This late silent film (which has a synchronized music track) is one of the most beloved and popular screen romances of all time; it won the very first Academy Awards for Best Actress (Janet Gaynor) and Best Director (Frank Borzage). Charles Farrell plays a Paris sanitation worker who saves a prostitute (Gaynor) from the police. He takes her in and gradually falls in love with her.

In this sensual experimental elegy by Harmony Korine, spellbinding infrared photography evokes a dreamlike portrait of a tormented assassin.

Mortimer Brewster, a newspaper drama critic, playwright and author known for his diatribes against marriage, suddenly falls in love and gets married; but when he makes a quick trip home to tell his two maiden aunts, he finds out his aunts' hobby - killing lonely old men and burying them in the cellar!

Hitchcock’s first sound feature was also Britain’s first all-talkie. One of Hitch’s best, the innovative film tells of a young woman who is blackmailed after killing an attempted rapist.

Paulette feels guilty after unjustly punishing her daughter Linda and would do anything to make it up to her. Linda immediately asks for a meal of chicken with peppers, which reminds her of the dish her father used to make. But with a general strike closing stores all across town and pushing people into this streets, this innocent request quickly leads to an outrageous series of events that spirals out of control, as Paulette does everything she can to keep her promise and find a chicken for Linda.

A story of romance, passion and violence set in contemporary Paris. Shot all over the city and a little bit in the countryside, it revolves around a romance between two young people who are old friends and devolves into marital infidelity and ultimately crime.

Aleksei is a young Belarusian on the run from a past he must bury. In a form of Faustian pact, he becomes a member of the French Foreign Legion in exchange for the promise of French citizenship. Far away, in the Niger Delta, Jomo is a revolutionary activist, engaged in armed struggle to defend his community. Aleksei is a soldier, Jomo a guerrilla fighter. Because of one more senseless war, their destinies will intertwine.

Two-time Oscar-winning writer and filmmaker Alexander Payne, director of The Holdovers and, before that, Sideways, Nebraska, The Descendants, About Schmidt, and others, will appear in person this afternoon—answering audience questions about his stellar career after a screening of a new 4K restoration of his breakthrough film. Election, Barack Obama’s favorite political movie, is a wickedly funny satire starring Reese Witherspoon as an overachieving Omaha high schooler who will do anything to be elected student body president, and Matthew Broderick as the veteran history and civics teacher who works to stop her. It won three 1999 Independent Spirit Awards—Best Feature, Direction, and Screenplay.

A collection of animated interpretations of great works of Western classical music.

Once labeled as pirates and targeted by the FBI, private film collectors have recently emerged from their basement hiding places to bask in the gratitude of film scholars and historians. These subterranean cinephiles have saved many movies that would otherwise be lost to time. This new documentary is many things: a lively tribute to the unsung guardians of photochemical film, a celebration of this fetishistic subculture of pre-video “cinemania,” and a timely reminder of the glories of analog movies.

Drew is approaching the end of his twenties and, with it, his relative youth. Looking to make a sudden change, he decides to quit his cushy desk job and “embrace life.” Cycling quickly through friends, hobbies, and goals, it’s not long until Drew realizes he has no idea what to do with his newfound freedom. Led by Colin Burgess and featuring a wide ensemble of New York City's funniest performers, Ryan Martin Brown's debut feature is an uproarious comedy — filmed on location in the midst of America's "Great Resignation" — about the search for meaning in the modern world.

Follows a family of Syrian refugees, an English teacher from Afghanistan and a border guard. They all meet on the Polish-Belarusian border during the most recent humanitarian crisis in Belarus.

A professor moonlighting as a hit man of sorts for his city police department, descends into dangerous, dubious territory when he finds himself attracted to a woman who enlists his services.

John Ford swapped America's wild west for the verdant valleys of Wales for this Oscar-winning saga of the region's descent from paradise to slagheap. The movie follows the story of Huw (Roddy McDowall) - the youngest of seven children - and his struggle as the unrelenting march of industrialisation take their toll on the family. Though always remembered as the film that best Citizen Kane to the Best Picture Oscar, it is quite simply, a classic - and as relevant now as it was back in 1941.

In this wackadoodle new action comedy that has taken the fantasy-film-festival world by storm, a 19th-century applejack manufacturer living in the Great Lakes region turns fur trapper in order to kill the legion of beavers that threaten his livelihood. If this sounds too violent for your delicate sensibilities, don’t worry. The beavers here are actors in goofy animal costumes and the whole wordless, b&w movie is an affectionate tribute to the gag-filled slapstick comedies of the silent era.

