The Rad Films Coming to The Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive

Compared to some of the offerings in previous quarters, Winter 2025’s programs at the Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive (hereafter “BAMPFA”) might be classified as being on the tamer side.  There aren’t any Cheryl Dunye-curated series showing “The Spook Who Sat By The Door.”  On the other hand, this quarter’s Frederick Wiseman documentaries on welfare and the meat industry don’t pull any punches.  Also, Julia Loktev’s epic documentary on independent newsgathering in Russia won’t please the fascist-friendly MAGAt crowd.

Let’s start our look at this winter’s BAMPFA programming locally with “Jerry Ross Barrish: A Life In Film And Art (December 6-14, 2025).”  If Barrish’s name sounds vaguely familiar, it’s likely because for 40 years his bail bondsman service helped get leftist political protesters out of local jails.  This series highlights a couple of other aspects of Barrish’s life that are not as well known: sculpting (with plastic trash) and filmmaking (thanks to studying under George Kuchar at the San Francisco Art Institute).  William Farley’s delightful documentary “Plastic Man: The Artful Life Of Jerry Ross Barrish (7 PM on December 6, 2025)” focuses on Barrish’s sculpting, but it also takes time to tell Barrish’s amazing life story, 

Barrish can also be credited with making three feature films which played at both local and international film festivals.  “Dan’s Motel (4:30 PM on December 7, 2025)” presents a trio of melancholy stories taking place at a dead end Pacific seaside motel.  Director Wim Wenders would become a fan of Barrish’s directorial debut.  “Recent Sorrows (7 PM on December 11, 2025)” takes viewers to early 1980s San Francisco before AIDS entered public discourse.  It’s the story of a chance encounter between two recently heartbroken men (one gay, the other straight) as they look back over their love affairs to try figuring out what went wrong.  The series wraps up with “Shuttlecock (4:30 PM on December 14, 2025),” a Pacifica-set relationship drama about an introverted painter whose life changes when an extroverted comedian and his girlfriend become her new neighbors.  Barrish himself will appear in person for all screenings.

The film series “Laura Truffaut On Francois Truffaut (January 17 - February 28, 2026)” also has Bay Area roots.  Laura Truffaut has called Berkeley home since 1979, when she came to UC Berkeley to study for her doctorate.  As her father is renowned world cinema director Francois Truffaut, the daughter will talk about her director father’s passion for film..

Such revered world cinema classics as “The 400 Blows (6:30 PM on January 17, 2026)” and “Day For Night (7 PM on February 20, 2026)” will be screened.   But there are other Truffaut films in the series that are worth a look.

“Small Change (4 PM on February 22, 2026)” is an ensemble dramedy about the joys and difficulties of childhood.  It’s set in the provincial French city of Thiers during Summer 1976.  The main characters are the motherless child Patrick Desmouceaux, who’s starting to take an interest in women (e.g. his teacher), and his poor friend Julien Leclou, who hides the effects of being beaten by his parents.  Catch this film to see such moments as kids attempting to tell dirty jokes or why you shouldn’t let a punished little girl get her hands on a bullhorn.

In “The Soft Skin (7 PM on January 29, 2026),” a chance encounter between famed lecturer/writer Pierre Lachenay and flight attendant Nicole (Francoise Dorleac) leads to the married middle-aged man having an affair with a woman half his age.  But attempts to fit carnal enjoyment of the affair in between their personal situations soon leads to unwelcome complications.

“Stolen Kisses (7 PM on January 22, 2026)” is part of Truffaut’s semi-autobiographical Antoine Doinel series.  Doinel, the protagonist of the aforementioned “The 400 Blows,” is now a young man who’s just been figuratively tossed out on his ear from the army.  Finding a job while maintaining his relationship with sweetheart and violinist Christine Darbon is one challenge.  But keeping a job turns out to be a much harder lift thanks to such problems as a violent jealous husband and poor driving skills.

