In January 2020, director Xiaorui reunites his cast and crew to complete a film that was abandoned during production ten years earlier. However, the team is suddenly placed into lockdown together during the onset of COVID-19. Confronted with the challenges of the pandemic, Xiaorui and his crew are forced to determine how to move forward in a rapidly changing world. From acclaimed director Lou Ye (Suzhou River, Summer Palace), An Unfinished Film is “an utterly unique and very important movie about Covid, the crisis that affected all of us,” (The Guardian). Combining fiction and documentary footage together, Lou Ye both commemorates those lost to the virus and creates “one of the most thoughtful, truthful and tactful depictions of the pandemic ever put to screen.” (The Wrap).
Not Rated
David Lynch: The Art Life (2016) (Rick Barnes, Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Jon Nguyen, 2016, 88min) Monday, 4/7 @ 2pm & 7pm Thursday, 4/17 @ 7pm David Lynch takes us on an intimate journey through the formative years of his life. From his idyllic upbringing in small town America to the dark streets of Philadelphia, we follow Lynch as he traces the events that have helped to shape one of cinema's most enigmatic directors. David Lynch the Art Life infuses Lynch's own art, music and early films, shining a light into the dark corners of his unique world, giving audiences a better understanding of the man and the artist. As Lynch states "I think every time you do something, like a painting or whatever, you go with ideas and sometimes the past can conjure those ideas and color them, even if they're new ideas, the past colors them."
Not Rated
Eraserhead (1977) (David Lynch, 1977, 89min) Saturday, 4/12 @ 7pm Wednesday, 4/16 @ 7pm Sunday, 4/20 @ 4pm A dream of dark and troubling things . . . David Lynch’s 1977 debut feature, Eraserhead, is both a lasting cult sensation and a work of extraordinary craft and beauty. With its mesmerizing black-and-white photography by Frederick Elmes and Herbert Cardwell, evocative sound design, and unforgettably enigmatic performance by Jack Nance, this visionary nocturnal odyssey continues to haunt American cinema like no other film.
Rfor language, some violence and sexuality/nudity.
Inland Empire (2006) (David Lynch, 2006, 180min) Thursday, 4/24 @ 7pm Wednesday, 4/30 @ 7pm As actress Nikki Grace (Laura Dern) begins to adopt the persona of her character, Sue, while shooting a film, her world becomes nightmarish and surreal. In David Lynch's postmodern style, meaning and narrative are obscured and twisted in a labyrinthine spiral of psychosis and composite layers of reality and perception, lost in a blur of mise en abyme, a French term, which translates literally to "placed in abyss". Emphasis on "abyss". Mise en abyme refers to recursive structures in art. The dream within a dream, the film within the film, and in the case of Inland Empire, reality within reality, all layered on top of one another. The film has been described as "a pure jolt of cinema" and as something better experienced than understood. As a capstone on Lynch's feature length projects (not forgetting Lynch's final foray into the world of Twin Peaks in The Return), Inland Empire can possibly be seen as the closest the artist ever got to fusing pure art and pure life outside of his dedication to living the Art Life, and being a work of art himself.
Rfor bizarre violent and sexual content, and for strong langauge.
Lost Highway (1997) (David Lynch, 1997, 134min) Wednesday, 4/23 @ 7pm Sunday, 4/27 @ 4pm Lost Highway, David Lynch’s seventh feature film, travels down a twisting road of perverse menace as a jazz saxophonist (Bill Pullman) and his wife (Patricia Arquette) begin receiving disturbing VHS tapes—leading to jealousy, murder, and a startling mid-act transformation that radically recontextualizes everything that came before it. Berserk violence, scrambled identities, a thunderous industrial soundtrack, and one of cinema’s most memorable Mystery Men (Robert Blake)—Lynch swirls it all into a screeching psychological manifestation of guilt, trauma, and denial that ranks among his most potent cinematic nightmares.
Rfor violence, language and some strong sexuality
Mulholland Drive (2001) (David Lynch, 2001, 147min) Monday, 4/28 @ 2pm & 7pm The 7pm showing features an introduction by Professor Rick Warner of UNC Film Studies. Beautiful, bizarre and strangely addictive, the film begins as a botched hit which results in the meeting of brunette amnesiac Rita (Laura Harring – Love in the Time of Cholera) and blonde would-be Hollywood actress Betty (Naomi Watts – Birdman, 21 Grams). Taking the viewer on a memorable neo-noir trip through Hollywood’s dark underbelly, Lynch dispenses with a conventional narrative in favour of a hallucinogenic assault on the senses that will stay with you long after the credits roll. Recently voted the best film of the 21st Century in a BBC Culture poll, MULHOLLAND DRIVE is essential viewing by one of the masters of contemporary American cinema. David Lynch’s scary and seductive vision of Hollywood is a true masterpiece, weaving together a tale of love, jealousy, and revenge like no other.