Wrongly convicted James Allen serves in the intolerable conditions of a Southern chain gang, which later comes back to haunt him.

Giulietta Masina, Broderick Crawford, and Richard Basehart star in Federico Fellini’s oft-overlooked follow-up to La Strada—a neorealist crime drama in which some longtime con men begin to have misgivings about their immoral, predatory lifestyle. Music by Nino Rota.

A woman in 40's living at Friends home answers briefly and a man in 70's living alone, end up giving longer answers had visitor for lunch in front of their guests, coincidentally they both added hot pepper paste to their ramyun.

A newly possessed high school cheerleader turns into a succubus who specializes in killing her male classmates. Can her best friend put an end to the horror?

In this non-narrative film by Taiwanese master Tsai Ming-liang (The Hole; Goodbye, Dragon Inn), Tsai’s perennial star Lee Kang-sheng impersonates a robed Buddhist monk who walks barefoot at a glacial pace through the hustle and bustle of modern Marseille. Tsai’s sixth entry in his globe-trotting, slo-mo “Walker” series is a mesmerizing mix of documentary and performance art—and the only one that co-stars cult French actor Denis Lavant (Beau Travail, Holy Motors), who mimics (mocks?) the monk. Cleveland premiere. DCP. 56 min. Preceded at 6:30 by Nathaniel Dorsky’s 18-min. silent film The Visitation (USA, 2002, 16mm), the first of Dorsky’s “Two Devotional Songs.”

One of the most perfect of Yasujiro Ozu’s family dramas, this piercingly beautiful movie delineates the attempts of an elderly widower (Chishu Ryu) to marry off his devoted grown daughter (Setsuko Hara) who is reluctant to leave him. Sublime!

Hitman Jef Costello is a perfectionist who always carefully plans his murders and who never gets caught. One night however, after killing a night-club owner, he's seen by witnesses. His efforts to provide himself with an alibi fail and more and more he gets driven into a corner.

Dustin Hoffman excels as “sick,” foul-mouthed, self-destructive 1950s-60s nightclub comedian Lenny Bruce in Bob Fosse’s acclaimed follow-up to Cabaret. Valerie Perrine plays Bruce’s stripper girlfriend Honey.

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.

Voted the 16th best movie of all time in the 2022 Sight and Sound “greatest films” poll, Maya Deren’s surreal psychodrama Meshes of the Afternoon was co-directed by her husband, Alexander Hackenschmied (Hammid). A noirish nightmare about a woman haunted by a mysterious hooded figure with a mirror for a face, this 14-min. classic will be followed by two other masterworks by deceased distaff directors: Forugh Farrokhzad’s The House Is Black (Khaneh siah ast, Iran, 1963, 22 min.), a poetic portrait of life in a leper colony; and Sara Gómez’ 73-min. One Way or Another (De Cierta Manera, Cuba, 1977), a fiction-nonfiction hybrid that explores sexism, racism, and class in post-revolutionary Cuba through a love story between a schoolteacher and a factory worker. 16mm/DCP

Before they penned Sunset Boulevard and The Lost Weekend, Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett co-wrote this superb, sophisticated (but often overlooked) screwball comedy. Claudette Colbert plays a penniless American chorus girl, stranded in pre-WWII Paris, who gets involved with both a poor Hungarian cab driver (Don Ameche) and a wealthy socialite (John Barrymore) who’s trying to win back his wife (Mary Astor). The movie will be introduced and discussed by film scholar Grafton Nunes, former President + CEO of the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Iconic silent-screen comedian Harold Lloyd stars in this madcap, pre-Code sound film. A young man with no acting experience who desperately wants to be in pictures is accidentally summoned to Hollywood for a screen test.

In the silent film era, attorney Leo Harrigan and gunslinger Buck Greenway are hired to stop an illegal film production. However, they soon team up with the filmmakers and become important players in the show business industry. Leo learns he has a talent for directing, and Buck's cowboy persona quickly earns him leading-man status — but both men fall for beautiful starlet Kathleen Cooke, leading to a heated personal rivalry. Peter Bogdanovich’s valentine to early movies, shown here in his preferred b&w version (it was originally in color and 8 min. shorter), was derived from true stories told to him by pioneering filmmakers Allan Dwan and Raoul Walsh.

Billy Wilder’s follow-up to Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960) is a rollicking Cold War comedy packed with gags and barbs. James Cagney plays a frustrated Coca Cola executive in West Berlin who is suddenly charged with looking after his Atlanta boss’s 17-year-old daughter (Pamela Tiffin), a socialite and socialist, when she visits Germany.

