The Autumn Films at BAMPFA!

One of the big programming items on the Fall schedule of the Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive (hereafter “BAMPFA”) happens to be the “Mill Valley Film Festival At BAMPFA (October 7-15, 2023)” section.  It’s a godsend for those who are intrigued by the offerings of the 46th Mill Valley Film Festival yet for one reason or another cannot physically be in Napa County during the festival.  However, BAMPFA won’t announce which films will be shown until September 7.  

Fortunately, everything else on the BAMPFA Fall schedule is now known, and there are some choice films to catch this quarter.  Viewers can see the stirrings of Cambodian cinema’s rebirth following Khmer Rouge efforts at eradication; learn how stained glass images in churches were a predecessor to modern cinema; take a picturesque trip through Mexico City courtesy of Luis Bunuel’s camera; celebrate the film distributor who’s made many classics of world cinema available for future generations; or even see what happens when Nicolas Cage is allowed to cut loose playing a drug-addicted homicide cop.

BAMPFA’s Fall calendar is bookended by two big film series.  The first of them opens the calendar with a celebration of the silver anniversary of the film distributor whose work makes classics of world cinema available for generations to come.  “Rialto Pictures Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Salute (September 2 – November 29, 2023)” showcases some of the distributor’s well-known restorations.  Carol Reed’s “The Third Man (November 18 and 26, 2023)” finds American pulp Western writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) searching through post-World War II Vienna for missing friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles).  “Ran” (November 26, 2023) sees director Akira Kurosawa’s adaptation of the Shakespeare drama “King Lear” for a powerful film set in 16th century Japan.  Finally, Federico Fellini’s first solo film, ”The White Sheik (November 3 and 19, 2023),” is a farce about a newly married couple whose trip to Rome slowly turns into a disaster thanks to the bride’s desire to meet the titular hero of her favorite fumetto.

But this series also includes a couple of lesser-known cinematic gems.  “The Runner (September 9 and October 6, 2023)” is an Iranian New Wave tale following an 11-year-old boy’s efforts to survive living alone in an abandoned oil tanker.  Famed Italian actor Alberto Sordi plays the lead in “Una Vita Dificile (A Hard Life) (November 4 and 24, 2023),” the story of a conformist who over twenty years goes from embracing leftist idealism to pursuing neo-capitalist success.  

Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans

The Fall schedule closes out with the start of the series “Infinite Horizons: The Films Of Werner Herzog (November 9, 2023 – February 2024), a retrospective of 60 years of work by the prolific German filmmaker.  Those who know Herzog’s work will be happy to hear this segment of the series features such classics as “Aguirre, The Wrath Of God (November 10, 2023)” and “Fitzcarraldo (November 24, 2023).”  The director himself will appear in person for the early screenings in this series. 

Other Herzog films on the Fall calendar deserving viewers’ attention are:  “Fata Morgana (November 10, 2023),” a documentary about Africa “in the beginning” and after becoming western nations’ trash receptacle; Herzog’s first Asian film “Family Romance, LLC (November 12, 2023),” a documentary/drama about a Japanese rent a family firm and a man whose pretend father role to a 12-year-old boy goes off the rails; “Lessons Of Darkness (November 12, 2023),” which immerses viewers in images of the Kuwait oil fields burning in the aftermath of the first Gulf War; “The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser (November 11, 2023)” recounts the real-life early 19th century mystery of the titular grown man, who suddenly appears in a small German town yet possesses the skills and coordination of a newborn child; and “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (November 9, 2023),” which shows what happens when you pair the director who once threatened to fatally shoot his leading man (for good reason) with Nicolas Cage as a cop alternating between trying to solve a multiple homicide and trying to score his next fix in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Continuing from the Summer schedule is the “Luis Bunuel’s Magnificent Weapon (September 1 – November 19, 2023)” film series.  This segment of the series focuses on the films Bunuel made in Mexico and outside Spain.  The double bill of “L’Age d’Or” and “Un Chien Andalou (September 6, 2023),” which also opens this year’s Alternative Visions series, can be described as surrealist shorts filled with such unforgettable images as an eyeball slicing, a cow sitting in a bedroom, and a bit of statue fellating.

