Love Streams, Gena Rowlands & John Cassavetes

May 2–May 14, 2025

A celebration of one of the most significant cinematic partnerships of the twentieth century, Love Streams, Gena Rowlands & John Cassavetes, focuses on Gena Rowlands’s performances in six groundbreaking independent films written and directed by John Cassavetes, her husband of thirty-five years.

Read full description

John Cassavetes: Love Streams, 1984
John Cassavetes: A Woman Under the Influence, 1974
John Cassavetes: Minnie and Moskowitz, 1971

Upcoming
Films
Upcoming
Events
Selected
Objects
Past
Films
Past
Events

Upcoming Films

A Woman Under the Influence
John Cassavetes
United States, 1974
35mm Archival Print
Friday, May 2 7:00 PM
John Cassavetes’s masterpiece retains the power to unnerve with its raw, often harrowing depiction of a blue-collar Los Angeles family, with Gena Rowlands in an Oscar-nominated performance as a housewife on the verge.
View Details
Faces
John Cassavetes
United States, 1968
35mm Archival Print
Sunday, May 4 7:00 PM
Gena Rowlands, John Marley, and Seymour Cassel star in this unflinching nightlong journey through a marriage on the rocks, a film “against all people that know and for people that just feel” (John Cassavetes).
View Details
Minnie and Moskowitz
John Cassavetes
United States, 1971
Wednesday, May 7 7:00 PM
John Cassavetes’s take on the screwball comedy stars Gena Rowlands as Minnie, a beautiful, refined museum employee unlucky in love.
View Details
Love Streams
John Cassavetes
United States, 1984
BAMPFA Collection
Friday, May 9 7:00 PM
John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands star in this film about the blows and buttresses of family. “A mighty, intimate, kaleidoscopically subjective, bravely self-searching summation of a career, an era, and a life” (New Yorker).
View Details
Gloria
John Cassavetes
United States, 1980
Sunday, May 11 6:00 PM
A former gangster’s moll (Gena Rowlands) takes on the mob—while protecting a Puerto Rican orphan—in pre-gentrification, graffiti-tagged early 1980s New York. “A commercial film . . . turned into a slice of pure avant-garde” (Dave Kehr).
View Details
Opening Night
John Cassavetes
United States, 1978
Wednesday, May 14 7:00 PM
John Cassavetes’s tribute to acting, actors, and the search for artistic integrity centers around a successful stage actress (Gena Rowlands) grappling with her character. “Cassavetes’s most cleverly constructed film” (New Yorker).
View Details

Past Films

Love Streams, Gena Rowlands & John Cassavetes

May 2–May 14, 2025

Member-exclusive presale begins Wednesday, February 5 at 11:00 AM.

Tickets for the general public go on sale Friday, February 7 at 11:00 AM.

Not yet a member? Join today for more great member-only benefits.

Gena Rowlands died last August at the age of ninety-four, but she lives on through the many characters she played in the course of her long and distinguished career. Offering the opportunity to honor her memory and celebrate her exceptional talents, Love Streams, Gena Rowlands & John Cassavetes focuses on her performances in six groundbreaking independent films written and directed by John Cassavetes, her husband of thirty-five years. A talented, sought-after actor, Cassavetes was most interested in making films outside the constraints of the entertainment industry and studio system. He wanted to represent the extraordinary emotions of real people and to depict the subtleties and struggles of human relationships and emotions authentically. Cassavetes’s genius as a director was creating the conditions by which his performers could become the characters he conceived. While his screenplays were meticulously scripted, he insisted that his actors discover the characters delivering the lines independently, lending their energy and imagination to the work and opening it up to new perspectives.

In Rowlands, Cassavetes found his most steadfast and brilliant collaborator, and together they crafted some of the most indelible characters in cinema history: Jeannie Rapp in Faces; Minnie Moore in Minnie and Moskowitz; the poignant, quirky Mabel Longhetti in A Woman Under the Influence; the actress Myrtle in Opening Night; the reluctant, then resolute protectress in Gloria; and Sarah Lawson, struggling for connection in Love Streams. Rowlands’s astonishing ability to communicate the intelligence, resilience, emotional depth, and complexity of each unique character is an enduring reminder of the creative power of love.

—Kate MacKay, Associate Film Curator

Less

Thanks to Chris Chouinard, Park Circus; David Jennings, Sony Pictures; Bret Berg, American Genre Film Archive; Mark Balsam, Westchester Films; Jason Jackowski, Carla Ortiz, Universal Pictures; and Todd Wiener, Steven K. Hill, UCLA Film & Television Archive.