The first British feature to be written and directed by a Black filmmaker is a watershed social drama that its funder, the British Film Institute, shelved for three years due to its depiction of police brutality. Set during the 1970s, the movie focuses on a British-born young man from a Trinidadian family who wants to assimilate into English society. So he tries to find honest work in racist London. Meanwhile, his brother, a Black Panther member, says Blacks must organize and fend for themselves.

Leslie Howard is Professor Henry Higgins and Wendy Hiller is Eliza Doolittle in this non-musical film version of George Bernard Shaw’s famous play—about a linguist who believes he can pass off a Covent Garden flower seller as a duchess. Shaw himself wrote the screenplay for this classic movie, generally regarded as the best film of a Shaw play. (It was adapted into the musical My Fair Lady in 1956.)

From the '60s to the '80s, Greek-born Chelly Wilson built a porn cinema empire and a reputation as a savvy operator in the Times Square vicinity known as the Deuce.

Set in 19th-century Japan, the movie focuses on a gruff slum doctor (Toshiro Mifune) who tries to convince an arrogant young intern that caring for poor people is nobler than being a society physician. This humanistic epic, perhaps the only hospital drama with swordplay, was the 16th (and final) collaboration between Kurosawa and Mifune.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Man Ray’s 1923 short film Le Retour à la raison, drone rock duo Sqürl (film director Jim Jarmusch and film producer Carter Logan) composed a new score for this silent avant-garde masterpiece—and for three other silent experimental shorts by Ray: Emak-Bakia (1926), L'Étoile de mer (1928), and Les Mystères du Château du Dé (1929). All four movies show in this program. According to Janus Films, the show’s U.S. distributor, these four works “represent a high-water mark of early European avant-garde cinema, a seminal nexus of experimental technique, surrealist narrative, and playful abstraction.” Sqürl’s scores promise to make these visually-stunning works even more beautiful, mysterious, and unforgettable.

Subtitled Or the Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World's Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits, Scala!!! is a tribute to London’s legendary Scala Cinema, which from 1978 to 1993 presented a changing-daily program of double-bills and all-nighters to more than a million moviegoers. Offering everything from high art to horror, sexploitation to kung fu, this seedy, notorious picture palace (where sex, drugs, and even deaths were not unknown) catered to a non-conformist audience that included many future filmmakers, musicians, writers, actors, activists, and artists. New interviews, archive material, movie clips, animation, graphics, and a score by Barry Adamson all add up to a hilarious and joyous celebration of cinema-going.

John Ewing’s all-time favorite film is the one that hooked him on movies almost 60 years ago. George Stevens’ celebrated western concerns a feud between cattlemen and homesteaders in late 19th-century Wyoming—and the mysterious stranger who sides with the “sodbusters.” Based on a novel by Cleveland-born Jack Schaefer, this tense, exciting movie tells a great, archetypal story that is at once frontier actioner, coming-of-age saga, love story, and metaphysical allegory. With Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, Van Heflin, Brandon de Wilde, and Jack Palance.

A young Iranian mother and her six-year-old daughter finds refuge in an Australian women’s shelter during the two weeks of Iranian New Year (Nowrooz) which is celebrated as a time of renewal and rebirth. Aided by the strong community of women at the refuge they seek their freedom in this new world of possibilities, only to find themselves facing the violence they tried so hard to escape.

The wrenching neorealist masterpiece that Vittorio De Sica and screenwriter Cesare Zavattini made just before they collaborated on Bicycle Thieves won the first Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Set in Rome in the immediate aftermath of WWII, the movie focuses on two street kids—shoeshine boys—who run afoul of the law when they become involved in the black market.

Being connected to nature, what does it mean? Father knows and father shows. The director's father is 84. We follow in his footsteps into the mountain home. Into nature's smallest life and out to grand panoramas, where he grew up.

Martin Scorsese co-directed this documentary that traces the history and influence of The New York Review of Books through its first five decades. Archival footage, contemporary interviews, and quotations from the publication abound.

"The Arc of Oblivion" explores a quirk of humankind: in a universe that erases its tracks, we humans are hellbent on leaving a trace. Set against the backdrop of the filmmaker's quixotic quest to build an ark in a field in Maine, the film heads far afield - to salt mines in the Alps, fjords in the Arctic, and ancient libraries in the Sahara - to illuminate the strange world of archives, record-keeping, and memory.

An unscrupulous movie producer uses an actress, a director and a writer to achieve success.

A woman slowly gleans that her pig-tailed, picture-perfect eight-year-old daughter is in fact a holy terror, prone to lying, theft, and much, much worse. What’s a mother to do? This overwrought, outrageous, but vastly entertaining film version of Maxwell Anderson’s stage shocker is both operatic and campy. Stars Nancy Kelly and Patty McCormack re-create their Broadway roles.

