The Orange Tyrant’s d**kishness has indeed touched the Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive (hereafter “BAMPFA”). Federal money originally directed to BAMPFA has been yanked away, presumably to fatten the pockets of the Orange Felon’s rich cronies. Fortunately, the BAMPFA staff is keeping on keeping on. This quarter delivers a mix of programming that’s timely to this political moment even if the Orange S**tgibbon’s name never comes up directly.
The big news this quarter is the return of the “Mill Valley Film Festival At BAMPFA (October 3-12, 2025)” series. For those leery of making the trek to Mill Valley and related locales to catch the 48th edition of this venerated cinema showcase, BAMPFA offers a more transit-friendly alternative. True, the star-watchers will be disappointed as all the big celebrity appearances happen in the Mill Valley area. The pure cinema lovers, on the other hand, will be ecstatic given that BAMPFA’s Mill Valley selections tend to be the cream of that particular year’s offerings. Last year, for example, this writer caught the luminous and highly acclaimed “All We Imagine As Light” in the Mill Valley BAMPFA program. Understandably, this year’s program is still in TBA mode.
Definitely not in TBA mode is the “Frederick Wiseman: America At Work (October 18, 2025 - February 18, 2026)” series. The acclaimed documentary filmmaker has over the decades created many cinematic chronicles of the everyday operations of institutions. This quarter’s section of the series demystifies the workings of America’s government by taking deep dives into their day-to-day realities.
“City Hall (12:30 PM on November 22, 2025)” primarily follows Boston Mayor Marty Walsh as his performance of his executive duties takes him everywhere from church basements to Fenway Park. But the film’s also a look at the less heralded work of the lower levels of city government.
Wiseman originally intended “Law And Order (7 PM on October 23, 2025)” to be an anti-cop hit piece, particularly in the wake of the police riot that occurred at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. But while filming the day-to-day activities of the Kansas City Police Department, the director discovered the reality of being a police officer isn’t so simple. The cops did do some nice things, but they also did ugly and horrible things.
Those who need a non-fictional pick-me-up from Wiseman should definitely check out “Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (3 PM on October 18, 2025).” It’s a deep dive into the world of the amazing New York Public Library. In 88 branches spread across five boroughs, this institution does such things as hold job fairs, run a celebrity speaker series, and have braille lessons. Viewers also get to see such behind-the-scenes work at the library as book redistribution and call center phone interactions.
For those daunted by the prospect of sitting down in theaters to see movies which can run as long as 4 ½ hours (e.g. “City Hall’), the Marta Mateus film series might satisfy a viewer’s mixed needs of brevity and exoticism. The series “Marta Mateus Presents 'Fire Of Wind’ And Films By Margarida Cordeiro And Antonio Reis (November 13 - 16, 2025)” runs only four days, and the longest film here only runs a few minutes shy of two hours.
The three directors’ films take viewers to two lesser known parts of rural Portugal: the Alentejo region (Mateus) and the northeastern highlands known as Tras-os-Montes (Reis, Cordero). Central to these films is the recording of the stories and songs of the people who lived on and worked the land. “Fire Of Wind (7 PM on November 13, 2025)” concerns a group of grape harvesters stuck in oak trees thanks to a menacing bull. They pass the time drinking wine and sharing stories and songs. “Tras-os-Montes (7 PM on November 15, 2025)” is memorably described by director Jean Rouch as “the cinematographic expression of…a difficult communion between man, landscape, and the seasons.”
“Cheryl Dunye Selects! (September 18 - November 2, 2025)” is a longer film series likely to get a side eye from the bigots working with the Orange Tyrant. Dunye’s being Black, lesbian, and talented will suffice to trigger them.
As the series title says, these films were chosen by the renowned queer director herself. It’s a mix of selected early works (of course this includes “The Watermelon Woman (September 18, 2025))” as well as personal favorites both familiar (“Before Night Falls (November 2, 2025))” and obscure (“Women’s Prison (September 25, 2025)).”
Broke-ass readers should know that the screening of Dunye’s “Stranger Inside (7 PM on September 26, 2025)” is a free event. Attendees who score tickets starting an hour before showtime can enjoy this tale of tough butch Treasure’s search for her lifer mother inside a maximum security women’s prison.
For readers who want to see how Dunye developed as a director, the “Cheryl Dunye’s Short Work (7 PM on October 15, 2025)” program is a must-see. This program of seven short films made over nearly 25 years include “Vanilla Sex” (a look at the shifting definition of the titular term), “An Untitled Portrait” (a family portrait using assorted film and video clips and voiceovers), and “Black Is Blue” (a trans security guard confronts his pre-transition self while on the job).
“The Spook Who Sat By The Door (7 PM on October 18, 2025),” a film Dunye admires, will definitely put the GQP fascists in freakout mode. It’s the story of Dan Freeman, the CIA’s first Black agent. The Agency may have intended him to be their token Black. However, Freeman turns the tables on the white higher ups by using his CIA training to foment a violent Black revolution.
