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coming up at boston's independent moviehouses - the brattle, harvard film archive, mfa and coolidge

Directed by John Boorman, Appearing in Person With Brendan Gleeson, Adrian Dunbar, Sean McGinley UK 1998, 35mm, b/w, 124 min. Print from Sony Pictures Classics Boorman's career-long fascination with ambivalent or ambiguous protagonists reaches an apogee in the veritable antiheroof The General, a character closely modeled on real-life Dublin gangster Martin Cahill, who in the 1980s managed to run afoul not just of the law but also the Catholic Church and IRA. Boorman himself had a run-in with Cahill, who burgled the director’s house, stealing the gold record for Deliverance’s “Dueling Banjos.” In marked contrast to the large-scale canvases of Hope and Glory or The Emerald Forest, The General’s sober black-and-white cinematography marked a return to the simplicity of Boorman's early BBC documentaries and the unadorned force of Point Blank. The Magner's Irish Film Festival Excellence Award one day only find/upload a trailer

Directed by John Boorman, Appearing in Person With Lee Marvin, Toshirô Mifune US 1968, 35mm, color, 103 min. Print courtesy of the Irish Film Archive One of the most inspired casting decisions of 20th century cinema pairs Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune as a United States Marine and a Japanese officer stranded together on a deserted Pacific island during World War II. The initial hostility and distrust brought on by the soldiers' unwillingness and inability to communicate eventually gives way to a fragile, tense relationship forged by their struggle to survive the harsh conditions of the island. For Boorman’s second film with Marvin after Point Blank, the actors and director drew on the Marvin's own hellish experiences in the Pacific War. The typically Boormanian trial by fire undergone by Marvin and Mifune gives way to a reflective variation on the war film, that eschews combat for deeper inner and inter-personal conflicts. one day only find/upload a trailer

Directed by John Boorman. With Dave Clark, Barbara Ferris, Lenny Davidson UK 1965, 35mm, b/w, 91 min. Print from Warner Brothers Conceived by the Dave Clark Five as an answer to the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, Catch Us If You Can is both an expression of the spirit of Swinging London in the 1960s and a prescient critique of its inevitable commodification. The story tells of a famous young model (Barbara Ferris, in a part designed for Marianne Faithfull) who flees the set of a television commercial with a stuntman. Their subsequent road trip in a white Jaguar leads to encounters with beatniks, military training exercises and a costume ball, all the while being chased by henchmen from the ad agency. The film’s style blends New Wave playfulness with the analytic coolness that underpins much of Boorman’s work. “We drew a portrait of a shallow, materialistic society, controlled and manipulated by advertising where youth was a commodity. It was a bleak picture, but expressed as comedy.”—J.B. one day only

Directed by John Boorman. With John Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty US 1972, 35mm, color, 110 min. Print from Warner Brothers One of the high points of the 1970s “New Hollywood,” Deliverance was a hugely influential critical and commercial success. Boorman's classic film lays bare two key Seventies preoccupations—anxiety about the environment and uncertainty about the meaning and worth of masculinity—into a brilliantly brooding existential horror story about a group of four middle aged Atlanta men whose weekend canoe trip in the woods turns into a fight for their lives. While a faithful adaptation the riveting novel by poet James Dickey, who also wrote the screenplay, Deliverance is also an important extension of the critique of violence central to key Boorman films such as Point Break and Hell in the Pacific. one day only

Directed by John Boorman. Sebastian Rice-Edwards, Geraldine Muir, Sarah Miles UK 1987, 35mm, color, 113 min. Print from Sony Many of Boorman’s best works center around a protagonist whose placid existence is suddenly transformed by a strange and violent eruption from the outside world. In Hope and Glory, it is Bill, a nine year-old living in London, whose life is upturned and intensified by the brutality of the 1940-41 Blitz. As the grownups worry, the adolescents flirt and fall in love, and the children rejoice in the freedom afforded by the disruptions of the bombing. The film is perhaps Boorman’s most classical, linking streamlined storytelling at its most entertaining to the director’s fascination with the anarchic side of human nature that is both troubling and cathartic. one day only

