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All contents © 2008
by Mark Jenkins,
unless otherwise noted.

Design by Smallpark




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FRIDAY, JUNE 20

ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD Werner Herzog's latest documentary considers the Antarctic landscape, and the sort of grizzled men who could live in it for months at a time. (Also 6/22) Part of the Silverdocs documentary festival. 2:30 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75


IMMORTAL LOVE Over several decades, Keisuke Kinoshita's film charts the lives of a family that begins when a woman is forced to marry a land baron's son. Tatsuya Nakadai plays the unwanted husband. (1961, 103 min) 7 pm, Freer/Sackler Galleries, 12th & Independence Ave SW. Free; tickets distributed one hour before screening.


TOKYO OLYMPIAD Kon Ichikawa's documentary about the 1964 Olympics is as artful as that other Olympics film, and not encumbered by a Nazi worldview. 7 pm, Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress Madison Building, Third Floor, 101 Independence Ave. SE. Free; call 202-707-5677 for reservations.


SATURDAY, JUNE 21

THE RUSSIAN QUESTION In this example of Cold War propaganda from the other side, an American journalist is smeared after he returns from the Soviet Union and refuses to write an anti-Soviet book. 2 pm, National Gallery of Art East Building auditorium. Free.


THERE WAS ALWAYS SUN SHINING SOMEPLACE: LIFE IN THE NEGRO BASEBALL LEAGUE This documentary collects reminiscences of the Negro Baseball League from Satchel Paige, James "Cool Papa" Bell, Judy Johnson, Buck O'Neil, and Monte Irvin. (1984, 57 min) Co-sponsored by the Anacostia Community Museum. 2 pm, Historical Society of Washington, D.C. 801 K St NW. Free.


REPETITION This film restages 1971's Stanford Prison Experiment, but the presence of cameras changes the result. (2005, 75 min) Shown with THE BATTLE OF ORGREAVE, a reenactment of a 1984 clash between striking British miners and police and a consideration of how televised images of the strike affected public opinion. (2001, 63 min) 3 & 4:45 pm, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays through Sept. 6, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 7th St & Independence Ave SW. Free.


CARNIVAL NIGHT This 1956 comedy, still a favorite in Russia, gently lampoons Soviet bureaucracy with a tale of an office showdown over celebrating New Year's Eve: The staff is planning a party, but the new boss intends to keep the evening on message. 4 pm, National Gallery of Art East Building auditorium. Free.


DARK ANGEL A love triangle is further complicated by war in this weepie, with Merle Oberon as the woman who watches her fiance and their good friend march off to World War I, and is prepared to marry the friend when the fiance is presumed dead. (1935, 106 min) 7 pm, Films on the Hill, Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, 545 Seventh Street, SE. $5.


AMERICAN TEEN This study of senior year for four Indiana teenagers has some I-can't-believe-they-got-that moments, including the aftermath of the nice girl's painful breakup and a vicious campaign against a girl who gave a topless photo to her boyfriend. Too bad the music cues are so blatant, the filmmakers included distracting animated sequences. Part of the Silverdocs documentary festival. 9:45 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75


MY WINNIPEG Asked to make a documentary about his hometown, the irrepressible Guy Maddin responded with this "docu-fantasia." Part of the Silverdocs documentary festival. 11:30 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75


SUNDAY, JUNE 22

YOJIMBO Toshiro Mifune plays a lazy, conniving bodyguard who pits his rivals against each other in Akira Kurosawa's ironic samurai film, later remade more than once in the west. Tatsuya Nakadai, who also starred in the film, will appear at this screening. (1961, 110 min) 1 pm, Freer/Sackler Galleries, 12th & Independence Ave SW. Free; tickets distributed one hour before screening.


I AM A CAT Kon Ichikawa'a adaptation of Natsume Soseki's novel takes a cat's-eye view of the life of a Meiji-period schoolteacher. Tatsuya Nakadai, who played the teacher, will appear at this screening. (1976, 116 min) 5 pm, National Gallery of Art East Building auditorium. Free.


MONDAY, JUNE 23

AFTER THE RAIN Written and directed by Takahashi Koizumi from notes left by his longtime mentor, Akira Kurosawa, this film doesn't much resemble the master's gory final samurai epic, Ran, or even lighter-hearted predecessors like Yojimbo. Poor ronin (unemployed samurai) Ihei Misawa (Akira Terao) and his wife (Yoshiko Miyazaki) are among the many travelers waiting at an inn for the rain-swollen nearby river to fall and allow a safe crossing. Ihei skillfully disarms a group of men fighting in the woods, earning the attention of the local lord (Shiro Mifune) and then an offer to serve as the lord's fencing instructor. But there's a reason why Ihei has long been unemployed: He's much better at handling swords than aristocratic egos. Even if Koizumi's movie doesn't convey precisely what Kurosawa intended, it is rooted in the master's style — notably his sensitivity to the natural world — and the themes he pressed rather too hard in his final work. Rather than sermonizing on alternatives to violence, however, the film simply shows one that's both simple and transcendent. Teruyo Nogami, who assisted in making this film, will appear at the screening. (1999, 91 min) (Shown at AFI in 2001 as When the Rain Lifts.) 6:30PM, 6:30 pm, Japan Information and Culture Center, 1155 21st St NW. Free; reservations required. RSVP to jiccrsvpwinter08@embjapan.org