A man staying at a secluded historical mansion finds himself being haunted by the presence of a spectre.

A hapless carnival performer masquerades as the court jester as part of a plot against an evil ruler who has overthrown the rightful king.

Banned for 20 years after its release, this masterpiece of the 1960s Czech New Wave evokes 1920s German Expressionism. A family man running a crematorium in 1930s Czechoslovakia becomes a little too enthusiastic about ending human suffering and “freeing” people for the afterlife. He eventually finds complete fulfillment during the Nazi occupation of his country, and formulates his own Final Solution. “One of cinema’s most trenchant and disturbing portraits of the banality of evil.” –Janus Films. With Rudolf Hrušínský.

A man brutally murdered comes back to life as an undead avenger of his and his fiancée's murder.

In Victorian England, the uncle of orphaned niece Flora and nephew Miles hires Miss Giddens as governess to raise the children at his estate with total independence and authority. Soon after her arrival, Miss Giddens comes to believe that the spirits of the former governess Miss Jessel and valet Peter Quint are possessing the children. Miss Giddens decides to help the children to face and exorcise the spirits.

USSR-China border, 1973: Young soldier Rafael is on guard duty when the border falls under attack from flying Chinese kung fu warriors, leaving him as the sole survivor. Utterly fascinated by the long-haired martial artists who easily dispatched his fellow guards, all while blasting forbidden Black Sabbath music from their portable radio, Rafael is struck by a revelation: he too wants to become a kung fu warrior. Looking for mentorship but with limited options, faith leads Rafael to seek martial arts teachers at one of the unlikeliest places: the local Eastern Orthodox monastery, where the black-clad monks begin his training. With a skeptical mother, a rival monk, and a budding love interest pulling him in different directions, Rafael finds that his journey to unlock the greatest martial art of all – the almighty power of humility — is long, winding, and full of kick-ass adventures.

An aging doorman, after being fired from his prestigious job at a luxurious Hotel is forced to face the scorn of his friends, neighbours and society.

Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway star in this Ealing comedy masterpiece—about a meek British bank clerk who concocts a scheme to steal gold bullion and smuggle it out of the country as souvenir Eiffel Tower paperweights. T.E.B. Clarke’s screenplay won an Oscar. Watch for a young Audrey Hepburn.

Shooting in Swedish on a set replicating a lovely 18th-century theatre, Bergman begins his wonderfully warm, witty and sensuous movie by focusing on the faces of a rapt audience (momentarily including his own) enjoying the overture. Thereafter, as the (abridged and intriguingly amended) tale of Tamino, Pamina et al proceeds, he highlights the piece’s exuberant theatrical illusionism, at the same time deploying close-ups to enhance the emotions conveyed by an excellent young cast. An admirably light touch is applied throughout, making for a performance of musical excellence, dramatic vitality and enormous, effortless charm.

The spoiled young heir to the decaying Amberson fortune comes between his widowed mother and the man she has always loved.

Two New York City detectives investigate the death of an attractive young woman. The apparent suicide turns out to be murder.

Robert Thorn, an American diplomat living in Rome, learns that his infant son died moments after birth. Rather than tell his wife Katherine the truth, which he fears would shatter her emotionally, Robert secretly arranges the adoption of another baby through the Catholic church. Years pass and the Thorn's child, Damien, has a happy, normal childhood. Robert is named Ambassador to the Court of Saint James, and the family relocates to a lavish estate in the English countryside. But their seemingly idyllic life begins to change when, during Damien's fifth birthday, the boy's nanny suddenly commits suicide. Shortly thereafter, Robert is approached by Father Brennan, who claims he was present at the hospital when Damien's adoption took place. He is convinced that the boy is the son of the Devil, and that only a man named Bugenhagen, who lives in Israel, has the power to kill him. Robert initially believes the priest to be mad, but his faith begins to waiver as everyone around Damien is subjected to a series of freak, horrific incidents.

This revolutionary DIY parody film and hilarious reimagining of the classic autobiographical coming-of-age story follows an unconfident, closeted trans girl as she moves to Gotham City to make it big as a comedian by joining the cast of UCB Live - a government-sanctioned late night sketch show in a world where comedy has been outlawed. As mainstream success eludes our heroine, leading her to unite with a ragtag team of rejects, misfits, and a certain love interest named Mister J, "Joker the Harlequin" is born again as a confident (and psychotic) joker on a collision course with the city's fascist caped crusader. Vats of feminizing chemicals, sexy cartoon interludes, scarecrow psychiatrists, CGI Lorne Michaels, and psychedelic gender dysphoria all play supporting roles. Helmed by writer/director/editor/star Vera Drew and using her own life experiences as a basis for the film, THE PEOPLE'S JOKER is a deeply personal journey that's as much documentary as it is parody.