Another giant of world cinema will have a quartet of his greatest films screened in 4K restorations.  The four films in “Akira Kurosawa: Four Recent Restorations (December 10, 2025 - February 20, 2026)” are: “High And Low (7 PM on December 10, 2025)” (The mistaken kidnapping and ransom of his chaufffeur’s son endangers shoe company executive Kingo Gondo’s (Toshiro Mifune) gamble to take control of the organization); “Ikiru (7 PM on December 17, 2025 and 4 PM on January 23, 2026)” (When public works bureaucrat Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura) learns he has terminal stomach cancer, he tries using the time left to him to find meaning in life); “Yojimbo (7 PM on December 19, 2025 and 4:30 PM on February 29, 2026) (When scruffy wandering ronin “Kuwabatake Sanjuro” (Mifune again) finds himself in a town terrorized by two rival gangs’ cold war, he tries to engineer a situation which will end with both gangs dead); and “The Hidden Fortress (3 PM on December 20, 2025 and 1:30 PM on January 11, 2026)”  (To keep the defeated Akizuki clan’s secret gold reserves out of the Yamana clan’s hands, disguised Akizuki general Makabe Rokurota (Mifune once again) commandeers peasants Tahei and Matashichi’s plan to reach safety in Hayakawa state by traveling through Yamana state with the concealed Akizuki gold and the disguised Akizuki Princess Yuki.) 

Kurosawa, incidentally, admired fellow Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse for creating films whose apparently placid surfaces concealed deep emotions.  Concluding this quarter is BAMPFA’s extensive retrospective of Naruse’s film work, the “Mikio Naruse: The Auteur As Salaryman (Now - December 21, 2025)” film series.  This last handful of films include:

“The Approach Of Autumn (2 PM on December 7, 2025)” is one of Naruse’s rare films featuring children as protagonists.  Hideo’s getting a fresh start after his father’s death with his mother’s move to Tokyo to work in a ryokan.  Befriending Junko, the daughter of his mother’s employer, will lead to excursions around Tokyo and even the fulfillment of one of Hideo’s big wishes.

“Summer Clouds (1:30 PM on December 21, 2025)” happens to be Naruse’s first film in both color and widescreen.  It depicts the passing of the old patriarchal family-focused way of farming in favor of individualism via Wasuke’s efforts to marry off his eldest son Hatsuji.  But it’s also the story of Wasuke’s widowed sister-in-law Yae, whose affair with married journalist Okawa provides a temporary shot at happiness.

But the must-see is Naruse’s “When A Woman Ascends The Stairs (7 PM on December 5, 2025).”  Aging and widowed bar hostess Keiko’s desire to improve her life clashes with some brutal personal realities.  Her family needs money for a nephew’s operation to help him walk again.  Stress has left her with a serious ulcer.  She even learns owning a bar is not the golden ticket to success she envisioned.  Is there no life path through which Keiko can find eventual happiness?

Meanwhile, in the last leg of the "Frederick Wiseman: America At Work (Now - February 19, 2026)” film series, public consumption provides a loose theme for these films.

“Welfare (7 PM on January 15, 2026)” takes a look at the public welfare system through the encounters in a New York City Social Services office between those seeking what little public benefits are available and the harried caseworkers who can’t always provide the relief their clients need.  For the unemployed and homeless seeking help, surviving matters more than “striking it rich.

“Striking it rich” may be a possibility for the models of New York City’s Zoli modeling agency.  Yet becoming a “Model (7 PM on February 11, 2026)” wrapped in the glamor of posing for magazine covers or doing TV commercials isn’t that simple.  The quiet brutality of the business, from selecting the “right” face and body to working with clients is far from easy.

“Meat (7 PM on February 19, 2026)” will probably be the most intense of the Wiseman films screening this quarter.  It looks in unsparing detail at how cattle and sheep get transformed by the then new mechanized slaughterhouse system into the food found on America’s dinner tables.  Phone deals are made over meat shipments while the source animals are skinned, gutted, and chopped into appropriate sized pieces.

The  environmental consequences of raising beef means “Meat” is also one of the films screening at this year’s “Climate Journalism On Screen (February 7-22, 2026)” film series.  Other documentaries screening in the series are:

“Teenage Wasteland (1 PM on February 7, 2026)” recounts how a 1990s cohort of Middletown high schoolers conducted a years-long investigation into illegal dumping of toxic waste at a local New York landfill.  The Electronic English class’ investigation would reveal the complicity of local politicians, the Ford Motor Company, and even the Genovese crime family.  Directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss’ (“Girls State”) film draws heavily on an archive of over 400 hours worth of video footage kept by the students’ advisor, teacher Fred Isseks.  

