Avant-garde Cinema

Directed by Julian Schnabel

UK/USA/Italy/Chile, 2025, 2h 33min, DCP, In English and Italian with English subtitles.

With Julian Schnabel in person at the March 4 screening.

“In the struggle for perfection in art, our lives may be less than perfect — even plagued with failure — but everything that exists outside the work of art doesn’t exist. The goal is to become the poem. Dante and Nick achieved that. I’m still working on it. Everything I really have to say is in my art.”
—Julian Schnabel

Oscar-nominated® director Julian Schnabel uses the life and the novel of writer Nick Tosches as a jumping-off point for a story taking place in both the 14th and 21st centuries, as Nick Tosches and Dante Alighieri’s parallel stories are interwoven and connected by Oscar Isaac’s singular performance.

• write up by Austin Film Society

This will most likely sell out, please buy your tickets immediately!

“A film poem of sometimes humbling beauty: a movie that opens up a new world to us — in the mountains of Iranian Kurdistan — with an enchanting freshness and austerity of vision.”
—The Chicago Tribune
“THE WIND WILL CARRY US takes the refined work of Iranian helmer Abbas Kiarostami up another notch to ever more metaphoric ground, where the vibrant colors of nature battle bones from a cemetery in a subtle personal debate about the value of being alive.”
—Variety
In a secluded village, an elderly woman at the center of a funeral ceremony stubbornly clings to life, much to the chagrin of a film crew who have traveled from Tehran to document the proceedings. A wry drama layered with poetic allusions characteristic of the best from director Abbas Kiarostami.
Featuring a post-film discussion and a pop-up shop on March 8. This film’s book pairing, Conversations with Kiarostami by Godfrey Cheshire, is available for purchase at Alienated Majesty Books, in-person or online.

-- Write-up by the Austin Film Society

Directed by Orson Welles

USA, 1958, 1h 51min, 35mm

“No amount of repeated viewings can dull the edge of its sinister ambience or soften the visual excitement Welles brought to this quintessentially cinematic film.”
—The Los Angeles Times

“Welles in TOUCH OF EVIL is beyond belief; his enjoyment of expressing himself on screen is so strong you can feel it.”
—Martin Scorsese

Long exiled from Hollywood, Orson Welles returned to make this adaptation of a tawdry pulp novel about bordertown corruption and produced a masterpiece. With Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, and Welles himself. A great film. In 35mm.

• write up by Austin Film Society

Directed by Lav Diaz

Portugal, 2025, 2h 44min, DCP, In multiple languages with English subtitles.

“Stunningly mounted, politically rigorous … confronts any viewers hoping for a sweeping biographical romp with a frank post-colonial perspective.”
—Variety

Lav Diaz’s panoramic telling of the conquests of Portuguese circumnavigator and conqueror Ferdinand Magellan stars Gael García Bernal as the title figure in an acclaimed, multifaceted performance. Taking visual inspiration from Renaissance paintings, it is also a visual spectacle.

• write up by Austin Film Society