Castle in the Sky in 35mm

The Asphalt Jungle in 35mm

Academy Museum

### **ABOUT THE FILM:**

Joel and Ethan Coen’s haunting tale of passion, crime and punishment, all presented in glorious black-and-white. Billy Bob Thornton stars as Ed Crane, a barber in a small Northern California town in 1949 who is dissatisfied with his life – until his wife’s (Frances McDormand) infidelity presents Ed with an opportunity for blackmail that he thinks will help him to change it. However, Ed’s scheme soon unravels and lays bare even darker secrets before leading to murder. Co-starring Michael Badalucco, James Gandolfini, Jon Polito and a young Scarlett Johansson.

FORMAT: DCP

DISTRIBUTOR: Universal

COUNTRY: USA

Q&A with cinematographer Roger Deakins and James Ellis Deakins Theatrical World Premiere of New Restoration 25th Anniversary ‘Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair – Year 5’

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE

Aero Theatre

Academy Award–winning Austrian director Michael Haneke shifted his focus from the social to the psychological for this riveting study of female sexuality and the dynamics of control, an adaptation of a controversial 1983 novel by Elfriede Jelinek. Haneke finds his match in Isabelle Huppert, who delivers an icy but quietly seething performance as Erika, a middle-aged piano professor at a Viennese conservatory who lives with her mother, in a claustrophobically codependent relationship. Severely repressed, she satisfies her masochistic urges only voyeuristically until she meets Walter (Benoît Magimel), a young student whose desire for Erika leads to a destructive infatuation that upsets the careful equilibrium of her life. A critical breakthrough for Haneke, The Piano Teacher—which won the Grand Prix as well as dual acting awards for its stars at Cannes—is a formalist masterwork that remains a shocking sensation.

The Piano Teacher

Egyptian Theatre

Ever wanted to build a synthesizer?

In this beginner&#x27;s workshop led by Dogbotic, participants will learn the process step-by-step, demystifying the horrible world of electrical engineering at every turn. You&#x27;ll learn how to build basic oscillators, filters, LFOs, and amplifiers, how to rig up your circuit to be light-sensitive, and oh-so-much more. Each participant will make their own working synth prototype, which we&#x27;ll tune together to form a delicious sound bath. You&#x27;ll then get to take your prototype home and use it to impress and irritate your friends and loved ones.All parts are included, no prior circuitry experience or musical ability needed!

You’ll be learning with:

Kirk Pearson (Dogbotic founder, creative director) and Sean Russell Hallowell (Dogbotic partner, technical director), both teach the DIY Synths virtual workshop.

About Dogbotic:

Dogbotic is a Bay-area based collective that teaches unconventional art classes as a means to promote creativity, discourage mindless consumerism, and engage in conversations about how to use our art to make the world more equitable. Our instructors love teaching artists how to engineer, and convincing folks how straightforward a lot of seemingly “difficult” concepts are. We hope to be a space free of judgement that fosters genuine collaboration and curiosity and an appreciation for the weird and wonderful.

Learn more us and our virtual workshops at [dogbotic.com](http://dogbotic.com/)

Build Your Own Synth hosted by Dogbotic (6/1)

Heavy Manners Library

### **ABOUT THE FILM:**

A Vietnam veteran returns home from the war only to find himself drawn into a life of crime. With the aid of his fellow vets, he plans the ultimate heist.

FORMAT: 35mm

DISTRIBUTOR: Disney

COUNTRY: USA

Q&A with filmmaker Allen Hughes ‘Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair — Year 5’ and ‘Cinematic Void’

Cinematic Void Presents DEAD PRESIDENTS

### **ABOUT THE FILM:**

Spider (Ralph Fiennes) is in a constant struggle to overcome a traumatic event early in his life. He has been allowed a second chance at life after a long stay in a mental institution and returns to the streets where he grew up; sent to a halfway house under the stern but unsupervised watch of Mrs. Wilkenson (Lynn Redgrave). The sights, sounds and smells of revisiting the familiar streets of his old neighborhood send Spider further down a shadowy path that reawakens memories of his where his mother (Miranda Richardson) and his father (Gabriel Byrne) raised him. He soon begins to uncover the real truth shifting seamlessly back and forth between the tragic events that polarized a boy’s adolescence to the shell of a man enduring the surreal plausible reality of today.

FORMAT: DCP

DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Pictures Classics

COUNTRY: Canada/UK

Introduction by Brandon David Wilson U.S. Premiere of New 4K Restoration ‘Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair – Year 5’

SPIDER

Los Feliz Theatre

War of the Worlds  / Edge of Tomorrow

New Beverly Cinema

**Screenwriter**: Sophy Romvari

**Producers**: Ryan Bobkin, Sara Wylie, Sophy Romvari, Gábor Osváth

In the late 1990s, eight-year-old Sasha and her family relocate to a new home on Vancouver Island, but their fresh start is interrupted by increasingly dangerous behavior from the eldest son, Jeremy. At wit’s end, their parents are presented with a shattering choice. Award-winning director Sophy Romvari’s feature debut is a lyrical and profound testament to the things we carry with us, masterfully chronicling the haze of a languid summer and the hyaline clarity of the moments that defined it.

Blue Heron

**Producer**: Gary Goetzman

We&#8217;re bringing the party back to the big screen to kick off June like rock stars! Join us for one of our favorite cinematic/musical experiences with a reprise of legendary Director Jonathan Demme’s ecstatic musical masterpiece Stop Making Sense. Filmed at the Hollywood Pantages Theater in December 1983, this fascinating piece of musical memorabilia showcases the Talking Heads boundless creativity and showmanship on stage and off. A one-of-a-kind experience, join Vidiots as we revel in 40 years of Vidiots and the 41st anniversary of this groundbreaking film, newly remastered in a stunning 4K presentation.

In honor of our third anniversary in Eagle Rock, we will be offering **one free rental** in the video store all day on June 1st!

**Picks from the Video Store:**

Jonesing for more Demme? We&#8217;ve got a killer section for Jonathan Demme on our directors racks that includes these rarities!

*Crazy Mama, Who Am I This Time?, Swimming to Cambodia*, and make sure to check out his tasty episode of *Columbo &#8211; Murder Under Glass!*

**Accessibility Options**: Amplified Audio, please see the box office for devices.

Stop Making Sense

Vidiots

### **ABOUT THE FILMS:**

**LA CÉRÉMONIE, 1995, Dir. Claude Chabrol, 111 Mins, Janus Films, France**

*In French with English subtitles.*

Sophie, a quiet and shy maid working for an upper-class French family, finds a friend in the energetic and uncompromising postmaster Jeanne, who encourages her to stand up against her bourgeois employers.

FORMAT: DCP

**VIOLETTE NOZIÈRE, 1978, Dir. Claude Chabrol, 124 Mins, France/Canada**

*In French with English subtitles.*

The daughter of a respectable lower middle-class couple, Violette Nozière, leads a disreputable double life. Far from being the innocent 18-year-old her parents mistake her for, she spends her nights with dissolute young men in the less salubrious areas of the city.

FORMAT: 35mm

*Thank you to our airline sponsor Delta Air Lines.*

Q&A with actor Isabelle Huppert. Moderated by filmmaker Sophy Romvari. ‘Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair — Year 5’ and ‘Isabelle Huppert: A Bleak Week Tribute’

LA CÉRÉMONIE / VIOLETTE NOZIÈRE

### **ABOUT THE FILM:**

*In English and Warlpiri with English subtitles*

Samson and Delilah’s world is small-an isolated community in the Central Australian desert. When tragedy strikes they turn their backs on home and embark on a journey of survival. Lost, unwanted and alone they discover that life isn’t always fair, but love never judges. A winner of numerous international awards, SAMSON AND DELILAH marks the emergence of a major new talent in filmmaker Warwick Thornton. Offering a rare insight into the issues confronting the youth of a lost generation of Aborigines, it has since been hailed by critics as the one of the greatest films ever to come out of Australia.

FORMAT: DCP

DISTRIBUTOR: Samuel Goldwyn Films

COUNTRY: Australia

*Thank you to our airline sponsor Delta Air Lines.*

Q&A with filmmaker Warwick Thornton ‘Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair — Year 5’ and ‘Warwick Thornton: A Bleak Week Retrospective’

SAMSON AND DELILAH

### **ABOUT THE FILM:**

When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband and a rugged frontiersman to whom she develops a forbidden attraction.

