First up is Caught by the Tides directed by master filmmaker Jia Zhengke, who makes the kinds of films that resonate for months and even years after seeing them: I still often think about his 2015 film Mountains May Depart, some 10 years later even though I saw it only the once (and also it contains one of the best uses of a pop song in a film ever, with the Pet Shop Boys’s “Go West”).  

His new film, Caught by the Tides, is something truly extraordinary, a project which had its inception during the pandemic, when Jia began going through his personal archives, 20 years of collected film footage. As Justin Chang notes for NPR, “He ended up weaving much of this footage — some of which we've seen before — into a gorgeous and lyrical feature . . . We're used to seeing archival material in documentaries, but this film is something far rarer and stranger: It's an archival drama — an entire narrative composed from two decades' worth of discarded scraps.”  The result is both affecting and profound, and while the film will move any viewer, I think it will be particularly pungent for those who are familiar with Jia’s work, as many scenes from his earlier films will be recognizable here, reframed and reimagined through the lens of a new story and new character.

The story follows the character Qiaoqiao, played by Jia’s frequent collaborator and superb actress Zhao Tao, following the span of her personal life over the course of years, while also capturing “a 21st-century Chinese landscape that is forever in flux.” As Chang further notes, “This flux has become the great subject of Jia's career; he's deeply attuned to the winds of social, economic, political, technological and even geographical change sweeping through his country.”  

It is a film that is very specific to Qiaoqiao and to her story and to China, but like any great piece of art its resonances are far-reaching, particularly in the way it meditates on and exposes the passing of time and the ways in which cinema can both freeze time, capturing one moment in perpetuity, while simultaneously reminding us that that moment is gone forever. 

Join us on Saturday at 1:30 pm for this incredibly special film. 

Our National Theatre Live series also returns this month with the unsettlingly timely Dr. Strangelove, starring Steve Coogan playing four roles. As Patrick Marmion notes for the Daily Mail, “Maybe we should call him Steve Sellers, or perhaps Peter Coogan... Either way, comedian Steve Coogan makes a fine fist of channelling the maniacal ghost of the late Peter Sellers in one of his best-known films: Stanley Kubrick's satire of nuclear Armageddon, Dr. Strangelove.” Faithful to Kubrick’s film, the play makes only a few alterations to the script, but the material is as sharp as ever, and its biting black comedy and political astuteness is as fresh as it was in 1964. 

Join us this Wednesday at 7:30 pm or for the encore on Sunday, June 8, at 10 am!

This Thursday’s screening of The Boys of Fengkuei marks the season finale of our Cinema East series, which will return for its next season in November.  It’s a rare treat to see this early film from Hou Hsiao-Hsien on the big screen, a film which some view as Hou’s “first mature work,” “the one in which he moved away from commercial comedies toward a more rigorous, naturalistic mode of storytelling.” Cinema East curator Jeff Purdue will be here to offer us an introduction to the film, and keep an eye out for his Sunday newsletter with a written introduction as well. 

Join us on Thursday at 11 am or 7:45 pm!

Finally, Pickford favorite and indie director extraordinaire Wes Anderson has a brand new film, The Phoenician Scheme, and you can be among the first to see it at our special Thursday evening sneak preview at 5:25 pm. I’ll have more to say about it next week, but let’s just note, for now, that The Phoenician Scheme brings all the clever wit, deadpan humor, visual gags, aesthetic artistry, and moments of unexpected poignance we’ve come to expect from our beloved Mr. Anderson -- and then some. 

See you at the movies, friends!

Melissa