Limited Engagements & Special Screenings 2017

Ongoing

Recent releases, restored classics, and special guests grace the Barbro Osher Theater.

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  • Faces Places

  • Blow-Up

  • Unforgiven

  • Mildred Pierce

  • California Typewriter

  • Dolores

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • Unforgiven

    • Friday, December 22 7 PM
    • Friday, December 29 4 PM
    Clint Eastwood
    US, 1992

    New Digital Restoration

    Clint Eastwood’s Western opus chronicles a retired, reformed gunman roped back into action by a much younger (and dumber) man. “A tense, hard-edged, superbly dramatic yarn” (Todd McCarthy, Variety).

  • California Typewriter

    • Saturday, December 16 3:30 PM
    • Friday, December 22 4 PM
    • Saturday, December 23 3:30 PM
    • Thursday, December 28 2 PM
    Doug Nichol
    United States, 2016

    This hymn to the ordinary typewriter is also a portrait of the countless artists, writers, and collectors (including Tom Hanks and Sam Shepard) who remain steadfast in their love and loyalty. “Pure typewriter heaven” (Don DeLillo).

  • Faces Places

    • Friday, December 8 7 PM
    • Wednesday, December 13 7 PM
    • Sunday, December 17 4 PM
    • Thursday, December 28 4:30 PM
    Agnès Varda, JR
    France, 2017

    Forever young-at-heart filmmaker (and French New Wave legend) Agnès Varda teams up with hipster artist JR on a road trip across rural France. A first-rate achievement in Varda’s brilliant career.

  • Mildred Pierce

    • Friday, December 15 7 PM
    • Saturday, December 23 8:15 PM
    • Wednesday, December 27 2 PM
    Michael Curtiz
    US, 1945

    New Digital Restoration

    Joan Crawford won an Oscar for her driven performance in this noir melodrama that exposed the nightmare side of upward mobility and domestic virtue.

  • Dolores

    • Sunday, November 12 7 PM
    • Saturday, November 18 3:30 PM
    • Friday, November 24 5:30 PM
    • Sunday, December 3 2:30 PM
    Peter Bratt
    US, 2017

    Peter Bratt’s intimate yet universal documentary profiles one of the US’s most dedicated community organizers, Dolores Huerta (cofounder of the United Farm Workers), and reveals the raw, personal stakes involved in committing one’s life to social justice.

  • The End of the Ottoman Empire

    • Saturday, November 4 5 PM
    • Friday, November 10 4 PM
    • Sunday, November 19 2:30 PM
    • Saturday, December 2 4 PM
    Mathilde Damoisel, Sylvie Jézéquel
    France, Switzerland, 2016

    Film to Table dinner follows the November 4 screening

    Back by popular demand! This new documentary offers an overview of the Ottoman Empire and its decline, the essential backstory of our world today.

  • Blow-Up

    • Saturday, November 18 8 PM
    • Friday, November 24 7:30 PM
    • Friday, December 1 7 PM
    Michelangelo Antonioni
    United Kingdom, 1966

    New Digital Restoration

    “Set in a vividly mod Swinging London, Antonioni’s first English-language film [is] a cryptic murder mystery . . . a landmark of the decade’s observational outrage and Pop disposability” (Time Out).

  • Almost Sunrise

    • Saturday, November 11 4:30 PM
    Michael Collins
    US, 2016

    Veterans Day screening cosponsored by KQED and the Cal Veteran Services Center at UC Berkeley

    This documentary follows two friends as they walk from Wisconsin to California to bring attention to the plight of veterans of the Afghan and Iraq wars. “Deepen[s] the picture of what troubles many veterans” (New York Times).

    Michael Collins, Tom Voss, Anthony Anderson, Marty Syjuco, and Rita Nakashima Brock in Person

  • Horse Feathers

    • Friday, October 20 4 PM
    • Saturday, October 21 4:30 PM
    • Sunday, October 22 2 PM
    Norman McLeod
    United States, 1932

    BAMPFA celebrates Homecoming Weekend with this perennial favorite in which college president Groucho and the other Marx Brothers wreak havoc on higher education.