FORMAT: DCP

DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Pictures Classics

COUNTRY: Australia/France

### **ABOUT THE RESTORATION:**

*The new 4K UHD restoration was supervised and approved by Jane Campion and her director of photography, Stuart Dryburgh. This new 4K restoration was made in the United States in Dolby Vision HDR 16-bit 4K from the original 35mm image negative scanned on Arriscan at the Fixafilm lab in Australia. Color grading was supervised and approved by Jane Campion and Stuart Dryburgh, with a 35mm print from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences used as a reference. The original 5.1 audio mix was remastered from the original 24-track digital.*

Introduction by Courtney Howard U.S. Premiere of New 4K Restoration ‘Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair – Year 5’

THE PIANO

Red Heat

Rambo: First Blood Part II

Vista Theatre

African Video Club presents MIRROR MIRROR VOL. 5, an ongoing screening series dedicated to filmmakers across the diaspora.

Join us for a special screening of *My Father's Shadow*, the debut feature from director Akinola Davies Jr. and the UK's submission for Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards.

Set on the day June 12th, 1993 during Nigeria's first presidential election following years of military rule, the film follows two young brothers as they spend the day with their estranged father, moving through Lagos amid a country on the cusp of political change.

An evening of film and good company.

MIRROR MIRROR VOL. 5: My Father's Shadow

2220 Arts + Archives

Grave of the Fireflies

Clash by Night with Don’t Bother to Knock

### **ABOUT THE FILM:**

*In English, Greek, Romanian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Serbian and Kurdish with English subtitles.*

An exiled filmmaker finally returns to his home country where former mysteries and afflictions of his early life come back to haunt him once more.

FORMAT: 35mm

COUNTRY: Greece

Rare 35mm collection print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive

ULYSSES' GAZE

Slowburn Shoot: An Indie Wrestling Story with Q&A with director Adam J. Wilde hosted by Chris Van Vliet

Synopsis: Slowburn Shoot is a feature length Documentary that takes an unvarnished look at the world of independent wrestling through the lens of Absolute Intense Wrestling. Rising stars and aging vets alike all pass through scrappy regional leagues like AIW. For some, it’s their only paycheck. For others, it’s their last chance. Slowburn Shoot also chronicles the trials and tribulations of founder John Thorne and his beloved co-owner “Chandler Biggins”. The story is told by some of the biggest names in professional wrestling today. They tell their own tales while revealing the tragedy and the ultimate triumph that is Absolute Intense Wrestling.

Slowburn Shoot with Q&A with director Adam J. Wilde hosted by Chris Van Vliet

Brain Dead Studios

### **ABOUT THE FILM:**

Two teenage boys must escape a violent entity that takes the form of the person they desire most—each other.

FORMAT: DCP

DISTRIBUTOR: NEON

COUNTRY: Australia

Introduction by filmmaker Adrian Chiarella and actors Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen Advance Screening Popcorn and soda courtesy of NEON

LEVITICUS

Days of Heaven / The Wild Child

Mezzanine and Now Instant present the Los Angeles premiere of the restoration of *Rosa de Areia* by the singular Portuguese husband-and-wife team António Reis & Margarida Cordeiro, a poet and a psychiatrist whose beautiful collaborations were a major influence on their contemporaries, including Manoel de Oliveira and their student Pedro Costa.

“Largely unknown outside Portugal, filmmakers António Reis (1927-1991) and Margarida Cordeiro (b. 1939) are legendary figures in their native country. Reis was a poet, a folklorist, and an ethnographer; Cordeiro, a psychiatrist by trade. Across the four films they made together, the duo forged a cinema of profound commitment, deeply rooted in the language, labors, myths, dreams, and material realities of a land and a people: namely, the peasants of Trás-os-Montes in Portugal’s remote Northeast. With one foot firmly anchored in the earth and the other in the cosmos, Reis and Cordeiro conjure up the deep, cyclical time of folk tradition. Their films are a collision of the forces of documentary and poetry, fact and fabulation, the ancient and the avant-garde, a vertigo of contradictions at once harmonious and sharply unreconciled. Employing simple and direct means, their work is all the more mystical for being so concrete. ‘Here and nowhere else. Here and anywhere else’—this is the paradoxical space-time of their films, in the words of Serge Daney.

Rosa de Areia

Now Instant Image Hall

**Screenwriters**: Carole Eastman,  Bob Rafelson

**Producers**: Richard Wechsler,  Bob Rafelson

Join us as we embark on a road trip with legends Jack Nicholson and Karen Black in Bob Rafelson&#8217;s iconic drama. Following Jack Nicholson’s breakout supporting turn in *Easy Rider, *director Bob Rafelson devised a powerful leading role for the new star in the searing character study *Five Easy Pieces. *Nicholson plays the now iconic cad BobbyDupea, a shiftless thirtysomething oil rigger and former piano prodigy immune to any sense of responsibility, who returns to his upper-middle-class childhood home, blue-collar girlfriend (Karen Black, in an Oscar-nominated role) in tow, to see his estranged, ailing father. Moving in its simplicity and gritty in its textures, *Five Easy Pieces *is a lasting example of early-1970s American alienation and was nominated for four Oscars and five Golden Globes.

**Picks from the Video Store**

We love Karen Black, and we&#8217;ve got you covered to fall down her physical media rabbit hole!

*Day of the Locust, Trilogy of Terror, Rubin and Ed*

**Accessibility Options**: Amplified Audio, please see the box office for devices.

Five Easy Pieces

Disclosure Day

Deadly China Doll

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes with Monkey Business in 4K

Michael Mann’s Manhunter: The Final Cut with Michael Mann

### **ABOUT THE FILM:**

The Dark Knight of Gotham City begins his war on crime with his first major enemy being the clownishly homicidal Joker.

FORMAT: 70mm

DISTRIBUTOR: Park Circus

COUNTRY: USA/UK

Ultra rare screening! Last screened in L.A. in 1998 ‘Ultra Cinematheque 70 Fest 2026’

BATMAN in 70mm

**NEW DATE:** Friday Jun 12

“After the Revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?” asked artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles in 1977. With that provocation, she shattered the divide between art and everyday labor, becoming the first artist in residence at New York City’s Department of Sanitation. Her collaborations with municipal workers injected art directly into the city’s bloodstream and redefined what creative practice could be. Inspired by Marcel Duchamp, Ukuleles pioneered the radical idea that routine maintenance—from changing diapers to picking up city trash to caring for the earth—could be acts of performance art.

Join us for a screening of *MAINTENANCE ARTIST*, the first feature documentary to explore this revolutionary public artist’s career. Featuring never-before-seen archival footage, the film traces a half-century of social and artistic upheaval through the lens of essential labor and public art. *MAINTENANCE ARTIST* celebrates Ukeles’s call for a “Maintenance Revolution,” honoring the workers who keep our world running and the artist who insisted that their labor deserves to be seen.

The screening will be introduced by multimedia artist Debra Scacco, the first civic-appointed artist in residence in the City of Santa Monica’s Water and Waste divisions (2023–25). 

DIRECTED BY: Toby Perl Freilich; PRODUCED BY: Toby Perl Freilich & Judith Mizrachy; EDITED BY: Anne Alvergue. 95 minutes, 2025.

This program is part of the [Art on Screen][1] series, which celebrates moving-image media and its intersection with art and art histories. The event is inspired by the Getty Research Institute’s collections of [feminist performance artists’ archives][2].

The conversation will be available on the [Getty Research Institute YouTube channel][3] following the event.

Visit the Getty Research Institute's [Exhibitions and Events page][4] for more free programs.


  [1]: https://www.getty.edu/whats-on/art-on-screen/
  [2]: https://www.getty.edu/projects/study_of_performance_woman_artists_archives/
  [3]: https://www.youtube.com/c/gettyresearch
  [4]: https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/

Screening: *MAINTENANCE ARTIST*

Getty Center

**
[REGISTER FOR THIS SCREENING](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ucla-celebration-of-iranian-cinema-black-rabbit-white-rabbit-2025-tickets-1987863793117?aff=oddtdtcreator)**

**Please note**: Registration does not guarantee entry if the event reaches capacity. Admission is granted on a first come, first served basis.

