BAMPFA’s Winter 2024 Film Series: Climate Crisis, Sexuality, and Community Power
Whether it was deliberately planned or just a matter of programming stars aligning, the film offerings for the Winter 2024 calendar of the Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive (hereafter “BAMPFA”) gives mental fuel for the truths needed to resist the lies propounded by the authoritarian kakistocracy returning to the White House. Whether it’s feeling human-created climate change is a problem demanding solutions or that human sexuality is far more complex than the retrograde male-female binary, several of BAMPFA’s Winter 2024 film series remind viewers that responding to life’s complex challenges won’t be met by retreating to simplistic “solutions.”
One such “solution” is acting as if the needs of resource extraction companies outweigh remediating the climate problems resulting from such extraction. The quartet of documentaries making up “Climate Journalism On Screen (February 2-23, 2025)” strongly beg to differ. The films in this series may deal with subjects as varied as Himalayan hawk moths and a clash in Kenya between indigenous pastoralists and wealthy white ranchers. But underneath these divergent subjects lie common themes: the history and ideas leading to the current climate crisis, unapologetic looks at the damage caused by climate change, and ideas for ways forward.
Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk, and Pedro Kos’ “The White House Effect (12:30 PM on February 2, 2025)” looks at why the U.S. government continually refused to take action to mitigate climate change despite scientific agreement as early as 1984 regarding the greenhouse effect’s existence.
Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan’s “Nocturnes (3:00 PM on February 8, 2025)” takes viewers to the biodiversity hotspot located on the India-Bhutan border. Ecologist Mansi Mungee and Indigenous Bugun Gendan “Bicki” Marphew are studying the local population of hawk moths, an important member of the food chain. Winner of a Sundance Special Jury Award.
Ready to be freaked out by human use of plastics? Ben Addelman and science journalist Ziya Tong in “Plastic People (1:00 PM on February 9, 2025)” take viewers on a tour of the insane growth of the plastics industry and its long-term impacts, ranging from microplastic ingestion in the food chain to waste colonialism.
Long-term drought in Kenya provides the spark that sets indigenous pastoralists and wealthy white ranchers at each others’ throats. Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi’s “The Battle For Laikipia (1:00 PM on February 23, 2025)” embeds with both sides for five years to show how pastoralists who have grazed the land for millennia have been forced by drought-related decimation of Kenya’s plains to encroach on the armed ranchers’ privately owned safari land.
A different sort of land conflict is the subject of the film that’s a highlight of the first part of this year’s “Documentary Voices (February 5 – April 18, 2025)” film series. The IDA award-winning “No Other Land (7:00 PM on February 12, 2025)” from directors Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor primarily follows over several years the struggles of the Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank area known as Masafer Yatta to resist the efforts of both Israeli Defense Forces and violent Israeli settlers to systematically destroy their homes and chase them from the land. It’s also a tale of the friendship between Adra and Abraham, a tenuous construct made more fragile by the very visible power imbalance between the two men.
Oddly related to the current year-long (and counting) violence directed by the Israeli Defense Forces against the inhabitants of Palestine is the historical essay film “The Natural History Of Destruction (2:30 PM on February 1, 2025),” which is inspired by W.G. Sebald’s essay of the same name. The film may look at the history of World War II urban bombing campaigns. Yet its central question of the morality of “us(ing) a civilian population as a means of war,” even as a rationalization for “higher ‘moral’ ideals,” feels particularly relevant to current events vis-a-vis Israel and Palestine.
This essay film is part of a film series dedicated to the work of documentary filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa. As indicated by the title of the series, “Sergei Loznitsa: Filmmaker In Residence (January 30 – February 8, 2025),” this independent filmmaker will appear in person at BAMPFA to talk about his filmmaking career. Loznitsa, for those unfamiliar with his work, focuses on the socioeconomic issues facing Ukraine, Russia, and the former Soviet bloc countries.
One obvious subject is the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Loznitsa’s “The Invasion (7:00 PM on January 30, 2025),” which is making its Bay Area premiere, offers portraits of ordinary Ukrainian citizens’ everyday struggles to survive the Russian invasion.
The drama “A Gentle Creature (6:00 PM on February 8, 2025)” adapts the titular Fyodor Dostoevsky story to the present day. An unnamed wife tries to find out why a parcel she sent to her imprisoned husband was returned to her without explanation. Her search for answers takes her to the distant prison where the husband was incarcerated. Yet finessing the bureaucracy keeping her from accessing the prison turns out to be a Kafkaesque nightmare.
A different sort of state-sponsored nightmare best describes the push, primarily in extreme right-wing dominated legislative bodies, to worsen the very existence of sexual minorities within the legislature’s borders. Offering a positive cinematic riposte is the “Masc II: Masc Plus Muchachas (January 17 – February 23, 2025)” film series. It brings together some rarely-seen films featuring butches, trans men, and AFAB (assigned female at birth) mascs from such countries as Japan, Brazil, and Mexico.
