Philip Gröning (Germany, 2005). Introduced by Gaetano Kazuo Maida. German director Gröning spent months among the monks of a monastery in the French Alps, sharing and observing their silence, attuning himself (and us) to the stillness of their devotion. The daily rituals-the prayers and meals, the walks and labors-establish a quiet and reverential rhythm. (164 mins)

Werner Schroeter (Germany, 1969). Archival print! Schroeter's dizzying first feature is a series of vignettes and songs assembled into a nine-part musical/camp format, by turns operatic, balletic, melodramatic, hilarious, and haunting. “This two-and-a-half hour funkfest is some kind of great movie” (J. Hoberman, Village Voice).

See On Location in Silent Cinema

Merian C. Cooper, Ernest Schoedsack (U.S., 1927). Introduced by Linda Williams. A family struggles to farm-and to live-at the edge of the Siam jungle in this pioneering travelogue/documentary/crowd-pleaser. With Buñuel's Surrealist documentary classic, Land Without Bread. (120 mins)

Vittorio De Sica (Italy, 1948). Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. De Sica's masterpiece of a father and son searching the streets of Rome for their stolen bicycle is considered one of the greatest films ever made. “An allegory at once timeless and topical” (Village Voice). (93 mins)

Bu Wancang (Richard Poh) (China, 1931). Imported Print! Introduced by Weihong Bao. Judith Rosenberg on piano. This rarely screened tragicomedy from the Chinese silent era depicts a woman's sacrifice and the price she pays for abandoning an arranged marriage. Starring the legendary Ruan Lingyu. (152 mins)

Reginald Barker (U.S., 1914). Restored 35mm print! Introduced by Scott Simmon. Frederick Hodges on piano. Join us for the West Coast premiere of the Library of Congress's 35mm restoration of this deeply unconventional border-town Western, starring William S. Hart in his first feature and the Grand Canyon in all its majesty. With short Sierra Jim's Reformation, starring Raoul Walsh. (83 mins)

Abram Room (U.S.S.R., 1930) Imported Print! Introduced by Anne Nesbet. Bruce Loeb on piano. The grand and forbidding vistas of Azerbaijan stand in for an unnamed, oil-rich South American country, in which a revolutionary is let out of jail for one day. The Soviet Wild West meets avant-garde design! (84 mins)

Alfred Hitchcock (U.S., 1943). Joseph Cotten is the urbane Uncle Charlie, hiding out in the small-town home of his sister Emma in this blend of satire and mystery. Is Uncle Charlie the Merry Widow Killer hunted by the police, or is he innocent as he claims? (108 mins)

Werner Schroeter (West Germany, 1978). This postwar chronicle of Naples is played out through one family's sufferings, successes, and madness in Schroeter's paean to that city's great beauty, and great ruins. Schroeter's most straightforward (almost) film is opera filtered through neorealism, both hallucinatory and socially profound. (132 mins)

(Nikudan). Kihachi Okamoto (Japan, 1968). A reluctant kamikaze at the tail end of WWII enjoys his last day on earth-or tries to-in this disorienting, savage antiwar satire, reminiscent of Sam Fuller by way of Hunter S. Thompson. From the director of Sword of Doom. (116 mins)