Patrons who have registered will need to obtain their free tickets at the box office, where seating will be assigned. Any seats remaining 15 minutes before showtime will be released to standby patrons.

*Farhang Short Film Festival 3rd prize winner*

A Kurdish city in western Iran, Sardasht was the target of a chemical weapons attack in 1987. Director Pejman Alipour captures the moment the city’s peaceful calm was shattered in this powerful, watercolor-style animated short. 

DCP. Director/Screenwriter: Pejman Alipour. 

Tajikistan's submission to the Oscars for Best International Feature Film, *Black Rabbit, White Rabbit* finds writer-director Shahram Mokri working at the top of his cinematic game. On a film set for the remake of a classic Iranian film, the crew’s armorer worries that a prop gun may not be what it seems and a mysterious young woman arrives to demand an audition. Meanwhile, at a well-appointed villa, a woman recovering from a car accident discovers she may be the target of a murder plot. In Mokri’s inimitable style, long camera takes and elliptical editing blur time and space, visions and reality, history and fiction. 

DCP. Director: Shahram Mokri. Screenwriters: Shahram Mokri, Nasim Ahmadpour. With: Babak Karimi, Hasti Mohammaï, Kibriyo Dilyobova.

Black Rabbit, White Rabbit

Hammer Museum

### **ABOUT THE FILM:**

An older man (Lionel Atwill) warns a younger man (Cesar Romero) about a temptress (Marlene Dietrich) in 19th-century Spain.

FORMAT: 35mm

DISTRIBUTOR: Universal

COUNTRY: USA

Get your ticket for just $7.20 at the box office! ‘Film by the Foot’

THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN

The Third Man

Inglourious Basterds

Iconic comedian **Paula Poundstone** is known for her smart, observational humor and a spontaneous wit that has become the stuff of legend. She regularly plays theaters across the country, hosts a weekly comedy podcast, _Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone_, and is a regular panelist on NPR’s _Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me_. She also voiced the character ‘Forgetter Paula’ in the feature films _Inside Out_ and _Inside Out 2._

  

Paula has starred in several HBO specials, including _Cats, Cops and Stuff_, which nabbed a cable ACE award for Best Comedy Special. She was the first female comic to host the White House Correspondents Dinner.  Paula has starred in two television series, both entitled _The Paula Poundstone Show_. Paula’s second book, _The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness_, was one of eight semi-finalists for the Thurber Prize For American Humor; the audiobook was one of five finalists for the AUDIE award for Audiobook of the Year. P

  

  

  

  

  

  

* * *

Read safety information [here](https://thewallis.org/safety).

PAULA POUNDSTONE

The Wallis

**Screenwriter**: Boots Riley

**Producers**: Aaron Ryder,  Andrew Swett,  Allison Rose Carter,  Jon Read,  Boots Riley

Get your eyeballs and brain ready for maximum explosiveness as Boots Riley&#8217;s newest inventive, hilarious, surreal, stylish, stop-motion-sprinkled, and utterly singular masterpiece hits our microcinema in all its dazzling propagandistic glory! The fashion, the fun, the gonzo satire &#8211; it&#8217;s the wildest ride in cinema this year and an absolute revelation for those of us who have been craving the return of originality to filmmaking. Keke Palmer heads a crew of professional fashion boosters out to resell expensive clothes at a discount, but when a fashion maven (Demi Moore at her bitchy best) vows to take them down, and an unexpected guest with a magical gadget appears &#8211; their quest begins to turn global. Boots Riley solidifies his place among America&#8217;s most inventive auteurs with yet another brilliantly bonkers but perennially relevant capitalist critique that will keep you laughing, gagging (at the FASHION), and cheering throughout.

I Love Boosters

**Screenwriters**: George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nick Lathouris

**Producers**: Doug Mitchell, George Miller, P.J. Voeten

One of the best films of 2015 and winner of six Academy Awards, George Miller’s reboot of the *Mad Max* series is as thrillingly imaginative as the previous installments. This time around, Tom Hardy’s Max is along for the ride as Charlize Theron’s badass Imperator Furiosa flees the forces of a brutish warlord through a primitive, post-apocalyptic desert wasteland. Taking the form of an epic, breathlessly inventive chase sequence, *Mad Max**: Fury Road* is a nigh-operatic spectacle of anarchic action and vehicular carnage that never takes its foot off the gas!

**Picks from the Video Store**

Looking for more bad-ass Aussie adventures? Head down under with these deep cuts!

*Dead End Drive-In, Razorback, Stone*

**Accessibility Options**: Closed Captions, Descriptive Audio, Amplified Audio, please see the box office for devices.

Mad Max: Fury Road

**Screenwriters**: Ewan Leslie,  Karen McCullah,  Kirsten Smith

**Producers**: Lauren Shuler Donner,  Ewan Leslie

*I can do this. I am a dude. I am a hunky dude! I&#8217;m a badass hunky dude! *From the Golden Era of teen Shakespearean adaptations, Amanda Bynes and Channing Tatum star in this gender-bending modernization of The Bard&#8217;s *Twelfth Night*. Viola Hastings is in a real jam. Complications threaten her scheme to pose as her twin brother, Sebastian, and take his place at a new boarding school. She falls in love with her handsome roommate, Duke, who loves beautiful Olivia, who has fallen for Sebastian! As if that were not enough, Viola&#8217;s twin returns from London ahead of schedule but has no idea that his sister has already replaced him on campus. Who needs the World cup when you&#8217;ve got Amanda Bynes and Channing Tatum falling in love in drag on the soccer field?!?

**Picks from the Video Store**

We&#8217;ve got a huge Shakespeare section with all the classics AND the best 1990s and 2000s adaptations!

*10 Things I Hate About You, Romeo + Juliet, O*

**Accessibility Options**: Amplified Audio, please see the box office for devices.

She’s the Man

**Screenwriters**: Ícaro Martins, José Antonio Garcia

Get your kicks in the microcinema with the coolest queer punk Brazilian soccer sex romp you&#8217;ve never seen! São Paulo, 1983: Women’s soccer has just been legalized in Brazil. A group of rebellious young women form the Gayvotas Football Club and begin training for their first match. But as the team quickly becomes a media sensation, its members are forced to confront the prejudices of the conservative military dictatorship that they live under.

Banned shortly after its premiere at the 1983 São Paulo International Film Festival and never released outside of Brazil until now, Ícaro Martins and José Antonio Garcia’s *Onda Nova: Gayvotas Football Club* is a defiantly queer and gleefully anarchic sex comedy that still packs a subversive punch (or kick?) all these years later. Join us to rediscover your new favorite swingin&#8217; raunchy rockin&#8217; sports movie!

Onda Nova

Southern Comfort

Escape to Witch Mountain

Ladies of the Chorus in 35mm

Bound

How to Marry a Millionaire

Karrer plods his way through life in quiet desperation. His environment is drab and rainy and muddy. Eaten up with solitude, his hopelessness would be incurable but for the existence of the Titanik Bar and its beautiful, haunting singer. But the lady is married and Karrer is determined to keep her husband away&#8230;

Damnation

Speed Racer is the tale of a young and brilliant racing driver. When corruption in the racing leagues costs his brother his life, he must team up with the police and the mysterious Racer X to bring an end to the corruption and criminal activities. Inspired by the cartoon series.

Speed Racer

Benjamin, a recent college graduate very worried about his future, finds himself in a love triangle with an older woman and her daughter.

The Graduate

**
[REGISTER FOR THIS SCREENING](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ucla-celebration-of-iranian-cinema-nasib-nasibi-tickets-1987863869345?aff=oddtdtcreator)**

**Please note**: Registration does not guarantee entry if the event reaches capacity. Admission is granted on a first come, first served basis.

Patrons who have registered will need to obtain their free tickets at the box office, where seating will be assigned. Any seats remaining 15 minutes before showtime will be released to standby patrons.

