with an introduction by Martina Furlan

Tucked away in the Hollywood Hills, not far from Mulholland Drive, lies a visually intriguing Brutalist house. The residence is not merely a filming location but the personal home of the late David Lynch. It is here, amidst these walls, that Lynch crafted the eerie, labyrinthine world of his 1997 neo-noir opus, Lost Highway. The film unravels as a haunting descent into the subconscious, following Fred Madison (Bill Pullman), a jazz saxophonist who, along with his wife Renee (Patricia Arquette), begins receiving ominous videotapes capturing unsettling footage of their home. As paranoia and dread set in, Fred is drawn into a nightmarish sequence of events that blur the boundaries of identity, time, and reality. The film’s labyrinthine narrative weaves themes of guilt, obsession, and the subconscious into an unforgettable tapestry of psychological horror.

This week’s screening is dedicated to David Lynch whose recent passing has a left an indelible void in the world of art and storytelling. Yet, his legacy endures in works like Lost Highway, where the boundaries of reality dissolve and the ordinary is rendered extraordinary. The film, much like Lynch himself, invites us to traverse the enigmatic corridors of the unknown, leaving them haunted, bewildered and forever changed.

with an introduction by Theo Du

One of the lesser discussed filmmaker of the Nouvelle Vague, this mid-career film of Rivette have been described as a “second first-feature” by Serges Daney. A serious game, a lighthearted drama. The film follows Marie (Bulle Ogier) and Baptiste (Pascale Ogier) as they decipher a cryptic map that divides up the districts of Paris into a Goose board. Tangents are of epiphanic quality, scenes connected together by the loosest of strings. Confusion and bafflement is given, but also utter exuberance and enjoyment! Come for a playful and fantastical adventure where a mother and a daughter pretend to meet each other for the first time for the good of cinema!

In collaboration with Avila:

Avila is a Brussels-based non-profit organisation which distributes Belgian auteur cinema in theaters and online. Founded by filmmakers, the platform offers both contemporary and classical, experimental, documentary, and fiction films. The catalogue is a carefully curated selection of films that resonate aesthetically and socially, and contribute to (film) history. Its range consists mainly of films with a unique worldview by directors with a bold cinematic signature who resolutely approach cinema as an art form. 

Belgium produces many exceptional and valuable films that often fail to fully reach their intended audience. Avila seeks to bridge the gap between a film and its public and contributes to a sustainable Belgian film culture on several levels. As a distributor, Avila brings unreleased films to the big screen with care and organises contextualised screenings in Belgium. After their release, the films are published on the streaming platform where they are accessible worldwide alongside 100 other titles.

Homer tells us how Ulysses’ wife Penelope used to weave Laertes’ shroud. The work she did by day she unravelled by night. That process was not dissimilar to the creation and production of Pink Ulysses. Gradually images (collected here and there, also from film classics) and well and lesser known music created a texture of sight and sound, resulting in a variation on Ulysses. Perhaps Penelope began to love her son more than her distant, absent husband? And possibly Ulysses began to love the “ideal Penelope” he recognized in magical Circe more than his wife, who would be waiting for him in Ithaca? Perhaps… and the imagination lingers on… How this materializes in a film, a fabric, is Pink Ulysses’ secret. An exploration, an adventurous wandering.’

with an introduction by Michał Bilski

How to Save a Dead Friend (2022) is an intimate and haunting documentary that captures the fragility of youth, love, and survival in the face of despair. Filmmaker Marusya Syroechkovskaya takes us through her own life as a suicidal teenager, holding onto the belief that 2015 might be her last year alive. She illustrates a deep connection with her boyfriend, Kimi Morev - a troubled kindred spirit whose presence becomes both a source of comfort and heartbreak. “He had scars on his wrists and knew every Joy Division song by heart,” she recalls. While their love offers her glimmers of hope, Kimi battles drug abuse and depression. In the end, it is a narrative about Russian youth and an unflinching look at love, loss, and the possibility of survival.

In collaboration with Radical Organization of Students Amsterdam (ROSA):

ROSA is a marxist student activist organization with members from universities across Amsterdam. Our focus is building the base for class struggle within student circles through protest, educational events, fundraisers, and other community-building activities.

Released in 1987 after nearly a decade of brutal retaliation to growing union power in the 1970s by the Reagan and Thatcher governments, Matewan looks to early 20th Century US labour history for both inspirational and cautionary lessons about organising. John Sayles shot the film as an alternative Western, harnessing and subverting tropes from American cinema’s most individualistic genre to tell a story of collective life and power in an Appalachian coal mining community. Based on true events, Matewan is an accessible exploration of solidarity and radical organisation, from internal struggles like racism and sexism, to external violence from the capitalist alliance of mining company and state.

Though the film was a commercial flop on release, it gained enough critical acclaim to warrant a Criterion edition in 2019. Whatever its box office take in 1987, Matewan appears now as a forgotten classic, with an incredible cast of recognisable character actors like Chris Cooper, James Earl Jones, and David Strathairn. It raises questions about the need for, and desperate lack of, mainstream pro-union cinema (across the West but especially in the United States) Every year the need for such art grows. As Dutch workers push for strikes across higher education, against genocide and the slashing of university budgets, films like Matewan are vital tools for mass education, inspiration, and mobilisation.

with introductions by Parker Burrows and Mel Ketelaars

A selection of Barbara Hammer’s short films and the feature film Nitrate Kisses.