Incidentally, the Dunye short works program is also part of the annual “Alternative Visions (Now to November 19, 2025)” program. This year’s showcase of experimental film dives into the past century of cinema to bring everything from a famed Sergei Eisenstein account of a factory workers’ strike in Czarist Russia (“Strike”) to Khalil Joseph’s recent use of different moving image genres to envision Black cultural consciousness (“BLKNWS: Terms And Conditions”). Other notable offerings in this year’s program are:
“Everything Is Now: J. Hoberman In Person (7 PM on October 1, 2025)” offers a discussion of the veteran Village Voice film and culture critic’s new book on 1960s New York’s avant-garde movements. The program will also feature such selected shorts from that period as Jonas Mekas’ “Award Presentation To Andy Warhol” and Ken Jacobs’ “Little Stabs At Happiness.”
Michio Okabe’s “Crazy Love (7 PM on October 8, 2025)” takes viewers to Tokyo’s Shinjuku district in the late 1960s. Okabe’s camera captures street performances by the Zero Dimension group and other stars of the era’s underground art scene. Mixed into the film are then-current American pop hits, references to current events, and even Okabe himself performing such roles as James Bond.
The “Rituals In Transfigured Time (7 PM on September 17, 2025)” program brings together assorted shorts by Maya Deren, Sidney Peterson, and Kenneth Anger. What these shorts have in common are cinematic choreography and images of bodies in motion. Included here is Peterson’s “The Lead Shoes,” a sort of Oedipal drama told in distorted anamorphic images with a soundtrack of traditional ballads.
Late Swedish experimental filmmaker and former S.F. Art Institute teacher Gunvor Nelson may also have a program of her shorts in this year’s Alternative Visions series. But that collection of shorts, which includes the hilariously revolting anti-maternal drudgery piece “Schmeerguntz,” is only the initial segment of the “Gunvor Nelson: A Life In Film (November 12 - 21, 2025)” series. Lucky viewers can catch several previously unreleased Nelson films and an in-person appearance by filmmaker and former Nelson student Lynne Sachs.
Another Swedish director prominently appearing this quarter makes films far different in nature from Nelson’s works. “The Signature Cinema Of Roy Andersson (September 6 - October 19, 2025)” can be characterized by such qualities as long quiet takes, deep-focus (and almost portrait-like) imagery, and themes of grotesquerie or even societal collapse. Andersson’s movies are not for everyone, but those who are on his wavelength will find much to enjoy.
The best starting sampler of Andersson’s cinema might be the “Short Films & Commercials By Roy Andersson (4 PM on September 28, 2025)” program. It includes “World Of Glory,” a short called by the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival one of the top ten shorts of all time. The commercials include images of middle-aged newlyweds battering each other on the head with appliances and nurses casually tossing their patients around their rooms.
The Cannes award-winning “Songs from The Second Floor (7 PM on September 20, 2025)” might be described as a compilation of darkly comic vignettes depicting a capitalist society in breakdown mode. Expect to see self-flagellating stock brokers walking the streets, a fired worker who takes groveling before his now ex-boss to extremes, and a desperate economist relying on a crystal ball for help.
What do you get when you meld together Peter Bruegel the Elder’s painting “The Hunters In The Snow,” Vittorio de Sica’s “Bicycle Thieves,” and Buster Keaton? The answer is Andersson’s Venice Film Festival award-winner “A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence (7 PM on October 16, 2025).” A traveling novelty prop salesman’s unsuccessful efforts to sell vampire teeth and laughing bags provides the framework for encounters with the mediocrity and the beauty of human life.
While Andersson mined societal collapse for dark humor, Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh lived through his country’s societal collapse. The legacy of Khmer Rouge rule has been a major theme of Panh’s films.
Now the Cambodian filmmaker makes a return in-person appearance at BAMPFA with his six film retrospective “Cambodian Elegist: Rithy Panh In Person (November 6-9, 2025).” His films can be characterized as narratives that aren’t quite documentaries and documentaries that aren’t quite narratives.
“The Burnt Theatre (3:30 PM on November 8, 2025)” refers to what used to be Cambodia’s National Theatre. This burnt-out shell was once the country’s cultural crown jewel. Panh brings a group of Cambodian actors to what remains of the theatre for his cinematic study in whether a country can be rebuilt when it lacks the means of transmitting its culture.
Panh’s most recent film “Meeting With Pol Pot (7 PM on November 7, 2025)” is a historical drama set in 1978. A trio of French reporters travel to Cambodia for the titular meeting. But what sort of journalism can they practice when the ideology and government-controlled information they’re provided strongly diverges from the reality they witness?
Far less straightforward if not outright weird is Panh’s “Everything Will Be OK (1:30 PM on November 9, 2025).” It might be a visual essay on 20th century totalitarianism and its lessons, as it uses archival footage and quotes from Mao and Umberto Eco. But the “students” learning about human cruelty are a group of miniature clay animals.