__________

*Cinema-ye Azad*, or Free Cinema, was an underground movement of filmmakers in Iran that began in 1969, with the explicit aim of creating a fully independent cinema opposed to the mainstream “Filmfarsi” in both form and content, methods and ideals. Where the better-known, contemporaneous Iranian New Wave predominantly consisted of foreign-educated, Tehran-based middle-class filmmakers, *Cinema-ye Azad *consisted of self-taught filmmakers, sharing resources and knowledge with one another to bring the possibility of cultural production to disadvantaged provinces. At its height, *Cinema-ye Azad* boasted hundreds of active members, a critical magazine and festivals around the country, but the dream was short-lived as the movement ceased activities after the revolution. Its works, however, are being rediscovered thanks to the dedication of curators and archivists in London and Iran. As part of this year's UCLA Celebration of Iranian Cinema, the Archive is pleased to present two screenings highlighting the films of two key *Cinema-ye Azad* figures, Nasib Nasibi and Behnam Jafari.

 *Program curated by *Arta Barzanji and Shaghayegh Raoufi with research and archival support from Hadi Alipanah. *Film notes written by Hadi Alipanah, Arta Barzanji and Shaghayegh Raoufi.*

A report on historical buildings, legends and traditions along the route from Isfahan to Shiraz, passing through regions including Mahyar, Shahreza, Ziaratgah, Aminabad, and Izadkhast. The film mixes documentary observation with the poetic vision seen in Nasib Nasibi’s later works.

DCP. Director: Nasib Nasibi. Screenwriters: Nasib Nasibi, Abbas Nalbandian. With: Bahram Ardabili.

*How Frightening Is the Darkness of the Soul!* is an avant-garde film poem about drowning in a world of madness in search of true liberation. It highlights the close connections between literary and theatrical circles and the filmmaker's approach to avant-garde cinema. Initially, the main character attempts to escape the monotony of daily life by immersing herself in a world of madness. The film is a journey through the path she takes.

Director: Nasib Nasibi.

Screenwriters: Nasib Nasibi, Abbas Nalbandian. With: Mahvash Bargi, Farhad Majd Abadi, Shokooh Najm Abadi.

Cinema-ye Azad: Nasib Nasibi

Join us for a launch event to celebrate the release of Nick Thorburn&#x27;s new book from Fantagraphics, *Pear Shape*. Featuring Nick Thorburn and special guests Giovanni Marks, Jesse Moynihan, and Nick Edwards!

Nick Thorburn: Pear Shape Book Launch

### **ABOUT THE FILM:**

Mikio Naruse’s final silent film is a gloriously rich portrait of a waitress, Sugiko, whose life, despite a host of male admirers and even some intrigued movie talent scouts, ends up taking a suffocatingly domestic turn after a wealthy businessman accidentally hits her with his car. Featuring vividly drawn characters and bold political commentary, STREET WITHOUT END is the grandly entertaining silent melodrama with which Naruse arrived at the brink of the sound era.

FORMAT: 35mm

DISTRIBUTOR: Janus Films

COUNTRY: Japan

35mm print courtesy of The Japan Foundation, Los Angeles Series co-presented by The Japan Foundation, Los Angeles and The Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities ‘Mikio Naruse: An American Cinematheque Retrospective’

STREET WITHOUT END

### **ABOUT THE FILM:**

*In German, Norwegian, French, Swedish and English with English subtitles.*

*“EDVARD MUNCH is the most personal film I have ever made. Its genesis lies in a visit to the Edvard Munch Museum in Oslo, in 1968, during the time of a screening of several of my films by the Oslo University. I was awestruck by the strength of Munch’s canvases, especially those depicting the sad life of his family, and was very moved by the artist’s directness – with the people in his canvases looking straight at us. I also felt a personal affinity with his linking of past and present, e.g., in the large painting showing the anguish of his family as his sister Sophie is dying: the artist and his brothers and sisters are depicted as adults – as they were in the 1890s when he painted this scene – even though the event had taken place ca. 20 years earlier. On another occasion, I was also very moved by Munch’s masterpiece ‘Death of a Child,’ hanging in the National Gallery in Oslo; in this painting the artist is broken, and has, in an almost desperate frenzy, blurred the form of his earlier depiction of Sophie’s death. This painting, in its time, was attacked as being ‘incomplete’ – a charge which branded certain of his other works as well.*

*“It took me three years to persuade Norwegian TV (NRK) to fund this film, and in the end it only happened because Swedish TV convinced them to participate in a co-production.” – Peter Watkins*

FORMAT: DCP

COUNTRY: Norway/Sweden

‘Peter Watkins: An American Cinematheque Retrospective’

EDVARD MUNCH

### **ABOUT THE FILM:**

Philip Hartman’s priceless artifact of New York’s pre-gentrification East Village follows down-and-out jukebox operator Macabee Cohn, played with deadpan melancholy by David Brisbin, who wanders the cheap tenements, dive bars and derelict streets of the East Village in search of a mysterious woman in a striped dress.

FORMAT: DCP

DISTRIBUTOR: The Film Desk

COUNTRY: USA

NO PICNIC

### **ABOUT THE FILM:**

Irene, unhappily married to her jealous husband Howard, imagines another life for herself in recurrent dreams of a fantasy lover. When Howard dies in a fire, these indulgent dreams morph into vivid visions where her late husband haunts her. The lines between reality and fantasy blur, and Irene finds herself trapped in a waking nightmare filled with lust, murder and mystery. 

FORMAT: 35mm

DISTRIBUTOR: Universal

COUNTRY: USA

‘Watch Local: Sex, Lies and… Fame at the Chateau Marmont’

THE NIGHT WALKER

Cartoon Club

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Desperate Living

Celebrating the 25th anniversary of Linklater's visionary philosophical exploration of dreams, consciousness, and the nature of reality!

Richard Linklater's WAKING LIFE (2001) — 25th Anniversary!

Philosophical Research Society

**Screenwriters**: Hayao Miyazaki, Neil Gaiman

**Producer**: Toshio Suzuki

From the legendary Studio Ghibli, creators of *Spirited Away*, and Academy Award®-winning director Hayao Miyazaki, comes an epic masterpiece that has dazzled audiences worldwide with its breathtaking imagination, exhilarating battles, and deep humanity.

Inflicted with a deadly curse, the young warrior Ashitaka heads west in search of a cure. There, he stumbles into a bitter conflict between Lady Eboshi, the proud people of Iron Town, and the enigmatic Princess Mononoke, a young girl raised by wolves, who will stop at nothing to prevent the humans from destroying her home and the forest spirits and animal gods who live there.

**Accessibility Options**: Amplified Audio, please see the box office for devices.

Princess Mononoke (English Dubbed)

**Screenwriter**: John Michael Hayes from the stage play by Lillian Hellman

**Producers**: Robert Wyler, William Wyler

Bring your hankies for William Wyler&#8217;s provocative and powerful film adaptation of Lillian Hellman&#8217;s heartbreaking story of homophobia and slander, starring icons Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine.  Longtime friends Martha (Shirley MacLaine) and Karen (Audrey Hepburn) run a boarding school for girls. When an unruly child, Mary, is punished for lying, she concocts a story that Karen and Martha are having a lesbian relationship. As homophobic hysteria hits, parents begin to pull their kids from the school and the two embark to clear their names from the rumors. Nominated for five Academy Awards, this classic was pushing the envelope at a buttoned up time in American history and paved the way for more queer cinema to hit the theaters as the 60s and morality loosened over the next decade.

**Picks from the Video Store**

Take home more Shirley MacLaine classics from her whole incredible career tonight on glorious physical media!

*Sweet Charity, What a Way to Go!, Steel Magnolias, Bernie*

**Accessibility Options**: Amplified Audio, please see the box office for devices.

The Children’s Hour

**Screenwriters**: David Koepp,  Robert Towne

**Producers**: Tom Cruise,  Paula Wagner

When Ethan Hunt, the leader of a crack espionage team whose perilous operation has gone awry with no explanation, discovers that a mole has penetrated the CIA, he&#8217;s surprised to learn that he&#8217;s the prime suspect. To clear his name, Hunt now must ferret out the real double agent and, in the process, even the score.

Mission: Impossible

**Screenwriter/Producer**: John Waters

Join Vidiots as we head out to the trailer park for one of the trashiest films ever made and the quintessential cult classic that changed cinema forever. Sleaze-bag criminal Divine is dubbed by the tabloids &#8220;The Filthiest Person Alive&#8221; for her audacious and oft-disgusting exploits. Connie and Raymond Marble are a couple of kidnappers and baby merchants who will do anything to take down Divine and assume the title for themselves. But we all know no one can take down Divine or out-trash her and her foul family members. The midnight movie that brought bad taste to the mainstream, this offensive and hilarious trashterpiece put the Dreamland crew on the map and got Middle-America to watch underground film! Call your Egg Man and bring your gang to John Waters&#8217; masterfully offensive salute to filth!

