January 1, 2019 – December 31, 2019
This revolving, ongoing series of classic films and cutting-edge new work will get you moving into the week. On first Mondays, we offer a selection of classic American films both independently-produced and studio-made; second Mondays are the time for experimental cinema in all its various modes; on third Mondays, we screen essential foreign films from all over the world; finally, on fourth Mondays, we focus on documentary new and old.
Queen of Diamonds
Directed by Nina Menkes
A smoldering, crystalline portrait of an anonymous woman adrift in Las Vegas, Menkes’ newly restored noir-of-sorts stars her sister Tinka …
Kiss Me Deadly
Directed by Robert Aldrich
One of the grittiest and downright nasty films noir of the classical Hollywood cycle (albeit independently produced), Kiss Me Deadly …
The Wandering Soap Opera
Directed by Raul Ruiz, Valeria Sarmiento
Shot entirely in 1990 as part of a filmmaking workshop but never completed during Ruiz’s lifetime (he passed away in …
Variety
Directed by Bette Gordon
From a viciously layered script by legendary playwright and novelist Kathy Acker and featuring a who’s-who crew of the downtown …
Angels are Made of Light
Directed by James Longley
Coming a full 13 years after his Oscar-nominated Iraq in Fragments (2006), director James Longley returns with the ominously beautiful …
24 Frames
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami
Three years in the making and Kiarostami’s final film before his death in 2016, each segment in 24 Frames offers …
3 Women
Directed by Robert Altman
Robert Altman made a long career out of films that challenged the idea that actions stemming from rampant consumerism or …
A City of Sadness
Directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Set between the end of WWII—Japan’s withdrawal from Taiwan—and the imposition of martial law under the Kuomintang government (a proxy …
A New Leaf
Directed by Elaine May
May, as one half of the legendary comedy team Nichols and May, established herself as a comedic powerhouse on stage …
All That Heaven Allows
Directed by Douglas Sirk
Douglas Sirk made a career on moody melodramas, and perhaps none is more effective at evoking the repression of 1950s …
Bauhaus Spirit: 100 Years of Bauhaus
Directed by Niels Bolbrinker, Thomas Tielsch
The Bauhaus, a legendary and revolutionary Weimar-era design school founded by architect Walter Gropius in 1919, has been the source …
Beyond the One
Directed by Anna Marziano
One of this year’s most singularly gorgeous films (shot on both 16mm and 8mm celluloid), this experimentally minded documentary focuses …
By the Time it Gets Dark
Directed by Anocha Suwichakornpong
One of the most thrillingly assured experimental works of the last several years, Anocha Suwichakornpong’s second feature (following 2009’s Mundane …
Casa De Lava
Directed by Pedro Costa
A sensual, atmospheric arthouse zombie film par excellence, Costa’s second feature—following 1989’s strikingly luminous Blood—is set on the rugged, tiny …
Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach
Directed by Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet
Newly restored for its 50th anniversary, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet’s famously uncompromising vision of cinema is a work of …
Cold Water
Directed by Olivier Assayas
Olivier Assayas is one of contemporary France’s most piercing, confident filmmakers. Cold Water, produced in 1994 but long unavailable due …
Dead Man
Directed by Jim Jarmusch
Few cinematic collaborations have been more perfectly cast than Dead Man, Jarmusch’s legendary, incendiary “psychedelic Western.” The film follows William …
Distant Constellation
Directed by Shevaun Mizrahi
Mizrahi’s debut feature is a compelling, sensitive portrait of an Istanbul retirement community, filled with misfits, as a sleek office/residential …
Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival
Directed by Fabrizio Terranova
Donna Haraway is one of contemporary philosophy’s most important and vital thinkers, her work playful and wide ranging in a …
Double Blind (No Sex Last Night)
Directed by Sophie Calle
Already established as one of Europe’s finest contemporary artists and known for thought-provoking pieces such as Address Book (1983) and …
Double Indemnity
Directed by Billy Wilder
Wilder’s prototypical film noir, featuring the archetypal femme fatale in Barbara Stanwyck’s chilling Phyllis Dietrichson, is one of the most …
Images of the World and the Inscription of War
Directed by Harun Farocki
In 1944, at the height of the Nazi threat, the US military planned to bomb an IG Farben industrial plant, …
In Pursuit of Silence
Directed by Patrick Shen
Few documentaries (or feature narratives, for that matter), are as meditative and deeply engrossing as In Pursuit of Silence, Shen’s …
Killer of Sheep
Directed by Charles Burnett
Made as the thesis film for his Master’s degree from UCLA, Burnett’s piercing yet tender look into post-’68 African-American life …
La chinoise
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
Starring French New Wave icons Jean-Pierre Léaud (The 400 Blows), Anne Wiazemsky (Au Hasard Balthazar, Weekend), and Juliet Berto (Celine …
La Religieuse
Directed by Jacques Rivette
French New Wave legend Jacques Rivette’s second feature is one of the fiercest moral statements in a career marked by …
Make Way for Tomorrow
Directed by Leo McCarey
Director Leo McCarey made a wonderful career out of comedies like Duck Soup and The Awful Truth, but this underrated …
Marcel Proust’s Time Regained
Directed by Raoul Ruiz
Taking the seventh and final volume of Marcel Proust’s magnum opus In Search of Lost Time as the frame through …
Memories of Underdevelopment
Directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
A legendary cinematic work emanating from the golden age of Cuban cinema, Alea’s masterful vision of the tumultuous country, set …
Night School
