About us
Meet others who deliberately seek out challenging foreign, avant-garde, and experimental films screened in San Francisco or Berkeley. After each film, we will get together for conversation at a cafe.
If you, like me, also enjoy thought-provoking literature, check out my Classic Literature and Cafes Club: http://www.meetup.com/Classic-Literature-and-Cafes
Upcoming events
9
Satyajit Ray's "Days and Nights in the Forest"
Roxie theater, 3125 16th street, san francisco, CA, USJoin us when we visit the Roxie Theater to see Indian director Satyajit Ray’s acclaimed, newly restored feature film, Days and Nights in the Forest. NOTE: Consider purchasing your tickets in advance at roxie.com.
“Adapted from Sunil Gangopadhyay’s celebrated 1968 novel, Days and Nights in the Forest is one of director Satyajit Ray’s greatest achievements, a modern search for connection that conjures the timeless resonance of a folktale. Desperate to flee Calcutta’s rat race, four friends—Ashim (Soumitra Chatterjee), Sanjoy (Subhendu Chatterjee), Hari (Samit Bhanja), and Shekhar (Rabi Ghosh)—drive to Palamu, one of India’s rural ‘tribal lands,’ where they bribe a watchman into letting them stay at a sylvan guesthouse. Despite vowing to get away from it all, the crew soon mixes with the locals, including a woodland family: the soulful yet mischievous Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) takes to the overconfident Ashim, while her widowed sister-in-law Jaya (Kaberi Bose) grows closer to the bookish Sanjoy. At the same time, Hari, fresh off a break-up, woos a Santal girl named Duli (Simi Garewal); and Shekhar, despite his own penchant for gambling, tries to rein in his companions’ boozy hedonism. Filled with some of Ray’s most indelible characterizations and lavish images (shot by longtime cinematographer Soumendu Roy), Days and Nights in the Forest touches on masculine vulnerabilities and Indian class divisions with the graceful complexity of a master at his peak.”—Program notes
More info on the Roxie Theater: roxie.com
5:45 Meet at the Roxie Theater to purchase tickets and take our seats.
The film starts at 6:05.
8:00 After the film we will meet at Pancho Villa Taqueria (3071 16th St.) for conversation.1 attendee
Volker Schlöndorff’s "Young Törless"
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2155 Center Street, Berkeley, CA, USJoin us at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive when we see Young Törless, German director Volker Schlöndorff’s debut feature film. This film is part of the PFA’s months-long Fassbinder and the New German Cinema retrospective. NOTE: It is recommended that you purchase tickets in advance.
"After working with Louis Malle, Jean-Pierre Melville and Alain Resnais, Volker Schlöndorff released this astonishingly assured first feature (working with a mainly non-professional cast) to universal critical acclaim. Based on a novel by Robert Musil about one boy’s unwitting involvement in the rituals of sadism and suppression in a turn-of-the-century boarding-school, it is filmed in a stark, almost documentary style fitting to its subject, playing up the allegorical potential of a power game of activity and passivity in a totalitarian little-world. Törless, despite his distance and inactivity, finds himself an accomplice: ‘We are neither good nor bad, but defined solely in action’” (Richard Kwietniowski)." — Pacific Film Archive
Pacific Film Archive Tickets, Information, and Directions: https://bampfa.org/event/young-torless
Fassbinder and the New German Cinema (March 6 – May 17): https://bampfa.org/program/Fassbinder-New-German-Cinema
4:00 Meet at PFA's Box Office (2155 Center Street) to purchase or pick up tickets.
The film starts at 4:30.
6:00 After the film we will meet at Elaichi cafe on 2161 Allston Way for conversation.1 attendee
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2155 Center Street, Berkeley, CA, USJoin us at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive when we see The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, a moving film by German directors Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta. This film is part of the PFA’s months-long Fassbinder and the New German Cinema retrospective. NOTE: It is recommended that you purchase tickets in advance.
"Adapted from the Heinrich Böll novel which was in turn based on a real incident, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum has frequently been compared with Costa-Gavras’ film Z for its pace and implications as a political thriller. After sleeping with an army deserter and suspected terrorist, a domestic servant finds herself persecuted and victimized by a police investigation and subsequent press coverage which turns her past into lurid sensationalism. . . . Coming after the post-Watergate glorification of the role of the press as ‘truth-tellers’, the film unabashedly makes its target the dubious practices of the right-wing German tabloid press” (Richard Kwietniowski).— Pacific Film Archive
Pacific Film Archive Tickets, Information, and Directions: https://bampfa.org/event/lost-honor-katharina-blum
Fassbinder and the New German Cinema (March 6 – May 17): https://bampfa.org/program/Fassbinder-New-German-Cinema
6:30 Meet at PFA's Box Office (2155 Center Street) to purchase or pick up tickets.
The film starts at 7:00.
8:45 After the film we will meet at Elaichi cafe on 2161 Allston Way for conversation.1 attendee
Fassbinder's "Fear of Fear"
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2155 Center Street, Berkeley, CA, USJoin us at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive when we see German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s melodramatic Fear of Fear. This film is part of the PFA’s months-long Fassbinder and the New German Cinema retrospective. NOTE: It is recommended that you purchase tickets in advance.
"Rainer Werner Fassbinder trades on the tricks of his Hollywood mentors, especially Douglas Sirk, in creating an always sunlit environment for his heroine, the ‘perfect’ middle-class wife and mother, to go mad in. Soon after the birth of her child, Margot (Margit Carstensen) experiences a depression that is exacerbated by her fear that she is becoming schizophrenic. Disproving Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous axiom, Fear of Fear is more than an examination of free-floating anxiety; rather, as Vincent Canby noted, “it is about the autumn of materialism in the form of an intensely personal case history . . . everything is perfect for Margot, yet nothing works.”—Pacific Film Archive
Pacific Film Archive Tickets, Information, and Directions: https://bampfa.org/event/fear-fear
Fassbinder and the New German Cinema (March 6 – May 17): https://bampfa.org/program/Fassbinder-New-German-Cinema
6:30 Meet at PFA's Box Office (2155 Center Street) to purchase or pick up tickets.
The film starts at 7:00.
8:30 After the film we will meet at Elaichi cafe on 2161 Allston Way for conversation.1 attendee
Past events
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