Directed by John Boorman. With Marcello Mastroianni, Billie Whitelaw, Calvin Lockhart UK 1970, 35mm, color, 104 min. Print from MGM In this Felliniesque allegory of racial and class tension, Marcello Mastroianni plays the title role, a deposed prince living in exile in a run-down London mansion. Watching birds from his window and ignoring the plans of hangers-on to restore him to his lost throne, Leo's gradual involvement with his impoverished black neighbors leads to a climactic act of self-dispossession. One of Boorman's unsung masterpieces, Leo the Last marks an early highpoint in his experiments in art direction. Decor, costumes, and backgrounds are all black, white or brown, and even the exteriors are severely desaturated. The soundtrack is even more experimental, revealing the director’s interest in the musical collages of composer Luciano Berio. one day only

Directed by John Boorman. With Powers Boothe, Meg Foster, Yara Vaneau UK 1985, 35mm, color, 113 min. Print courtesy of the Irish Film Archive The Emerald Forest echoes the deep concern of Deliverance for the alienation of modern society caused by its radical separation from nature. Boorman cast his own son as a young American boy whose kidnapping by an indigenous tribe in Brazil leads his father—an engineer building a dam in the Amazon—on a desperate search that lasts several years. Unlike Deliverance's vision of nature as a terrifyingly indifferent force, The Emerald Forest explores its ultimately benevolent side. It is at once an engrossing ecological fable, a recasting of the Oedipal drama and a post-colonial remake of The Searchers. one day only

Directed by Orson Welles. With Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau, John Gielgud Spain/Switzerland 1965, 35mm, b/w, 115 min. Print from the Harvard Film Archive Collection One of the few films over which Orson Welles wielded complete creative control, Chimes at Midnight is a creative, combinatory adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Even more than a sublime John Gielgud as the guilt-ridden Henry IV and Jeanne Moreau as a lusty Doll Tearsheet, the most fascinating performance comes from Welles himself in a riveting Falstaff that is a classic Welles grotesque – by turns abrasive, gentle, pathetic and boastful. Among Welles’ most movingfilms, Chimes at Midnight reveals the relationship between Falstaff and Prince Hall to be Shakespeare’s nuanced reflection on the difficult gap between political power and its human instrument. one day only

Directed by Richard Wilson, Bill Krohn, Myron Meisel. With Orson Welles France/US 1993, 35mm, color and b/w, 89 min. Print from Swank In 1942, in the midst of the editing The Magnificent Ambersons, Welles famously abandoned Los Angeles for Brazil, accepting an RKO contract for a State Department sponsored film project comprised of a handful of segments set primarily in Mexico and Brazil whose goal was to strengthen relationships with the United States' good neighbors in Latin America. In the early 1990s, a group of scholars and historians rescued the incredible and previously unseen footage from It’s All True to create this insightful documentary that intertwines Welles' own filmed stories with the fascinating tale of the project's genesis and demise. Sunday November 30 at 3pm Othello Directed by Orson Welles. With Orson Welles, Michéal MacLiammoir, Suzanne Cloutier US/Italy/France/Morocco 1948–52, 35mm, b/w, 91 min. Print courtesy of 1955-85, video, 125 min. Among Welles' most legendary unfinished projects is the thriller The Deep, based on a novel by Charles Williams and filmed at the Dalmatian coast in Croatia, and meant by Welles to be a crossover film and more commercial venture. “My hope is that it won’t be an art-house movie. I hope it’s the kind of movie I enjoy seeing myself. I felt it was high time to show that we could make some money.” (Orson Welles). His last project was King Lear, a film that exists only as the revealing explanatory video designed to instruct his producer on the nuances of his proposed Shakespeare adaptation. In addition to important scenes and excerpts of The Deep, this program will also show some footage from The Other Side of The Wind, The Dreamers and Welles' dream project, Don Quixote. imdb mrqe --> one day only

