Using jump cuts and frenetic montage sequences to create disunities in time and space, Alain Resnais creates a visual and thematic conundrum on the effects of the Algerian War on the lives of three emotionally scarred survivors. Helene is literally surrounded by the past, as she uses her apartment to showcase and sell antique furniture. Alphonse, who has struggled to rebuild his life after the war, is unable to reconcile with their failed relationship. Bernard, haunted by the memory of a nameless war casualty, sits in a dilapidated studio endlessly replaying military footage, struggling with his own personal demons. MURIEL is a cryptic, and labyrinthine puzzle on memory and altered perception--a challenging portrait of isolating guilt and the tragedy of survival.
- STRICTLY FILM SCHOOL

In November 2001, French documentarian and cinema-essayist Chris Marker, became intrigued by the sudden appearance in Paris of alluring portraits of grinning yellow cats on buildings, Metro walls and other public surfaces. Marker's cinematic efforts to document the mysterious materializations of this charming feline are a recurring theme of THE CASE OF THE GRINNING CAT. This engaging record of Marker's cinematic peregrinations throughout the city, visually energized by his free-association montage style, chronicles strikes, demonstrations, memorials, election campaigns, celebrity scandals, international political incidents, and a seemingly endless variety of political protests. The personalized commentary running throughout offers the simultaneously learned and witty reflections of the filmmaker, now in his early eighties, on both the contemporary and historical implications of these varied events and personalities.

China’s colossal Three Gorges Dam is the setting for Jia Zhangke’s latest foray into the socio-economic surreal: a perverse dreamscape of industrial wasteland, scenic splendor, and frightening architectural feats. Negating the still waters of the rising Yangtze River are two lost souls: Han Sanming, a mainlander seeking his ex-wife who may or may not have been relocated from her soon-to-be-submerged village; and Shen Hong, a city dweller determined to confront her absentee husband, now working under the auspices of the ceaseless Dam project. As they meander across a topography resembling a war zone, Martian panorama, and futuristic colony all at once, the classic Zhangke landmarks are mapped out with acute familiarity: the polarity of old and new, the scars of unremitting change, and the human debris of those left in its wake.
- Tim Wong, THE LUMIERE READER

IN BETWEEN DAYS intimately portrays the joys and risks of first love and burgeoning adulthood with bracing and undeniable honesty. Aimie is a teenager recently transplanted from her native South Korea to a snowbound North American city. Disconnected from her single mother and bored at school, she struggles to find her way in a strange land of new faces, only to encounter a strange age of new feelings. Aimie’s sole meaningful connection is to her best and only friend Tran, a Korean boy a few steps ahead of her on the path to assimilation. In her thrillingly self-assured feature debut, So Yong Kim uses intricately framed handheld DV photography and a naturalistic soundscape to lucidly render her non-actor cast’s performances with remarkably unforced believability.
- KINO INTERNATIONAL

In honor of the recent passing of this legendary director, the Pratt Film Society presents the only film he made in the USA. This epic and prescient work is defined by Antonioni’s absorption in the landscape, both natural and man-made. "I would say my films are political, but not about politics … they are made from a definite point of view … In August, 1968, just before we were going to begin shooting, I went to Chicago for the Democratic convention. What I saw there - the behavior of the police, the spirit of the young people - impressed me as deeply as anything else I've seen in America. To some degree, ZABRISKIE POINT is influenced by what happened in the streets of Chicago …”
- Michelangelo Antonioni, from an interview with Roger Ebert in 1969.