This November at UC Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive

This month, visit the PFA:
2575 Bancroft Way
Berkeley, CA 94720
Call 510.643.2197 for information.

Theater Admission Prices:
Single Feature:
$5.50 for BAM/PFA members and UC Berkeley students
$9.50 for Adults (18-64)
$6.50 for UC Berkeley faculty and staff; non-UC Berkeley students, senior citizens (65 & over), disabled persons, and youth (17 & under)

Additional Feature:
$4All patrons

Wednesday, November 3
Alternative Visions
7:30Flaming Creatures 
Jack Smith (U.S., 1963). This infamous camp fantasy of sexual confusion, transvestite orgies, and role-playing exhibitionism—one of the most banned films in American history—was an inspiration to John Waters, George Kuchar, and many more. With Paul Sharits’s Razor Blades. (70 mins)

Thursday, November 4
Days of Glory: Revisiting Italian Neorealism
7:00Ossessione 
Luchino Visconti (Italy, 1943). With a deft mixture of authenticity, narrative suspense, and ambiguous passions, Visconti transposes James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice to a Po Valley trattoria. “An extraordinarily majestic, elegant, and romantic movie.”—Vincent Canby, New York Times (140 mins)
 
Friday, November 5
Carl Theodor Dreyer
7:00Day of Wrath 
Carl Th. Dreyer (Denmark, 1943). A medieval witch trial provides a scathing metaphor for Dreyer’s fusion of Hawthorne and Kafka, filmed during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. “This psychological masterpiece…is one of the most completely moving films ever made."—Pauline Kael. (95 mins)

Carl Theodor Dreyer
9:00Vivre sa vie 
Jean-Luc Godard (France, 1962). Godard’s fragmentary portrait of a prostitute makes Anna Karina an object of endless visual fascination, and includes a rapt tribute to Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc. “A film of extraordinary purity.”—Manny Farber. (85 mins)

Saturday, November 6
Days of Glory: Revisiting Italian Neorealism
6:30Without Pity 
Alberto Lattuada (Italy, 1948). American G.I.’s, mobsters, and civilians tangle in the ruins of Livorno in this energetic, noirish tale of postwar Italy, anchored by a love affair between an Italian woman and an African American soldier. Written by Federico Fellini and starring Giulietta Masina. (95 mins)

Days of Glory: Revisiting Italian Neorealism
8:30The Overcoat 
Alberto Lattuada (Italy, 1952). A petty clerk dreams of a fancy new overcoat in Lattuada’s brisk adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s famed short story, reset in the suitably corrupt and hopeless hallways of Italian government bureaucracies. Starring Renato Rascel, one of postwar Italy’s most popular comics. (99 mins)

Sunday, November 7
Carl Theodor Dreyer
2:00 The Parson’s Widow 
Carl Th. Dreyer (Sweden, 1920). Introduced by Mark Sandberg. Judith Rosenberg on Piano. A young divinity student is offered a job at a rural parish—but only if he marries the previous parson’s ancient widow—in Dreyer’s surprising comedy, part naturalist hymn to the countryside, part ethnographic study of folk customs. “Dreyer’s first masterpiece.”—David Thomson. (88 mins) 

Carl Theodor Dreyer
4:15 Love One Another 
Carl Th. Dreyer (Germany, 1922). Judith Rosenberg on Piano. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, a young Jewish schoolgirl fights for the Revolution—and her Jewish identity—in Dreyer’s historical drama, filmed in Berlin with actors from Max Reinhardt’s famous company and refugees from the 1917 Revolution. (84 mins)

Wednesday, November 10
Alternative Visions
7:30 Recent Spanish Experimental Cinema 
Introduced and curated by Garbiñe Ortega. Laida Lertxundi in person.
In these recent experimental films and videos from Spain, exterior landscapes describe emotional states while inner landscapes speak about the physical world. (66 mins)

Thursday, November 11
Afterimage: Filmmakers and Critics in Conversation: Kelly Reichardt with B. Ruby Rich
7:00 Ode 
Kelly Reichardt (U.S., 1999). Kelly Reichardt in Person. The 1960s teenage love story of Bobbie Lee and Billy Joe, retold in dusky Southern rhythms with a languid soundtrack by Will Oldham. With shorts Then a Year (“lyrical, ominous, and evocative of how horribly love can hurt”—Village Voice) and Travis. (75 mins)

Friday, November 12
Afterimage: Filmmakers and Critics in Conversation: Kelly Reichardt with B. Ruby Rich
7:00Old Joy 
Kelly Reichardt (U.S., 2006). Screening followed by Kelly Reichardt in conversation with B. Ruby Rich. Two old friends reunite for a backpacking trip through the Pacific Northwest, but find their paths have diverged, in this “triumph of modesty and of seriousness that also happens to be one of the finest American films of the year.”— NY Times (76 mins)

Afterimage: Filmmakers and Critics in Conversation: Kelly Reichardt with B. Ruby Rich
9:00River of Grass 
Kelly Reichardt (U.S., 1993). New Print. Introduced by Kelly Reichardt. A thirty-something housewife goes on the lam with a young drifter in this atmospheric tale from the Florida swamplands. “Original, controlled filmmaking by creative independents who clearly understand the B-movie legacy they’re tapping into.”—Sundance Film Festival (85 mins)

Saturday, November 13
Days of Glory: Revisiting Italian Neorealism
6:15Bitter Rice 
Giuseppe De Santis (Italy, 1949). This little-seen postwar gem filters a neorealist call for workers’ rights through the aesthetics of film noir. Vittorio Gassman is a thief whose girlfriend hides out with itinerant rice workers and becomes awakened to the workers’ plight. (109 mins)

Afterimage: Filmmakers and Critics in Conversation: Kelly Reichardt with B. Ruby Rich
8:30Wendy and Lucy 
Kelly Reichardt (U.S., 2008). Screening followed by Kelly Reichardt in conversation with B. Ruby Rich. Michelle Williams is a young woman who loses her way—and her dog—in the Pacific Northwest, in this award-winning American indie, named to multiple Best-of-2008 and even many Best-of-the-Decade lists. “A lucid and melancholy inquiry into the current state of American society.”—NY Times (80 mins)

Sunday, November 14
Carl Theodor Dreyer
2:00Once Upon a Time 
Carl Th. Dreyer (Denmark, 1922). Introduced by Amanda Elaine Doxtater. Judith Rosenberg on Piano. In Dreyer’s delightful medieval fairy tale of royals, commoners, assumed identities, wood nymphs, and confessions of love, a spoiled princess sends most of her suitors to the hangman until a prince arrives with a most unlikely scheme to win her heart. An eye-opening taste of silent cinema at its lightest and most entertaining. With short Bride of Glomdal. (131 mins)

Radical Light
5:001980-1989 
Artists in person. Works by Peter Herwitz, Rock Ross, Gunvor Nelson, Mark Street, and more represent the fertile Bay Area filmmaking scene in the 1980s, when many artists carried seminal artistic traditions into new territory. (84 mins)