“Only On Earth (1 PM on February 15, 2026)” from director Robin Petre takes viewers to Spain’s Southern Galicia region during a particularly hot dry summer.  With the disappearance of wild horses keeping flammable regional undergrowth in check, normal rhythms of harvesting and birthing sheep have been replaced by protecting against the area’s extreme fires. 

Ondi Timoner’s “All The Walls Came Down (1 PM on February 22, 2026)” is both a personal and a political short documentary.  Timoner learns the home she built with wife Morgan Doctor was one of many Altadena houses destroyed in the wake of the Eaton Fire.  Yet the destruction wasn’t an act of God but tied to long histories of redlining and displacement befalling Black neighborhoods.  Also showing on the program is Brennan Robideaux’s short “Sallie’s Ashes,” in which 80-year-old Sallie Smith flights more than one clock to get Alabama Power’s Plant Barry to move its waste ash out of its current unlined storage pit before a levee breach results in the ash polluting Mobile Bay. 

The other aforementioned Wiseman documentary, “Model,” also pops up in the February installment of this year’s “Documentary Voices (February 4 - April 22, 2026)” film series.  This segment of the series focuses on labor of various shades.

Sandi, Lori, and Tracy are among the few female long-haul truck drivers in the U.S.  Amy Reid’s “Long Haulers (7 PM on February 4, 2026)” portrays their lives and even gets into their  reasons for doing this job.  Their motivations vary from flight from domestic violence to the stigma against the formerly incarcerated to mental health issues.  Above all, trucking provides the freedom and autonomy otherwise missing from their lives.

“Gaucho Gaucho (7 PM on February 18, 2026)” comes from Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw (“The Truffle Hunters”).  It’s a portrait of a group of Argentine gauchos (cowboys and cowgirls to Americans), and the friction between their older way of life and that of the modern world.  While older gauchos have accepted the land’s cycle of tough droughts and relieving rains, younger gauchos have tired of trying to eke out an existence in this devastated land.  A couple of notable characters in the film are Gauda, a teenage girl who’s training to become a gaucho, and the endangered Andean condor, which has a thorny relationship with the gauchos.

Poet and photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, though, engages in the most dangerous work in this quartet of documentaries.  She’s using both her photojournalism and her conversations with Iranian director Sepideh Farsi to depict for the outside world life in Gaza under Israeli bombardment.  Hassouna would become yet another journalist killed in Gaza following Israel’s October 7 retaliation.  Her story is recounted in the powerful “Put Your Soul On Your Hand And Walk (7 PM on February 25, 2026).”

A different sort of portrait of female journalists in the midst of war can be found in one of this quarter’s Special Screenings.  The film in question is Julia Loktev’s epic “My Undesirable Friends Part I: Last Air In Moscow (All chapters starting at 12 PM on February 14, 2026, Chapters 1-3 at 7 PM on February 26, 2026, and Chapters 4-5 at 7 PM on February 27, 2026).”  It’s an intimate portrait of the journalists of TV Rain, Russia’s last independent TV news channel.  Anna Nemzer, Sonya Groysman, and Olya Churakova are among the journalists struggling with being labeled as “foreign agents” by Putin’s government, not panicking vs. not adapting to the increasing government repression, and when is it time to get out of Russia before they get arrested.

Youssef Chahine’s neorealist crime drama “Cairo Station (4:30 PM on January 11, 2026 and 4:30 PM on February 21, 2026)” concerns the lame Cairo station newspaper seller Qinawi, who becomes obsessed with the beautiful cold drink vendor Hannuma.  But when the vendor rejects his advances, he plots to murder her in retaliation.

Shocking in a different way is Luis Bunuel’s sacrilegious surrealist dramedy “Viridiana (6:30 PM on December 13, 2025 and 7 PM on January 14, 2026).”   In this Cannes Palme d’Or-winning film, Viridiana’s path to becoming a nun gets derailed by her reclusive uncle Don Jaime’s hidden agenda.  Circumstances soon allow her to dedicate her resources to find a way to help those in need.  But things eventually go disastrously wrong, resulting in a blasphemous parody of da Vinci's “The Last Supper.”

