USA/1994—directed by Ayoka Chenzira | 85 minutes

“A gorgeous clarion call for our young Black girls, heralding the creativity and confidence that is the pride of our culture.”  - Ava DuVernay 

In 1994, when independent filmmaker Ayoka Chenzira completed Alma’s Rainbow, distributors failed to “get” her glorious coming-of-age comedy-drama about the day-to-day aspirations and triumphs of three Black women living in Brooklyn.

Teenager Rainbow Gold (Victoria Gabrielle Platt) is entering womanhood and navigating experiences around standards of beauty, self-image, and the rights Black women have over their bodies. Rainbow, who attends parochial school, studies dance, and is just becoming aware of boys, lives with her strait-laced mother Alma Gold (Kim Weston-Moran), who runs a hair salon in their home. When Alma’s free-spirited sister Ruby (Mizan Kirby) arrives from Paris after a 10-year absence, the sisters clash over the “proper” direction for Rainbow’s life. 

Alma's Rainbow presents a multi-layered Black women’s world where the characters are eager to embrace life and love joyfully, while still wrestling with what it means to exercise their agency. The year’s most revelatory rediscovery has been beautifully restored by The Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation, and is presented by Julie Dash.

 "Nearly three decades after its initial release, Alma’s Rainbow is a revelation!”    -Stephen Saito, The Moveable Feast 
  

Lebanon/2021—directed by Mounia Akl | 106 minutes

In the not-so-distant future, the five members of the free-spirited Badri family have escaped the smog and social unrest of big-city life in Beirut life by settling down in a far more tranquil, idyllic mountain home. Surrounded by lush rolling hills, the family is getting used to relative peace and quiet until the youngest child spots strangers in the valley, and learns that a new, “green” landfill will be constructed just beyond their fence.

Before long, household tension rises along with the landfill, and the family’s conundrum reveals long-simmering differences within the family. Deftly written and performed, with more than a touch of sardonic wit, director Mounia Akl’s prizewinning debut feature captures the joys and frustrations of a close-knit family with an intimacy that feels startlingly natural, and sets them against a superbly drawn backdrop of environmental and social change.

“A stellar family drama, clear-eyed and above all sincere. This is a film worth savoring.” -Andrew Crump, The Playlist 

Official Selection, Venice, Toronto, Chicago, San Francisco, and Arab American National Museum Film Festivals; Audience Award, London Film Festival. In Arabic with English subtitles.

UK/2021—directed by Mark Cousins | 167 minutes

“What sets it soaring is the discerning guide at its helm, one whose curatorial exultation and rigor are also calming and reassuring - a welcome voice in cacophonous times.”  -Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter 

A decade after The Story of Film: An Odyssey, his brilliant documentary about the state of moviemaking in the 20th century, filmmaker and author Mark Cousins returns with an epic portrait of cinematic innovation from around the globe. Here, Cousins turns his sharp, meticulously honed gaze on world cinema from 2010 to 2021, using sequences from a vast range of works — including Frozen, Joker, and Cemetery of Splendour — as launchpads to explore recurring themes and motifs, from the evolution of film language to technology’s role in moviemaking today to shifting identities in 21st-century world cinema.

With insights on everything from Deadpool and It Follows to Black Panther and Lover’s Rock, Cousins seeks out creators and communities often under-represented in traditional film histories, including Asian and Middle Eastern works, as well as boundary-pushing documentaries and films that see gender in new ways. As the pandemic begins to ebb, Cousins ponders what comes next in the streaming age: how have we changed as cinephiles, and how moviegoing will transform in the digital era to our collective joy and wonder.

“Monumental and amazingly ambitious. An unashamed celebration of cinema as an art form.”  -Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian 

USA/France/Switzerland/UK/2018—directed by Julian Schnabel | 111 minutes

Julian Schnabel’s unconventional, visionary imagining of Van Gogh’s time in Arles and Auvers-Sur-Oise might be described as the melding of striking, visual stream-of-consciousness imagery with a contemplative, spiritual center worthy of Chekhov.

Though the film’s controversial approach to Van Gogh can leave a fan of more conventional “biopics” equally dazzled and disoriented, there can be little disagreement as to the hypnotic and transfixing intense performance of the astonishing Willem Dafoe, who brings to the screen a Van Gogh both blazingly intense and achingly vulnerable. As with Van Gogh’s greatest paintings, you simply can’t look away.
 

