theater on Film

    July 29 & August 19, 2017

    BAMPFA's outdoor screen comes to life this summer with vibrant film adaptations of noted stage productions. Bring a lawn chair or blanket and enjoy the show! 

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  • Screen Play

    A Free Outdoor Festival of Theater on Film

    July 29 & August 19, 2017

    BAMPFA's outdoor screen comes to life this summer with vibrant film adaptations of noted stage productions.

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  • Women’s Troubles: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar

    July 27–August 31, 2017

    Heartfelt melodrama meets candy-colored camp in the Spanish director's tales of women's struggles and solidarity.

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  • Band of Outsiders: Women Crime Writers

    June 29–August 17, 2017

    Adaptations of tales by Patricia Highsmith, Vera Caspary, Dorothy B. Hughes, and others reveal the dark side of "women's writing."

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  • Samurai Rebellion: Toshiro Mifune, Screen Icon

    June 15–August 30, 2017

    In films by Akira Kurosawa and others, Mifune showed astonishing vitality and range. We present a dozen of his iconic roles, plus a new documentary.

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  • Melville 100

    June 8–August 12, 2017

    This retrospective marks the centennial of the great French director whose American-inspired crime films helped set the New Wave in motion.

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  • Summer Repertory, BAMPFA Style

    June 6–August 27, 2017

    This summer showcase spans centuries and continents with films from the BAMPFA collection and beyond.

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  • Auteur, Author: Film & Literature

    May 31–June 4, 2017

    Films that celebrate, adapt, and reinterpret writing and writers, with a stellar lineup of authors, filmmakers, and others in person.

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  • Safeguarding Cinema: Film Archivists in Person

    April 22–May 6, 2017

    BAMPFA welcomes two distinguished guests from the international film archive community, Alexander Horwath and Shivendra Singh Dungarpur.

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  • Personality Is Plot: The Films of John Cassavetes

    April 22–May 14, 2017

    A tribute to one of the great American independent filmmakers and to the indelible characters he and his actors created.

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  • 60th San Francisco International Film Festival at BAMPFA

    April 6–16, 2017

    BAMPFA is proud to be the East Bay venue for this global showcase of cinematic discovery.

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  • Cinema Mon Amour: Sharon Lockhart

    March 15–17, 2017

    The artist presents her contemplative, collaborative works in addition to films by Jean Eustache and Raymond Depardon.

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  • African Film Festival 2017

    March 9–April 28, 2017

    This annual festival draws on the best of African cinema and films from the African diaspora.

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  • In Focus: Robert Bresson

    March 8–22, 2017

    Film scholar Jeffrey Skoller offers insights into three of Bresson's films in this lecture/screening series.

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  • Grace and Perfection: The Films of Robert Bresson

    March 3–April 1, 2017

    A near-complete restrospective of the French director's austere yet compassionate work.

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  • Afterimage: Sergei Loznitsa

    February 22–24, 2017

    Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa joins us to present and discuss his work, including the award-winning Maidan and his latest, Austerlitz.

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  • Other Minds Festival at BAMPFA

    February 19, 2017

    Biographical films of composers Lou Harrison (1917–2003) and Isang Yun (1917–1995).

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  • Hippie Modernism: Cinema and Counterculture, 1964–1974

    February 7–May 20, 2017

    Films that actively participated in emerging counterculture movements of the 1960s and 1970s, presented in conjunction with the exhibiton Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia.

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  • Paz Encina: Exercises in Memory

    February 1–9, 2017

    Four evenings with Paraguayan artist, filmmaker, and humanist Paz Encina, who is the UC Regents’ Lecturer of 2017.

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  • Not Reconciled: The Cinema of Straub & Huillet

    January 26–May 14, 2017

    The duo of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet created one of the most uncompromising, yet eternally surprising, filmmaking aesthetics in postwar European cinema. Discover the films that inspired Harun Farocki, Pedro Costa, John Gianvito, and others.

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  • Documentary Voices 2017

    January–April 2017

    A selection of recent and historical documentaries that extend the nonfiction form in provocative ways. 

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  • Movie Matinees for All Ages 2017

    Ongoing

    Treat the family to a Saturday afternoon at the movies.

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  • On Dangerous Ground: The Cinema of Nicholas Ray

    January 19–February 25, 2017 View

  • In Focus: Hollywood Outsiders

    Lecture/Screening Series

    January 18–March 1, 2017

    A seven-week lecture/screening course with film historian David Thomson focusing on Hollywood directors who were at odds with the studio system. Special admission applies.

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  • Limited Engagements & Special Screenings 2017

    Ongoing

    Recent releases, restored classics, and special guests grace the Barbro Osher Theater.

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  • World Trilogies: Pagnol's Fanny Trilogy

    December 28–30, 2016 View

  • World Trilogies: Kieslowski’s Three Colors

    December 9–18, 2016 View

  • Cinema Mon Amour: Fall 2016

    November 27–December 8, 2016

    David and Janet Peoples, Justin Desmangles, and Daniel Clowes present films that inspire them.

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  • Arrows of Desire: The Films of Powell & Pressburger

    November 19–December 30, 2016

    The witty, daring, and lavish films of writer-director-producer duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, including the influential Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, and A Matter of Life and Death.

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  • Afterimage: Madeline Anderson

    Filmmakers & Critics in Conversation

    November 17–18, 2016 View

  • Cinema Mon Amour: Robert Beavers

    November 9–14, 2016

    Avant-garde filmmaker Robert Beavers comes to BAMPFA for a weeklong residency to show his own work alongside films that have inspired him.

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  • Three Lives: Classics of Contemporary African American Cinema

    November 5–December 1, 2016

    Spanning several decades and employing radically different cinematic styles, three films revolving around the daily lives of young black men: Do the Right Thing, Killer of Sheep, Fruitvale Station.

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  • World Trilogies: Ray's Apu Trilogy

    November 4–December 30, 2016 View

  • Committed Cinema: Alanis Obomsawin

    November 3–6, 2016

    The films of Committed Cinema guest Alanis Obomsawin reveal the effects of colonialist history and destructive government policy on indigenous Canadians and show the power of resistance in First Nations communities. 

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  • 80th Anniversary of the Spanish Civil War

    October 13, 2016

    Peter Carroll introduces The Good Fight: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War in conjunction with other UC Berkeley campus events commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War.

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  • Afterimage: Ken Jacobs

    Filmmakers and Critics in Conversation

    October 12–15, 2016

    Filmmaker Ken Jacobs visits from New York to present a Nervous Magic Lantern performance, which uses pre-cinema technology to create startling, mesmerizing images, and a lecture on his teacher, painter Hans Hofmann. 

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  • Inspector Maigret on Film

    October 8–22, 2016

    Three films focusing on Georges Simenon's fictional detective: Duvivier's 1933 La tête d'un homme, Renoir's La nuit du carrefour (1932), and Chabrol's 2009 Inspector Bellamy.

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  • Committed Cinema: Zhou Hao

    Unparalleled Access

    September 30-October 2, 2016

    Acclaimed documentarian Zhou Hao visits Berkeley to present and discuss his films, which examine the impact of the massive social and economic changes in China.

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  • Anna Magnani: Eternal Soul of Italian Cinema

    September 25–December 4, 2016

    A series spotlighting Italian actress Anna Magnani, who brought a unique combination of exuberance, empathy, and intelligence to all the parts she played.

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  • Cinema Mon Amour: Mark Morris

    September 24–October 1, 2016

    Choreographer Mark Morris introduces four films centering on the theme of unrequited love in conjunction with the premiere of his new production of Layla and Majnun at Cal Performances. 

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  • Committed Cinema: Hayoun Kwon

    September 21–22, 2016

    Animated films from Hayoun Kwon that explore the border between North and South Korea, as well as the border between historical and personal truth. Plus a program of animated films selected by Kwon.

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  • Afterimage: Trinh T. Minh-ha

    Filmmakers and Critics in Conversation

    September 14-17, 2016

    Internationally renowned filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha presents two of her films (including her latest, Forgetting Vietnam) and discusses them with Shannon Jackson and Akira Mizuta Lippit.

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  • Cinema Mon Amour: Ken Ueno

    September 8, 2016

    Composer/vocalist Ken Ueno presents Wim Wenders's poetic documentary Tokyo-Ga.

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  • Alternative Visions

    2016

    September 7–November 16, 2016

    Our annual series dedicated to avant-garde film.

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  • Something To Do with Death: Sergio Leone

    September 2-23

    A rare chance to see Leone's groundbreaking "spaghetti" Westerns on the big screen.

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  • Limited Engagements & Special Screenings 2016

    Fall 2016

    La Notte, Ixcanul, Elevator to the Gallows, and Hieronymus Bosch: Touched by the Devil

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  • Contemplative Cinema: Ozu's Late Films

    September 1–October 30, 2016

    Ozu’s thoughful and poetic postwar films focusing on middle-class life, including the Noriko trilogy starring Setsuko Hara.

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  • David Lynch: The Man from Another Place

    August 19–21, 2016

    Dennis Lim takes us on a five-program exploration of “the Lynchian," the world of abysmal terror, piercing beauty, and convulsive sorrow created by filmmaker David Lynch.

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  • Cinema Mon Amour

    August 11–17, 2016

    Local luminaries Tiffany Shlain, Vijay Anderson, and Gary Meyer present films that have inspired them.

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  • Hitchcock/Truffaut

    July 14–August 28, 2016

    Films by two iconic directors who changed the way we look at cinema. Inspired by the recent doc Hitchcock/Truffaut, which screens twice in this series.

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  • Vienna and the Movies

    July 7–October 9, 2016

    The influence of Vienna—an essential cockpit of modernism—on cinema. Includes films by Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, Max Ophuls, Josef von Sternberg, Billy Wilder, and more.

     

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  • Guided Tour: Museums in Cinema

    July 6–August 31, 2016

    Fiction, nonfiction, and experimental films encourage us to contemplate and debate the role of museums in contemporary society.

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  • Auteur, Author: Film & Literature 2016

    June 1–5, 2016

    Presented in collaboration with the Bay Area Book Festival, this series celebrates the dialogue between film and books and includes many literary luminaries in person.

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  • Early Music Film Festival

    May 26-June 15, 2016

    BAMPFA partners with the Berkeley Festival to celebrate Baroque music with concerts and films. 

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  • UCLA Festival of Preservation 2016

    May 15–June 26, 2016

    This traveling showcase is a grab bag of genres spanning six decades of American cinema, from comedy to melodrama to war film to Western.

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  • Wim Wenders: Portraits Along the Road

    May 13–July 30 2016

    A retrospective featuring recently restored films by Wim Wenders, "a must-see for cinephiles of all stripes” (Rodrigo Perez, Indiewire).

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  • The Films of Seijun Suzuki

    May 7–June 30, 2016

    In films ranging from B-movie potboilers to beguiling metaphysical mysteries, Seijun Suzuki's audaciously experimental approach has gained him a cult following both in Japan and abroad.

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  • Mexican Film Noir

    May 7–June 11, 2016

    See how Mexican directors took the icy cool of the Hollywood noir and turned up the heat in this sampling of films from the 1940s and 1950s in new restorations.

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  • 59th San Francisco International Film Festival at BAMPFA

    April 22–May 5, 2016

    BAMPFA is the exclusive East Bay venue for the San Francisco International Film Festival, an annual showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation.

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  • Isaac Julien

    April 20–21, 2016

    Isaac Julien, a central figure in British visual culture and queer independent cinema, presents his boundary-pushing work over two evenings. 

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  • In Focus: Japanese Film Classics

    April 6–May 11, 2016

    In this lecture/screening series, experts guide us in an exploration of key works of Japanese cinema.

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  • Committed Cinema: Charles Ferguson

    March 30–April 4, 2016

    Three powerful documentaries from Charles Ferguson, including his latest, about climate change.

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  • The Cinematic Landscapes of Nuri Bilge Ceylan

    March 24–April 17, 2016

    Discover the complex and subtle films of Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, "one of the most important auteurs working today" (NY Times), including his latest, the Palme d'Or recipient Winter Sleep.

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  • Jean Epstein

    March 4–April 10, 2016

    Revolutionary cinema from French director Jean Epstein (1897–1953), including his poetic adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher.

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  • Eduardo Coutinho: A Cinema of Listening

    February 25–April 15, 2016

    Stories told by everyday people about their lives—"films as conversations"—from legendary Brazilian documentarian Eduardo Coutinho (1933–2014).

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  • Movie Matinees for All Ages 2016

    Ongoing

    Introduce young people to the joys of the big-screen cinematic experience with Saturday afternoons at the movies.

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  • Cinema Mon Amour: Guy Maddin

    February 12–14, 2016

    Join wildly entertaining filmmaker Guy Maddin as he presents his own work, including 2015's The Forbidden Room, plus some of his favorites from film history.

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  • African Film Festival 2016

    February 11–March 19, 2016

    The festival spotlights new work from Africa and the African diaspora, including a new crop of documentaries.

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  • In Focus: The Role of Film Archives

    February 10–March 16

    Go behind the scenes with this lecture/screening series featuring presentations by America’s leading film archivists.

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  • Documentary Voices 2016

    February 10–April 13, 2016

    A selection of recent and historical films that extend the documentary form in provocative ways. With Alan Berliner as our first Les Blank Lecturer.

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  • Love Exists: The Films of Maurice Pialat

    February 5–March 25, 2016

    Pialat (1925–2003) is considered the greatest French filmmaker of the post–New Wave era. A gifted storyteller, Pialat made films that capture the authenticity of real life. 

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  • Cinema Mon Amour

    Opening Week Celebration

    February 3–7, 2016

    Celebrate and remember our storied past as we embark on this exciting new chapter in our institution’s history.

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  • Afterimage: Nino Kirtadze

    Filmmakers & Critics in Conversation

    Filmmaker Nino Kirtadze is known for documentaries that explore contemporary Georgia, Russia, or the relationship between the two. She joins us for short residency to present her work and to discuss them, and the issues they raise, with film critic Michael Guillen. 

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  • An Open Window: Víctor Erice

    July 29–August 2, 2015

    Spanish director Víctor Erice is revered for his masterpieces of contemplative cinema, reflecting on childhood, cinema, and the passing of time. We are honored that Erice will visit BAM/PFA to present his complete oeuvre of feature films and discuss his work with curator and professor Richard Peña.

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  • New Video Art from India

    A program of recent video art from India, including work from Mumbai, Goa, and New Delhi. Titles include Logic of Birds, Man with Cockerel, Fjaka, Iceboat, Between the Waves, Forerunner, and Night Noon. 

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  • The Poetry of Time: Andrei Tarkovsky

    Influential Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) "invented a new language, true to the nature of film" (Ingmar Bergman). This complete retrospective extends from Tarkovsky's powerful first film, Ivan's Childhood (1962), to his final, the elegiac The Sacrifice (1986). 

     

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  • Cinema According to Víctor Erice

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  • Melodrama Master: John M. Stahl

    If you like Douglas Sirk, you'll love John M. Stahl. Stahl (1886–1950 ), the original Hollywood melodrama master.

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  • The Phantom Foe

    Experience a classic of the silent serial genre with the fifteen hair-raising episodes of this adventure tale featuring the Phantom Foe, an elusive and sinister criminal mastermind. “A rediscovered proto-feminist masterpiece of terror and tension!” (Jurij Meden, George Eastman House). With live musical accompaniment. 

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  • Sunday Funnies: Laurel & Hardy and W.C. Fields

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  • A Theater Near You (2015)

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  • Thanks to Henri Langlois: A Centennial Tribute

    One of the final series in our current theater honors French film archivist and cinephile Henri Langlois (1914–1977), who inspired the international cinematheque movement and whose approach greatly informed the vision of BAM/PFA. Our tribute includes French silent cinema as well as work by Langlois’s favorite auteurs, Tod Browning, Ernst Lubitsch, Jean Renoir, Erich von Stroheim, and others. 

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  • Afterimage: J.P. Sniadecki

    Filmmakers & Critics in Conversation

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  • Committed Cinema: Thomas Allen Harris

    Thomas Allen Harris (E Minha Cara/That’s My Face, VINTAGE: Families of Value) situates stories of his own family within larger contexts to open possibilities of political action and social change. He visits BAM/PFA to present two of his visually striking and insightful essay films and discuss his new groundbreaking documentary on African American photographers with UC Berkeley professor Leigh Raiford, author of Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle.

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  • CAAMFest 2015

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  • Serialities 1915/2015

    2/25/15 to 2/27/15 The programs in this series, presented as part of the Third International Berkeley Conference on Film and Media, reflect just a fraction of what can happen when single films, artists, and television go serial. Why have serials-on television, online–become the quintessential expression of our postindustrial, digital age? Join us for some intriguing examples of the serial form and special presentations by scholars Mark Sandberg, Paolo Cherchi Usai, and Michael Zryd.. View

  • Afterimage: Filmmakers and Critics in Conversation: Mati Diop

    2/19/15 to 2/21/15 French filmmaker Mati Diop, who started as an actress in Claire Denis's 35 Shots of Rum, is known for “beautifully inscrutable” films “drawn from memory, experience, and chance encounters” (André Picard). We are delighted that Diop joins us to present and discuss her work in conversation with Genevieve Yue, coeditor of Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture. View

  • Documentary Voices 2015

    1/27/15 to 2/24/15 This year's edition of our annual spring series Documentary Voices features masters of the medium, from Robert Flaherty to Frederick Wiseman to Harun Farocki. Presented in conjunction with the UC Berkeley course History of Documentary Film taught by Linda Williams, the series continues through April. View

  • Film 50: History of Cinema

    1/21/15 to 4/29/15 Our annual film-lecture course, copresented with UC Berkeley's Department of Film and Media, showcases an exciting lineup of world cinema classics, globetrotting between continents and featuring strong examples from various film movements and historical periods. View

  • African Film Festival 2015

    1/17/15 to 2/17/15 This year's edition of our annual African Film Festival focuses on liberation movements-both today and in the past-and on women filmmakers, including one of the first women to make films in Africa, Sarah Maldoror. View

  • Jean-Luc Godard: Expect Everything from Cinema

    1/16/15 to 2/13/15 Our yearlong Jean-Luc Godard retrospective continues with some of the master's more recent films, as well as two of his monumental, rarely screened serial essays, France/tour/détour/deux/enfants and Histoire(s) du cinéma. “A body of work that is truly rich and strange, and as ambitious, diverse, and inspiring as anything (Godard) produced in his supposed 1960s heyday” (Michael Temple & James S. Williams). View

  • Ready for His Close-Up: The Films of Billy Wilder

    1/15/15 to 2/28/15 The superlative American director Billy Wilder, who wrote and directed over two dozen films, worked the fine, serrated edge between-between dark noirs and ribald comedies, between blithe romance and sorrowful drama. Our series showcases his pithy storylines, breakneck banter, and award-winning casts, and includes Sunset Blvd., Double Indemnity, Sabrina, The Lost Weekend, Some Like It Hot, and more. View

  • Mario Monicelli: Satires, Capers & Sendups

    View

  • Jean-Luc Godard: Expect Everything from Cinema

    11/8/14 to 12/13/14 Godard's films from the 1980s, the focus of this installment in our ongoing retrospective, mark a (relative) return to narrative. Genres from slapstick to detective stories are mined, juxtaposition and fragmentation are enlisted, and sound and image angle for supremacy. Ultimately, though, Godard continues to interrogate what cinema means to him. "The(se) films . . . are arguably deeper, more technically accomplished, and more daring than the early ones" (Richard Brody, The New Yorker). View

  • I'm Weiwei: Activism, Free Expression, Human Rights

    11/2/14 to 12/11/14 A series in solidarity, I'm Weiwei addresses many of the issues that confront the great Chinese artist Ai Weiwei-basic human rights, free expression, incarceration, abuses of state power. Innovative documentaries offer portraits of men and women who have found themselves actively engaged, whether in response to unexpected circumstance or as a result of a calculated allegiance to a cause. Includes Ai's newest film, Ai Weiwei's Appeal ¥15,220,910.50, and special guests in person at most screenings. View

  • Afterimage: Leslie Thornton

    10/15/14 to 10/16/14 New York–based experimental filmmaker Leslie Thornton combines original and found footage, sound, and texts to create indefinable works that cross narrative, science fiction, ethnography, and documentary forms. She presents her work and joins in conversation with Pooja Rangan, assistant professor of culture and media at the New School in New York, on October 15 and 16. View

  • Also Like Life: The Films of Hou Hsiao-hsien

    10/10/14 to 12/14/14 We are pleased to present a retrospective of the work of Hou Hsiao-hsien, “the world's greatest working narrative filmmaker” (J. Hoberman), who first came to prominence as a key figure of the New Taiwan Cinema movement of the 1980s. Our series begins in October with Hou's early works, including screenings of his first three, extremely rare commercial films. The series continues through mid-December, with such acclaimed titles as Dust in the Wind, Flowers of Shanghai, and Café Lumière. View

  • Endless Summer Cinema

    10/3/14 to 10/10/14 Join us for two evenings of free films under the stars across the street from our future home in downtown Berkeley. Pedal on over on Friday, October 3 for Pee-wee's Big Adventure and let your hair grow in time for This Is Spinal Tap on Friday, October 10. On the Crescent Lawn, Oxford Street between Center & Addison Streets. View

  • Film Course: Spotlight on Georgian Cinema

    9/29/14 to 10/27/14 A five-week film course offered in conjunction with the series Discovering Georgian Cinema, gives you the opportunity to view 35mm archival prints and learn more about Georgian history, geography, and culture, as well as the stylistic traditions of Georgian cinema, from leading authorities. View

  • Discovering Georgian Cinema

    September 26, 2014–April 19, 2015 Inspired by BAM/PFA's significant holdings of Soviet Georgian films, Discovering Georgian Cinema explores the rich cinematic tradition that has emerged from this distinctive cultural milieu during the past century. Including over fifty programs presented over seven months, this series offers multiple opportunities to encounter an impressive range of stylistic approaches and thematic concerns, as well as lyrical depictions of Georgia's spectacular landscape. View

  • Banjo Tales and Musical Holdouts

    9/16/14 Join us for the world premiere of Banjo Tales, copresented with the Berkeley Old Time Music Convention. Yasha Aginsky's film follows the legendary folklorist and string-band performer Mike Seeger (1933–2009) as he travels through Appalachia in search of traditional banjo players. Expect some live clawhammer-style banjo picking and special guest Alexia Smith, Mike Seeger's widow. Plus John Cohen will introduce his short film Musical Holdouts. View

  • Jean-Luc Godard: Expect Everything from Cinema

    9/12/14 to 10/23/14 This installment of our Godard retrospective focuses on the period 1968 to 1979, when the French New Wave director turned to the problem of how to “make films politically.” It includes work made with Jean-Pierre Gorin under the banner The Dziga Vertov Group-Gorin joins us in person for an illustrated lecture and to introduce Ici et ailleurs-and experimental works made in collaboration with Anne-Marie Miéville in the 1970s. We conclude with Godard's “second first film,” Every Man for Himself; his return to narrative, Godard-style, is featured in the next installment of our series, which continues through April 2015. View

  • Activate Yourself: The Free Speech Movement at Fifty

    9/11/14 to 10/30/14 Activate Yourself brings together punchy, probing documentaries and feature films that testify to the expansive influence of the Free Speech Movement, born on the UC Berkeley campus fifty years ago this October. Expect a bevy of special guests at each screening, including veteran activists, experts on free speech, filmmakers, and others who witnessed Berkeley in the sixties. But don't just watch, activate. View

  • James Dean, Restored Classics from Warner Bros.

