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Jim Sledden’s 1998 documentary Brakhage is an interesting, well-constructed portrait of avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage, who made almost 400 film in the 50 years up to his death in 2003. Along with fellow artists Jonas Mekas and Maya Deren, he’s regarded as one of the most important of American experimental filmmakers, and his influence can be seen in everything from music videos to title sequences from such films as Se7en. Starting with the psychodramas so typical of young filmmakers, he eventually moved into more abstract films, even physically manipulating the celluloid itself by gluing things to it or scratching it with a variety of implements.Read More »

A Chinese aphorism says that although the poet dreams he is a butterfly, it is perhaps instead the butterfly that dreams it has become a poet. In Le dos rouge, a famous filmmaker played by Bertrand Bonello searches for an image of the uncanny. An eccentric female art historian accompanies him through museums, where they examine and discuss numerous works of art. A metamorphosis gradually takes place, as red marks appear on the filmmaker’s back. It seems that gazing at all that monstrousness has brought about a transformation in the observer. Bonello, a victim of Stendhal Syndrome, gradually loses himself in his admiration of the sublime uncanny. When he is hypnotised by the artworks, he exudes a fascination as great as that of the objects themselves. It’s a pleasure to watch one artist gazing at another, for this film is a multi-layered mise en abyme. By creating a fictional portrait of an aesthete, Barraud subtly allows the paintings to enter into a dialogue with his newly created images. Artificiality meets art, and during the search for the ideal monster, a playful, aesthetic spell is cast.Read More »

Synopsis:
El Movimiento takes place during the first half of the XIX century, in a vast and desolated land which has fallen into anarchy. Several groups of armed men drift along the infinite Pampas demanding for support and food from the peasants. While there’s great rivalry among these groups, they all claim allegiance to the Movement, such the name of the political organization they say to represent. Among these drifting gangs there’s one led by Señor, an educated man who together with two followers intends to found a peaceful new order. While his enchanting words and manners seem appealing to the people, his methods reveal an unstoppable thirst for power.Read More »

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The film’s violence is the genuinely spiritual kind. A loud expression of the alienation that hums constantly in the elevator music to modern life. (John Farley, Full Stop)

The novels, writings and performance works created by prolific, transgressive and author Dennis Cooper describe a world in which desire, aggression, loneliness and power swirl, in which characters teeter on the brink of immolation and where love and violence fuse. In its first partnership with San Francisco’s new Alamo Draft House, Cinematheque is thrilled to welcome Cooper and co-director Zac Farley for the local premiere (and pre-DVD release screening) of Like Cattle Towards Glow (2015), a similarly visionary examination of these overwhelming obsessions.Read More »

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Austeria takes place during the opening days of World War I, in the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia. Tag (Franciszek Pieczka) is a Jewish innkeeper whose inn (austeria means inn in the local Polish dialect) is located near the border with Russia. War has broken out and local civilians are fleeing the advancing Russian Army, and several groups of refugees have taken shelter in Tag’s inn for the night. A group of Hassidic jews from the neighboring village arrive, followed by an Austrian baroness on and a Hungarian hussar cut off from his unit…Read More »

After her mother’s death, Stacey (Lauren Kinsella) moves with her uncle Will (Aiden Gillen) to a remote region in the Irish midlands. As the two cautiously get to know each other,they have to deal with the dark shadows of the past. An astute character driven study on the need to regain footing and let go, told with a good dose of Irish humor.Read More »

Mondo Trasho is a 1969 16mm mondo black comedy film by John Waters. The film stars Divine, Mary Vivian Pearce, David Lochary and Mink Stole. It contains very little dialogue, the story being told mostly through musical cues.

A few excerpts from 1000misspenthours.com:
” In the meantime, what we can do is to revisit the moment of transition between Waters essentially making movies on a lark with his reprobate friends and the Dreamland Studios team (as they called themselves) becoming serious about building careers in cinema on their own eccentric terms. That transition came with Mondo Trasho, Waters’s first feature-length film, and his first to receive any approximation of professional distribution. Mondo Trasho premiered, as usual, with a nine-showing engagement at the Emmanuel Church rental hall, but it was quickly picked up by the New York-based Film-Makers Cooperative as part of their fledgling effort to break into the distro business. The coop never managed to secure a booking in their home city, ironically enough, but they did send Mondo Trasho to Los Angeles. Read More »

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Many people consider Texas bluesman Mance Lipscomb to be the greatest blues guitarist and songster of all time. This glowing portrait of the legendary musician (also life-long husband and sharecropper) is among Blank’s special masterworks. Instead of growing bitter, tough times made Lipscomb sweet.

The favorite film of Kurt Vonnegutt, Jr.Read More »

An affectionate portrait of a group of women who, after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and evacuation, returned to the exclusion zone surrounding the nuclear power plant and have resided there – semi-officially, for years.Read More »