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Harvard Film Archive Cinematheque CarpenterHarvard Film Center Archive for theCinematheque Visual Arts Carpenter Center for24 the Quincy Visual Street Arts Cambridge,24 Quincy MA 02138Street Cambridge, MA 02138

The Harvard Film Archive (HFA) provides the faculty and students of Harvard University and the greater scholarly community with academic research services and a public film program that offers audiences the opportunity to view international and independent films and to interact with filmmakers and artists.

Film series are scheduled year-round and include retrospectives of distinguished directors and actors, surveys of important periods and movements, and in-depth explorations of historic themes and contemporary issues. Screenings of films from the HFA collection as well as those from other collections are held in the HFA Cinematheque, a 210-seat theater with state-of-the-art equipment. About The HFA frequently brings filmmakers to introduce and discuss their work, and over the years has hosted such renowned artists as photographer and filmmaker William Klein, Swedish actress Bibi Andersson, Canadian director Atom Egoyan, independent filmmaker Harmony Korine, the “Father of African Cinema” Ousamane Sembene, Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, and actor-director Tommy Lee Jones, among others.

Established with the assistance of the Luce Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1979, the Harvard Film Archive has grown into a rich resource for scholars and filmmakers. Its extensive collection includes 16mm and 35mm film prints, as well as rare video materials, vintage film posters, and promotional materials. As an affiliate of the International Federation of Film Archives, the HFA also has access to film prints from over a hundred repositories.

Tickets for all regular screenings are available 45 minutes before show time at the Cinematheque on the lower level of the Carpenter Center. HFA does not sell tickets in advance unless indicated otherwise, and a separate admission fee is charged for each screening.

Ticket Prices $8 - Regular Admission $6 - Non-Harvard Students, Harvard Faculty and Staff, and Senior Citizens Regular HFA screenings are free for all Harvard students with a valid photo ID. $10 - Special Event Ticket Price for all patrons

The Harvard Film Archive is located in the lower level of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at 24 Quincy Street, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We are east of the Harvard Square Red Line T Stop, in between the Harvard Faculty Club and the Fogg Art Museum, one block north of Massachusetts Avenue between Broadway and Harvard Streets in the Harvard University campus.

Parking Admission Although parking in Cambridge is difficult (most of the surrounding streets have restricted parking for Cambridge residents only), metered parking on Broadway and Harvard Streets, as well as the rest of Harvard Square, is free after 6 pm. Film-goers are encouraged to use public transportation, particularly the & Directions MBTA Red Line.

From the Turnpike (I-90) Take Exit 18, “Cambridge-Allston,” and proceed straight upon exiting, through the stoplights and over the River Street Bridge. Continue on River Street, which soon becomes Western Avenue. Cross Massachusetts Avenue at Central Square, at which point Western Avenue becomes Prospect Street. Continue on Prospect Street and take a left at the second set of lights, onto Harvard Street. Proceed on Harvard Street until you reach Prescott Street. The entrance to the Carpenter Center is in between Prescott Street and Quincy Street.

The HFA Public Film Program depends on the generous support of members of the community to ensure the health and longevity of our unique blend of programming. You can become a member by contacting the Archive at 617-496-6046 or by filling out and mailing in our Membership Form (in PDF format) along with a check in the appropriate amount to Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Friend of the Archive ($750) Friends of the Archive receive two individual admission passes for an entire year, a subscription to the bi- monthly program calendar, reserved tickets via e-mail or phone for special events and in-person appearances, and an invitation for two to press screenings and private receptions.

Director’s Circle ($500) Director’s Circle members receive two individual admission passes for an entire year, a subscription to the bi-monthly program calendar, and reserved tickets via e-mail or phone for special events and in-person appearances.

Silver Screen Society ($300) Silver Screen members receive an individual admission pass for an entire year, a subscription to the bi-monthly program calendar, and reserved tickets via e-mail or phone for special events and in-person appearances.

Individual/Dual Membership ($55/$100)

Membership Members receive $5 admission to regular HFA programming, a subscription to the bi-monthly program calendar, and reserved tickets via e-mail or phone for special events and in-person appearances.