    9/5/14 to 9/20/14 This series dedicated to the iconic actor showcases beautiful new digital restorations of the three films James Dean made for Warner Brothers: East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause, and Giant. View

  • Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case

    9/5/14 This new Danish documentary following the Chinese dissident artist after his release from imprisonment for the “subversion of state power” sets the stage for I'm Weiwei, our film series on human rights coming this November and December. View

  • Eyes Wide: The Films of Stanley Kubrick

    9/4/14 to 10/31/14 This complete Kubrick retrospective begins with his first feature, 1953's Fear and Desire, an existentialist exercise in the futility of war, and ends with Eyes Wide Shut, an absurdist exercise in the depths of the erotic, released after his death in 1999. These thirteen films, made over a span of forty-six years, reveal the ever-curious, pessimistic, and meticulous mind of one our great directors. View

  • Alternative Visions

    9/3/14 to 11/19/14 Our annual fall series featuring avant-garde cinema includes guest presentations by filmmakers Mary Helena Clark, Laura Heit, Jerome Hiler, Adele Horne, Linda Scobie, Karly Stark, and Pawel Wojtasik. We also offer a centennial tribute to local luminary James Broughton and Craig Baldwin helps us celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Artists' Television Access. Plus wo programs explore expanded projections, films with two images side by side or superimposed. View

  • Free Outdoor Screening in the BAM/PFA Sculpture Garden

    8/27/14 Bring a blanket to the BAM/PFA sculpture garden for a free outdoor screening of Shack Out on 101, deliriously trashy espionage flick starring Lee Marvin. Plus surprise short! View

  • Over the Top and into the Wire: WWI on Film

    8/2/14 to 8/27/14 Timed to commemorate the centenary of the beginning of World War I, our series brings together a selection of the shorts, cartoons, and features that span the fifty years separating the Great War from the Cold War to suggest the range of responses to the conflict and its aftermath. Guest curated by UC Berkeley's Russell Merritt, who will give two short lectures. View

  • Alternative Visions: Animation

    7/22/14 to 8/7/14 This summer installment of Alternative Visions presents three programs of creative animation, featuring masters of the field who work largely by hand with materials ranging from paints, ink, and pencils to cutouts. With programs devoted to Faith and John Hubley, Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby, and Sally Cruikshank. View

  • Derek Jarman, Visionary

    7/5/14 to 8/28/14 To mark the twentieth anniversary of Derek Jarman's death, we are pleased to screen a selection of his remarkable films, newly remastered by the BFI. Jarman (1942–1994), one of the most creative, idiosyncratic, and controversial filmmakers to come out of Britain, was known for his embrace of low-budget filmmaking, his willingness to unsettle audiences, and his vibrant exploration of a repressed queer history. And don't miss a screening of Andy Kimpton Nye's portrait of Jarman preceding a screening of Jarman's transcendent Blue on August 28. View

  • Picture This: Classic Children's Books on Film

    6/29/14 to 8/10/14 Picture This gathers over twenty animated shorts from the BAM/PFA Collection that were adapted from beloved picture books by Ezra Jack Keats, Leo Lionni, Maurice Sendak, William Steig, Dr. Seuss, Rosemary Wells, and more. Join us for four Sunday matinees this summer to discover these charming films and to hear from local children's book authors and illustrators. View

  • Rude Awakening: American Comedy, 1990–2010

    6/27/14 to 8/30/14 Our three-part survey of American comedy closes out with movies selected by you, the audience. You have chosen films that are destined to be classics, if they aren't already: Austin Powers, Groundhog Day, Best in Show, The Royal Tenenbaums, Knocked Up, Borat, The Big Lebowski, Office Space, and more. View

  • Kenji Mizoguchi: A Cinema of Totality

    6/19/14 to 8/29/14 Between the early 1920s and the year of his death, Kenji Mizoguchi (1898–1956) made more than seventy-five films, marked by elegant long takes and sequence shots and a thematic concern with the subjugation of women. This summer, we are delighted to screen sixteen of his films, many of them rarely seen. View

  • The Grapes of Wrath at 75

    6/18/14 Steinbeck's novel turns seventy-five this year and we honor his masterpiece with a special screening of the restored version of John Ford's compelling screen adaptation. Three experts join us: Susan Shillinglaw, Gray Brechin, and Harvey Smith. View

  • Martin Scorsese Presents Masterpieces of Polish Cinema

    6/14/14 to 8/21/14 "An incredible opportunity to discover for yourself the great power of Polish cinema on the big screen in brilliantly restored digital remasters," says Martin Scorsese of this touring series, which he helped organize. Spanning the years from 1957 to 1987, Masterpieces of Polish Cinema features films by Wojciech Has, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Zanussi, and more. View

  • A Theater Near You

    6/13/14 to 8/31/14 A restored 35mm print of Antonioni's L'avventura, Last Year at Marienbad to remember Alain Resnais, the original 1954 version of Godzilla, and a restored final cut of The Wicker Man (the Citizen Kane of horror films). View

  • Film & Video Makers at Cal

    5/9/14 This program presents work by the 2014 winners of the Eisner prize, the highest award for creativity given on the UC Berkeley campus. View

  • San Francisco International Film Festival @ BAM/PFA

    4/25/14 to 5/8/14 BAM/PFA is the exclusive East Bay venue for the filmmakers and other special guests in person. View

  • Diamonds of the Night: Jan Nemec

    4/6/14 to 4/23/14 Join us for this long-overdue survey dedicated to Jan Nemec, a true iconoclast. We present early films that helped define the Czech New Wave, including a new print of his debut feature, Diamonds of the Night from 1964, as well as recent work made after his return to the Czech Republic in the 1990s. View

  • Special Screening: Nuclear Nation

    4/4/14 Filmmaker Atsushi Funahashi joins us to present his documentary Nuclear Nation, about the refugees of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster. Presented with the Center for Japanese Studies as part of the symposium Reframing 3.11. View

  • Ross McElwee and the Cambridge Turn

    3/30/14 to 4/2/14 Ross McElwee, who studied filmmaking at MIT with pioneers of cinema verité, uses cinema as a means of examining his own life and, along the way, exploring the history of his times. We are delighted to welcome McElwee to Berkeley to screen his films and discuss his career with Scott MacDonald, author of American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary: The Cambridge Turn. View

  • More Than Fantasy: In Memoriam, Saul Zaentz (1921–2014)

    3/22/14 to 4/13/14 This small series honors Saul Zaentz, who passed away this year after a brilliant second career as an independent film producer that earned him three Academy Awards. We present One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, all in 35mm prints generously donated by The Saul Zaentz Company to BAM/PFA. View

  • A Theater Near You: A Touch of Sin

    3/22/14 to 3/23/14 The East Bay Premiere of the latest from Jia Zhangke, "one of the best and most important directors in the world" according to The New Yorker's Richard Brody. Winner of Best Screenplay at Cannes. View

  • Committed Cinema: Ritu Sarin & Tenzing Sonam

    3/16/14 to 3/20/14 We welcome Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam to BAM/PFA as part of our ongoing series Committed Cinema, dedicated to filmmakers who explore vital contemporary issues in aesthetically innovative ways. The Dharamsala-based duo presents two films that focus on the plight of Tibet and its exiled people. Part of CAAMFest 2014. View

  • CAAMFest 2014

    3/14/14 to 3/21/14 Each year, the Center for Asian American Media brings us the best in contemporary cinema from Asia and the Asian diaspora. This year's edition of CAAMFest at BAM/PFA feature films and documentaries from Singapore, Japan, India, the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, the United States, and more. View

  • Inside the BAM/PFA Film Collection

    3/10/14 A free screening for members in conjunction with Member Appreciation Month. View

  • Too Much Johnson Rediscovered

    3/3/14 We are proud to present the West Coast premiere of Mercury Theatre's recently rediscovered Too Much Johnson (1938), directed by Orson Welles for the Mercury's stage production of the nineteenth-century play. Plus a home movie from the BAM/PFA Collection that shows Welles directing the film. View

  • Jokers Wild: American Comedy, 1960–1989

    3/1/14 to 4/18/14 It's no joke! Joker's Wild showcases the high points of American comedy from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s and includes laugh-riots from Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Tim Burton, Harold Ramis, Melvin Van Peebles, and more... View

  • Afterimage: Kamran Shirdel

    3/1/14 Renowned Iranian filmmaker Kamran Shirdel visits BAM/PFA during his first visit to the U.S. to present four of his remarkable short films. He will be in conversation with the acclaimed scholar of Iranian cinema, Hamid Naficy, author most recently of A Social History of Iranian Cinema. View

  • Committed Cinema: Tony Buba

    2/18/14 to 2/20/14 Tony Buba, called a "national treasure" and "one of the most singular and egregiously overlooked filmmakers in the U.S." by Anthology Film Archives, has been chronicling the decline of his hometown, Braddock, PA, for some forty years. We are thrilled that Buba is coming to the PFA Theater to present his work and join author and professor Rick Ayers in conversation. View

  • Screenagers Film Festival

    2/8/14 Come see what is on the mind of Bay Area teens at the 16th annual Screenagers Film Festival, featuring a diverse selection of films made by Bay Area high school students. Films selected by students from Berkeley High. Admission just $5.50. View

  • Against the Law: The Crime Films of Anthony Mann

    2/7/14 to 2/28/14 Discover Anthony Mann's electrifying thrillers, from 1946's Strange Impersonation to 1950's Side Street, all of which are fronted by psychologically complex and emotionally scarred characters. Mann scholar Max Alvarez joins us to illuminate the back alleys of the Hollywood director's crime films and to sign copies of his new book, The Crime Films of Anthony Mann. View

  • Jean-Luc Godard: Expect Everything from Cinema

    1/31/14 to 4/19/14 Jean-Luc Godard has shaped the course of film history in profound ways. We are honoring the legendary French filmmaker, who will turn eighty-four this year, with a year-long retrospective: between January and April we focus on his pre-1968 films and in the fall we present his post-1968 oeuvre. Come open your eyes to a new way of thinking about cinema. View

  • Documentary Voices 2014

    1/28/14 to 4/22/14 Documentary Voices, our annual series presented in conjunction with the UC Berkeley course History of Documentary Film, showcases a broad range of contemporary and historical documentaries, from poetic explorations to cinematic essays to forays into archival collections. View

  • African Film Festival 2014

    1/25/14 to 2/26/14 This year's edition of our annual African Film Festival includes films from Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Algeria, Senegal, Kenya, and the global African diaspora. Highlights include Jean-Pierre Bekolo's incendiary mock documentary Le Président, Andrew Dosunmu's vibrant American indie Mother of George, and David Tosh Gitongo's dynamic and humorous Nairobi Half Life. And families shouldn't miss Zarafa, an animated film from France about the journey of a young Sudanese boy and his giraffe. View

  • Film 50: History of Cinema

    1/22/14 to 5/7/14 BAM/PFA and the UC Berkeley Department of Film and Media copresent the film-lecture course Film 50, now celebrating its twenty-first year. This year's course, taught by Emily Carpenter, showcases an exciting lineup of world cinema classics. Open to the public as space permits. View

  • Frederick Wiseman's At Berkeley

    1/18/14 Come see Frederick Wiseman's acclaimed, epic documentary on the campus that inspired it. "One of Wiseman's best, a summation of sorts of a career's worth of principled filmmaking" (Variety). View

  • The Brilliance of Satyajit Ray

    1/17/14 to 8/31/14 Before the “international art house circuit,” before “Third World Film,” before “slow cinema” and “rural realism,” there was Satyajit Ray, one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. Discover-or rediscover-this legend of cinema with our expansive series, which continues through August and includes nearly all of his films. View

  • Funny Ha-Ha: American Comedy, 1930–1959

    1/16/14 to 2/22/14 Join fellow filmgoers in the collective catharsis that is comedy. Part one of a three-part series, Funny Ha-Ha charts the triumphant chortles of American comedy from the 1930s through the 1950s and includes classics such as Duck Soup, It Happened One Night, Adam's Rib, and Some Like It Hot. And stay tuned for the announcement of our next installment, spanning the years 1960 to 1989. View

  • Frederick Wiseman Presents At Berkeley

    12/3/13 In a special screening exclusively for UC Berkeley faculty, staff, and students, renowned filmmaker Wiseman presents his epic At Berkeley, a four-hour-plus documentary that reveals not only the state of higher education today, but also the state of America's middle class. View

  • The Resolution Starts Now: 4K Restorations from Sony Pictures

    12/1/13 to 12/15/13 This nine-film series airs some of the complex issues raised by the ouster of analog while presenting laudable examples of recent digital restorations from Sony Pictures, including such classics as Lawrence of Arabia and Taxi Driver. Grover Crisp, senior vice president of asset management, film restoration and digital mastering at Sony, offers his insights about the state of digital preservation in a presentation on December 5. View

  • Behind the Scenes: The Art and Craft of Cinema with Randy Thom, Sound Designer

    11/21/13 to 11/24/13 Academy Award–winner Randy Thom, lead designer at Skywalker Sound, takes us behind-the scenes of sound design with a presentation focusing on David Lynch's Wild at Heart. He also introduces Dennis Hopper's Colors and Brad Bird's The Incredibles, which won Thom one of his Oscars for Best Sound Editing. View

  • Arrested History: New Portuguese Cinema

    11/13/13 to 11/17/13 Recent Portuguese filmmakers, including Susana de Sousa Dias, Miguel Gomes, Salomé Lamas, and João Pedro Rodrigues, investigate Portugal's past and present with intelligence and imagination in films that often straddle fiction and documentary forms. De Sousa Dias and Rodrigues join us at screenings of their films, in conversation with curator and critic Nuno Lisboa. In conjunction with the UC Berkeley conference Cinematic Times. View

  • Beauty and Sacrifice: Images of Women in Chinese Cinema

    11/8/13 to 12/8/13 As a companion series to the exhibition Beauty Revealed: Images of Women in Qing Dynasty Chinese Painting, we present a small selection of Chinese films that portray women, their desires, and their sacrifices. Two of the films, from the 1930s, feature the legendary actress Ruan Lingyu, while a third, Stanley Kwan's Center Stage (1992), is an innovative modernist biography of Ruan. Wong Kar-wai's masterpiece, In the Mood for Love-in a new 35mm print-and Cecile Tang Shu Shuen rare 1969 melodrama The Arch, round out the series. View

  • Special Screening: Northern Lights

    11/7/13 We are pleased to welcome independent film director Rob Nilsson back to BAM/PFA to present the West Coast premiere of the 35mm restoration of his highly acclaimed first film (codirected with John Hanson), Northern Lights, which won the Caméra d'or at Cannes in 1979. View

  • Afterimage: Agnès Varda on Filmmaking

    11/4/13 to 11/22/13 Legendary French filmmaker Agnès Varda joins us from Paris to present her 2000 documentary The Gleaners and I, one of her most powerful and popular films, as well as three short films, two of which Varda made while visiting the Bay Area in the late 1960s. The series also includes her 1954 debut, La Pointe Courte, called the first film of the nouvelle vague, as well as Cléo from 5 to 7, the 1961 film that established her international reputation. View

  • Fassbinder's Favorites

    11/1/13 to 12/14/13 This sidebar to our Fassbinder retrospective offers a taste of the director's favorites, crammed full of all the fantastic things that make life worth living, ranging from the Hollywood melodramas and genre films that he adored to French masterpieces from Jean-Luc Godard and Robert Bresson. View

  • Moumen Smihi: Poet of Tangier

    10/10/13 to 10/27/13 We are delighted to host Moumen Smihi, one of the key figures of Moroccan and North African cinema, who presents his remarkable films and discusses his work with critic/scholar Peter Limbrick. Smihi's films mirror the cultural and intellectual potpourri of Tangier, the atmospheric port city of Morocco, hub between Europe and Africa, Christianity and Islam. View

  • Love Is Colder Than Death: The Cinema of Rainer Werner Fassbinder

    10/4/13 to 12/15/13 Seemingly overnight, Fassbinder (1945–1982) went from enfant terrible to the driving force behind the New German Cinema, and became one of the most influential artists of the postwar European scene. This major retrospective offers Bay Area filmgoers a chance to get to know-or reacquaint themselves with-the remarkable richness of Fassbinder's career as a film director. View

  • Endless Summer Cinema

    9/27/13 to 10/4/13 FREE outdoor movies on the Crescent lawn! Join us across the street from our future home in downtown Berkeley for free films under the stars. View

  • Committed Cinema: John Gianvito and Paul Chan

    9/24/13 to 10/23/13 We open our new ongoing series Committed Cinema with John Gianvito and Paul Chan, filmmakers whose works arise out of political conviction and aesthetic innovation to explore vital and urgent issues of our times. View

  • Pier Paolo Pasolini

    9/20/13 to 10/31/13 A brilliant artist who was at the center of the intellectual life of postwar Europe, controversial and influential Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) took inspiration from many sources: Renaissance painting, Romanticism, Freudian psychology, Italian neorealism, ethnographic filmmaking, and music. This comprehensive retrospective features brand-new 35mm prints, many of which were restored by Cineteca di Bologna. View

  • Dark Matters: The Films of William Friedkin

    9/12/13 to 9/21/13 This series honors the work of director William Friedkin, who from the late sixties to the present has delved into the dark matter that dwells in the human soul with films such as The Exorcist, Sorcerer, The French Connection, To Live and Die in L.A., and Killer Joe. On the occasion of his newly published memoir, we welcome Friedkin to BAM/PFA for a book signing and a conversation with critic Michael Gullien. View

  • The Man Who Wasn't There: Wendell Corey, Actor

    9/6/13 to 10/5/13 We commemorate the work of actor Wendell Corey (1914–1968), known mostly for his key supporting roles, with ten films that showcase his range, including The Furies (with Barbara Stanwyck), The Rainmaker (with Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn), Harriet Craig (with Joan Crawford), The Killer Is Loose, and Sorry, Wrong Number. View