In contrast to Panh, Mikio Naruse’s films use such easily understandable themes as ordinary people dealing with money problems and the plight of women in Japanese society. This quarter sees a continuation of the “Mikio Naruse: The Auteur As Salaryman (September 5 - December 21, 2025)” film series.
One of Naruse’s personal favorite films is his comedy “Traveling Actors (1 PM on October 19, 2025).” Two actors in an itinerant Kabuki troupe play a horse, with the more experienced member of the duo having artistic pretensions about his role. But the actors’ future employment becomes iffy after a real horse gets hired for the same part.
“Ginza Cosmetics (7 PM on November 20, 2025)” follows aging bar hostess Yukiko (the great Kinuyo Tanaka) over the course of a few days. This single mother struggles to keep up with the demands of the bar circuit (e.g. short-tempered customers) to support her small son.
A fatal car accident sets in motion the events of “Scattered Clouds (7 PM on September 28, 2025).” Hiroshi, Yumiko’s husband, dies in the accident. The widow initially refuses to forgive Shiro, the driver of the other car. Circumstances result in Yumiko and Shiro meeting again in Hokkaido, and developing a relationship that blooms into a love affair. But has Yumiko truly left the trauma of Hiroshi’s death behind?
In “Late Chrysanthemums (4:30 PM on September 7, 2025),” Naruse adapts three different Fumiko Hayase short stories about aging ex-geishas and small but significant events in their lives. Kin, Tamae, Tomi, and Nobu once worked together in the same geisha house. Now Kin has become a ruthless businesswoman and moneylender to her former co-workers. But will her cold heart melt when wartime lover Tabe re-enters her life?
“Sound Of The Mountain (2 PM on November 23, 2025)” sees Naruse adapting the titular novel by Nobel Prize-winner Yasunari Kawabata. Aging patriarch Shingo Ogata rules over a home where he lives with son Shuichi and daughter-in-law Kikuko (the legendary Setsuko Hara). While he treats Kikuko kindly (for possibly less than altruistic reasons), his lack of affection towards his daughter Fusako might have damaged her life. And then there’s the reality that Shuichi has been carrying on lots of extramarital affairs…
The last of this quarter’s big film series is “Cities & Cinema: Shanghai (September 13 - November 2, 2025).” Shanghai has served many roles throughout history, including as a Jewish refuge and as a key site during the 1949 Chinese Revolution. The screenings in this series mixes period newsreels and home movies with feature-length films capturing various points in Shanghai’s history.
Ulrike Ottinger’s epic documentary “Exile Shanghai (1 PM on September 27, 2025)” recounts how, thanks to its open port status, Shanghai served as a temporary haven for Jews escaping Nazi terror. As Ottinger’s camera searches for remnants of the synagogues and salons that used to be in the city, interviews with former members of that community bring the period to life.
A different and broader history of Shanghai is recounted in Jia Zhangke’s documentary “I Wish I Knew (6:30 PM on September 13, 2025).” Instead of relying on historians or former government officials, Jia goes to the social and political black sheep among the city’s citizens, filmmakers, and artists. Hearing from such folk as noted director Hou Hsiao-hsien, this recounted history promises to have a bite.
Viewers needing a crowd-pleaser definitely won’t go wrong with the new 4K restoration of the Tsui Hark classic musical comedy “Shanghai Blues (6:30 PM on November 1, 2025).” In 1937, aspiring songwriter Do-Re-Mi (Kenny Bee) accidentally meets young Shu-Shu (Sylvia Chang) while hiding under Suzhou Bridge during a Japanese air raid on Shanghai. The duo romantically promise each other to meet under the bridge after the war. But in 1947, Do-Re-Mi searches in vain for Shu-Shu, as he doesn’t realize she 1) transformed into a glamorous nightclub singer and 2) is also Do-Re-Mi’s annoying downstairs neighbor. Add into the mix Shu-Shu’s new ditzy roommate Stool (Sally Yeh), who falls in love with Do-Re-Mi, and the viewer can expect comic chaos.
Speaking of 4K digital restorations, they also appear frequently in this quarter’s Special Screenings. See such film classics as Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now: Final Cut (September 6, 2025 and October 31, 2025)” Charlie Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush (November 28, 2025), and Akira Kurosawa’s “Ran (September 14, 2025 and November 28, 2025).” But the restoration to catch is the rarely-seen Robert Bresson romantic classic “Four Nights Of A Dreamer (October 31, 2025 and November 23, 2025),” which follows the relationship between disillusioned artist Jacques and unhappy potential suicide Marthe over four nights of meetings on the Pont Neuf. Finally, you know what to do if you’ve previously missed Jia Zhangke’s acclaimed “Caught By The Tides (September 7, 2025 and October 24, 2025),” which uses the romances of heroine Qiao Qiao to examine contemporary China’s many transformations.
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