AN ODE TO THE AGGRESSIVE DRIFTER In the seedy domain of Miami’s criminal underbelly, a seasoned tormented assassin embarks on the relentless pursuit of his next target — navigating a twisted world where violence and madness reign supreme. Tensions unravel, leading to a psychedelic journey that blurs the lines between predator and prey. Get ready for an adrenaline-fueled trip through Miami's underbelly in this sensual experimental elegy by Harmony Korine, shot entirely through a thermal lens. AGGRO DR1FT is playing in New Mexico EXCLUSIVELY at CCA for TWO NIGHTS ONLY, May 17th and 18th at 8pm. "Aggro Dr1ft has a visceral effect that’s hard to shake, and its images are unexpectedly memorable, ready to loiter in your synapses until a series of Nicolas Roeg-style flashbacks brings them racing back into your mind’s eye."-Deadline Hollywood "There will likely never be another film like it. Even so, it’s clear that Harmony Korine’s immersive iridescent plunge into the world and psyche of a serial killer points the way down fresh avenues for the medium to explore." -Variety

Please join CCA for our ongoing Community Reading Series in the Muñoz Waxman Gallery. This event features NM state poet laureate Lauren Camp, prose writers Jamie Figueroa and Renata Golden and poet Natachee Momaday Gray. Readings are curated by former Santa Fe poet laureate Elizabeth Jacobson.

CCA's monthly Closer Looks series, May 2024. Selected by Paul Barnes. "Bruce Springsteen wrote a song called “Cautious Man”. It contains a line inspired by The Night of the Hunter, “"On his right hand Billy'd tattooed the word "love” and on his left hand was the word "fear” And in which hand he held his fate was never clear” In the film there’s a famous scene in which Robert Mitchum as an enigmatic Reverend says to a little boy, "Ah, little lad, you're staring at my fingers. Would you like me to tell you the little story of right-hand/left-hand?” The Night of the Hunter—incredibly, the only film the great actor Charles Laughton ever directed—is truly a stand-alone masterwork. A horror movie with qualities of a Grimm fairy tale, it stars a sublimely sinister Robert Mitchum as a traveling preacher named Harry Powell (he of the tattooed knuckles), whose nefarious motives for marrying a fragile widow, played by Shelley Winters, are uncovered by her terrified young children. Graced by images of eerie beauty and a sneaky sense of humor, telling its chilling story through visual fantasy, this ethereal, expressionistic American classic— featuring the contributions of the great silent actress Lillian Gish and renowned writer James Agee—is cinema’s most eccentric rendering of the battle between good and evil. Charles Laughton showed here that he had an original eye, and a taste for material that stretched the conventions of the movies. It is risky to combine horror and humor, and foolhardy to approach them through expressionism. For his first film, Laughton made a film like no other before or since, and with such confidence it seemed to draw on a lifetime of experience." -Paul Barnes A religious fanatic marries a gullible widow whose young children are reluctant to tell him where their real daddy hid $10,000 he'd stolen in a robbery.

From Golden Bear winner Radu Jude, DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD takes a fierce and darkly comic swipe at modern day life. Overworked and underpaid production assistant Angela (Ilinca Manolache) is assigned to film a workplace safety video for a multinational corporation in Bucharest. When one of the interviewees makes a statement that ignites a scandal, Angela has to re-invent the story. Featuring appearances from Nina Hoss, Uwe Boll, and Angela’s TikTok alter-ego Bobiță, Jude’s anarchic satire is a wild and unforgettable ride through the vulgar indignities of the 21st century.

FILM IS DEAD. LONG LIVE FILM! explores the vanishing world of private film collecting—an obsessive, secretive, often illicit world of basement film vaults, piled-high with forgotten reels, and inhabited by passionate cinephiles devoted to the rescue and preservation of photochemical film. Condemned as pirates and hounded by the FBI, film collectors have long lurked in the shadows. Yet their efforts have resulted in the survival of countless films that would otherwise have been lost to history. Archives and studios now look to private hands for missing titles and many collectors have begun restoring and releasing films themselves. As analog film fades from memory, the basement-dwellers and bootleggers of old are finally being given their due. FILM IS DEAD. LONG LIVE FILM! is a lively and loving tribute to the private film collector, a celebration of the fetishistic subculture of pre-video movie-love, and a timely reminder of the glories of analog film. REVIEWS: You may not go to a more thought-provoking funeral than the one held for the art of film projection in Peter Flynn’s lovely documentary THE DYING OF THE LIGHT . . . the film is an elegy to a century of watching movies and to the craftspeople who made it possible. Grade: 4/4 Stars. Boston Globe "An elegiac tribute to the artistry of film and to the men and women who toiled 'behind the curtain' to bring that artistry to life every day in movie theaters around the world...a not-to-be-missed treasure of movie history." Grade: A Boston Herald

