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UFO Factory to screen biweekly on Thursdays starting Jan. 26;
Cultivate to screen monthly on last Sunday of month, Jan.-Mar.
Foreign film distributor Big World Pictures will present all selections on glorious 16mm film, screened on two portable Eiki 16mm projectors salvaged from crumbling institutions. Prints will be drawn from private collectors, and rights cleared by US distributors.
The inaugural schedule, to screen from January through March, includes six titles from the United States and France, drawn from the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and ’80s; ranging from indies to classics; from Jean-Luc Godard to Charles Burnett, Chris Marker to Jim Jarmusch. (see detailed schedule below)
All films will screen at 7pm, and are free and open to the public, though donations will be accepted to help defray expenses. |
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Down By Law
(dir. Jim Jarmusch, 1986, USA, B&W, 107 min.)
Feb. 2 at UFO Factory
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Killer of Sheep examines the black Los Angeles ghetto of Watts in the mid-1970s
through the eyes of Stan, a sensitive dreamer who is growing detached and numb from
the psychic toll of working at a slaughterhouse.
Frustrated by money problems, he finds respite in moments of simple beauty: the
warmth of a coffee cup against his cheek, slow dancing with his wife in the living
room, holding his daughter. The film offers no solutions; it merely presents life —
sometimes hauntingly bleak, sometimes filled with transcendent joy and gentle
humor.
Killer of Sheep was shot on location in Watts in a series of weekends on a budget of less
than $10,000, most of which was grant money. Finished in 1977 and shown
sporadically, its reputation grew and grew until it won a prize at the 1981 Berlin
International Film Festival. Since then, the Library of Congress has declared it a
national treasure as one of the first fifty on the National Film Registry and the
National Society of Film Critics selected it as one of the “100 Essential Films” of all
time.
“An American masterpiece, independent to the bone... This may be Mr. Burnett’s most radical
truth-telling.”
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
“A masterpiece. One of the most insightful and authentic dramas about African-American life on film. One of the finest American films, period.”
– Dave Kehr, International Herald Tribune
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Director Jim Jarmusch followed up his brilliant breakout film Stranger Than Paradise with another, equally beloved portrait of loners and misfits in the American landscape. When fate brings together three hapless men—an unemployed disc jockey (Tom Waits), a small-time pimp (John Lurie), and a strong-willed Italian tourist (Roberto Benigni)—in a Louisiana prison, a singular adventure ensues. Described by Jarmusch as a “neo-Beat noir comedy,” Down by Law is part nightmare and part fairy tale, featuring sterling performances and crisp black-and-white cinematography by the esteemed Robby Müller.
“Three of the damnedest performances in an eccentric ensemble since the Marx Brothers.”
– Andrew Sarris, The Village Voice
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Breathless
(dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1960, France, B&W, 90 min.)
Mar. 9 at UFO Factory
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Marker, the cinemaʼs globetrotter/essayist par excellence, travelled between Japan, Africa and Iceland to create his masterpiece Sans Soleil. Refiltering and synthesizing sounds and images with astonishing fluidity, Marker dissolves the distinctions between fiction and non-fiction film, offering the viewer the extraordinary sensation of simultaneously spanning the globe and being enclosed within someoneʼs mind.
“No two people will come away from Sans Soleil with the same impression, nor will a solitary viewer’s multiple viewings yield the same experience. Marker’s film prefigures multimedia and… approximates the experience of being trapped inside the Internet and making radical leaps of associative connection…only Marker typically prefigured the technology.”
–Eric Henderson, Slant Magazine
Marker’s La Jetée is one of the most influential, radical science-fiction films ever made, a tale of time travel told in still images.
“One of the best of all SF films is this haunting, apocalyptic 27-minute French short by the great Chris Marker.”
–Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
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A small-time thief steals a car and impulsively shoots a motorcycle policeman. Wanted by the authorities, he reunites with an American expat student and attempts to persuade her to run away with him to Italy. Based on a script by François Truffaut.
“There are precious few titles in the history of cinema that can truly be called ‘revolutionary,’ and
Godard’s Breathless is one of those few – it gave us a new way of making movies and a new way of
thinking about them, a new rhythm of life, a new way of looking at ourselves. And, like all great
pictures, it seems as fresh and startling today as it did 50 years ago.”
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Martin Scorsese
Screening supported by Brooklyn Brewery
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The release in 1955 of Satyajit Ray’s debut, Pather Panchali, introduced to the world an eloquent and important new cinematic voice. A depiction of rural Bengali life in a style inspired by Italian neorealism, this naturalistic but poetic evocation of a number of years in the life of a family introduces us to both little Apu and, just as essentially, the women who will help shape him: his independent older sister, Durga; his harried mother, Sarbajaya, who, with her husband often away, must hold the family together;
and his kindly and mischievous elderly “auntie,” Indir—vivid, multifaceted characters
all. With resplendent photography informed by its young protagonist’s perpetual sense
of discovery, the Cannes-awarded Pather Panchali is an immersive cinematic
experience and a film of elemental power.
“Never having seen a Satyajit Ray film is like never having seen the sun or the moon.”
– Akira Kurosawa
“What makes it almost unparalleled in cinema is its fusion of poignancy, humor and poetry.... It
concerns a poor boy growing up in India nearly a century ago – and yet, miraculously, it concerns us
all.”
– Andrew Robinson, New York Times |
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