balderdash

Selected by Richard Misrach

The film will be preceded by a prerecorded conversation between childhood friends Richard Misrach and Jeff Bridges.

The Last Picture Show is one of the key films of the American cinema renaissance of the seventies. Set during the early fifties, in the loneliest Texas nowheresville to ever dust up a movie screen, this aching portrait of a dying West, adapted from Larry McMurtry’s novel, focuses on the daily shuffles of three futureless teens—the enigmatic Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), the wayward jock Duane (Jeff Bridges), and the desperate-to-be-adored rich girl Jacy (Cybil Shepherd)—and the aging lost souls who bump up against them in the night like drifting tumbleweeds, including Cloris Leachman’s lonely housewife and Ben Johnson’s grizzled movie-house proprietor. Featuring evocative black-and-white imagery and profoundly felt performances, this hushed depiction of crumbling American values remains the pivotal film in the career of the invaluable director and film historian Peter

Part of the Fraenkel Film Festival

Selected by Nan Goldin

Addiction, nonmonogamy, and female sexual liberation: decades before such ideas were widely discussed, Dorothy Arzner, the only woman to work as a director in 1930s Hollywood, brought them to the screen with striking frankness, sophistication, and wit—a mature treatment that stands out even in the pre-Code era. Fredric March (in one of four collaborations with Arzner) and Sylvia Sidney turn in extraordinary performances as an urbane couple whose relationship is pushed to the breaking point by his alcoholism and wandering eye, leading them into an emotionally explosive experiment with an open marriage. Exposing the hypocrisies and petty cruelties simmering beneath the surface of high-society elegance, Merrily We Go to Hell is a scathing early-feminist commentary on modern marriage.

Part of the Fraenkel Film Festival

Selected by Kota Ezawa

From filmmaker George Miller, originator of the post-apocalyptic genre and mastermind behind the legendary Mad Max trilogy, comes this return to the world of the Road Warrior, Max Rockatansky. Haunted by his turbulent past, Mad Max (Tom Hardy—The Dark Knight Rises) believes the best way to survive is to wander alone. Nevertheless, he becomes swept up with a band of survivors fleeing across the Wasteland in a war rig driven by an elite Imperator, Furiosa (Oscar winner Charlize Theron—Prometheus). They are escaping a Citadel tyrannized by the Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), from whom something irreplaceable has been taken. Enraged, the Warlord marshals all his gangs and ruthlessly pursues the rebels in the high-octane Road War that follows.

Part of the Fraenkel Film Festival

Selected by Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller

Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece of sustained suspense and paranoia, starring Gene Hackman as a loner surveillance expert. Hackman’s Harry Caul bugs a couple in San Francisco’s teeming Union Square. But why? A recluse living alone in an empty apartment, Caul plays saxophone to jazz records and broods over the deaths he may have been responsible for. And as he keeps tinkering with the recordings, he gets bugged himself, his tapes are stolen, his landlord effortlessly penetrates his security to leave a note—and then, to his horror, he figures it out. The Conversation’s stellar cast also includes John Cazale (Fredo of the first two Godfather films), as Harry’s dim-witted assistant, and a supporting cast of soon-to-be-stars, including Frederic Forrest (Apocalypse Now), Cindy Williams (Laverne & Shirley), Teri Garr (Young Frankenstein), and a ridiculously young Harrison Ford (three years before Star Wars).

Coppola’s follow-up to The Godfather, The Conversation was nominated for three Academy Awards for Sound (by legendary editor/sound designer Walter Murch), Original Screenplay, and Picture—the same year as Best Picture winner The Godfather Part II nabbed six Oscars.

Part of the Fraenkel Film Festival

Selected by Wardell Milan

In this chilling adaptation of the best-selling novel by Thomas Harris, the astonishingly versatile director Jonathan Demme crafted a taut psychological thriller about an American obsession: serial murder. As Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee who enlists the help of the infamous Hannibal“the Cannibal”Lecter to gain insight into the mind of another killer, Jodie Foster subverts classic gender dynamics and gives one of the most memorable performances of her career. As her foil, Anthony Hopkins is the archetypal antihero—cultured, quick-witted, and savagely murderous—delivering a harrowing portrait of humanity gone terribly wrong. A gripping police procedural and a disquieting immersion into a twisted psyche, The Silence of the Lambs swept the Academy Awards (best picture, director, screenplay, actress, actor) and remains a cultural touchstone.

Part of the Fraenkel Film Festival

Selected by Martine Gutierrez

Ariel, a free-spirited and headstrong mermaid with a perpetual curiosity about humans, falls in love with Prince Eric after rescuing him from a shipwreck. In order to fulfill her desire to become human, Ariel makes a deal with Ursula, the evil sea witch, who takes Ariel’s voice in exchange. Loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s story, this animated musical feature was composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman’s first collaboration with Disney as a team, marking the beginning of what is frequently referred to as the Disney Renaissance era. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards, winning Original Score and Original Song for“Under The Sea.”

Part of the Fraenkel Film Festival

Selected by Christian Marclay

From the extraordinary mind of Palme D’Or winning director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and starring Academy Award winner Tilda Swinton, comes a bewildering drama about a Scottish woman, who, after hearing a loud ‘bang’ at daybreak, begins experiencing a mysterious sensory syndrome while traversing the jungles of Colombia.

Part of the Fraenkel Film Festival

Selected by Liz Deschenes

In his controversial masterpiece The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin offers both a cutting caricature of Adolf Hitler and a sly tweaking of his own comic persona. Chaplin, in his first pure talkie, brings his sublime physicality to two roles: the cruel yet clownish “Tomainian” dictator and the kindly Jewish barber who is mistaken for him. Featuring Jack Oakie and Paulette Goddard in stellar supporting turns, The Great Dictator, boldly going after the fascist leader before the U.S.’s official entry into World War II, is an audacious amalgam of politics and slapstick that culminates in Chaplin’s famously impassioned speech.

Part of the Fraenkel Film Festival