Known as a trailblazer of experimental queer cinema, Barbara Hammer’s films focus on representing both the ephemera and the undeniable concreteness of what it means to be queer. Her early films, such as Dyketactics (where a party of lesbians frolic naked in a park) and Superdyke (where a lesbian army takes over the streets of San Francisco) use the confines of the film frame to create small but impenetrable safe spaces where queer sexuality can blossom in spite of a hostile, heteronormative culture. In other shorts, Contribution to Light and Multiple Orgasm, Hammer uses crossfades and dreamy cinematography to mix images of nature with images of bodies, always showing the inarguable place of queerness within the order of the natural world. These early shorts along with her masterpiece Women I Love, build up to her first feature film Nitrate Kisses, an essayistic documentary that explores the erasure of queer images in mainstream culture and unapologetically represents queerness as an ever-evolving, inextinguishable source of power.

The program will be:

- Contribution to Light (1968)

- ⁠⁠Dyketactics (1974)

-⁠ ⁠⁠Superdyke (1975)

- ⁠⁠Multiple Orgasm (1976)

-⁠ ⁠⁠Women I Love (1976)

- Nitrate Kisses (1992)

with an introduction by Martina Furlan

American experimental directors Jack Smith and Kenneth Anger are known for their outrageous mixing of biblical epics, art deco, lurid sin, and redeeming morality. By pairing Flaming Creatures (1963) and Lucifer Rising (1972) we will endure a visceral, sensory experience that questions established norms and defies conventional narratives and aesthetics, embracing dreamlike imagery, provocative symbolism, and a radical reimagining of identity, sexuality, and spirituality. Flaming Creatures, Smith’s surreal, gender-fluid fantasy, unfolds in a decadent, decaying world where boundaries between the real and the mythical dissolve. In this feverish cinematic landscape, drag queens, vampires, and otherworldly creatures drift through a series of performances that blur the line between the grotesque and the sublime. Anger’s Lucifer Rising complements this aesthetic with its hypnotic, esoteric dive into the mythological and the cosmic. In line with his adherence to Thelema, an esoteric and occult spiritual philosophy, Anger reinterprets the mythology of Lucifer as a bringer of light and agent of transformation.

with an introduction by Fien Limburg

“People who blame The Beyond (1981) for its lack of story don’t understand that it is a film of images, which must be received without any reflection”, states giallo maestro Lucio Fulci’s in response to criticism of what is widely considered to be his masterpiece. The Beyond is Fulci’s humble attempt at the “absolute film”, one that is supposed to encompass all the horrors of the world. The gossamer plot follows Liza who mysteriously inherits a decrepit yet opulent hotel in Louisiana. Through a subsequent series of supernatural occurings she comes to discover this hotel is built upon the very gates of hell. Freighted with doomed inevitability, the languorous and gloomy Southern Gothic atmosphere is interjected by fevered paroxysms of pure terror. The unique pleasure of The Beyond lies precisely in witnessing the feeble skeleton of narrative deliquesce into the putrefied flesh of “pure theme”, our grip on reality dissolving into hallucinations and prophecies. This pure, unfettered and potent 80s horror splendor bears testament to a completely different vision to what cinema can and potentially should be.

with an introduction by Neha Thantry

When puberty begins for 11-year-old Zaffan, she finds her body slowly changing in new and terrifying ways, making her an outcast among her friends and family in her rural Malaysian village. In this feature debut, Amanda Nell Eu visualises the growing pains of girlhood through skin-crawling body horror, embodying the fear and isolation encompassed within Zaffan's transformation. Yet, Eu frames this metamorphosis with a gentle compassion and empathy that brings a fresh take into the horror genre, following Zaffan into the lush greenery of the living, breathing tropical forest, that allows her to carve out a liminal space for herself to grow into her changing body, free from the constraints of the conservative society she calls home. For fans of the likes of Jennifer's Body (2009) and The Exorcist (1973), Tiger Stripes is a surprisingly endearing coming-of-age story that reimagines the monstrous feminine haunting the jungles of Malaysia, and questions whether it's time to embrace her power, rather than fear it.

with an introduction by Mel Ketelaars

Silent film director G. W. Pabst introduces the world to Louise Brooks in her iconic role as Lulu, in the Weimar classic Pandora’s Box (1929). Controversial during its release, this Weimar era silent film tells the intriguing story of Lulu, a sex worker who seduces the people around her and takes them with her into a downward spiral. With sexuality and female desire at the centre stage, Pandora’s Box is surprisingly modern and daring, not shying away from showing the audience one of the first lesbian subplots in cinema history. Although subtle, the queer undertones in this film deserve to be celebrated. Pabst turned Louise Brooks into an icon, with her sharp bob and her bold and gutsy performance, catapulting her into fame together with Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) and Miss Europe (1930), making her unforgettable. Later known as one of the most infamous flapper girls of her time, Brooks pulled people in with her performance as Lulu, leading to the rediscovery of the film in the 1950s, turning a censored and condemned film into a Weimar classic.

with an introduction by Parker Burrows

The international breakout film from the most famous Spanish filmmaker of his generation. Far reaching in its influences from Jean Cocteau, rapid-fire American screwball comedies of the 1940s and 50s, and pop-art aesthetics, Almodóvar’s film follows Pepa (played with deadpan brilliance by Carmen Maura) who intends to poison herself in the wake of a sudden breakup. When her impulsive, gazpacho-related suicide is interrupted by an ensemble of regular Almodóvar players (among them Rossy de Palma, Julieta Serrano, and Antonio Banderas), absurd chaos begins to pile up as everyone’s love life seems to spiral out of control. While the film never breaks from its high-octane ridiculousness, it keeps an intimate, empathetic focus on the perspectives of its women and offers a story of finding self-determination outside of the patriarchy. With its exaggerated melodrama and vibrant bursts of color, the film’s camp sensibilities overtook the Spanish and international mainstream and became a massive critical and commercial success.

with an introduction by Parker Burrows

Tsui Hark asserts himself as a legendary figure of Hong Kong’s New Wave movement with this audaciously colorful delight. Hong Kong superstars Maggie Cheung and Joey Wong lead the way as snake sisters that desperately try to disguise themselves as humans as they both attempt to pursue the same oblivious man. Meanwhile, a conservative monk tracks the two sisters and threatens to eradicate them both. Expanding on the fantastical style of the wuxia film, Green Snake feels like a dream in its most vibrant form. Aided by floating, dance-like combat and floods of pink and purple shades, the film creates a playfully erotic (and arguably quite queer) story about breaking past the limits of conservative tradition and learning how to take the daunting leap towards taking control of your abundantly magical body.

with an introduction by Fatme Hawarin

With a selection of 4 short films we want to invite you on a journey into the evolution of Palestinian videography as an empowering counter-image to the historical and ongoing media massification of displaced populations.