Gu Wentong, a middle-aged food critic, is drifting through the local eateries of vibrant Beijing with his younger photographer colleague Oyang. A divorcé with a 6-year-old daughter and estranged from his father for decades, he is looking for a new perspective on life while reconsidering his failings as a father, a son, and a lover. While the seasons come and go, people get together and move apart. Only one thing will remain the same: The White Pagoda where they all meet sooner or later…

Iconic silent screen comedian Harold Lloyd made his last screen appearance in this film written and directed by the great Preston Sturges. Opening with an extended clip from Lloyd’s 1925 classic The Freshman and climaxing in a thrill sequence that evokes his 1925 Safety Last, the film focuses on a bored bookkeeper 20 years removed from his go-getting college days. When he loses his dead-end job and has his first-ever drink, he goes blotto—waking from his stupor to discover that he’s not only rich and a flamboyant dresser but also the owner of a bankrupt circus! A flop when first released (and also when reissued four years later as Mad Wednesday, shorn of 15 minutes and saddled with a re-shot ending), the movie will be shown here in Sturges’ original cut. Philip J. Skerry, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus at Lakeland Community College and author of numerous film books (and a big fan of the film), will introduce it.

Widely regarded as the best American film by the great Jean Renoir, this poetic masterpiece focuses on a Texas sharecropper (Zachary Scott) who decides to acquire his own land and work for himself. But challenges and hardships abound. Originally banned in Tennessee, The Southerner was also condemned by the KKK for its (alleged) unflattering depiction of rural life in the South. Script co-written by William Faulkner (uncredited).

One of the five nominees for the 2024 Oscar for Best Int’l Feature (and hopefully the runner-up to the worthy winner The Zone of Interest) is a tense examination of the challenges of teaching multicultural students in a politically-sensitive environment. An idealistic instructor at a German middle school sets off a chain of nightmarish events when she investigates a theft in the teachers’ lounge. Winner of five 2023 German Film Awards (Lolas) including Best Fiction Film, Director, Actress, and Screenplay.

Former detective Nick Charles and his wealthy wife Nora investigate a murder case, mostly for the fun of it.

On January 5, 1900, a disheveled looking H.G. Wells - George to his friends - arrives late to his own dinner party. He tells his guests of his travels in his time machine, the work about which his friends knew. They were also unbelieving, and skeptical of any practical use if it did indeed work. George knew that his machine was stationary in geographic position, but he did not account for changes in what happens over time to that location. He also learns that the machine is not impervious and he is not immune to those who do not understand him or the machine's purpose. George tells his friends that he did not find the Utopian society he so wished had developed. He mentions specifically a civilization several thousand years into the future which consists of the subterranean morlocks and the surface dwelling eloi, who on first glance lead a carefree life. Despite all these issues, love can still bloom over the spread of millennia

Christine (Sandy McLeod) takes a job selling tickets at a porno theater near Times Square. Instead of distancing herself from the dark and erotic nature of this milieu, she develops an obsession that begins to consume her life. Few films deal honestly with a female sexual pointof-view, controversial and highly personal, VARIETY does just this.

In the English village of Midwich, the blonde-haired, glowing-eyed children of uncertain paternity prove to have frightening powers.

The least known of Marlon Brando’s three screen collaborations with director Elia Kazan (the other two are A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront) is a John Steinbeck-penned portrait of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata (Brando), who led a peasant revolt against the country’s tyrannical government early in the 20th century. As Zapata’s brother, Anthony Quinn won an Oscar.

Juliet Berto, Anne Wiazemsky, and Jean-Luc Godard appear in one of the most accessible of Godard’s radically leftist “Dziga-Vertov Group” films (1968-72). The movie is a grotesque parody of 1969-70’s farcical Chicago Eight trial (later Chicago Seven); Judge Hoffman becomes Judge Himmler, the revolutionary defendants are continually silenced, and Godard (as Lenin) discusses politics and cinema.

The second American film from the German maker of Metropolis and M is a young-criminal-lovers-on-the-run drama that created the template for later films like Bonnie and Clyde and Pierrot le Fou. Henry Fonda plays an ex-con trying to go straight. But Fate seems to have other plans when he is framed for murder. Sylvia Sidney is his devoted wife.