Aside from the highly acclaimed recent New Trans Cinema essay film “Orlando, My Political Biography,” here are some of the rarities being shown in this film series:
Cheryl Dunye’s prison drama “Stranger Inside (5:00 PM on January 19, 2025)” happens to be a free screening. Treasure is a butch convict hoping to find her long-lost mother, who’s serving a life sentence in a maximum security lockup. But Treasure’s search isn’t keeping her from making moves on femme prisoner Sugar, much to the anger of Sugar’s current girlfriend.
Fans of “Better Things”’ Pamela Adlon should make time for her starring role turn in Paul Schneider’s “Something Special aka Willy/Milly (7:00 PM on February 20, 2025).” When Milly’s wish to live as a boy is literally fulfilled overnight, she rejects choosing one sex over another and prefers to live as both. But once Willy/Milly starts at a new high school, how long can she remain true to herself?
If the viewer could see only one film from this series,make it Shusuke Kaneko’s “Summer Vacation 1999 (7:00 PM on February 14, 2025).” Based on Moto Hagio’s classic Boys’ Love manga “The Heart Of Thomas,” it follows the shifting attractions among a quartet of boys living at an isolated country school. Interestingly, the “boys” are played on screen by girls, but their male voices were later dubbed in. Also, the film was never released on home video or streaming in the US.
Those interested in the intersection of cinema and the younger demographic should take advantage of the “Movie Matinees For All Ages” screenings to introduce their young ones to the joys of theatrical moviegoing. This quarter’s offerings are winners, each in their own way. The Charlie Chaplin classic “Modern Times (3:30 PM on December 21, 2024)” follows Chaplin’s Little Tramp character as his encounters with the absurdities of industrialized work may well inspire a more precocious kid to start thinking about the virtues of socialism. Stanley Donen’s musical comedy classic “Singin’ In The Rain (3:30 PM on January 18, 2025)” delivers a great introduction to the singing and dancing talents of Gene Kelly. It’s also a tale of adapting to technological change (here, the transition from silent film to sound film) and how some people can smoothly change while others try to finesse what they think is a workaround. For those kids who wonder what it’s really like to fly like a bird, “Winged Migration (3:30 PM on February 22, 2025)” from directors Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud, and Michel Debats will have the little ones’ mouths agape thanks to its rich and beautiful photography. Just be ready to comfort them when some of the birds get killed (or at least badly wounded) on screen.
The birds that are the subjects of “Winged Migration” probably think little or nothing about the lands they fly over. In a way, John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards probably shares that attitude about the lands he rides through. After all, this Confederate Civil War vet is more focused on finding the niece who’d been kidnapped by the Comanches. While Wayne’s character may be the “hero” of John Ford’s “The Searchers (7:00 PM on January 10 & 25, 2025),” that term feels relative given the retrograde racial attitudes he openly displays. Fortunately, the film series
“Landscapes Of Myth: Westerns After ‘The Searchers’ (January 10 -February 28, 2025)” offers a different perspective on land as something with emotional or even spiritual weight rather than grist for exploitation.
Kelly Reichardt’s “Meek’s Cutoff (6:30 PM on February 15, 2025)” challenges male authority on the frontier. Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood) has been hired to guide a wagon train of three families over the Cascade Mountains. But this is 1845 in the early days of the Oregon Trail, and it soon becomes clear to Emily Tetherow (Michelle Williams) that Meek’s authority and guidance might be less than advertised.
Glauber Rocha’s “Anotonio das Mortes (6:30 PM on January 18, 2025)” is a sequel to his earlier film “Black God, White Devil.” In the earlier film, Antonio das Mortes served the forces of reaction by killing rebels and bandits with stunning effectiveness. In this film, the hired killer has taken on the job of serving as bodyguard to the corrupt Colonel Horacio. But what happens when das Mortes starts sympathizing with the condition of the poor?
Zacharias Kunuk and Natar Ungataaq’s “Maliglutit (7:00 PM at February 28, 2025)” inverts the ethos of the Ford film. The general plot may be the same: males search for kidnapped female relatives in a harsh and unforgiving landscape. But where Edwards essentially spits on indigenous culture and prizes individuality, Kuanana (the Wayne character’s opposite number) relies on a spirit guide and the community he’s a part of for his quest.
Speaking of extolling divergent cultural values, the mini-film series “To Exalt The Ephemeral: Artists On Screen (Now to December 22, 2024)” may have already started up. But there’s still time to enjoy this film series connected with the ongoing exhibit “To Exalt The Ephemeral: The (Im)permanent Collection,” which celebrates artists whose work deals with impermanence, decay, and regeneration.
Painter Agnes Martin’s “Gabriel (December 15, 2024)” depicts a boy’s joy as he appreciates such sights of natural beauty as riverbanks, forests, and fields. Concluding the series is Marcie Begleiter’s “Eva Hesse (December 22, 2024),” a documentary portrait of the significant if tragically short-lived American artist whose use of such materials as latex and plastic provided welcome complexity to the minimalist aesthetic.