Aside from such expected classics as “Los Olvidados  (September 1, 2023)” and “Land Without Bread (September 24, 2023),” this segment of the series shows films where the famed director takes the leftovers of common potboilers and turns what he has to work with into cinematic omelettes. 

Illusion Travels By Streetcar

Among the Bunuel films being shown this quarter: “Susana (September 10, 2023)” redeems the idiot scenario of “morally loose young woman upends respectable ultra-bourgeois family” by having the cinematic cliche dial set to 11; “Mexican Bus Ride (September 30, 2023)” concerns a long bus ride for testamentary purposes which a newly married peasant finds is getting longer thanks to such diversions as the driver taking a detour via his mother’s home; the wonderfully titled comedy “Illusion Travels By Streetcar (November 4, 2023)” follows a pair of transit workers’ attempt to sneak back into the depot the “borrowed” decommissioned street car they took on a nighttime joy ride..in broad daylight and with nobody the wiser; the black comedy “The Criminal Life Of Archibaldo de la Cruz (November 11, 2023)” shows what happens when the title character’s quest to recreate the erotic high he once got from killing a woman with a supposedly magical music box turns into an exercise in continued sexual frustration; and “The Young One (November 19, 2023),” which sees Bunuel offer a peculiar take on American Southern racism by bringing together a falsely accused fugitive Black jazzman, a naive teenage orphan, and the lonely lecherous game warden who’s the orphan’s guardian.    

For those who appreciated the two Bunuel films opening this year’s “Alternative Visions (September 6 – November 15, 2023)” film series, why not check out some of the other examples of experimental film both old and new being shown in the series?  These cinematic delights include a program of short films using such media as Super 8mm and ray-o-grams as well as a theoretical musical about Wilhelm Reich.

More specifically, series viewers can see: an examination of North America’s relationship to Nicaragua in a way that escapes the depersonalized war zone frame peddled by the U.S. government and mass media (retiring “Alternative Visions” co-curator Jeffrey Skoller’s “Nicaragua Hear-Say/See Here (October 25, 2023)”), a Bay Area filmmaker’s program of educational short films celebrating curiosity and humanity’s relationship to nature (“A Place To Be: The Experiential Cinema Of Paul Fillinger (September 27, 2023)”), and an improvisational musical conversation between scientist/social thinker Wilhelm Reich and such contemporary feminist thinkers as Judith Butler and Helene Cixous (“OR119 (November 1, 2023)”). 

Connected to the “Alternative Visions” film series is a mini-film series devoted to local experimental filmmaker Jerome Hiler.  The series “Illuminations: Jerome Hiler (September 13 – October 28, 2023)” brings together everything from his talk on how the first hundred years of stained glass’ existence served as a foreparent of cinema (“Cinema Before 1300”) to a documentary about a mayor with a very unconventional view of what constitutes prosperity (“Music Makes A City”).  Over decades of work, Hiler’s love for film focuses not on technological toys but on the play of light in darkness.  In fact, key to understanding the filmmaker’s work may be his continued fascination with the sight of “stained glass glowing in a space of sacred darkness.”

A couple of films in this year’s “Artists On Film (October 22 – November 5, 2023)” series also aesthetically connect to this year’s Alternative Visions series. “With Peter Bradley (October 22 2023)” offers a portrait of the titular Black abstract artist who finds inspiration in the changing seasons on his New York farm.  Meanwhile, Bay Area-based abstract sculptor Brian Wall shows how the act of making his famous large abstract steel sculptures can be a challenge in itself in “An Improbable Odyssey: The Life And Times Of Brian Wall (November 5, 2023).”   The final film in this mini-series, “Carving The Divine: Buddhist Sculptors Of Japan (October 29, 2023),” shows how the students and teachers of busshi continue a 1,400-year-old Japanese wood carving tradition and even learn from their carving subjects of Buddhist teachings and/or the religion’s practitioners.