Student/Senior Membership ($35) Members receive $4 admission to regular HFA programming, a subscription to the bi-monthly program calendar, and reserved tickets via e-mail or phone for special events and in-person appearances. SUN The Magic Flute MON From the Life Winter Light: A Tribute to Ingmar Bergman 13 14 3pm (Trollflöjten) 7pm of Marionettes “Any filmmaker trying to get into the texture of human relations ends up in Bergman Stockholm’s Drottningholm Theater is a marvel: This film opens with the killing (in color) of a territory. What I learned from Bergman is that you can explore human relationships with a a still-working theater with 18th-century stage prostitute by a middle-class young man, then certain level of brutality and crudity as long as you love your characters.” – machinery. Bergman takes full advantage of both backs up for a series of scenes (in black and white) the theater’s wonders and Mozart’s music in his explaining what led to the crime. The master here Bergman’s death last year prompted a number of reminiscences about his life and work, staging of the opera The Magic Flute (performed works in German without any of his usual stable as well as the chance to reflect on the Swedish director’s long assumed status as one of the here in Swedish) and in turn, his filming of that of actors in this tale of a tortured relationship staging. The tale of young lovers tested is set against between a pair of young lovers that leads to masters of world cinema. And yet today he remains a name universally recognized but not Bergman’s attention to the goings-on in the wings sexual obsession and murder. always understood. during the performance, and in the audience. MON The Face, aka The FRI Summer Interlude SAT Sawdust and Tinsel SUN In the Presence of a Clown 14 11 12 13 9pm Magician (Ansiktet) 7pm (Sommarlek) 7pm (Gycklarnas afton) 7pm (Larmar och gör sig till) When a mid-nineteenth century traveling magi- Like the somewhat later masterpiece Monika, The owner of a ramshackle traveling circus makes Committed to an Uppsala asylum in the mid-1920s cian and hypnotist rolls into town, he is sum- Summer Interlude focuses on a young woman’s a desperate attempt to reunite with his estranged for attempting to murder his fiancée, an eccentric moned to give a command performance for the summer of love. Reflecting Bergman’s affinity for wife while his mistress, the bareback rider, suffers inventor obsesses on death and Schubert. Once authorities, who are eager to debunk him. He backstage drama, the woman here is a ballerina a humiliating affair with an actor. This bleak view released, he schemes to make the first sound film, proves too clever for them in this allegory about reminiscing on her first lover, the awkward and of human relationships is mirrored in the film’s basing it on his obsessions and on a melodramatic art as artifice and its ability to outflank those who reticent Henrik. The film, Bergman’s first with a striking use of shadows and darkness. Sawdust and fairy tale told to him by another inmate. This look think they are immune to it. The Face is at once female protagonist, marked a new maturity in Tinsel is now regarded as one of Bergman’s early back at Bergman’s own career is an homage to the a spooky Gothic and a darkly erotic comedy. the young director’s filmmaking. masterpieces. silent cinemas of Sweden and Germany. FRI Winter Light SAT Through a Glass, Darkly SUN The Virgin Spring 11 12 13 9pm (Nattvardsgästerna) 9pm (Såsom i en spegel) 9:15pm (Jungfrukällen) In a kind of passing of the baton from one Bergman Perhaps Bergman’s greatest film, Through a Glass When Max von Sydow’s young daughter is raped actor to another, Gunnar Björnstrand plays a Darkly renders a fragile woman’s descent into and gruesomely murdered, fate delivers the killers pastor struggling with a crisis of faith even as he insanity as a cruel and beautiful poem. Harriet into his hands. The plot of The Virgin Spring is as tries to minister to Max von Sydow, playing a Andersson brings a dangerous incandescence to simple and as clear as a parable, but the power of severely depressed parishioner. This austere portrait Karin, whose mental disintegration unleashes long the film comes from Bergman’s ability to give all of a man’s crisis of faith also boasts some of Sven buried incestuous passion and transforms her fits the blood-letting a real impact. The Virgin Spring Nykvist’s most strikingly beautiful cinematography. of religious ecstasy into harrowing visions of an remains a shocking film, and sadly, its ambivalence Profoundly moving, Winter Light is shot through uncaring, punishing god. about retaliatory violence has also retained its with human warmth despite the wintry setting timeliness. (Horror fans will note that the film was and the severity of the theme. remade as Last House on the Left by Wes Craven.)