Starting at the height of the PLO film unit period operating during the “Cinema of the Revolution” Abu Ali’s Palestine in the Eye (1976) mourns the death of martyr filmmaker Hani Jawharieh while revealing the anti-imperialist potential of non-hierarchical collective filmmaking. In Mona Hatoum’s video installation Measures of Distance (1988) the personal and political are inextricably merged as intimate letters grieving exile, family fragmentation and irreparable loss of heritage. With Ma’loul Celebrates its Destruction (1985), Michel Khleifi commemorates the ancestral ground on which a ruined village outside Nazareth once prospered under Jewish, Roman, Ottoman and Palestinian rule, the villager’s oral testimonies and landscape iconography resurface as living artifacts of collective trauma. We will conclude our journey on Mother Mary and Joseph’s motorcycle towards Bethlehem in Elia Suleiman’s postmodern Cyber Palestine (2000), stylishly translating themes of geographic fragmentation and surveillance into digital Y2K sci-fi aesthetics.

with an introduction by Neha Thantry

The first feature-length film to be shot on the Palestinian “Green Line” in the West Bank, Michel Khleifi’s Fertile Memory (1980) paints a lyrical portrait of two Palestinian women – one is an elderly widow, dispossessed of the land left to her by her deceased husband, who remained in Nazareth after 1948. The other, a successful writer and teacher from Nablus, alienated by her status as a divorcée. The women never meet, and yet they almost seem to be in constant conversation with each other, their “stuckness” in their respective interior lives framed against idyllic Palestinian land. Transcending the boundaries between fiction and documentary, the film is a pensive rumination on what it means to navigate a patriarchal society under occupation, and a loving ode to the steadfast resistance that is borne from negotiating the contradictions of everyday life.

with an introduction by Parker Burrows

In an essayistic form that rests somewhere in between fiction and documentary, Vasconcelos recounts stories of her late mother and grandmother - sometimes through her own eyes, and sometimes through her father’s. Vasconcelos’ background in fine arts is apparent in the cinematography, which captures luscious nature and intimate domestic scenes with the careful deliberation of classical still lifes. Through gorgeously poetic voiceover, Vasconcelos blurs many lines - between analog and digital archives, between grief and optimism, between dreams and memories. A treasure of contemporary documentary filmmaking.

with an introduction by Theo Du

'A love story set in Calcutta', is perhaps all the information one needs to understand Marguerite Duras' India Song (1975). Most famous as the writer of Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959), Duras' India Song can be seen as another exploration of memory, loss, and the impossibility of return. The author of over 25 novels, here we see the prime example of her 'literary cinema.' As we follow the lush and pompous lives of colonial ambassadors, attaches, and wife around the putrid heat of Calcutta, sickness seeps in. One smells death, incense, petrichor, sweat and champagne; as we hear the same song on the piano, the same dancing song. Featuring Delphine Seyrig and Michael Lonsdale, India Song stays in your head like a fever dream, immaterial yet eminently tactile, unbelievably beautiful yet suffocating.

with an introduction by Alex Muller

Directed by the maestro of erotic cinema, Tinto Brass, Salon Kitty is a provocative and controversial film which attempts to unmask the perverse depravity at the heart of Nazism. With bold and salacious mise-en-scène inspired by the paintings of Otto Dix and George Grosz, the film tells the story of Margherita, a young woman recruited by the Nazis to work as a spy in a high-end brothel known as Salon Kitty. Brass's film is known for its unflinching portrayal of the moral decay and licentiousness of the Nazi regime, as well as its unique exploration of the relation between eros and ideology. Through explicit scenes and striking visuals, Salon Kitty sheds light on the darkest corners of human nature and asks us to reconsider the potentiality of genre as an effective source of critique.

with an introduction by Fien Limburg

At times labeled as a “documentary” on the life of Harlem Renaissance poet and novelist Langston Hughes, Looking for Langston (1989) is more akin to an associative mosaic or archival fragments, fictional dream-sequences, jazz, still photographs, experimental fiction and poetry. The film was released in the context of the virulent homophobia of the AIDS crisis, and served as an intervention in how the heritage of both the Harlem Renaissance and Hughes has been constructed and maintained, inevitably suffering the threat of a lawsuit from the Hughes Estate. Looking for Langston can be seen as what Julien calls “poetic restitution”, the retrieval and restoration of a stolen, lost or otherwise submerged history and opening up the possibilities of the archive and the museum as a site for radical reinvention through beauty and desire. Abandoning notions of historical verity and chronology, Looking for Langston constructs a sensuous imaginary where the Jazz Age and queer club culture of the 1980s simultaneously coexist in unquestionable harmony.

with an introduction by Neha Thantry

Driven by the need to settle her mounting electricity bills, Leonor Reyes, once celebrated as a prolific screenwriter, embarks on a journey to breathe new life into one of her old scripts. Her project takes an unexpected turn when, one neighbourly dispute and a freak accident involving a TV set later, she’s sent into a coma that literally catapults her into her unfinished screenplay. There, she becomes the unlikely action hero of this familiar yet faraway world. What unfolds is an epic meta-narrative that lovingly pays homage to the pulpy Filipino genre films of the 70s and 80s while breaking their every rule. As you wrap your head around the film-within-a-film (within another film?) structure of this inventive directorial debut, be prepared to find yourself laughing your heart out one minute and holding back tears the next. In this endearing yet confident ode to the films that shaped our childhoods, Martika Ramirez Escobar weaves together a profound exploration of grief and sacrifice, that ultimately celebrates the joy and healing power of filmmaking.