For those who prefer their classic cinema to not earn denunciation by the Catholic Church (as “Viridiana” did), perhaps the offerings in the “Swedish Silent Cinema: Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller (January 16 - February 28, 2026)” film series might be more to their liking.  The film series offers a chance for viewers to check out some of the best work of these titans of Swedish silent cinema.  If Sjostrom’s name sounds vaguely familiar to newbie world cinema fans, it’s because this great Swedish director played the protagonist in the Ingmar Bergman classic “Wild Strawberries,” which is being shown as part of this series.

Stiller’s romantic comedy “Erotikon (7 PM on January 16, 2026)” pushed boundaries of the time with its plot of a married woman having affairs with two different men.  Entomologist Leo Charpentier may be studying polygamy among beetles, but he’s blind to wife Irene’s unfaithfulness.  She’s having an affair with Leo’s best friend, sculptor Preben Wells and flirts with aviator Baron Felix.  A couple of misunderstandings throw all these relationships off-kilter.  Who winds up with whom when the dust settles may surprise the viewer.

The double bill of “The Wings & Ingeborg Holm (1 PM on January 18, 2026)” sees both a Stiller and  a Sjostrom film appear on the same program.  Stiller’s unfortunately fragmentary film “The Wings”  (thanks to preservation issues) tells the story of a gay sculptor named Claude Zoret, whose relationship with bisexual model Mikael gets sabotaged by the machinations of his patron Countess Lucia de Zamaow.  It may have been the first feature film with gay content, and use of flashbacks to tell its story.  

Sjostrom’s “Ingeborg Holm” is a social drama depicting the misfortunes befalling the title character after her husband dies.  Not only does Mrs. Holm lose the shop she opened with her husband, but she’s forced to go to the poorhouse and be forcibly separated from her children.  Debates sparked by the film eventually led to changes in Sweden’s poorhouse laws.

“The Phantom Carriage (1 PM on February 1, 2026)” sees Sjostrom playing loosely with Nobel Prize-winner Selma Lagerlof’s source material.  The flashback-heavy story concerns the attempts to reform a drunkard named David Holm (Sjostrom).  Involved in the tale are Holm’s old friend and drinking buddy Georges, a dying Salvation Army sister named Edit, and the legend of Death’s phantom carriage.

For viewers interested in trying films with more complex structures than Sjostrom’s films, they might want to check out the “Robert Beavers: Filmmaker In Residence (January 30 - February 7, 2026)” film series.  It’s a retrospective of this avant-garde filmmaker’s body of work, which focuses on such subjects as psychology, musical phrasing, and architectural space.  Viewers to the series can expect to see much of Beevers’ 18-film cycle “My Hand Outstretched To The Winged Distance And Sightless Measure” as well as more recent works such as “The Sparrow Dream” and “Der Klang, die Welt…”

Last but certainly not least is the film series “In The Mood For Love: The Films Of Wong Kar Wai (January 9 - February 28, 2026).”  The series comes on the heels of both the Criterion Channel debut of Wong’s TV epic “Blossoms Shanghai” and the release of Criterion’s “World Of Wong Kar-Wai” box set.  Speaking of the latter, the seven films in that box set will be shown in 4K digital restorations.  Seeing such classic Wong films as “Chungking Express” and “In The Mood For Love” on the big screen will be a treat in and of itself.  But there are other titles in this series that aren’t in the box set. 

“The Grandmaster (7 PM on February 21, 2026)” is a historic biography about legendary wing chun kung fu grandmaster Ip Man (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai).  There are fights aplenty in the film, but space is also given to philosophy and even politics.

“Ashes Of Time Redux (7 PM on January 23, 2026)”.may also be a martial arts film with swordplay and action sequences directed by the legendary Sammo Hung.  Yet the fighting isn’t the main attraction.  Martial artist Ouyang Feng (Leslie Cheung) sets up an inn near a desert village where he offers his services as a killer for hire.  But the inn also turns out to be a magnet for traveling martial artists with their own stories.  These tales include: a brother and sister who hire Feng for different killing contracts; a swordsman who wants to see his wife one last time before he loses his sight; and a down and out martial artist who fights for the price of a single egg.