  • Alternative Visions

    9/4/13 to 11/20/13 This year, our annual series highlighting experimental cinema includes recent animation, new videos by Bay Area film students, and in-person appearances by filmmakers Nancy Andrews, Phil Solomon, Abigail Child, Susana de Sousa Dias, and Lynne Sachs. View

  • Free Outdoor Screening in the BAM/PFA Sculpture Garden

    8/28/13 Bring a blanket to the BAM/PFA sculpture garden for a free outdoor screening of The Troublemaker, a finger-snappin' exposé of a bumpkin opening a coffeehouse in Greenwich Village, preceded by a special beat poetry reading by Adam Sussman and other swingin' surprises. View

  • Yang Fudong's Cinematic Influences

    8/22/13 to 10/6/13 A companion to Yang Fudong: Estranged Paradise, Works 1993–2013, the midcareer survey presented in the BAM/PFA galleries, this film series-co-curated by the artist himself-showcases some of the major cinematic influences on his work, ranging from the decadent aura and black-and-white exquisiteness of Shanghai's Golden Age of Cinema to the realism and historical investigations of Fifth Generation classics. View

  • The Hitchcock 9: Rare Silents Restored

    8/16/13 to 8/31/13 We are pleased to bring to the East Bay all nine of Hitchcock's surviving silents, which are touring the U.S. after being digitally restored in the largest project ever undertaken by the British Film Institute. These restorations reveal not only cleaner, crisper images but recover original material that had gone missing from available prints. Presented in conjunction with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, this series offers a chance to discover new dimensions of Hitchcock's work and observe a master's style in the making. All films feature live piano accompaniment by Judith Rosenberg. View

  • Tales of Love: The Enchanted World of Jacques Demy

    7/25/13 to 8/31/13 This summer, we are delighted to showcase the films of Jacques Demy (1931–1990), one of the most gifted filmmakers to emerge during the French New Wave. Masterfully choreographed camera movements, a penchant for colorful decorative elegance, and a starring role for music (often by Michel LeGrand) are trademarks of Demy's cinematic style. Our series also includes three films about Demy directed by his wife, Agnès Varda. View

  • Dark Nights: Simenon and Cinema

    7/11/13 to 8/29/13 A dozen films based on Georges Simenon's mysteries, thrillers, and melodramas are the perfect companions for your summer vacation. His Inspector Maigret has investigated hundreds of crimes, less obsessed by chasing clues than motivated by Simenon's own motto, “to understand without condemning.” His darker psychological novels detail how ordinary lives derail, whether through weakness or deluded dreams. Read the books, join us to see a rich array of movies, and discover the darkness that lies within. Includes films by Marcel Carné, Bertrand Tavernier, Claude Chabrol, Julien Duvivier, Béla Tarr, and others. View

  • A Call to Action: The Films of Raoul Walsh

    7/5/13 to 8/10/13 Raoul Walsh (1887–1980) was a director's director, an inspired pro with an unbridled desire to just make movies. And make them he did-nearly one hundred features and shorts between 1913 and 1964. Our fourteen-film retrospective includes selections of Walsh's Westerns (The Big Trail, Wild Girl, Pursued), comedies (Sailor's Luck, Me and My Gal), war films (Objective Burma, What Price Glory), and gangster movies (Regeneration, High Sierra, White Heat). New York Times critic Dave Kehr introduces several of the films and joins Bay Area–based film critic Michael Fox in conversation on August 1. View

  • Behind the Scenes: The Art and Craft of Cinema with Editor Sam Pollard

    6/27/13 to 6/29/13 Sam Pollard, who for the last forty years has been editing, producing, and directing key films about the African American experience, takes us behind-the-scenes of the art and craft of editing. Pollard discusses his craft in an illustrated talk followed by a screening of Half Past Autumn: The Life and Works of Gordon Parks and presents Clockers, one of his many collaborations with director Spike Lee. (Pollard's originally scheduled visit was postponed due to Superstorm Sandy.) View

  • From the Archive: Treasures of Eastern European and Soviet Cinema

    6/21/13 to 7/20/13 As a tribute to the late George Gund III, who passed away in January, we showcase a selection of 35mm films that he donated to BAM/PFA over the years. These works, from Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union, honor Gund's passion for Eastern European cinema and his great generosity to the Bay Area film community. View

  • A Theater Near You

    6/19/13 to 7/6/13 Our Theater Near You summer roundup includes digital restorations of Volker Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum (1979), Luis Buñuel's Tristana (1970), and Marcel Carné's Port of Shadows (1938); sci-fi classics The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicolas Roeg, 1976) and Kuroneko (Kaneto Shindo, 1968); and Lech Majewski's critically acclaimed The Mill and the Cross (2010), an innovative filmic interpretation of Pieter Bruegel the Elder's The Way to Calvary. View

  • Castles in the Sky: Masterful Anime from Studio Ghibli

    6/16/13 to 8/25/13 Studio Ghibli's stunning films-marked by exquisite artistry, emotionally resonant themes, and absolutely memorable flights of fantasy-have forever altered the animated feature. This series showcases the full range of the Japanese studio's output, from films for the youngest viewers, such as the utterly magical My Neighbor Totoro, to darker narratives like Whisper of the Heart, to Ghibli's newest release, From Up on Poppy Hill, a realistic coming-of-age story. Don't miss this chance to appreciate the breathtaking beauty of these films on the big screen. View

  • Dancing with Light: The Cinematography of Agnès Godard

    6/13/13 to 6/28/13 The great French cinematographer Agnès Godard spends four evenings at the PFA Theater this June, introducing films and presenting a Behind the Scenes lecture on her art. Godard's award-winning work with directors such as Wim Wenders, Agnès Varda, Ursula Meier, and Claire Denis has earned rightful acclaim as some of the most riveting, naturalistic, and sensual imagery in world cinema today. View

  • Film and Video Makers at Cal

    5/10/13 Film and video by UC Berkeley students, including the winners of the Eisner Prize, the campus's highest award for creativity. View

  • 56th San Francisco International Film Festival

    4/26/13 to 5/9/13 BAM/PFA is honored to be the exclusive East Bay venue for the San Francisco International Film Festival. We are pleased to present a stellar selection of features, documentaries, and shorts from around the world, as well as a host of filmmakers and other special guests in person. Tickets go on sale April 5. View

  • Afterimage: Leonard Retel Helmrich's Trilogy

    4/20/13 to 4/23/13 Over the course of three remarkable films, each of which stands on its own, Leonard Retel Helmrich has turned his camera on one working-class Indonesian family, creating a chronicle of everyday life that spans both the personal and the political, the intimate and the communal. Helmrich's “single-shot cinema” updates the techniques of cinema verité with a balletic, ever-moving, and constantly surprising method that has earned him praise as “the master of impossible camera angles.” We are thrilled to welcome Helmrich to the PFA Theater to discuss his work with scholar Daniel L. Miller. View

  • The Spanish Mirth: The Comedic Films of Luis García Berlanga

    3/29/13 to 4/17/13 Beginning his directorial career in the midst of Franco's regime, Luis García Berlanga (1921–2010) evaded much outright censorship by disguising his subversive views in stinging satire. Often credited with helping to reshape midcentury Spanish cinema, he spared no one his wicked humor, which was paired with an irrepressible and zestful anarchy. We are pleased to screen seven of his films, all in archival imported prints. View

  • Inside the BAM/PFA Film Collection

    3/18/13 In conjunction with Member Appreciation Month, our curators and film collection staff present a selection of recently acquired works and share insights into their significance, both for our collection and for the history of film. Open to BAM/PFA members only. Admission free. View

  • Afterimage: The Films of Singapore's Royston Tan

    3/17/13 to 3/20/13 International art-house favorite and so-called “bad-boy” of Singaporean cinema Royston Tan introduces three of his films and joins us on March 20 for a conversation with local artist and critic Valerie Soe following a screening of 15. Tan began making provocative short films, which caught the attention of Singapore's film censors, when he was just twenty-one; his subsequent films have included candid takes on the forbidden pleasures of disaffected youth as well as affectionate homages to his homeland. View

  • CAAMFest 2013

    3/15/13 to 3/23/13 Each year, the Center for Asian American Media brings us the best in contemporary cinema from Asia and the Asian diaspora. The thirty-first installment of this adventurous festival (formerly the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival) at the PFA Theater features films and documentaries from China, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States, and a real rarity, a feature film from North Korea. View

  • Filmmaker Provocateur: Jean Rouch

    3/10/13 to 4/16/13 Much of the extraordinary life work of the French filmmaker and anthropologist Jean Rouch (1917–2004) focused on Africa, where for over sixty years he made ethnographic films in a radical style that continued to evolve. A pioneer of cinema verité and an influence on the French New Wave, Rouch experimented with improvisation, introducing fiction to documentary, and collaborating with his subjects. Rouch brought a deep sense of social justice to depicting contemporary life, whether Parisians in his seminal Chronicle of a Summer or the rituals and dreams of West Africans in his ethno-fictions Moi, un noir and Jaguar. View

  • And God Created Jean-Louis Trintignant

    3/2/13 to 4/21/13 In the wake of the accolades bestowed on Jean-Louis Trintignant for his outstanding performance in Michael Haneke's Amour (2012), we showcase Trintignant's work as a film actor beginning with his breakthrough film, Roger Vadim's 1956 …And God Created Woman. Join us for this look back at Trintignant-the man with a killer smile, stone-faced stare, and extraordinary ability to emote melancholy. View

  • Chronicles of Inferno: Japan's Art Theater Guild

    2/7/13 to 2/27/13 In 1967, Japan's Art Theater Guild (or ATG) began producing experimental and highly controversial independent films that challenged not only postwar Japanese society, but cinema itself. Our tribute includes films made for ATG by New Wave icons like Shohei Imamura, Nagisa Oshima, and Masahiro Shinoda; genre masters such as Kihachi Okamoto; veterans of independent cinema like Kaneto Shindo; the neglected Susumu Hani; and more extremist firebrands like Toshio Matsumoto, Shuji Terayama, and Koji Wakamatsu. View

  • Documentary Voices 2013

    2/5/13 to 4/9/13 Documentary Voices is presented in conjunction with the UC Berkeley course History of Documentary Film. Continuing throughout the spring semester, the series showcases the broad range of documentaries being made today, from documentary-fiction hybrids to cinematic essays, ethnographic films, and documentary animations. View

  • Screenagers Film Festival

    2/2/13 The annual Screenagers Film Festival, now in its fifteenth year, is dedicated to showcasing new works by Bay Area high school students, , selected by a team of high school curators. View

  • On Location in Silent Cinema

    2/2/13 to 2/22/13 The films in this series, shown in conjunction with the Second International Berkeley Conference on Silent Cinema, address the establishment of location as a cinematic concept by considering the various ways that it functions in silent cinema. All films will be introduced by leading scholars and accompanied by live music. View

  • The Sounds of Silence

    2/1/13 to 2/28/13 The film component of the exhibition Silence, the Sounds of Silence comprises experimental films, two feature films, and a documentary that explore silence as either subject or medium. Ingmar Bergman's masterful The Silence describes the terrible quiet left behind by God's absence; Pat Collins's windswept Silence follows an audio recordist as he reconnects with the source of sound; and Philip Gröning's reverential Into Great Silence closely portrays the muted days of an alpine monastery. Two programs of experimental films amplify the theme, tracing the use of silence and hushed sound from the 1940s to the present. View

  • Campus Connections: Playwright/Director Stan Lai

    1/31/13 Stan Lai, who received his Ph.D. in dramatic art from UC Berkeley in 1983, is Taiwan's leading theater playwright/director. He returns to Berkeley in January as an Avenali Resident Fellow at the Arts Research Center and we are pleased to welcome him to the PFA Theater for a screening of his delightful, award-winning film The Peach Blossom Land. View

  • Behind the Scenes: The Art and Craft of Cinema with Title Designer Kyle Cooper

    1/26/13 UPDATE: KYLE COOPER IS UNABLE TO APPEAR DUE TO ILLNESS. SE7EN WILL SCREEN AT 9 PM. Kyle Cooper, who has designed openers for over 150 movies, including Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, and Iron Man II, takes us behind-the-scenes of title sequence design. Cooper's talk is followed by a screening of David Fincher's 1995 film Se7en, starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman; its critically acclaimed opening sequence revolutionized the field of title design and established Cooper as a leading practitioner. View

  • The Saddest Music in the World: Tenth Anniversary Celebration

    1/24/13 On the tenth anniversary of Guy Maddin's tale of bewitching beer baroness Lady Port-Huntly (Isabella Rossellini), enjoy a special tribute performance by Grale. Then sit back and relive Maddin's witty and atmospheric film, based on an original screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro. To conclude we raise a glass of Pyramid Ale to the beer baroness. View

  • Film 50: History of Cinema: The Cinematic City

    1/23/13 to 5/1/13 This year, Film 50 focuses on the city, asking "What is it about the city that makes it such a rich subject for cinematic representation?" Films present the city variously as a dynamic visual attraction, a celebration of modernity, a dystopian nightmare, a psychic projection, or a vehicle for social commentary. A UC Berkeley course open to the public as space permits, with lectures by Marilyn Fabe (Department of Film and Media). View

  • African Film Festival 2013

    1/23/13 to 2/5/13 The 2013 edition of our annual African Film Festival provides a striking opportunity to learn about Africa and the African diaspora through recent films from Egypt, the Republic of Congo, Mali, Kenya, Sudan, Morocco, Haiti, and South Africa. Whether through documentary, animation, or narrative forms, these films open a window on everyday lives and the histories of these varied countries. View

  • Werner Schroeter: Magnificent Obsessions

    1/19/13 to 4/7/13 Our tribute to the revolutionary director of film, theater, and opera Werner Schroeter (1945–2010) captures the marvelous range of his visionary oeuvre: early fragmented, stylized melodramas marked by an intoxicating use of music; nonfiction films that develop as free-ranging explorations of philosophy and culture; and later films that move toward art cinema, weaving more complex, dark narratives. View

  • Alfred Hitchcock: The Shape of Suspense

    1/11/13 to 4/24/13 In this season of Hitchcock biopics, we invite you to return to the source and see the classic films from the Master of Suspense. This series is a chance to not only (re-)experience his famed American work of the 1940s and 1950s on the big screen, but also to discover the delights of the British Hitchcock. View

  • The Hills Run Red: Italian Westerns, Leone, and Beyond

    1/10/13 to 1/27/13 Join us for six classic Spaghetti Westerns by Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci, Damiani Damiano, and others, many featuring music by the maestro of the genre, Ennio Morricone. Filmed in the rugged landscapes of Italy and Spain and starring rising (or fading) American actors such as Lee Van Cleef, Burt Reynolds, James Coburn, and Jack Palance, these films have had a lasting impact on movie-making-Quentin Tarantino's new Django Unchained being the latest example. View

  • Day With(out) Art

    12/5/12 We commemorate Day With(out) Art, initially conceived in 1989 as the national day of action and mourning in response to the AIDS crisis, with a screening of the new film United in Anger: The History of ACT UP by Jim Hubbard. View

  • Readings on Cinema

    12/2/12 Esteemed film historian David Thomson-author of A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, and numerous biographies-joins us to discuss and sign copies of his latest book, The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies-and What They Have Done to Us, which argues that film is a dynamic force that departs from the screen and enters our lives. Thomson introduces one of the films from his book, Peter Weir's The Truman Show. View

  • Wild at Heart: Writer Barry Gifford

    11/29/12 to 12/8/12 Writer Barry Gifford, a singular voice in American letters, joins us to present selections from his impressive cinematic oeuvre, including Wild at Heart, Lost Highway, and The Phantom Father, and discuss the art and craft of screenwriting. A frequent collaborator with David Lynch, Gifford is attracted to the quirky, sensual, and sometimes twisted side of the American experience. View

  • Art for Human Rights: Ai Weiwei

    11/11/12 In conjunction with the BAM/PFA program Art for Human Rights, we present Alison Klayman's intimate portrait of Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, introduced by art critic and Ai's friend Jeff Kelley. "Ai Weiwei is captivating on camera, and the film makes the case that there is really no separation between the artist and his work" (Globe and Mail). Visit the BAM/PFA Theater Gallery between October 31 and November 11 to view a sculpture by Ai Weiwei from our collection. View

  • Afterimage: The Films of Kidlat Tahimik, Indigenius

    11/8/12 to 11/18/12 An idol of iconoclasts worldwide, a pioneer of the postcolonial essay film, and the grandfather of the Philippine New Wave, Kidlat Tahimik is committed to documenting and celebrating the “indigenius”-the genius of indigenous peoples. In a rare visit to the U.S., Tahimik joins us over four days to talk about his films, including the influential essay film Perfumed Nightmare and the virtually unknown masterpiece, Why is Yellow the Middle of the Rainbow? View

  • Don't Shoot the Player Piano: The Music of Conlon Nancarrow

    11/2/12 to 11/4/12 As part of Nancarrow at 100: A Centennial Celebration, produced by Other Minds and Cal Performances, we present two special evenings of films that capture the life and music of avant-garde composer Conlon Nancarrow. The first screening follows a discussion in the BAM/PFA galleries as part of the opening celebration for the exhibition Trimpin: Nancarrow Percussion Orchestra / MATRIX 244. View

  • At Jetty's End: A Tribute to Chris Marker, 1921–2012

    11/2/12 to 11/30/12 We remember the great French filmmaker Chris Marker, pioneer of the film essay, with three evenings of screenings (including his masterpieces Sans soleil and La jetée) plus a sneak preview of Emiko Omori's tribute, To Chris Marker, An Unsent Letter. View

  • Behind the Scenes: The Art and Craft of Cinema with Editor Sam Pollard

    11/1/12 to 11/3/12 UPDATE: Due to the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Sam Pollard is unable to come to the Bay Area as planned. His behind-the-scenes lecture will be rescheduled for a future date. But we will screen the two films selected by Pollard as examples of his craft, Spike Lee's Mo' Better Blues and Tony Silver's 1984 Style Wars, an early exploration of graffiti and hip-hop culture in New York. View

  • Home Movie Day

    10/20/12 This year we celebrate Home Movie Day with a compilation of recently discovered home movies from the 1930s and 1940s by Pullman porter Ernest Beane, who lived in Berkeley, accompanied by an original score performed by composer/bassist Marcus Shelby. We also include a selection of African American home movies from families in Richmond, Detroit, Omaha, and Seattle shot from the 1930s to the 1970s. View

  • An Army of Phantoms: American Cinema and the Cold War

    10/5/12 to 10/27/12 Author and critic J. Hoberman has curated this series for us based on his recent book, An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War. The selected films illustrate how cinema articulated the chilling moods and manias of the era, from Joe McCarthy's witch hunts to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and include William Wellman's The Next Voice You Hear, Elia Kazan's Panic in the Streets, Sam Fuller's The Steel Helmet, and Laslo Benedek's The Wild One. Hoberman joins us to introduce two of the films and to give a longer talk and sign books at the screening of Fort Apache. View

  • Rebel Without Applause: The Films of Alex Cox

    9/28/12 to 10/7/12 Alex Cox's films are typified by their unrelenting rebellion and anarchic punk aesthetic, from his first radioactive rollick, Repo Man (1984), to 2010's Straight to Hell Returns, featuring Joe Strummer, Courtney Love, and The Pogues. As part of our ongoing series Afterimage: Filmmakers and Critics in Conversation, renowned critic J. Hoberman will join Cox for a discussion following the screening of Cox's Acid Western, Walker. View

  • Grand Illusions: French Cinema Classics, 1928–1960

    9/14/12 to 12/9/12 Spanning four months and dozens of films-many in imported 35mm prints-Grand Illusions showcases the work of French directors such as René Clair, Marcel Carné, Jean Grémillon, Max Ophuls, Jean Renoir, Marcel Pagnol, Jean Vigo, Jean Cocteau, and Georges Franju. Classic performances by Jean Gabin, Michèle Morgan, Gérard Philipe, Raimu, Simone Signoret, and others will light up the screen through mid-December. View

  • A Theater Near You

    9/8/12 to 10/21/12 A Theater Near You presents two classics, a new 35mm print of Mike Nichols's legendary The Graduate (1967) and Gillo Pontecorvo's brilliant The Battle of Algiers (1966), plus two recent releases that should really be seen on the big screen: Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and Béla Tarr's The Turin Horse. View

  • L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema

    9/6/12 to 10/30/12 African American filmmakers associated with the L.A. Rebellion, a group that coalesced at the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television from the late 1960s through the 1980s, were the first to forge a sustained alternative black cinema practice in the United States. Our series includes thirty-five works from filmmakers such as Don Amis, Charles Burnett, Larry Clark, Julie Dash, Zeinabu irene Davis, Jamaa Fanaka, Haile Gerima, O.Funmilayo Makarah, and Billy Woodberry. View