On August 30, 1972, in New York City, John Lennon played his only full-length show after leaving The Beatles, the One to One benefit concert at Madison Square Garden, a rollicking, dazzling performance from him and Yoko Ono. Macdonald’s riveting documentary takes that legendary musical event and uses it as the starting point to explore eighteen defining months in the lives of John and Yoko. By 1971 the couple was newly arrived in the United States— living in a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village and watching a huge amount of American television. The film uses a riotous mélange of American TV to conjure the era through what the two would have been seeing on the screen: the Vietnam War, The Price is Right, Nixon, Coca-Cola ads, Cronkite, The Waltons. As they experience a year of love and transformation in the US, John and Yoko begin to change their approach to protest — ultimately leading to the One to One concert, which was inspired by a Geraldo Rivera exposé they watched on TV. Filmed in a meticulously faithful reproduction of the NYC apartment the duo shared, ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO offers a bold new take on a seminal time in the lives of two of history’s most influential artists.
Rfor language.
Following the death of his father, energetic and free-spirited Rickey (Michael Angarano) convinces long-time friend Glenn (Michael Cera) to go on an impromptu road trip from Los Angeles to Sacramento. Frustrated by Rickey’s Peter Pan complex, Glenn is encouraged by his pregnant wife Rosie (Kristen Stewart) to go on the adventure to reconnect. In the worn yellow seats of Glenn’s old college convertible, the two men confront their anxiety-ridden lives, addressing past mistakes and questioning what their futures hold.
PG-13for some language and smoking.
THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND follows Charles (Tim Key), an eccentric lottery winner who lives alone on a remote island and dreams of getting his favorite musicians, McGwyer Mortimer (Tom Basden & Carey Mulligan) back together. His fantasy turns into reality when the bandmates and former lovers accept his invitation to play a private show at his home on Wallis Island. Old tensions resurface as Charles tries desperately to salvage his dream gig.
Rfor language including a sexual reference.
Based on the bestselling novel, writer and teacher Iris (Watts) finds her comfortable, solitary New York life thrown into disarray after her closest friend and mentor (Murray) leaves her his beloved 150 lb. Great Dane. The regal yet intractable beast, named Apollo, immediately creates practical problems for Iris, from furniture destruction to eviction notices, as well as more existential ones. Yet as Iris finds herself unexpectedly bonding with Apollo, she begins to come to terms with her past and her own creative inner life in this story of healing, love, and friendship.
Rfor language and some sexual material/nudity.
From Director Andrew Ahn comes a joyful comedy of errors about a chosen family navigating the disasters and delights of family expectations, queerness, and cultural identity. Angela and her partner Lee have been unlucky with their IVF treatments, but can’t afford to pay for another round. Meanwhile, their friend Min, the closeted scion of a multinational corporate empire, has plenty of family money but a soon-to-expire student visa. When his commitment-phobic boyfriend Chris rejects his proposal, Min makes the offer to Angela instead: a green card marriage in exchange for funding Lee’s IVF. But their plans to quietly elope are upended when Min’s sceptical grandmother flies in from Korea unannounced, insisting on an all-out wedding extravaganza. With a pitch-perfect cast of multigenerational talent that includes Bowen Yang, Academy Award nominee Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran, Han Gi-chan, Joan Chen, and Academy Award winner Youn Yuh-jung, this fresh reimagining of Ang Lee’s beloved, Award-winning rom-com teems with humour and heart in a poignant reminder that being part of a family means learning to both accept and forgive.
Rfor strong violence, sex, and drug content, and for language
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (David Lynch, 1992, 134 min) Saturday, 4/26 @ 7pm In the town of Twin Peaks, everybody has their secrets—but no one more than Laura Palmer. In this prequel to his groundbreaking 1990s television series, David Lynch resurrects the teenager found wrapped in plastic at the beginning of the show, following her through the last week of her life and teasing out the enigmas that surround her murder. Homecoming queen by day and drug-addicted thrill seeker by night, Laura leads a double life that pulls her deeper and deeper into horror as she pieces together the identity of the assailant who has been terrorizing her for years. Nightmarish in its vision of an innocent torn apart by unfathomable forces, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is nevertheless one of Lynch’s most humane films, aching with compassion for its tortured heroine—a character as enthralling in life as she was in death.
Rfor strong brutal bloody violence including disturbing images, strong sexuality, nudity, and language.
Wild at Heart (1990) David Lynch, 1990, 125min) Saturday, 4/19 @ 7pm Monday, 4/21 @ 2pm & 7pm In David Lynch's 1990 Palme d'Or winning adaptation of Barry Gifford's novel Sailor and Lula are two lovers struggling to remain together even when fate seems intent on keeping them apart. In this case, fate is Lula's mother, Marietta Fortune; a desperate woman who hates Sailor and will do anything to keep him away from her daughter. After Sailor is released from prison for murdering a man in self-defence, he and Lula embark on a sex-filled, rocking road trip, aware all the time that they are being hunted by Marietta's cronies. Wild At Heart features iconic performances from Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe, Crispin Glover, Diane Ladd, Isabella Rossellini, and Harry Dean Stanton.