Thursdays: May 16, May 23, May 30, June 6 4:30-6:30p, In-person at CCA Poet Elizabeth Jacobson returns to CCA with her popular workshop series Intimate Immersion. During this four-week virtual intensive participants will focus on generating new poems, critiquing each other’s work, revising their poems, and looking at elements of craft. Each meeting, participants are invited to bring a new poem (with copies for everyone) for workshop discussion. Since this is the first look, the process creates a deep, concentrated attention distinctive from preparing critique notes ahead of time. Additionally, contemporary poems are provided as a catalyst for the following week's writing prompt. This is an intimate, focused immersion to reinforce the writing practice and foster the evolution of new poems. Tuition (for all four in-person sessions): $250 Please register early as class size is limited to 8 participants. We will meet in CCA’s conference room, which is in the same building as the cinema. About Elizabeth Jacobson: Elizabeth was the fifth Poet Laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico and an Academy of American Poets 2020 Laureate Fellow. Her third collection of poems, There are as Many Songs in the World as Branches of Coral, is forthcoming from Free Verse Editions, 2025. Her previous book, Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air won the New Measure Poetry Prize (FVE/Parlor Press, 2019) and the 2019 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for both New Mexico Poetry and Best New Mexico Book. Her other books include Her Knees Pulled In (Tres Chicas Books), two chapbooks from Dancing Girl Press, Are the Children Make Believe? and A Brown Stone, and Everything Feels Recent When You’re Far Away, Poetry and Art from Santa Fe Youth During the Pandemic (Axle Books, 2021), which she co-edited. Elizabeth is a Reviews Editor for the on-line literary journal Terrain.org, and she is co-founding director of Poetry Pollinators, an eco-poetry public art initiative supporting native solitary bees. Her community projects have received eight consecutive grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry.

Everyone has their own Chimera, something they try to achieve but never manage to find. For the band of tombaroli, thieves of ancient grave goods and archaeological wonders, the Chimera means redemption from work and the dream of easy wealth. For Arthur, the Chimera looks like the woman he lost, Beniamina. To find her, Arthur challenges the invisible, searches everywhere, goes inside the earth – in search of the door to the afterlife of which myths speak. In an adventurous journey between the living and the dead, between forests and cities, between celebrations and solitudes, the intertwined destinies of these characters unfold, all in search of the Chimera.

Travis, a jaded detective, arrives in the remote outback town of Limbo to investigate the cold case murder of local Indigenous girl Charlotte Hayes 20 years ago. As truths about the murder begin to unfold, the detective gains a new insight into the unsolved case from the victim’s fractured family, the surviving witnesses and the reclusive brother of the chief suspect. A poignant, intimate journey into the complexities of loss and the impact of the justice system on Aboriginal families in Australia.

A documentary look at calypso, mostly through the conversation and performances of two singers from Trinidad and Tobago, Lord Kitchener, nearing 70 when the film is made, and Calypso Rose. We see them practicing and in concert; both talk about their early careers. On hand with Lord Kitchener are Lord Pretender and Growling Tiger. Lord Kitchener looks back on London in the late 40s, when he and calypso rose to international popularity. Fifteen years later he returned to Trinidad, taking a year to re-establish his popularity. Intercut with scenes from Trinidad's Carnival, younger singers compete in an annual singing contest as Lord Kitchener serves as MC.

Three rascal children run afoul of an enigmatic coven in Weston Razooli’s whimsical neo-fairytale, which evokes a menagerie of esoteric genres and dreamy cult-film vibes. “Riddle of Fire is the kind of cinematic bedtime story whose whimsical tone makes it easy to overlook its many keenly crafted intricacies. The feature directorial debut by writer/actor Weston Razooli works through a charming conviction: Three kids—brothers Hazel and Jodie and their friend Alice rumble down a country road on their motorbikes to an OTOMO warehouse armed with paintball guns and gummy worms. They fearlessly infiltrate the stockroom, procuring a box simply marked “Angel”. The only resistance they meet is from the manager, whom they mercilessly shoot at before triumphantly thundering off on their motorbikes.” -Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com But that’s only the beginning of these three kids’ adventures. Set in a neo-fairy tale Wyoming and shot on 16mm Kodak film — with radioactive-yellow wildflowers and foliage so green you may reach for your allergy medication — the project makes up in personality what it lacks in budget. Their odyssey begins when their mother asks them to run an errand. On the hunt to obtain her favorite blueberry pie, the children are kidnapped by poachers, battle a witch, outwit a huntsman, befriend a fairy, and bond together to become best friends forever.  Director Weston Razooli clearly has ambition and imagination, and this simple but sweet fairytale is an exuberant adventure with charm to spare. He taps into the pure joy of childhood where the world is a playground and magic can be conjured at any given moment. Razooli accomplishes that feat with an intoxicatingly assuredness that makes this fairy tale feel like a classic in the making."

The year is 2044: artificial intelligence controls all facets of a stoic society as humans routinely “erase” their feelings. Hoping to eliminate pain caused by their past-life romances, Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) continually falls in love with different incarnations of Louis (George MacKay). Set first in Belle Époque-era Paris, Louis is a British man who woos her away from a cold husband, then in early 21st Century Los Angeles, he is a disturbed American bent on delivering violent “retribution.” Will the process allow Gabrielle to fully connect with Louis in the present, or are the two doomed to repeat their previous fates? Visually audacious director Bertrand Bonello (Saint Laurent, Nocturama) fashions his most accomplished film to date: a sci-fi epic, inspired by Henry James' turn-of-the-century novella, suffused with mounting dread and a haunting sense of mystery. Punctuated by a career-defining, three-role performance by Seydoux, The Beast poignantly conveys humanity’s struggle against dissociative identity and emotionless existence.

The Old Oak is the last pub standing in a once thriving mining village in northern England, a gathering space for a community that has fallen on hard times. There is growing anger, resentment, and a lack of hope among the residents, but the pub and its proprietor TJ are a fond presence to their customers. When a group of Syrian refugees move into the floundering village, a decisive rift fueled by prejudices develops between the community and its newest inhabitants. The formation of an unexpected friendship between TJ and a young Syrian woman named Yara opens up new possibilities for the divided village in this deeply moving drama about loss, fear, and the difficulty of finding hope. The release of The Old Oak reunites legendary British director Ken Loach with Zeitgeist Films and Kino Lorber following our 2020 release of his film Sorry We Missed You. Loach, who is 87 years old, has announced that The Old Oak will be his final film.