Fall 2020

In 1900, Sigmund Freud began treating a 17-year old girl he called "Dora." Her parents brought her to therapy after she accused a family friend of sexual assault. Freud's account of his sessions with Dora was the only major case history he published of a female patient. Intercutting his published text with a scripted version told from Dora's point of view, Hysterical Girl, from the acclaimed director of The Gospel According to André, revisits this landmark case.

The Miss Holocaust Survivor Beauty Pageant takes place every year to the delight of its participants and audience. To take part in this unique contest, sponsored by an Evangelical Christian organization, the female survivors have to retell their traumatic stories one more time. The Pageant is a fascinating and important documentary about how memory, politics and spectacle are interconnected.

Sundog lives out in the Sonora Desert on the Mexican border. He is an elderly gentleman, who lives off anything that the brutal nature gives him, be it a wild boar or the psychedelic poison of a toad. With the desert as the ultimate existential (and cinematic) setting, A Shape of Things to Come from directors Lisa Marie Malloy and J.P. Sniadecki shows the relationship between humanity and nature at a critical time, when civil disobedience is the provocative answer to the most pressing questions.

The worldwide travels and unique cultural finds of renowned American folklorist Henry Glassie are enthrallingly chronicled in this portrait. Field Work allows us to witness the walling up of a massive kiln in Piedmont, North California, and features archival recordings of Glassie's encounters with carpet weavers and ceramicists in Western Turkey, and storytellers in Collins and Hogan's home country of Ireland, where Glassie's subjects reflect on their troubled present by talking about the past.

NEW DIGITAL RESTORATION. An unsentimental elegy to the American West, Sweetgrass follows the last modern-day cowboys to lead their flocks of sheep up into Montana’s breathtaking and often dangerous Absaroka-Beartooth mountains for summer pasture. This astonishingly beautiful yet unsparing film reveals a world in which nature and culture, animals and humans, vulnerability and violence are all intimately meshed. 

Paulo Rocha’s haunting second feature, Change of Life, is a beautifully-told story of a young man who returns from abroad to his small fishing village to discover that much has changed. Inspired by his work with Manoel de Oliveira, Rocha “cast” the local villagers as themselves, interspersed with experienced actors led by the great Isabel Ruth. The film was a critical and commercial success upon release, though it would effectively be the last film Rocha made for nearly two decades.

Never before released in the US, Paulo Rocha’s debut feature The Green Years, gloriously shot in black and white, is an extraordinary and haunting coming-of-age tale. Nineteen-year-old Julio heads to Lisbon from the provinces and gets a job as a shoemaker for his uncle Raul. But when he meets Ilda, a confident young housemaid who becomes a regular shop visitor, the two begin a tentative romance until the realities of the outside world come crashing through.

At the end of the 19th century the peasants in Portugal started a courageous struggle for better work conditions. After generations of starving misery, the Carnation Revolution sowed the promise of an Agrarian Reform. Mostly in the Alentejo region, these rural workers occupied the huge properties where they were once submitted to the power of their Masters. The protagonists of this film, resistants of this struggle, tell their story to the youngsters of today, in their own words.

In this critically-acclaimed film, director Dan Sallitt charts a friendship between two young women. Mara and Jo, in their twenties, have been close friends since middle school. It soon becomes apparent that Jo, despite her intellectual gifts, is unreliable in her professional life, losing and acquiring jobs at a troubling rate. Substance abuse may be responsible for Jo’s instability… but some observers suspect a deeper problem. 

Evelyn Bell, a Catholic professor of theology, and her younger sister Virginia are reunited after many years when Virginia returns home in a depression after being ejected from a religious cult. At a lakeside retreat in Northeastern Pennsylvania, the sisters try to reestablish their relationship, talking about their very different systems of belief, and about the oppressive childhood that still hangs over them. From filmmaker Dan Sallitt.

Mimi and Michael, in their thirties, marry suddenly after years of friendship and go on their honeymoon without having had a physical relationship. The honeymoon turns into a nightmare of sexual failure and conflict, fueled by Mimi's anxiety. With the marriage hanging by a thread, the couple try to resolve their problems against all odds. From filmmaker Dan Sallitt.

Filmmaker Joong-rae, suffering from writer’s block, takes a trip to the coast with his production designer Chang-wook, who brings along the vivacious Moon-sook. Soon after their arrival, Moon-sook falls for Joong-rae’s advances; however, the fickle hero can’t commit and he awkwardly parts with her. What had been a sardonic Jules and Jim turns into a burlesque Vertigo when Joong-rae returns to the coastal resort and attempts to recreate the original romance with a woman who resembles Moon-sook, until his jilted lover shows up…

Shot in the narrow alleys, petite cafes and beautiful hanok inns of Seoul’s historic Jong-ro district, a favorite Hong location, Hill of Freedom is a masterful, alternately funny and haunting, tale of love and longing from the great director. Kwon (Seo Young-hwa) returns to Seoul from a restorative stay in the mountains. She is given a packet of letters left by Mori (Ryo Kase, Like Someone In Love), who has come back from Japan to propose to her. As she walks down a flight of stairs, Kwon drops and scatters the letters, all of which are undated. When she reads them, she has to make sense of the chronology… and so must we. 

A major work of the celebrated Berlin School, the debut of Ulrich Köhler (In My Room) is a mesmerizing portrait of a young German soldier named Paul who goes AWOL and returns to his childhood home in the countryside. With Köhler’s penchant for deadpan humor and subtle performances, Bungalow becomes a quiet mockery of militarism, familial estrangement, and youthful ennui. New 4K Restoration.

A journey through the films of Pedro Costa, focusing on such works as Casa de Lava, Colossal Youth, In Vanda's Room and Horse Money. Incorporating clips from his films, and emphasizing the unique visual and aural landscapes he creates, along with his own reflections, Sacavem provides unique insight into one of the most powerful and singular bodies of work in contemporary cinema.

The great filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira lived for over a century, directing films like The Strange Case of Angelica, I'm Going Home, Francisca and many more. In this affectionate documentary, João Botelho guides us through the beloved filmmaker's career, exploring his ideas, methods and his extraordinary cinematographic inventions.

From the Academy Award winning director of Parasite, Bong Joon-Ho's Influenza is a startling short film that marks a singular achievement in the filmmaker’s thrilling body of work. Bong's disturbingly humorous film traces the downward spiral of an unemployed 31 year-old man as he is captured on Seoul’s omnipresent CCTVs and cameras. Completed between Memories of Murder and The Host but never before released, it demonstrates a young filmmaker reaching the height of his powers.

Something as simple as a herring roasting on a hearth, or a meal of bread, wine and winter melon, takes on the humble aura of a Caravaggio painting in Straub-Huillet's masterful tragicomedy about Sicilians who are poor of means but rich in spirit. “A passionate and wide-ranging masterwork by Straub and Huillet." (The New Yorker). New 20th anniversary digital restoration.