Alile Sharon Larkin (U.S., 1982) New Print! Introduced by Leigh Raiford. An African American woman living away from her family in Los Angeles yearns to be recognized for more than her physical attributes. With short films exploring personal and social change: Cycles (Zeinabu irene Davis), Water Ritual #1: An Urban Rite of Purification (Barbara McCullough), and Grey Area (Monona Wali). (112 mins)

(U.S., 2011–12). Student filmmakers in person. Introduced by student curators. Tonight's program-presenting the work of fourteen gifted college student filmmakers-includes pieces that explore the less-traveled alleys and alcoves of the Bay Area, unearth fleeting images and sounds of memories long untouched, and employ innovative cinematic structures and forms. (c. 73 mins)

Alex Cox (U.S./Mexico, 1991). Alex Cox in person. A Mexican highway patrolman learns the seedier side of the job in this straight-from-the-hip study of a young man who yearns for the noble when everything around him is grubby and corrupt. (104 mins)

William Wellman (U.S., 1950) Archival print! Introduced by J. Hoberman. An ordinary family tunes their radio into “the voice of God” in Wellman's arch drama from the Nuclear Age. “A study in terror; it acknowledges an actual anxiety and, however pitifully, responds to a real sense of helplessness” (Hoberman). (82 mins)

Alex Cox (U.S./Mexico, 1996). Alex Cox in person. Cox's ongoing fascination with Jorge Luis Borges is seen in this feature adaptation of a Borges tale. Here, we are engaged by the dogged Peter Boyle as Erik Lönnrot, a philosophical detective who uncovers a series of murders that might be the outcome of an occult conspiracy. With Pedro Armendáriz Jr and Christopher Eccleston. (86 mins)

Alex Cox (U.S., 1987). Alex Cox and J. Hoberman in conversation. A broadside at the ship of state and Reagan-era imperialism in Latin America, Walker follows the bloody campaign of an American mercenary (Ed Harris) to conquer and rule over Nicaragua in 1855. (94 mins)

Samuel Fuller (U.S., 1951) Archival print! Introduced by J. Hoberman. A gruff American sergeant and a South Korean orphan make their way through enemy territory in Fuller's ruthlessly unsentimental war film. (84 mins)

Alex Cox (U.S., 2007). Ed Pansullo in person. Two men in a lengthy odyssey to exact revenge for past wrongdoings-not John Ford's anguished oater The Searchers, but Alex Cox's road movie redux, which follows two former actors on a trail of vengeance. A road romp filled with film references, sly homages, buddy banter, and a love of the panoramic. (96 mins)

John Ford (U.S., 1948) Archival print! Lecture by J. Hoberman, followed by a book signing. The first entry in John Ford's Cavalry Trilogy, Fort Apache sets the nineteenth-century war against the Indians within the sensibility of post-WW II combat. With Henry Fonda, John Wayne, and Shirley Temple. (127 mins plus lecture)

René Clair (France, 1928). Judith Rosenberg on piano. A masterpiece of silent comedy, The Italian Straw Hat is a tribute by René Clair to the early French pioneer filmmakers, but one that moves with a rhythm and tempo unseen before its time. “One of the funniest films ever made, and one of the most elegant as well” (Pauline Kael). (84 mins)

Rose Lowder (France, 1979–2010). Rose Lowder in person. Introduced by Greta Snider. French filmmaker Rose Lowder has made over fifty experimental films, many of them shot frame-by-frame in rural Europe. Scott MacDonald has observed, “The most memorable of Lowder's films are experiments in creating distinct visual experiences.” Films include Colored Sunflowers, Poppies and Sailboats, Sun Garden, and Sea Salt Flower. (77 mins)

William Cameron Menzies (U.S., 1953). Student Pick! A terrified thirteen-year-old witnesses an alien invasion, in Menzies's paranoid Cold War-era yarn. “Stylized and almost avant-garde in its use of minimal forms, forced perspective, and bursts of color-field frames, Invaders from Mars suggests a Cold War Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, complete with added dream ‘frame'” (Hoberman). (78 mins)

Samuel Fuller (U.S., 1953). Pickpockets and cheap whores battle Commie provocateurs along the seedy New York waterfront in Sam Fuller's noirish potboiler of gutter-level loyalties, both personal and political. With Richard Widmark. (80 mins)

René Clair (France, 1930). René Clair's first sound film involves entanglements among a comely immigrant (Pola Illéry), a street singer (Albert Préjean), a petty criminal (Gaston Modot), and the singer's best friend (Edmond Gréville); the film's creativity and wit lie not in the plot but in Clair's inventive technique. (82 mins)

René Clair (France, 1955). René Clair's first color film is set in a provincial garrison just before World War I. Gérard Philipe plays a cavalry officer and self-styled Don Juan who wagers that he can seduce any woman in town, chosen at random. (106 mins)

Kon Ichikawa (Japan, 1956). A lyrical, haunting requiem for the victims of war, set amid the giant Buddhas of Burma. Winner of the top prize at the Venice film festival and one of Ichikawa's most famous films. (116 mins)

René Clair (France, 1931). A search for a winning lottery ticket spurs René Clair's unique blend of music and romance, a screen operetta by way of the Marx Brothers and Salvador Dali. (80 mins)

Chris Sullivan (U.S., 2012). Chris Sullivan in person. Introduced by Jeffrey Skoller. Chris Sullivan's intricate mix of hand-drawn animation, cutouts, and collage is an enigmatic, emotional tale centered on the intertwined lives of three intimate strangers in a small rust-belt town. “An artistic achievement so ambitious that most projects seem mundane in comparison” (Daniel Walber, Movies.com). (134 mins)

