Provincial newlyweds arriving in Rome get sidetracked by the wife’s obsession with a fumetto photo-comic star in Federico Fellini’s solo directorial debut. “A funny, sardonic, and clever satire on popular heroes and ordinary people’s illusions” (Chicago Reader).

UC Berkeley graduate Ester Hernández talks about her screen prints Sun Mad II and Sun Raid II, which address issues of migration and the overuse of pesticides and their impact on farmworkers, consumers, and the environment. Catherine Wagner discusses her work The Arctic Circle IV, part of a photographic trilogy in three distinct areas: scientific machines (Frankenstein), the Arctic Circle, and the history of science.

Luis Buñuel’s sole English-language film, which follows a Black jazz performer running from false rape charges in the Deep South, is a peculiar portrait of American Southern racism that at first resembles a Hollywood effort; by the end, it’s pure Buñuel. “One of his most sensual, sheerly physical works” (Jonathan Rosenbaum).

Tours of What Has Been and What Could Be: The BAMPFA Collection take place on selected Sundays at 2 PM and Free First Thursdays at 1:15 PM

“In a film of stunning spectacle and furious struggle, boat and task become centerpieces for two tales of obsession. Every bit as driven as Fitzcarraldo’s efforts to move the craft upward, Mr. Herzog’s determination to perform the feat in actuality inspired Les Blank’s documentary Burden of Dreams, also released in 1982, about the making of the film” (Peter M. Nichols, New York Times).

“Alberto Sordi’s pungent embodiment of a left-wing pamphleteer who can’t prosper in a capitalist republic propels [Dino] Risi’s deft seriocomic panorama from Mussolini’s fall to the rise of the postwar Roman oligarchy. . . . The closest America has come to Alberto Sordi is Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in their prime, rolled into one” (Michael Sragow, Air Mail).

Acclaimed documentary filmmaker and longtime collaborator with Les Blank, Maureen Gosling was nominated for Best Editing for Burden of Dreams by the American Cinema Editors. Gosling joins us for the presentation of a new digital restoration of this celebrated film.

Jean-Pierre Melville’s drama of the French Resistance, starring Lino Ventura and Simone Signoret, “grips tighter than a Gestapo handcuff. . . . A film of noirish compositions and fantastic cool” (Independent).