with an introduction by Stefan Glowacki

In the snowy forests surrounding the 'Caribou' trade post roams The Wolf-Dog - a foundling adopted by a wolf pack and raised according to the law of the wilderness. Though the feral ways run deep, they have to surrender to the kindness of the heart when The Wolf-Dog finds Gabrielle, a fur trader caught up in an intrigue orchestrated by the cunning trade post manager, Shad. This is the plot of Where the North Begins, a 1923 American silent film featuring Rin Tin Tin, the canine star of silent cinema, in his first leading role. It is the film that reportedly saved Warner Bros. from bankruptcy and launched Rin Tin Tin into international stardom. Surely, a restaging of the mythical scene of domestication, but shown in a way that cannot be reduced to a tale of human mastery.

with an introduction by Jacob Engelberg

Harriet (Sally Faulkner) and John (Brian Deacon), a staid and parochial English couple, are off on an equally unadventurous caravanning holiday. Their hopes of calm tranquility are spoiled, however, by the strange presence of two glamorous and mysterious women (Marianne Morris and Anulka Dziubinska), who flit around the woods and country house nearby. As the couple’s curiosity builds, the women take in gentleman callers, whose desires eventually prove deadly. It’s 50 years since the release of José Ramón Larraz’s Vampyres (1974), a low-budget yet luscious film whose inventiveness with the figure of the bisexual female vampire has cemented it as a classic of the vampire genre. Vampyres serves up sex and gore at their most ecstatic, with a good dose of humour to boot, but its most alluring and enduring images are those attesting to the troubling implication of death in desire.

with an introduction by Bogna Bochińska

Fastening your seatbelts might not be enough to get out of this race in one piece. Redline is the most infamous and deadly intergalactic car race in the universe. The stakes are high, but the prize is even higher. Fame, money and prestige are worth to risk it all. In the midst of this crazy world of speed, aliens, shady business and secret military operations, the story focuses on an underdog, who above all just loves to race. 

Koike’s Redline is a visual delight that gives you an adrenaline rush through pure aesthetic overstimulation. All hand drawn, it took 7 years to make, almost bringing down one of Japan's major animation studios at the time. 

with an introduction by Rhys Jones

Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s gruesome horror À l'intérieur (2007) is a film fixated on physical and metaphysical boundaries: from the fleshy walls of the womb to the less tangible social and economic boundaries imposed by France’s right-wing administration that culminated in the Paris riots of 2005. The plot follows the life of Sarah (Alysson Paradis), a pregnant woman whose partner dies in a car crash. Months later, Sarah is terrorized in her home by a mysterious woman (Béatrice Dalle) who wants Sarah’s unborn child.

(In collaboration with Media Makers)

Also referred to as Dogme #28, the film uses the filmmaking techniques of the Dogme 95 manifesto, started by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg in Denmark in the 90s. Open Hearts revolves around a tragic car accident that intertwines the lives of two couples. Cecilie and Joachim’s relationship faces a sudden challenge when Joachim is involved in the accident, leaving him paralyzed. Seeking solace, Cecilie forms an unexpected connection with Niels, the doctor treating Joachim.

with an introduction by Carolina Amato

Steven Shainberg’s 2002 Secretary offers a witty and audacious look into a particular so-called ‘dysfunctional’ relationship between a young secretary and her strange boss. Lee has just been released from a psychiatric hospital to which she was admitted because of her self-harming tendencies, which she hasn’t fully shaken. Returning home proves to be, once again, unfulfilling thus awakening in her the desire to assert her independence and possibly break out of old habits. After taking a typing course, Lee finds a job at E. Edward Grey’s small (very small) law firm. He establishes himself as unique and peculiar of a character as Lee and soon enough real sexual tension starts building in the office, initiating a sadomasochistic power-play between the two of them. This film, inspired by Mary Gaitskill’s short story in Bad Behaviour (1988), presents the audience with an endearing BDSM-toned romantic comedy which ultimately proves to be an intelligent and multi-dimensional look into dysfunctional love. 

with an introduction by Constantine Zhang

In Journey to the West, the characters from a classic Chinese story are revived in a modern setting, keeping to the ancient romance writing style. In accordance with the original book, a group is assembled for a mission, an exploration, a pilgrimage, and a dream. Out of the obstacles emerges the vivid image of different characters. The pseudo-documentary filming and dynamic editing (motion sickness alert!) add flavours of humor and absurdity to this legendary tale. Looking at the stars won't salvage us from the gutter, but they are there.

with an introduction by Martina Furlan

Hats, canes, jazz hands, bent knees, hip rolls. After the success of Cabaret (1974) and suffering from a heart attack, choreographer and director Bob Fosse tells his own life story through the character of Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider). While he juggles between the editing of his latest film and staging a new musical starring his ex wife Audrey (Leland Palmer), Joe struggles with chain smoking, heavy drinking, and drug abuse and the crumbling of his relationships with Audrey, his girlfriend Katie (Ann Reinking) and his daughter Michelle. All That Jazz is a sparkling, effervescent musical but all that glitters is not gold and Fosse conceives a movie death that does not fail to leave an arrogant mark in the history of cinema.

with an introduction by Sam Yang

"John Cassavetes' 'Faces' is the sort of film that makes you want to grab people by the neck and drag them into the theater and shout: 'Here!'"