Directed by Andrew Cohn
Following three adult students—Melissa, Shynika, and Greg—through their year in a high school diploma program in Indianapolis, Cohn’s tender, empathetic …
Notes on an Appearance
Directed by Ricky D'Ambrose
Ricky D’Ambrose, one of New York City’s most promising new filmmaking voices, makes his feature debut with the mazelike Notes …
Nude on the Moon
Directed by Doris Wishman
Legendary sexploitation director Wishman delivers one of the most surreal “nudie cuties” of all time with this zonked slice of …
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
Directed by Sam Peckinpah
One of the most tumultuous productions in Hollywood history, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid has nonetheless become the stuff …
Peppermint Soda
Directed by Diane Kurys
French actress Diane Kurys embarked on a directorial career with 1977’s unsung masterpiece Peppermint Soda, a film about the transition …
Personal Problems
Directed by Bill Gunn
Bill Gunn (Ganja & Hess) directed this “experimental soap opera” from a script he co-wrote with his friend and collaborator …
Phantom Lady
Directed by Robert Siodmak
An underappreciated film noir masterpiece, Phantom Lady is one of German emigré Robert Siodmak’s finest in a procession of films, …
Playtime
Directed by Jacques Tati
Jacques Tati made a fitfully long career out of diagnosing and then holding a mirror to normative tendencies in French …
Punishment Park
Directed by Peter Watkins
Highly controversial and chilling upon its initial release, Watkins’s brutal mockumentary follows two sets of anti-war protesters in an alternate …
Railway Sleepers
Directed by Sompot Chidgasornpongse
Eight years in the making, longtime Apichatpong Weerasethakul collaborator Chidgasornpongse’s debut regards Thai society through the somewhat unlikely lens of …
Rancho Notorious
Directed by Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang’s finest Hollywood western, Rancho Notorious is an oddball Technicolor fever dream, a revenge story for the ages. Vern …
Riddles of the Sphinx
Directed by Laura Mulvey, Peter Wollen
In 1975, Laura Mulvey published her best-known work, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” which quickly became a foundational work of …
Sixty Six
Directed by Lewis Klahr
Los Angeles based collage film artist Klahr, whose vital work has unfolded over the last thirty years, has made the …
Solaris
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
One of the most profoundly meditative sci-fi films ever created, Solaris is one of Russian master Tarkovsky’s finest achievements in …
Spettacolo
Directed by Jeff Malmberg, Chris Shellen
The residents of Monticchiello, a small hamlet in the Tuscany hills, have since the end of World War II produced …
Taste of Cement
Directed by Ziad Kalthoum
While Aleppo and much of Syria have been systematically destroyed by their iron-fist dictator, Bashar al-Assad, millions of refugees have …
The Departure
Directed by Lana Wilson
Set in the gorgeous countryside of Giju prefecture, Japan, Wilson’s (After Tiller) film follows Ittetsu Nemoto, a former punk and …
The Gold Diggers
Directed by Sally Potter
Sally Potter’s (Orlando, The Tango Lesson) debut feature is a thrilling experimental musical following two women at opposite ends of …
The Juniper Tree
Directed by Nietzchka Keene
Set in medieval Iceland, The Juniper Tree follows Margit (Björk in a riveting performance) and her older sister Katla (Bryndis …
The Other Side of Everything
Directed by Mila Turajlić
Turajlić’s probing documentary is part portrait of her mother, the dissident academic Srbijanka Turajlić, and part portrait of a country …
The Passenger
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
The original Italian title of Antonioni’s existential masterpiece, which directly translates to Profession: Reporter, belies none of the dread or …
The Prairie Trilogy
Directed by John Hanson, Rob Nilsson
In the late 1970s, Rob Nilsson (Northern Lights) and John Hanson visited North Dakota for a series of interviews with …
The Red Soul
Directed by Jessica Gorter
The Red Soul, on its surface, seeks to trouble the notion that modern-day Russia is totally in thrall to Putin’s …
The Rest I Make Up
Directed by Michelle Memran
Filmmaker Memran’s directorial debut focuses on the legendary New York City-based, Cuban-born playwright María Irene Fornés (May 14, 1930 - …
The Smallest Show on Earth
Directed by Basil Dearden
Matt (Bill Travers) and Jean (Virginia McKenna) are a young, newly married couple with their whole lives ahead of them. …
Time to Die
Directed by Arturo Ripstein
Mexican cinema legend Arturo Ripstein’s directorial debut Time to Die, with a script co-written by Gabriel García Márquez, is a …
Tomorrow Never Knows
Directed by Adam Sekuler
In Sekuler’s powerful and intimate film, Shar and partner Cynthia face a difficult decision after Shar is diagnosed with early-onset …
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Winner of the Palme d’Or (best film) at the Cannes Film Festival, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives …
Vagabond
Directed by Agnès Varda
In Varda’s own words a poetic soliloquy for an unknown woman, this 1985 masterpiece follows Mona (an unforgettable Sandrine Bonnaire), …
Wattstax
Directed by Mel Stuart
The legendary Memphis record label Stax produced a benefit concert in 1972 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for the …
WR: Mysteries of the Organism
Directed by Dušan Makavejev
A tragic figure in the history of psychiatry, Wilhelm Reich is often credited with sparking the fire of the sexual …
Yellow is Forbidden
Directed by Pietra Brettkelly
World-renowned fashion designer Guo Pei, working in the field since the late 1980s but becoming increasingly known in the 2000s, …
You and Me
Directed by Fritz Lang
Department store owner Mr. Morris (Harry Carey) runs a tight ship, but differs from his competitors in that he hires …