Vice vs. Virtue in Pre-Code Hollywood SUNKongo A new and remarkable energy animated the American cinema between the coming of sound 20 at the end of the 1920’s and the strict enforcement of the 1934 Production Code censoring One of the most shocking and lurid films 7pm of the pre-Code era, this underrated gem “unwholesome” onscreen behavior. During the pre-Code era Hollywood found commercial stars Walter Huston as “Deadlegs” Flint, a and critical success in a series of films that radically expanded the previously acceptable ruthless trader in the Congo who seeks revenge thresholds for exploring sex and crime related themes. The twilight of the Jazz Age and the on the man who crippled him by tormenting his daughter (Velez), dragging her from a convent Great Depression encouraged directors and screenwriters to seriously examine the moral and to a brothel. Deep in the jungle, Flint rules over sociopolitical underpinnings of the changing nation through frank and, quite often, extremely a rogue’s gallery of grotesques with sex, drugs graphic stories designed to titillate and shock. Encouraged by the box office, Hollywood and alcohol – not to mention – leeches! Not for produced startling depictions of infidelity, prostitution, drug use, crime, homosexuality and the fainthearted. miscegenation. The injustices of corporate capitalism and the sexual experimentation of the period, particularly by women, were also newly exploited as fitting subjects for the screen. The Sign of the Cross Cecil B. DeMille pulls out all the stops in this The frequent mythologization of the pre-Code cinema as an apogee of daring and uncom- tale of early Christians persecuted in ancient Rome. Charles Laughton stars as a leering, promised studio filmmaking often obscures the fact that the compromise of the Production lascivious Nero, complete with spit curls. In the Code was, in fact, self-imposed by the studios themselves. Although Hollywood directors and words of Paramount’s publicity, “Rome burns screenwriters would ultimately discover a creative friction working with and against subse- again! The sets are marvelous and the costumes spell sex. There’s Claudette Colbert in a milk quent censorship rules, the films of the pre-Code era reveal the potential of a decidedly unruly bath. And Fredric March using the sensuous cinema largely unrestrained by the mores of polite society. Joyzelle to break down the resistance of Elissa ALL ARE DOUBLE FEATURE ADMISSION Landi – mentally, and how!” FRI Call Her Savage SAT Search For Beauty SUNTwo Seconds MON Employee’s Entrance 18 19 20 21 Former “It” Girl Clara Bow blazed her Ida Lupino’s riotous American screen debut Strapped to the electric chair, John Allen 7pm Employee’s Entrance offers a deeply 7pm way into the 1930’s with this scorching 3pm is a risqué tale of two Olympic athletes duped 3pm (Robinson) recalls the sordid circumstances cynical look into the cutthroat world of cautionary tale about a Texas debutante gone bad. by a pair of unscrupulous hustlers into fronting leading to his murder conviction. In the final the skyscraper boardrooms floating above the Adultery and miscegenation are mere details a nudie tabloid disguised as a fitness magazine. moments of his life, memories of the doomed man’s miseries of the Depression era. The ever-dastardly in Nasa “Dynamite” Springer’s whirlwind life While the athletes dream of opening a fitness past rush in. Robinson’s incredible performance Warren William stars as a self-made mogul who of spirited rebellion and debauchery. One of the resort, their patrons have other ideas. Search for makes palpably real the struggles of a riveter with rules his department store with an iron fist and most beloved films of pre-Code aficionados,Call Beauty itself often seems to be little more than an grand ambitions destroyed by a loveless marriage a ruthless drive. Gleefully driving his enemies to Her Savage features a fascinating Hollywood excuse to parade cheese - and beefcake - before and a scheming taxi dancer. Robinson and director suicide, William remains a disturbingly seductive recreation of a Greenwich Village cabaret, complete the camera. The result is an entertaining comedy Mervyn LeRoy reunited to deliver this disturbing anti-hero. Loretta Young co-stars as one of the with a pair of pansies and a slumming expedition. with a playfully dirty mind. tale of crime and its cruel punishment. unemployed driven to desperate measures. A subversive and wickedly entertaining film. Girl Without a Room Female Blood Money This musical romp through bohemian Paris stars Wild Boys of the Road Ruth Chatterton is Alison Drake, the owner of A minor masterpiece by one of the 1930s great Charles Farrell as an amateur American painter Impoverished by the Depression, teenage buddies an automobile factory who, like a latter-day overlooked talents, Roland Brown, Blood Money who wins an all-expenses-paid trip to the City of Tom and Ed take off to fend for themselves and Catherine the Great, keeps a stable of studs offers a biting portrait of corporate capitalism Light to study art. But the Tennessee wallflower lighten their unemployed parents’ load. Far from chosen from among her comeliest male employees. as a mad circus run by thieves and perverts. (who uses his imagination to paint nudes, out of home, the boys’ romantic dreams of new found But as soon as any of them show signs of wanting Brown assembles a fascinating line-up of rogues modesty) falls in with a boisterous crowd in turn freedom and idyllic odyssey are shattered by the some romance along with their sex, Alison cuts from Los Angeles’ seedy underbelly – sexual of the century Montparnasse and gets schooled in brutal lessons of the dog-eat-dog nature of life on them loose. She finally meets her match in the masochists, cross-dressing lesbians, kleptomaniacs affairs of a more indelicate nature. In the film’s the ragged fringes of society. Such clear-eyed and form of George Brent, who drives her nuts by and corrupt politicians. Eager for an extra set très moderne nightclubs and starving artists’ unflinching depictions of poverty, lawlessness and resisting her entirely. Chatterton was one of the of manhandling hands, she in turn falls for a lofts, anything goes as Paris’ finest vamps and the victimization of youth would soon become rare greatest female stars of the pre-Code era. young bank robber, who pulls the whole lot into chiselers exploit the “banjo-eyed numbskull” for in Hollywood. a citywide scandal. a good time.

