LOLA
February 19 (Friday)
Directed by Jacques Demy
Starring Anouk Aimée, Marc Michel, Jacques Harden
(France, 1961, 90 minutes, b/w, in French with English subtitles)

With spectacular camera work, Jacques Demy pays tribute to the “Lolas” of Max Ophüls’ 1955 LOLA MONTES and Josef von Sternberg’s 1930 THE BLUE ANGEL in this New Wave reinterpretation of the classic tale of a beautiful cabaret singer and the men in her thrall.

CAMP DE THIAROYE [THE CAMP AT THIAROYE]
February 26 (Friday)
Directed by Ousmane Sembene
Starring Sidiki Bakaba, Hamed Camara, Philippe Chamelat
(Senegal, 1987, 157 minutes, color, in Wolof and French with English subtitles)

A group of African soldiers who fought valiantly for France during World War II are detained in a prison camp at war’s end because their French colonial masters have grown uneasy with the equality the men have achieved on the battlefield. Sembene’s semi-autobiographical film received the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.

FISTS IN THE POCKET [I PUGNI IN TASCA]
March 5 (Friday)
Directed by Marco Bellocchio
Starring Lou Castel, Paola Pitagora, Marino Masé
(Italy, 1965, 105 minutes, b/w, in Italian with English subtitles)

A shocking and influential black comedy of the Italian New Wave, FISTS IN THE POCKET features a disturbed young man who kills off members of his peculiar family to “save” them from various medical afflictions. In the words of one Italian critic, “When it came out, it ripped the collective film imagination to shreds.”

LA NOUBA DES FEMMES DU MONT-CHENOUA [THE SONG OF THE WOMEN OF MOUNT CHENOUA]
March 12 (Friday)
Directed by Assia Djebar
Starring Sawsan Noweif, Mohamed Haymour, Zohra Sahraoui
(Algeria, 1977, 115 minutes, color, in Arabic with English subtitles)

In her inventive, experimental debut as film director, major Maghrebi fiction writer Assia Djebar borrows the structure of the nouba, a five-part traditional song, to tell the story of a woman who returns to the town of her childhood fifteen years after the violent War of Independence.

AFTER LIFE [WANDÂFURU RAIFU]
March 19 (Friday)
Directed by Hirokazu Kore-Eda
Starring Arata, Erika Oda, Susumu Terajima
(Japan, 1998, 118 minutes, color, in Japanese with English subtitles)

A deliberately spare, thoughtful work, AFTER LIFE presents a kind of antechamber to heaven in which the recently deceased are asked to choose a single cherished memory to preserve for all eternity. Stephen Holden of the New York Times called it a “brilliant, humorous, transcendently compassionate film.”

LE JOUR SE LÈVE [DAYBREAK]
April 9 (Friday)
Directed by Marcel Carné
Starring Jean Gabin, Jules Berry, Arletty
(France, 1939, 88 minutes, b/w, in French with English subtitles)

A factory worker kills his rival in love, then barricades himself in his apartment to weather an armed siege by the police, all the while recalling the events that led to the crime. The film is a masterpiece of “realist” cinema from major French director Marcel Carné.

THE TALES OF HOFFMANN
April 16 (Friday)
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Starring Moira Shearer, Ludmilla Tchérina, Anne Ayars
(United Kingdom, 1951, 128 minutes, color)

A young man’s dreams of past romantic adventures come to life on the screen in this exquisite blend of music, ballet and cinematic effects. Directed by the famous team of Powell and Pressburger (THE RED SHOES), the film is based on the 1881 opera by Jacques Offenbach and the stories of E. T. A. Hoffmann.

LITTLE OLD NEW YORK
April 23 (Friday)
Directed by Sidney Olcott
Starring Marion Davies, Stephen Carr, J. M. Kerrigan
(United States, 1923, 106 minutes, b/w)

SILENT with live piano accompaniment by Mike Schiffer

An Irish immigrant lass comes to New York City disguised as a boy to claim her dead brother’s inheritance in this charming historical drama set against the background of real events, including the 1807 launch of Robert Fulton’s steamboat on the Hudson River.