  • Alternative Visions

    9/5/12 to 11/28/12 This rendition of our annual series of experimental films, presented in conjunction with the UC Berkeley course on avant-garde film, features rare local presentations by filmmakers from around the world. With humor, passion, and intelligence they explore the possibilities of cinema-its material properties and its capacity to express radical content. Each program is introduced by an artist, critic, or curator from the community. View

  • Life Is Short: Nikkatsu Studios at 100

    9/1/12 to 10/27/12 Join us to celebrate the centenary of Japan's venerated Nikkatsu studios, “just maybe the coolest film production house of all time” (Chuck Stephens, Criterion). Our series covers nearly every Nikkatsu decade and includes a 1921 samurai work, Japan's first sound film, a 1939 musical, fifties melodramas, an international art-house hit, and sixties action films from filmmaking legends such as Daisuke Ito, Kenji Mizoguchi, Masahiro Makino, Kon Ichikawa, and Seijun Suzuki. View

  • Free Outdoor Screening

    8/24/12 Spread out a blanket on the sculpture garden lawn for our annual free outdoor screening. This year's selection, Pretty Poison, culminates our summer-long Cool World series, featuring the coolest actors from four decades of American film, as selected by our audience. Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld costar in this blend of sex, fantasy, and mayhem. Plus surprise shorts! View

  • Summer Cinema on Center Street

    8/4/12 to 8/18/12 Join us for a series of free outdoor events-including music, movies, and more-at the site of our future home on Center Street in downtown Berkeley (between Shattuck and Oxford). The theme is cerebral cinema and the headliners are three campy classics from the fifties and sixties, The Atomic Brain, Donovan's Brain, and The Brain That Wouldn't Die. Pre-movie mania includes a mind-expanding mix of DJs, live music, short films, heady talks on neuroscience, and art performances. Bring a chair and sit beneath the stars! View

  • Universal Pictures: Celebrating 100 Years

    8/3/12 to 8/31/12 Join us in celebrating the hundred-year legacy of Universal Pictures, a studio known for challenging the distinctions between fine art and popular entertainment. We present a wide range of Universal's productions, including much-admired classics (All Quiet On the Western Front), beloved horror films (Dracula, The Mummy), suspense films (The Birds), and even a sex farce (Pillow Talk). Here's to another hundred years. View

  • Russian Inferno: The Films of Alexei Guerman

    7/29/12 to 8/23/12 Russian filmmaker Alexei Guerman, born in 1938 in Leningrad, has achieved cult status among many enthusiastic cineastes. Guerman's aim is to portray the historical truth of an era, which he achieves with visually stunning films that boast long, elaborate tracking shots and crisp black-and-white cinematography. This touring series, judged by Artforum to be “among the most important retrospectives in years,” presents all of Guerman's features. View

  • The Eternal Poet: Raj Kapoor & the Golden Age of Indian Cinema

    7/19/12 to 8/11/12 One of the most influential figures in Indian film history, the actor/director/producer Raj Kapoor helped popularize many of the tropes that make up commercial Indian cinema, or “Bollywood,” today. His series of box-office hits from the late 1940s and early 1950s are at once glossy and realist, slapstick and sorrowful, and include epic musical numbers, noirish deep-focus cinematography, and insanely elaborate sets, along with pleas for social mobility. View

  • Cool World

    7/12/12 to 8/24/12 Who are the coolest American actors from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s? We asked you to vote and Cool World presents the winners: Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, Tuesday Weld, Pam Grier, Jane Fonda, Clint Eastwood, Dennis Hopper, Winona Ryder, River Phoenix, Matt Dillon, Johnny Depp, and Edward Norton. A hot series for the summer. Stay cool. View

  • Always for Pleasure: The Films of Les Blank

    7/8/12 to 8/30/12 Join us for a celebration of the rich body of work of local documentary filmmaker Les Blank, whose films take us on a journey through the back roads and main streets of American regional culture. Music, food and dancing are central to Blank's films, as are the poetry and passion of the people who keep these traditions alive. Blank's beautiful, roaming camerawork will be the subject of a Behind the Scenes lecture on Saturday, August 25. Plan for a summer of pleasure, as special culinary events will accompany some of these feasts for the eyes and ears. View

  • Bellissima: Leading Ladies of the Italian Screen

    7/6/12 to 8/31/12 This summer, take a tour through postwar Italian film, with visits to major cinematic landmarks as well as less traveled byways. Each stop along the route brings an encounter with another unforgettable actress: Anna Magnani, Giulietta Masina, Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale, Tina Pica, and Monica Vitti. View

  • A Theater Near You

    7/6/12 to 7/15/12 Join us for our ongoing series featuring new prints of classic films and contemporary releases of particular interest. We bring you a new 35mm print of Jean-Luc Godard's seminal Weekend (1967); plus three noteworthy films from 2011, Corinna Belz's Gerhard Richter Painting; This is Not a Film, codirected by Mojtaba Mirtahmasb and Jafar Panahi; and El Velador from Natalia Almada. View

  • One-Two Punch: Pulp Writers Dorothy B. Hughes, Mickey Spillane, Elmore Leonard

    6/23/12 to 6/30/12 In this second round of One-Two Punch, several great pulp contenders duke it out for supremacy: Dorothy B. Hughes (In a Lonely Place, Fallen Sparrow), Mickey Spillane (My Gun is Quick, The Girl Hunters), and Elmore Leonard (Stick, Valdez is Coming). Get a seat ringside and prepare to be knocked out. View

  • Behind the Scenes: The Art and Craft of Cinema, Editor Curtiss Clayton

    6/20/12 to 6/22/12 Film editor Curtiss Clayton takes us Behind the Scenes of the art and craft of cinema with an illustrated talk and the screening of three of the more than thirty films he has edited: Gus Van Sant's To Die For (1995); Rick (2003), starring Bill Pullman, which Clayton also directed; and Maladies, the not-yet-released feature from Carter, starring James Franco. View

  • Tribute to Ken Russell (1927–2011)

    6/14/12 As a tribute to Ken Russell, the flamboyant and provocative British filmmaker who died last year at age eighty-four, we screen Gothic, his extravagantly excessive 1986 tale of the birth of Frankenstein. View

  • Gregory Peck: An Agreeable Gentleman

    6/13/12 to 6/29/12 Academy Award–winner, Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, and Cal alum Gregory Peck stands tall in these eight films from his illustrious career. An iconic figure of the forties, fifties, and beyond, Peck was known for his reserve, integrity, and rich, honeyed voice. Our series highlights his versatility as an actor and includes Pork Chop Hill, To Kill a Mockingbird, Roman Holiday, and Duel in the Sun, among others. View

  • Afterimage: Three Nights with Nathaniel Dorsky

    6/10/12 to 6/24/12 Local filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky-whose exhilarating 16mm silent films relish in the possibilities of image making-joins us for three evenings of special screenings of his work. Our series kicks off on June 10, with New York–based curator Mark McElhatten joining Dorksy in conversation following a screening of Dorsky's most recent films. “A formalist with a brimming, elegiac soul, Dorsky will gently rock your attitude toward cinematic landscape”(Paul Arthur). View

  • Three Czech New Wave Classics

    6/9/12 to 6/29/12 A rare opportunity to see three Czech New Wave classics in 35mm: Vera Chytilová's surrealist comedy Daisies (1966) and inventive masterwork Fruit of Paradise (1970), and Jaromil Jires's cult classic Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1969). View

  • Peter Greenaway: Cinema and Painting

    6/8/12 to 6/9/12 We present two films by British director Peter Greenaway that explore Rembrandt's most famous painting, The Night Watch. Rembrandt's J'Accuse purports to explain the mysteries hidden in plain sight in the painting, revealing a Golden Age murder mystery, while Nightwatching combines a fictional foray into the life and loves of the Dutch master with the mysterious conditions surrounding the commissioning of the group portrait. View

  • From the Collection

    6/8/12 A treasury of over forty trailers culled from the PFA Collection. View

  • Film and Video Makers at Cal

    5/6/12 The Eisner Prize is UC Berkeley's highest award for creativity. This program presents work by this year's winners in film and video, Rebecca Ramage and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck, along with a diverse sampling of videos from the competition. View

  • Afterimage: Films of Michael Glawogger

    5/4/12 to 5/6/12 We are honored to host Austrian director, writer, and cinematographer Michael Glawogger, who is best known for his trilogy of powerful films that examine working life in a global economy. We screen a selection of Glawogger's documentaries, narratives, and experimental films and welcome him in person each evening of our tribute for a series of conversations with acclaimed New York critic and programmer Dennis Lim. View

  • 55th San Francisco International Film Festival @ BAM/PFA

    4/20/12 to 5/3/12 BAM/PFA is honored to once again be the exclusive East Bay venue for the San Francisco International Film Festival. Join us for forty-two films-features, shorts, documentaries, experimental films-from over thirty countries. View

  • Cine/Spin

    4/12/12 Cal DJs spinning solo or in teams take on silent and silenced films from the PFA Collection: Jean Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet and surprise surreal shorts. Join us for this BAM/PFA tradition. Presented with the BAM/PFA Student Committee. View

  • Costume Designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis, Behind the Scenes: The Art and Craft of Cinema

    4/5/12 to 4/6/12 Acclaimed costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis (Raiders of the Lost Ark; Michael Jackson's Thriller; The Blues Brothers) takes us behind the scenes of Hollywood costume design, with an illustrated talk followed by a screening of ¡Three Amigos! (with Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, Martin Short), one of the many films she has made with her husband, director John Landis. The next evening fellow costume designer Aggie Guerard Rodgers joins Landis in conversation, following a screening of American Graffiti, the quintessential teen movie set in 1962, for which Rodgers designed the costumes. View

  • Special Event: Kevin Brownlow on Napoleon

    3/30/12 We are pleased to welcome esteemed film historian Kevin Brownlow to the PFA Theater for an illustrated talk on the restoration of Abel Gance's epic 1927 film Napoleon. Copresented with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Preceded by a reception and book signing, ticketed separately. View

  • San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival

    3/9/12 to 3/17/12 Join us for the thirtieth San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, featuring films from China, the Philippines, New Zealand, Cambodia, South Korea, the United States, and even a rarity from Burma. View

  • A Tribute to José Saramago (1922–2010)

    3/4/12 Join us for a special screening of José and Pilar, a 2010 portrait film from director Miguel Gonçalves Mendes that focuses on the Nobel Prize–winning Portuguese novelist and playwright José Saramago. View

  • Afterimage: James Ivory, Three Films from Novels

    3/3/12 to 4/7/12 Our tribute to director James Ivory focuses on Merchant-Ivory adaptations of contemporary American novels: Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, from the books by Evan. S. Connell), Le Divorce (based on local author Diane Johnson's novel of manners), and A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (a saga of expatriate life in Paris adapted from Kaylie Jones's autobiographical novel). We are delighted that director James Ivory will join us in person for a conversation with renowned essayist Phillip Lopate about the art of transforming novels into films after the screening on April 7. Lopate will also introduce Chekhov for Children, a documentary recounting the impact of his projects as a writer in the New York City public schools. View

  • The Library Lover: The Films of Raúl Ruiz

    3/2/12 to 4/15/12 Surreal, hilarious cerebral, surprising, entertaining-the films of Chilean director Raúl Ruiz are unlike anything else in contemporary cinema. We present eight films (plus one short) by the celebrated filmmaker, who died last year. A self-proclaimed “library lover,” Ruiz often adapted his films from literary sources; our series includes Ruiz's artful adaptations of Proust, Klossowski, Kafka, Dante, and others. View

  • Dark Past: Film Noir by German Emigrés

    3/1/12 to 4/15/12 Hollywood was the great beneficiary of the exodus of filmmakers from Hitler's Germany in the 1930s. Directors such as Otto Preminger, Max Ophuls, Douglas Sirk, Billy Wilder, and Fritz Lang skillfully transformed the low-budget B-movie into what we now call film noir. Characterized by brooding urban cityscapes distilled from German Expressionism, the eight films in this series are also permeated by the feeling that no one can shake their dark past. View

  • Dizzy Heights: Silent Cinema and Life in the Air

    2/23/12 to 2/26/12 Copresented by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, this series explores the intersection of silent cinema and aviation. It was film that first allowed moviegoers to vicariously experience flight. The screen was alive with speculations on how life might be lived in a futuristic world of airplanes, spaceships, and dirigibles. Above all, these films savor a new way of seeing: the aerial view. All programs feature live musical accompaniment. View

  • Screenagers: 14th Annual Bay Area High School Film and Video Festival

    2/11/12 Screenagers features documentaries, narratives, and experimental films from high school students throughout the Bay Area, selected by Berkeley High School students. Combining teen power with the creative juices of the overly imaginative minds of Bay Area youth, this fun-packed program will keep you thinking. View

  • Seconds of Eternity: The Films of Gregory J. Markopoulos

    2/9/12 to 2/16/12 Gregory J. Markopoulos, a leading figure of the American avant-garde and the world of art cinema, was a poet filmmaker whose work falls intro three main categories: mythic themes, film portraits, and films of place. Join us for this rare opportunity to view eleven of Markopoulos's films made between 1940 and 1967. View

  • Behind the Scenes: The Art and Craft of Cinema, Composer Mark Isham

    2/4/12 Composer Mark Isham talks about his three decades of musical scoring for cinema in this illustrated talk, followed by a screening of A River Runs Through It. A Grammy winner and Oscar nominee, Isham takes us Behind the Scenes to address how a composer brings emotional texture and added drama to a film. View

  • African Film Festival 2012

    1/26/12 to 2/29/12 This year's edition of our annual African Film Festival spans the globe to feature new voices from Africa and the African diaspora, spotlighting pool attendants in Chad, Beethoven lovers in Kinshasa, Tuareg immigrants in Italy, a Spanish filmmaker in Morocco, and even two African American hipsters in San Francisco. View

  • Documentary Voices 2012

    1/25/12 to 4/18/12 Focusing on the past and the present of documentary filmmaking, this series is presented in conjunction with the UC Berkeley course History of Documentary Film. The January/February lineup spotlights PFA's recent preservation of David Holzman's legendary cinéma vérité film and an innovative array of recent documentary animations , including a program of shorts, The Green Wave, and Kongo. The series continues in March and April with additional programs that explore new directions in documentary film. View

  • Austere Perfectionism: The Films of Robert Bresson

    1/19/12 to 2/25/12 This complete retrospective of French director Robert Bresson's fourteen films-austere and controlled, yet replete with compassion-reveals the beauty and perfectionism of his singular body of work. “Bresson touched something very close to the bone of what French cinema is about; ultimately he defined it” (Olivier Assayas). View

  • Film 50: History of Cinema, Film and the Other Arts

    1/18/12 to 4/25/12 A UC Berkeley course open to the public as space permits, Film 50: History of Cinema takes as its theme this semester films that make prominent use of another art form: theater, literature, painting, dance, music, architecture, or photography. Each screening is presented with a lecture by Marilyn Fabe (Department of Film and Media). SERIES IS SOLD OUT. A limited number of rush tickets may available at the box office before each screening. View

  • Howard Hawks: The Measure of Man

    1/13/12 to 4/17/12 “What one loves most about Hawks, finally, is the aliveness of so many of his people” (Robin Wood). Howard Hawks, one of the most-loved directors of classical Hollywood cinema, made films in almost every genre-screwball comedies, dramas, gangster films, action adventures, Westerns, science fiction, musical comedies-and left his distinctive mark on each. Our series, which continues through mid-April, surveys the full range of Hawks's career, including his rarely screened silents. View

  • Henri-Georges Clouzot: The Cinema of Disenchantment

    1/12/12 to 2/4/12 French director Henri-Georges Clouzot's virtuosic way with suspense-in acclaimed thrillers such as Diabolique and Wages of Fear, among others-earned him the title “French Hitchcock.” But his gripping films, often tinged with sardonic humor, had a hard-edged realism born of the pessimism of war-torn France. “Whereas Hitchcock's pictures tend to be set . . . in the world of archetypes, Clouzot always seems bent on recreating life itself with all its contradictions” (Luc Sante). View

  • Afterimage: The Films of Nicolás Pereda

    12/2/11 to 12/4/11 The young Mexican Canadian filmmaker Nicolás Pereda, one of the major new voices in contemporary Latin American (and world) cinema, joins us for the screening of six of his films. Pereda uses contemporary cinematic techniques-such as long, quiet takes and the blending of documentary and fiction-to evoke a physical sense of place, modern Mexico. Pereda will be joined in conversation by critic Robert Koehler on December 4; Koehler will also introduce Together on December 2. View

  • Behind the Scenes: The Art and Craft of Cinema
    Phil Tippett, Special Effects Master

    11/17/11 to 11/18/11 Phil Tippett, founder of Berkeley's renowned Tippett Studio, is a contemporary master of effects animation who has worked on The Empire Strikes Back, Jurassic Park (for which he won an Academy Award), and Starship Troopers, among many other movies. He joins us to offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse of his craft and to introduce two films that embody the past and present of special-effects wizardry. View

  • Southern (Dis)comfort: The American South in Cinema

    11/11/11 to 12/11/11 The Southern Gothic genre, originally penned by the literary likes of William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor, and Erskine Caldwell, then agilely adapted by such directors as Fritz Lang, Sidney Lumet, Elia Kazan, John Huston, and others, plows deep into a region that just can't shake its past. View

  • Romani Culture

    11/10/11 In conjunction with UC Berkeley's Inaugural Conference in Romani Studies, we present Aleksandar Manic's The Shutka Book of Records, which documents the Shutka neighborhood of Skopje, Macedonia, the largest Romani (“Gypsy”) quarter in Europe. View

  • Special Screening: Michelangelo Antonioni's Red Desert

    11/5/11 A new 35mm print of Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni's first color film, Red Desert (1964). View

  • Abbas Kiarostami: The Fragility of Life

    11/5/11 to 11/20/11 We are pleased to present the "earthquake trilogy," of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, acknowledged as one of the greatest filmmakers in contemporary cinema. While critics and programmers have dubbed three of these works-Where Is the Friend's Home, And Life Goes On..., and Through the Olive Trees-the “Koker Trilogy,” Kiarostami himself believes that it is the latter two, combined with his later film Taste of Cherry, that comprise a trilogy, one investigating the beauty, and fragility, of life. View

  • Jeanne Moreau: Enduring Allure

    11/3/11 to 12/11/11 This retrospective of French actress Jeanne Moreau comprises a dozen films she made with an impressive array of directors who were lured by her singular talent, including Louis Malle, François Truffaut, Michelangelo Antonioni, Luis Buñuel, Jacques Demy, and Orson Welles. View

  • Alternative Visions

    11/2/11 to 11/30/11 Our avant-garde film series continues with four programs: an evening featuring the work of collage filmmaker Lewis Klahr; the West Coast premiere of a new film by cinema essayist Daniel Eisenberg; a classic film by James Benning; and a program of recent experimental films, fresh from the Wavelengths program at the Toronto International Film Festival. View

  • Home Movie Day

    10/15/11 To commemorate Home Movie Day, a celebration of amateur filmmaking held at many venues worldwide, we present Amateur Night, a compilation of sixteen amateur films that provides a fascinating history of small gauge filmmaking. View

  • Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Two Great Epics

    10/14/11 to 10/28/11 Back by popular demand after its recent premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival, we present another opportunity to see the dazzling new 35mm restored print of the sci-fi spectacle World on a Wire (1973) paired with Fassbinder's other great television epic, the masterful Berlin Alexanderplatz (1979–80), imported as a 35mm restored print from Germany. View

  • Paul Sharits: An Open Cinema

    10/5/11 to 10/13/11 Paul Sharits (1943–93) trained in painting and graphic design before turning to film, a background apparent throughout his work, which juxtaposes intense pulses of color with repeated words or sound tones, and often takes the form of multiprojector pieces or installations. This retrospective, featuring many new preservation prints, surveys Sharits's career as he continuously evolves what it means to “open up” the cinematic medium. View

  • A Theater Near You

    9/23/11 to 10/30/11 An ongoing series featuring rare prints of classic and contemporary films, A Theater Near You presents a new 35mm print of Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest (1950); a stunning new 35mm restoration of Alberto Cavalcanti's World War II drama Went the Day Well? (1942); and two wonderful films from Eric Rohmer, Summer (Le rayon vert, 1986) and Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987). View

  • Kino-Eye: The Revolutionary Cinema of Dziga Vertov

    9/21/11 to 12/1/11 The films of Russian filmmaker and film theorist Dziga Vertov (1896–1954), intended as bold aesthetic experiments in documenting contemporary life, are as revelatory today as when they first premiered. Including both newsreels and feature films and extending over three months, Kino-Eye: The Revolutionary Cinema of Dziga Vertov is the largest series of Vertov's films ever mounted at the PFA Theater. View

