Tengiz Abuladze (USSR, 1977). Over twenty stories make up this episodic Georgian pastorale, set in the pre-Revolutionary birthplace of the famous painter Pirosmani. “Coordinated with the utmost consideration for what pleases the eye” (Hollywood Reporter). (108 mins)

Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwan, 1984). Two city kids spend a summer in the countryside while their mother is hospitalized in the film that marked Hou's arrival on the world-cinema stage. “Gentle, deeply humane and totally assured” (Tony Rayns). (98 mins)

Giorgi Shengelaia (USSR, 1969). This poetic, visually stunning biography of the great Georgian primitive artist Nikoloz (Niko) Pirosmanishvili won the Grand Prize at the Chicago Film Festival. “A splendid and innovative work of poetic biography” (New Yorker). (85 mins)

Lynn Hershman Leeson (U.S., 2007). Lynn Hershman Leeson in person. Telling the strange tale of artist and alleged “bioterrorist” Steve Kurtz, Lynn Hershman Leeson deconstructs both documentary conventions and post-9/11 paranoia. (76 mins)

Craig Baldwin (US, 1991). Craig Baldwin in person. “This masterpiece is at once a sci-fi cheapster, a skewed history of US intervention in Latin America, a satire of conspiratorial thinking, and an essential piece of current Americana” (Village Voice). With Bruce Conner's A Movie (1958). (60 mins)

Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwan, 1985). Out of his own childhood, Hou weaves a picture of a moment in time. "A spectacular triumph without anything of the 'spectacular' about it" (Derek Malcolm). (136 mins)

Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwan, 1986). The story of a country boy's lost love, "a heartbreaking film of profound humanity, the high point of an enormously gifted director in mid-career" (Evans Chan). (110 mins)

Noutsa Gogoberidze (USSR, 1930) Imported Print! Judith Rosenberg on piano. Long suppressed and nearly written out of film history, this exceptional documentary was an artistic collaboration between Georgia's first female director and the noted avant-garde painter David Kakabadze. With Felicità (2009), a deadpan, hilarious short on the work of women. (69 mins)

Jean-Luc Godard (France/Switzerland, 1982). Isabelle Huppert and Hanna Schygulla in Godard's visceral, visually enthralling film about a film called Passion, based on tableaux vivants of famous paintings. (87 mins)

Rezo Chkheidze (USSR, 1956). The picaresque village comedy is updated for Georgia's postwar urban realities in Rezo Chkheidze's lyrical tale of life, love, and collective labor inside a chaotic Tbilisi apartment block. Stars future filmmaker Giorgi Shengelaia. (89 mins)

Hou Hsiao-Hsien (Taiwan, 1987). A young woman and her brother float along the periphery of the Taipei underworld in Hou's intriguing blend of gangster tale and mood-drenched drama, a fascinating and little-seen forerunner to his Millennium Mambo and Goodbye South, Goodbye. (93 mins)

Pawel Wojtasik (US, 2008–14). Pawel Wojtasik in person. Polish artist Pawel Wojtasik's beautiful and disconcerting films include depictions of an autopsy, a recycling plant, a woman's body, and workers in Varanasi, India, all in sensual detail. (75 mins)

Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwan, 1989). Free screening. A family lives through Taiwan's independence from Japan, and later political crackdown. Hong Kong superstar Tony Leung stars in “one of the supreme masterworks of contemporary cinema” (Jonathan Rosenbaum). (158 mins)

Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwan, 1993). Free screening. Introduction and booksigning by Richard Suchenski. Suchenski and Guo-Juin Hong in conversation. Hou's film about the puppeteer Li Tien-lu is "epic in scope but personal in outlook, astonishingly rich in atmosphere but as unforced as the passing moment" (Kent Jones). (142 mins)

Cyclical minimalist rhythms and extended classical harmonies from founder of Quest Coast Quarterly.

Jean-Luc Godard (France, France/Switzerland, 1983). (Prénom Carmen). Anne-Marie Miéville and Godard's Bizet adaptation captures “the spirit of erotic feverishness . . . A violent lunge at the carnal mysteries” (David Denby). (85 mins)

Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwan, 1995). New 35mm print! Introduced by Richard Suchenski. Hou views Cold War repression in Taiwan through a present-day scrim. "A rigorous work of art whose mysteries are worth unraveling" (Caryn James). (108 mins)

Heather Rae (US, 2005). The life and times of the Native American activist and spoken-word performer John Trudell are spotlighted in this inspiring documentary from Heather Rae. Includes interviews with Robert Redford, Jackson Browne, Kris Kristofferson, and others. (80 mins)