USA/France/UK/Netherlands/1990—directed by Robert Altman | 138 minutes

Several key episodes in the intertwined lives of Vincent Van Gogh (Tim Roth) and his brother Theo (Paul Rhys) are juxtaposed with consummate skill and sensitivity by one of the greatest of all cinematic storytellers, director Robert Altman.

Originally conceived as a four-hour, multi-part series for television, Altman and screenwriter Julian Mitchell simultaneously edited the film into this 138-minute version designed for theatrical release, which is how it was seen in American theaters and described by critic Roger Ebert as “a film that generates the feeling that we are in the presence of a man in the act of creation.”

France/1991—directed by Maurice Pialat | In French with English subtitles. (159 minutes)

In rising to the risky challenge of dramatizing the last 67 days of the life of Vincent Van Gogh, French auteur Maurice Pialat fashioned this intimate depiction of a fascinating, troubled, yet frequently charming genius.

This is due to the generous and deeply human performance of singer and composer Jacques Dutronc, whose acting career followed his musical success and lead to his receiving the 1992 César Award - France’s version of the Oscar® - for his performance as Van Gogh in the film that director Jean-Luc Godard called “astonishing.”

(USA/1956—directed by Vincente Minnelli)

Vincente Minnelli’s lavishly colorful, widescreen biography of Vincent Van Gogh is powered by Kirk Douglas’s Oscar® nominated performance as the brilliant, tormented artist.

Though it shaped Van Gogh’s story to fit within the framework of a big-studio Hollywood blockbuster, the enduring popularity of Lust For Life – if not its absolute accuracy – is considered by many to be one of the principal factors that propelled Van Gogh’s art into America’s popular consciousness in the fifties.

Co-starring Anthony Quinn as Paul Gaugin, and James Donald as Vincent’s brother Theo. (122 minutes)
 

In the aftermath of World War II, Ypsilanti-based designer Preston Tucker (Jeff Bridges) was quick to realize that over the four years during which Detroit’s Big Three had forsaken individual automobile production to focus on the war effort, Americans had developed a voracious appetite for new cars. Tucker’s answer was to independently create an innovative “car of the future,” featuring pioneering safety features and modern streamlined styling, including a center-mounted “cyclops” headlight that turned with the vehicle.

It’s easy to see why the Detroit-born Francis Ford Coppola was drawn to this story of one man’s vision and unwavering determination; many of Coppola’s own independent productions —not to mention his brilliant Godfather saga—can be seen as parallel portraits of American dreamers. (110 minutes) 

“Francis Coppola's heartfelt tribute to Preston Tucker turns out to be one of his most personal and successful movies.”  –Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader 

“An elegiac corollary to the fiery documentaries that captured Hong Kong's recent protest movement, Chan Tze Woon's Blue Island looks at the state of the region in the wake of the 2020 national security law, an era where many pro-democracy protesters have either fled into exile or are sitting in custody. Explicitly hybrid in its approach, the film not only blurs narrative and documentary, but also the years of 2019 to 2021 with a longer history of Hong Kong as a site of refuge. 

The film incorporates staged sequences in which the young protest leaders of today―many of whom are awaiting sentencing for speaking out―are daringly cast in the roles of student leaders from 1989 and earlier. Timely and resonant, Blue Island grapples honestly with the fact that Hong Kong as we once knew it is no more.” –Jesse Cumming, HotDocs Festival, Toronto.

In Yue Chinese (Cantonese), English and Mandarin with English subtitles. (97 minutes)

“Political bravery and aesthetic daring... Urgent, remarkable, genre-defying.” –Museum of Modern Art

(Denmark, Norway, Sweden/2021 —directed by Linda Hambäck) 

Though Jonna’s home is filled with wonderful kids and a caring guardian, she can’t help but pin her hopes on one day being adopted. When that long-awaited day finally arrives, she learns that love comes in all shapes, sizes, and, er, creatures… like the enormous ape with the equally enormous heart who wants to take Jonna home. Using her own experience as an adoptee, director Linda Hambäck shares this hilarious and moving story through a powerful, nuanced lens.

A warm tale of love over greed, the joy in the things that make us different, and the life-changing magic of sometimes letting things get a little messy, The Ape Star is sure to win hearts. Recommended for families with children 6 and over. (73 minutes)