  • Anatolian Outlaw: Yilmaz Güney

    9/17/11 to 10/9/11 Renegade Turkish actor/filmmaker Yilmaz Güney (1931–84) created a cinema that took key elements of Turkish and Kurdish outlaw folklore and merged them into a hypnotic blend of Italian and Hollywood Westerns, Third World cinema, and social realism. This series features eight of his films, including the 1982 winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes, Yol. View

  • Alternative Visions

    9/7/11 to 10/26/11 Our annual avant-garde showcase Alternative Visions, presented in conjunction with the UC Berkeley course Avant-Garde Film, features the edgy collage animations of Martha Colburn, classic films by the great Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko and Russian director Dziga Vertov, and the work of experimental filmmakers Jordan Belson and Chick Strand. View

  • Sounding Off: Portraits of Unusual Music

    9/3/11 to 9/18/11 Five new documentaries about contemporary musical practice that demonstrate that music can be more about a relationship to the world than the ordering of tones or sounds. Includes sonically seductive works from Australia, France, Portugal, and the U.S. View

  • The Outsiders: New Hollywood Cinema in the Seventies

    9/2/11 to 10/27/11 The New Hollywood of the late 1960s and 1970s brought a startling new kind of realism to American theaters that depicted sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, as well as the banality of everyday life. Casting light on the dark side of the American dream and often focusing on misfits and marginal characters, films such as The Heartbreak Kid, Last Picture Show, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, and Over the Edge changed the way movies were made. View

  • UCLA Festival of Preservation

    9/1/11 to 10/30/11 UCLA Film and Television Archive's biennial Festival of Preservation showcases their remarkable restoration and preservation achievements. This year's offerings range from Cecil B. DeMille's 1935 epic The Crusades through Douglas Sirk's petit-noir Sleep, My Love, to Robert Altman's 1982 Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. View

  • FREE Outdoor Screening

    8/25/11 Bring a blanket and picnic on the lawn in the BAM/PFA Sculpture Garden. View

  • Bay Area Animation

    8/24/11 to 8/28/11 Animation specialist, professor, and author Karl Cohen presents two programs featuring over forty years of Bay Area animation, with many artists in person. Cohen has selected a wide range of inventive short works, including the abstract, the political, the whimsical, the psychedelic, and, of course, the humorous. (These two animation programs contain adult content. Not recommended for children.) View

  • Special Screening: The Makioka Sisters

    8/17/11 to 8/26/11 Kon Ichikawa's 1983 film, based on a Tanizaki novel and presented in a new 35mm print, chronicles four sisters in 1930s Osaka, scions of a once-wealthy shipbuilding family who are under pressure to marry well to ease the family's debts. “A Whartonian work of compassionate nostalgia tinctured with irony . . . overwhelmed sporadically by onrushes of beauty-a rapturous collage of kimono fabric (and) the sisters' annual spring viewing of the cherry blossoms” (Village Voice). View

  • The Timeless Cinema of Marcel Pagnol

    8/12/11 to 8/31/11 BAM/PFA joins in celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Chez Panisse with this series devoted to the poignant 1930s dramas of French filmmaker Marcel Pagnol. Filmed on location in the director's native Marseilles or the surrounding countryside, with local actors (their regional accents intact), and highlighting timeless social rituals (including the production and consumption of earthy meals featuring local ingredients), Pagnol's warm and comic depictions of life among the gens de Provence bring the region alive. View

  • Behind the Scenes: The Art and Craft of Cinema
    John Musker on the Art of Animation

    8/3/11 to 8/7/11 Disney animation director John Musker, responsible for such films as The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, takes us behind the scenes of hand-drawn animation with an illustrated lecture on August 3 and will join us on August 4 for a screening of his most recent release, 2009's The Princess and the Frog. He has also selected a classic Disney film, Pinocchio (featuring his favorite Disney character, Jiminy Cricket), for a Sunday matinee. For kids of all ages! View

  • Hands Up! Essential Skolimowski

    7/22/11 to 8/25/11 Jerzy Skolimowski-poet, painter, actor, director, writer-was one of most inventive voices of the Polish New Wave. This series reveals the director's stylistic diversity-we feature early films that encapsulate the alienation and restlessness of young Eastern Europeans in the 1960s (Barrier, Walkover), the absurdist Hands Up! (which provoked the ire of the Polish censors in 1967), the satirical King Queen Knave (1972), the surrealist films of the 1970s (Deep End, The Shout), and Skolimowski's recent return to filmmaking with a tale of obsessive love, Four Nights with Anna, and his own take on the action-escape genre, Essential Killing (2010). View

  • Bernardo Bertolucci: In Search of Mystery

    7/8/11 to 8/18/11 Trained first as a poet, this great Italian film director has issued a body of expansive works, lyrical in their form, rigorous in their reception, profound in their intent, over the course of his fifty-year career. Our series presents an opportunity to see all new prints of many of his feature films, from The Grim Reaper (1962) to 2003's The Dreamers, and a virtually unknown but astonishingly still-relevant 1967 documentary, The Path of Oil. View

  • Going South: American Noir in Mexico

    7/1/11 to 7/29/11 In American noirs, Mexico is depicted as a torrid refuge where the fugitive can disappear into the disorder of daily life. Going South showcases films from the 1940s and 1950s-including Where Danger Lives, The Hitch-Hiker, Kansas City Confidential, and Touch of Evil-that imagine Mexico, or its border with the U.S., as a haven for desperate desires, inevitably foiled by corruption, fated love, and a tint of tequila. View

  • Japanese Divas

    6/17/11 to 8/20/11 The golden age of Japanese cinema shines at BAM/PFA this summer as we spotlight great screen performances by Setsuko Hara, Machiko Kyo, Hideko Takamine, Kinuyo Tanaka, Ayako Wakao, and Isuzu Yamada. Join us for an impressive range of films, including a series of delicate family dramas by Yasujiro Ozu, an existential thriller from Hiroshi Teshigahara, a historical drama from Kenji Mizoguchi, and a comedy from Keisuke Kinoshita, among many others. View

  • Cult of the Kuchars

    6/10/11 to 6/25/11 Cult underground filmmaking twins George and Mike Kuchar will join us in person for screenings of films and videos made together and individually from the 1950s to the present. As part of our ongoing Afterimage series, critic Gene Youngblood will join the Kuchars in conversation following a screening of a selection of their early 8mm films and will introduce a program of George's video diaries. View

  • Arthur Penn, A Liberal Helping

    6/10/11 to 6/29/11 The films of director Arthur Penn (1922–2010) are distinguished by an emphasis on strong performance, fluidity of setting, and empathy for cultural moods. Bonnie and Clyde (1967), his modern take on the gangster film, helped break the stranglehold of the studio system and usher in a new era of filmmakers, including Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Schrader. View

  • Film and Video Makers at Cal Works from the Eisner Prize Competition

    5/6/11 This program features recent films and videos by UC Berkeley students, including the winners of the Eisner Prize, the campus's highest award for creativity. View

  • 54th San Francisco International Film Festival at BAM/PFA

    4/22/11 to 5/5/11 BAM/PFA is honored to once again be the exclusive East Bay venue for the San Francisco International Film Festival. Highlights of the festival at BAM/PFA this year include a continuation of our Patricio Guzmán series with a screening of his most recent film, Nostalgia for the Light; Aurora, the new film by the Romanian director Cristi Puiu; and a documentary by Lynn Hershman Leeson on women artists in the 1970s. View

  • Afterimage: The Films of Patricio Guzmán

    4/2/11 to 4/28/11 Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán is best known for his monumental, three-part Battle of Chile, which documented the rise and fall of Salvador Allende; he followed this with a portrait of the revolutionary president (Salvador Allende) and an indictment of the general who led the military coup against him (The Pinochet Case). As part of our ongoing Afterimage series, we are honored to host the filmmaker in conversation with film scholar and critic Jorge Ruffinelli at a screening of his most recent film, Nostalgia for the Light, on April 28. View

  • Behind the Scenes: The Art and Craft of Cinema
    Patricia Woodbridge on Art Direction

    3/31/11 to 4/3/11 We are pleased to welcome art director Patricia Woodbridge to our ongoing series Behind the Scenes: The Art and Craft of Cinema. Woodbridge will give a lecture on her craft, discussing the role of the art director in bringing the overarching filmic vision to fruition, and will introduce two films on which she has worked, I Am Legend and Shutter Island. We will see how art direction can help communicate a story, define characters, and render a precise mood. View

  • First Person Rural: The New Nonfiction 

    3/26/11 to 4/17/11 The films in this series share an embrace of a cinema of and for the senses. A hybrid of documentary, fiction, and experimental film, works such as La libertad, Sweetgrass, The Sky Turns, and Alamar offer quiet, observational long takes; direct-sound recording; and a “narrative” seemingly just happened upon while the camera was rolling. Drawn largely from the 2010 Flaherty Film Seminar, they constitute a pastoral cinema that investigates our complicated relationship to the environment. View

  • San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival

    3/11/11 to 3/19/11 The Center for Asian American Media's twenty-ninth annual SFIAAFF brings us the best in contemporary cinema from Asia and the Asian diaspora. This year's festival at BAM/PFA includes many filmmakers in person, a spotlight on recent horror films, and a special presentation by UC Santa Barbara scholar Yunte Huang about the real Charlie Chan. View

  • Film and Video Makers at Cal

    3/10/11 This diverse program of recent work by UC Berkeley student filmmakers, entitled Strangers and Friends, delicately shifts between intimacy and remoteness, clarity and disjunction. View

  • Under the Skin: The Films of Claire Denis

    3/4/11 to 4/16/11 An important retrospective devoted to one of the most exciting talents of contemporary cinema, French director Claire Denis, many of whose films focus on colonialism and its legacy. Whether in her debut film Chocolat or her most recent, White Material, Denis focuses her (and our) attention on the textures and rhythms of the physical world and on the ways that people move through it. This series also includes films by Jim Jarmusch and Wim Wenders on which Denis served as assistant director, revealing the long arc of her remarkable career. View

  • Merce Cunningham Dance Company: The Legacy Tour Special Screening: Craneway Event

    3/3/11 to 3/5/11 BAM/PFA and Cal Performances present the Bay Area premiere of Tacita Dean's Craneway Event in conjunction with Merce Cunningham Dance Company: The Legacy Tour. Dean's film follows Cunningham as he rehearses his dancers in Richmond's visually stunning Craneway Pavilion over the course of three days in 2008. Craneway Event documents the construction of a dance but is also a portrait of the legendary choreographer at work during his last visit to the Bay Area. View

  • Alternative Visions

    3/2/11 to 4/20/11 This eclectic series of experimental films features a program of Canadian works that simultaneously depict nature and explore the nature of the cinematic image; three films by Chicago-based avant-garde filmmaker Thomas Comerford, who will join us in person; an intimate glimpse of Andy Warhol's Factory; and a musical comedy set in Depression-era Winnipeg starring Isabella Rossellini as a bewitching beer baroness. View

  • Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Screening: Shoah 

    2/20/11 to 2/27/11 The twenty-fifth anniversary of Claude Lanzmann's seminal Shoah is being marked with the release of a new 35mm print. This film is essential not only as a historical document, capturing the voices of those who witnessed or perpetrated the horrors of the Holocaust in Poland, but also as an innovative documentary that breaks with the conventions of the genre. View

  • Cinema Across Media: The 1920s 

    2/19/11 to 2/25/11 Presented in conjunction with UC Berkeley's Department of Film and Media's interdisciplinary conference, Cinema Across Media will highlight the “multimedia” films of the 1920s, a time when cinema enlisted artists from many other fields such architecture, design, painting, music, and vaudeville. View

  • Special Events: School Days 

    2/5/11 to 2/13/11 PFA presents two special events by, for, or about local students. The thirteenth annual Screenagers, curated by Berkeley High students, includes documentaries, narratives, and experimental films from high schools throughout the Bay Area. The Lunch Love Community Documentary Project presents webisodes from an impending documentary by local filmmakers about the Berkeley School Lunch Initiative. View

  • Cruel Cinema: New Directions in Tamil Film 

    1/30/11 to 2/19/11 This selection of films demonstrates that a Tamil new wave is underway, a movement steeped in cinephilia that presents an unflinching view of the intimate cruelty of family, wanton murder on the streets of Madurai, and the brutality of evil gang lords. View

  • African Film Festival 2011 

    1/27/11 to 2/17/11 The features and shorts of the 2011 African Film Festival offer compelling glimpses of a continent in flux. Films from a wide range of countries, including Morocco, Mali, Ghana, and South Africa, expand and challenge our understanding of Africa. View

  • Film 50: History of Cinema

    1/19/11 to 4/27/11 Through April 27 This year's edition of Film 50, a UC Berkeley film course taught by Russell Merritt and open to the public, focuses on the oddly parallel movements in fairy-tale lore and film narrative, and includes such films as Black Orpheus, Ugetsu, Alien, and Wings of Desire. View

  • Alternative Visions 

    1/19/11 to 2/23/11 This installment of our ongoing series features an affectionate documentary on the history of experimental film. Other Wednesday night programs overlap with both the Radical Light and Cinema Across Media series and include films that use light as both medium and subject, alter reality through the use of abstraction, exploit found footage, and extol Modernism in architecture. View

  • World Cinema Foundation: Safeguarding Cinematic Treasures 

    1/15/11 to 2/10/11 The mission of Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation is to preserve, restore, and share the worldwide patrimony of film. This series presents restored 35mm prints of classics from Egypt, Hungary, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, South Korea, Taiwan, and Turkey. View

  • Suspicion: The Films of Claude Chabrol and Alfred Hitchcock

    1/13/11 to 2/25/11 This series celebrates the films of the late Claude Chabrol and pairs them with a selection of films by Alfred Hitchcock to highlight the art and craft of these two “masters of suspense.” View

  • Grin, Smile, Smirk: The Films of Burt Lancaster

    11/26/10 to 12/11/10 Burt Lancaster was known for his exuberant grin. This toothsome survey features taut existential noirs, acrobatic extravaganzas, and judicious social dramas from Burt's beaming career. View

  • Special Screening

    11/18/10 to 11/20/10 Two opportunities to view a new print of Jean-Luc Godard's Every Man for Himself (1979). View

  • Afterimage: Filmmakers and Critics in Conversation: Kelly Reichardt with B. Ruby Rich

    11/11/10 to 11/13/10 This debut of the new Filmmakers and Critics series pairs Kelly Reichardt with B. Ruby Rich for several nights of screenings and conversation. Reichardt's social-realist films for the modern age, such as Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy, have earned her a reputation as “an indispensable American filmmaker.” She will be in conversation with acclaimed critic and author B. Ruby Rich. View

  • Carl Theodor Dreyer

    11/5/10 to 12/12/10 The films of legendary Danish director Carl Th. Dreyer strip away the unnecessary and turn what's left-emotion, human contact, faith, and love-into almost hallucinatory forces. His 1928 masterpiece, The Passion of Joan of Arc, will be presented with orchestral and choral accompaniment at Oakland's Paramount Theatre, in collaboration with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and the UC Berkeley Choral Ensembles. View

  • Alternative Visions

    11/3/10 to 11/17/10 This installment of Alternative Visions brings new experimental Spanish cinema to the Bay Area; screens films from the 1960s and 1970s that use text as image; and presents Jack Smith's 1963 Flaming Creatures, a campy fantasy of sexual confusion. View

  • Days of Glory: Revisiting Italian Neorealism

    10/1/10 to 12/12/10 A major series which revisits one of postwar cinema's greatest, most influential movements, Italian neorealism, featuring many rarely screened prints, direct from Italian archives, of both well-known classics and titles that will be discoveries for Bay Area audiences. View

  • Behind the Scenes: The Art and Craft of Cinema

    9/23/10 to 9/26/10 BAM/PFA is proud to introduce a new series that gives audiences a rare chance to hear from-and meet-those “behind the scenes”: the cinematographers, producers, editors, designers, and others responsible for bringing the directorial vision to the screen. View

  • Elegant Perversions: The Cinema of João César Monteiro

    9/18/10 to 10/24/10 Combining an almost reverential approach to filming everyday life with an embrace of all things obscene, repressed, and unspoken, the cinema of Portuguese filmmaker João César Monteiro is one of the major rediscoveries-and controversies-of the season. View

  • Radical Light

    Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area

    September 17, 2010–April 3, 2011 Located at the edge of the continent, the Bay Area has long been home to utopian projects, cross-disciplinary explorations, edgy experiments, and psychedelic extravaganzas. View

  • Special Events

    9/11/10 to 10/30/10 Join us at the PFA Theater for several special film-related performances and events, including screenings copresented with the Berkeley Old Time Music Convention (9/11) and the Dance and the State In East Asia Conference (9/11); Home Movie Day (10/16); the complete Metropolis (10/19); and two Readings on Cinema, on “skyscraper cinema” (10/28) and San Francisco movie theaters (10/30). View

  • Drawn from Life: The Graphic Novel on Film

    9/10/10 to 10/31/10 The comic book and its high-brow brother, the graphic novel, hit the screen with this eight-film tribute spanning Popeyes, Pekars, Hellboys, and Swamp Things. View

  • Shakespeare on Screen

    9/3/10 to 10/29/10 California Shakespeare Theater and BAM/PFA join together to showcase some of the best-and most radical-approaches to the Bard, with films spanning the globe from Denmark to the United States, Japan to Russia, and featuring the likes of Toshiro Mifune, silent film star Asta Nielsen, and Leonardo DiCaprio. View

  • Swoon: Great Leading Men in Gorgeous 35mm Prints

    9/2/10 to 9/26/10 Spend the fall with Robert Mitchum, Paul Newman, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and other great leading men, all “young again,” thanks to some wonderful new restorations. View

  • Alternative Visions

    9/1/10 to 10/27/10 Brand-new experimental works complement classics by Oskar Fischinger, Fernand Léger, Joseph Cornell, Lois Weber, Luis Buñuel, and more. View

  • Shelf Life: PFA Collection Shorts Outdoor Screening

    8/27/10 Join us for an evening under the stars with these little gems from the PFA Collection, small tales for all senses straight from our new, improved storage vault. Free admission. View

  • Viva la Revolución: Celebrating the Hundredth Anniversary of Mexico's Revolution 

    8/14/10 to 8/27/10 Five films, one revolution. Join the campaign as we celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, which encompassed such larger-than-life revolutionaries as Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata and a backdrop rife with heroics, betrayal, and sacrifice. View

  • Criminal Minds

    7/23/10 to 8/13/10 Live on the edge a little this summer, with some help from friends like Jack the Ripper, Al Capone, and Boxcar Bertha, with this series highlighting the “true-life” crime genre. View

  • A Theater Near You 

    7/10/10 to 8/8/10 Our ongoing program spotlights some of the best recent films and film restorations of the past year. View

  • Modernist Master: The Cinema of Francesco Rosi 

    7/8/10 to 8/28/10 A committed leftist and an equally committed modernist, Francesco Rosi offers a body of films whose political and emotional impact is almost purely visual. Born in Naples, Rosi is a man of the South who constructs his films, mostly thrillers and political exposés, as dramatic inquiries, frequently into real situations, always into real social forces-the forces of corruption. View

  • El Futuro Está Aquí: Sci-Fi Classics from Mexico

    6/24/10 to 6/27/10 See a robot in mortal battle with an Aztec mummy! A masked wrestler repelling an invasion from Mars! Venusian babes falling for a charro from Chihuahua! These movies are a deranged blend of American sci-fi tropes and Mexican pop mythology. View

  • West Coast Premiere: Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then

    6/16/10 Animator Brent Green appears in person with his first feature, a fable of love, loss, and compulsive construction. This premiere is presented in conjunction with the artist's MATRIX exhibition. View

  • Tales from the Golden Age: Recent Romanian Cinema

    6/11/10 to 6/27/10 Works from one of the most exciting movements in contemporary international cinema depict life during and after the Ceauşescu era with compelling realism and absurdist humor. View

  • Icky Flix Remix: Videos by The Residents, 1975–2010

    6/9/10 A whirlwind survey of the legendary avant-rock group's moving-image output, from their eyeballs to yours. Representatives of the Cryptic Corporation in person. View

  • Akira Kurosawa Centennial

    6/4/10 to 8/29/10 A master by any measure, Kurosawa exploited the epic possibilities of the big screen while remaining grounded in a fundamental humanism. This thirty-film retrospective is a chance to explore the full range of his fifty-year career. View

  • Strange Tales of the Whistler

    5/29/10 to 6/5/10 Out from the shadows of B-movie history comes The Whistler, a series of swift-moving, eerily entertaining noirs, presented in brand-new prints. View