**Picks from the Video Store**

Looking for more trashy underground weirdness? Our cult section can take you to some wild places from your couch!

*Thundercrack, Terminal Degeneration: The Films of Jon Moritsugu, Hard Ticket to Hawaii*

**Accessibility Options**: Amplified Audio, please see the box office for devices.

Pink Flamingos

Motel Hell/Terror at Red Wolf Inn

Los Angeles Filmforum, EZTV, and Hollywood Entertainment present Filmforum 50, program 14: The 21st Century Odyssey, with co-director Barbara T. Smith in conversation with Michael J. Masucci.

The film’s two chapters will be presented with a short intermission featuring international snacks from some of the countries visited in the film.

Program notes and complete info at: https://www.lafilmforum.org/

∆

*The 21st Century Odyssey* is a video travelogue through love, liberatory technology, social and personal mythology, and the pleasures and rigors of making life into art told in part through the pixelated beauty of the videophone. Though rarely screened, it is a rich and resonant chapter in the legendary Barbara T. Smith’s careerlong experiments with machine innovation. Her partnership with Kate Johnson and EZTV documents an epic befitting their shared goals of evolving and synthesizing video art and performance art’s past and future. The film’s patient veneration of the quotidian alongside the grand coupled with the ache of long-term romantic longing re-embodies the interpretive act of translating this two-year-plus durational performance project into its video form.

The film sees Smith from 1991 through 1993 sending photo messages to her lover, physician Roy Walford, while he is sealed inside the Biosphere 2 and serving as its resident physician. Highlighting the newly-available and newly-aesthetically-permeable availability of transmissions via broadcast and teleconference by the Electronic Cafe International in Santa Monica, the film spans four continents and even the subject’s college reunion. Smith and Johnson’s resulting document of a durational performance is a stirring and strange tale of Smith as Odysseus. Unlike her inspiration, she can reach her (doctor) Penelope via semi-frequent messages. But the resulting tensions of their avant-garde and at-times intangible communication creates new permeations of distance-via-intimacy that are being newly defined as they happen, resonating profoundly in the world that these pioneers created for us. This is documentary as video art, love as performance piece, and a must-see for admirers of Smith, Johnson, and EZTV.

Special thanks to Mara McCarthy and The Box.

Filmforum 50: Barbara T. Smith - The 21st Century Odyssey

Bend It Like Beckham in 35mm

Shaolin Soccer in 35mm

Offside in 35mm

Notorious Baltimore criminal and underground figure Divine goes up against Connie & Raymond Marble, a sleazy married couple who make a passionate attempt to humiliate her and seize her tabloid-given title as &#8220;The Filthiest Person Alive&#8221;.

**Introduced by screenwriter Bruce Wagner**

**Presented by Mezzanine & The Big One**

**Sunday, June 14**

Brain Dead Studios

611 N Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90036
**Doors:** 7:30pm

**Film:** 8:00pm

We are thrilled to present a special screening of David Cronenberg’s pitch-black Hollywood satire—a portrait of Los Angeles as an inferno of narcissism, greed and sexual perversity—whose polarizing reception upon release has led to its contemporary reappraisal as a modern camp classic.

This event is presented with *The Big One*, a print-exclusive literary magazine featuring emergent and established Los Angeles writers. Issue No. 4, “Wellness & Reinvention,” features an interview with novelist, screenwriter, and producer Bruce Wagner, and will be sold at the event.

Wagner’s darkly comedic depictions of the intersections of fame, desire, desperation, and metaphysics draw from his own experiences living in Los Angeles, delivering transgressive, surreal, and sometimes cynical narratives. He is a conduit of Hollywood lore, having gone from chauffeuring stars as a local limo driver himself to portray Robert Pattinson portraying the limo driver in *MAPS TO THE STARS*, a screenplay Wagner wrote twenty-three years prior to its release. He sat down with *The Big One* to discuss Los Angeles literature, his legacy, and the film:

“It was something I wrote out of utter exasperation… I wrote MAPS TO THE STARS when I felt stillborn. I felt that everything had died, in essence, so I wrote something like a dream journal. I wrote something that I felt would be impossible to make into a film. Not that it wasn’t cinematic, but that it didn&#8217;t cohere or imitate or feel remotely compatible with Hollywood movies and even as an independent or a foreign film.” – Bruce Wagner

Special thanks to Johanna Stone and Gabrielle Sones (*The Big One*) and Darrell Brett.

“This is *MULHOLLAND DRIVE* for perverts.” – Ivy Wolk

“A vicious masterpiece.” – Daniel Goldhaber

Maps to the Stars with Bruce Wagner

**
[REGISTER FOR THIS SCREENING](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ucla-celebration-of-iranian-cinema-behnam-jafari-tickets-1987863900438?aff=oddtdtcreator)**

**Please note**: Registration does not guarantee entry if the event reaches capacity. Admission is granted on a first come, first served basis.

Patrons who have registered will need to obtain their free tickets at the box office, where seating will be assigned. Any seats remaining 15 minutes before showtime will be released to standby patrons.

*__________*

*Cinema-ye Azad*, or Free Cinema, was an underground movement of filmmakers in Iran that began in 1969, with the explicit aim of creating a fully independent cinema opposed to the mainstream “Filmfarsi” in both form and content, methods and ideals. Where the better-known, contemporaneous Iranian New Wave predominantly consisted of foreign-educated, Tehran-based middle-class filmmakers, *Cinema-ye Azad *consisted of self-taught filmmakers, sharing resources and knowledge with one another to bring the possibility of cultural production to disadvantaged provinces. At its height, *Cinema-ye Azad* boasted hundreds of active members, a critical magazine and festivals around the country, but the dream was short-lived as the movement ceased activities after the revolution. Its works, however, are being rediscovered thanks to the dedication of curators and archivists in London and Iran. As part of this year's UCLA Celebration of Iranian Cinema, the Archive is pleased to present two screenings highlighting the films of two key *Cinema-ye Azad* figures, Nasib Nasibi and Behnam Jafari. 

*Program curated by **Arta Barzanji and Shaghayegh Raoufi with research and archival support from Hadi Alipanah. Film notes written by Hadi Alipanah, Arta Barzanji and Shaghayegh Raoufi.*

Every day, a young man plays his trumpet from the top of a half-finished building while facing the city. Ambiguous happenings around him suggest the outlines of what may lurk below the peaceful surface of society.

DCP. Director/Screenwriter: Behnam Jafari. With: Nematollah Gorji, Ahmad Amini, Hassan Seifi.

This satirical collage of Iranian cinema stages a confrontation between the ethos of the commercial “Filmfarsi” and the artistic ambitions of the New Wave cinema. In a direct reference to *Cinema-ye Azad*, the film ends with the arrest and exile of young amateur filmmakers from professional cinema.

DCP. Director/Screenwriter: Behnam Jafari. With: Khosrow Haritash, Said Oveissi, Zari Khoshkam.

This film follows the restless lives of two young pickpockets through the labyrinth of seedy streets and shadowy alleyways, in a world where every day ends in triumph or ruin.

DCP. Director/Screenwriter: Behnam Jafari. With: Davood Teymouri, Naser Tarighat, Ghazal Irandoust.

A social portrait of two young lovers that reflects the larger prejudices of society.

DCP. Director/Screenwriter: Behnam Jafari. With: Farhad pour Azam, Shirin Jannesari, Behrouz Razavi.

In his cinematic debut, Saeed Poursamimi plays a former inmate who frees a genie from a bottle. After thousands of years of captivity in the bottle, the genie finds himself in a world that has been completely transformed by its people’s beliefs. The two embark on a bitter journey to find the remnants of the forgotten magical realm. Director Behnam Jafari uses stark visuals and provocative metaphors to explore the impossibility of relying on traditional myths in the face of a new world.

DCP. Director/Screenwriter: Behnam Jafari. With: Saeed Poursamimi, Hamid Taati, Mohammad Poursattar.

