Berkeley Artwork Museum and Pacific Movie Archive’s winter program gives a treasure chest of film gems, from well-known options comparable to John Ford’s tarnished Western “The Searchers” to Cheryl Dunye’s not often seen women-prison drama “Stranger Inside.”
Our cinematic style buds are salivating already. Right here’s a glance:
“G. W. Pabst: Selected Films 1925-38” (By Feb. 28): Bay Space followers’ ardour for silent movies is assured to pack theaters, so bounce on scoring tickets for the ten remaining movies on this sequence that includes Austrian actor-turned-director Georg Wilhelm Pabst, whose breakout directorial characteristic was 1925’s gritty, groundbreaking post-World Struggle I drama “The Joyless Street.” Set on a scrappy avenue in Vienna, it options Greta Garbo and Asta Nielsen as two ladies going through unsure futures who mingle with the wealthy, on the lookout for an excellent time. It screens at 7 p.m. on Dec. 20. Two different titles that struck my curiosity are the little seen “The Love of Jeanne Ney,” at 7 p.m. Dec. 12, Pabst’s 1927 adaptation of a well-liked novel by Russian writer Ilya Ehrenburg from that interval; and the daring 1929 showgirl triumph “Pandora’s Box” at 1:30 p.m. Jan. 19. Many screenings embody Judith Rosenberg on the piano. Go to bampfa.org/program/gw-pabst.
Legendary Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni is spotlighted in a program illustrating his immense vary. (Courtesy BAMPFA)
“Marcello Mastroianni at 100” (Dec. 15 by Feb. 27): Certainly one of Italy’s most hard-working and revered actors (170 movies to his credit score) died in 1996 at 72, however his legacy and affect in movie historical past dwell on. The 11-film program displays his variety and his evolution as an actor who nimbly jumped from comedy to drama. His collaborations with the influential Federico Fellini netted classics comparable to “La dolce vita” (screening at 6 p.m. Dec. 21 and seven p.m. Jan. 22); and “8 ½” (at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 11 and seven p.m. Jan. 22). However he’s additionally remembered for occasionally fiery on-screen romances in Vittorio De Sica’s “Marriage Italian Style” (at 4:30 p.m. Jan. 22) reverse Sophia Loren, and Pietro Germi’s frisky “Divorce Italian Style” (at 7 p.m. Dec. 19) as a married and dishonest aristocrat, a task that landed him considered one of three greatest actor Oscar nominations. Go to bampfa.org/program/marcello-mastroianni-100.
Cheryl Dunye’s “Stranger Inside” starring Yolonda Ross, a standout choice within the Pacific Movie Archive’s winter programming, screens without cost. (Courtesy BAMPFA)
“Masc II: Mascs plus Muchachas” (Jan. 17 by Feb. 23): Purchase tickets now for any of the screenings on this spectacular follow-up to final yr’s sold-out sequence “Masc: Trans Men, Butch Dykes, and Gender Nonconforming Heroes in Cinema” curated by Berkeley filmmaker and LGBTQ cinema historian/preservationist Jenni Olsen and movie critic and writer Caden Mark Gardner. (Additionally: Get a replica of Gardner and coauthor Willow Catelyn Maclay’s distinctive ebook “Corpses, Fools and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema.”) Olsen, the only curator of this yr’s program, will likely be featured in dialog throughout the sequence, which is co-presented by Frameline San Francisco Worldwide LGBTQ+ Movie Pageant and the College of California, Berkeley’s Division of Gender and Girls’s Research. Olsen once more spotlights and celebrates AFAB (assigned-female-at-birth) masc films. Spanish trans thinker Paul B. Preciado’s 2023 acclaimed debut “Orlando, My Political Biography” (screening at 7 p.m. Jan. 17) is a novel visible essay that springboards from Virgina Woolf’s influential novel because it ponders on the trans expertise. Others I don’t need to miss are a free screening of “The Watermelon Woman” director Cheryl Dunye’s 2001 drama “Stranger Inside” (at 5 p.m. Jan. 19 with Dunye and Frameline Government Director Allegra Madsen in a post-screening dialog) that includes Yolonda Ross because the butch Treasure who’s on a quest whereas incarcerated to search out her mother; and Sérgio Toledo’s “Vera” (at 7 p.m. Jan. 29), a 1986 Brazilian drama about that nation’s trans poet Anderson Bigode Herzer. Go to https://bampfa.org/program/masc-ii.