a stunning entry into everybody's favourite genre of "middle-class white Americans shouting at each other about marital issues and much more," Cassavetes' Faces carries a loud bang. Sounds of clashing sensibilities, and of the teardown of foundational values of late 60s America. 

with an introduction by Marta Rudzynska

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors guides the viewer through an intricate story of loss, tragedy, love and the cycle of suffering. It gives an insight into the traditions and myths of Ukrainian culture, inviting us to accept magic as an undeniable part of reality. All of this, through the life of Ivan, a boy that witnessed a death of his brother, father, and later the love of his life, who was the daughter of the murderer. His path through the tragedy and salvation becomes the central theme of the story.

with an introduction by Lilly Henssge

We are going to start off our themed month with Christian Petzold's Undine (2020), a romantic tale starring Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski, two of Germany's most exciting young actors. The film quietly explores the age-old myth of Undine, a water nymph who falls in love with a human but is doomed by an inescapable curse, in the context of present-day Berlin. By reimagining Undine as a historian in urban development, a nymph specialized in the land that traps her, Petzold reckons not only with Berlin's past and present but with what it means to maintain a sense of the fantastical amidst the disillusionment of modernity. 

with an introduction by Fien Limburg

Join us for a snowy last screening of the year… Daisies' (1966) director Věra Chytilová explores the 1980s teen-horror movie by mixing blistering political allegory with science fiction. In Wolf’s Hole, a group of teenagers takes part in a mysterious skiing workshop in the mountains but they soon realize that they are part of sadistic social experiment.

with an introduction by Martina Furlan

A less known gem from Tampopo’s director Juzo Itami, Supermarket Woman is a vibrant and charming comedy about two friends joining forces in order to save the local supermarket. The manager (Masahiko Tsugawa) of the failing family-owned Honest Mart hires his old classmate Hanako (Nobuko Miyamoto), an experienced housewife, to help him compete with a new rival grocery store. As soon as Hanako takes over, she uncovers a number of discrepancies which she tries to change but not without angering many chiefs of the sections. Itami puts together a cheerful blend of slap-stick farce mixed with humor and astute social observation. 

How do we hold on to memories – in archives, in the mind, in the landscape, on film? Visual artist and filmmaker Fiona Tan (born in 1966 in Indonesia) works with photography and moving images and creates spatial installations, investigating ways in which we record the world around us. This autumn, Eye Filmmuseum is pleased to present the work of Fiona Tan in the solo exhibition Mountains and Molehills. 

with an introduction by Floris Paalman

Andrei Tarkovsky’s debut feature Ivan’s Childhood is a poetic journey through the fragments and shadows of a 12 year old boy during World War II. In this jarring and unforgettable depiction of the impact of war on children, Tarkovsky moves back and forth between the trauma of war and peaceful moments of family life before the conflict. While other Soviet films of the period glorified the war experience, Ivan’s Childhood focuses on the importance of human life.

In the spirit of last year's screening of The Seashell and The Clergyman and Arabesque, our first excursion for this year will be at Muziekgebouw for the 1924 Soviet film Aelita: Queen of Mars accompanied by live music. It will take place on Wednesday, November 16th 2022 at 20:15; you can find more information about the evening by clicking here.

with an introduction by Marein van den Heuvel

Many recent audiovisual media deploy circular or cyclical movements as a guiding principle. Oftentimes the aesthetic project of such media is to either “break the loop” or to “close the cycle”. These approaches may in fact be two sides of the same coin: achieving a more sustainable mode of existence first requires the overcoming of destructive, habitual cycles. This becomes clear within so-called time travel paradoxes where characters are trapped in a cycle of time itself. Both La Jetée and World of Tomorrow employ the idea of time travel loops in different ways and with this screening we would like to discuss how these two connect to a grander theory of the loop.

The discussion will be accompanied by Toni Pape, UvA researcher and organizer of the ASCA research seminar Breaking the Loop, Closing the Cycle, a seminar that is closely connected to the themes of these films. 

with an introduction by Emiel Martens

The first film on Gambia’s fishmeal factories, offering a unique insight into untold drivers of migration. In the Gambia, the smallest country of mainland Africa, fish is now being powdered up by Chinese corporations and exported to Europe and China to feed animals in industrial farming. As a result, Gambians are being deprived of their primary source of protein, overfishing is depleting marine ecosystems. The film follows Abou, Mariama and Paul, three Gambians who share intimate stories of daily struggle, anger, hope and longing for their loved ones. There’s so much to worry about in the world but Stolen Fish is a 30 minute microcosm of what is wrong with it, eloquently put by those who take the brunt of the destruction caused by global capitalism. 

This screening will be in combination with Gifts from Babylon (Bas Ackermann, 2018).

with an introduction by Theo Du

A quiet explosion captured on film, coming from master filmmaker Edward Yang. This week we delve a bit into the fascinating world of Taiwanese New Wave with a lesser known work by the director of Yi Yi (2000) and A Brighter Summer Day (1991), with a cinematic jigsaw that packs a hell of a punch. A failing marriage intertwined with petty criminals all cruising through the streets of '80s Taipei. With police cars punctuating everything, whose only purpose seem be an unwilling participant of metropolitan cacophony. Modernity has never been dissected in such bombastic way, or understated way, all depending on how you interpret the ending. Join us for a fascinating slice of the cynical humanism beautifully composed on the big screen!

with an introduction by Lilly Henssge

Three years before The Matrix would leave its mark on the film industry and pop culture at large, sisters Lana and Lilly Wachowski made their directorial debut with sensual neo-noir thriller Bound, starring Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly as two lovers scheming to con the Mafia. Far from the multi-million dollar production of a studio franchise, Bound was shot on a tighter budget with no major stars to its name. Despite its reduced scale, the film quickly became a cult favorite and a standout achievement in queer cinema, both making use of and cleverly subverting genre clichés. Filled with sex and violence, Bound – in typical Wachowski fashion – manages to explore the nuances of identity in a way that was clearly ahead of its time.