Cinema-ye Azad: Behnam Jafari

**
[REGISTER FOR THIS SCREENING](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ucla-celebration-of-iranian-cinema-checkpoint-1987-dead-end-1977-tickets-1987863933537?aff=oddtdtcreator)**

**Please note**: Registration does not guarantee entry if the event reaches capacity. Admission is granted on a first come, first served basis.

Patrons who have registered will need to obtain their free tickets at the box office, where seating will be assigned. Any seats remaining 15 minutes before showtime will be released to standby patrons.

During the height of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, a busload of Iranian college students returning to the U.S. after a field trip in Canada are thrown into political and legal limbo when they’re refused entry at the border. A ripped-from-the-headlines urgency drives writer-director Parviz Sayyad’s *Checkpoint* as the students split along factional lines in their struggle to reclaim their rights and dignity. Executive producer Mary Apick also leads a committed ensemble cast that never loses sight of the fragile, individual humanity ever at risk amid grand ideological clashes.

Director/Screenwriter: Parviz Sayyad. With: Mary Apick, Houshang Touzie, Parviz Sayyad.

This provocative film stars Mary Apick as a young woman who is drawn to a mysterious suitor haunting the dead-end street where she lives, only to discover that he is not what he seems and she and her family may be in danger. A giant of Iranian cinema, writer-director Parviz Sayyad rose to fame as the star of the commercial *Samad* film and television series before producing some of the key works of the Iranian New Wave, including films by Sohrab Shahid Saless, Ebrahim Golestan and Dariush Mehrjui. Based on a short story by Anton Chekhov, *Dead End* plays with themes of voyeurism and surveillance in a society on the verge of radical transformation. 

DCP. Director: Parviz Sayyad. Screenwriter: Parviz Sayyad, Houshang Baharlou. With: Mary Apick, Parviz Bahador, Apick Yousefian.

Checkpoint / Dead End

### **ABOUT THE FILMS:**

**DEKALOG: ONE, 1988, Dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 56 Mins, Janus Films, Poland**

*In Polish with English subtitles.*

Krzysztof, a semantics professor and computer hobbyist, is raising his young son, Paweł, to look to science for answers, while Irena, Paweł’s aunt, lives a life rooted in faith. Over the course of one day, both adults are forced to question their belief systems.

FORMAT: DCP

**DEKALOG: TWO, 1988, Dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 59 Mins, Janus Films, Poland**

*In Polish with English subtitles.*

Dorota is in love with two men: her gravely ill husband, Andrzej, and a fellow musician who is the father of her unborn child. Andrzej’s doctor, himself no stranger to loss, is Dorota’s downstairs neighbor; she implores him to swear to a prognosis for her husband, and in doing so puts a very serious decision into his hands.

FORMAT: DCP

### **ABOUT THE EVENT:**

**DEKALOG, 1988, Dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, Janus Films, Poland**

This masterwork by Krzysztof Kieślowski is one of the twentieth century’s greatest achievements in visual storytelling. Originally made for Polish television, DEKALOG focuses on the residents of a housing complex in late-Communist Poland, whose lives become subtly intertwined as they face emotional dilemmas that are at once deeply personal and universally human. Its ten hour-long films, drawing from the Ten Commandments for thematic inspiration and an overarching structure, grapple deftly with complex moral and existential questions concerning life, death, love, hate, truth, and the passage of time. Shot by nine different cinematographers, with stirring music by Zbigniew Preisner and compelling performances from established and unknown actors alike, DEKALOG arrestingly explores the unknowable forces that shape our lives.

Introduction by film critic, educator and scholar Doug Cummings Co-presented with the Polish Cultural Institute New York ‘Krzysztof Kieślowski: An American Cinematheque Retrospective’

DEKALOG: ONE & TWO

Join Julia Voss and Daniel Birnbaum in a talk discussing Hilma af Klint  as a lens to examine Wassily Kandinsky and more.

Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky: Dreams of the Future ONLINE EVENT!

The LA premiere of the new restoration of the wonderful TALLY BROWN, NEW YORK + a cult gem starring fellow Warhol superstar Holly Woodlawn!

TALLY BROWN, NEW YORK (LA Premiere!) + SCARECROW IN A GARDEN OF CUCUMBERS!

A group of former child stars reunites to perform at a fan convention where mysterious products promising confidence, popularity, and belonging begin appearing everywhere. As backstage tensions rise and old insecurities resurface, the masks they wear begin to slip, forcing the performers to confront who they are both onstage and off.

Created by The Miracle Project, _Unmasked_ is an original theatrical production featuring neurodivergent, neurotypical, disabled, and nondisabled artists ages 5–65. Blending comedy, original music, live performance, and film, the production brings together performers from across The Miracle Project’s programs in a bold exploration of identity, performance, and self-acceptance.

_Unmasked_ will be presented in two performances on Sunday, June 14. Both performances feature the same core storyline while highlighting different members of The Miracle Project community through unique sketches, musical numbers, and performance pieces. Audience members are encouraged to attend both shows for the full experience and can join us for a cast celebration and community gathering between performances. Discounted ticket packages are available for attendees purchasing tickets to both performances.

* * *

**ABOUT THE MIRACLE PROJECT**

The Miracle Project is a fully inclusive theater, film, and expressive arts organization that supports neurodivergent, disabled, and nondisabled individuals in developing communication, social, and creative skills through collaborative artistic experiences. Programs serve participants of diverse communication styles, support needs, and experience levels, including individuals who are minimally speaking or nonspeaking.

In addition to in-person programming in Los Angeles, The Miracle Project offers virtual classes that connect participants from across the country through collaborative theater, music, film, and improvisation projects.

Learn more at [The Miracle Project](https://www.themiracleproject.org/)

_Support for_ Unmasked _is provided in part by the National Endowment for the Arts._

THE MIRACLE PROJECT: UNMASKED

**Screenwriters**: Michael J. Wilson,  Michael Berg,  Peter Ackerman

**Producer**: Lori Foote

Get ready for some prehisterical fun as we head back in time with this icy animated classic. Twenty-thousand years ago, Earth was a wondrous, prehistoric world filled with great danger, not the least of which is the beginning of the Ice Age. To avoid a terrible frostbite, the planet&#8217;s majestic creatures &#8211; and a few small, slothful ones &#8211; begin migrating south. The story revolves around sub-zero heroes: a woolly mammoth, a saber-toothed tiger, a sloth and a prehistoric combination of a squirrel and rat, known as Scrat.

Ice Age

**Screenwriters**: Kit Hesketh-Harvey,  James Ivory from the novel by E.M. Forster

**Producer**: Ismael Merchant

Come swoon with us as Hugh Grant grapples with his homosexuality in Edwardian England in Merchant and Ivory&#8217;s dreamy adaptation of the E.M. Forster novel. Set against the stifling conformity of pre-World War I English society, *Maurice* is a story of coming to terms with one&#8217;s sexuality and identity in the face of disapproval and misunderstanding. Maurice Hall (James Wilby) and Clive Durham (Hugh Grant) find themselves falling in love at Cambridge. In a time when homosexuality is punishable by imprisonment, the two must keep their feelings for one another a complete secret. After a friend is arrested and disgraced for the unspeakable vice of the Greeks, Clive abandons his forbidden love and marries a young woman. Maurice, however, struggles with his identity and self-confidence, seeking the help of a hypnotist to rid himself of his undeniable urges. But while staying with Clive and his shallow wife, Anne, Maurice is seduced by the affectionate and yearning servant Alec Scudder (Rupert Graves), an event that brings about profound changes in Maurice&#8217;s life and outlook.

**Picks from the Video Store**

Take home more remarkable masterpieces from Merchant and Ivory!

*I Know Where I&#8217;m Going, Black Narcissus, A Matter of Life and Death*

**Accessibility Options**: Amplified Audio, please see the box office for devices.

Maurice

**Screenwriter:** Jim Jarmusch

**Producers:** Richard Guay, Jim Jarmusch

Co-Presented by **Synth History**!

This eccentrically postmodern take on the hit-man thriller finds director Jim Jarmusch combining his love for the ice-cool crime dramas of Jean-Pierre Melville and Seijun Suzuki with the philosophical dimensions of samurai mythology. In one of his defining roles, Forest Whitaker brings a commanding serenity to his portrayal of a Zen contract killer working for a bumbling mob outfit, a modern man who adheres steadfastly to the ideals of the Japanese warrior code even as chaos and violence spiral around him. Featuring moody cinematography by the great Robby Müller, a mesmerizing score by the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, and a host of colorful character actors (including a memorably stone-faced Henry Silva), *Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai* plays like a pop-culture-sampling cinematic mixtape built around a one-of-a-kind tragic hero.