  • Serenade for Haiti

    • Friday, September 15 7:30 PM
    • Sunday, September 24 3 PM
    • Saturday, September 30 6:15 PM
    • Sunday, October 8 2 PM
    Owsley Brown
    United States, 2016

    Shot over a period of years both before and after Haiti’s deadly 2010 earthquake, this vibrant documentary testifies to the role of music in creating community and sustaining hope under the most difficult of circumstances.

    Owsley Brown in Person (September 15 screening only)

  • Il Boom

    • Friday, September 1 6:30 PM
    • Saturday, September 2 6 PM
    • Sunday, September 10 7 PM
    • Saturday, September 23 6 PM
    • Friday, September 29 4 PM
    Vittorio De Sica
    Italy, 1963

    Digital Restoration
    Bay Area Theatrical Premiere!

    The director of The Bicycle Thief shows off his comic side in this hilarious sendup of Italy’s early 1960s economic miracle, starring the great Italian comic Alberto Sordi and finally released theatrically in the US after over fifty years.

  • Stalker

    • Saturday, September 9 7 PM
    • Friday, September 22 7 PM
    Andrei Tarkovsky
    USSR, 1979

    Digital Restoration

    A writer, a scientist, and their “stalker” guide venture into a mysterious wasteland known as the Zone. “A dense, complex, often contradictory, and endlessly pliable allegory about human consciousness” (Slant).

  • Le bonheur

    • Saturday, September 16 5:30 PM
    • Friday, September 22 4 PM
    Agnès Varda
    France, 1965

    BAMPFA Collection Print

    Agnès Varda’s strikingly colorful, lyrical film examines a love triangle within a circular structure.

  • Obit.

    • Friday, August 11 8:30 PM
    • Sunday, August 13 5 PM
    • Sunday, August 20 7 PM
    Vanessa Gould
    United States, 2016

    “An entertaining inside look at the obituary writers of The New York Times. . . . [This] doc makes a strong case for the well-wrought obituary as something of an art form” (Film Journal International).

  • Panique

    • Sunday, July 2 4:30 PM
    • Friday, July 14 6:30 PM
    • Saturday, July 15 8:15 PM
    • Saturday, July 29 8 PM
    Julien Duvivier
    France, 1947

    New Digital Restoration

    Duvivier’s long-unseen Simenon adaptation, starring Michel Simon and Viviane Romance, is an “allegory of wartime collaborationism and the cruel madness of rumor, fear and spite” (Village Voice).

  • An Evening with Ernie Gehr

    • Wednesday, July 19 7 PM

    As part of Canyon Cinema’s fiftieth-anniversary celebrations, Gehr makes a rare visit to the Bay Area to present a selection of his recent digital films: Picture Taking, Autumn, Transport, and A Commuter’s Life (What a Life!).

  • Revolution: New Art for a New World

    • Saturday, July 8 6:30 PM
    • Sunday, July 9 5 PM
    • Saturday, July 15 6:30 PM
    Margy Kinmonth
    United Kingdom, 2016

    “Stunning research and archive footage conjures Revolutionary Russia and the courage of artists in the avant-garde” (State Magazine).

  • Notes on Blindness

    • Saturday, June 17 6:30 PM
    • Saturday, June 24 8:30 PM
    Peter Middleton, James Spinney
    United Kingdom, France, 2016

    A taped journal that theologian John Hull (1935–2015) kept after the onset of blindness in 1980 forms the basis of this “beautiful, accessible, and thoughtful work of art” (The Guardian).

  • An Evening with Sophie Calle

    • Thursday, June 22 7 PM

    Combining a key early work, a recent documentary, and an in-person discussion, this special evening provides an unparalleled introduction to one of the world’s leading contemporary artists. Featuring No Sex Last Night and the documentary Sophie Calle, Untitled.

  • Kedi

    • Wednesday, June 7 7 PM
    • Friday, June 9 6:30 PM
    • Sunday, June 11 5 PM
    Ceyda Torun
    Turkey, United States, 2016

    A “splendidly graceful and quietly magical documentary about the multifaceted feline population of Istanbul” (Variety).