with an introduction by Fien Limburg and Aram Isaac

The alcoholic novelist Gerard (Jeroen Krabbé), prone to lugubrious premonitions of death begins an affair with the androgynous wealthy widow Christine (Renée Soutendijk) and develops a sexual fixation on her boyfriend Herman (Thom Hoffman). After discovering her three last husbands died in gruesome accidents, Gerard’s morbid hallucinations start to bleed into reality as he succumbs to the superstition that Christine might be a witch. Verhoeven’s final Dutch film before continuing his career in Hollywood is a stylishly lurid occult thriller, teeming with morbid catholic imagery and dripping with bisexual eroticism. Generously endowed with the typical Verhoevian flourish, this spellbinding mystery effortlessly alternates between the alluring and the repulsive, between the ridiculous and the profound.

with an introduction by Marein van den Heuvel

"The goal of the film," says producer Mark Magidson, "was to reach past language. nationality, religion and politics and speak to the inner viewer." Baraka explores the human condition by taking viewers on a photographic odyssey through time and space. For some, Baraka is the definition of  'pure cinema' as there is no dialogue throughout this striking documentary; it is only the soundtrack in combination with clever editing of its beautiful imagery in which meaning is created. This unique style cause cultures to intertwine, beauty and destruction to collide and shows how all around the world we experience this same abstract feeling which is known as the essence of life. Come and experience this unique journey at film club as this is a documentary you must see on a big screen with a good audio system!

with an introduction by Martina Furlan

A scream of revolt against every institution. The striking, cruel debut film of Marco Bellocchio rages with anger and desperation against family, Catholicism, and other cornerstones of the Italian bourgeoisie. Wild, sarcastic, autobiographical, shot in the countryside near Bobbio, the film exhibits a rebellious and antisocial protagonist. Bellocchio anticipates some of the moods of the protests of 1968 by balancing acceptance and detachment. Almost sixty years later, Fists in the Pocket still maintains its modernity and corrosive energy. 

An angry revolt from the inside of the bourgeois scope. It reminds me of Ginsberg's poetry: completely outside of every school of thought, political tendencies, ideologies that have characterized Italian cinema up to now. 

–  Pier Paolo Pasolini

with an introduction by Blandine Joret

“Wanting happiness is already happiness” – join us this Thursday for our first film of the year, Lola (1961) by Jacques Demy! We’re starting in a nouvelle vague romantic kind of way, with Demy’s feature debut which in several ways shaped the universe for so many of his future films and characters. 

Set in Demy’s hometown, the seaport city of Nantes, Lola tells the intertwined stories of young girls and single mothers, sailors and high school lovers – of coming and going, and arriving just in time. Lola is a cabaret singer awaiting the return of Michel, who left to the USA only to return a rich man. Will she resist the hopeless avances of her old lover Michel or the American sailor Frankie? 

Between the French new wave and Hollywood musicals, with the classic cinematography of Raoul Coutard and the charming performance of Anouk Aimee: come and experience this blend of everyday reality with longed-for fairy tales!

(part of our series Filmmaking Through Her Eyes)

with an introduction by Lilly Henssge

Director Kirsten Johnson puts together a collage of her life and career as a cinematographer in her autobiographical documentary Cameraperson. A boxing match in Brooklyn; life in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina; the daily routine of a Nigerian midwife; an intimate family moment at home with the director: Johnson creates a tapestry of footage captured over her twenty-five-year career. Through the juxtaposition of moments and situations that have personally affected her, she meditates about the relationship between filmmaker and their subjects, objectivity and the intervention of the camera. Johnson leads us on a personal journey about the craft of filmmaking and human connection. 

(part of our series Filmmaking Through Her Eyes)

with an introduction by Blandine Joret

After Paris Is Burning, we’re adding another classic in New Queer Cinema to our program! With her debut feature film The Watermelon Woman, Cheryl Dunye examines the historical caricature of the “mammy”: a black, often overweight older woman working and nursing in white households. As one of the most persisting racial stereotypes in general, the mammy has been for a long time the primary role performed by black women in mainstream film history. 

Cheryl, an aspiring black lesbian filmmaker working in a video store, is making a documentary about a black actress from the 1930s who was typecast, credited only as “the watermelon woman.” While uncovering the meaning of her life, Cheryl simultaneously experiences an upheaval on her own. 

Dunye’s work is characterized by a unique blend of fiction and documentary, addressing issues of LGBTQIA+ and racism in an often penetratingly humorous and intelligent manner. Not only is The Watermelon Woman a classic within the New Queer Cinema movement, it is also a pioneer of the mockumentary genre. 

(part of our series Filmmaking Through Her Eyes)

with an introduction by Fien Limburg 

Agnès Varda, seminal feminist filmmaker and innovator of the rive gauche of the French New Wave, paint an intimate and lovingly rendered portrait of the childhood of her husband and fellow filmmaker Jacques Demy. The film, released a year after the death of Demy, combines a recreation of the early years of the filmmaker in Occupied France and his passion for the art of cinema combined with documentary interludes of Demy himself and excerpts from his films. A reimagination of a loved one’s recollections, the film is an ode to filmmaking and falling in love with seventh art.

with an introduction by Grace Childs

The dazzling world of a glamorous Italian fashion house is slashed open when a masked killer begins to dispatch off the staff of models and designers. Now the dirty laundry of this cast of enigmatic characters is brought to light, but who is hiding the biggest secret; the identity of the murderer, and who will be their next ill-fated victim? Mario Bava’s brutal take on the Agatha Christie inspired murder mystery has become an essential Giallo classic, forever changing the visual aesthetics of the genre on film. With its shocking viciousness and its stunning colours, this early entry in the cinematic canon became a definitive sacred text of the genre that still holds up in its own right to this day.