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Directed by Orson Welles. With Orson Welles, Michéal MacLiammoir, Suzanne Cloutier US/Italy/France/Morocco 1948–52, 35mm, b/w, 91 min. Print courtesy of the Library of Congress A follow-up to his innovative 1948 adaptation of Macbeth for Republic Pictures, Welles' Othello was plagued with delays and budget problems from its very first day. Welles’ genius and resourcefulness transformed obstacles into opportunities, such as the famous fight scene staged in a steamy Turkish bath after the production’s costumes failed to arrive. While Welles' cosmetic dark skin has contributed to the film's general neglect, he gives one of his finest performances, conjuring a genuinely moving Othello who is deeply plagued by love and jealousy. Despite the film's renown – it garnered the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1952 – Othello remained virtually impossible to see until a wonderful 1992 restoration made new prints available. one day only

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Directed by Nathaniel Dorsky, Appearing in Person US 2008, 16mm, color, silent, 15 min. Print from Nathaniel Dorsky Dark and stately is the warm, graceful tenderness of the Sarabande. – N.D. one day only find/upload a trailer

The Strange M. Victor Directed by Jean Grémillon. With Raimu, Pierre Blanchar, Viviane Romance France 1938, 35mm, b/w, 97 min. French with English subtitles one day only find/upload a trailer

Directed by Nagisa Oshima. With David Bowie, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Tom Conti UK/Japan 1983, 35mm, color, 122 min. English and Japanese with English subtitles Print from Janus/Criterion Oshima's unconventional adaptation of Laurence van der Post's celebrated memoir of imprisonment in a Japanese war camp adds a lush and at times almost operatic dimension to the book, combining its moving tale of camaraderie and cultural difference with an unusual critique of masculine authority and the homoeroticism of the bushido code. Starring a mesmerizing David Bowie in one of his great film roles, Oshima's late masterpiece also features memorable performances by Ryuichi Sakamoto – who composed the film's incredible score – and Takeshi Kitano in his very first film screen appearance. Made at the height of Oshima's later international period, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence's exploration of the Japanese nation and image as seen by outsiders offers a fascinating counterpoint to the imperious and insightful scrutiny of the Japanese psyche that cuts across Oshima's work. one day only find/upload a trailer

Directed by Jean Grémillon. With Suzy Delair, Arlette Thomas, Fernand Ledoux France 1949, 16mm, b/w, 92 min. French with English subtitles Print courtesty of the French Ministry Gremillon’s intriguing mix of fairy tale and film noir focuses on a destitute aristocrat who falls in love with the local innkeeper’s mistress. one day only

Directed by Nagisa Oshima. With Yusuke Kawazu, Miyuki Kuwano, Yoshiko Kuga Japan 1960, 35mm, color, 96 min. Japanese with English subtitles Print courtesy of the Kawakita Institute Oshima's still-shocking portrait of reckless adolescence chronicles the doomed, desperate love of a high school couple determined at all costs to categorically reject the mediocrity and mendacity of adulthood. A lucid vision of a lurid and remarkably alive world of dangerous extremities, Cruel Story of Youth finds a pulsing beauty in the neon-lit underworld of irremediably corrupted youth captured by its extraordinary widescreen compositions. A landmark of postwar Japanese cinema, Oshima's second Shochiku film was a surprise box office hit that temporarily repaired his precarious standing with the studio and went on to become an icon of the taiyozoku, or Sun Tribe, films, the popular cycle of overripe youth exploitation pictures that were an important staple of Japanese cinema during the early 1960s. one day only

Directed by Nagisa Oshima. With Kayoko Honoo, Isao Sasaki, Masahiko Tsugawa Japan 1960, 35mm, color, 87 min. English and Japanese with English subtitles Print courtesy of the Japan Foundation Assigned to make a topical youth film, Oshima produced an intense, theatrically inflected study of Osaka criminal gangs that, like the films of Pasolini, finds both dignity and cruelty in the violent world of the criminal proletariat. Oshima uses a fragmentary narrative structure to interweave multiple stories of petty criminality and prostitution into a brutal typology of the underworld emerging in Japan's war-scarred slums. The Sun's Burial is tempered by the unusual beauty of its mise-en-scene and the choreographed long takes that follow the rhythmic rise and fall of the symbolically overripe sun that casts and unnatural glow over the film. Friday December 12 at 7pm Night and Fog in Japan (Nihon no yoru to kiri) Directed by Nagisa Oshima. With Fumio Watanabe, Miyuki Kuw one day only