**Picks from the Video Store**

Take home ALL the Jim Jarmusch you can watch on Blu-Ray and DVD &#8211; We&#8217;ve got them all!

*Stranger Than Paradise, Mystery Train, Limits of Control*

**Accessibility Options**: Amplified Audio, please see the box office for devices.

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

***Miss Video 4 You*** is an alternative video distribution network. For every 10 videos Miss Video receives, she compiles the videos onto a single USB. She then makes 10 copies of this USB for distribution to each contributor. The USB is mailed back to all contributors. This is how the *videochainletter* is created, a term from the past, when feminist activists and video artists would share local news and short films using VHS tapes and snail mail. **Third Transmission** is MV4u's third video chainletter. With each iteration of these video compilations, we aim to showcase work from different generations, localities, and styles. Works shown in the Third Transmission span nearly 50 years, connecting 10 artists across 10 towns, 2 oceans, 3 countries. It has its own voice and tone that make it stand out from the previous chain letters, and we look forward to the new direction that future iterations will take from here.

‍

## Program:

*************‍****Babylon* (2023 Berlin, Germany) by **Alicia Nieto‍***The Great Path to a Foreign Body* (2026 São Paulo, Brazil) by ***Lau Mota‍****Snooping* (Richmond, USA) by **Lenny Farinholt‍***Who Do You Think You Are* (1986 Saunderstown, USA) by **Mary Filippo**‍*Prelude* (2025 New York, USA) by **Paulina Jamieson‍***Another Great Day* (1980, New York, USA) by **Ruth Peyser‍***Embryonic* (2023 Ann Arbor, Michigan) by **Jackie Blue‍***Shifting Borders* (2025 Middletown, USA) by **Tess Usher & Frances Mitchler‍***Los Angeles Movie* (2025 Los Angeles, USA) by **Ankha Cros-Rohig‍**The Red 70s (2015 Cedar Rapids, USA) by **Derek Caterwaul**

‍

‍

## SUNDAY, 6/147:30P DOORS8:00P SCREENING

‍

$12 general admission, $11 for members.

‍

*Whammy! is located in the REAR unit of 2514 Sunset Blvd, entrance access is via Rampart Blvd.*

Miss Video 4 U

WHAMMY!

Only Yesterday

The French Connection in 35mm

### **ABOUT THE FILM:**

A sexy nightclub owner, Barb Wire (Pamela Anderson) moonlights as a mercenary in Steel Harbor, one of the last free zones in the now fascist United States. When scientist Cora Devonshire (Victoria Rowell) wanders into Barb’s establishment, she gets roped into a top-secret government plot involving biological weapons. Soon Barb is reunited with her old flame Axel Hood (Temuera Morrison), who is now Cora’s husband and a guerrilla fighter, resulting in plenty of tense action.

FORMAT: DCP

DISTRIBUTOR: Universal

COUNTRY: USA

Introduction by Salem Horror Film Fest founder and film lecturer Kay Lynch 30th Anniversary ‘Cinematic Void’

Cinematic Void Presents BARB WIRE

### **ABOUT THE FILM:**

*In Swedish with English subtitles.*

*“In 1974, Sveriges Radio in Stockholm invited members of the Swedish public to submit teleplay scripts dealing with the “future.” One of the scripts selected was by Bo Melander, a noted journalist working for The Gothenburg Times. I accepted to direct the play when it was chosen for production, and in January 1975 Bo and I worked on developing the script, deciding to concentrate on the nuclear reactor issue which was becoming a major political concern in Sweden in 1974. THE TRAP is set in the underground living quarters of a scientist working at an international nuclear waste station near the west coast of Sweden. It is the end of 1999, and the TV in the oppressive living room inhabited by John (the scientist), his wife, Margereta, and their son Peter, is proclaiming optimistic statements about the promise of the New Millennium. John’s brother Bertil, accompanied by young Bo, the son of a third brother – imprisoned by the Swedish authorities for ‘antisocial’ activities – arrives at the waste site to celebrate the new century; they are first seen via monitor screens – making their slow progress through the security checks. Their visit with John and his family is tense and soon breaks down. Bertil holds a political position completely opposed to that of his establishment brother, denounces the consumerist society which has led to the need for all the nuclear waste embedded in the nearby rocks, and argues bitterly with John, telling him that he and his colleagues are like caged rats, trapped within the confines of a system they defend blindly. Too angry to stay on, Bertil takes Bo and attempts to leave, but is arrested at a security checkpoint. Margareta watches the security guards grab a protesting Bo, and asks her husband, “What kind of life is this we’re living?” Meanwhile, on the Swedish television channel, a Minister of State expresses his belief that, ‘The century to come will be a century for humanity, filled with humanity.'” – Peter Watkins*

FORMAT: DCP

COUNTRY: Sweden

THE TRAP

The Death of Robin Hood

**Screenwriters**: Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy

**Producer**: Karen Murphy

Hey teens! Join us for the first Movie Den of the season with a  special screening of the howlingly hilarious mockumentary *Best in Show*. Christopher Guest and an incredible ensemble of the funniest people on earth are ready to improv their way to a blue ribbon in this furry comedy phenomenon. From start to finish, you&#8217;ll bark with laughter as an eccentric blend of dog owners from across the country gear up to compete at the Mayflower Dog Show.

**Movie Den** is a community initiative generously supported by **Golden Globe Foundation.******

All tickets come with a free small popcorn. Please enter through the video store. Doors will open 45 minutes before showtime.

If online tickets are no longer available HAVE NO FEAR, we will ALWAYS have walk-ups available starting 45 minutes before showtime (which give you plenty of time for free popcorn and a browse of the video store)!

This series was designed for audience members 12 and up, please note some films may contain more mature content than others. We encourage parents, caretakers, and guardians to explore the program and titles prior to ticket purchases. We will include MPAA ratings for all films in this series. Parental discretion is advised.

Best in Show

Breakfast at Tiffany’s / Roman Holiday

**Screenwriters**: Harry Dodge, Silas Howard

**Producers**: Silas Howard,  Harry Dodge,  Steak House

Vidiots is thrilled to welcome filmmakers **Silas Howard, Harry Dodge, **and **Steak House** for a special 25th Anniversary screening of their trailblazing trans buddy comedy ***By Hook or By Crook***! Conversation moderated by filmmaker **Vera Drew**!

Groundbreaking when it was made and still fiercely innovative today, *By Hook or By Crook* is a butch and trans buddy film that chronicles three weeks in the life of a handsome, gender-bending, small town dreamer with a nagging messiah complex. Emotionally defeated after the death of his father, Shy heads to the big city to sink himself into a &#8220;life of crime.&#8221; He is quickly distracted by Valentine, a deliriously expressive, wise-acre adoptee on a misguided search for her birthmother. The two freaky grifters join forces and learn the true meaning of &#8220;poise under pressure&#8221; in this visually stunning and wonderfully acted, anti-authoritarian tale of friendship, trust and redemption.

**Picks from the Video Store**

Take home more phenomenal trans cinema tonight on fabulous physical media!

*Funeral Parade of Roses, Women in Revolt, Come Back to the 5 and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean*

**Accessibility Options**: Amplified Audio, please see the box office for devices.

By Hook or by Crook

Aardman Animations Celebration

A treasure chest of narrative fragments, *The Decay of Fiction* lacks the itinerary and “instructions for use” that automatically comes with a linear story. The shards of its many implied plotlines are the fruit of O’Neill’s all-encompassing sense of form, which for better or worse is conceptual rather than technical or material. – Jonathan Rosenbaum, *The Chicago Reader*, May 30, 2003,

https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2023/03/ghosts-of-hollywood/

***Skies***  | 9 min  | 35mm transferred to digital  |World Premiere

We&#8217;ll also premiere Pat&#8217;s new film, *Skies*, composed of excerpts from his 35mm film timelapse documentation of the skies above the western United States landscape. This minimalist piece is a collaboration with the composers Thollem McDonas and Terry Riley, performing a vocal duet as the soundtrack.