An artist, cultural critic, filmmaker, writer and professor, Hito Steyerl is one of the most significant and influential figures in contemporary art. She operates on the boundary between film and visual art, working in genres ranging from documentary cinema to innovative multimedia installations. Her rigorously researched and visually stunning installations illuminate some of the most pressing issues of our time. So if you want to extend your experience on what visual arts could teach us, then this is an exhibition you really do not want to miss out on!

with an introduction by Martina Furlan

Known as the master of modern cinema, Michelangelo Antonioni redefined the seventh art by focusing more on the form and less on the narrative. With his famous trilogy of alienation L’avventura (1960), La notte (1961) and L’eclisse (1962), he struck for stylistic perfection and came to be defined as “the eye that changed cinema”. Key to his cinematic achievements was his relationship with Monica Vitti – featured in all of the films of the trilogy – who embodied different encapsulations of discontent, estrangement and incommunicability. The last film of the trilogy, L’eclisse tells the story of a young woman (Monica Vitti) who leaves one lover (Francisco Rabal) and initiates a doomed relationship with a vital young man (Alain Delon). The city of Rome and its architecture – a combination of classical Roman buildings and the modern EUR neighborhood – serve as a backdrop for the exploration of the decadence of modernity and its effects.

with an introduction by Aram Isaac

Amsterdam. The city famous for its beautiful canals. But be aware, there might be evil lurking underneath the water. At night he’ll search for his next victim and leave without a trace. Director Dick Maas popularized the so-called Nether-horror with his cult classic Amsterdamned. When a serial killer terrorizes the city, officer Eric Visser (Huub Stapel) is out to catch him. But what is he after? Is it even human? 

with an introduction by Fien Limburg 

Before the seminal Un Chien Andalou (1929) there was Germaine Dulac’s surrealist feat La Coquille et le Clergyman (1928): A hallucinatory voyage through the psyche of a clergyman, tormented by visions of death and lust as he grapples with his sexual fixation on the general’s wife. Reportedly met by a riot upon its release, the film is a pioneering example of early feminist avant-garde experimentation. The screening will be paired with Dulac’s short Arabesque (1929): a visual poem of kaleidoscopic imagery, laid bare in its abstracted beauty.

Both La Coquille et le Clergyman and Arabesque was accompanied by a live performance of an original electronic score provided by Hypochondriac Resonators.

with an introduction by Caitlyn van Doorn

The Full Monty is an uplifting British comedy about what it was like to live in Sheffield during the 90s amid a country-wide recession. The film centres around unemployed and divorced Gaz, played by Robert Carlyle, who needs to find money so he can keep seeing his son. As the real dad he is, he devises an outrageous plan to earn a lot of money with the help of a few mates. The rest is for you to find out so come experience the ludicrous lengths these men are willing to go to in order to make ends meet.

with an introduction by Riley Gold

George Kuchar (1942–2011), a prolific American underground filmmaker, spent over a decade visiting El Reno, Oklahoma during tornado season. He documents these trips in an eccentric series called the Weather Diaries. While Kuchar does experience multiple storms firsthand—as well as records how the storms are mediated across radio, television, and newspaper—he spends most of his time waiting around for something to happen. 

We screened Wild Night in El Reno (1977), a sort of Weather Diaries prologue shot on film, followed by the VHS experimentations of Weather Diary 3 (1988) and Weather Watch (1991).

with an introduction by Bogna Bochinska

What would you do, if one day an air conditioner fell on your head? This is a real struggle for citizens of Luanda in Fradique’s directorial debut Air Conditioner. In this magical realist tale, we follow Matacedo, a superintendent of an apartment complex, who embarks on a journey to retrieve his boss’s AC unit from a shady repair shop across the street. The mission is not easy as he not only has other duties to fulfill but also has to navigate this strange new world of falling ACs and post-war realities.

with an introduction by Lilly Henssge

Considered a pearl of 1960's South Korean cinema, The Housemaid eludes any simple genre classification. Gut-wrenching yet spellbinding, the film is about a man's affair with his family's housemaid which leads to dark consequences. What follows is a torrid tale of forbidden love, sexual aggression, blackmail, and, ultimately, murder. Ki-young handles this contorted plot with such assured brazenness—mixing social critique with elements of horror and grotesque—that it’s hard not see The Handmaid as a model for all Korean horror made since.

with an introduction by Aram Isaac

Things go badly for a hack director and film crew when shooting a low budget zombie movie in an abandoned WWII Japanese facility. 

The movie is fun and highly creative as it involves the personal lives of the real cast and crew of the One Cut of the Dead production as they prepare to make the one-shot take.

with an introduction by Patricia Pisters

15-year-old Mia is facing an overwhelming transformation which calls her entire existence into question. She questions whether she was adopted; she questions her body; she questions everything about her. Her body is changing radically, and despite desperate attempts to halt the process, she is soon forced to accept that nature is far more powerful than her. 

with an introduction by Aram Isaac

The film tells the story of a Schizophrenic young woman (Andersson) vacationing with her family on a remote island, during which time she experiences delusions about meeting God, who ultimately appears to her in the form of a monstrous spider. Her author father attempts to use her illness in his work, and her brother struggles with sexual frustration. In this film, we explore art, psychosis and sexuality altogether.

with an introduction by Martina Furlan and Marein van den Heuvel

Described by film critics as a helpful paradigm for Lynch's narrative sense, Six Men Getting Sick is a one-minute animation of a painting by David Lynch himself looped four times and accompanied by a soundtrack of a siren wailing. 

The Alphabet combines animation and live action and goes on for four minutes. It contains a simple narrative structure relating a symbolically rendered expression of a fear of learning.