Directed by Nagisa Oshima. With Fumio Watanabe, Miyuki Kuwano, Masahiko Tsugawa Japan 1960, 35mm, color, 107 min. Print courtesty of the Kawakita Institute Oshima took full advantage of the directorial carte blanche briefly granted him by the surprise box office success of Cruel Story of Youth to create his first truly radical film. Its title an overt homage to Alain Resnais, Night and Fog in Japan explores a similarly uncompromising and politically charged formal language as his New Wave hero by almost entirely restricting the camera to the extended sequence-shots that would become an important signature of Oshima's early work. The camera's restlessly pans back and forth between the polarized factions at a wedding as they debate the failed legacy of the Japanese student uprisings. Written and filmed in total secret from his Shochiku superiors, Night and Fog in Japan's political outspokennessincensed the studio, who pulled the film after only three days and adamantly refused angry critics' viewing requests. one day only

Directed by Nagisa Oshima. With Rentaro Mikuni, Sadako Sawamura, Hugh Hurd Japan 1961, 35mm, b/w, 97 min. Print courtesy of the Kawakita Institute Immediately following his angry break with Shochiku over their unyielding suppression of Night and Fog in Japan, Oshima turned to an adaptation of an unsettling and politically trenchant fable by Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe. The story of an African-American pilot captured by the inhabitants of a remote mountain village in the final days of WWII, The Catch's study of the Japanese peasant as national archetype offers perhaps the closest link to the work of Shohei Imamura, the contemporary with whom Oshima is most often compared. With its vehement insistence on the collective guilt of the Japanese people, The Catch makes clear Oshima's categorical rejection of the humanistic interpretations of the war prevalent in postwar Japanese cinema. one day only

Directed by Nagisa Oshima. With Fumio Watanabe, Akiko Koyama, Tetsuo Abe Japan 1969, 35mm, color, 105 min. English and Japanese with English subtitles Print courtesy of the Kawakita Institute Based on the shocking story of a young Japanese couple jailed for throwing their ten-year old son into traffic in order to extort money from unwitting drivers, Boy offers an indictment of the Japanese family as an inherently corrupt and exploitative intergenerational trap while depicting a sympathetic portrait of an intense struggle for survival and dignity. One of Oshima's most beautiful, restrained and accessible films, Boy is set apart from his more radical and experimental work by its classicism of form and its use of an intensely linear narrative to delve the extreme emotional depths into which the characters are perilously thrown. Making brilliant use of widescreen cinematography, Boy sets the family's cross-country wanderings within a remarkable series of expressive landscapes and cityscapes. one day only

Directed by Nagisa Oshima. With Katsuo Najamura, Mariko Kaga, Yumiko Nogawa Japan 1965, 35mm, color, 90 min. Japanese with English subtitles Print from Janus/Criterion In the mid-1960s Japan witnessed a rush of artistically ambitious soft-porn pink films inspired by the gradual liberalization of Japan's censorship regulations and the audacity of rebellious young auteurs who found a creative haven within the popular genre such as Koji Wakamatsu, Takechi Tesuji and, briefly, Oshima, with Pleasures of the Flesh. Centered around a man's decision to dedicate the last year of his life and a cache of embezzled money to the unbridled pursuit of his sexual fantasies, Oshima's sole foray into the pink film clearly anticipates In the Realm of the Senses' exploration of relationships bonded by sexual intensity. Pleasures of the Flesh also marks a more controlled and restrained visual and narrative style, hereby restricting his signature sequence-shots to the extended erotic scenes. one day only