DIRECTOR Apichatpong Malee and the Boy Weerasethakul APPEARING A collaboration where a 10 year-old boy who roamed around Bangkok, gathering sounds for the IN PERSON film as the filmmaker followed him with a camera. SAT Like the Relentless Fury of 19 Blissfully Yours follows a young Thai the Pounding Waves 7pm woman and her taciturn Burmese boyfriend, This documentary leisurely examines the shifting an illegal immigrant in need of a forged ID, as they focus of image and sound. venture out to the countryside for a bucolic idyll punctuated by matter-of-fact sexual interludes. Thirdworld Composed of meditative long takes, the film is Thirdworld depicts the landscapes, metaphorical casually erotic, playful – and gently ruminative. Yet and actual, of the southern island Panyi. the film’s serene, pastoral nature is not without an oblique political conscience, hinted at by the 0116643225059 As images of a photograph and an apartment devastated Thai economy and Burmese military Mysterious Objects: Apichatpong Weerasethakul interior alternate, a telephone conversation links junta that lurk sinisterly in the deep background. With the release of each of his films, Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul (1970–) the two spaces claims a number of new converts. As viewers of his recent features Tropical Malady and Ghost of Asia can attest, Apichatpong is one of the most original, and delightful, FRI Short Work On a Thai island, two boys and a girl are invited to 25 cinematic talents to have emerged in some time. His radical reinvention of the basic archi- nine short films make a movie and are provided with an actor whose tecture of the fictional feature film is infused with warmth and humor, as well as a rigorous 7pm function is to perform the tasks dictated by them. intelligence and a striking (and strikingly beautiful) visual style. The resulting work is eclectic The Anthem My Mother’s Garden and virtually impossible to categorize as it experiments skillfully with narrative and tone, This short presents a “Cinema Anthem” which An impression of a jewelry collection and a comically praises and blesses the feature to come. tribute to Weerasethakul’s mother’s garden continually subverting expectations, shifting as it does from comedy to drama, dark to light, lyric realism to… something stranger. We are pleased to present a sampler of some of Windows Worldly Desires “Windows is an improvisation using a little The video is a little simulation of manners, Apichatpong’s earlier work, including a number of short films virtually unseen in this country physical movement to capture natural phenomena dedicated to the memories of filmmaking in the and his second feature, the luminous Blissfully Yours. through the camera eye’s mechanism.” – A.W. jungle during the years 2001-2005.”

