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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  • Chungking Express

  • Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint

  • The Story of a Three Day Pass

  • Tell Them We Were Here

  • Edo Avant Garde

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

Past Films

  • The Two Sights

    • Wednesday, February 16 7 PM
    Joshua Bonnetta
    Canada, United Kingdom, 2020

    In an “eerie and hypnotic” experimental evocation of the gift of second sight, Joshua Bonnetta infused the landscape of Scotland’s Outer Hebrides with otherworldly tales and meanings (Justine Smith, POV).

  • Song Without a Name

    • Sunday, February 6 2 PM
    Melina León
    Peru, Spain, United States, 2019

    An Indigenous Andean woman searches for her stolen newborn amidst the institutional corruption of 1980s Peru in this surreal blend of Latin American political history and Kafkaesque alienation, “shot, scored, and styled like the most beautiful of bad dreams” (Variety).

  • Tell Them We Were Here

    • Sunday, January 30 2 PM
    Griff Williams, Keelan Williams
    United States, 2021

    Featuring eight groundbreaking local artists, this documentary reflects on a Bay Area art scene less concerned with money and power than with imagination, innovation, community, and care.

    Griff and Keelan Williams, Lawrence Rinder, and Bay Area Artists in Conversation

  • Irmi

    • Sunday, January 23 2 PM
    Veronica Selver, Susan Fanshel
    United States, 2020

    BAMPFA Collection

    This beautiful documentary portrait of German Jewish émigrée Irmi Selver (1906–2004), based on her memoirs (read by Hanna Schygulla), takes us on a unique journey through a life marked by love, unimaginable loss, and strength of spirit.

    Veronica Selver and Susan Fanshel in Person

  • Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint

    • Saturday, December 4 4:30 PM
    • Sunday, December 12 2 PM
    • Saturday, January 15 4 PM
    Halina Dyrschka
    Germany, 2019

    This documentary, which “bristles with the excitement of discovery and also with the impatience that recognition has taken so long,” illuminates the story of Swedish painter Hilma af Klint, the unsung modernist of the early twentieth century (New York Times).

  • The Cloud-Capped Star

    • Friday, December 17 7 PM
    • Sunday, January 9 2 PM
    Ritwik Ghatak
    India, 1960

    Digital Restoration

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

  • The Edge of the World

    • Sunday, December 19 4:30 PM
    • Sunday, January 9 5 PM
    Michael Powell
    United Kingdom, 1937

    Restored 35mm Print

    In a remote Scottish island community facing extinction through isolation, two young men embark on a foolish challenge. Michael Powell’s stunningly photographed film is a hybrid of documentary-like realism and poetic fatalism.

  • Edo Avant Garde

    • Sunday, December 19 2 PM
    Linda Hoaglund
    Japan, United States, 2019

    This beautiful examination of the tradition of Japanese folding screen and scroll painting explores the sensuous style and innovative methods of Edo-period painting and reveals its influence on Western art.

    Linda Hoaglund in Person

  • Chungking Express

    • Friday, December 10 7 PM
    • Saturday, December 18 7 PM
    Wong Kar Wai
    Hong Kong, 1994

    Digital Restoration

    Wong Kar Wai’s love letter to Hong Kong combines separate tales of two cops (Takeshi Kaneshiro, Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and their tenuous romantic connections (Brigitte Lin, Faye Wong) in “a film with style to burn” (Los Angeles Times).

  • Flowers of Shanghai

    • Saturday, December 11 7 PM
    • Thursday, December 16 7 PM
    Hou Hsiao-hsien
    Taiwan, 1998

    Digital Restoration

    Tony Leung Chiu-wai stars in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s period-piece reverie set in a Shanghai brothel circa 1890. “‘Surrender’ is the key to this visually ravishing masterpiece” (Phillip Lopate).

  • Oliver Sacks: His Own Life

    • Sunday, December 5 1:30 PM
    • Thursday, December 9 7 PM
    Ric Burns
    United States, 2019

    “At once tender and thrilling,” this moving and insightful portrait of neurologist and author Oliver Sacks centers on intimate interviews from his final months, facing death and looking back on his extraordinary life (Variety).

  • Black Life: The Story of a Three Day Pass

    • Thursday, December 2 7 PM
    • Sunday, December 5 4 PM
    Melvin Van Peebles
    France, 1968

    Digital Restoration 

    The Thursday, December 2 screening features an introduction with Ryanaustin Dennis. The Sunday, December 5 screening will be presented without an introduction.

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

    Introduced by Ryanaustin Dennis