  • Brought to Light: Recent Acquisitions to the PFA Collection

    5/29/10 to 6/23/10 We celebrate the breadth and richness of PFA's film and video holdings with an eclectic selection of recent acquisitions. View

  • L@TE: Friday Nights @ BAM/PFA

    5/28/10 to 6/25/10 Expanded cinema comes to the Berkeley Art Museum's Gallery B as part of the Friday night program L@TE. View

  • Film & Video Makers at Cal

    5/7/10 Recent works by UC Berkeley students, including the winners of the Eisner Prize, the campus's highest award for creativity. View

  • 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival at PFA

    4/23/10 to 5/6/10 After more than half a century, the festival is still the premier annual film event in the Bay Area. View

  • Cine/Spin

    4/15/10 Silent comedy gets loud when UC Berkeley student DJs bust a move on Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. View

  • What's a Matta U? Considering the College Experience Through Film

    4/7/10 Film critic and psychotherapist Reyna Cowan presents the Australian coming-of-age tale Somersault, “a frank and visceral film that at the same time exudes an unexpected innocence.”-L.A. Times View

  • Dotted Lines: Women Filmmakers Connect the Past and the Present

    4/6/10 to 4/21/10 A miniseries of works by women exploring personal and global histories through the film essay form. Irene Lusztig, Lynne Sachs, and Amie Siegel will be present to discuss their work. View

  • Frederick Wiseman: La Danse

    4/1/10 The latest work from venerable documentarian Frederick Wiseman takes us behind the scenes of one of the world's greatest ballet companies. View

  • Private Lives: The Films of Alain Cavalier

    3/31/10 to 4/20/10 We sample from the unusual career of French filmmaker Alain Cavalier, from his New Wave debut through the exquisite Thérèse to the intimate personal documentaries he makes today. View

  • What's It All Mean: Films by William T. Wiley and Friends

    3/30/10 to 4/18/10 In conjunction with the BAM retrospective of William Wiley's freewheeling work, the artist visits PFA to present his films and others by his California cohorts. View

  • Celebrating Chekhov

    3/27/10 to 4/18/10 Celebrating the 150th anniversary of Anton Chekhov's birth, this series presents a diverse selection of Soviet and Russian films adapted from his writings. View

  • Life, Death, and Technicolor: A Tribute to Jack Cardiff

    3/25/10 to 4/17/10 We pay homage to a peerless color cinematographer in a series that features stunning restored prints of The Red Shoes and other classics. View

  • San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival at PFA

    3/12/10 to 3/20/10 The Center for Asian American Media brings you the best in contemporary cinema from Asia and the Asian diaspora. This year's festival includes a spotlight on Filipino director Lino Brocka. View

  • Film & Video Makers at Cal

    3/11/10 An eclectic selection of works by UC Berkeley students. View

  • Love Letters and Live Wires: Highlights from the GPO Film Unit

    3/5/10 to 3/9/10 A charming and surprising compilation of shorts from Britain's postal film unit in the 1930s, featuring works by such talents as Alberto Cavalcanti, Len Lye, and Norman McLaren. View

  • Joseph Losey: Pictures of Provocation

    3/5/10 to 4/16/10 A masterly director who spent most of his career in exile from red-baiting America, Joseph Losey pursued an ethical cinema that investigated the limits of personal freedom. We survey his work from impressive noirs like The Prowler and M on through his years in Britain, including his remarkable collaborations with Dirk Bogarde. View

  • Jan Troell in Person

    3/4/10 Swedish director Jan Troell, “among the world's most distinguished filmmakers” (N.Y. Times), joins us to present his acclaimed feature Everlasting Moments. View

  • Celebrating Amateur Film

    2/21/10 to 2/28/10 There are people who make movies for profit, and there are those who do it for love. This series celebrates the latter, with a special tribute to amateur auteur Sid Laverents. View

  • Masters of Asian Cinema: Yasujiro Ozu and Hou Hsiao-hsien

    2/19/10 to 2/20/10 Compare and contrast: a rare early work by Ozu and a modern classic by Hou, offered in conjunction with a conference on Ozu and his cinematic legacy. View

  • Alfred Leslie: Cool Man in a Golden Age

    2/9/10 to 2/16/10 Leslie was a key figure on the New York scene in the fifties and sixties, and is still a vital artist today. We present Leslie's collaborations with Frank O'Hara and the legendary Pull My Daisy. View

  • Screenagers

    2/6/10 The Bay Area High School Film Festival presents fresh works by the filmmakers of tomorrow. View

  • What's a Matta U? Considering the College Experience Through Film

    2/3/10 Film critic and psychotherapist Reyna Cowan presents Pieces of April, a quirky and charming tale of a family coming together-and falling apart. View

  • The Kids Are Alright: Post-Fifties Musicals and the Rise of Youth Culture

    1/31/10 to 2/28/10 These are not your parents' musicals-or maybe they are, if your parents were teenagers in the sixties. Sing along to the sounds of the widening generation gap, from 1961's West Side Story to 2008's Fruit Fly. View

  • L@TE: Friday Nights @ BAM/PFA

    1/29/10 to 3/26/10 Media artists take over BAM's Gallery B for a new series of moving image spectacles, the fourth Friday of each month. View

  • African Film Festival

    1/27/10 to 2/24/10 This annual series invites Bay Area audiences to experience the vibrant voices and visions of African cinema. View

  • Alternative Visions

    1/26/10 to 2/23/10 Zoe Beloff presents fascinating films from the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society, and Nathaniel Dorsky screens four of his beautiful, meditative works. View

  • Complicated Shadows: The Films of Val Lewton

    1/22/10 to 2/13/10 Val Lewton was that rare creature in Hollywood, the producer with a genuine artistic vision. We feature ten of Lewton's 1940s cheapies, as rich in shadowy atmosphere and psychic unease as they were financially impoverished. View

  • Film 50: History of Cinema

    1/20/10 to 4/28/10 If you want to explore the history and aesthetics of film, this popular course is the place to start. View

  • Before “Capraesque”: Early Frank Capra

    1/16/10 to 2/27/10 What better time than now to revisit the work of Frank Capra, the celebrated Hollywood populist of the last Great Depression? This series showcases the range of Capra's early work, including many little-known gems in restored prints. View

  • Playtime: The Modern Comedy of Jacques Tati

    1/14/10 to 1/30/10 Tati's brilliantly composed comedies revel in the oddity of everyday twentieth-century life. Don't miss this chance to see masterworks like Playtime on the big screen. View

  • An Evening with Mark Morris

    12/16/09 The celebrated choreographer presents films that illuminate his own work and spotlight classic performances, from Charlie Chaplin to the great black musical artists of the forties. View

  • Readings on Cinema: Hitchcock's Psycho

    12/5/09 To mark the publication of his new book The Moment of Psycho, critic David Thomson introduces a special screening of Hitchcock's film. We regret to announce that David Thomson is unable to join us this evening; however, The Moment of Psycho will still be available for sale at this screening. View

  • Four by Hungarian Master Miklós Jancsó

    12/5/09 to 12/18/09 Visual ballet meets political analysis in the films of this Hungarian artist. “An essential director whose work cannot be seen, should not be seen, anywhere other than on the big screen” (Cinematheque Ontario). View

  • Screening and Conversation: Godard's Made in U.S.A.

    12/3/09 “Godard's ultimate statement about his love/hatred for the aesthetics/politics of American movies/life” (Jonathan Rosenbaum) is the subject of a conversation between Kaja Silverman and Jonathan Everett Haynes. View

  • Otto Preminger: Anatomy of a Movie

    11/27/09 to 12/20/09 “Otto Preminger must hold some sort of record for one of the longest stretches of provocative and intelligent mainstream filmmaking in American cinema” (Village Voice). We survey the director's work from noir classics like Laura through the feisty indies of the fifties and sixties. View

  • Alexander Black: Cinema Pioneer

    11/22/09 Discover the work of an unjustly neglected film forefather-including shorts recently preserved by PFA-in an illustrated presentation by scholar Kaveh Askari. View

  • Jesters and Gestures: Performing Yiddish Culture from Silent Cinema to Avant-Garde Film

    11/12/09 to 11/24/09 This journey into the world of Yiddish cinema showcases spectacular film performances and celebrates the varieties of Eastern European Jewish culture with an abundance of music, humor, irony, and self-awareness. View

  • Fiercely Freestyle: Ari Marcopoulos

    11/11/09 to 11/18/09 In conjunction with the exhibition of the photographer's work in the BAM galleries, two evenings of films featuring musicians, skaters, snowboarders, and other denizens of the subcultural sublime. View

  • After the Wall: Andreas Dresen's Silent Country

    11/8/09 Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we look back with a screening of Andreas Dresen's droll take on that pivotal moment. View

  • In Time: The Films of Alain Resnais

    11/6/09 to 12/15/09 Exploring the structures of time and memory, Resnais created a cinema of ideas that transformed the idea of cinema. This series revisits the unforgettable work of a true modernist master, including the groundbreaking Night and Fog and Last Year at Marienbad. View

  • New Spanish Cinema

    11/5/09 to 11/8/09 This sampling of recent cinema from Spain includes soulful family drama, hard-hitting social critique, and exquisite animation. View

  • A Woman's Face: Ingrid Bergman in Europe

    11/4/09 to 12/17/09 A chance to discover rare works by a beloved actress, this series looks beyond Bergman's Hollywood fame to consider her work across the Atlantic, from her early years in Sweden to her work with Roberto Rossellini and that other Bergman, Ingmar. View

  • Alternative Visions

    11/3/09 to 12/1/09 The avant-garde in your backyard: PFA's Tuesday evening showcase brings new works by Ute Aurand, Harun Farocki, and others to Berkeley. View

  • Watching the Unwatchable: Films Confront Torture

    11/1/09 to 2/7/10 When the unthinkable happens, we must watch the unwatchable. Filmmakers take on torture in this continuing program, presented in conjunction with the BAM exhibition Fernando Botero: The Abu Ghraib Series. View

  • Halloween Screening: The Krays

    10/31/09 Gary and Martin Kemp (of Spandau Ballet) play notoriously malevolent twin criminals in this brutal neo-noir. View

  • Chilean Directors in Person

    10/22/09 Sebastián Moreno Madrones and Sebastián Campos will be on hand to discuss their films City of Photographers and The Sacred Family, views of Chilean life under Pinochet and today. View

  • Home Movie Day

    10/17/09 If you have home movies on film that you've never seen or haven't watched in years, don't let them decay! Take them to Home Movie Day! View

  • Robert Beavers: My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure

    10/13/09 to 10/20/09 The films of Robert Beavers are exceptional for their visual beauty, aural texture, and depth of emotional expression. PFA is honored to present his eighteen-film cycle and to welcome him as an artist in residence. View

  • Julien Duvivier: Poetic Craftsman of Cinema

    10/2/09 to 10/31/09 “This great technician, this rigorist, was a poet,” Jean Renoir said of his countryman Julien Duvivier. Encompassing an astounding array of genres and featuring extremely rare works as well as favorites like Pépé le Moko, this retrospective is a chance to discover a master of French poetic realism. View

  • Life's Work: The Cinema of Ermanno Olmi

    9/25/09 to 10/30/09 In slyly humorous, deeply humanist films like Il posto or the majestic Tree of Wooden Clogs, Italian director Ermanno Olmi has placed the realities and rhythms of work at the heart of his cinema. PFA's celebration of this underrated, understated director includes the Bay Area premiere of the new Slow Food documentary Terra Madre. View

  • What's a Matta U? Considering the College Experience Through Film

    9/17/09 to 11/19/09 Hosted by film critic and psychotherapist Reyna Cowan, this new series considers how we become who we are. We begin with François Truffaut's The Wild Child. View

  • Metaphysical Medium: The Video Works of Bill Viola

    9/16/09 to 9/30/09 For over three decades, celebrated artist Bill Viola has been exploring the apparatus of vision as a means of metaphysical revelation. We present three evenings of probing perceptual investigations, with Viola in person on September 30. View

  • Another Border: Films and Videos from the Cinémathèque de Tanger Archives

    9/13/09 to 10/1/09 A selection of short films, documentaries, and experimental works showcases the vitality of contemporary Moroccan film and video alongside the richness of historic archival footage from the region. View

  • Top Bill: The Films of William Klein

    9/11/09 to 10/11/09 Whether chronicling the folly of haute couture, exposing the absurdity of social conformity, or documenting the peculiar effects of celebrity, photographer and filmmaker William Klein applies an outsider's sensibility and an audacious visual energy. This retrospective surveys Klein's decades-long career in and out of fashion. View

  • Special Screening with Live Music: Always Been a Rambler

    9/9/09 A new documentary and live performances of old-timey music pay tribute to pioneering folk revivalists the New Lost City Ramblers. View

  • A Theater Near You

    9/4/09 to 10/29/09 The latest entries in our ongoing repertory series are a profile of fashion's immortal Valentino and a recent feature by the great Chinese director Jia Zhangke. View

  • Tea and Larceny: Classic British Crime Films

    9/2/09 to 9/26/09 “Crime is everywhere, and the British cinema has long made hay of it with a series of moody and violent melodramas” (The New Yorker). Join us for a trip down deliciously dark cinematic alleys, unearthing obscure tales of murder and mayhem and uncovering the menace behind English manners. View

  • Alternative Visions

    9/1/09 to 10/27/09 Up-to-the-minute experiments complement classics by Shirley Clarke, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and others in PFA's avant-garde showcase. Many artists will join us in person, including Ken Jacobs with one of his fabled Nervous Magic Lantern performances. View

  • Free Outdoor Screening: The Fast and the Furious

    8/28/09 From 1954, the original crash course in fast cats, cool jazz, and careening cars. View

  • Special Screening: Vertigo

    8/13/09 Hitchcock's extraordinary drama of obsession and illusion makes a vertiginous counterpoint to Into the Vortex. View

  • Secrets Beyond the Door: Treasures from the UCLA Festival of Preservation

    8/7/09 to 8/30/09 From Josef von Sternberg and Frank Borzage to John Cassavetes and John Sayles, from Jazz Age Vitaphone shorts to the first Sri Lankan independent film, this festival of works preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive covers a spectrum of cinema history in sparkling prints. View

  • Sneak Preview: Taking Woodstock

    8/6/09 Screenwriter/producer James Schamus in person. Ang Lee's latest film is based on the memoirs of Elliot Tiber, a young interior designer who inadvertently helped make the Woodstock Festival into a legendary cultural event. View

  • Ecco l'uomo: Celebrating Italian Actors

    7/24/09 to 8/29/09 Behind every great Italian auteur stands a great Italian actor. We celebrate the talents of Vittorio Gassman, Marcello Mastroianni, Alberto Sordi, and other performers who brought the films of directors like Fellini, Monicelli, and Pasolini to life. View

  • Into the Vortex: Female Voice in Film

    7/15/09 to 8/26/09 Exploring the use of the female voice in 1940s Hollywood films, this series includes canonical “women's pictures,” obscure gems, and other not-so-guilty pleasures. View

  • A Tribute to Hayao Miyazaki

    7/12/09 to 7/21/09 We showcase the stunning artistry, soaring imagination, and social conscience of master animator Hayao Miyazaki in four special screenings. View

  • A Theater Near You

    7/12/09 to 7/23/09 PFA's repertory series returns with a new work from Polish master Andrzej Wajda and a fresh print of a beautiful 1961 film by Jean-Pierre Melville. View

  • Eccentric Cinema: Overlooked Oddities and Ecstasies,
    1963–82

    7/8/09 to 8/27/09 A dozen delirious, genre-defying films by the likes of Brian De Palma, Robert Downey, Bill Gunn, Curtis Harrington, and George Romero revel in pictorial excess and a contempt for the customary. View

  • Tight Spot: Phil Karlson in the Fifties

    6/5/09 to 6/26/09 Karlson renders the corrupt, cruel undercurrents of American life in a style that is “hard, fast, and unadorned” (Dave Kehr). We present eight of his best exercises in low-budget ingenuity and pulp realism. View

  • Karel Vachek: Poet Provocateur

    5/31/09 to 6/28/09 The works of this influential Czech filmmaker inventively trace political and intellectual history and take part in trenchant cultural debate. Vachek joins us to continue the conversation at two screenings. View

  • Quality Control: Selected Works from Zaentz Films

    5/30/09 to 6/17/09 We celebrate the craft of filmmaking with four award-winning works from Berkeley's own Zaentz Films, each introduced by a member of the creative team that produced it. View

  • In the Realm of Oshima

    5/29/09 to 7/18/09 “No other director of Nagisa Oshima's generation has made more vital, inventive and challenging films, or taken more risks. He is a giant in contemporary cinema” (Tony Rayns). This retrospective of the Japanese master's work is a landmark, once-in-a-generation event. View

  • Film & Video Makers at Cal

    5/8/09 Recent works by UC Berkeley students, including the winners of the Eisner Prize, the campus's highest award for creativity. View

  • Kazuo Hara in Person

    5/2/09 The great Japanese documentarian presents two of his provocative, idiosyncratic portraits and signs his new book. View

  • 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival at PFA

    4/24/09 to 5/7/09 After more than half a century, the festival is still the premier annual film event in the Bay Area. View

  • Cine/Spin

    4/16/09 Weed-wacked exploitation flick Reefer Madness gets a totally dope soundtrack by Cal student DJs. View

  • Film and Video Makers at Cal

    4/9/09 An eclectic selection of works by UC Berkeley students. View

  • Ventana al Sur: Argentine Experimental Films

    4/7/09 These provocative short films from the land where winter is summer just might turn your world upside down. View

  • From Riches to Rags: Hollywood and the New Deal

    4/1/09 to 4/19/09 Lessons from the last Great Depression in four evenings of films, talks, and live music. View

  • Movie Matinees for All Ages, March/April 2009

    3/21/09 to 4/11/09 Bring the family and share the joys of classic films on the big screen. View

  • 27th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival

    3/13/09 to 3/21/09 The Center for Asian American Media brings you the best in contemporary cinema from Asia and the Asian diaspora. This year's program spotlights Kiyoshi Kurosawa. View

  • Agnès Varda: Cinécriture

    3/6/09 to 4/18/09 We survey the personal, political, and playful work of this French filmmaker, a founding mother of the New Wave in the fifties and sixties and a major independent voice ever since. View

  • Martín Rejtman in Person

    3/3/09 to 3/5/09 A key figure in the recent ascendance of Argentine cinema, Rejtman joins us to present his surreal, funny, and compelling films. View

  • Thinking About Not Thinking: Buddhism, Meditation, and Film

    3/2/09 to 4/27/09 This film-lecture course uses film to understand Buddhism, and Buddhist principles to reflect on film. View

  • Women's Cinema from Tangiers to Tehran

    3/1/09 to 4/22/09 A celebration of women filmmakers from North Africa and the Middle East, featuring an evening with director, actress, and Kiarostami collaborator Niki Karimi. View

  • PFA Theater: Conversations with Kaja Silverman

    3/1/09 to 4/17/09 Free admission. The Pacific Film Archive is pleased to present three events this spring examining the moving image and installation art. View

  • Human Rights Watch International Film Festival

    2/25/09 to 2/27/09 The annual program presented by the renowned advocacy organization Human Rights Watch showcases eye-opening works by courageous filmmakers worldwide. View

  • The Human Condition

    2/15/09 A marathon screening of Masaki Kobayashi's scathing World War II epic. “Kobayashi's monumental film can clarify and enrich your understanding of what it is to be alive.”-N.Y. Times View

  • One-Two Punch: Pulp Writers on Film

    2/13/09 to 2/28/09 This series comes out swinging with double bills based on the work of four great pulp authors: Fredric Brown, Jim Thompson, Charles Willeford, and Cornell Woolrich. View

  • Screenagers

    2/7/09 The Bay Area High School Film Festival presents fresh works by the filmmakers of tomorrow. View

  • African Film Festival

    1/25/09 to 2/22/09 This annual series invites Bay Area audiences to experience the vibrant voices and visions of African cinema. A tribute to the late Youssef Chahine is one of this year's highlights. View

  • Movie Matinees for All Ages, January/February 2009

    1/24/09 to 2/21/09 Our ongoing Saturday series is a chance for the whole family to enjoy classic films on the big screen. View

  • Members' Special Event: Letters from Iwo Jima

    1/23/09 Clint Eastwood joins us in person to discuss his moving, humanist portrayal of Japanese soldiers in World War II. View

  • The Way of the Termite: The Essay in Cinema

    1/22/09 to 4/19/09 An expansive, opinionated selection of essay films, curated by Jean-Pierre Gorin. View

  • Film 50: History of Cinema

    1/21/09 to 5/6/09 Our ever-popular film-lecture series focuses this season on images of childhood. View

