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The Whitsell Auditorium and the Northwest Film Center Equipment Room are closed to the public in an effort to further stem the spread of COVID-19. All classes canceled until further notice. Stay connected to art, film, and more by signing up for our newsletter.

Genre: Crime

A Short Film About Killing

Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski

Krzysztof Kieślowski’s epic miniseries The Decalogue—contemporary stories based on the Ten Commandments played out in a Warsaw apartment block—was a …

Atlantic City

Directed by Louis Malle

“As if his 1940s noir hoodlum had lived to see the 1980s, Lancaster’s Lou Pasco catches only faint echoes of …

Band of Outsiders

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard

“After the first eight minutes of Band of Outsiders, the narrator (Godard) dryly offers a recap: ‘A pile of money. …

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Beyond Murder

Directed by Zachary T. Smith

This chilling true crime mystery reenacts the modus operandi of the oldest couple in American history to be sentenced to …

Black Coal, Thin Ice

Directed by Diao Yinan

Haunted by a botched police investigation five years earlier, former policeman Zhang has retired to a distant mining town in …

Bottle Rocket

Directed by Wes Anderson

An expansion of his short film made at the University of Texas, Anderson’s first feature signaled a unique fusion of …

Bound

Directed by Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski

The Wachowski’s debut feature foreshadows their interest in the aesthetics and tropes of film noir (which will be a recurrent …

Branded to Kill

Directed by Seijun Suzuki

This fractured film noir is the final provocation that got Suzuki fired from Nikkatsu Studios, simultaneously making him a counterculture …

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Directed by Sam Peckinpah

Chasing after a bounty on the head of an already dead man, an alcoholic pianist (Warren Oates) forges a violent …

Brute Force

Directed by Jules Dassin

“Soon-to-be-blacklisted director Jules Dassin’s excoriating and angry prison drama uses the ‘big cage’ as a metaphor for the lost innocence …

Confidential Report AKA Mr. Aradkin

Directed by Orson Welles

Bearing key similarities to The Third Man, Welles’ noir concerns small-time smuggler Guy Van Stratten (Robert Arden), who overhears a …

Criss Cross

Directed by Robert Siodmak

Arguably the prototypical Los Angeles noir and featuring extensive location photography in the Bunker Hill neighborhood shortly before it was …

The Northwest Film Center recognizes and honors the Indigenous peoples of this region on whose ancestral lands the museum now stands. These include the Willamette Tumwater, Clackamas, Kathlemet, Molalla, Multnomah and Watlala Chinook Peoples and the Tualatin Kalapuya who today are part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and many other Native communities who made their homes along the Columbia River. We also want to recognize that Portland today is a community of many diverse Native peoples who continue to live and work here. We respectfully acknowledge and honor all Indigenous communities—past, present, future—and are grateful for their ongoing and vibrant presence.