Cinema Before 1300

The Peter Bradley documentary also happens to be one of the selections in this year’s edition of the “African Film Festival 2023 (October 1 – November 16, 2023).”  These documentary and narrative films from the New York African Film Festival’s National Traveling Series prove unfortunately of current relevance given the GQP’s ongoing crusade to suppress or ignore the voices and accomplishments of Black people.  Here are some other festival offerings: 

The documentary “The Last Shelter (October 12, 2023)” takes viewers to Mali’s the House of Migrants located in Gao at the southern edge of the Sahara Desert.  Here, viewers meet some of the migrants about to attempt (or returning from attempting) a long odds journey to reach Algeria and possibly Europe…if the cops, al Qaeda, or the desert itself doesn’t stop them first.

The Kinshasha Film Festival award-winner “Juwaa (October 20 2023)” concerns a tense mother-son reunion in present-day Brussels.  Years ago, a committed journalist went into self-exile in Brussels following the brutal assassination of her husband.  But she left her son behind.  Now the son has returned, as he’s going to college now.  Despite the years that separate them, both mother and son are bound by their inability to speak about the historical trauma that still haunts them.

“Ama: An African Voyage Of Discovery (November 5, 2023)” is the restoration of a 1991 classic of diasporic Black indie cinema.  This African magical realist tale set in contemporary Britain concerns the kids of a loving Ghanian English family whose lives are changed by the discovery of a magical floppy disc.  The information on that disc includes a mix of forgotten African heritage and dire prophecies.   .  

A different sort of reclamation of lost culture takes place in “Cambodian Cinema: Rising From The Ashes (September 24 – October 6, 2023).”   One of the unacknowledged disasters of the Khmer Rouge’s reign over Cambodia came with the rulers’ destruction of the commercial movies the country made between 1960 and 1975.  Combined with the liquidation of that generation of filmmakers, the results were culturally devastating.  

Fortunately, internationally famed documentary filmmaker Rithy Panh has been supervising the training of a new generation of Cambodian filmmakers.  The Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center, which Panh co-founded, is now in partnership with BAMPFA and UC Berkeley’s South and Southeast Asian Studies Department 

Juwaa

This mini-film series offers both a look at this cinematic reclamation work and some notable recent films.  “Cambodia: Developing The Next Generation Of Filmmakers (October 6, 2023)” features Bophana Executive Director Sopheap Chea talking about projects the Bophana Center is involved in.  In addition, the program will also have short screenings of films made under the Center’s auspices   One such program, the One Dollar Project, captures the struggles of people with very limited financial resources.  Another project is an attempt to incubate potential filmmakers working in Cambodia’s rural districts.

A couple of other films deal with the traumas inflicted on Cambodia and its cinema by the Khmer Rouge.  “Golden Slumbers (October 5, 2023)” uses the recollections of surviving film personnel from Cambodia’s cinematic golden age as well as the country’s period songs to recreate the spirits of that lost cinematic world.  “Bophana: A Cambodian Tragedy (September 30, 2023)” is Rithy Panh’s recounting of the life of ex-Buddhist monk Hout Bophana, who with her husband became two of the victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide.

The last film in the series, “White Building (September 24 & 30, 2023),” gets its title from a Phnom Penh tenement that’s slated for demolition.  Yet Samnang, his family, and his friends call that building home.  Where are they expected to go in a Cambodia now in the grip of rapid industrial change?

Examples of Asian film culture that didn’t get destroyed by political events can be found in the series “Chinese Musicals From 1957 to 1963 (October 19 -28, 2023).”  The period mentioned in the film series title is the product of the intersection of growing economic optimism among Hong Kong’s middle class and that burgeoning class’ nostalgia for the mainland and traditional Chinese culture. 

Among the five films being screened in the series are: “The Love Eterne (October 21, 2023),” the Chinese blockbuster (and one of Ang Lee’s favorite films) about a young girl whose plan to disguise herself as a man and get an education goes awry when she meets her soulmate (acted by a woman); “Third Sister Liu (October 26, 2023)” is the entertaining Communist musical you didn’t know you needed in your life thanks to a story about a rabble-rousing singing farmgirl named Liu Sanjie who uses a singing competition to incite the masses against greedhead landlords; and “The Wild, Wild Rose (October 28, 2023),” the tale of a hot-tempered and tough as nails nightclub singer whose life changes with the arrival of a doormat of a pianist resulting in a classic that’s equal parts “Carmen,” “The Blue Angel,” and a Mandarin pop showcase.