  • Unknown Orson Welles

    1/17/09 to 1/18/09 Archivist Stefan Drössler presents two programs of rare Welles works, including TV ephemera and tantalizing excerpts from unrealized projects. View

  • Man of Marvel: Andrzej Wajda

    1/16/09 to 2/18/09 Wajda's masterful films bravely depicted the realities of war and oppression and played a vital role in Poland's self-awareness as a nation. We present twelve key works. View

  • Josef von Sternberg: Eros and Abstraction

    1/15/09 to 2/22/09 “Hollywood's master craftsman, Sternberg . . . could out-light, out-design, and out-fetishize any director on the lot” (Village Voice). Our series celebrates Sternberg before, during, and after his famed collaboration with Marlene Dietrich. View

  • Fellini's Amarcord

    1/14/09 to 1/23/09 A new print of Fellini's free-spirited portrait of Rimini in the 1930s, when fascism was a fact of life. “A film of exhilarating beauty.”-N.Y. Times View

  • Moments of Truth: Italian Cinema Classics

    11/29/08 to 12/21/08 This small but mighty collection forms a tribute to neorealism and its inheritors in Italian cinema. Works by Rossellini, Fellini, Visconti, De Sica, Olmi, and others. View

  • A Dirty Dozen: The Films of Robert Aldrich

    11/21/08 to 12/20/08 Aldrich found a challenging refuge in Hollywood genres, but he always tampered with the conventions, proffering startling themes and “sold-out dreams.” Several screenings are introduced by his daughter Adell Aldrich. View

  • PFA at the Castro: Voices of Light / The Passion of Joan of Arc

    11/17/08 At San Francisco's Castro Theatre, the University of California Alumni Chorus and PFA present an oratorio with silent film-Carl Th. Dreyer's 1928 classic, and music by Richard Einhorn. View

  • Discovering Teuvo Tulio

    11/15/08 to 12/4/08 See why Teuvo Tulio, the wild and willful director of Finnish melodramas from the 1930s and 1940s, is looked upon by Aki Kaurismäki and others as an incomparable master of the form. View

  • Merce Cunningham: Dance on Film

    11/9/08 to 11/13/08 Presented in association with Cal Performances, PFA's tribute to Cunningham features illuminating behind-the-scenes documentaries and “filmdances,” works choreographed specifically for the screen. View

  • Movie Matinees for All Ages, November 2008

    11/8/08 to 11/29/08 Our ongoing Saturday series is a great way to introduce youngsters to the joys of the big screen-and to rediscover them yourself. View

  • Mahjong: New Independent Chinese Cinema

    11/6/08 to 11/22/08 The newest generation of Chinese filmmakers has come of age in a world drastically different from that of their predecessors, and they address China's present-day problems and failures, from unemployment to concerns of loneliness and family. View

  • Alternative Visions

    11/4/08 to 12/9/08 PFA's Tuesday evening avant-garde showcase features new video works from Lebanon, experimental pieces from China, a tribute to the Bay Area's own Canyon Cinema, an evening with MATRIX artist Martha Colburn, and a memorial to the great San Francisco–based artist Bruce Conner. View

  • Cinema Japan: A Wreath for Madame Kawakita

    11/1/08 to 12/17/08 Celebrating the centenary of Madame Kashiko Kawakita, a “roving ambassador” who brought Japanese cinema to international attention-and to PFA-over many decades, this eclectic twenty-four-film showcase offers a journey through highlights of Japan's postwar cinema. View

  • An Election Year Halloween: The Werewolf of Washington

    10/31/08 Dean Stockwell is a speechwriter with bite in this satiric treat from the era of Tricky Dick. View

  • Special Event: Ghost World

    10/26/08 Bay Area originals Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff present their great tribute to teen disaffection. View

  • I Love Beijing: The Films of Ning Ying

    10/23/08 to 10/27/08 “Ning Ying knows Beijing the way Martin Scorsese knows New York” (Boston Phoenix). China's most important woman director maps her country's shifting physical and cultural topography with deadpan humor and clear-eyed intelligence. She is an artist in residence at PFA this fall. View

  • Home Movie Day

    10/18/08 Dust off your old home movies and share them with the world, or just come and enjoy the spectacle. “Home Movie Day is an orgy of self-discovery, a chance for family memories to suddenly become show business.”-John Waters View

  • Envisioning Russia: A Century of Filmmaking

    10/10/08 to 10/30/08 Classics by masters from Eisenstein to Tarkovsky; little-seen genre gems; fabulously kitschy relics of the Soviet era-all are part of the panorama of Russian cinema presented in this eclectic survey. View

  • No Wave: The Cinema of Jean Eustache

    10/4/08 to 10/22/08 In documentaries and unvarnished fictions, Jean Eustache recorded provincial French traditions and the mating habits of post-1968 Parisians with the same detached fascination. This series presents a rare opportunity to explore his career beyond the landmark The Mother and the Whore. View

  • Campus Connections

    9/25/08 to 9/26/08 Music and modernity in films from Turkey and South Africa, offered in conjunction with conferences at UC Berkeley and open to the public. View

  • Movie Matinees for All Ages, September/October 2008

    9/20/08 to 10/11/08 Our ongoing Saturday series is a great way to introduce youngsters to the joys of the big screen-and to rediscover them yourself. View

  • Before Big: The Early Films of David Lean

    9/19/08 to 10/11/08 David Lean's early films are smaller in scale than his famous epics, but nonetheless “lively, stirring, and an inspiration . . . in love with the screen's power and the combustion in editing” (David Thomson). We present ten of these wonderfully crafted British classics in recently restored prints. View

  • Unknown Pleasures: The Films of Jia Zhangke

    9/12/08 to 10/17/08 “One of the most exciting filmmakers of our time” (Film Comment), Jia Zhangke contemplates a China perpetually reinventing itself, and the people left behind in the transition. Our retrospective surveys the observational, highly original work of this contemporary master. View

  • Jean-Luc Godard: Movie Love in the Sixties

    9/5/08 to 10/17/08 In the sixties, Jean-Luc Godard broadened the notion of screen romance to embrace a wide entrancing world: this was movie love. Godard celebrates and deconstructs his various inspirations-Anna Karina, Paris, cinema itself-in eight films, including several new prints. View

  • Czeching Out: The Early Films of Milos Forman

    9/4/08 to 9/13/08 In seminal works of the Czech New Wave, Milos Forman brilliantly mocked an authoritarian system in decline. Then, in the seventies, he discovered new satiric territory: America. This series witnesses Forman stepping out from behind the Iron Curtain. View

  • Alternative Visions

    9/2/08 to 10/28/08 Our Tuesday evening avant-garde showcase returns for a wide-ranging fall season that features works by Craig Baldwin, Robert Beavers, James Benning, Robert Breer, Valie Export, and many others, plus a program of found-footage works in memory of the late Bruce Conner. View

  • Manoel de Oliveira: Talking Pictures

    8/9/08 to 9/28/08 The rich, rigorous work of Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira is at once passionate and austere, gracefully weaving philosophy, literature, theater, and storytelling into a purely cinematic experience. We celebrate the upcoming centennial of this still active director with a major series. View

  • Streets of No Return: The Dark Cinema of David Goodis

    8/1/08 to 8/23/08 Filmmakers have long found sordid inspiration in the dead-end tales of pulp writer David Goodis. In films by Jacques Tourneur, François Truffaut, and many others, this series explores a noir universe peopled with tormented losers and doomed lowlifes, where Goodis's obsessions are written-or rewritten-on the screen. View

  • The Long View: A Celebration of Widescreen

    7/16/08 to 8/30/08 Invented as a retort to television, CinemaScope and its widescreen successors-VistaVision, Panavision, and the rest-take cinema outside the box. Our summer-long series covers an expansive panorama of genres, styles, periods, and nations, but all these films have one thing in common: they truly must be seen on the big screen. View

  • Hecho por México: The Films of Gabriel Figueroa

    7/10/08 to 8/9/08 More than a cinematographer, Gabriel Figueroa was a consummate film artist. His rich chiaroscuro captured Mexico's grandeur and embodied its entrenched contrasts in what the painter Siqueiros called “murals that travel.” This series reframes Figueroa's work with new and archival prints of films directed by Emilio Fernández, Luis Buñuel, and others. View

  • United Artists: 90 Years

    7/5/08 to 8/31/08 Founded by Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, D. W. Griffith, and Charles Chaplin in 1919, United Artists went on to release films by such independent-minded artists as Buster Keaton, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, Woody Allen, and Martin Scorsese. This anniversary tribute samples from UA's eclectic roster with everything from low-budget gems to blockbuster classics, including many gorgeous new prints. View

  • Where To and Back: The Axel Corti Trilogy

    6/15/08 to 6/29/08 Addressing the plight of Jews during World War II, Austrian director Axel Corti's brilliantly nuanced trilogy embodies the search for meaning amidst the wreckage of humanity. “At once intimate and epic and an impeccable period re-creation, Where To and Back is a masterpiece” (L.A. Times). View

  • Joan Blondell: The Fizz on the Soda

    6/13/08 to 6/29/08 With a lush figure, bright, platter-sized eyes that missed nothing, and a mouth equally ready to dish a wisecrack, pull a sneer, or plant a kiss, Joan Blondell was a staple of Hollywood's studio heyday. This series spotlights a perennial supporting player who was also “one of the most reliably good actresses Hollywood has ever seen” (Matthew Kennedy). View

  • Mental Minefields: The Dark Tales of Zeki Demirkubuz

    6/8/08 to 6/28/08 “An auteur with a genuine spiritual sensitivity, Zeki Demirkubuz (is) one of the world's few convincing existential filmmakers” (Boston Phoenix). Discover this Turkish director's acclaimed body of work, a compelling portrait of morality in the contemporary world. View

  • Louder, Faster: Punk in Performance

    6/5/08 to 6/26/08 In conjunction with the BAM exhibition Bruce Conner: Mabuhay Gardens, four loud evenings of films made at punk's high point, from 1976 to 1980-not nostalgic looks back, but hardcore reports from the pogo pit. View

  • Lynn Hershman Leeson: Virtually Everything, Virtually

    6/1/08 Lynn Hershman Leeson is now best known for her technologically astute feature films and interactive gallery incursions, but her career can be traced back to a substantial body of inventively prophetic video works. This immersive eight-hour extravaganza presents those pieces, with the artist in virtual conversation throughout. View

  • R. W. Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz

    5/30/08 to 6/7/08 A special presentation of the recently restored Fassbinder epic, adapted from Alfred Döblin's 1929 novel of the Berlin underworld. “From the audacious opening sequence, in which the petty criminal Franz Biberkopf is released from prison, to his Sadean hallucinations in the epilogue, Fassbinder reached the zenith of his inspiration here” (New Yorker). View

  • Hong Kong Nocturne: The Films of Johnnie To

    5/29/08 to 6/27/08 “One of the greatest action directors working in the world . . . (Johnnie) To has built a dazzling brilliant career out of cinematic mayhem” (N.Y. Times). This series samples the gritty gangster sagas, like Election, that have gained To international notoriety, as well as his over-the-top fantasies that unchain genre filmmaking from the tethers of reality. View

  • Film and Video Makers at Cal

    5/5/08 Recent works by UC Berkeley students, including the winners of the Eisner Prize, the campus's highest award for creativity. View

  • 51st San Francisco International Film Festival at PFA

    4/25/08 to 5/8/08 After more than half a century, the festival is still the premier annual film event in the Bay Area. View

  • American Nonsense: Frank Tashlin

    4/11/08 to 4/18/08 For Tashlin, “a filmmaker of Swiftian gifts” (N.Y. Times), the gaudy fantasies of fifties America are objects of both satire and celebration. Lampooning consumer excess, packaged sex, and media-saturated culture, these movies are even bigger, louder, and funnier than American life. View

  • Film and Video Makers at Cal

    4/9/08 to 4/22/08 An eclectic selection of works by UC Berkeley students. View

  • Alternative Visions: Films by Audrius Stonys

    4/8/08 This Lithuanian artist's mesmerizing, poetic documentaries are acutely sensitive to human solitude. View

  • Direct Engagement: New Digital Films from Palestine and Lebanon

    4/6/08 Two programs explore the vitality and diversity of documentary and experimental filmmaking in Lebanon and Palestine today. View

  • Cine/Spin

    4/3/08 Some people might consider it sacrilegious to let live DJs run music over a sound film by Luis Buñuel, but it's hard to be more sacrilegious than Simon of the Desert already is. View

  • Heinz Emigholz: Architecture as Autobiography

    4/1/08 to 4/17/08 Emigholz's revelatory documentaries contemplate the construction of space in the work of architects like Louis Sullivan, Adolf Loos, and Rudolph Schindler. View

  • The Clash of '68

    3/27/08 to 4/23/08 Dedicated to the memory of May '68 and its surrounding history, this series evokes an expansive sense of global unrest in films by Godard, Oshima, Pontecorvo, Costa-Gavras, and many others. View

  • 26th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival

    3/14/08 to 3/22/08 Each year, the Center for Asian American Media brings you the best in contemporary cinema from Asia and the Asian diaspora. The 2008 program includes a tribute to the late, great Taiwanese director Edward Yang. View

  • Movie Matinees for All Ages, March 2008

    3/8/08 to 3/29/08 Our ongoing Saturday series is a great way to introduce youngsters to the joys of the big screen, and to rediscover them yourself. View

  • The Magnificent Orson Welles

    3/7/08 to 4/13/08 “Every filmmaker since 1941 is, to some degree, in debt to Orson Welles” (Peter Bogdanovich). Join us as we trace the multifarious career of this Hollywood prodigy, international artist, master thespian, and incorrigible trickster. View

  • A Theater Near You

    3/5/08 to 3/30/08 Our showcase for fresh prints of international classics brings you restored works by American independent Charles Burnett, caustic Sicilian comedies by Pietro Germi, and the searing Mexican surrealism of Luis Buñuel. View

  • Shoot Shoot Shoot: British Avant-Garde Film of the 1960s and 1970s

    3/4/08 to 3/11/08 Seminal works from the London underground. View

  • Still Lives: The Films of Pedro Costa

    3/1/08 to 4/12/08 With films including the recent Colossal Youth, Portuguese director Pedro Costa has won wide acclaim for his spare aesthetic, willful ambiguity, and combination of documentary, avant-garde, and fiction. Discover Costa's “monumental cinema of humble means” (N.Y. Times). View

  • Closely Watched Films: Terence Davies

    2/20/08 to 2/27/08 “Flawlessly measured, immensely moving”: the words used by a Village Voice critic to describe Terence Davies's adaptation of The House of Mirth could well describe this British director's small but emotionally huge output. In films like his beloved Trilogy and the Cannes Critics Award–winning Distant Voices, Still Lives, Davies turns the stuff of a Liverpudlian past into masterful mise-en-scène, suffused with life, diffused by memory. Closely Watched Films includes a “shot-by-shot” discussion with the director. View

  • Readings on Cinema: Daisuke Miyao on Sessue Hayakawa

    2/9/08 to 2/10/08 As renowned in his day as Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, the Japanese American actor Sessue Hayakawa has nonetheless been an elusive figure in the history of silent cinema. We present three key Hayakawa films, with author Daisuke Miyao joining us to examine the cultural context of Hayakawa's career. View

  • Screenagers

    2/2/08 Artists in Person. Works by the filmmakers of tomorrow. View

  • Human Rights Watch International Film Festival

    2/2/08 to 2/24/08 The annual festival presented by the renowned advocacy organization Human Rights Watch showcases truly committed cinema-works by courageous filmmakers worldwide. The works in this year's program deliver urgent insights about threats to human freedoms and the health of the planet, and celebrate the power of art to generate social change. View

  • African Film Festival

    1/24/08 to 2/28/08 This series invites Bay Area audiences to experience the vibrant voices and visions of recent African cinema. New works and favorites from the international festival circuit offer compelling artistry and insight into Africa's changing cultural landscape. This year, we offer a special focus on Abderrahmane Sissako, the director of Bamako. View

  • Film 50: History of Cinema

    1/23/08 to 5/7/08 If you want to explore the history and aesthetics of film, this popular film-lecture series is the place to start. Film 50 is an undergraduate UC Berkeley course open to the public as space permits. View

  • Movie Matinees for All Ages, January/February 2008

    1/19/08 to 2/16/08 Our ongoing Saturday series is a great way to introduce youngsters to the joys of the big screen-and to rediscover them yourself. This winter, discover the magic of Georges Méliès, speed through New York with Harold Lloyd, and follow the adventures of Betty Boop and friends. View

  • Jean-Pierre Léaud: The New Wave and After

    1/18/08 to 2/29/08 If the French New Wave has a face, it might be the beaky, piercing-eyed visage of Jean-Pierre Léaud. Léaud made his debut at age 15 in François Truffaut's The 400 Blows; over the next two decades, he would play alter ego to Truffaut, Godard, and Jean Eustache, and to a generation that grew up (or failed to) along with him. We present a selection of films in which Léaud is compelling, brilliantly comic, and never less than iconic. View

  • Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Recent Experimental Documentaries

    1/15/08 to 2/26/08 An earthwork emerges from underwater; a man sails out to sea and disappears. The history of a glass of milk is chronicled, and the myths of the mainstream media smashed. Speculative, observant, or interrogative, these documentaries manifest the urge to deal with the world-its people, its injustices, its beauty-in diverse strategies and to surprising effect. View

  • A Theater Near You

    1/13/08 to 2/24/08 This installment in our ongoing repertory series presents classic films and cult favorites, from Ophuls to Eraserhead, in restored or newly struck prints. View

  • Cool World: Jazz and the Movies

    1/12/08 to 2/6/08 In Hollywood, jazz signified the cool world, haunted by tortured artists blowing a new sound. The music in these films was sometimes ghosted by such greats as Harry James, Gene Krupa, and Charles McPherson; in some, the likes of Dave Brubeck, Louis Armstrong, Jackie McLean, and Charles Mingus cut loose for the camera. Jazz also allowed Hollywood to play it on the outside, looking in at risky issues like racism and illicit drugs. This ain't for squares, you dig? View

  • The Medieval Remake

    1/11/08 to 2/16/08 “People started dreaming of the Middle Ages from the very beginning of the modern era,” Umberto Eco once claimed. It's only natural, then, that the medieval would find many expressions in the cinema, a modern medium of collective dreams. In this series, European masters-from Eisenstein to Tarkovsky, from Dreyer to Bergman and Bresson-make and remake the Middle Ages in diverse forms and with diverse motivations, from political imperative to personal obsession. View

  • Ingmar Bergman: Light and Shadow

    12/6/07 to 12/20/07 A selection of beautiful prints offers a chance to remember and rediscover-or discover for the first time-this marvelous director who expanded our ideas about what cinema could be: a sensual and metaphysical exploration of faith, mortality, and the nature of human connections. View

  • Charles Chaplin

    11/18/07 to 12/19/07 Our series of pristine prints is an invitation to reconsider the career of Charles Chaplin, extraordinary performer and complex artist, maker of films that were poignant, pointed, and, above all, funny. This is the way for adults and kids alike to experience Chaplin: not at home, but on the big screen, in the community of an audience. View

  • Movie Matinees for All Ages, November/December 2007

    11/17/07 to 12/1/07 Our Saturday series is a great way to introduce youngsters to the joys of the big screen-and to rediscover them yourself. This season we spotlight three Chaplin classics. View

  • Blood of a Poet: The Films of Lech Majewski

    11/16/07 to 12/2/07 Polish-born poet, painter, composer, video artist, and filmmaker Lech Majewski is “a major discovery, a brilliant filmmaker whose haunting aesthetic is formed of much deeper stuff, processed through a lively mind and idiosyncratic imagination, chastened and tempered by history.”-Washington Post View

  • Readings on Cinema

    11/15/07 A lecture and booksigning by Antonia Lant, editor of Red Velvet Seat: Women's Writing on the First Fifty Years of Cinema, plus a screening of Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life. View

  • “Keep 'em Flying!”: Films of the U.S. Army Air Forces First Motion Picture Unit

    11/9/07 to 11/11/07 During World War II, hundreds of Hollywood studio personnel donned Army Air Force uniforms for a unique military-Tinseltown collaboration. Over Veterans' Day weekend, we celebrate their work and explore its implications. View

  • The Objects, the Rituals, the Reel of Things: Video Works by Joan Jonas

    11/8/07 to 11/29/07 In concert with the BAM installation The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things, two programs survey Jonas's groundbreaking forays into a televisual theater of the self. View

  • Alternative Visions

    11/6/07 to 12/4/07 Classic films by Stan Brakhage and Chantal Akerman, a tribute to the California College of the Arts, and works that experiment with eros in all the ways pornography can't. View