Directed by Nagisa Oshima. With Hashizo Okawa, Satomi Oka, Ryutaro Otomo Japan 1962, 35mm, color, 100 min. Japanese with English subtitles Print courtesy of the Kawakita Institute The dismal reception of The Catch forced Oshima back into the studio fold at Toei where, most appropriately, he was assigned a film about an inveterate rebel and iconoclast, Shiro Tokisada, the legendary leader of Japan's most significant peasant rebellion. Virtually impossible to see today, Shiro Amakusa is an important bridge between Oshima's early youth films and his politically and formally ambitious later work. A violent and beautiful widescreen film, Shiro Amakusa captures the spirit of radical upheaval so central to Oshima's generation, updating the Christian rebel's revolutionary saga into a relevant cautionary tale about the necessary price of subverting authority. one day only find/upload a trailer

Directed by Nagisa Oshima. With Kenzo Kawarazaki, Atsuko Kaku, Kei Sato Japan 1971, 35mm, color, 122 min. Japanese with English subtitles Print courtesy of the Kawakita Institute Among Oshima's most ambitious films, The Ceremony is a soaring, psychoanalytically inspired epic that parallels the cruel spiraling story of a rigidly patriarchic family with the rise and fall of militaristic Japan. The Ceremony focuses on the tortured scion of a merchant clan and his struggles to break free from the crushing ritualistic cruelties of family and tradition that are his birthright and bitter fate. Oshima's brilliant melodrama is structured around a series of devastatingly absurd set pieces – a wedding without a bride, a phantom baseball game  – that savagely critique the psycho-sexually corrosive abuses of power at the heart of the modern Japanese family and nation. one day only

Directed by Nagisa Oshima. With Kazuhiko Kato, Osamu Kitayama, Norihiko Hashida Japan 1968, 35mm, color, 80 min. Japanese with English subtitles Print courtesy of the Japan Foundation A zany, biting satire of the racist and chauvinist assumptions of postwar Japan, Three Resurrected Drunkards follows the comic misadventures of three bumbling students mistaken for Korean stowaways. A visually stunning and exuberant work, Three Resurrected Drunkards uses itsscrewball fable to reveal the militaristic vestiges of Japan’s nationalist past lingering in Vietnam War-era nation and the dramatically expanding gulf separating youth from the prewar generation. one day only

Directed by Nagisa Oshima. With Ichiro Araki, Hideko Yoshida, Koji Iwabuchi Japan 1967, 35mm, color, 103 min. Japanese with English subtitles Print courtesy of the Japan Foundation A bizarre and bewitching film, Treatise on Japanese Bawdy Songs is equal parts ribald comedy and radical mode of cultural anthropology. Oshima makes innovative use of a diptych structure to juxtapose the film's first half—the quest of three sexually imaginative high school students to pass their university placement exams—with the students' later encounter with a hard-drinking teacher determined to instruct his protégés in the rough poetry and revelatory history of the Japanese drinking song. one day only

Directed by Nagisa Oshima. Japan 1967, 35mm, b/w, 100 min. Narrated in English Print courtesy of the Kawakita Institute Oshima adopted a decidedly unorthodox approach for his one and only anime, a spirited adaptation of Sanpei Shirato's popular manga epic about the struggle of a young samurai warrior to avenge his father's death. Out of respect for the unique artistic and textual qualities of Shirato's celebrated graphic novel, Oshima restricted his production to filming the drawn pages themselves and matching the images to the film's layered music, sound and voice tracks. An inspired follow-up to Diary of Yunbogi's powerful montage of still images, Band of Ninja offers a totally novel and effective mode of adaptation and a fascinating meditation on the relationship between the comic book and the cinema. one day only

Directed by Nagisa Oshima. With Keiko Sakuai, Kei Sato Japan 1967, 35mm, b/w, 98 min. Japanese with English subtitles Print from Janus/Criterion Among Oshima's least known films, Japanese Summer: Double Suicide is a darkly comic romance about a couple on the run: a sex-crazed young woman and her suicidal boyfriend who are drawn into a band of violent gangsters. Declared by Oshima to personify the death drive in Japanese culture, the irrationally violent and unsympathetic gangsters in Japanese Summer: Double Suicide suggest a more pessimistic and absurd dimension of the outlaw anti-heroes so central to Oshima's films. one day only