GAMES OF LOVE AND CHANCE Contrasting classical French theater with today's polyglot culture, Abdel Kechiche's film shows what happens when a group of high-schoolers from Paris's projects study the Marivaux play that gives this film its title. (2004, 123 min) 6:30 pm, Goethe-Institut, 812 Seventh St NW. Free, but reservations required. RSVP to 202-289-1200 ext. 161 or rsvp@washington.goethe.org


TUESDAY, JUNE 24

LA CHINOISE Jean-Luc Godard goes Maoist, although not humorlessly, with this tale of five would-be revolutionaries who debate how to bring China's Cultural Revolution to Europe. (also June 25 & 26) 3, 5, 7, & 9:10 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75


ANATOMY OF A MURDER In this Otto Preminger drama, Jimmy Stewart plays a small-town lawyer who defends a hothead for a murder he's already confessed to. Cameos by Army-McCarthy lawyer Joseph N. Welch and the film's score composer, Duke Ellington. (Also June 25-27 & 30 and July 1) 6:30 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75


DOG DAY AFTERNOON Based on actual events, Sidney Lumet's film is about a bank robbery staged by a man (Al Pacino) seeking cash for his boyfriend's sex change operation. (1975, 124 min) 7 pm, National Portrait Gallery, 8th & F Sts NW. Free.


MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS Historical drama of the sort they probably shouldn't have still been making in the 1970s, this account of Mary's battles against her cousin, soon to become Elizabeth I, has been called "schoolmarmish." The cast, however, is notable, featuring Vanessa Redgrave, Glenda Jackson, Patrick McGoohan, and Timothy Dalton. (1971, 128 min) 7 pm, Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress Madison Building, Third Floor, 101 Independence Ave. SE. Free; call 202-707-5677 for reservations.


RABIN-PERES: EVERYTHING IS PERSONAL This documentary contrasts the lives and politics of bitter rivals Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, and shows how they came to collaborate in the 1990s. (2007, 88 min) 7:30 pm, Washington DC Jewish Community Center, 1529 16th Street NW. $10.


VERTIGO The setup for Alfred Hitchcock's bleak masterpiece is routine detective-story fodder, but it gives genre the slip midway through the story, allowing the film — and Jimmy Stewart as its neurotic protagonist — to reveal much more than whodunnit (or, in this case, whoisit). (1958, 126 min) (also June 25-29, July 1 & 3) 9:30 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75


MY LIFE TO LIVE A clerk (Anna Karina) becomes a hooker in the first of Jean-Luc Godard's many films to use prostitution as a metaphor for modern life. With its on-screen commentator, the movie has elements of documentary, and also invokes Brecht. Then the tone shifts toward Hollywood B-movie, albeit with one dazzlingly edited sequence that's pure new wave. (1962, 85 min) (also June 25-29) 9:45 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75


WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25

LET KATIE DO IT and HOODOO ANN Two early shorts by D.W. Griffith. In the first, Katie takes her seven nieces and nephews from Maine to Mexico, where they help defend Katie's fiance's gold mine from attackers. In the second, an orphan who believes she's jinxed (or "hoodooed") finds adoptive parents and a boyfriend, but then thinks she's responsible for a horrible event. 7 pm, Films on the Hill, Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, 545 Seventh Street, SE. $5.


THURSDAY, JUNE 26

TRAVELERS AND MAGICIANS The youthful, Westernized protagonist of writer-director Khyentse Norbu's picturesque but pat second feature wants to escape from a small Bhutanese village to the glamour of the U.S.A. Hitchhiking on what he hopes is the first leg of his journey to America, Dondup (Tshewang Dendup) acquires several traveling companions, including a storytelling monk (Sonam Kinga). During lulls in the journey, the monk spins a cautionary tale. It is, of course, a parable of a restless young man who's bored with his village and wants to visit new places: Tashi (Lhakpa Dorji) leaves his home, gets lost, and is reluctantly given shelter by an old man (Gomchen Penjore) whose beautiful young wife (Deki Yangzom) is a potentially fatal attraction. The story has less effect on Dondup's zeal to emigrate, however, than do the charms of another traveler, a pretty 19-year-old (Sonam Lhamo). More conventional and less humorous than Norbu's previous movie, The Cup, this film offers a rather Victorian gloss on Buddhism. (Also July 2) (2003, 108 min) 2 pm, Freer/Sackler Galleries, 12th & Independence Ave SW. Free; tickets distributed one hour before screening.


THE PASSING Bill Viola's experimental film collates the conscious and the subconscious to create a vision of the director's own birth, life, and death. (1991, 54 min) 6 pm, Smithsonian American Art Museum, McEvoy Auditorium, 8th & G Sts NW. Free.


THE ANNIVERSARY Vietnamese-American filmmaker Ham Tran's short concerns two brothers separated by the Vietnam War. Followed by a discussion of the Vietnamese-American experience with the director and two Vietnamese-American academics. (2004, 28 min) 6:30 pm, Smithsonian S. Dillon Ripley Center Free.


THE ETERNAL MONUMENT Never released in the West, Tadashi Imai's film sidesteps the more controversial aspects of the battle of Okinawa by focusing on female high school students working at army field hospitals. The title refers to a monument that memorializes some 200 girls who died during Okinawa's fall to the U.S. (1982, 140 min) 7 pm, Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress Madison Building, Third Floor, 101 Independence Ave. SE. Free; call 202-707-5677 for reservations.


WEEKEND AFI screenings cancelled.