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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F. W. Murnau handpicked Janet Gaynor to star in his first Hollywood feature, a masterpiece of silent cinema widely considered among the greatest films ever made, which tells an elemental tale with virtuosic visual invention. This film was among Tom Luddy’s favorites. As an undergraduate at UC Berkeley in 1966, Luddy founded the F. W. Murnau Film Society.
In twelve tableaux, Vivre sa vie tells of Nana (Anna Karina) at the brief, flickering moment when she takes responsibility for her life. Jean-Luc Godard’s cinema was greatly admired by Tom Luddy, who organized the first Godard retrospective with the artist present in March 1968.
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Tom Luddy screened this classic French film noir many times during his tenure as a curator at the Pacific Film Archive. “Marvelously photographed by Henri Alekan and arguably Gérard Philipe’s finest study of romantic despair” (David Thomson, Biographical Dictionary of Film).
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Considered a predecessor to the existentialist works of Michelangelo Antonioni and hailed as a groundbreaking modernist work by the legendary film journal Cahiers du cinéma, Journey to Italy is a breathtaking cinematic benchmark. Among the major retrospectives Tom Luddy organized for the Pacific Film Archive was a Roberto Rossellini series in 1973 with Rossellini in person.
This program gathers short works by filmmakers closely linked to Tom Luddy, including Agnès Varda’s vibrant Uncle Yanco (1967) and Black Panthers (1968); Chris Marker’s La Jetée and Junkopia (1981, produced by Luddy); and Carroll Ballard’s Crystallization (1974).
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Several aspects of Stroszek stem from Werner Herzog’s frequent visits to the Pacific Film Archive; these are reflected in the “Special Thanks” screen credits for Errol Morris and Les Blank. It was Morris (a Berkeley resident and PFA regular) who led Herzog to his location sites in Wisconsin, and Blank who inspired one of the more memorable bits in the film (see Blank’s Spend It All).
A remake of the classic 1956 sci-fi flick, adapted from Jack Finney’s novel about an alien invasion, here set in San Francisco. Starring Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Leonard Nimoy, and Veronica Cartwright, with a cameo appearance by Tom Luddy.
Jean-Luc Godard left Cannes in 1985 with a contract for a Shakespeare adaptation, drawn up on a napkin, to be delivered to Hollywood in a year’s time. Tom Luddy was largely responsible for that meeting and worked as an associate producer (uncredited) on King Lear. “Godard’s ‘rediscovery’ of Shakespeare is a grand statement about the power of moviemaking” (Richard Brody, New Yorker).
Bigger Than Life is one of Nicholas Ray’s masterworks. Jean-Luc Godard placed it on his list of the Ten Best American Sound Films, and Tom Luddy hosted Ray at the Pacific Film Archive in July 1977.
BAMPFA Collection Print
In Larissa Shepitko’s masterpiece, the partisan struggle against the Nazis in World War II provides the setting for a tale of morality and martyrdom. “A profoundly moving experience” (Filmex ’78) that was awarded the Golden Bear at the 1977 Berlin Film Festival and hailed as the finest Soviet film of its decade. Tom Luddy hosted Shepitko at the Pacific Film Archive in September 1977, not long before her tragic death in a car accident.
Errol Morris’s brilliant debut feature, Gates of Heaven, about two pet cemeteries in Northern California and the people involved with them, is a work closely tied to the era when Tom Luddy directed the Pacific Film Archive and Morris was a regular member of the audience. The completion of this film led to the making of Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (screening June 17 at 4:30 PM).
“As in all of [Les] Blank’s films, the people interviewed [in Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers] are beautiful, natural, and full of zest for life. These garlic-lovers take great pride in their own identity, glorifying it in song and dance and turning it into constant celebration” (Rob Baker, Soho Weekly News). With Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe and two remembrances to Blank by Tom Luddy, Alice Waters, and Werner Herzog.
BAMPFA Collection Print
Andrei Konchalovsky’s first feature, set in a Kyrgyz village shortly after the Russian Revolution. “The beauty of tradition and the need for change . . . expressed with a deft simplicity of style and a rare quality of emotion” (Michel Ciment). Tom Luddy hosted Konchalovsky at the Pacific Film Archive in October 1979.
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A warm and ribald comedy based on the idea that food is the life of a community. Orson Welles once called The Baker’s Wife “a perfect movie” and star Raimu “the greatest actor of the cinema.” Tom Luddy presented Marcel Pagnol’s films time and again and encouraged Alice Waters to name the restaurant Chez Panisse after a Pagnol character.
Recommended for ages 8 and up.
A lonely but enterprising young girl discovers a secret garden on her uncle’s isolated estate in this magical adaptation of the famed children’s novel. “Elegantly expressive . . . celebrating nature as a force for freedom” (New York Times).
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This groundbreaking Cuban work explores the experiences and reveries of a bourgeois writer after the revolution. “A profound, noble film” (New York Times). Tom Luddy hosted Tomás Gutiérrez Alea at the Pacific Film Archive in October 1979.
In Memoriam Kenneth Anger (1927–2023)
The Magick Lantern Cycle, Part 2, screens at 9 PM.
Tom Luddy was a great supporter of avant-garde film and brought many filmmakers to the Pacific Film Archive over the years. Kenneth Anger visited in December 1976 to present his work. We take this occasion to showcase Anger’s The Magick Lantern Cycle, a central body of work in American avant-garde cinema.
In Memoriam Kenneth Anger (1927–2023)
The Magick Lantern Cycle, Part 1, screens at 7 PM.
Tom Luddy was a great devotee of avant-garde film and brought many filmmakers to the Pacific Film Archive over the years. Kenneth Anger visited in December 1976 to present his work. We take this occasion to showcase Anger’s The Magick Lantern Cycle, a central body of work in American avant-garde cinema.
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The second film in the Apu trilogy follows Apu’s family as they travel to the holy city of Benares along the banks of the Ganges River. “Graceful, insightful, and moving” (San Francisco Chronicle). Satyajit Ray’s films were shown frequently by Tom Luddy during the 1970s.
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A wandering journalist finds himself stuck with someone else’s daughter in this road movie across the United States and Germany, “a fine, tightly controlled, intelligent, and ultimately touching film” (New York Times). Wim Wenders, who was a guest presenter at the Pacific Film Archive numerous times in the 1970s, was one of the New German Cinema filmmakers whose films Tom Luddy helped introduce to audiences.
Voted the number one film of Sight & Sound’s 2022 Poll of the 100 Greatest Films.
A singular work in film history, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles meticulously details, with a sense of impending doom, the daily routine of a middle-aged widow—whose chores include making the beds, cooking dinner for her son, and turning the occasional trick. Tom Luddy hosted Akerman as a guest at the Pacific Film Archive in 1976 and 1979.
This portrait of revolutionary Cuba, written by Yevgeny Yevtushenko and brimming with bravura camerawork, is an extraordinary example of “pure” cinema in the service of politics. Tom Luddy helped bring this film to light by programming it at the Telluride Film Festival and the San Francisco International Film Festival. He also helped acquire a 35mm print for the BAMPFA collection.
BAMPFA Collection Print
A comic fable about a middle-aged man in Dakar whose life changes when he receives a money order from Paris. “[Ousmane] Sembène’s approach is spare, laconic, slightly ironic, and never patronizing” (New York Times). The film received the International Critics’ Prize at the Venice Film Festival. Tom Luddy hosted Sembène at the Pacific Film Archive in February 1978 as part of a focus on New Senegalese Cinema.