SUN Les Destinées 27 Driven: The Films of Olivier Assayas 3pm sentimentales Like the founders of the French New Wave, Olivier Assayas (1955–) discovered the cinema Assayas’ unexpected foray into the period film first as a critic writing for the influential journal Cahiers du cinéma. The dynamic eclecticism adapts Jacques Chardonne’s epic novel of the same name about the rise and fall of a French family Assayas would evince in his filmmaking is already fully legible in his criticism, which focuses and its Limoges porcelain business. Jean Barnery with equal insight on a diverse range of directors from Ingmar Bergman and Kenneth Anger (Berling) struggles through two marriages, the to Hou Hsiao-Hsien and King Hu. Great War and the coming mass-production that threatens to render his family’s factory obsolete. And like the New Wave directors, Assayas’ films are inspired both by art cinema and Assayas skillfully weds this narrative to wide-screen cinematography that embraces both his usual popular culture, intertwining currents from “high” and “low.” In place of the Hollywood cool, muted palette and the sunnier hues of central B-movie beloved by the nouvelle vague, Assayas channels the gritty energy of punk and France and Switzerland. post-punk culture and Asian genre films, mixed with quieter strains of East Asian hip and SAT Cold Water SUN Paris Awakens cool. While Assayas is well-schooled in the venerated canon of of postwar world cinema 26 27 (Bresson and Visconti, Ozu and Mizoguchi), his work also gravitates markedly towards the 7pm (L’eau froide) 7pm (Paris s’éveille) avant-gardist margins (especially Anger and Warhol, but also the Situationists) and the In the time-honored tradition of The 400 Blows Familial affection (or lack thereof) becomes entangled and Vagabond, Cold Water offers a tale of alienated with budding sexual desire in Paris Awakens. Young perennially young “new waves” of Hong Kong and Taiwan. youth, focused this time upon a pair of troubled Adrien comes to live with his estranged father, but adolescents who abruptly desert the families that their awkward reunion is given an Oedipal twist by In a filmmaking career now more than twenty years old (including mid-1980s screenplays are unwilling or unable to understand them. Christine Adrien’s feelings for his father’s young girlfriend. directed by André Téchiné), Assayas has consistently conveyed an active imagination and a is locked up for shoplifting, while Gilles chafes Further complications unfold with the revelation continued fascination with the dynamics of love, lust and affection, with misfits and criminals, under the weight of a smothering father (played of a secret in Adrien’s recent past. Paris Awakens by László Szabó). The climax of the film is a foreshadows the complex, anguished family dynamics and with cinema’s unique ability to make them all real. bravura extended sequence set at a teenage party in Les Destinées sentimentales and Clean. in an empty house in the woods. DIRECTOR OLIVER ASSAYAS SUN HHH – A Portrait APPEARING IN PERSON SAT 27 26 In this bold updating of Feuillade for 9pm of Hou Hsiao-hsien MON Boarding Gate 9pm the age of global capital and digital As a critic for Cahiers du cinéma, Assayas was among 28 Boarding Gate is a mix of Hong Kong media, rival shadowy multinational corporations the first to recognize the profound talent of Hou 7pm funk and Eurocool. “It” girl of the hipster send their attractive minions (Chloë Sevigny, Hsiao-hsien, the Taiwanese director often considered set Asia Argento stars as a young woman working Connie Nielsen, and Gina Gershon, among others) to be one of the greatest filmmakers working today. as a drug runner for her Hong Kong boyfriend to scheme, lie, or even kill for a stake in Tokyo- Assayas’ documentary follows Hou as he wanders (Ng), whose life gets even more complicated when Anime, a Japanese company that produces 3-D through Taipei visiting childhood friends and discussing her sleazy ex (Madsen) reappears. Bouncing animated porno-graphy. demonlover is a cynical his life and work. In keeping with the eclectic trajectory between Paris and HK, the film reveals itself and beautifully rendered postmodern fable of sex, of his career, Assayas offered this intimate portrait to be a deliberately feisty nose-thumbing at the high fashion and espionage as the new currencies of a still relatively unknown Hou as an immediate new global marketplace (including, as Assayas of international cyber-business. follow-up to his breakout hit (1996). notes, “the new order of film finance”).