A different sort of experimentation takes place in Andrew Sokurov’s “Fairytale (7:00 PM on January 15, 2025).” It involves animated archival footage of such 20th century political leaders as Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler and the reduction of their public fearsomeness to seeing them talk past each other. That’s just one of the Special Screenings taking place this quarter. Other offerings include a 4K restoration of Claire Denis’ “No Fear, No Die (7:00 PM on December 18, 2024 and 7:00 PM on January 12, 2025),” a tale of a pair of Black immigrants hired to train roosters for illegal cockfights, and Cedric Kahn’s acclaimed historical courtroom drama “The Goldman Case (7:00 PM on December 11, 2024 and 3:00 PM on January 24, 2025),” the true story of left-wing activist and revolutionary Pierre Goldman’s attempt to defend himself in a high-profile trial against a battery of criminal charges including armed robbery and murder.
At least Kahn’s Goldman sort of has his day in court. Gabriele, the blacklisted radio announcer played by Marcello Mastroianni in Ettore Scola’s “A Special Day (4:00 PM on February 9, 2025)” can only helplessly wait to be deported to Sardinia. The bitterness of this waiting, which Gabriele shares with harried mother Antonietta (Sophia Loren), is ironically reflected in the real meaning of the film’s title. Adolf Hitler’s personal visit to 1938 Rome to honor Germany’s new political alliance with Il Duce.becomes for the Italian crowds who show up for the dictator’s visit an occasion for celebration. .
Mastroianni’s performance in Scola’s film is just one reason for checking out the film series “Marcello Mastroianni At 100 (December 15, 2024 – February 27, 2025).” This cinematic celebration of the centenary of Mastroianni’s birth includes the actor’s legendary performances in “La Dolce Vita” and “8 ½” as well as some incredible but lesser known performances among the over 170 films he made during his lifetime.. If there’s a common theme to the actor’s cinematic oeuvre, it’s probably his efforts to go above and beyond his base image as a charming and charismatic Latin lover.
Mastroianni’s Antonio Magnano, the titular “Il bell’Antonio (The Beautiful Antonio) (7:00 PM on January 16, 2025),” may seem to stay in the Latin lover wheelhouse given the character’s reputation as a notorious womanizer. However, when Antonio’s forced to return to his Sicilian hometown of Catania, the truth about his amorous conquests turns his relationship with the beautiful Barbara Puglisi (Claudia Cardinale) into a source of torment. A decade-long battle with the local censorshad to be overcome before this adaptation of Vitalino Brancati’s titular novel could appear on a theatrical screen.
A more classy screen adaptation starring Mastroianni can be found in Marco Bellocchio’s Luigi Pirandello adaptation “Henry IV (4:30 PM on February 15, 2025).” Thanks to a fall from a horse during a medieval costume pageant, a 20th-century nobleman (Mastroianni) wakes up thinking he’s the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV. Family and friends play along with the delusion for twenty years until a psychiatrist comes up with an elaborate scheme to shock the nobleman out of his dementia.
A different state of madness, fascism circa 1938, happens to be the theme of Roberto Faenza’s “According To Pereira (7:00 PM on February 27, 2025).” Mastroianni plays the titular Pereira, a journalist in 1938 Lisbon working as the culture editor of an evening paper. He’s more concerned with translating French novels than taking a stand against the evils of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar’s Estado Novo fascist dictatorship. But when he hires as an assistant the supposedly apolitical Monteiro Rossi, his intellectual slumber comes to an end thanks to Rossi’s antifascist activities.
Finally, viewers who’ve seen films of the 1920s and 1930s will recognize the name of director G.W. Pabst from two seminal films he made with actress Louise Brooks (“Pandora’s Box” and “Diary Of A Lost Girl”) as well as his classic Bertolt Brecht & Kurt Weill adaptation “The Threepenny Opera.” While the series “G.W. Pabst: Selected Films, 1925-38 (Now to February 28, 2025)” gives viewers a chance to revisit or be introduced to those three films, the other films in this series deliver a broader picture of Pabst’s talents. He worked in a wide variety of genres such as lost civilization fantasy, psychological drama, and even politically themed romance.
Some of the Pabst films to try include: “Westfront 1918 (7:00 PM on February 9, 2025),” a strong anti-war film which contrasts life on the blissfully ignorant homefront with the realities of war endured by a quartet of soldiers fighting in France during World War I’s last months; “The Joyless Street (7:00 PM on December 20, 2024),” which refers to a bustling if dreary post-World War I street in Vienna where “meat is hard to come by but souls are cheap,” features Greta Garbo in a breakout performance as the daughter of an impoverished civil servant; “Kameradschaft (4:30 PM on February 21, 2025)” concerns a 1919 mining disaster on the Franco-German border and whether enmities from the First World War will dissuade German miners from rescuing the trapped French miners; and “The Love Of Jeanne Ney (7:00 PM on December 12, 2024),” the story of a diplomat’s daughter whose relationship with a Bolshevik agent takes her from the revolution-torn Crimea to Paris.
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