The Royal Road

Directed by Jenni Olson, 2015
In Person: Jenni Olson

A cinematic essay in defense of remembering, a primer on Junipero Serra’s Spanish colonization of California and the Mexican–American War, alongside intimate reflections on nostalgia, the pursuit of unavailable women, butch identity, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Screens with 575 Castro St., a haunting remembrance of Harvey Milk.

Series: Documentary Voices

Poem of the Sea

Directed by Yuliya Solntseva, 1958

“Poem of the Sea, which tells of the construction of an artificial sea, necessitating the flooding of a village, is remarkable for its confidence, grandeur and glowing beauty” (Ronald Bergan, Camera Lucida).

Series: Ukrainian Cinema: Poetry and Resistance

BAMPFA Student Committee Film Festival

In Person: Student Filmmakers

Free Admission. Tickets available at the admissions desk beginning at 6 PM.

Series: Special Screenings 2025

Nayola

Directed by José Miguel Ribeiro, 2022
Introduction: Ndola Prata

Angola’s tragic twenty-five-year-long civil war is given an unexpected retelling in this stunning animated feature film, a remarkable Lusophone African companion to such titles as Waltz with Bashir and Persepolis. “Bold and thrilling storytelling” (Screen International).

Series: African Film Festival 2025

Poison

Directed by Todd Haynes, 1991
Introduction: Thomas DePaoli

35mm Archival Print

A seminal work of the New Queer Cinema and a preemptive strike against the domestication of queer identity, Todd Haynes’s audacious first feature weaves together three stories inspired by Jean Genet, each realized in a radically different cinematic style.

Series: Todd Haynes: Far from Safe

Ukrainian Rhapsody

Directed by Sergei Parajanov, 1961

A Ukrainian singer recalls her greatest love in this early work by the director of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, inspired by Ukrainian naive art, folk songs, and the American musical. “Complex and fascinating . . . [with] tropes that turn a social-realist musical into a hallucinatory fantasy” (Judy Bloch).

Series: Ukrainian Cinema: Poetry and Resistance

MK: Mandela’s Secret Army

Directed by Osvalde Lewat, 2022
Introduction: Zamansele Nsele

While Nelson Mandela is best known as a pacifist and statesman, this riveting documentary on the armed wing of the African National Congress underlines that, most of all, he was a freedom fighter. Powerful archival footage and interviews with surviving veterans drive home the brutality of apartheid, and the still-ongoing battle for justice. Screens with Chadrack Banikina’s short Ota Benga.

Series: African Film Festival 2025

New Wave

Directed by Elizabeth Ai, 2024
In Conversation: Eilzabeth Ai, Peter Zinoman

Copresented by the UC Berkeley Center for Southeast Asia Studies

Elizabeth Ai explores the significance of electronic New Wave music and punk/goth aesthetics for a generation of Vietnamese American youth coming of age in the 1980s and grappling with the weight of their parents’ unspoken traumas.

Series: Documentary Voices