  • Amarcord

    • Sunday, April 23 7 PM
    • Saturday, April 29 5:30 PM
    • Saturday, May 13 8 PM
    Federico Fellini
    Italy, 1974

    Fellini’s free-spirited portrait of Rimini in the 1930s, when fascism was a fact of life, shines in this new print. “A film of exhilarating beauty” (New York Times).

  • My Love Affair with the Brain: The Life and Science of Dr. Marian Diamond

    • Saturday, April 22 2 PM
    • Friday, April 28 4 PM
    Catherine Ryan, Gary Weimberg
    United States, 2016

    This biography-cum-scientific adventure is a fascinating, engaging voyage into the human brain and the work of UCB professor emeritus Marian Diamond, one of the founders of modern neuroscience.

    Co-directors Catherine Ryan and Gary Weimberg will introduce the 4/22 screening, and introduce and lead a discussion following the 4/28 screening.

  • Gerhard Richter Painting

    • Saturday, March 25 4 PM
    • Friday, March 31 4 PM
    • Saturday, April 1 4 PM
    Corinna Belz
    Germany, 2011

    This strikingly visual document of artist Gerhard Richter’s creative process is “a must-see for followers of contemporary painting” (Hollywood Reporter).

  • The Great Dictator

    • Friday, March 24 4 PM
    • Sunday, March 26 6:30 PM
    • Thursday, March 30 7 PM
    Charles Chaplin
    United States, 1940

    Chaplin takes on that other famous guy with a small black moustache. “A time capsule, a timeless document and a profound work of conscience. . . . See it with a crowd” (San Francisco Chronicle).

  • King of Jazz

    • Sunday, March 5 4:45 PM
    • Friday, March 10 4 PM
    • Saturday, March 11 4 PM
    John Murray Anderson
    United States, 1930

    New 4K Digital Restoration

    One of Hollywood’s most ambitious musicals, featuring the top jazz orchestras and dancers of the day, is brought back to life in this dazzling restoration from the original two-color Technicolor negative.

  • Chan Is Missing

    • Thursday, March 2 7 PM
    Wayne Wang
    United States, 1982

    New 35mm Print

    Touted as the first all–Chinese American feature film, Wang’s irreverent, refreshingly authentic movie follows two cab drivers searching S.F.’s Chinatown for an elusive flim-flam man. “A small, whimsical treasure of a film” (Roger Ebert). With Wang’s short Dim Sum Take-Out.

    Wayne Wang in person

  • One-Eyed Jacks

    • Friday, February 10 7 PM
    • Friday, February 17 4 PM
    • Saturday, February 25 7:30 PM
    Marlon Brando
    United States, 1961

    New 4K Restoration

    Marlon Brando's first and only directorial effort, a Freudian Western loosely based on the legend of Billy the Kid. "Mean, moody, and magnificent" (Time Out).

  • The Battle of Algiers

    • Saturday, January 28 5:30 PM
    • Saturday, February 4 8:15 PM
    Gillo Pontecorvo
    Italy/Algeria, 1966

    New 4K Restoration

    One of the best films on revolution ever made, Pontecorvo’s agit-prop classic concerns Algeria’s struggle for independence against its French overlords. “A masterpiece! Surely the most harrowing political epic ever!” (New Yorker).

  • In the Last Days of the City

    • Friday, January 27 7:30 PM
    • Sunday, January 29 4 PM
    • Friday, February 3 4 PM
    Tamer El Said
    Egypt/Germany, 2016

    East Bay Premiere

    A personal portrait of Cairo during the fall of the Mubarak regime, and a snapshot of the Arab Spring. “A city requiem rather than a city symphony” (Variety).

     

  • Tampopo

    • Friday, January 20 7 PM
    • Saturday, January 21 8:15 PM
    • Friday, January 27 4 PM
    Juzo Itami
    Japan, 1986

    New 4K Restoration

    Juzo Itami’s hit Japanese satire of samurai films and Westerns, one of the best-loved foodie films ever made. “Gleefully sensual and inventive” (Film Comment).