“I am interested in exploring the boundaries of believability. The narrative tradition insists that, no matter how fantastic the story, its surface must be seamless. By contrast, I call attention to the artifice, all the staged aspects, and allow the well-worn stories to slip over and through one another. The film’s intention could be described as wanting to take stories off the screen and into the imagination. I like to work within the gaps between reality and story, to look at what is going on around the story, its context, and to make that a part of my conversation with the audience.” – Pat O’Neill

**Tickets:** $15 general, $10 students/seniors (purchased at door), free for Filmforum members.

The Decay of Fiction

Movie theater chain established in 1938 showcasing the latest independent, foreign & art films.

This unique series is hosted by filmmaker Stanley Sheff, who worked closely with Welles as a collaborator, editor, and un-credited co-director on his unsold TV pilot The Orson Welles Show. Sheff will share stories from their professional collaboration and personal friendship, giving audiences a rare first-hand glimpse into the private world of Orson Welles.Doors at 7pm, show at 7:30pm and film at 8pm.

Tonight's show:TOUCH OF EVILMexican Narcotics officer Ramon Miguel 'Mike' Vargas has to interrupt his honeymoon on the Mexican-US border when an American building contractor is killed after someone places a bomb in his car. He's killed on the US side of the border but it's clear that the bomb was planted on the Mexican side. As a result, Vargas delays his return to Mexico City where he has been mounting a case against the Grandi family crime and narcotics syndicate. Police Captain Hank Quinlan is in charge on the US side and he soon has a suspect, a Mexican named Manolo Sanchez. Vargas is soon onto Quinlan and his Sergeant, Pete Menzies, when he catches them planting evidence to convict Sanchez. With his new American wife, Susie, safely tucked away in a hotel on the US side of the border - or so he thinks - he starts to review Quinlan's earlier cases. While concentrating on th

TOUCH OF EVIL

Fine Arts Theatre

**Screenwriters**: Jacques Tati, Jacques Lagrange, Art Buchwald

**Producer**: Bernard Maurice

Join Monsieur Hulot in Paris in this breathtaking comedy masterpiece. *“A film that comes from another planet, where they make films differently.”* So sayeth legendary French auteur Francois Truffaut about *PlayTime*, a movie that looks and feels like nothing else you’ve ever seen before. Director Jacques Tati spent a small fortune constructing an artificial city to shoot in (the set was big enough to require its own power plant!), all for a surreal comedy about a lonely Everyman (Tati himself) wandering around a bizarre, modernist metropolis he can’t quite comprehend. You’ll want to see this on the big screen so you can take in every detail of Tati’s unforgettable masterpiece, one of the greatest movies ever made about the absurdity of modern life.

**Movie Den** is a community initiative generously supported by **Golden Globe Foundation.******

All tickets come with a free small popcorn. Please enter through the video store. Doors will open 45 minutes before showtime.

If online tickets are no longer available HAVE NO FEAR, we will ALWAYS have walk-ups available starting 45 minutes before showtime (which give you plenty of time for free popcorn and a browse of the video store)!

This series was designed for audience members 12 and up, please note some films may contain more mature content than others. We encourage parents, caretakers, and guardians to explore the program and titles prior to ticket purchases. We will include MPAA ratings for all films in this series. Parental discretion is advised.

PlayTime

Beginners

Acropolis Cinema presents *An Injury to All* (Dir. Travis Wilkerson, 2026). World premiere sneak preview of a new work in progress, presented as a singular live documentary!

Total runtime: 90 min. In person: Travis Wilkerson.

~

*An Injury to All* is both the prequel to *An Injury to One* (2001) and its urgent postscript. It traces the life of I.W.W. Organizer Frank Little before his arrival and infamous murder in Butte, Montana. Following his peripatetic, restless journey from his childhood in Oklahoma to his astonishing rise as a visionary organizer criss-crossing the American West, struggling for immigrant rights, for militant labor, for free speech and always and forever against the social catastrophe of war—his is a singular and irreplaceable story of American resistance and the inspiring vision of a different kind of world. Most of all, it restores his incompatible life—rather than the horror of his eventual death—to the place it always deserved to be. A ferocious antidote to the present moment and conscious riposte to the 250th anniversary of the USA.

Acropolis Cinema: Travis Wilkerson's An Injury to All (2026)

10th Anniversary of Spa Night

Exclusive screening of "STRIKING" a film by Khufu Najee.

Doors 7PM.

RSVP required. Entry is first come, first served. A standby line will be available.

STRIKING (Screening) starring Ovrkast.

Gardena Cinema is the oldest and only vintage single-screen stand-alone movie cinema in Southwest Los Angeles.

Monthly short film festival. Watch and vote. Audience award to the best short film each month. Annual championship in DECEMBER.

MOVIE SCREENERS CLUB (Thu. 6/18) 7:30pm

Gardena Cinema

### **ABOUT THE FILM:**

*“In 1966, following the collapse of a film which I hoped to develop with Albert Finney’s production company, on the 1916 Easter uprising in Dublin, I was approached by John Heyman, a British artists’ agent, to make a film based on an original screenplay by Johnny Speight, which dealt with the influence of Steven Shorter, a pop star in the 1960s. American novelist Norman Bognor and I adapted the script, which we retitled PRIVILEGE, to emphasize the significance of Steven Shorter as an allegory for the manner in which national states, working via religion, the mass media, sports, Popular Culture, etc., divert a potential political challenge by young people. In case this theme appears exaggerated, it is important to keep in mind that it was set in the ‘swinging Britain’ of the 1960s, and was prescient of the way that Popular Culture and the media in the US commercialized the anti-war and counter-culture movement in that country as well. PRIVILEGE also ominously predicted what was to happen in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain of the 1980s – especially during the period of the Falkland Islands War.” – Peter Watkins*

FORMAT: 35mm

DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures

COUNTRY: UK

PRIVILEGE

One Battle After Another

The world theatrical premiere of the restoration of a fascinating and singular 70s artifact of California's new age movement.

THE PYRAMID (1976) presented by Analog Outlaw and Enlighted Artists

**Screenwriters**: Kevin McDonald,  Mark McKinney,  Scott Thompson,  Bruce McCulloch, Norm Hiscock

**Producer**: Lorne Michaels

Vidiots is tickled pink to welcome comedy legend ***Scott Thompson*** for a special 30th Anniversary screening of the comedy cult classic ***Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy.***

Your serotonin is about to shoot through the roof when everyone&#8217;s favorite Canadian sketch comedy troupe takes on Big Pharma in this ridiculously demented laugh riot. In a rush to launch a new anti-depressant onto the market, a shifty pharmaceutical company fast-tracks a scientist&#8217;s breakthrough pill Gleemonex that makes people remember their happiest memory, and although it&#8217;s successful, it has unfortunate side effects that the company is all too willing to hide to protect their profit margins! Like any true cult classic, this brilliantly bonkers social satire opened to an underwhelming reception, but over the last 30 years an ever-growing cult of *Candyphiles* have recognized the forward-thinking brilliance of the *Kids* and their gender-bending, consumerist-skewering, oddball-extravaganza that is *Brain Candy*!

**Picks from the Video Store**

You can take home every last episode of *The Kids in the Hall *on DVD tonight, as well as these absurd specials!

*The Kids in the Hall: Same Guys, New Dresses, The Kids in the Hall: Tour of Duty, The Kids in the Hall: Death Comes to Town*

**Accessibility Options**: Amplified Audio, please see the box office for devices.

Monday, 6/1

Academy Museum

Castle in the Sky in 35mm

2:30 PM

⭐

The Asphalt Jungle in 35mm

7:30 PM

⭐

Aero Theatre

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE

7:00 PM

⭐

Egyptian Theatre

The Piano Teacher

7:00 PM

⭐

Heavy Manners Library

Build Your Own Synth hosted by Dogbotic (6/1)

6:00 PM

⭐

Los Feliz Theatre

Cinematic Void Presents DEAD PRESIDENTS

7:00 PM

⭐

SPIDER

10:00 PM

⭐

New Beverly Cinema

War of the Worlds

Edge of Tomorrow

7:30 PM

⭐

Vidiots

Blue Heron

7:00 PM

⭐

Stop Making Sense

7:30 PM

⭐

Monday, 6/1