Special Screenings

Ongoing

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

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  • Works from the Eisner Competition 2024

  • Nostalghia

  • The Zone of Interest

  • Daughters of the Dust

  • About Dry Grasses

  • All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

  • The 9 Lives of Barbara Dane

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

Upcoming Films

  • Film & Video Makers at Cal: Works from the Eisner Competition 2024

    Free Admission

    Sunday, May 12 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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  • Nostalghia

    Andrei Tarkovsky
    USSR, Italy, 1983

    Digital Restoration

    Sunday, June 9 7:00 PM

    Andrei Tarkovsky’s breathtaking journey through the ruined but magical spaces of Tuscany follows a Russian man who feels the longing for home, closure, and the absolute that the film’s title describes. “Not so much a movie as a place to inhabit for two hours” (J. Hoberman).

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  • The Zone of Interest

    Jonathan Glazer
    United Kingdom, Poland, United States, 2023

    Winner of the Grand Prix at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and Academy Awards for Best International Feature and Best Sound

    Wednesday, June 12 7:00 PM

    Loosely inspired by the 2014 novel of the same name by Martin Amis, Jonathan Glazer has created a singular, unsettlingly timeless representation of inhumanity and our capacity for indifference in the face of atrocity.

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  • Daughters of the Dust

    Julie Dash
    United States, 1991

    Presented in conjunction with A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration

    Thursday, June 13 7:00 PM
    Introduced by Nadia Ellis

    A film experienced in sequences, from the perspective of several generations of women, including an unborn daughter, Daughters of the Dust creates a fabric of universal themes: the conflicts between personal and collective history, and between spiritual and industrial life.

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  • The Zone of Interest

    Jonathan Glazer
    United Kingdom, Poland, United States, 2023

    Winner of the Grand Prix at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and Academy Awards for Best International Feature and Best Sound

    Sunday, June 16 7:00 PM

    Loosely inspired by the 2014 novel of the same name by Martin Amis, Jonathan Glazer has created a singular, unsettlingly timeless representation of inhumanity and our capacity for indifference in the face of atrocity.

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  • All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

    Raven Jackson
    United States, 2023
    Wednesday, June 19 7:00 PM

    A lyrical exploration across a woman’s life in Mississippi, the feature debut from award-winning poet, photographer, and filmmaker Raven Jackson is a richly layered portrait. One of the film’s producers is Barry Jenkins.

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  • About Dry Grasses

    Nuri Bilge Ceylan
    Turkey, France, Germany, 2023
    Friday, June 21 7:00 PM

    Nestled away in the wintry East Anatolia region of Turkey, public-school art teacher Samet (Deniz Celiloğlu) yearns to leave the sleepy village for cosmopolitan Istanbul.

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  • The 9 Lives of Barbara Dane

    Maureen Gosling
    United States, 2023
    Wednesday, June 26 7:00 PM
    Maureen Gosling in Person

    For decades Barbara Dane lent her stellar singing voice to social-justice movements in the Bay Area and beyond, garnering an impressive FBI file along the way. “A true unsung hero of American music” (Boston Globe).

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  • Nostalghia

    Andrei Tarkovsky
    USSR, Italy, 1983

    Digital Restoration

    Saturday, June 29 7:00 PM

    Andrei Tarkovsky’s breathtaking journey through the ruined but magical spaces of Tuscany follows a Russian man who feels the longing for home, closure, and the absolute that the film’s title describes. “Not so much a movie as a place to inhabit for two hours” (J. Hoberman).

    View Details

  • About Dry Grasses

    Nuri Bilge Ceylan
    Turkey, France, Germany, 2023
    Wednesday, July 3 7:00 PM

    Nestled away in the wintry East Anatolia region of Turkey, public-school art teacher Samet (Deniz Celiloğlu) yearns to leave the sleepy village for cosmopolitan Istanbul.

    View Details

Past Films

  • BAMPFA Student Committee Film Festival 2024

    • Friday, April 5 7:30 PM

    Free Admission

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

    Student Filmmakers in Person

  • Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros

    • Sunday, January 14 2 PM
    • Saturday, January 27 2 PM
    • Saturday, February 24 11:30 AM
    • Saturday, March 2 11:30 AM
    Frederick Wiseman
    France, United States, 2023

    Esteemed documentarian Frederick Wiseman’s latest is a food lover’s heaven—a long, behind-the-scenes excursion into the world of France’s venerable restaurant La Maison Troisgros, which has held three Michelin stars for more than five decades.

