Save the Date! Mill Valley Film Festival Program Coming Soon

Persona

Directed by Ingmar Bergman, 1966

Digital Restoration

Exploring the strange symbiosis between a speechless actress (Liv Ullmann) and her nurse companion (Bibi Andersson), this is Ingmar “Bergman at his most brilliant” (Time Out).                  

Series: Smiles of a Summer Night: Swedish Auteurs

Stalker

Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979

Digital Restoration

A writer, a scientist, and their “stalker” guide venture into a mysterious wasteland known as the Zone. “A dense, complex, often contradictory, and endlessly pliable allegory about human consciousness” (Slant).

Series: Andrei Tarkovsky: Voyages in Time

Rebels of the Neon God

Directed by Tsai Ming-liang, 1992
Introduction: Andrew F. Jones

A disaffected youth and his friends wander through a neon Taipei in Tsai Ming-liang’s first feature, “a near-masterpiece” (Chicago Reader). “Inaugurates the filmmaker’s multi-movie study of urban alienation not with showoff chops but quiet, enduring compassion” (Village Voice).

Series: Tsai Ming-liang in Person

Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts

Directed by Mikio Naruse, 1935

Tokyo’s lively Asakusa district comes alive in Mikio Naruse’s wonderful portrait of three modern girls who try to break away into love and marriage. Based on a Yasunari Kawabata novel.

Series: Mikio Naruse: The Auteur as Salaryman

A Swedish Love Story

Directed by Roy Andersson, 1970

A moped-riding Romeo loves a gum-chewing Juliet in late 1960s Sweden, but dreamless, refrigerator-selling parental figures stand in their way. A wry, Milos Forman–inspired look at youthful hopes and middle-aged sadness.

Series: Smiles of a Summer Night: Swedish Auteurs

Nostalghia

Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983

4K Digital Restoration

Andrei Tarkovsky’s breathtaking journey through the ruined but magical spaces of Tuscany follows a Russian man who feels the longing for home, closure, and the absolute that the film’s title describes. “Not so much a movie as a place to inhabit for two hours” (J. Hoberman).

Series: Andrei Tarkovsky: Voyages in Time

Nashville

Directed by Robert Altman, 1975

As the bicentennial of American independence looms, the titular “Country Music Capital of the World” becomes an unholy soup of politics, art, patriotism, religion, and money—showbiz, America. Buoyed by a cast of dozens, Nashville “is a satire, a comedy, a musical, a melodrama” (Vincent Canby, New York Times).                   

Series: Robert Altman at 100

Vive l’amour

Directed by Tsai Ming-liang, 1994
In Conversation: Tsai Ming-liang, Lee Kang-sheng, Andrew F. Jones

Three lost souls—and a very alluring empty apartment—form an unlikely love quadrangle in Tsai Ming-liang’s Venice-winning follow-up to Rebels of the Neon God. Here “Tsai began to emerge as one of our great poets of modern alienation” (Slant).

Series: Tsai Ming-liang in Person