Directed by Nagisa Oshima. With Saeda Kawaguchi, Akiko Koyama, Kei Sato Japan 1966, 35mm, color, 90 min. Japanese with English subtitles Print from Janus/Criterion Violence at Noon is based on the notorious nationwide killing spree of the Daylight Demon, a brutal murderer who took the lives of over thirty victims during the late 1950s, all women and all killed in the middle of the day. In Oshima's version, the killer is also part of a failed cooperative farm in rural Japan whose members include two idealistic women who become involved with the future killer. Violence at Noon introduced a new formal complexity into Oshima's cinema, abandoning the extended long takes that were the staple of his early films to embrace a radically fragmented montage style that mirrors the women's attempts to understand their traumatic memories. A disturbing study of the criminal mind and a moving elegy to failed dreams, Violence at Noon is Oshima's first great masterpiece. one day only

Directed by Nagisa Oshima. With Hosei Komatsu, Hiromi Kurita, Akiko Koyama Japan 1972, 35mm, color, 95 min. Japanese with English subtitles Print from New Yorker Films On the occasion of Okinawa's release from American control, Oshima offered this poetic and wonderfully unpredictable exploration of the island and its inhabitants as a distorting mirror of Japan's complex and tumultuous modern history. Loosely following a spirited young Tokyo woman's travels through Okinawa in search of the half-brother she has never met, Dear Summer Sister leads us through a series of mysterious vignettes about the girl's extended family and new found Okinawan acquaintances, each of whom hold sharply different opinions about the island's history and future. one day only

Directed by Nagisa Oshima. With Eiko Matsuda, Tatsuya Fuji, Taiji Tonoyama Japan/France 1976, 35mm, color, 105 min. Japanese with English subtitles Print from Janus/Criterion Oshima's abiding fascination with the most dangerous extremes of sexual desire gave way to his pornographic masterpiece, one of the most intensely debated films of the 1970s and one of the first to artistically depict explicit sex. Marking a triumph for Oshima's visionary melding of eroticism and politics, the release of his first French-financed project resulted in a major international scandal and a trial on obscenity charges hurled against Oshima. Based on the true story of a tempestuous affair between a dangerous prostitute and a gambler in the 1930s, In the Realm of the Senses is both a sumptuous period piece, with a vivid ukiyo-e inspired color scheme and architectonic compositions, and a fascinating study of the intermingling of sex and death. one day only

Directed by Nagisa Oshima. With Kei Sato, Fumio Watanabe, Toshirô Ishido Japan 1968, 35mm, b/w, 117 min. Japanese with English subtitles Print from New Yorker Films In Nagisa Oshima's bleakly black comedy, a criminal is sentenced to be hanged but mysteriously survives and, as the guards and officials present soon find out, has lost all memory of his crime, trial and eventual fate. The ensuing debate about how to deal with him points to Oshima's skill as both a passionate social critic and a Godardian trickster. NOT ON VIDEO! one day only

Directed by Nagisa Oshima. With Fumio Watanabe, Kei Sato, Tadanori Yokoo Japan 1968, 35mm, b/w, 94 min. Japanese with English subtitles Print courtesy of the Japan Foundation Oshima launched a guerilla assault on narrative continuity and political neutrality in his playfully experimental fable about a sexually confused book thief loose in Tokyo's boisterous Shinjuku neighborhood. Diary of a Shinjuku Thief's freeform meditation on the psychosexual ambiguities of the postwar counterculture interweaves the awkward romance and sexual therapy misadventures of the thief and his captor with a series of avant-garde kabuki performances. Set against the vivid background of the massive student-led riots against the American Security Pact and the Vietnam War, Diary of a Shinjuku Thief adapts an energetic mode of cinema vérité to capture the violent protests and the radical street theater enacted by Oshima's cast and, at times, crew. one day only