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Today in the PFA Theater

The PFA Theater is closed today.


Current Film Series

link image thumbnail Manoel de Oliveira: Talking Pictures
August 9 - September 28
The rich, rigorous work of Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira is at once passionate and austere, gracefully weaving philosophy, literature, theater, and storytelling into a purely cinematic experience. We celebrate the upcoming centennial of this still active director with a major series.


link image thumbnail Alternative Visions
September 2 - October 28
Our Tuesday evening avant-garde showcase returns for a wide-ranging fall season that features works by Craig Baldwin, Robert Beavers, James Benning, Robert Breer, Valie Export, and many others, plus a program of found-footage works in memory of the late Bruce Conner.


link image thumbnail Czeching Out: The Early Films of Milos Forman
September 4 - September 13
In seminal works of the Czech New Wave, Milos Forman brilliantly mocked an authoritarian system in decline. Then, in the seventies, he discovered new satiric territory: America. This series witnesses Forman stepping out from behind the Iron Curtain.


link image thumbnail Jean-Luc Godard: Movie Love in the Sixties
September 5 - October 17
In the sixties, Jean-Luc Godard broadened the notion of screen romance to embrace a wide entrancing world: this was movie love. Godard celebrates and deconstructs his various inspirations—Anna Karina, Paris, cinema itself—in eight films, including several new prints.



Upcoming Film Series

link image thumbnail Unknown Pleasures: The Films of Jia Zhangke
September 12 - October 17
“One of the most exciting filmmakers of our time” (Film Comment), Jia Zhangke contemplates a China perpetually reinventing itself, and the people left behind in the transition. Our retrospective surveys the observational, highly original work of this contemporary master.


link image thumbnail Before Big: The Early Films of David Lean
September 19 - October 11
David Lean’s early films are smaller in scale than his famous epics, but nonetheless “lively, stirring, and an inspiration . . . in love with the screen’s power and the combustion in editing” (David Thomson). We present ten of these wonderfully crafted British classics in recently restored prints.


link image thumbnail Movie Matinees for All Ages
September 20 - October 11
Our ongoing Saturday series is a great way to introduce youngsters to the joys of the big screen—and to rediscover them yourself.


link image thumbnail Campus Connections
September 25 - September 26
Music and modernity in films from Turkey and South Africa, offered in conjunction with conferences at UC Berkeley and open to the public.


link image thumbnail No Wave: The Cinema of Jean Eustache
October 4 - October 22
In documentaries and unvarnished fictions, Jean Eustache recorded provincial French traditions and the mating habits of post-1968 Parisians with the same detached fascination. This series presents a rare opportunity to explore his career beyond the landmark The Mother and the Whore.


link image thumbnail Envisioning Russia: A Century of Filmmaking
October 10 - October 30
Classics by masters from Eisenstein to Tarkovsky; little-seen genre gems; fabulously kitschy relics of the Soviet era—all are part of the panorama of Russian cinema presented in this eclectic survey.


link image thumbnail Home Movie Day
October 18 - October 18
Dust off your old home movies and share them with the world, or just come and enjoy the spectacle. “Home Movie Day is an orgy of self-discovery, a chance for family memories to suddenly become show business.”—John Waters


link image thumbnail I Love Beijing: The Films of Ning Ying
October 23 - October 27
“Ning Ying knows Beijing the way Martin Scorsese knows New York” (Boston Phoenix). China’s most important woman director maps her country’s shifting physical and cultural topography with deadpan humor and clear-eyed intelligence. She is an artist in residence at PFA this fall.


link image thumbnail Special Event: Ghost World
October 26 - October 26
Bay Area originals Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff present their great tribute to teen disaffection.


link image thumbnail An Election Year Halloween: The Werewolf of Washington
October 31 - October 31
Dean Stockwell is a speechwriter with bite in this satiric treat from the era of Tricky Dick.