Limited Engagements & Special Screenings

Ongoing

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

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  • Actor Antonio Banderas floats in a swimming pool with his head above the surface of the water

    Pain and Glory

  • In Search of Voodoo: Roots to Heaven

  • Coup 53

  • Bedlam

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Past Films

  • CANCELED: Student Films from the Eisner Competition 2020

    • Sunday, May 3 4:30 PM

    All film screenings and public programs at BAMPFA have been temporarily canceled. Learn more

    Join the filmmakers for a program of the outstanding student films that are this year’s prizewinners and honorable mentions for the Eisner Prize, the highest award for creativity given on the UC Berkeley campus.

  • Actor Antonio Banderas floats in a swimming pool with his head above the surface of the water

    CANCELED: Pain and Glory

    • Friday, March 6 7 PM
    • Saturday, May 2 5 PM
    Pedro Almodóvar
    Spain, 2019

    All film screenings and public programs at BAMPFA have been temporarily canceled. Learn more

    Ailing and adrift, a celebrated film director (Antonio Banderas) looks back at his work and life in Almodóvar’s pensive, tantalizingly self-reflexive drama, which garnered Academy Award nominations for Best Foreign Language Film and for Banderas's extraordinary performance.

  • NOW ONLINE: Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint

    • Sunday, April 5 2:30 PM
    Halina Dyrschka
    Germany, 2019

    This film is now available to stream at home on your TV, computer, or mobile device. Learn more

    This documentary illuminates the story of visionary Swedish painter Hilma af Klint, who began creating radically abstract paintings in 1906—before the celebrated modernists of the early twentieth century—yet has only recently come to international attention.

  • CANCELED: BAMPFA Student Committee Film Festival 2020

    • Friday, April 3 9 PM

    All film screenings and public programs at BAMPFA have been temporarily canceled. Learn more

    Free Admission!
    Student Filmmakers in Person

    Join the BAMPFA Student Committee for their annual showcase of short films made by students in Berkeley and the wider Bay Area.

  • CANCELED: Coup 53

    • Saturday, March 7 5 PM
    • Friday, March 13 4 PM
    • Sunday, March 29 4:30 PM
    Taghi Amirani
    United Kingdom, 2019

    All film screenings and public programs at BAMPFA have been temporarily canceled. Learn more

    A fascinating investigation into the 1953 Anglo-American coup d’état in Iran that displaced democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and installed the despotic Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as shah. “Passionate and fearless” (Hollywood Reporter).

  • CANCELED: Free Member Screening: Killer of Sheep

    • Tuesday, March 24 7 PM
    Charles Burnett
    United States, 1977

    All film screenings and public programs at BAMPFA have been temporarily canceled. Learn more

    New 35mm Print!
    Open to BAMPFA members only, this free screening is part of Member Appreciation Month. Not yet a member? Join today!

    Charles Burnett’s portrait of working-class African Americans in 1970s Watts is “a great—the greatest—cinematic tone poem of American urban life” (New York).

  • CANCELED: Bedlam

    • Saturday, March 14 2 PM
    Kenneth Paul Rosenberg
    United States, 2019

    All film screenings and public programs at BAMPFA have been cancelled through March 29. Learn more

    East Bay Premiere!
    Copresented with the Downtown Berkeley Association

    This documentary takes us inside psychiatric emergency rooms, jails, homes, and homeless encampments in its wrenching portrayal of America’s crisis surrounding the care of severely mentally ill citizens. “Haunting and trenchant . . . a necessary and important film” (Hollywood Reporter).

    Thomas Insel and John Snook in Conversation

  • In Search of Voodoo: Roots to Heaven

    • Friday, March 6 4 PM
    Djimon Hounsou
    United States, Benin, 2018

    Weaving together personal, cultural, and spiritual journeys, this documentary by actor Djimon Hounsou seeks to illuminate the practice of faith that is prevalent in West Africa, specifically Benin, the “cradle of Voodoo.” “Vivid and heartfelt” (Variety).

    Panel Discussion: Spiritual Reclamation as a Revolutionary Act, with Dowoti Desir, Wade W. Nobles, Luisah Teish, Nedra T. Williams, and Tracy Brown

  • Notorious

    • Friday, December 27 7 PM
    • Wednesday, January 22 7 PM
    • Friday, February 28 4 PM
    Alfred Hitchcock
    United States, 1946

    4K Digital Restoration

    Trying to infiltrate a group of Nazis in Latin America, Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman find themselves entangled in a cruel love affair. Hitchcock’s polished, perverse thriller exploits an espionage plot to explore the nature of love and loyalty. 

  • One Child Nation

    • Sunday, February 2 3 PM
    • Friday, February 21 4 PM
    Nanfu Wang, Jialing Zhang
    United States, 2019

    This chilling and complex documentary explores the lasting consequences of China’s one-child policy, which ended in 2015. Winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize, US Documentary.

  • The Assistant

    • Tuesday, February 4 7 PM
    Kitty Green
    United States, 2019

    Free Sneak Preview!

    A junior assistant to a powerful entertainment mogul grows increasingly aware of the abuse that insidiously colors every aspect of her workday. “An urgent, quiet scream . . . a jarring portrait of today’s contemporary workplace where too many women remain marginalized. And worse” (Film Comment).

    James Schamus and Linda Williams in Conversation

  • Fritz Lang’s Indian Epic, Part I: The Tiger of Eschnapur

    • Saturday, January 11 1:30 PM
    • Saturday, January 25 1 PM
    Fritz Lang
    West Germany, France, Italy, 1959

    Digital Restoration

    Fritz Lang’s late-career epic is a fantasia of flamboyant set pieces. In Part I, a German architect in India encounters a man-eating tiger and falls for an exotic temple dancer, but has competition from the local maharajah.

  • Fritz Lang’s Indian Epic, Part II: The Indian Tomb

    • Saturday, January 11 3:45 PM
    • Saturday, January 25 3:15 PM
    Fritz Lang
    West Germany, France, Italy, 1959

    Digital Restoration

    In the second part of Lang’s Indian epic, the romance between the German hero and his Indian beloved is imperiled, while a palace rebellion brews. The film reaches a pinnacle of exoticism with Debra Paget’s eye-popping “snake dance.”

  • Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am

    • Friday, December 6 4 PM
    • Sunday, January 19 1:30 PM
    Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
    United States, 2019

    BAMPFA Student Committee Pick

    Pulitzer- and Nobel Peace Prize–winning author Toni Morrison recalls her life, challenges, and successes in this “eloquent nonfiction biopic” (Variety), featuring archival footage and interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Angela Davis, Hilton Als, and others.

  • The Night of the Hunter

    • Wednesday, January 15 7 PM
    Charles Laughton
    United States, 1955

    Restored 35mm Print

    Robert Mitchum plays a predatory preacher who chases two innocent children across a menacing rural landscape in this eccentric, expressionistic Southern Gothic masterpiece. Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish costar.

    Introduction by Ron Nagle

  • Tokyo Twilight

    • Saturday, December 21 7 PM
    • Friday, December 27 2 PM
    • Wednesday, January 8 7 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1957

    Bay Area Premiere of Digital Restoration

    Setsuko Hara stars as a woman trying to hold her family together in Ozu’s darkest, most urban film, set in the shadowy back streets of Ginza. “Retains an enormous dramatic power, perhaps because of [its] very divergences from the Ozu oeuvre” (Michael Koresky).