What's On
Feven Kidane & Tiny Pyramids Play the Music of Sun Ra
Celebrate the music of Sun Ra with legendary local trumpeter Feven Kidane and Tiny Pyramids, a group of interstellar travellers featuring Dan Gaucher on drums, Colin Cowan on bass, Mary Ancheta on keyboards, and Tom Wherrett on guitar. This performance will be paired with a screening of Space is the Place.
Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise)
The crowning glory of classical French cinema, this sumptuous melodrama brings to life the early 19th century Boulevard du Crime in Paris, where popular audiences for mime shows and carnival rub shoulders with wealthy patrons of classical theatre.
The Wild Bunch (Director's Cut)
The Mexico/Texas borderlands, 1913: Pike (William Holden) leads his gang of aging outlaws on a foray south for one last hurrah. Peckinpah's masterpiece, a savage lament for men who believe in nothing but find respect by dying in vain.
The Ascent
During the darkest winter of WWII, two Soviet partisans venture through the backwoods of Belarus in search of food, always at risk of falling into enemy hands. In her masterpiece Larisa Shepitko zeroes in on profound spiritual and philosophical themes.
Bicycle Thieves
De Sica's film about a labourer desperate to track down the bike that has been stolen from him is a landmark in film history, the movie that cemented the impact of Italian neo-realism on world cinema.
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 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