Limited Engagements & Special Screenings

Ongoing

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

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  • CineSpin

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • Chinese Animation: The Screen and the Scroll

    Sunday, January 15 4:30 PM
    Introduced by Julia Irwin and Linda C. Zhang

    This program features animated shorts created by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio that feature painting and folk art that link screen with scroll. The screen becomes a site for the painterly projection of dreams, nightmares, and fantasies.  

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  • Women Talking

    Sarah Polley
    United States, 2022
    Monday, January 30 6:30 PM
    Frances McDormand, Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, and Naima Karczmar in Conversation

    Graced with an extraordinary cast, Polley’s thoughtfully executed adaptation of Miriam Toews’s best-selling novel chronicles a radical “act of female imagination” to consider the healing power of language and what is required to escape systematic criminal abuse in an isolated religious community. 

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  • Black Life: An Evening with Paige Taul

    Saturday, February 18 5 PM
    Paige Taul and ruth gebreyesus in Conversation

    Black Life is thrilled to welcome Oakland-born filmmaker Paige Taul back to the East Bay for a screening and conversation about her films. Primarily shot on 16 and super 8mm film, her works “engage with and challenge assumptions of Black cultural expression and notions of belonging.”

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  • Neutra: Survival Through Design

    PJ Letofsky
    United States, 2019
    Saturday, February 25 12 PM
    Lisa Heschong, Richard Jackson, Lindsay Baker, and Raymond Richard Neutra in Conversation; Introduced by PJ Letofsky

    Austrian American architect Richard Neutra (1892–1970) designed 350 buildings around the world and was noted for his vision of environment, ecology, and livability. This information-rich documentary will be of interest to generalists and specialists alike in the areas of twentieth-century architecture and restoration, psychology, and aesthetics.

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  • Tukdam: Between Worlds

    Donagh Coleman
    Finland, Ireland, Estonia, 2022

    Copresented with the Center for Buddhist Studies and the UC Berkeley Anthropology Department, cosponsored by the Institute for South Asia Studies and the Himalayan Studies Initiative

    Thursday, March 2 7 PM
    Donagh Coleman, David Perlman, and Jacob Dalton in Conversation

    In what Tibetans call tukdam, deceased meditators have shown no signs of death for days or weeks. Juxtaposing ground-breaking scientific research and Tibetan perspectives, this creative documentary challenges our notion of life and death—and where we draw the line between them.

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  • BAMPFA Student Committee Film Festival 2023

    Free Admission

    Friday, April 7 7 PM
    Student Filmmakers in Person

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

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  • Black Life: Circling the Archive with Filmmaker Dwayne LeBlanc

    Saturday, April 29 4 PM
    Dwayne Leblanc and ruth gebreyesus in Conversation

    Filmmaker LeBlanc joins Black Life cocurator ruth gebreyesus in person to share his film and discuss influences on his approach to filmmaking. The program also features a 35mm restored print of Charles Burnett’s first film, Several Friends

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  • Drylongso

    Cauleen Smith
    United States, 1998
    Sunday, May 7 5 PM
    Cauleen Smith and Leila Weefur in Conversation

    “An enduringly rich work of DIY filmmaking, Drylongso remains a resonant and visionary examination of violence (and its reverberations), friendship, and gender” (Film at Lincoln Center).

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  • Film & Video Makers at Cal: Works from the Eisner Competition 2023

    Free Admission

    Sunday, May 14 2 PM
    UC Berkeley Student Filmmakers in Person

    Student filmmakers join us for a screening of this year’s prizewinners and honorable mentions in the film and video category of the Eisner Prize competition, UC Berkeley’s highest award for creative media making.

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  • Town Destroyer

    Deborah Kaufman, Alan Snitow
    United States, 2022

    East Bay Premiere!

    Saturday, June 10 4:30 PM
    Deborah Kaufman, Alan Snitow, and Gregory Scharpen in Person

    This is the East Bay premiere of Town Destroyer, which explores the ways we look at art and history at a time of racial reckoning. “Snitow and Kaufman’s documentary offers a fascinating overview of a case that encapsulates many of the bitterest divisions of our era” (Dennis Harvey, 48 Hills).

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  • Black Life: Saint Omer

    Alice Diop
    France, 2022
    Sunday, June 25 4:30 PM
    Introduced by ruth gebreyesus

    Alice Diop’s first venture into narrative after more than a decade of documentary filmmaking, Saint Omer follows a young novelist, Rama, who is observing the trial of Laurence Coly, a woman accused of murdering her fifteen-month-old child in northern France.

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  • The March

    James Blue
    United States, 1964

    Free Admission

    Thursday, August 24 7 PM

    To commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which demanded equal rights for African Americans, we present two powerful documentaries, James Blue’s The March and Haskell Wexler’s The Bus.

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  • CineSpin: Chess Fever, Un chien Andalou, and The Cage

    Free Admission

    Friday, November 3 8:30 PM

    Join us for CineSpin, the BAMPFA Student Committee’s annual event featuring terrific UC Berkeley student musicians providing original live accompaniment for Chess Fever (1925), Un chien Andalou (1929), and The Cage (1947).

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