  • Revolutions in Romanian Cinema

    11/3/07 to 12/9/07 A recent spate of prizewinning films reveals the Romanian film scene as one to watch. “These films share the eye of the historian and the gaze of the auteur as they consider a people emerging from a past defined by foreign power-games and local hardship. Their stories are different, but they display an immediacy and an energy in common.”-Time Out View

  • The Passion of Pasolini

    11/1/07 to 12/7/07 In the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini, oppositions of sacred and profane, reality and myth, Marxism and Catholicism, homosexuality and abhorrence of the modern cultural landscape are no longer contradictions. This selection of his extraordinarily beautiful films, including the entire “Trilogy of Life,” shows the spectrum of Pasolini's metaphysical, political, and sensual passions. View

  • One Way, or “the Other”: Asian American Film and Video

    11/1/07 to 12/12/07 Around the time the youngest artists in the BAM exhibition One Way or Another entered this world, a new generation of film- and videomakers emerged who rejected the clichéd subject matter of mainstream media in favor of diverse scenarios acknowledging the long-ignored experiences of ethnic communities. The PFA series features fearless artists who truly did it their way. View

  • Special Halloween Screening

    10/31/07 Vincent Price is The Last Man on Earth in a deadpan feast of the undead. View

  • Highly Defined: New Works from the Voom HD Lab

    10/17/07 to 10/24/07 Works from the artist-in-residence program at HDTV network Voom begin to reveal the myriad possibilities of proliferating pixels. View

  • Once upon a Time in Widescreen: The Films of Sergio Leone

    10/12/07 to 10/28/07 Sergio Leone's so-called spaghetti Westerns upset the clichés of the American genre (and created some of their own), undermining myth with brutality and turning comforting stereotypes into haunting archetypes, like Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name. In striking 'Scope, with iconic music by Ennio Morricone, Leone confirmed that the Western is a genre of poetry-one that must be seen on the big screen. View

  • Movie Matinees for All Ages, October 2007

    10/6/07 to 10/27/07 Our Saturday series is a great way to introduce youngsters to the joys of the big screen-and to rediscover them yourself. View

  • Spotlight: International Animation

    10/4/07 to 10/28/07 A diverse and captivating selection of animated films includes children's classics from China, the surrealism of Jan Svankmajer, and recent works by Naoyuki Tsuji. View

  • Olivier Assayas in Residence: Cahiers du cinéma Week

    10/4/07 to 10/11/07 Like many a great French filmmaker before him, director Olivier Assayas began his career as a critic for the influential Cahiers du cinéma. We are pleased to present this eclectic series of films directed and selected by Assayas, including the local premiere of his latest, Boarding Gate. Assayas appears in person to discuss his work with Cahiers director Jean-Michel Frodon. View

  • Girls Will Be Boys

    9/21/07 to 9/30/07 The cross-dressed actress captivated audiences throughout the first decades of the twentieth century. Featuring a wealth of archival prints, this series celebrates the rampant gender and sexual play of the silent and pre-Code eras, when stars like Asta Nielsen, Katharine Hepburn, and Greta Garbo wore the pants. View

  • Tomu Uchida: Japanese Genre Master

    9/8/07 to 9/29/07 From witty, loose-limbed swordplay films to taut melodramas teeming with social detail; from a wildly stylized fable to a modernist detective story, the midcentury films of Tomu Uchida sample nearly every genre and pleasure that Japanese cinema can offer, and do so "with a vitality and a love of cinema we search for in vain in the films of today" (Max Tessier). Discover these recently rescued films along with us! View

  • Fearless Females: Three Films by Shyam Benegal

    9/5/07 to 9/7/07 Indian director Shyam Benegal joins us for three days of film and conversation. Benegal's influence on the Indian new wave that began in the 1970s was profound, with his spirited focus on the role and struggles of women and on the inequities of traditional culture that linger in the midst of emerging modernity. View

  • Alternative Visions

    9/4/07 to 10/30/07 The latest installment in our ongoing Tuesday-night avant-garde showcase features such greats as Bruce Conner, Maya Deren, Nathaniel Dorsky, George Kuchar, Len Lye, Marie Menken, Jack Smith, and Michael Snow, among others. View

  • Look Back at England: The British New Wave

    9/2/07 to 10/26/07 Never mind the Sex Pistols-back in the 1960s, Britain's Angry Young Man movement made the phrase "There will always be an England" sound more like a prognosis than a promise. If these brilliantly scripted films, starring the likes of Richard Burton, Albert Finney, Alan Bates, and Laurence Harvey, were prophetic then, they are classics now. View

  • A Theater Near You

    9/1/07 to 10/27/07 PFA keeps the Bay Area tradition of vibrant repertory programming alive with this ongoing showcase for international festival hits, documentary discoveries, and recent restorations of beloved classics. View

  • From the Tsars to the Stars: A Journey Through Russian Fantastik Cinema

    8/10/07 to 8/31/07 This compendium of rare works showcases the startling imagination and agitprop fascination of Russian science fiction and fantasy cinema. "An uncommonly bold blend of curatorial adventurousness and cultural excavation . . . sure to expand even the most hard-core avant-geek's horizons."-Time Out New York. "This is why we have retro houses-to unleash . . . the secret cinemas of the global past."-Village Voice View

  • Max Ophuls: Motion and Emotion

    7/20/07 to 8/17/07 Master of the fluid image, Max Ophuls translated the ineffable qualities of love, memory, and time into a sensual cinematic language. This series tracks an artist whose career roved across continents and genres, from German comedies to American noirs to French masterworks like The Earrings of Madame de . . ., but whose style remained unmistakable and consummately cinematic. "Everyone who's in love with movies loves Max Ophuls."-Boston Phoenix View

  • Eco-Amok! An Inconvenient Film Fest

    7/11/07 to 8/29/07 Ants the size of SUVs, buffed-up behemoths rising from the ocean floor, man-plants with their roots in horror: these are among the cinematic consequences of messing with Mother Nature. Our summer series of eco-cautionary tales conveniently delivers both timely message and giddy mayhem. View

  • Abbas Kiarostami: Image Maker

    7/7/07 to 8/30/07 One of the most critically acclaimed and influential filmmakers of the past twenty-five years, Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami has captivated Western audiences with works of deceptive simplicity and indefinable poetry. We are proud to present this retrospective of his films, from early documentaries through his celebrated "Koker trilogy" and recent masterworks like The Wind Will Carry Us and Five, along with an exhibition of his still photographs in the BAM galleries. "These are indispensable films."-The Nation View

  • Ball of Fire: Barbara Stanwyck Centennial

    7/6/07 to 7/31/07 Born 100 years ago this July, Barbara Stanwyck was the screen archetype of the independent woman with her wits about her. Our tribute surveys a career that ran from scandalous pre-Code sagas and "women's weepies" through noirs, smart-mouthed comedies, and whip-cracking Westerns. "When I think of the glory days of American film, at its speediest and most velvety, I think of Barbara Stanwyck."-New Yorker View

  • A Theater Near You

    7/5/07 to 8/21/07 This summer's installment in our ongoing repertory series brings you East Bay premieres of major new films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Tsai Ming-liang, and Corneliu Porumboiu, plus a special pre-broadcast premiere of Steven Okazaki's compelling documentary White Light/Black Rain and new prints of classics by Altman, Ichikawa, and Kurosawa. View

  • Rivette Revisited

    6/9/07 to 6/26/07 We revisit Jacques Rivette's cinema of rehearsals and reversals with three films, including the monumental, extraordinarily rare Out 1, a "cinephile's holy grail" (N.Y. Times). View

  • Meaningful Motion: The Early Films of Walter Hill

    5/30/07 to 6/27/07 By turns hip, heroic, and harrowing, Walter Hill's mid-seventies films demolish genres and rebuild them anew with a virtuosic construction of cinematic space. Join us for early features like Hard Times, The Driver, and The Long Riders, which offer propulsive stories peopled by taciturn outlaws, and graceful storytelling that privileges fluidity over formula, acceleration over anecdote. View

  • Czech Modernism, 1926–1949

    5/27/07 to 6/24/07 The cinema that emerged in Czechoslovakia between the World Wars is like no other, a dizzying cut-and-paste compilation of native artistry and outside influences-German Expressionism, Soviet montage, Hollywood glamour-with a delightful sense of experimentation and a touch of the surreal. The films are breathtaking even today-both of their time and so far ahead of their time, cinema still hasn't caught up to their energy and invention. View

  • Shohei Imamura's Japan

    5/25/07 to 6/30/07 Famous for the controversial subject matter and raw energy of his films, Shohei Imamura depicted a Japan untouched by the tea ceremony, Zen, or conventional gentility. In Imamura's universe, Japanese women are not long-suffering, modest females, but survivors-self-aware, self-serving, and sexual. At once sensuous and structured, outrageous and analytical, his films are "obviously the work of a supremely assured artist, and one who is at home with his (and our) most basic instincts."-N.Y. Times View

  • A Theater Near You

    5/25/07 to 6/23/07 PFA's popular repertory series offers East Bay premieres of international festival favorites, screenings of recent restorations, and revivals that shed new light on the classics. This season brings fresh prints of films by Godard, Malle, and Greenaway, plus a compendium of postwar British cautionary tales and a deadpan comedy from Uruguay's Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll. View

  • Film and Video Makers at Cal

    5/6/07 A lively selection of films and videos by UC Berkeley student filmmakers, including the winners of the Eisner Prize, the campus's highest award for creativity. View

  • PFA Preservation Screening

    5/3/07 The documentary Last Summer Won't Happen is a vital document of the antiwar movement on New York's Lower East Side in 1968, including portraits of such key players as Abbie Hoffman, Paul Krassner, Phil Ochs, and Tom "Osha" Neumann. We present the director's cut, preserved by PFA. View

  • 50th San Francisco International Film Festival at PFA

    4/27/07 to 5/10/07 Festival screenings at PFA bring you the latest in world cinema, as well as independent American works, right here in the East Bay. View

  • Film and Video Makers at Cal

    4/12/07 to 4/19/07 An eclectic selection of works by UC Berkeley students. View

  • Sounding Off: Moving Images and Music

    4/11/07 to 4/25/07 DJs assault Jean Vigo's Zero for Conduct, the Nintendo-modulated music of Xik inflects a report on the world of game hackers and chip tuners, and an ensemble of manic musicians riffs on the doc Noisy People. Come join in the noise. View

  • Closely Watched Films: Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Director

    4/5/07 to 4/7/07 Thai fabulist Apichatpong Weerasethakul, “one of the most brilliantly original directors in the world” (Sight & Sound), is our guest for the next installment in this ongoing series that offers a new way to engage with films and the people who make them. The centerpiece is a lively shot-by-shot exploration of the mysterious and transfixing Tropical Malady with the director fielding your questions. View

  • Frame by Frame: Avant-Garde Film Preservation

    4/3/07 to 4/24/07 Archivists on the edge: a special series highlights recent efforts to preserve avant-garde films and brings restored treasures to the screen. View

  • 25th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival

    3/16/07 to 3/24/07 This year's festival ventures from Canada to Kabul, offering glimpses-fictional and all too real-of women looking for love in Japan, polygamists in Indonesia, gangsters in Korea, and vampires in L.A. Plus two by Hong Sang-soo, South Korea's answer to Eric Rohmer. View

  • Alternative Visions

    3/6/07 to 3/13/07 An evening with Nicky Hamlyn, maker of subtle, concentrated films and author of Film Art Phenomena; and a roundup of recent animation. View

  • Modernist Master: Michelangelo Antonioni

    3/2/07 to 4/22/07 An essential retrospective surveys the career of this most elegant proponent of cinematic modernism, from early melodramas through landmarks like Red Desert, Blow-Up, and The Passenger-all visually compelling and still amazingly resonant. "Would it be too much to simply say, 'Go see them all'? This is the kind of retro that can make . . . the enlightened out of the curious."-Time Out N.Y. View

  • A Tribute to the San Francisco International Film Festival at 50

    3/2/07 to 4/21/07 Leading up to the 50th anniversary of the festival-the first in the Americas to reach that landmark-we offer this series of SFIFF films past, to celebrate the festival's illustrious history and enjoy its discoveries all over again. View

  • Women of Color Film Festival 2007

    3/1/07 to 3/10/07 Now in its twelfth year celebrating the diverse perspectives of women of color in the filmmaking community. Lourdes Portillo is artist in residence. View

  • Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2007

    2/23/07 to 2/25/07 The annual festival presented by the renowned advocacy organization Human Rights Watch showcases truly committed cinema-works by courageous filmmakers worldwide. This year's program exposes the human cost of global commerce; investigates the consequences of war and its aftereffects in everyday life; and offers inspiring portraits of activism and resistance. View

  • Screenagers

    2/11/07 View

  • Alternative Visions

    2/6/07 to 2/27/07 An evening with Nicky Hamlyn, maker of subtle, concentrated films and author of Film Art Phenomena; and a roundup of recent animation. View

  • Then, Not Nauman: Conceptualists of the Early Seventies

    1/31/07 to 4/4/07 Video art by Vito Acconci, Peter Campus, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and others provides context for Bruce Nauman's work in the BAM exhibition A Rose Has No Teeth. View

  • African Film Festival

    1/28/07 to 2/18/07 View

  • Movie Matinees for All Ages, January-March 2007

    1/20/07 to 3/31/07 Our ongoing Saturday series is a great way to introduce youngsters to the joys of the big screen-and to rediscover them yourself. View

  • A Thousand Decisions in the Dark: A Film Series with David Thomson

    1/18/07 to 2/22/07 By the late fifties, classical Hollywood was in ruins-both as a business and as a way of telling stories. Illustrious critic David Thomson returns to PFA to discuss how the movies responded to the breakdown, screening films-Vertigo, Touch of Evil, Rio Bravo, and Bonnie and Clyde, among others-that defy conventions of genre, stardom, and the happy ending. But these movies don't just illustrate a thesis-they're also great fun. Come and join the conversation. View

  • Together Again: Collectively Created Compilations

    1/17/07 to 2/21/07 View

  • Film 50: History of Cinema

    1/17/07 to 5/2/07 An undergraduate UC Berkeley course open to the public as space permits, with lectures by Marilyn Fabe. Tickets Are Sold Out View

  • Yoko Ono: Imagine Film

    1/16/07 to 2/13/07 View

  • The Lubitsch Touch

    1/12/07 to 2/16/07 View

  • A Theater Near You

    1/11/07 to 2/17/07 View

  • Janus Films: Seven Samurai Classics

    12/1/06 to 12/17/06 View

  • Radical Closure

    11/28/06 to 12/12/06 View

  • Closely Watched Films: Frank Pierson, Director and Screenwriter

    11/16/06 to 11/19/06 View

  • 'Til Your Well Runs Dry: An Appreciation of Water

    11/15/06 to 12/6/06 View

  • Movie Matinees for All Ages, November 2006

    11/11/06 to 11/25/06 View

  • Gunvor Nelson: Personal Lens

    11/9/06 to 11/14/06 View

  • Alternative Visions

    11/7/06 View

  • Beat-Era Cinema

    11/5/06 to 12/3/06 View

  • Janus Films: A 50th Anniversary Celebration

    11/3/06 to 12/16/06 View

  • Jacques Rivette: Rehearsals and Reversals

    11/2/06 to 12/16/06 View

  • The Pow Pow Power of Persuasion: A Propaganda Tour with James Forsher

    11/1/06 to 11/8/06 View

  • Ousmane Sembène: Pioneer of African Cinema

    10/7/06 to 10/26/06 View

  • Ousmane Sembène: Pioneer of African Cinema

    10/7/06 to 10/26/06 View

  • Consummate Storytelling: The Cinema of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

    9/22/06 to 9/29/06 View

  • Special Event: The Unsilent Film

    9/17/06 View

  • Ali Kazimi: A Commitment to Justice

    9/14/06 to 9/16/06 View

  • The Road to Damascus: Discovering Syrian Cinema

    9/7/06 to 10/12/06 View

  • Arrr, Matey: Pirates and Piracy

    9/6/06 to 10/25/06 View

  • Alternative Visions

    9/5/06 to 10/31/06 View

  • The Mechanical Age

    9/3/06 to 10/22/06 View

  • A Theater Near You

    9/1/06 to 10/29/06 View

  • John Canemaker/Winsor Mccay

    8/26/06 View

  • Unfolding Mizoguchi: Seven Classics

    8/11/06 to 8/30/06 View

  • Frank Borzage's Philosophy of Desire

    7/29/06 to 8/23/06 View

  • Janet Gaynor: A Centennial Celebration

    7/21/06 to 8/13/06 View

  • Screenagers: Documents from the Teenage Years

    7/11/06 to 8/29/06 View

  • Labor's Love Lost: The Films of Vittorio De Seta

    7/6/06 to 7/9/06 View

  • Desire Under the Banyan: Beyond Bollywood

    7/6/06 to 8/31/06 View

  • I Hear Music: Global Rhythms on Screen

    7/5/06 to 7/26/06 View

  • A Theater Near You

    7/1/06 to 7/16/06 View

  • The Puppet Animation of Kihachiro Kawamoto

    6/28/06 to 6/29/06 View

  • Isabelle Huppert: Passion and Contradiction

    6/9/06 to 6/30/06 View

  • Against Indifference: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski

    6/1/06 to 6/27/06 View

  • A Theater Near You

    5/25/06 to 5/31/06 View

  • Film & Video Makers at Cal

    5/7/06 View

  • Amateur Film Festival

    5/7/06 View

  • A Tribute to Jean-Claude Carrière

    5/5/06 to 5/6/06 View

  • First Impressions: PFA Preservation Screening

    5/4/06 View

  • 49th San Francisco International Film Festival at PFA

    4/21/06 to 5/4/06 View

  • A Theater Near You

    4/16/06 to 4/18/06 View

  • Brave Outsiders: The Films of Kim Longinotto

    4/13/06 to 4/15/06 View

  • Readings on Cinema

    4/9/06 to 4/12/06 View

  • 65 Seconds That Shook the Earth: Commemorating the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake

    4/6/06 to 4/9/06 View

  • The Enchanting World of Jacques Demy

    3/30/06 to 4/2/06 View

  • Heroic Grace: The Chinese Martial Arts Film, Part II

    3/24/06 to 3/25/06 View

  • 24th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival

    3/17/06 to 3/25/06 View

  • The Wide-Angle Cinema of Michel Brault

    3/9/06 to 3/26/06 View

  • Vantage Points: New Documentaries by Women

    3/7/06 to 4/18/06 View

  • Women of Color Film Festival 2006

    3/2/06 to 3/5/06 View

  • Real Live: Film and Video Makers at Cal 2006

    3/2/06 to 3/23/06 View

  • Video: Recent and Strange

    3/1/06 to 4/19/06 View

  • Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2006

    2/19/06 to 2/26/06 View

  • African Film Festival

    1/27/06 to 2/17/06 View

  • The Women's Film Preservation Fund

    1/24/06 to 2/21/06 View

  • Screenagers

    1/22/06 View

  • Weird America

    1/18/06 to 2/22/06 View

  • Film 50: History of Cinema

    1/18/06 to 5/3/06 View

  • Alternative Visions

    1/17/06 to 2/28/06 View

  • A Theater Near You

    1/13/06 to 1/20/06 View

  • Scattered Clouds: The Films of Mikio Naruse

    1/12/06 to 2/18/06 View

  • Special Screenings

    11/28/05 to 12/3/05 View

  • Marcel Pagnol's Provence

    11/25/05 to 12/18/05 View

  • Busy Signals: Telephonic Art in Motion

    11/16/05 to 11/30/05 View

  • Taisho Chic on Screen

    11/5/05 to 12/11/05 View

  • The Battles of Sam Peckinpah

    11/4/05 to 12/16/05 View

  • Selling Democracy: Films of The Marshall Plan, 1948–53

    11/3/05 to 12/1/05 View

  • The Unofficial Histories of Péter Forgács

    11/2/05 to 11/9/05 View

  • Alternative Visions

    11/1/05 to 12/6/05 View

  • Alternative Requirements

    10/25/05 View

  • Peter Kubelka: Films and Lectures

    10/18/05 to 10/20/05 View

  • Doctor Atomic Goes Nuclear

    10/5/05 to 10/30/05 View

  • Derek Jarman's Home Movies

    10/4/05 to 10/11/05 View

  • Farewell: A Tribute to Elem Klimov and Larissa Shepitko

    9/24/05 to 10/29/05 View

  • Tropical Punch: The Videoworks of Tony Labat

    9/21/05 to 9/28/05 View

  • Madcat Presents

    9/20/05 to 10/13/05 View

  • Dutch Voices: Jos De Putter and Peter Delpeut

    9/18/05 to 10/27/05 View

  • World Premiere: Security

    9/11/05 View