In a similar way to The Alphabet, The Grandmother also combines live action and animation as the story revolves around a boy who grows a grandmother to escape neglect and abuse from his parents.

Premonition Following an Evil Deed is a bizarre, silent short film about what appears to be an abduction of a girl. 

Rabbits is a 2002 series of eight short horror web films and it depicts three humanoid rabbits in a living room, within a single box set. Their disjointed conversations evoke mystery and thoughts.

with an introduction by Fien Limburg 

Design for Living (Lubitsch, 1933) tells the story of a sophisticated albeit romantic relationship between three people starting on a train. Charming gal-of-fortune Gilda meets handsome playwright Tom Chambers and even more handsome artist George Curtis. The sparks between the three characters are both fun and silly! 

Gilda cannot decide between two men who love her, and the trio agree to try living together in a platonic friendly relationship. There are a lot of revolutionary ideas and details that make the film far ahead of the time. Don't you want to find out?

with an introduction by Theo Du

In this film, we follow a Korean-born man who finds himself stuck in Columbus, Indiana, where his architect father is in a coma. The man meets a young woman who wants to stay in Columbus with her mother, a recovering addict, instead of pursuing her own dreams.

Casey decides to move on after a discovery of her mother being untrustworthy. Casey wants to pursue her dream as she stopped holding herself back from the reality and her mother's condition. This is a great break through from herself.

with an introduction by Patricia Pisters 

When Camiel, a gay dentist, and Simon, a carefree café owner, collide in a traffic accident, their lives become intrinsically entangled. When they bump into each other fourteen years later, Simon is severely ill. Camiel experiences at close range how Simon and those around him come to terms. 

Some consider this a modern Dutch cinema classic. “Propaganda,” Terstall admits: “propaganda for a progressive, liberal society.” 

with an introduction by Kseniia Bespalova

In the late-1990s squalid town of Nalchik, a poor young Jewish couple is kidnapped and a grievous ransom is demanded, as bitter resentments and cruel dilemmas come to light, magnifying the small community’s grave predicament.

with an introduction by Blandine Joret 

During the winter we paired two summertime short films by Erik Kerssen: Zomerjurk and Waterlichamen (both 2021) by Erik, alumnus of our programme, followed by Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning (1991). A truly iconic documentary of drag nights among New York’s underclass. Queens are interviewed and observed preparing for and competing in many ‘balls’. The people, the clothes, and the whole environment are outlandish.

While critically acclaimed to this day, the film also raised eyebrows about the positions we take or are given when making or watching a film. We’ll have much to see and talk about, so join us for a discussion on lgbtq+ club and ball culture, the performative, spectacle and representation, identities and the gaze.

with an introduction by Blandine Joret

Chantal Akerman: pioneer of the female gaze, auteur of the intimate, director of the quotidian. In Je tu il elle (1974), dramatic tension builds gradually but systematically with each gesture, within and between each frame. 

Through her characteristic experiment with time and duration, Akerman gives us a coming-of-age performance film that, despite its realist style, defies literal readings. Today still, it’s an eye-opening icon of queer cinema: a must-see, an exercise in looking! 

with an introduction by Kirsten van der Holt

With film-theatre memories from last week fresh in our minds, we’re screening Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989). In between meals at Le Hollandais, Georgina tricks her abusive husband with romantic escapes to the bathroom until gastronomy turns into murder.  

This is not for the faint of stomach: expect dark humor, profanity and violence, but also cinematic spectacle, aesthetic pleasure and political irony. Always provocative and controversial, you either love or hate Greenaway: so, let’s see what’s cooking!  

“All about theatre about film” is a celebration of the set, staging, the light, acting and scripting: a celebration of everything that ties the theatre to film, and vice versa. Known for their large-scale film-to-stage productions, Eye invited theatre/scenographer duo Ivo van Hove and Jan Versweyveld to stage their fall exhibition. The result is an all-encompassing experience that blends film form with unconventional theatre: come and immerse yourself in the sounds, the film fragments, the outtakes, the props and sets of this Amsterdam based and internationally acclaimed avant-garde theatre duo!

with an introduction by Bogna Bochinska

Innocent Sorcerers (1960) gives us the jazzy soundtrack and crisp imagery of “boy meets girl”, playing hard to get while taking the game of seduction quite literally! 

with an introduction by Blandine Joret 

A plunge into the hustle and bustle of Brooklyn in the seventies, the film bursts with colour, rhythm and life. Following Troy along her journey through the streets of her home, she's truly one of the most iconic children of the cinema! 

An exploration of cinema's manifestation in a different form, the filmmakers — Lucrecia Martel (South America), Leopold Emmen (Europe), Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese (Africa), Carlos Reygadas (North America) and Jia Zhang-ke (Asia) — were each invited to make a work for the exhibition that exploits the three-dimensional gallery space rather than the two-dimensional cinema screen. For some of them, it was the first time they had created a cinematographic installation that explores the boundaries of their work and of the art of film in general.

Since we screened films by Lucrecia Martel and Jia Zhangke (also included in the expo) it’s going to be interesting to see how their work translates into the exhibition context.

with an introduction by Blandine Joret 

In the spirit of the French New Wave but firmly in the nineties, Leos Carax spirals around the complexities of a troubled love story shot in the streets of Paris.

with an introduction by Catherine Lord and Patricia Pisters

a uniquely cinematic adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel, deemed “unmakable” at first. Tilda Swinton’s majestic performance takes us on a gender-bending time-travel through 4 centuries, an impressive visual spectacle that speaks to you directly.

with an introduction by Hemen Heidari

We’re back in the car, around Tehran this time, as we follow Mr. Badii around seeking a helping hand in his planned suicide. Characteristic of Kiarostami’s style, the film is a minimalist meditation on major political, philosophical and ethical themes.