What's On
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
RW Fassbinder's lop-sided love story (60 year old German widow and a Moroccan twenty years her junior) shines an unflattering light on social hypocrisies.
The Second Mother
Humane, humorous and critically astute, this firm festival favourite from 2015 features a wonderful performance from Regina Casé as a nanny and housekeeper in São Paolo who begins to reevaluate her life when she's reunited with her teen daughter.
Sumo Do, Sumo Don't
This hilarious sports underdog story from the director of Shall We Dance won 5 Japan Academy Awards including Best Film, and was the inspiration for the recent Disney+ spin off series.
Jesse Zubot in Concert
Using a violin, viola and miscellaneous electronics, and incorporating multiple sounds and techniques that relate to his work as a film composer, Jesse Zubot promises a unique and thrilling concert, followed by a preview of the the new BC film Inedia.
The Cloud-Capped Star
Ritwik Ghatak is the unsung genius of Bengali cinema. His best known film is a a brilliantly structured melodrama about the terrible demands of poverty and family on the prospects of a young woman.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Céline Sciamma's queer costume drama -- about a painter covertly studying a young noblewoman who refuses to sit for her portrait -- was voted 30th Greatest Film Ever Made in a 2022 poll, the highest ranking film of the past decade.
Woman in the Dunes (35mm)
Teshigahara's collaboration with novelist Kōbō Abe's is vividly strange, erotic and unsettling allegory about an amateur entymologist who is himself ensnared in a trap he only dimly understands.
The Colour of Pomegranates + The House Is Black
This month's Pantheon screening is a double-bill, Sergei Parajanov's extraordinary evocation of the life and work of C18th Armenian poet Sayat Nova, and, The House is Black (22 min), the only film directed by the great Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad.
Fantasia
Walt Disney pushed the boundaries of animation and sound recording when he put together a movie concert: eight classical pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Stravinski et al, each animated in a different style. It's playful, sometimes cute, other times inspired.
Image: © Disney, 1940