Levan Koguashvili (Georgia/US, 2009) Bay Area Premiere! Levan Koguashvili in person. This eye-opening, compelling documentary sheds light on the hardships experienced by Georgian women in America. Followed by Street Days, a powerful character study of a drug addict struggling to survive in Tbilisi. (143 mins)

Levan Koguashvili (Georgia, 2013). Levan Koguashvili in person. A forty-something bachelor seeks true love, even if he is still living at home with his parents, in this whimsical Georgian love story. (95 mins)

(US, 2011–14). Mary Helena Clark, Linda Scobie, Karly Stark in person. Learn how to project 16mm film, see what film frames end up on Craig Baldwin's cutting room floor, and more in tonight's program of recent experimental films. Includes work by Vincent Grenier, Andrew Lampert, Tomonari Nishikawa, Adele Horne, and local artists Linda Scobie, Karly Stark, and Mary Helena Clark. (75 mins)

Mikheil Chiaureli (USSR, 1931). Imported Print! Introduced by Nikolay Mikhailovich Borodachev and Peter Bagrov. Judith Rosenberg on piano. Set in Tbilisi, Khabarda is a satire that plays on the tension between petit bourgeois values and the incoming sweep of Communist ideology. Another rare, rediscovered find from the archives of Gosfilmofond. (64 mins)

Jean-Luc Godard (1985). Godard's send-up of and tribute to film noir follows a dozen or so characters as they wander about a Parisian hotel, looking for mysteries, love, and money. With Johnny Hallyday and Jean-Pierre Léaud. (95 mins)

Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwan, 1996). A band of “gangsters” move from one luckless scheme to another in the south of Taiwan in Hou's take on the gangster film, which replaces gun battles and violence with the quiet moments in between. “A fascinating window onto modern Taiwan” (Berenice Reynaud). (112 mins)

Mikhail Kalatozov (USSR, 1930). Judith Rosenberg on piano. A snowbound, rock-hewn village in the harsh Caucasus is the setting for his bracing, rhythmically cut early masterpiece from the director of I Am Cuba. Nature, politics, and cinema combine in this salute to “the dynamic sublime.” (66 mins)

Mikhail Kalatozov (USSR, 1930/1932). Imported Print! Judith Rosenberg on piano. The saying “For want of a nail, a war was lost” is brought to dynamic, stirring life in this rapid-fire look at the Red Army. Another early masterpiece from the director of I Am Cuba. Followed by Patrick Cazal's documentary on the director, Hurricane Kalatozov (2010). (128 mins)

Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwan, 1998). New 35mm print! Tony Leung stars in Hou's quietly sumptuous tale of brothel life in nineteenth-century Shanghai. "'Surrender' is the key to this visually ravishing masterpiece" (Philip Lopate). (113 mins)

Jonathan Demme (US/Haiti, 2003). Jonathan Demme (Stop Making Sense, The Silence of the Lambs) documents the turbulent history of Radio Haiti, the first independent station in that nation's history, as instigated by its main broadcaster, the flamboyant Jean Léopold Dominique. (90 mins)

Mikhail Kalatozov (USSR, 1957). Mikhail Kalatozov's stunningly visualized drama of young love and ambition destroyed by war. A key work of both the post-Stalin era and all of world cinema. Winner, Palme d'Or, 1958 Cannes Film Festival. (95 mins)

Jean-Luc Godard (France, 1987). (Soigne ta droite). Godard's episodic comedy stars himself as an Idiot Prince, ordered to make a movie in one day. Godard at his most light-hearted and inquisitive, inspired by Buster Keaton, Jerry Lewis, Jaques Tati, and Dostoevsky. (82 mins)

Mikhail Kalatozov (Cuba/USSR, 1964). Made in 1962 as an act of Soviet-Cuban friendship, and written by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, this is an extraordinary example of "pure" cinema in the service of politics. "A deliriously one-of-a-kind movie, wildly schizophrenic in its bizarre mix of Slavic solemnity and Latin sensuality" (Telluride Film Festival). (138 mins)

Jean-Luc Godard (France, 1985). (Je vous salue, Marie). New 35mm Print! The story of Mary Magdalene, as filtered through the sensibilities of Godard. “I wanted to make a sincere, reverent film about faith, even if it's not the film the Church would have wanted,” he wrote; critics raved, while the Pope condemned it as “blasphemous.” (103 mins)

Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwan, 1998). New 35mm print! Tony Leung stars in Hou's quietly sumptuous tale of brothel life in nineteenth-century Shanghai. "'Surrender' is the key to this visually ravishing masterpiece" (Philip Lopate). (113 mins)