  • Bushman

    • Saturday, February 24 7 PM
    David Schickele
    United States, 1971

    Open Captions

    BAMPFA presents the recently completed restoration of Bushman, directed by Bay Area independent filmmaker David Schickele. Paired with Schickele’s earlier film Give Me a Riddle.

  • Vishniac

    • Friday, February 23 4 PM
    Laura Bialis
    United States, 2023

    Copresented with The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life

    BAMPFA partners with The Magnes to host the East Bay Premiere of Vishniac, Laura Bialis’s new portrait of famed photographer Roman Vishniac’s life and work.

  • Black God, White Devil

    • Saturday, January 27 7 PM
    • Thursday, February 15 7 PM
    Glauber Rocha
    Brazil, 1964

    Digital Restoration

    “Steeped in history, myth, religion, and politics, and suffused with the feverish intensity of the blistering desert, Black God, White Devil is one of the Cinema Novo movement’s most uncompromising statements on current social issues as well as the universal problem of mindless fanaticism” (Janus Films).

  • Sorry to Bother You

    • Saturday, February 10 7 PM
    Boots Riley
    United States, 2018

    Copresented with UC Berkeley’s Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry and the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs, in conjunction with Imagining Beyond Authoritarianism: Race and Gender in Our Times

    Closed Captions

    Surrealism meets satire in Oakland. Boots Riley’s black comedy chronicles a hapless telemarketer whose sudden burgeoning success in the workplace is directly proportional to his alienation from his coworkers, his girlfriend, and himself.

    Boots Riley and Darieck Scott in Conversation

  • Vishniac

    • Sunday, February 4 2 PM
    Laura Bialis
    United States, 2023

    Copresented with The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life

    BAMPFA partners with The Magnes to host the East Bay Premiere of Vishniac, Laura Bialis’s new portrait of famed photographer Roman Vishniac’s life and work. Bialis joins the February 4 screening to discuss her film with Bay Area documentary filmmaker Veronica Selver (Irmi, KPFA on the Air).

    Laura Bialis and Veronica Selver in Conversation

  • Bushman

    • Saturday, February 3 3 PM
    David Schickele
    United States, 1971

    Bay Area Premiere of the Digital Restoration

    Open Captions

    BAMPFA presents the Bay Area premiere of the recently completed restoration of Bushman, directed by Bay Area independent filmmaker David Schickele. We will be joined by special guests, including Schickele’s family, who have been instrumental to the preservation of Bushman, as well as original members of the cast and crew and the preservation team. Paired with Schickele’s earlier film Give Me a Riddle.

    Gail Schickele, Nighttrain Schickele, Rob Nilsson, Ross Lipman, among others in Conversation

  • Snow and the Bear

    • Thursday, December 7 7 PM
    • Wednesday, January 31 7 PM
    Selcen Ergun
    Turkey, Germany, Serbia, 2022

    A chilling, mysterious, and stunning debut film. “Selcen Ergun’s acute and wide-awake direction emphasizes the undertones of a rigid patriarchal society while brilliantly setting the atmosphere for this anti fairy-tale” (Toronto International Film Festival).

  • Victims of Sin

    • Thursday, December 14 7 PM
    • Wednesday, January 24 7 PM
    Emilio Fernández
    Mexico, 1951

    Digital Restoration

    Victims of Sin is famed Mexican director Emilio Fernández’s unique blend of film noir, melodrama, and musical. Fernández infuses the film with impassioned songs and performances by Ninón Sevilla, an icon of Mexican cinema and a purveyor of African, Caribbean, and Cuban dance styles.

    Introduced by Peter Conheim and Viviana Garcia-Besné

  • Werckmeister Harmonies

    • Sunday, December 17 4 PM
    • Sunday, January 21 1:30 PM
    Béla Tarr
    Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, 2000

    Digital Restoration

    One of the major achievements of twenty-first-century cinema thus far, Béla Tarr’s mesmeric parable of societal collapse is an enigma of transcendent visual, philosophical, and mystical resonance. New German Cinema icon Hanna Schygulla appears in a welcome cinematic comeback, while Lars Rudolf contributes a fevered performance of Klaus Kinski–like proportions.