No guarantees on whether viewers’ lives will change after meeting Georgian documentary filmmaker Salome Jashi and seeing some of her films.  This Georgian reporter turned filmmaker is making her first Bay Area visit for the mini-series “Georgian Filmmaker Salome Jashi In Person (September 10-17, 2023).”  Communities forced to migrate from their homes thanks to cultural uprooting turns out to be a common theme in her films.  Jashi brings to the screen a great visual sense and a talent for capturing almost surreal moments.

The Love Eterne

Jashi’s breakout film and her most recent film demonstrate these qualities at work.  The award-winning “The Dizzying Light Of Sunset (September 17, 2023)” follows TV broadcast reporter Dariko and cameraman Kakha in their efforts to gather news stories for the evening newscast.  But what newsworthy material can she find when her beat is the Western Georgian town of Tsalenjikha?  In “Taming The Garden (September 14, 2023),” a wealthy man’s removal of ancient village trees for his private garden sets off a clash between villagers who see the removals as bankrolling new roads for the village and those villagers who resent losing a monolithic symbol of the town’s history and memory. 

(The former) Yugosalvian documentary filmmaker Zelimir Zinik demonstrates a far different approach to filmmaking in the mini film series “The People Are Present: Films Of Zelimir Zinik (September 28-29, 2023).”  While his name isn’t well known to American cinephiles, Zinik has been making highly celebrated and politically engaged documentaries in (the former) Yugoslavia since the 1960s.  Perhaps his in-person BAMPFA appearance will increase Zinik’s American visibility, especially after seeing a couple of his films..

“Pirika On Film (September 28, 2023)” is a video essay about Pirika, a former child actor who appeared in a couple of Zinik’s films.  44 years later, this child has become a strong-willed woman living in Serbia.  But in looking at Pirika’s life, the director is also looking at post-socialist life in Serbia and Germany.  Accompanying this screening are four short documentaries about the refugee and immigrant experience, including “Kenedi, Lost And Found” (Kenedi Hasani just wants to reunite with his parents and siblings, but doing so involves illegal immigration to European Union countries) and “House Orders” (house restrictions cause clashes and absurd situations between the house’s guest worker tenants and the building “orderlies”).

“Oldtimer” (September 29, 2023)” uses a road movie format to recount Milosevic’s rise to power and Yugoslavia’s social disintegration.  Igor is an aging rocker who leaves his gig at Ljubljana’s Radio Student when he’s had enough of the station janitor whose police work involves spying on journalists critical of the regime.  But the rocker’s plans to travel to Greece via Yugoslavia go awry when he gets caught up in the turmoil of Milosevic’s “anti-bureaucratic revolution.” 

The last mini-film series on this quarter’s calendar is “Dawn Porter In Person (September 21-23, 2023).”  Porter, for those unfamiliar with her name, is a documentary filmmaker whose body of work focuses on people who’ve dedicated themselves to making sure America actually lives up to its promise of justice and equality for all.  Her previous films have included a portrait of civil rights leader and Congressional representative John Lewis (“John Lewis: Good Trouble”) and films about racist terror directed at Black Americans (“Rise Again: Tulsa and The Red Summer”).

The Lady Bird Diaries

Aside from doing an Artist’s Talk (September 22, 2023) with award-winning journalist Lisa Armstrong, Porter will bring two of her films.  “Gideon’s Army (September 23, 2023)” follows three Black public defenders in Southern states fighting huge odds to make sure the criminal justice system doesn’t railroad their poor clients into the nearest prison cell.  Porter’s newest film “The Lady Bird Diaries (September 21, 2023)” is definitely not a cinematic diary about the making of Greta Gerwig’s semi-autobiographical “Lady Bird.”  Instead, the titular Lady Bird in Porter’s film happens to be the wife of President Lyndon Baines Johnson.  And gleanings from Lady Bird Johnson’s 123 hours’ worth of audio recordings documenting her White House experiences provide a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the American presidency during a monumental cultural and political period.

No grandiose claims will be made about any of the BAMPFA offerings being utterly life-changing.  But it can be said that at their best, this quarter’s BAMPFA offerings once again demonstrate what cinema can accomplish once it’s freed from the primary yoke of making a financial profit for the studio that made the film.