Larry Clark (U.S., 1977) New Preservation Print! An African American jazz musician, just out of jail, searches for his mentor and grandfather. Clark's film theorizes that jazz is one of the purest expressions of African American culture. With Charles Burnett's When It Rains. (124 mins)

René Clair (France, 1931). Clair combines fantasy with irony, whimsy with wistful pessimism, musical comedy with fine-tuned slapstick to create a satire of the highest order in this tale of two ex-cons, one now the owner of a large phonograph company, the other a freedom-loving vagabond. (82 mins)

Seijun Suzuki (Japan, 1964) New 35mm Print! A gang of prostitutes and a perpetually shirtless thug (Jo Shishido) survive in the sewers of Occupied Japan in this color-filled, cheerfully nihilistic thumb-in-the-eye to both good taste and motion picture censors. “A classic of the Nikkatsu subgenre known as roman porno” (James Quandt, Cinematheque Ontario). (90 mins)

Ernest Beane (U.S., 1935–46). Introduced by Rick Moss and Pamela Jean Vadakan. Live music by Marcus Shelby Duo. To commemorate Home Movie Day, we present a compilation of recently discovered rare home movies by Pullman porter (and Ashby Avenue resident) Ernest Beane, with an original score by Marcus Shelby. Preceded by a selection of African American home movies from families in Richmond, Detroit, Omaha, and Seattle. (80 mins)

Laslo Benedek (U.S., 1953). Marlon Brando leads a gang of leather-clad cyclists descending on YOUR small town in this classic of disaffection and outlaw life. What are you rebelling against? “Whaddya got?” Brando infamously states, against a engine-fueled roar. (79 mins)

Gillo Pontecorvo (Italy/Algeria, 1966). Pontecorvo's agit-prop classic concerns Algeria's struggle for independence against its French overlords, and remains today as one of the best films on revolution ever made. “A MASTERPIECE! Surely the most harrowing political epic ever!” (New Yorker). (123 mins)

Elia Kazan (U.S., 1950). Richard Widmark is a doctor scouring the streets of New Orleans for the carrier of a deadly disease in this gripping but alarmist tale of a “plague” traveling from abroad to our complacent shores. With Jack Palance, Barbara Bel Geddes, and Zero Mostel. (96 mins)

Zeinabu irene Davis (U.S., 1999). Zeinabu irene Davis in person. Compensation depicts two Chicago love stories, one set at the dawn of the twentieth century and the other in contemporary times, featuring a deaf woman and a hearing man. Incorporates sign language and title cards, making it accessible to both deaf and hearing audiences. Preceded by Iverson White's Dark Exodus. (118 mins)

Ute Aurand (Germany/Japan, 2011). Ute Aurand in person. Introduced by Susan Oxtoby. This program of German filmmaker Aurand's beautiful observed films features her most recent work, a meditation on Japan and portraits of her friends and godchildren. Films include Young Pines and Paulina, Franz, Maria, Susan, Lisbeth. (63 mins)

Seijun Suzuki (Japan, 1963). A young tough with a florid heart and swinging fists enters adulthood-and encounters both love and fascism-in Suzuki's wild film, a Taisho-set equivalent to Rebel Without a Cause. (95 mins)

Jean Grémillon (France, 1941). Cowritten by Jacques Prévert, Remorques stars Jean Gabin as a tugboat captain working the storm-battered coast of Brittany, where the moody Michèle Morgan soon washes into his life and he begins to become unmoored from his marriage to fragile Madeleine Renaud. (85 mins)

Jean Grémillon (France, 1943). Although it was never released in this country, for many British and French critics Lumière d'été stands alongside Children of Paradise as a masterpiece of French cinema made during the German Occupation. A remote mountain inn is the setting for a class-crossed love affair. (112 mins)

Don Siegel (U.S., 1956). Anytown U.S.A. gets clobbered again. This time alien pods replicate full-fledged citizens, turning them into unfeeling collectivized conformists. And the threat is not a bug-eyed alien or insidious Commie, but Mom, Dad, and Little Timmy. “They're already here. You're next! You're next!” (80 mins)

Seijun Suzuki (Japan, 1966). A high-school student and militant ideologue is torn between violence and his love for a Catholic girl in Suzuki's scathing portrait of militarism, filmed with typical high style and humor. (86 mins)

Jean Grémillon (France, 1944). Based on a 1937 news event, and released just before the Normandy invasion, Le ciel est à vous tells of a provincial couple who are devoted to a joint goal: for the wife to break the world solo flying record for women. (105 mins)

(U.S., 1971–88). This compilation of shorts celebrates black culture: Four Women (Julie Dash), Black Art, Black Artists (Elyseo J. Taylor), Define (O. Funmilayo Makarah), Bellydancing-A History & An Art (Alicia Dhanifu), and Festival of Mask (Don Amis). (75 mins)

Haile Gerima (U.S., 1972). Inspired by a dream director Haile Gerima had after seeing Angela Davis handcuffed on television, Child of Resistance follows a woman (Barbara O. Jones) who has been imprisoned as a result of her fight for social justice. With shorts Brick by Brick (Shirikiana Aina), L.A. in My Mind (O. Funmilayo Makarah), Rain (Melvonna Ballenger), and the collaborative piece Dawn at My Back: Memoir of a Black Texas Upbringing (excerpt). (83 mins)

Introduced by Jeff Lambert. A celebration of the Film Foundation and National Film Preservation Foundation's Avant-Garde Masters program, with three films that portray San Francisco: Ernie Gehr's Side/Walk/Shuttle, Frank Stauffacher's Notes on the Port of St. Francis, and Abigail Child's Pacific Far East Line. (75 mins)